The Friendly Necromancer

The Righteous Wrath of Pathfinder!

2026-08-10T19:05:15.998-05:00

Before I jumped headfirst into EverQuest Legends, I had casually waded into an older game (crazy that a game made 5 years ago is "older") based on the Pathfinder game system. Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous! It was on sale on Steam for $4.99 a month ago, and I had overheard a group of friends were delving into it.

"Group?" You say, "But I thought that was a single player only game!" You are correct, but they were going to play it together through the power of a Multiplayer Mod available through Nexusmods. Honestly, I thought maybe Dylan (yes, the famous Dylan) and I could play it together. As it turns out, he was busy at the moment and had no time to spare for my silly games, so I just gave it a quick solo run.

I ended up completing what I believe was Act I? I couldn't help myself comparing this game to Baldur's Gate 3 (or even Divinity Original Sin II), and honestly, how I felt like, "Why am I just not playing Baldur's Gate 3?" I guess the answer is, well, I've played Baldur's Gate 3 through four times already (387 hours played), but IT'S JUST THAT GOOD! I'm totally ready to play again (Happy third birthday BG3!)

What's different here is that it's the Pathfinder system (pretty wild and complex on its own), there's an auto-fight feature so you don't HAVE to always play turn-based combat, there are infinitely less branching pathways that affect gameplay, and . . . no epic, wildly inappropriate cut-scenes (like a bugbear playing quarterback and tight end with an ogre). Speaking of that, did you hear that Larian managed to get their stream banned on YouTube and TikTok?

There was a pretty cool cut scene at the beginning of the game. Dragon v Locust Demon!

The openness of the multiclass system has always been pretty great in Pathfinder. You want to build a hand-to-hand specialist that has a pet and buff spells? They got you fam. Of course, you can do the same thing in D&D, it's just a bit more difficult? Weird? More restricted so you don't make a dumb character?

Portrait doesn't match the race which doesn't match the actual character . . . but it's all good.

I did have fun with what I played, and I did like the auto-attack mode for trash fights. The ability to toggle back and forth between auto-attack and turn based worked really well for when the fight was hairy or the stakes were high. I imagine the goal might be to build strong enough characters to just auto-attack all the time, but really that means building pretty basic characters that focus only on attack and not all the myriads of other things you can do with a character that has a lot of spells and skills.

I'm a mythic hero now!

The final fight of Act 1 was pretty epic to be honest, you had waves of enemies coming in from four or five different points in the map, and after 12 rounds or so, the back gate crashes open with a minotaur. I finished that fight and completed the achievement for not letting the town burn, HURRAH!

I've finished a whopping 4 of 153 achievements . . .

I may come back to the game at some point to play a bit more, but for some reason finishing Act 1 felt like I got my $5 worth. If I was more invested in leveling my weird character, I'd do it, but I'm not sure I like how he's turned out.

What I did find interesting is that . . . well, I wonder if the bargain basement sale came about because of the recent money troubles of Paizo, the parent company? If you didn't hear, Diamond Comics went bankrupt, causing $10 million worth of Pathfinder books to be held up in a warehouse. That coupled with a $2 million loss in 2025 resulted in them letting a dozen or so people go. Anyway, it's hard to see a good D&D competitor struggle.

*raises glass to Pathfinder* stay strong, friends!

Happy Dueling!

Gukking Around in EverQuest Legends

2026-08-09T22:29:52.540-05:00

Guess I better get a post out before the day is up! BLAUGUST! SHEESH! SO DEMANDING!

Today was a pretty chill day. I spent the majority of it playing around in . . . you guessed it . . . Everquest Legends. I ended up reaching level 39 and called it quits for the day.

Oh, I was watching TV with the Uber Wife, but I also had the game loaded up on a laptop and just sat there camping the Ancient Crocodile in Upper Guk for the Gatorscale Leggings and Gatorscale sleeves. It's an incredibly easy camp and so I was able to get both items up to +4 just sitting there, popping back and forth between difficulties, hitting Origin, hitting Gate, wash rinse repeat . . . of course there was another guy doing the same thing, so it wasn't perfect.

Got me them GATORSKINS!

Back in lower guk I spent a good amount of time hunting the Ritualist, the assassin, and the supplier. It made a nice circuit in my solo instance that I could easily run over and over. I ran it so much I filled all my slots with weight reduction bags from the supplier and I have a new fun clicky mask that can turn me into a dark elf from the assassin.

Stingite Smurfstak!

I explored a bit more and did another circuit farming the Executioner, the Sage, and the Savant. The Executioner drops an axe that has a haste effect! I'm hoping to get another drop or two of that so I can see if I can pull the augment off of that and put it on another weapon. *scratches chin*

After that, I decided to give Solusek Ro B a shot. It's one of those classic old dungeons. Unfortunately, I don't think it's been redone with more bosses or anything like that, although there is a pretty great spot where I spent some time hunting all the Kobold Royalty. Honestly, it was a little more annoying than I had hoped. The sonic bats there chain stun and have a bunch of health. There were a few times where Feign Death came in REAL handy.

Don't mind me . . . just taking a nap!

The amazing thing is the fact that after just a week of playing, I'm level 39. Do you know how long that took me in old regular EverQuest?! It felt like a year. Things were so much slower in original EverQuest. At this rate, I'll be max level by next week, hanging out in the Plane of Sky or Plane of Hate!

Happy Dueling!

Out with Najena, In with the Guks -- Everquest Legends

2026-08-08T18:38:53.750-05:00

I logged on this morning to find that the servers were down for EverQuest Legends, so I decided to join the Discord server and see what's up. OH man, that was a weird flame fest. A comment from Brasse was taken out of context (typical for CMs). It certainly got that Discord chat jumping. It felt like all the general chat channels from every unavailable server suddenly exploded on Discord.

*shivers* PTSD from being a CM

I muted that server quickly and got on with some real-life stuff for a bit. Later I checked back and, sure enough, the servers were back online and ready for my mass destruction of Najena. I started a nice little circuit defeating the Widowmistress (is it just me or would Webmistress have had a bit more comedic flair).

Kick to the back!

