Poll Wars Episode I: The Phantom Blog Post

I clearly don't eat enough Blog Fiber, because this blog for sure ain't regular (HEEYO).

Someone should tell the blog authors this.

Anyway, like most people on the internet, Fallout 4, Star Wars books, and the upcoming Star Wars movie have been taking up most of my attention these last few months. What's that you say? Fallout 4 only came out like two weeks ago? Shut up. I've actually had a blog post or two in the pipe for a while now (two months actually)(this is why I need blog fiber)(Seriously, we have 8 draft posts in the works. It's ridiculous), but haven't posted it yet because it's not done.

Also! We have a poll up on the side now: WHAT IS YOUR LEAST FAVORITE STAR WARS EPISODE?!?! I wanted to include the holiday special, but decided against it because it would win hands down. Well, Episodes I and II may have given it a run for its money, but still.

Back to the meat of the post though. As a few of you no doubt know, when Disney purchased Lucasfilm, they struck down the old expanded universe and have been gradually replacing it with their own. As of now, the only things that are canon in the Star Wars expanded Universe are the movies, the Clone Wars and Rebels TV shows (the ones on the Disney channel and very much meant for younger audiences), a few comic books, and a few normal books. This includes a series of books and comics that supposedly lead up to and provide a bit of background for Episode VII. So, of course, over the last few months or so I've been slowly purchasing and reading all of the new books and comics. I'm currently about three books, twenty TV episodes, and five comic series into this new canon.

SWTOR's PAX Prime Cantina makeup livestream for Knights of the Fallen Empire sorta, kinda recapped/opinion

"That's always been your problem, Voidy--can I call you Voidy? You never worry about the big picture."

WARNINGS AND SUCH: Ok, now I expect this post to lead to some burning of bridges with other members of the #SWTORFamily. And while I do hate that could happen, If it happens over an opinion... Ok then, who am I to Judge? I am only going to mention stuff about the Base story to Shadow of Revan, and only the officially released stuff for Knights of the Fallen Empire. Also, anything I say here is my own opinion, don't hold it against Clang. Also, this is all in good fun, let's not ruin it?

So, today, the team at BioWare Austin did a livestream to show off Knights of the Fallen Empire. Originally, this was going to be stuff talked about at the PAX Prime Community Cantina, but the Cantina was canceled so the Dev team could stay and work on KotFE. Now, some in the community have (rather vocally, and depending on who you ask, correctly) been worried about the way the Community Team has been sharing information of late. Now, I'll be honest, I understand the worry, the way the CT has shared info has always been...lacking since early 2012 (The 'Dark Times', as those of us who have been here since launch remember.) But, some are making their... frustration more vocal and... honestly, insane. (We'll share that later.)

Now, onto what was talked about in the livesteam. If you have been following the datamining posts on the SWTOR Subreddit, or over at TORCommunity, you would know most of this. But, as is normal for the cantinas (as I try to tell people), this wasn't for us, it was for those new people who may be coming to the game (Which is why when the Dev team came to Colorado, I got Clang to go, Not sure if that is why he decided to play, but... Maybe it helped). They showed off Chapter III of the new story (Boy, the new naming convention is going to confuse the hell out of me when it comes to naming my videos!) New changes to the Follower (Companion) system and how influence (The fancy new name for the Pre-4.0 affection system) affects your followers. Which, sounds a lot like the way the influence system in KotOR II worked. (And from the sounds of it, will make the way I record videos a lot easier when it comes to having my companions in empty gear.) And something from Chapter I. But, from what I read and saw, it sounds like your character will be someone important to the resistance to the Eternal Empire.

"Wait, wait wait... What? I am 'important to the resistance to the Eternal Empire.'? You got the wrong guy!"

"Don't worry, Captain. If I can lead the galaxy against the Reapers, you can stop the Eternal Empire! Sure... I nearly died, but we defeated the Reapers."

"....You died?"

"Nearly..."

Dawn of the Filler: Genesis

Not quite a filler post, but since not much is really going on in terms of life, here we go.

First off: Movie reviews!
I've been on a cheesy cop movie kick lately (you should see my Netflix queue), and I just want to share with you all some of the movies I've been watching.

Mad Max, Fallout 4, Dinosaurs, and other stuff.

You may have noticed that sidebar on the right side of the blag. The names on this bar have a very specific purpose: The one at the top when Fallout 4 comes out will be my first character's name. There's a story behind this, and it all begins in Australia.

