Potpourri

I played some more Star Wars Saga Edition tonight with Gman and the fellows. We're doing an adventure set in the time frame of The Phantom Menace, with our characters on Naboo doing some investigating for the Jedi Council and Senator Antilles. We opened this session with my character, Rann Nassin (Noble of Alderran, agent of Senator Antilles) and Laari Noobles (Sullastan Scoundrel) locked up by the invading droid army in Theed. Our partners, a Rhodian Soldier and a Human Jedi had to lead the rescue attempt from outside the city. Plenty of violence dished out on the droids in the city square outside our "prison", while inside the two least combat oriented characters managed to have trouble beating up a single B1 battle droid armed with a stun rod.

The game plays well, with a few artifacts of the underlying d20 system occasionally getting in the way. At one point, I wanted Rann to try and pull the B1 droids stun rod away – a classic cinematic struggle. The rules, however, made such an endeavor painful and difficult to manage. The same went for trips, shoves, grabs and grapples. In the end, I was left with pretty much standing there waving my hands in the droids face in a futile attempt to distract it. Those issues aside, the game plays very well. I just need to take a bit of time to make my Noble a little more versatile in the action, adventure and talking scenes.

Other news on the radar is Obama's win in Iowa, which should give his campaign a bump and a push and make him the legitimate front-runner for the Democratic nomination. I'm suspecting an Obama-Edwards ticket will be more likely than an Obama-Clinton one, but we'll see how the future caucuses shake out. Huckabee over Romney is more of a surprise, but given the Republican slate there really wasn't much choice. The Republican nomination feels a little more Wild West, though, and I expect to see a few more shoot-outs before that one solidifies with a clear front-runner.

I realized today that I have very little urge to pick up my comics for the month. Aside from Ennis' The Punisher, there's nothing really out there I want to collect on a month-to-month basis anymore. I am interested in finding more Age of Bronze trades, and filling out my Essential Spider-man collection a bit more. The monthly issues, though, just aren't doing it for me anymore. After about 34 years of reading comics, the efforts of DC and Marvel have exhausted my interest and left me feeling curmudgeonly and isolated from the marketplace. Which, really, may not be a bad thing; I could definitely stop spending the $20-30 a month on the habit.

I haven't been able to find out where I finished in the for-fun NFL football pool I was in. I was tied for first before the last week, but I think I blew my picks and might have fallen to third place. Unfortunately, my friend who was running the site seems to have shutdown the server and I haven't found out. Last year, I was leading until Week 8, when I suddenly lost whatever skills I had, and ended up picking under .500 for the rest of the season. This year, I managed to keep a brisk clip of picks through a combination of reading NFL.com and the ever handy 'flip a coin' method of picking. My personal theory is that in each game of NFL football, the odds are 50-50, or close enough to that, that you can flip a coin to decide the winner. This theory is based on the effects of the salary cap, plus the nature of American football. Of course, it doesn't account for a team like the Patriots or the Colts.