She doesn't drop any gear I'd be interested in currently, but I collected her caster gear just on the off chance that someday I respec with some Magician or Wizard. Eventually I went back to the prison area and had my revenge for the other day, and much to my surprise, I found a throwing weapon I was interested in!

I honestly was hoping to find a throwing axe, but I'll take a throwing knife.

All of that led to me defeating Rathyl (and his second incarnation) and collecting the key to Najena's room . . . the final boss I'd need to defeat to say I was officially done with Najena. I mean, I could grind here a bit defeating Ekeros to buff up that throwing knife a bit or farm Najena to buff up the Clawed Knuckle Ring, but that all feels secondary to quick leveling to be honest.

Najena isn't easy at level 29, that's for sure. Her room has a total of six enemies, well, two mages, herself, and three pets. Separating them and not getting rooted in place is actually pretty tricky. I died a few times, which made me say ENOUGH, and restart the solo instance with the non-respawning mobs option. I figure if I'm going to die, then I could at least take out one of the mages and make it easier on myself the next time around . . . and that's exactly what happened.

At the end of it all, I had dinged 30 and decided it was time to head to the guks. This was such a confusing area for me when I was playing original EverQuest. At the time I was a cleric glued to my spell book and there was hardly any chance to get to know this place well. My friends were leveling like crazy here, but by the time I made it to that level, they were done with guk and on to better conning pastures. (I think I'm still burnt about being behind the leveling curve.) So, once again, I'm getting my feet wet in an old area that a lot of people already know like the back of their hand.

Trying to make me croak!

Of important note! I recently picked up two game-changing AA abilities. One is Quick Buff. The other is the Unholy Steed for the Shadow Knight. If you don't know what Quick Buff is, basically you load up your spell bar with buffs, click Quick Buff, and it auto-casts every buff you have simultaneously on you and your pet (and every group member if you're in a group). Such a time saver. Luckily I also investing AAs in increasing the size of my spell bar. Between Cleric, Beastlord, and Shadowknight, I have a TON of buffs I can cast.

As for the Unholy Steed. Well, it's a mount. Thanks, I love it!

I just need a sidecar for my warder now . . .

Happy Dueling!

"Storyworths" -- I don't want your photograph!

2026-08-07T19:50:16.000-05:00

I don't know if you're familiar with Storyworth, but it's a site dedicated to capturing your loved one's memories and keeping them in a book. A year ago, my wife "gave" me a year subscription to the site (part-time job) for my birthday and said "DO IT!" I'm like, but what about my stack of journals and blogs?

Some of those journal entries are adorably written in crayon

Her response was, "There's no way I'm reading your stack of journals! That is crazy, and I can barely read your handwriting!" Ok ok, I get it . . . I've been wasting my time my whole life cataloging my boring adventures of Tuesday in an unreadable font known as "My Handwriting Scribble LT."

Basically how Storyworth works is that your significant other buys a subscription as a gift to their loved one. Then, along with the help of Storyworth's suggestions and interest prompting, your significant other develops a long list of questions for you to answer. Finally, every week for a year you're sent a question prompt to answer: 52 Questions in total.

A sampling of my Storyworth Questions . . .

So far I've managed to answer 44 of the 52 questions, which is pretty good, but I have a slew I just don't know if I'll ever get to. I have three months to wrap it up before my access goes away and the printed book that comes along with the subscription is sent to my family.

The Stage Four cancer diagnosis really kind of scared everyone. We didn't know (and really, still don't know) how long I'll have beyond what the doctors tell us is the average life expectancy, which is really just the average from decades of dart throws at the wheel of life for everyone who has ever had NSCLC Lung Cancer.

. . . and so I'm happy to answer the questions. Today I answered this one:

What photograph do you most regret not taking when you had the opportunity?

I know this is going to sound strange because it just happened and it's not some super old, cherished memory or something, but the photograph I most regret not taking happened during this last 4th of July. For the past couple of years, we've been going to a local 4th of July parade that's pretty legendary. It's a "candy parade." They have to have police go up and down the sides of the parade just to make sure kids aren't running out and grabbing a stray piece beyond the edge of the bicycle lane.

I've been going to this parade mostly because my youngest plays the mellophone in the marching band, but for the past two years, it's also coincided with either my father-in-law or mother-in-law visiting. My thing is finding little stray pieces of candy no one has grabbed yet and giving them to my elderly guest.

Anyway, this last 4th of July there was this panicked mother that kept screaming at her kid to GET BACK OVER HERE! She had to be in her 20's and dressed in these really nice white cowgirl boots with white fringe. She had gotten all gussied up for the day and was obviously not paying very good attention to her kid. This kid must have been 3 or 4 years old, not very old at all. He was either a fantastic escape artist or she was incredibly distracted.

This is where the photograph comes into play. At one point this scene unfolds right in front of me where she's yelling at her kid and he's unable to vocalize anything. She then realizes that he's stuffed about three or four pieces of yellow taffy into his mouth and can't swallow it. It's just a giant wad stuck in his mouth. At that moment, crouched down near her kid, in these fancy white boots and expensive, gussied-up, country girl outfit . . . hair perfectly done . . . that she commands her child to spit out the taffy wad in his mouth into her hand.

That's the picture, and I missed it. This goofy kid unleashed the most amazing spit-filled, giant yellow glob of taffy into his mom's hand. He's got this dumb smile on his face that's also mixed with a bit of relief and sugar sadness. She's sitting there with a disgusted look on her face mixed with the emotions of what do I do with this, meanwhile she's spent an hour or more getting ready and looked pristine aside from her hand filled with yellow goop and spit. It captured a feeling that's something akin to everything that a candy parade with a young unprepared, yet fully prepared, mom should be -- a juxtaposition of kid-gross and glam-mom, white boots and yellow taffy . . . where my mother-in-law and I were pretty much the only audience members amongst a sea of legs in shorts that were all instead watching a local parade.

This kid kept running away from his mom the whole parade and she kept yelling after him during the whole event. I had my phone camera prepped in case something amazing like that happened again, but it never did. I would have loved to have that as a picture, but perhaps the picture of it in my mind is better than it would have turned out.

I've been doing the best I can to capture the essence of "me" for this book. Hopefully it'll be much more accessible for my family than my handwritten journals.

Happy Dueling!