Well, kind of.

It begins in my basement, but the movie we're watching takes place in Australia. See, since Fallout 4 is coming out soon(ish), my roommates and I have decided to watch all of the Mad Max movies. So of course we started at the only place that made sense. At move 2: The Road Warrior.

Ohmygodsomuch80s

Adventures in D&D 5e Part 3: Revenge of the Dice

The fun thing about D&D, I think, is that it can bring a group together for a fun night of adventuring in a way that video games really can't: namely face to face. The bad thing about D&D is that you have to play it with a group of people, and as everyone knows, people are assholes.

So in my group, there are a couple of types of people: the ones who really really know how to play and expect the game to be played that way, and the ones who are there for the halibut and don't really care so long as fun is had by all. Then there's the DM, who's been valiantly trying to run the game and just kind of wants his campaigns to not be put through the wringer every time he makes one up.

Let's start with that last group, eh? The DM. He's the one that sets everything up and tells the story. He more or less makes the world and the rules and things within. Our group's DM is a veteran DM, but not particularly with this system. He's worked more with systems where combat is not so large a part of the game, and so has had some interesting things for us to see and do within his world other than murdering things.

Story, PVE, and PVP in Star Wars: The Old Republic's newest expansion - Knights of the Fallen Empire.

"A man can have anything... If he's willing to sacrifice everything."

***

At EA's press conference during E3 on Monday, BioWare Austin General Manager Jeff Hickman announced the release of the newest expansion for The Old Republic: Knights of the Fallen Empire. To quote the official page, "the story follows your player character as he/she becomes The Outlander, a veteran of the Great Galactic War. A third faction threatens the galaxy as we know it, and your choices will determine the fate of both the Sith Empire and Galactic Republic."

So far, it looks like that BioWare has SIXTEEN Chapters worth of story content planned for KotFE (With eleven named on the site so far.) But, some in the community asked "What about PVP and End Game PVE content? Where is that?" Well, as Mr. Hickman stated in an article on polygon.com; "I want to be really clear to our fans out there who are deep MMO fans. We're not forgetting about that part of the game either," said Hickman. "We just have a focus right now on the story. We're doing lots of stuff around flashpoints and operations and raid bosses and PvP and that stuff. But it's all about story this year." Of course, as is par for the course when it comes to BWA and SWTOR, they are damned if they do, and damned if they don't. The players who are in the game for the story are excited (And already asking about who the story will play out! :P) But, the PVP and Raiders have various feelings from concern to outright anger that BioWare would focus on story content instead of PVP or Raids. Now, I'm not saying they don't have a right to be concerned, but they are going as bit far with some of their arguments...

WARNING!!! Incoming story and potential personal views off the port bow!!!

Adventures in D&D 5e Part 2: D&D Harder

Alright! Part 2.

It's been a bit more than a week, but that only means that I've had twice (3x, actually) as much D&D since last time to write about! I have decided that I enjoy 5e. I like the warlock class, I like my character, and I like my game. For the most part. But we'll get into that later.

My first actual session started at 5PM. We then actually got around to playing at about 7PM. We are a very chatty group, I've found. Our first game was a tour through the wonders of Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark, complete with random Bandersnatch encounter. Pretty fun, all things considering. Here's how it went: we got off of our ship, a ship headed from distant lands to the Nine Kingdoms, and find that the coastline has been magically altered by a meteorite that has fallen slightly inland of where we landed, turning the coast into a poem. We head into the jungle, past a library with wards outside that would withstand nukes, to try and catch the baker (not the banker) who ran off into them. We then find the banker (not the baker) getting chased by a bandersnatch. We kill it fairly quickly. I think my favorite part of this was when our fighter got scared into the trees by a portly banker bursting out, but when the giant monster thing popped up, he jumped right in without so much as a whimper. Dice are fun.

Anyway, we then find that the baker (not the banker) has set up shop next to the crash site of the meteorite. He's selling baked goods. Our bard buys a muffin off him before I get a chance to buy any of the wedding cake (it turns out that this was a good thing later, as the snark likes the flavor of that particular muffin), and we get to venture into the hole behind his shop. Inside we find a glass sphere and a cute little creature (the snark) who happily follows our bard back out of the cave (chewing on her bag all the while). With the sphere in hand, we then head back to the library we saw earlier. Upon entering the library, the huge wards explode, dealing quite a bit of damage to a few of our party. The snark has now chewed through our bard's bag and bites the ball, breaking it and dispelling the enchantment on the area. We have a nice little chat with the magic librarian (who sends us on our next quest), get chased out of town (by superstitious townsfolk), and then end for the night.

