Weekend Plans of the Nerd Kind (May 15th - May 17th)

WRITING: Getting back on the horse. I have a bunch of excuses why I haven't been writing regularly these last two months - but, in all actuality, I have no excuse.

Moving on...

TV and MOVIES: X-Files: Season One. It's weird: I've probably seen less than ten X-Files episodes in total, but I would call myself a fan of the show. Going to start at the beginning this weekend.

Also have the last disc of Voyager: Season One and the very first Doctor Who episode in the mail from Netflix, which should arrive tomorrow.

Yes, the wife and I have been watching Voyager. We're not proud of this.

I watched the first few episodes of Voyager when they first came out and never bothered to watch the show again. The desire for new Trek prompted the wife and I to give the show another chance.

Really, it's not as bad as I remember. It's not particularly good, and I don't see that is has the same potential to improve as Next Gen and DS9 did, but it's still hitting the spot somehow.

GAMES: Either Heavy Gear or 4th Ed. D&D this weekend for the game group. We do Heavy Gear when we have everyone together, and D&D when we're short on people.

I have to say that 4th Ed. is growing on me. I still stand by my central complaints with the system - most notably that the game was designed from the beginning with the aim to keep gamers buying WOTC products regularly after the initial investment of the core rulebooks - but there's a lot of fun to be had with this game.

Part of the joy of 4th Ed. is that I finally have two characters with actual personalities that I like playing. This is the first time since the release of the third edition, when I started playing RPGs, that I have a character I like playing, instead of just a class I like playing. Once we settled on 4th Ed. as the game we'd play when we were missing people, I created a second PC to fill out the group. I decided that the character, a dwarf cleric named Darvos, would be the father of my first character, a dwarf fighter named Darvin. Basically, I'm just riffing on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, but playing the disapproving father - a priest nonetheless - to the adventure-craving son has been a lot of fun.

The Dice Gods have helped as well in building the character of these characters. The fighter tends to roll ridiculously low when the cleric rolls ridiculously high, which prompts me to say things like, "Darvos uses his free action to blame Darvin's melee inadequacies on his mother." That or both characters blow their rolls, which would usually drive me crazy - but it's actually pretty damn funny with these two characters, because of their dwarven natures.

BOOKS: Haven't been able to settle on a book lately. I keep picking things up, but nothing seems...right. That ever happen to you?

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Have a good weekend, people. Go see Trek if you haven't yet.