MMMMMMM . . . Najena Bosses

2026-08-06T19:15:23.252-05:00

Last night I spent more time in Najena in Everquest Legends instead of doing my usual Wednesday game of Dungeons and Dragons. It's too bad, but the DM had surgery last week and was struggling to sit and play our silly little games. On the upside he declared we can all advance to level seven for next week! MMmmmmm (Homer Simpson voice) Level seven rogue features -- extra d6 sneak attack and evasion.

Anyway, grinding Najena has been kind of brainless fun. I was able to develop a pretty nice pattern with constant killing running between three bosses and building up their magic items by merging them together. This run involves the Unbound Flame, the Tenderizer, and the Lost Crusader.

Mmmmm . . . Flaming Fist

Honestly, this merging feature is pretty cool. I love the concept that if I get two of the same items, I can just squish them magically together on the fly and make one of them more powerful. It gets a little one sided with drop rates favoring a common drop vs. a rare drop, but still pretty great to start with a regular Tenderizer hammer and end up with a +5 Tenderizer hammer while leveling up 10 levels or so.

For a soloer, it's a bit of a bummer that increasing the difficulty of an instance doesn't also increase the level of the enemies (at level 24, those entrance skellies still con green. Man, it'd be cool if I bumped it up to Difficulty 4 and they now conned yellow like they did when I first stepped foot in there. I know! I know! That isn't the purpose of increasing the difficulty. I super digressed. Now returning you to the original train of thought), but on the plus side, the enemies on the second and third floors of Najena are still nice and juicy exp-wise.

I started working up a second group of four (sometimes five) bosses last night that seems pretty fun and frantic, which unfortunately are also starting to degrade as the exp keeps flowing. This run involves BoneCracker, Officer Grush, Guard Captain, Visiting Priestess, and Trazdon.

. . . and staring at Najena Banners while waiting for bosses to spawn . . .

I fell down a pit trap at one point last night into a jail cell and started fighting tentacle terrors and a few named prisoners . . . then I opened a door full of enemies and discovered the true meaning of pain as they unleashed several nukes on me. At least there aren't corpse runs and corpse summoning in this game! Again, as I mentioned before, EverQuest Legends is all about the fun of speed running EverQuest without all those painful group-play dynamics. Now that I've hit level 24 and have Feign Death available to me because of my Shadow Knight tertiary class, I could probably survive that room I died in last night and pull it apart with Feign Death. I CAN FEIGN DEATH NOW!

Happy Dueling!

An Axe-citing Birthday

2026-08-05T13:19:58.101-05:00

It was my birthday yesterday! Thought I'd take this opportunity to just do a quick rundown of events on or around my birthday and say that I'm happy I'm still alive and writing about it. How's that?

My typical birthday celebration consisted of two things: Eating at Spaghetti Factory and watching an IMAX film. Although I didn't do either of those things yesterday, I did see a movie a couple days before and eat at ye' old Spaghetti Factory three weeks ago, so . . . it still counts!

We saw Spider-Man Brand New Day with myself, uber wife, my middle kiddo, and my youngest. It was a pretty good show and well worth the price of admission to see it on the big screen. I'm happy we splurged instead of waiting for Netflix. After the show, my youngest (who really isn't much of a Spider-Man fan) called up my oldest (who was instead at a local con with a friend) to declare that "They finally did it! They finally made a good Spider-Man Movie!" High praise from him!

We almost got in the car to make the 40 minute drive to Spaghetti Factory, but I've been craving some Jet's Pizza and offered that up as an alternative. I'd never had Jet's pizza before . . . not bad! It kind of reminds me of what Pizza Hut used to taste like before it went downhill.

Mostly what I did yesterday was play more EverQuest Legends (Ding 20) and throw axes at my new birthday gift!

I paid my buddy (the infamous Dylan) to build me an axe throwing target for my birthday as yet another "in spite of" cancer activity. For those that don't know the story, when I first came down with pains from my lung cancer, I thought it was from going on an axe throwing excursion. It was pretty odd. All the inflammation around the lining of my lungs was somehow causing pain in my upper right shoulder in a very specific spot. After a month of wasting my time and money at a Chiropractor, a couple x-rays and a CAT Scan confirmed it was actually cancer. To those ends, I have a new axe throwing target I can take out my aggression on. (It also helps that one of my favorite D&D characters I played used to specialize in throwing axes at stuff.)

Good times, and I'm happy to still be throwing axes, writing blog posts, and playing EverQuest!

Happy Dueling

Najena vs. The Maps of Myrist

2026-08-04T09:12:01.781-05:00

My word I'm having so much fun delving into the newest incarnation of EverQuest. Yesterday I advanced myself to level 16 and explored a bunch of old zones that I really just kind of ignored before . . . because I could. When I started, I was a high elf locked in the whole Greater Faydark area and grew up being lost in that whole area over there.

Now I'm playing as an Iksar in the Deserts of Ro in some strange zone called New Sebilis. WHAT? That zone isn't listed in my EverQuest Atlas: The Maps of Myrist!

Includes an intro from Maelin Starpyre, Grand Librarian of Myrist . . .

Several years ago when I was working at KingsIsle, my old partner in crime Leah Ruben (Lead Producer of Wizard101) and I got talking about EverQuest. She let me in on a little secret that it was actually Evequest that led her to get involved in the Games Industry, and we talked for a long time about our love of the game. If you go haunt Leah's page on MobyGames, you'll find out that, yes, in fact, she was intimately involved in EverQuest Online Adventures back in 2003, as well as being a Game Master for several expansions.

After our long conversation about EverQuest, Leah (and her hubby Joel) gifted me an old copy of the EverQuest Atlas. A kind of common-bond item and a very welcome gift by me. It's been sitting in a box in my garage for a couple of years now after I moved to Utah. In fact, I had forgotten about this book until this morning when I remembered . . . OH YEAH . . . I HAVE COOL MAPS!

I never thought I'd actually be using this book for real.

Last night I spent a lot of time in a solo instance of Najena farming up the entrance and an ogre named The Tenderizer who drops a weapon named . . . The Tenderizer . . . and also a haste belt named The Kitchen Toolbelt.

Give me your kitchen tools, Mr. Tenderizer, sir!

