While it makes for an interesting read, I have to say that I think the author greatly understates the enormous problems Internet Explorer’s rendering engine has when it comes to web standards. Yes, each browser has its own interpretation of the W3C standards and interprets them slightly differently. However (and it is a big however), the differences between the other browsers are usually pretty mild compared to the abominable results that you will find viewing the same page in Internet Explorer. The box model problems are so severe that you do have to insert hacks into your code to make it work with IE. It is attrocious. We aren’t talking about “oh, it is a few pixels off” like you might run into with Opera and Firefox. Oh now, we are talking “doesn’t display right at all.” Not to mention having to put line break tags behind every image so IE doesn’t add extra dummy space next to or beneath the image…

A long time I ago I stopped paying much attention to IE. I make sure that a site will display usably in the browser, but I don’t waste my time and the client’s money to make it look perfect there. I usually use a “two out of three ain’t bad” approach to design: if the code displays right in two browsers out of the three I test in (IE 6, Firefox, Opera) and looks passable in the other, then it is all right. If it displays good in two but is totally screwed up in a third, that means there is either A) a problem in MY code; or B) a problem in the offending browser that doesn’t like how I coded something. A little bit of finagling is usually enough to get things working right again.

That being said, I think IE’s best option as far as compatibility is concerned is to default to an IE7-compatible engine, and then just allow a quick toggle between that and the standards-based IE8 mode. That way your run-of-the-mill user won’t be inconvenience (immediately, anyway), and people that want to use the standards-based method will be fine. Then, by the time IE9 is rolled out, the standards-based mode can be made the default and everyone can be happy. That will give web developers a good 2-3 year window to update code for the new IE engine, while making sure that the less web saavy don’t think their “Internets are not working right on their modem.”

Yes, I have to deal with these people that not only don’t know what they are doing but don’t have any intention of putting more energy into their computer than they do operating a television set. Sigh.

I am glad that Roy got me those Ipsha Battleglobes (which Mongoose calls warglobes — geez, they can’t do anything right, can they? A little bit of research from a primary source [JMS usenet postings] is just too much hassle for them, I guess) and Lumati transport for Christmas. They were the last ones that Thoughthammer had in stock! I kind of would have liked some of the Gaim possibly, too, but given the horrible quality issues with most of the Mongoose original miniatures it is probably better that I didn’t purchase any (the Ipsha ships I have will need epoxied rather than glued because the idiots couldn’t figure out that a mounting peg might have been useful for the fins).

I have to say that of the B5 license holders, Mongoose may have been the most prodigious, but they seem to have managed to achieve that through a mix of directly reusing previous product line elements (Agents of Gaming’s full scale miniatures) and adopting ideas that made Galoob’s “Ma’caroon cruiser” seem intelligent by comparison. I have long thought about buying some more of the Mongoose RPG books just to see how mad they make me — the Minbari book had me rolling my eyes constantly. Yes, some of the concepts in them would have made for an interesting alternative universe campaign, but they have no place in the actual Babylon 5 universe (Shadow Minbari? Yeah, right. Vorlons massacring the primitives? Oh, yeah, that makes sooooooooooo much sense!). It is like they were spoon feeding story hooks to those GMs that aren’t imaginative enough to think of their own story concepts.

Whoa, this has really evolved into an anti-Mongoose rant… and I didn’t even have to buy one of their books to make me fist-shakingly irate!

Edit: It is confirmed: http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/news/news_item.php?pkid_news=201

Call of Cthulhu Sixth Edition is the first roleplaying game that I ever owned, and I have to say that there are many things I like about it. I think I have only run four games so far, but with no one to GM for me, have regrettably never got to play in a game yet. Maybe some day? Anyway, one of the gifts I received for my birthday was the new Stars Wars Saga Edition roleplaying game. I had added it to my Amazon wishlist because I thought that a Star Wars roleplaying campaign might be just the setting that might get Roy interested in maybe running a small weekly (or bi-weekly) campaign. I had purchased the old Revised edition of the Star Wars roleplaying game, but never played. I created a Mon Calamari noble using the rules, but that is as far as a got.

