LFGryph

Gaming, geeking, and sometimes cats.

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Skyrim, The Talos Principle, and Adulting

Posted by Gryph on October 6, 2015
Posted in: Blog News. Tagged: Extra Life, Fallout, horror. 2 Comments

Talos3

I’ve been game swapping quite a bit lately. I think it’s mostly because of the new computer, and being able to run games on much better settings. Having a computer that will run games better (and not run the fan so loud I fear it will explode) adds a lot to even games I’ve already played.

I put a good bunch of hours into The Talos Principle before taking a break from it. I really only paused because I had a few exhausted nights in a row. As much as I can play puzzle games while tired, it’s not the most fun thing in the world. I started up a new character in Skyrim, and we’ll see if I get farther than usual this time. I tend to get distracted by sidemissions and collecting alchemy materials, and then never complete the actual story.

Skyrim

In the world of adulting, I’ve canceled my subs to DCUO and FFXIV for now. I still enjoy both games, especially FFXIV, I just can’t justify a subscription for a game I’m rarely playing. I can always resub when I feel the need. This is one of the reasons I got a lifetime membership to The Secret World – I can spend less money in the Item Shop, but never have to justify the money for a sub.

I’m also in the process of picking up a second job, which may well affect my posting for a while. I’ve juggled multiple jobs before without too much trouble, though, and I’d love to make more headway on some old student loans hanging over my head. Real life always comes first, and the folks I most enjoy gaming with tend to agree.

I’m looking forward to Funcom’s upcoming game, The Park, this month and Halloween in TSW. No one does Halloween like TSW does! Gameday for Extra Life is coming up in November, and I intend to reserve time off for that no matter how many jobs I’m working. I preordered Fallout 4, and I’m sure I’ll be posting about that once it’s out.

With luck I’ll have some more freetime later this week, and will be able to post something more substantial!

Holosuite Article Up – Diversity in Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Posted by Gryph on October 1, 2015
Posted in: Creating, Writing. Tagged: books, offsite articles. Leave a comment

Dragons

Hey all! Forgot to post it here, but today’s article for Holosuite is live. This time I talk a little bit about favorite books of my childhood and why I think it’s important we continue to strive for  more diversity in our stories.

link: Thoughts on More Diversity in Fantasy and Sci-Fi

The Computer Saga Continues!

Posted by Gryph on September 29, 2015
Posted in: Blog News. Tagged: screenshots, Steam, storytime. 2 Comments

Data Cauldron

First, I find it super amusing that Tuesday seems to be my guaranteed day to post. My other posts seem to switch days depending on my schedule, but I always seem to feel like writing on Tuesday. I wanted to use September to experiment with a schedule somewhere between the Blaugust daily posting and the once-a-week posting I’d fallen into. I’ll see if I can get more consistent days in October, but we’ll see what happens!

I don’t have much gaming to discuss because I haven’t been able to do much for about a week. Work was a string of crazy days involving massive pallets of kitty litter and countless small children at various stages of “behaving” visiting the shelter. Then I got home from work Sunday (my Friday) to discover my computer wouldn’t wake up. Continue Reading

Gryph is Playing The Talos Principle

Posted by Gryph on September 25, 2015
Posted in: Gryph is Playing, PC Gaming. Tagged: Myst, new games, puzzles, Steam. 7 Comments

Talos Sunset

The Talos Principle is a game I was intrigued by when it first came out in December 2014. It’s a first-person puzzle game (my screenshots are not in first person, but it’s optional), which always gets my attention, and I’d heard very good things about its atmosphere and themes. I’d further heard it inspires some pretty serious contemplation about life and the Self, which always makes my ears perk.

I still held off on it for almost a year. Part of this is because it wasn’t (and isn’t) a cheap game, even for a new release. I prefer to buy my games on sale even if it means waiting a while, and tend to wait until something is at least under $20. The other part of my hesitation was due to it being in a genre I absolutely love. I can’t seem to help comparing all first person puzzle games to the Myst series. A game in this style has to work hard to impress me. I don’t say that as a good thing, either. Setting my bar at, “How I felt the first time I played Myst,” is a ridiculous and unfair comparison to make…it’s just where my mind always wants to go.