I really don't know if this boss existed in the old game of EverQuest. I think it might be an EverQuest Legends exclusive? I of course wouldn't know because I was too busy messing around in the Feydark or over in the future expansion of Kunark. Looking back at the old Najena map over on EQ Atlas, there's certainly no note of such a notable farming spot. Huh. Must be new like the weird tutorial zone with all the Dougs (if you play the tutorial zone, you'll see Old Doug, Doug, Dougina, Dead Doug . . . as I'm gathering, it's a tribute to Doug Cronkhite?)

Aha! So those are the Dangers, Benefits, and Background of Najena . . . got it.

I suppose finding something in all the old is what really makes EverQuest Legends the ultimate game for old fans.

. . . you are here. Wait . . . secret door beyond the Tenderizer?

Happy Dueling!

its Everquest -- for Legends!

2026-08-03T13:31:18.066-05:00

So, I wasn't fully tuned in to this Everquest Legends release that happened just a few days ago. I mean, I saw the e-mail from Daybreak and skimmed a few blogposts (enough to know Tipa was playing). I even logged on to Twitch and watched several streamers play for about 20 minutes. I hate to admit this, but watching the Twitch streams bored me enough that I thought I wouldn't play the game (it just wasn't that exciting to watch despite the personalities). I'm blaming Tipa. Talking to her over Discord about the game really pushed me over the edge . . . mmmm . . . and also realizing I could play an Iksar Beastlord sealed the deal.

Funny enough, I made a Stingite Sleestak T-shirt about a month ago. I took my favorite screenshot of my Beastlord standing in the Plane of Time, had AI add in my warder pet and make the wording, then used Ninja DTF transfers to make a quality heat transfer.

STINGITE SHIRT!

Twenty bucks plus a free month of sub time seemed the perfect price point, so, while wearing my Stingite Sleestak shirt, I began my journey back in Norrath ... in an all-new way! At first I was confused. I thought you played as three separate characters ... kind of like multiboxing or playing with henchmen in actual Everquest. Wrong! No this is much crazier and actually part of what makes this experience so unique. You MULTICLASS! WHAT?! Gosh dang it's so cool.

LOL, that face . . . I need updated graphics STAT

So when I was playing EQ, I started my experience as a high elf cleric because it's what my friends needed. Eventually the Beastlord class released and Stingite became my new number one character. Listen, you have no idea how many times I wished that as a Beastlord I could separate tightly packed in enemies with a Calm spell. Now it's possible. CRAZY!

Single pulling Dervish Cutthroats like a boss!

If that last paragraph made sense to you, you probably played Everquest. You see, in Everquest, the aggro radius of nearby enemies was always scary for me. It was meant to be that way because Everquest was a game made for group play (even though as a Beastlord I could pull off solo play). Each person had a role. Clerics can help lower the aggro radius of those tightly packed enemies making pulls of enemies much less dangerous, something I knew I could do with my cleric, but not with my Beastlord.

As ridiculous as it sounds, sometimes I would even log on my cleric, debuff enemies with calm, log back on as a beastlord, and then take my chances that the debuff hadn't worn off.

So, long story short, in Evequest Legends you can mix and match the abilities of any three classes (well, only two until you reach level 10 -- then it's three). That's crazy cool! I'm so on board for that kind of synergy! Now that I'm playing as a Beastlord Cleric Shadowknight, I can have a cool pet, heal with efficiency, Harm Touch, nuke, and pull. Ridiculous!

My old lack of experience here is that I really don't know that much about playing as a Shadowknight. You know, now that I think about it, I kind of doubt that a regular Joe schmo would understand even how to play this game. It feels like this game was built for the old Legends who used to play Everquest 26 years ago, like me. Not saying a regular Joe schmo can't play this game, just that the learning curve is going to be kind of steep and probably less enjoyable. I feel it, and I spent YEARS playing this game. Anyway, for now, I'm loving the retro fun and being a new legend in the old world of Everquest.

Happy dueling!

I made a comic book for my D&D Group

2026-08-02T09:18:08.737-05:00

I briefly mentioned this at the beginning of last month, but as I was cataloging my new D&D group's journeys, I started to get the idea that I could produce a kind of comic book. The goal wasn't to mass distribute it and sell it on shelves, but rather I just wanted to hand them out to these new friends I had made.

It all started with a blog that I called Thotham's Journal. As most know, keeping notes and writing about your D&D character's adventures isn't anything new. I (and countless others) have done it a bunch before, and in fact my old DM encouraged it by handing out Heroic Inspiration for anyone willing to write about their journey. Because of that, it became almost second nature -- of course I'm going to write about my adventures!

I was also using AI to produce pictures to go along with the blog posts. (I've already discussed my struggles with AI art at length.) I didn't really need help with the writing department, but what I did use AI for was to stop me from being so long winded. It was not uncommon for me to throw down 750 to 1,000 words to describe a play session, and honestly, once I started looking at making a comic book, that just wasn't going to work. So I also asked AI to condense my posts down to about 350 to 400 words so they would still be readable and fit on one page.

When I first had the idea, I actually tried to make a standard comic book out of our adventures because one play session really could have been stretched out into one entire comic, but explaining word bubble orientation, keeping character details straight, and directing character positioning is actually pretty hard to do with AI. It's like I'd describe a small change I'd want done to an otherwise great looking comic page spread, and it would just bungle and change a handful of other things in the process.

So I went back to my original thought, which was . . . hey, current AI may not do great making comic page spreads, but it is actually pretty good at making simple storyboard panels! It reminded me of the old Prince Valiant comics in the newspaper from when I was a kid. They worked kind of similarly in that there weren't really word bubbles, instead it was a lot of text with storyboard pictures. THAT, AI could pull off.

Once I had all my storyboards made and words condensed down to 350-400 words per page, I could have a page of text on the left and a storyboard picture on the right as you thumbed through the comic book. The inside cover was a tribute to the players of the game, the game store for hosting, and the GM for making the adventure. The first page was my character as a level one Rogue. The back inside cover was my character now as a level 4 soul knife rogue.

When I was at a local bookstore I had seen a number of local comics for sale and on the back of several of them was a company called Ka-blam. When I was searching for a printer, Ka-blam was in fact one of the top results and looked to be a great company to work with. I love that they will cut some of your costs by letting you put their ad on the back page of your comic book.

