Last weekend I participated in a 9 hour intensive on Peer Counseling at the Grove.

Today we held a Deity Swap workshop at the Grove, hosted by my dearest friend Anna, where members were to pick a deity of significance with them, and talk about how they have influenced their life. I originally thought it was going to be a workshop where we would break-off into groups of two, explain our deity of choice to our partner, and in turn our partner would talk about what they learned about said deity to the group.

Turns out, however, that it was just one big group discussion, and each person went through their deity in turn. This, of course, made the workshop span a lot longer than I anticipated, as you know how people like to talk about themselves. And unfortunately I abhor group discussions, and avoid them whenever possible for this simple reason. That and when decisions have to be made with in the group (such as Witan meetings, ritual planning meetings) that everyone has to get the “me too’s” in and you’re stuck there for hours on end. Hardly anything gets accomplished.

But, I stuck it out because I really was interested in hearing from other people, and I wanted to support my friend. I did not speak about everything I wanted to, I kept it short and sweet. Perhaps I will write up my thoughts concerning Athena at another time for those interested.

I also have several thoughts on my particular spiritual mindset that I might delve into later.

Yesterday I changed the oil in my car, scrubbed the bathroom, and started some cleaning for some potential guests tomorrow or Tuesday. My good friend Art from Hemlock Vales Protogrove and his wife may be able to stop in for a visit while in town from northern PA. I look forward to seeing them, as I haven’t seen Art since Trillium. If the plans go through, I will probably take off work early one day to hang out with them.

Tonight is a “Me” night, spent on web projects, MUD chaos, and my dedicant’s program. Earlier I was able to play God and brought down fire from the sky, plagued the streets with demonic rats, and sent tidalwaves over the city, washing citizens of the city (players included) down the street, half-drowned.

It’s dangerous when I get frisky

John Chow, who apparently considers himself the Root of all Evil (and is also a very smart internet money-maker) is having a contest where he gives away a Nintendo Wii. The contest is sponsored by a company called 1234Pens.com, who make promotional pens (and they have a -lot- of nice pens, I might think about getting some for the Grove).

In order to enter this contest, you have to do exactly what I am doing now, make a post about it, with a few specified links and words. I don’t necessarily want the Wii for myself, I have little time to play video games these days. (Though I’m sure I will try it out). But for my sweetheart. So I’m bloggin for you, kid, cause I lurve you.

I have a player on my MUD that still uses a 28.8 modem. Not only did I not think those things even existed anymore, but it’s an indestructible flashback to
“Yo check this out guy, this is insanely great, it has a 28.8 bps modem.” “Yeah? Display?” “Active Matrix Man, a million psychadelic colors.” “I want it.” “I want it to have my children.” “It has a killer refresh rate.” “P6 chip, triple the speed of the pentium.” “And it has a PCI BUS, but you already knew that.”

I imagine with that, all he -can- do is MUD.

I talk about MUD’s once in a while, and I imagine most people have no clue what I’m talking about. Try to explain a text-based game to the current incarnation of gamers who are based off of World of Warcraft, GuildWars, Final Fantasy, and Half Life.

What could -possibly- be fun about playing a game based entirely around text?

One word: Immersion.

I play World of Warcraft on occasion. I can stand at the very maximum, an hour of it, though usually it’s half an hour, before I get bored of killing things over and over and over and over again. Sure the graphics are great. My night elf looks badass, and I get excited when I see the golden pillar of ambrosia “j00 just leveled” encompass my character momentarily.

But what happens after that? You start all over again to reach the next level. What happens when you get to 60? Or even worse, you’ve spent the $60 for the expansion just to get to level 70 with a new race? Are you kidding me? Do you know how many man hours that takes? So what happens when you get to 70? Raids and instances? Uber equipment? There’s nothing in these games to do except for grinding and farming.

This is why the text-based grandeur of the 80’s is far far superior than the uber conglomerate MMORPG’s mentioned above. You can actually level up your character, and change the world.

Such as the life on my own MUD, if you join up to be an Imperial Guard (an organization I’ve based largely off of the Roman Empire), you can not only enforce laws on other played characters, but when they’ve broken them, you can execute them (meaning they’re gone for good, and that player has to create a new character). Not only can you attack another city, but you can take it over and claim it as your own territory. You can take out the entire enemy force for good, and claim dominance over the entire continent. You can create a thief and manipulate information, gold, equipment out of unsuspecting allies. You can create a mage and cast spells on all of your friends, or use these spells to change the way you look, create items, create portals to other portions of the world. You can create a legendary character that is known throughout the world. You can worship the God of War, and actually become a high priest in his church, leading his religion and followers, and most likely even roleplay with the God himself. Everything you say or do affects the game as a whole, and you control everything that your character does, every skill that they can learn, every spell that they cast.

You can actually play a role, and have it mean something.

