We had a fun day fishing today at the Blackstone Valley Fishing Derby in Upton, MA. They stocked Pratt Pond full of trout, and that’s what the tournament was supposed to be awarding prizes for. Unfortunately, very few trout were caught by anyone (we were fishing the right way for them, and still didn’t get a hook-up). So, for the second year in a row, I think we ended up tossing a winner back in without measuring it: within the first 15 minutes, Rebecca pulled a nice little Pickerel out, but I immediately released it.

Worms ruled the day for us. We tried a whole bunch of baits and lures, but none of the Powerbaits were all that effective. Salmon eggs were pretty good, both bottom feeding (for trout) and bobber-fishing when we heard that they’d opened up the categories for other fish. Jacob was getting some very impressive casts with his rig, but also caught a few trees too!

Anyway, I was surprised at how few people showed up for the event. Maybe it was me, but I expected to see a lot more kids fishing. We’re looking forward to the Upton Police Derby in June, and I plan on showing up early to get a good spot, and bringing both minnows and a few dozen nightcrawlers.

I’m a huge Firefox fan at work. As I’ve written about previously, it has tons of extensions that help me do my work, and the fact that it’s very fast is a huge plus.

At home, my wife and I use the same PC for our ‘couch browsing’, and since we don’t want to have to logoff & log back on every time to check our email, we’ve taken to using different browsers to handle it for us. She uses Firefox and I use Chrome – just because, when I installed it, Chrome was in beta and I wanted her using something familiar to her.

Having said that, the more I’ve used Chrome over the last months, the more I’ve liked it. Just to be clear, I’ve never disliked it: I just like Firefox more. But I’ve been finding myself more and more lately using Chrome instead of Firefox for my regular browsing, even on my main PC. Extensions have definitely helped here, but I think it’s just the rock-solid stability of it, the incredible ease of use, the minimal U/I approach (ok.. in Firefox this is my fault), and the SPEED.

I know that both Google and Mozilla are paying close attention to HTML5, too, and was surprised to see that, at the moment, Firefox seems to be leading Chrome for HTML5 and CSS3 support, although Youtube’s HTML5 video support is only for Chrome (and Safari) . I suspect (hope??) that this is going to be the next major battleground for web-standards, finally killing the proprietary standards of both Adobe Flashplayer and Microsoft’s Silverlight in one fell swoop. Hey, at least I can dream, right? I’m pleased to see that Microsoft seems to be largely ignoring HTML5, which is their M.O. for any new ‘standard’ that’s not theirs, and am hoping that this means that the IE standard will finally die. Again, probably wishful thinking.

update 3/3/10: DRAT! Microsoft is going to be paying attention to HTML5 after all.

I upgraded to 2.9.2 today – it took me all of 1 click and about 45 seconds of waiting, for a major upgrade. No problems, no glitches, nothing.

I love WordPress as a CMS. That is all.

My refamiliarization with AD&D continues. As explained previously, the 3.5 campaign that I’m running for my family is going well, and they’re having fun. I haven’t hit them with anything truly sinister yet, with only a couple of divine/DM interventions needed thus far to avoid complete disaster.

But I’m still somewhat nonplussed with the 3.5 system. It’s incredibly complex and some of the details just don’t feel right to me, even with my house rules applied. I’m ignoring some of more intricate details for now, at least until I can get my arms around them. I’m also not really interested in investing in the 4E stuff, given what I’ve read about it.

Anyway, the Pathfinder RPG looks very intriguing to me. It’s NOT a completely new game, and looks to be a very nice 3rd-party take at a revamp of AD&D 3.5 (even though they’re very careful not to say D&D or mention WoTC). I took a quick read through some of their stuff, and it’s very interesting and well done, and is getting rave reviews. I might pick up the core books just to read through them more and pick up some useful details – even then, the characters are only 4th level right now, so if it makes sense, I might just do a conversion if applicable. PCGen is supporting the Pathfinder rules now, too, which is a huge plus.

Anyone out there have any suggestions or comments on Pathfinder?

Even though we’ve added a few more activities to our family’s already-full weekly agenda (Fencing lessons on Monday nights, regular weekend hikes, etc.), we’ve been pretty successful at keeping our burgeoning AD&D campaign going. Rebecca and Jacob have been joined by Mary Lou and my brother Jon almost every week for the past couple of months, and have progressed nicely in their character development.

It’s been pretty fun for me as well: despite the unwieldiness of the v3.5 system, I’ve been able to craft some memorable (I hope!) encounters and NPCs for them to interact with, and the world around them is really starting to take shape. As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m using the Forgotten Realms as a base world, but the lands for this campaign are set in a distant location – I’ll connect everything at some point.

The characters so far:

• Feanora: Half-Elf 4th level longsword-wielding Cleric of Corellon Larethian – Masterwork Longsword, Chain Mail – Rebecca
• Calinar: Half-Elf 4th level dual-wielding Ranger (major dps here!) – Masterwork Longsword, +1 Short Sword – Jacob
• Mantis: Human 3rd level Monk/1st level Sorceress – Quarterstaff – Mary Lou
• Fareis: Wood Elf 4th level Rogue with a haunted past – Dagger +2 (quest item), Padded Leather +1 – Jon

I’ve found some really good resources to assist me on our ‘adventure’ nights. Encounter locations are designed either by hand using Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop, or using a Map-Making Tile tool. The latter tool was a bit expensive and limited for what you get ($30) but it does allow for quick assembly of most necessary locations. I take the resulting PDF’s and modify them in Photoshop.

I bought Campaign Cartographer 3 along with the City Designer 3, but find the system very confusing and clumsy. I’m spending some time getting used to it, but it’s a tough haul. What I’d really like is an automatic town map generator, where I can specify walls, ports, gates, population, etc. and have the base map prepared for me. There are some freeware takes at this, but you’d think that a commercial product would incorporate that functionality instead of forcing you to start from scratch for every design.

I’m using PCGen for character maintenance. This tool also has its quirks, but I think some computer-based character creation system is a must for v3.5. The d20 SRD site is a must-have for in-play documentation. I keep the books handy, but have thankfully never had to refer to them during play.

Finally, as the pièce de résistance, I’ve taken an old projector and hung it on the ceiling, pointed towards a table. Real-time dungeon exploration is handled via ‘erasing’ a fog layer on top of the map in Photoshop. This is also nice in that I can swap out locations quicky and display previously prepared graphics of monsters. I started by printing tiles and using an old collection of dungeon pieces, but this was very limiting in a couple of ways. The projector-method, while it has its weaknesses, is a much more manageable solution. All the players have to do is move their miniatures on the map, and roll their dice.

Speaking of dice, I’ve been very surprised at the lack of good gaming supply stores around here. There are a bunch of R/C or model stores, but only one store in the area (The Whiz on Route 9) has any sort of selection at all. I suppose it’s understandable that the world of pen & paper gaming has been overrun by computer games and MMORPG’s, but wonder if a well-stocked specialty store couldn’t do well.