To be honest, they were amazing to work with. I had used AI once again to try and produce my full pdf, and as per usual, AI had bungled a lot of the finer details like continuity between pages and keeping enough safe space between art and edges per the template that Ka-blam had provided. They contacted me before printing and raised some concerns about the art being too close to the edge.

At that point I took all the artwork to Microsoft PowerPoint and placed the pages by hand because I had had enough of messing around with AI to try and get the last bit done. After exporting the .pdf, I sent it back to Ka-blam, and a few days later they had printed out 12 high-gloss copies of my comic book and shipped it to me for around $55.

Honestly, I'm incredibly happy with how it turned out, and being able to hand these out to the other players and the DM as a gift to commemorate our adventures felt really satisfying. I guess more than anything, I'm happy I learned so much about the process of just printing and preparing a comic along the way. Perhaps if I had $1,000 to pay a really good artist on Fiverr to make a comic book for me, I'd do it, but this was good for what it was: a fun commemorative item and a learning experience.

Happy Dueling!

Asian Buffet with a side of Cancer

2026-08-01T08:19:36.791-05:00

Happy start of Blaugust! I don't know why I signed up for this. It's not like I don't have a billion other things going on right now, and I usually don't sign up unless I'm dead set on posting EVERY FREAKIN' DAY. That may be different this year. We shall see.

For today, I don't know, just thought I'd talk a bit of real life. I posted to my friends on Facebook a couple days ago, just a random goofy video.

"I've been watching a lot of Mullet Review lately, and when my co-worker magically found a coupon for City Buffet in Roy, it felt like . . . serendipity? kismet? synchronicity? My co-workers and I went there for lunch and I went there for the memes. (I'm really not going to eat at this same buffet until I get food poisoning.) Thankfully, I did not get food poisoning. I did eat waaaaay too much, however. On Yelp this has 3.3 stars, on Google it had 4.2 stars. I'm leaning 4.2 stars! We gooning and there was pizza! Side note: Tomorrow is chemo day! Wish me luck!"

As it turns out . . . it WASN'T chemo day yesterday. My oncologist told me that we're just going to go back to regular immunotherapy for now and that the 3 (4 with a break) rounds of my 2nd cycle of Chemo should have accomplished what he wanted to do with it, which is kick start my immune system again to continue fighting the cancer.

I fully thought I might have 3 more rounds of Chemo to look forward to (or dread) this time around. I was incredibly upset that the cancer came back, but I'm starting to realize that this is going to be kind of my new normal for a while.

While my goal may be NED (No evidence of disease), the reality is (so far) I'm in it for a long fight where we do this stuff . . . bounce back and forth, trying to control and contain. Wait for new treatments. Try new stuff. Fight it off as long as we can. It's in the lining of my lung and it's a sneaky type of cancer.

Long story short, I'm not going to feel like crap next week. Immunotherapy is pretty chill in comparison. I might be a little tired, but I'm not going to be poisoned (whether from chemo or Asian Buffet).

Thanks for reading, and go get some Asian Buffet -- do your own Mullet Review for the day!

Happy Dueling!

Here's to Bel!

2026-07-30T06:41:08.491-05:00

So I just learned a couple days ago that Belghast died of complications from chemotherapy while fighting cancer. Man, it really shows you how checked out I am from blogging these days, but with the Blaugust event coming up, I stumbled into the unfortunate information. That said, I feel like I need to pay respects, even if its belated!

First, I really appreciate the example of his drive! Blaugust alone really cast a long shadow, and I feel it brought a lot of welcome attention to nerd and game blogging. Long live, Blaugust! I've participated multiple times myself, and he really started a unique community that is continuing on now without him. Honestly, it's pretty cool that the torch for Blaugust 2026 is still being carried! Good on those who are intimately involved. You rock!

Second, when you look at his last post on Tales of the Aggronaut, Man, look at that, he posted right up until the end. Round 7 of chemo, July 1st, a post on PoE 2 mapping, and (as from what I'm understanding) then the next day he was gone. Just floored. His dedication was top tier!

On a personal level, I have two thoughts. One, the similarities between our situations is uncanny in a way. He had a different, more aggressive, type of cancer than I do, but with my own battle going on still, it brings it all home to me. Two, just to be honest, I think Belghast was one of those that I don't know if we always saw eye to eye on things; we ran a bit in different circles; and yet we played similar games and did similar things. He loved MMOs first (much like me) and also ARPG games, but whereas he was really drawn to the hardcore complexity of Path of Exile 2, I was pretty turned off from the game. On the other hand, I could play Diablo IV for what it is and fully enjoy it, but Bel was critical of the game (for what it could be).

People come to the TFN blog for old Wizard101 information, nostalgia, or to be simply entertained by me doing dumb stuff like building Turkey Bases in Dune. The truth of the matter is, if I was a developer for a game that Belghast was playing, he would be one that I'd tune into for more critical opinions on the game that I needed to hear. He was good at what he did, and so yes, a bright light in the blogging community has gone out, and it is definitely notable here on TFN. Sorry it has taken me so long to note it!

Here's to Bel and Happy Dueling!

A dose of real life: Chemo, Xeriscape, Poetry, Birthdays, and D&D!

2026-07-03T21:58:18.265-05:00

Well, dang, it's been a hot minute hasn't it? It feels like a good time to update you all on what's going down in the life of Tom. Let's get to it.

First up, the cancer . . . I'm doing chemo again, and I'm back in a regular three-week cycle:

- Week1: Get infusion on a Friday, Feel like garbage from that Saturday through Tuesday. Bounce back Wednesday through the first Friday.

- Week 2: Avoid people while I'm immune compromised. I'm working from home, and I stay in my little bubble.

- Week 3: Life is good! Kick in those steroids on Thursday and brace myself for "the suck" of week 1 all over again.

Bring it Chemo x 2!

As for other trial prospects, my oncologist and I decided to skip the BiPave trial I was looking at in case insurance didn't come through. Currently I'm hinging secondary bets on Daraxonrasib getting wider approval. It's got some funky possible side effects, including bleeding from the pores of your face, but it targets my particularly difficult kind of KRAS cancer mutation. If worse comes to worse, there's always that!