The Talos Principle sat on my wishlist until I got one of the lovely (and dangerous!) emails that something on my wishlist was on sale. I don’t remember how much of a sale it was, to be honest, but enough for me to chance it.  Continue Reading

Dances With NPC’s

Posted by Gryph on September 23, 2015
Posted in: Communities, Livestreams, MMO, Secret World Legends. Tagged: #The Secret World, #TSW, events. 4 Comments

2015-09-17_00040

As eager as I am to jump ingame and check out The Secret World’s new hoverboards, I promised to tell you folks the story of our very special TSW party last Thursday. So post first, hoverboard later!

Secret Worlders got a very special treat on Thursday night…

The Secret World had just introduced new RNG bags into the Item Store. These bags, planned to be the first of many, have a military theme and also introduce “Lucky Coins” with which you can purchase some of the bags’ content if you are unlucky with them. The items from the bags are all tradeable until used, and all cosmetic, so I’d say TSW has once again done Cash Shop options right. What matters to this story is a particular emote players can get through these bags or by saving up their Lucky Coins. Continue Reading

Extra Life, Computer Woes, and Other Excitement

Posted by Gryph on September 22, 2015
Posted in: Blog News, Creating, Secret World Legends, Writing. Tagged: #The Secret World, #TSW, Extra Life, otters. Leave a comment

BTV 9.17.15

What a week! I’d like to apologize for the lack of content – it’s mostly due to two things:

1) I’ve been doing a lot of cleaning when I’m not working. While most people do Spring Cleaning, I sometimes get an overwhelming urge to clean, straighten, and rearrange in the fall. I have 17 grocery bags full of books to donate, if that gives you any idea. O_o

2) My computer has been a bit wonky, most likely Windows 10 bugs since the computer itself is so new. I think I have them squashed for now, but it involved a clean install and all the time and hassle that entails.

I have another piece almost ready (We had an amazing Beyond the Veil show last week, with an NPC suddenly “coming to life” and interacting with us thanks to our awesome dev team), but in the meantime I have links to other projects!

The piece I wrote for the Extra Life gaming community went live last Friday! It’s been a long time since I wrote for someone I didn’t know and who was editing my work. I’m still so pleased to get the chance to write it, and look forward to possibly writing more for them in the future. If you missed my posts on social media, you can find the article at http://community.extra-life.org/articles.html/communitycontent/how-extra-life-helped-me-find-my-voice-r58/.

Jennet, of OtterDown and The Secret World fame, has put together a trailer for Extra Life 2015! She kindly let me in on the fun, and the filming this morning was full of glorious flailing. “Sorry, I fell into a me-sized hole and almost got eaten, what were you saying?”

[link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPq65oAp5cI]

In other news, it looks like I’ll be hosting this week’s Beyond the Veil show, which should also be a great time.

With luck I’ll have time to get my other post up tomorrow!

Black Cats and Coincidences

Posted by Gryph on September 18, 2015
Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: Humane Society, storytime. 9 Comments
Lucky

Lucky

This was too awesome not to share, despite not being about gaming!

One of the (many) cats we had while I was growing up was a black cat named Lucky. He followed my brother home from school one day (yes, for real), and we kept him. Lucky was an awesome cat who very much bonded with my brother.

Unfortunately, he ran away while our family was on vacation in Michigan. The local Humane Society called us some time after we got back, saying they had a black cat who had been found in a live trap in our area, and asking if we could come see if it was ours. When my mother went in, the black cat was smaller than she remembered, but it seemed to know her so she brought “Lucky” home.

Well, a month or so later, I was petting “Lucky” when another black cat came up to the door wearing a collar I’d never seen before. The cat outside was our Lucky, who had apparently found a new home! Plus, the second cat wound up being female – I have no idea why that didn’t tip us off at the time. I think my mother assumed we must have been wrong about Lucky’s sex in the first place? Anyway, we named her “Lucky Too” and she lived a lovely long life with us.