Having read through the Saga Edition, I have to say that while I like a lot of the rules concepts, I think that the implementation just doesn’t “feel” right. I am a novice roleplayer with no previous knowledge of Dungeons and Dragons (any edition), so a lot of the “crunch” probably makes perfect sense for someone that has played before. However, the class and skill system just doesn’t do anything for me. The predilection for special rules for this that and the other thing really don’t excite me, either. Again, the content is great (I do like the gifts, Dorthy, and they will be useful!) — but after sitting down and reading through the book a few times I just think I am coming to the conclusion that the BRP rules from Call of Cthulhu just “feel” better to me.

Taking a renewed look at the Call of Cthulhu rules, I think that with a few tweaks I could port over all of the Star Wars force powers, equipment lists and the like from KOTOR and make them work just fine. POW easily becomes representational of a character’s force abilities, with the Magic pool becoming a “Force Reserve” that is used during combat to perform Force Powers (CoC Spells). Lightsaber combat then becomes just another weapon skill, starting at 1% for non-Jedi. Each lightsaber form is leveled up separately, and would provide its own effects on combat.

I need to review the Call of Cthulhu combat rules again, but I don’t foresee that many modifications really being necessary to make it all balance fairly well. The only other change that I think I would make would be to increase the number of Hit Points that characters have (or at least the player characters) to be equal to CON + SIZ, and not half of that total. That would give individuals a bit more resilience, but still leave them quite mortal otherwise.

After watching a few more episodes of Stargate SG-1 on DVD last night, I have also been mulling the idea of adapting the BRP rules to cover the Stargate universe. I haven’t purchased any of the Delta Green supplements (are they even still available?) for Call of Cthulhu yet, but that woudl probably be more appropriate to that modern level of play. However, I bet I could make things work regardless.

Overall, I think what I like about Call of Cthulhu and the BRP is the fact that the system is simple and straightforward, and doesn’t devolve into “grinding for XP”. Your characters are mortal and can be killed (it is even very likely that they will be killed or driven insane at some point, given a long enough campaign or brutal enough scenario).

For those of you who follow the blog, I would enjoy hearing whatever comments you might have on this subject. What are your favorite roleplaying systems, and why? Is there a trick to getting the feel for the D&D rules?

Spoilers Ahead

…however, after playing it through, I have to say that there were only a few honestly scary sections of that particular quest. The exploding lights made me jump once, but the thrown objects didn’t really instill any fear in me — I knew that it was possible for objects to be thrown in the game, and that was all that was really happening. Well, that and the things that were going to be thrown at you were having seizures when you got within eye shot, so you knew which ones were going to fly around and hit you.

Admittedly, there were a few things that did make me jump. The stairs collapsing out from underneath me left me bewildered a bit, but then later in the underground area there was a second where you caught sight of a phantasm running perpendicular to your position down another tunnel. That scared me a bit. The children’s drawing on the floor in the one room was also a bit forboding.

It is too bad the quest couldn’t have lived up to the early potential. It just kind of fizzles out once you get the locket and you are left wondering if you missed something. I doubled back once after picking the locket up just to see if I had missed something important. I didn’t find anything, so I guess that is just where it was supposed to end.

So, as far as being scary is concerned, the quest was actually pretty mild. Of course, some of the edge might have been taken off of the experience by having an inkling of what was going to be happening. I hadn’t spoiled myself on the quest (at least not completely), but there weren’t too many genuine scary moments to be had. It wasn’t even as scary as some of the old text and early graphical adventure games, like some of the Sierra OnLine games from the 80s.

Another thing that arrived in the mail for me on Friday was a copy of Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines. I have heard a lot of good things about the game. First, it was one of the last game that Troika did, the studio of Black Isle evacuees, that did Arcanum for Sierra, which is a RPG that I am quite fond of. Secondly, I had been consistently running into good reviews for the game, though all warned that the game was (as with most Troika games) more than a little buggy. I tried finding a copy of the game in Riverton when I was there in September, because I had seen a few boxed copies in various Wal-Marts during the past year, but just hadn’t been ready to purchase until now. At that time the game was out of stock at Amazon.com (where I bought it), but it is back in stock now for those that want to grab a copy.

I played a bit of this on Saturday and Sunday. I know nothing of the whole White Wolf World of Darkness setting or any of its tropes, but so far the game has been fairly fun. The game engine and play has a feel that reminds me of Postal 2 (for good or ill). There are glitches and little bugs, sure, but overall it has been pretty fun. It isn’t a deep game, and it could have used some major tweaks, but still it is better than most of the computer games that I have picked up lately.