Next up, I gotta talk about my front non-lawn, y'all. I've been having EXTREME stress about my front lawn ever since we moved into the new house and I realized that it was a bark chip nightmare full of weeds and old grass that was never fully dealt with.

Knowing that it was a huge point of stress for me, my wife turned to my father-in-law, and he hooked us up with a family-loan so we could get it redone in xeriscape.

It turned this:

So stressful to look at for me

. . . into this:

Night and day

One less thing to worry about is good for my soul. I couldn't be happier about it.

Thirdly, my apologies to my acquaintances who hate AI -- sincerely -- but I discovered that I could use it to build a mobile game I pitched to my old company. I talk all about my internal conflicts about it in my last post.

I'm now on my sixth prototype build of the game with a roadmap to launch on Android and possibly PC. It's been something I've been able to work on after hours and during my chemo recovery. I wish I had the money to pay and artist and a programmer to help me tag team this game, but ChatGPT it is for the time being. It's been incredibly enlightening.

Poetry Slammers is becoming real!

Fourthly, I can't believe my youngest turned 17. Remember when I announced his birth all the way back when? Crazy. Such a good kid. Going to watch him play the mellophone in the local 4th of July parade tomorrow.

I like how I appear taller than him in this picture . . . I'm not.

Finally, I've been playing a lot of ye old dungeons and dragons. We finished up our first three-month long campaign and now we've shifted tables to a new DM. They gave us the option of rolling up new level five characters, but I've decided to just stick with good ol' Thotham my soul knife.

To those ends, I've printed up a comic book of his adventures (again, with the help of AI), and a short run of 12 copies will soon be delivered to me so I can pass them out to the people I played the game with and have a couple copies for myself. So fun to give them all some kind of memorabilia of our time around the table.

Yup, pretty AI looking. Fun to make though!

So there's all the news that's fit to print about me. I'm now two years into my journey here back in Utah, and it's been a weird ride so far. Thanks for reading and as always . . .

Happy Dueling!

Using AI to make a game -- There's no money in poetry

2026-06-13T15:39:21.507-05:00

Ok, y'all, story time and a bit of a follow up post to me being conflicted about using AI for art.

*cough*

Yeah, I went full on dark side here and decided to try my hand at making a game with AI's help. The first time I tried this was about a year ago when I wanted to make a VR game in Unreal, but that failed miserably since, I'll be honest, my experience in Unreal is pretty small . . . like 3 months of dev time and a week of game jam. The platform I'm best at making games in is Unity. I used that for about five years to do mobile game development (AND Battlebows VR development) at both KingsIsle and WIMO.

Continuing with story time (sorry, I know this is a long build up), I have a friend at work, and she was talking to me about how her father uses AI to develop little apps and things as a hobby. That discussion combined with a discussion with my old boss from WIMO (who also gave AI a shot) got me really thinking . . . if these guys can do it and have success, I should be able to as well!

And so . . . I started solo dev working on a game. It's a game that I've had in my back pocket for several years, in fact, this game had even made a top 10 list for being presented to our CEO as games we felt we could easily make and be profitable. Long story short, when the CEO saw my game pitch, he was flabbergasted by it and saw no possible way that this game would make money . . . and so it died there . . . but it didn't die for me!

I mean, he's right of course, it's a hyper casual game and the only way it's going to make money is if it became hugely successful around a very niche topic of poetry. As Robert Graves said, "There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either."

. . . and so, no one in the world would make this game but me (much like no one in the world would make Button Bombers but Andrew Stout), so I might as well do it while recovering from Chemo. I threw on a blanket, sat in my computer chair, and shared my game idea with ChatGPT and I started chatting with AI about how to make this prototype, my overall vision for the game, and how it could help . . . and especially how it could help given I failed using ChatGPT to build my last game.

You know what? Where ChatGPT might have struggled horribly with VR about a year ago, it excelled at coding scripts in C# for a 2D mobile game made in Unity. Does that mean I'm vibe coding? Or am I just letting AI code for me?) Now, will it give the game a blackmark for being made with AI? Probably? I believe you have to mark your game as being made with AI in any storefront, but I haven't investigated that far or even determined if I'm going "store front" yet. But, this game never had a hope of being made otherwise, and again, there's no money in poetry anyway . . . .

So while I'm not really ready to share the details of this project just yet, I guess just know it exists and I'm on Version 0.03 of my prototype. I've shared the download link with a select few, and I'm gathering some feedback as I make my game.

Give me time and you'll be sure to hear more about it here on TFN.

Happy Dueling!

Windrose and the jumping puzzle.

2026-06-04T06:35:24.405-05:00

After beating Windrose, we kind of all fizzled out of the game, but I was still fleshing out my new island home. I had moved away from newbie island and left a strange sculpture as a goodbye.

Goodbye old newbie house!

At my new home, I decided to build a floor that stretched all the way across an inlet and land lock a couple of my old boats in museum style. After that, I started building up my crazy triangle houses into kind of a crazy triangle house village.

I love my triangle houses!

After THAT, I realized how much fun I was having building nerd poles ala Minecraft style building. I kind of couldn't believe it just worked, but if you stand on a pillar and start putting down more pillars while jumping, you can take yourself up high into the sky with no fear of taking falling damage. Back in the day, this was the best way in Minecraft to leave large markers of where you were in the world when you found something important.

Nerd pole construction then turned into building an obstacle course ala a Roblox style obby. After running way up into the atmosphere and giving myself a platform for staring into the sunset, I started looking down on my blank canvas.

Don't ask me how the physics work, Pirates don't care about physics.

MAN, there's so much you could do here, and what else would a rich pirate do but order crates and crates of wood to make a pyramid maze balanced on a nerd pole?

Definitely not a trap . . .

So there you have it. Windrose may as well be dead for us now, but someday we'll return, and when we do, my house area will be ready for the ultimate house party!

Pirates love geometry though. It's all about Arrrrcs and Angles!

Happy Dueling!

Rambling about Real Life, D&D, and a side of AI Art

2026-05-23T18:05:22.145-05:00

You know, I seem to have lost my passion for blogging about video games lately, which is pretty unsettling. I mean, I know what's changed, but I don't know why my writing here on The Friendly Necromancer just doesn't excite me right now.