Lucky Too

Lucky Too

Skip ahead to more recent times. We’ve had a black cat at the Humane Society, where I now work, for a month or so. He has a small white patch on his chest, but something about him always reminded me of Lucky and Lucky Too. Maybe it was the way he gives “love bites” like Lucky used to, or maybe his face just reminded me of Lucky Too. He’s a special one to me, and I was super happy when an older couple wanted to adopt him today.

As they filled out the paperwork, we got talking about how gorgeous and special black cats are. I told my story about our two Lucky’s, ending with how we spelled “Lucky Too” – “Too” not “Two” The couple stared at me for a moment in surprise, and then told me that’s exactly what they are renaming their kitty – even down to the spelling. 🙂 They recently lost a black cat named Lucky, which was why they were so excited to see this one.

Sometimes life throws things at us that we would consider contrived in a novel or movie, and I love it.

Lucky Too...the Second?!

Lucky Too…the Second?!

New Holosuite Article: Horror That Works

Posted by Gryph on September 15, 2015
Posted in: Creating, Writing. Tagged: books, horror, offsite articles. 1 Comment

TSW Spooky StoriesIn which reading Scrivnomancer’s book makes me ponder what I like in horror tales.

link: Horror That Works

The Great Computer Update

Posted by Gryph on September 12, 2015
Posted in: Blog News, Livestreams. 4 Comments

Desksetup2

This is just a quick update to explain why I haven’t been posting the last few days. My laptop’s wireless card, which has been slowly dying for some time, finally started really going out. The good news is I wound up having an opportunity to pick up the new computer I’ve mentioned, so I was out of town doing that on Thursday. Unfortunately it wasn’t up and running in time for this week’s Beyond the Veil, so I missed that, too.

Since then (other than working!) I’ve been getting everything set up, downloaded, and transferred over, and I’m hopefully near the end of that part. I’d forgotten the joy of tracking down save files, re-downloading mods, transferring over my scripts… I really can’t complain though, it’s all towards a great end goal!

I was able to pick up two monitors thanks to a sale, and you know what that means…streaming sometime soon(tm)!!! I’ll be announcing on Twitter and Facebook once I’m ready to go, otherwise my Twitch channel is at twitch.tv/darkgryphon42. I am super excited to start up again, and just in time to get a jump on Extra Life!

Speaking of Extra Life, I will also be doing the final edit on my article for the Extra Life Community website this week, and will post a link when it goes up. I may be writing more for them at another time, I’ll keep everyone posted on that.

That’s about all I’ve got for now. I spent last night in awe of being able to play The Secret World on higher graphic settings. I thought the game was gorgeous on low, now it blows my mind! After gaming on the same laptop for 5 or 6 years, it’s incredibly nice to have so much more screen real estate and a system that isn’t going to freak out running my favorite games. (Also, ignore the mess, I still need to find places for all the things I used to keep on my desk! :P)

Gaming space1

Gryph is Playing Craft the World

Posted by Gryph on September 8, 2015
Posted in: Gryph is Playing, PC Gaming. Tagged: Minecraft, Steam. Leave a comment

Craft the World start

After getting frustrated with my internet last night, (The Right Round is NOT a fun mission to disconnect on. And yes, the problem was on my end, not TSW’s.) I decided to scan through my Steam library for something single-player. “Ohhey, Craft the World! I haven’t played in ages, wonder if it’s still fun?”

The answer is yes, yes it’s still fun and crazy addictive. I was on for about 4 hours, and it was 2am before I went to bed. >_>

From the Steam page:

Craft The World is a unique sandbox strategy game, the mix of Dungeon Keeper, Terraria and Dwarf Fortress. Explore a random generated world populated by dangerous creatures, build a dwarf fortress, gather resources, and craft all the items, weapons, and armor you need

Continue Reading

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