I can probably give a bit better review after I get done playing through for the first time. How long will that take? Who knows. I am pretty sporadic when it comes to most games, the KOTOR games being a marked exception (playing them is about all I did on my off hours until I beat them!).

First of all, I received my Wacom Cintiq 21UX on Friday, and after some jostling I was able to get it working before I had to leave for an evening appointment at Byan Systems to update some software on their computers. I was at Byan until about 8 PM or so on Friday night, so I wasn’t able to play around with it much that day.

The next day I got to fight the tablet. Oh boy, did I have to fight it! First, the power connect on this tablet is very fiddly. If you bump it just right the thing loses power completely, and then you have to spend 10-15 minutes unplugging it and plugging it back together before it will come back. The power connect from the tablet to the power “brick” is some weird S-Video shaped connector with several large prongs that goes together.

Now, upon getting the Cintiq up and running like it should, Photoshop went nuts. I have since learned whereyou have to go to delete the Photoshop preferences file (Documents and Settings and find an Adobe folder under Application Data). Delete the preferences file and it fixed my problem. What problem was I having, you might ask? Well, the New dialog box was not displaying. It was somewhere, because if you went File => New and hit enter you would get a new document. But if you made the invisible box lose its focus, then you were screwed. The only way out of the program at that point was to go end the program/process manually using Task Manager. Sigh.

After cussing the device most of Saturday, I was finally able to get it to work. It drew like it was supposed to and I was happy. The next problem was figuring out where to put the tablet. My desk space I had left for it was too small, and there is also the problem about the screen’s glare. To say it glares is an understatement; any ambient light at all will show up on the screen. Ouch. Right now I have the tablet set as my primary monitor and just sit it down by my keyboard. Eventually I am going to have Roy build me a metal stand for it so that it can be taken off the easel that came with it and be sat up in a more permanent stand that will allow the tablet to sit at near 90 degrees, something the easel won’t allow (and which was a point of consternation in trying to figure out where to put things). My main 19″ NEC is now a secondary monitor sitting off to the left on the raised platform where both my other monitors were at before.

Sunday I had planned on getting the final work done on our VBAM products, but I ended up screwing off a bit instead. In the afternoon I went out with Roy and rode in the Yamaha Rhino that he bought. It got me out of the office and let me freeze my butt off a little bit, so it couldn’t have been all bad I had an all right time, though the setup and take down time for getting the Rhino transported back and forth ate up probably half the time we were out riding. Not much you can do about that, though. The new windshield that Roy put in the Rhino worked good, and with a few modifications he should have the beast all ready to go at the first of the year when it comes street legal.

This weekend I should have been working on getting the final corrections to MAS done and more stars generated for Star Charts, but I have spent the last three or four weekends doing that non-stop, and I am not in burnout mode. Ugh. I will have to put in a few hours during the week to get that all done instead. We are so close on MAS, and Star Charts is almost there, too, but it is always the last sprint that is the hardest.

This of course means that I need to find some projects to use to try and get a handle on the tablet. Any good recommendations for projects that you guys would want to see?

Having to do some of the art for the VBAM books has forced me to get a bit better with my art — I am still a rank amateur, and would never argue otherwise. However, something like this would allow me to really have fun and create some pretty nice artwork, I think. I could never do any of this with the mouse, and attempt to do so have always been a disaster. However, being able to actually see the artwork and manipulate on a tablet LCD would overcome the visual disconnect for me.

The tablet is $2500 plus shipping… and I do need a business expense for the year. There are a few cons to getting this right now, though. The first is that I just got done loaning $12,000 to family members, so I have less cash available right now than I would like. I also just paid up my Qwest phone/internet for the year (~$1,200). But I still have enough cash so that the $2,500 really wouldn’t be an overwhelming expense, either. The other disadvantage is that I would have to buy another PCIe video card to stick in my machine in order to have another video adapter to hook this tablet into. I could put it in place of my second LCD, but I am not sure I really want to do that. I guess I could… and I did have Roy build my desk with that in mind, but still…

I am on the fence about it, but I will probably end up buying one. Though, if I do buy one, I am going to have to put a lot more time into improving my art skills so that I actually get full use out of it; otherwise, it will just end up being a $2,500 paperweight.