Random thoughts for context:

The constant drip of cancer in my life is incredibly loud, and I don't know if it's made me naturally more reclusive?

I don't want to be known as Tom, the dude who has cancer, but I guess it's too late for that. It's part of my story now.

My new job isn't as satisfying as my old one, but I really love that I'm able to provide for my family. I'll take having a job over not having a job any day of the week.

I'm just not thinking about video games as much anymore.

I enjoy playing, but why does blogging about it feel exhausting at the moment?

I mean, I have been blogging a bit, but just not here on TFN . . . and that's the more exciting thing that's been going on. I'm blogging about a weekly D&D game.

That said, the blog I'm working on now reeks of AI art because I'm not an artist, I never have been and I feel guilty about using AI. ARGH.

(I think in bullet points sometimes.)

Sigh. Ok, let me break down that brain dump . . . for my own sake:

Cancer -- Gosh dangit. Having cancer really sucks. There's the physical pain, but there's also the trouble of just going for infusions, money woes, mortality considerations, and just everything else. It's just a part of me now, and I can't escape it. The recent relapse made me realize that I'm far from being through the woods. This is going to be a lifetime battle.

I'm working on an album of music where my cancer story is the major theme, but it's slow going lately.

Job -- Gosh dangit. I'm just not passionate about my job now. It's just . . . a job. I do it well. I like my coworkers. I like the importance of what I'm doing. It's just not games nor blogging material. I mean, I probably could start a blog about Project Management for a government contractor, but it'd be kind of lame. I've learned a lot but . . .

I think someone out there might be saying, well, go get another job in the games industry then! Um, it's not that easy, plus the recent cancer diagnosis makes me feel like I can't put myself under that stress and uncertainty right now. It's a bit of a drag, but best to stay put.

New blog -- I'm playing D&D on Wednesday nights at a local game store! That's right, I actually found an interesting group, and rolling dice once a week with people around a table is really fun. I'm playing a goliath rogue, a walking paradox: the sneaky giant, Thotham. I love him!

AI art -- Gosh dangit. I mean, I feel a bit bad about this. I hate the idea that I'm using AI and being part of the massive social problem in front of us. On the other hand, AI art has made leaps and bounds from three years ago, and it's only getting better.

As I type that, I hear a cacophony of voices saying, "Yeah, better at stealing other people's art." You're right. You're right. And that's why I feel guilty.

Exhibit 1 -- Back in 2016 I was playing a D&D game with my family, Jeff Toney (an artist from work), and his daughter. We had a lot of fun, and I started a blog back then called "Althea and Company." Althea was the name of Jeff's daughter's character. She was a DPS monster.

I would draw a short three-panel comic to accompany the blog post. Obviously, I don't have a lot of talent when it comes to drawing, but Jeff seemed to love my little three-panel comics that went along with the post.

Now with AI, I'm able to take a sketch like that and fully flesh it out into something kind of cool. That new comic now looks like it could have come straight out of Dragon Magazine, and all it cost was a piece of some random artist's soul, my little sketch from 2016, and 10 minutes of AI time.

So now if you drop by Thotham's Journal, my new D&D blog, it has all my writing (I didn't use AI to write any of that), but the art is all AI. I will say that after using AI to make a bunch of storyboard panels, I am finding that telling AI what to draw is a bit like trying to creatively direct an incredibly talented 5-year-old with a continually melting crayon.

I've always been more of a storyteller than an artist. If I was rich, I could imagine dropping 100 bucks on an artist to hand-draw me a cartoon to go along with a blog post, but I'm far FAR from rich . . . so AI it is?

But what about Windrose -- Oh yeah, we finished what's available to play in that game, and I have lots of thoughts, but I just got blocked wanting to write about it. I don't know why. Maybe because Tipa already covered it? (She's still excited about blogging about vidja games, but where's my passion?) I guess I could just start typing and see what happens.

Anyway, I'm torn lately, and a bit blocked. I'm still here. I'm still writing. I'm still playing and enjoying games, but I'm also questioning my old passion. I guess more than anything, I just need to force myself to do it more often -- even if it is a rambling post with no central point.

Happy Dueling!

Russian Pirates Rushin' Goals in Windrose

2026-04-26T18:09:00.006-05:00

The other day, my youngest looked over my shoulder while I was playing Windrose. At the time I was running around my mishmash rock-and-thatch villa with a dock, goofy giant rock arches, and a farm full of hot peppers and flax. He seemed a bit shocked and asked me what this game was (how could dad be playing a game he had never seen or heard of before).

My homage to the Wasatch Mountains?

Windrose is, as I told him, the newest survival game, but with pirates, and he was like "survival game?" Now, THAT question, threw me off . . . like he had never heard of survival games before? I mean of course he had! So I took the opportunity to remind him of my library of games on Steam.

Ever heard of Valheim? Survival game but Vikings. Ever heard of V Rising? Survival game but Vampires. Ever heard of Dune Awakening? Survival game but Dune Ever heard of Ark? Survival game but Dinosaurs. Ever heard of 7 Days to Die? Survival game but Zombies. (I could have kept going on . . . but he got the point . . . of course he had heard of survival games.)

"Why do you have so many survival games?"

Uh . . . they're fun? (I think sometimes he likes questioning me just to see what I would say . . . I should have told him it was all research for a VR Survival game, like Green Hell or A Township Tale, but I would have been lying. It would have been pretty great to work on a VR Survival Game though. Ain't gonna lie.)

So, Windrose is fun. I like it. No one should be surprised I like it, especially after having so much fun in the Demo a couple of months ago. When we saw that Windrose had a full early access release, the entirety of Team Spode (minus Mr. Spode himself, love you, Joey) jumped on board and started going overboard on the newest pirate-themed survival game.

There is a lot more to do here than in the Demo! The quests have all been fleshed out. Factions, Big Boss Fights at the biome end caps, ship crafting, skill trees, new enemies, new exploration types, farming, and more and more were all added in. In fact, two full, entire quest areas of stuff to do were added in, with a fourth promised in the wings!