Or you can mindlessly kill your enemies for honor points over and over, as they repop into their new bodies, gather up their same equipment again, with names like “CuteChick” and “j00suck”. You can wait for the administrators whom you’ve never met, and will never know, to change the global storyline paragraph on their website, which actually means absolutely nothing in game, because nothing ever changes.

Know what the biggest mind-boggling difference is? MUD’s are free. You can get so much more, for free.

I’m sure there are many more ways I could hammer on about how superior MUD’s are to the modern day MMORPG, but really the only way to find out is to try it yourself. (But feel free to add to my list in comments :))

Yesterday from a client, we all received our own bottles of “Willm Cremant d’Alsace Brut“, which through some search is apparently: “A Still Wine. An easy-drinking sparkler. Quite frothy with light tones of honey and candied fruit.” A nice sentiment I will probably save it for Christmas Day with my dad. I’ve drank a lot of mead, but I don’t think I’ve ever had wine.

This Saturday we’re having our Winter Solstice ritual at the Grove. In a way I’m looking forward to it, for the spiritual aspect. But in another way, I’m not. Mostly the moving watching and such that people intend to do all night. But I will be attempting to immerse myself into this ritual more.

My sister also called last night and asked to come over this weekend. I told her that I’d be going to a ritual on Saturday, just to warn her, but she wanted to come anyway. I’m hoping this doesn’t blow up in my face like last time.

Dad has baked over 100 dozen cookies. I dunno why he bakes so much, but he enjoys it so… We give them away as gifts, and I’m sure I will bring plenty to work to give away. They’re just so…tempting.

Things on the MUD are progressing enormously well. It’s weird. I had originally opened into alpha phase, with the sole intention of mostly doing some code/system testing with some roleplay inbetween. But the players have completely kickstarted the entire thing into fully operational, complete with fantastic character development and roleplay. It’s actually concerned me a little bit because I’m not sure I have the staff to be able to keep up, but we’re doing alright so far. Plus an old staff member came back recently, whose roleplay is admirable.

I haven’t even advertised yet and we’re already up to 131 pfiles, which is probably about 15 regular players, their alts and a bunch of folks who stopped by but don’t want to or don’t think they can play yet. I’m looking at spring to advance into beta testing and actually start advertising for players.

I’ll be starting my cherokee II classes in January, and I’ve been playing the guitar more. I suppose it would do me good to learn how to actually read music. So that’s on the menu.

Huzzah for being busy.

In the light of my previous entry about my disgust for psychotic coveters of video games, we now have thieves who tunnel under the wall just for PS3.

Merry Christmas.

I haven’t had anything overly significant to say lately.

I’ve mostly been absorbed in web work, dance, and my MUD.

I let my dad have my bank card today to get groceries and a couple hundred out for himself to use for holiday shopping. He can’t afford to buy anything, he can barely afford to pay monthly bills. So I take care of that for him. Even if it’s essentially buying gifts for myself.

I received a holiday card from Alison, it was unexpected but very much appreciated it I am not sending out holiday cards this year, since I had to make sure my dad was able to send out cards. But you all get imaginary cards from me, because I adore you all very much.

I also received a movie off my wishlist from a friend out in California, which was also very much appreciated. Ever see the movie “Starman?” It came out in the early 80’s about an alien that falls to earth, falls in love with a human etc. It’s very romantic, I remember my mom watching it when I was a wee sapling. I watched it last night and cried, of course. Kudos to alien romance.

I’ve been feeling more pull towards my spiritual self lately. I still don’t have as much time to devote to it right now as I would like, but I am one by one pwning through items on my todo list.

And I really love having a MUD. I have so much culture and depth stored in my brain about this medieval fantasy world, and as I’m putting it into the game, I’m seeing other people (players), playing this culture and setting out. It just boggles my mind at how awesome that feels. I’ve even had IMPs from other MUDs login and tell me how impressed they were with the game, and I’m just in alpha (even though things feel fully operational). And the more players absorb themselves into the game and create all these storylines, the more I want to write and create.

My dad and I are going to get our tree tomorrow and decorate. So I will spend the day doing that, and taking pictures.

I hate holiday shopping.

So much that I don’t even go out to do holiday shopping if I can help it, I order what I need to online.

What I hate worse is the mobs, and they are at the stores AND online.

For example: Nintendo Wii sells out in a matter of minutes, and customers actually have the gall to write reviews and complaints to Amazon.com because they didn’t get theirs.

wtf?

Or the people trying to sell PS3 for hundreds of THOUSANDS of dollars. The majority of which are at least doubling the price.

When did America become so materialistic that we’re willing to camp out for days at a time to get the latest and greatest piece of plastic and wire to sate our kids ADD and empty our bank accounts? Are my children going to love me any less because instead I buy them something beneficial to their learning and upbringing? Are they going to be less cool than all of their friends?

Will I really care?

And it’s not just the greedy consumer, it’s the companies that release such things right before the holidays, knowing full well that people will throw out their morals to get their hands on these new arcs of the covenant.

Did you know people are being shot and murdered for these things?