Fun, fun! I think the only problem with this night was that some of us were not done with our characters in time for the game to start, and so held up the rest of the group getting ready. Whoops. Other than that, it went fairly smoothly and I (having missed the character creation meet), got to learn a lot about my companions.

Adventures in D&D 5e

I am going to be starting a D&D 5e game with some friends soon. I believe that I'll be playing either a wizard or sorcerer, so we'll see how that goes. One problem: I've never played D&D before.

Well, that's kind of a lie. I've played a few games of savage worlds and a game of Edge of the Empire, but never the actual D&D.

First off: character generation!!
I missed our group's character generation meeting thing. So I get to do it all on my own! Woo!
Only knowing the vaguest bits about what kind of characters all the others will be playing (classes for most of the others), the only thing I knew is that we need a spellcaster. I'm leaning toward Wizard because I'd rather play the old, wizened (or younger but bookish) character than a brash sorcerer. I'll decide for sure while looking over the spells. If I know me, it'll probably come down to rolling a die and interpreting evens as one class and odds as another.

Anyway, I decided to go for a warlock because I was talking to a friend and he postulated the idea of being a "poke the dragon to see what the flames look like" kind of character and warlock seemed to fit nicely there. I will be a half-elf warlock, so that adds to my charisma a bit, and I put my two extra points into intelligence and wisdom. I chose Arcana, Deception, History, and Insight as my skills.

Again, I decided to be the "Pushes a glass of milk off the counter to see it crash, but will totally buy you a new one I guess" kind of character, so I'll be going with the elder god type patron, that way I can play with the minds of my enemies. Just to see what I can get them to do. I may actually go back and change history to Persuasion now that I think of it...

First P0st!!

Alex:
Greetings and salutations!

Image property of some other guy.

Clang:
Welcome to the blog of Giant Chips that are Grey in Space (Only one shade available, sorry). We aim to provide the highest quality of stuff that we may find interesting. My name is Clang, and his name is Alex.

I personally am a computer programmer from the lovely city of Fort Collins, CO and in my spare time I enjoy video games, Star Wars, board games, tabletop stuff, Pokemon, and bothering the people kind(/crazy) enough to call themselves my friends.

I also collect X-Wing miniatures and Pokemon cards fairly regularly, with comics sometimes.

Alex:
And I am a 1224 (AKA '24') year old [redacted] that works for the [redacted] department of [redacted]. In my free time, I [redacted] on [redacted] with [redacted]. I'm studying for a video editing degree from AIMS Community College.

I personally enjoy long walks on the beach, pineapple-coconut flavored beverages, and things that have "Star" in the name.

Clang and I have known each other since high school, when we both flunked out and joined the Imperial Stormtrooper Academy of Marksmanship. We passed with flying colors.

Clang:
Anyway, don't want to make this post all intro and no substance, today we attended the Denver Comic Con in the city of Denver, CO. It was PACKED. Deer lord, there were a lot of people there. It was still fun and we still got all of our walking and such in, but still. I did not dress up this year, been too lazy to make a costume again (last year I went as Professor Birch), but I did carry around my Pokemon cards in the hope that I would get to offer up a challenge.

I didn't.

I did get to buy some nice prints from some random guy and one of the aforementioned friends that I bother from time to time. So fun times were had by all. I might actually get to go to some panels tomorrow as well, so that will be fun.

Alex:
I, meanwhile actually did dress up. I was Commander Shepard (and this was my favorite booth on the con floor). I also decided to get a statue of Darth Malgus, a Darth Malgus action figure and a couple of signatures from the actors that were signing stuff. Tomorrow's my last day at the con (work Monday), so I'll be wrapping everything up there soon.

Clang:
As it is now midnight and officially tomorrow, I think that's enough for this post. Over the coming weeks, we'll be playing with blog format and layout and design and stuff, so expect things to change rather dramatically.

Until next time!
Clang
Alex

Sidenote:
Clang's favorite costumes of the Con:
1. Left Shark
2. Raptor Jesus
3. The 8-year-old girl that came dressed up as Pyramid Head.
Yeah. not 18... 8. Because it was probably the most terrifying thing I've seen all year.
4. An X-Wing fighter and Tie fighter

And we'll be changing the background image when we find a more suiting one. For now though we're stuck with this one.