Dylan and I are once again roleplaying it up and having fun together. Dylan named his character Boris the Blade and suggested Russian Gangsters. I loved it, but my Russian gangsta' ain't typical, see . . . I've been watching a metric ton of hockey and now that my beloved Utah Mammoth are in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, I named my pirate Sergy the Slapshot after Mikhail Sergachev, my favorite Russian hockey player.

Close enough for hockey pirates . . .

And of course, what ship does Sergy the Slapshot sail? The mighty Utah Mammoth!

Love the name detail on the back of the ship to be honest . . .

What weapon and armor set does Sergy the Slapshot don? Definitely the heavily padded Conquistador look with as close to a hockey stick as I can get in game . . . the good ol' Executioner's Halberd.

I get called for High Sticking a lot . . .

Heated Rivalry jokes aside . . . our Russian Hockey Duo is ready to scorch the seas! (Thanks for the joke, John.)

So many muscles . . . so much heated rivalry . . .

So, I'll be posting more thoughts about the game as we play, but just wanted to get it out there so the readers of the Friendly Necromancer knew what was fascinating me these days.

Happy Dueling!

Chemo Round 2 and a visit from the Austin Crew

2026-04-09T11:50:16.364-05:00

Team Tom! It's been a long time, but I have news to share, so I'm going to get the bad stuff out of the way. I've had a little pain in my back and the latest CT Scan confirms that I've some new evidence of cancer in the lining of my left lung. The result is that we're going to do another short round of chemo and monitor how it goes. It's upsetting, but it is what it is. I had a nice 8-month stint of nothing but cancer shrinking or stability. Let's get that back.

Had I made this post a few days ago, I probably wouldn't have even talked about the pain or cancer and instead just let you all know that life has been pretty cool, actually! My good buddies from Austin paid me a surprise visit last weekend, and it was so good to see them and hang out.

The Austin crew hanging out in Gilgal Garden

The story: Renee and the uber wife had been planning a surprise for months and kept it from me. After I had an immunotherapy infusion last Friday, my wife said, "Let's go to Spaghetti Factory!" When we arrived, she said she had a reservation for five. I'm like, what?!?! Are the kids coming?!?! She just rolled with it and let me believe the story I was making up for her.

After a few minutes of waiting, Mercedes ( good ol' Art of Warlord) comes up from behind and asks me if I dropped something (presenting me with an old Beckett's Magazine Writer Card of mine). I just stared with disbelief. Is this real life? Next thing you know, Kayly (good ol' Mythdust) sneaks in, and I'm surrounded by my old buddies. THE COOL KIDS CREW FROM KI!

Took the crew to my favorite local game / card store

My non-plans for laying around all weekend were suddenly gone and instead we went all up and down the Wasatch Front visiting game store, seeing sites, and catching up with what's been going down.

Just a tiny bit of snow at Snowbasin this year

What an absolute honor it was to have them come in to pay me a visit and what great timing. I'm going to need that boost going into another round of chemo. Here we go again!

Happy Dueling!

The Music of Mewgenics -- "Chasin' the Rats!"

2026-03-20T16:58:00.002-05:00

Part of the fun for me of playing Mewgenics is that my middle child (longtime readers of the blog will know him as Kyle Skystaff), has been playing as well. We've been sending Discord messages back and forth to each other on the daily just talking about our current status in the game, which classes we've unlocked, and just general thoughts on how our current runs are going. I think Kyle might be a bit more invested in the game than I am . . . that said, we're pretty close to being around the same point in the game with each other.

Preaching the good word to the Throbbing King

One thing he mentioned to me the other day is how he had tier-ranked his favorite songs he'd unlocked in the game so far. It made me realize I had neglected to mention how cool the Mewgenics music is! Ridiculon (Binding of Isaac fame) put together a soundtrack that is really well done and has some of the catchiest lyrics I've heard in a game. Definitely worthy of a mention.

In fact, the whole family has been singing Eatin' Rats for the past month or so. You can check out a couple dozen of the tracks over on Spotify. But if you REALLY want to get into it, there's a collection of 82 tracks for sale for 10 bucks on Steam.

Cool cats making cool music!

Below is Kyle's tier ranking of the music (he said he couldn't rank any of the songs below a C-tier hehe):

S-Tier

The Alley (Eatin' Rats): S
The Bunker (Alone in the Dark): S
The Crater (Feline Invader): S
The Moon (So High): S
The Lab (Endless Misery): S

A-Tier

The Sewers (Flush): A
The Junkyard (Chumbucket Kitty): A
The Caves (Crystalline Dreams): A
The Core (Down With The Devil): A

B-Tier

The Path (Kat Fight): B
The Boneyard (Them Kitty Bones): B

C-Tier

The Desert (Lonesome Road): C

If you've been playing and love the music, drop us a line! You're in good company here.

Happy Dueling!

Pain and Pawnishment in Mewgenics

2026-03-15T00:03:00.000-05:00

Team, I've put 80+ hours on this game now, and it's both simultaneously infuriating and amazing. Just a few days ago, I saw the credits screen roll on the game (WOOT), but, much like, say, Slay the Spire, you'll see the credits screen, but then they suddenly offer you up more content to play with a whole new class and challenges for you to undertake.

Who knew the Man in the Moon was a Sumerian demi-god?

I have to tell you, as Thee Friendly Necromancer, the moment I unlocked the Necromancer class was when fun, mild curiosity became my new leech-throwing addiction. So you're telling me I can make a slovenly cat necromancer lord and summon undead kittens? I'M HERE FOR CATMAGEDON!

I am the Nine Lives Necomancer!

After that, things started to get weirder with the classes . . . butcher . . . psychic . . . tinkerer. There's a surprising amount of depth and replayability to this game, which makes sense because that's 100 percent needed in a roguelike where you're going to be running the game over and over (. . .and, if you're like me, somehow dying every time in the final battle).

Ohhhhh . . . so you lure the hands out to the middle and make him hit himself, got it.

That is perhaps the most infuriating part of the game. You feel like you've mastered your class combo and found some good synergy (tons of possibilities here tbh) only to fight a boss for the first time and get wrecked . . . only to return back home with mostly empty pockets and lost time. (Time melts away quickly playing this game.)

Been there, killed that x3

Besides gold and food, your cats themselves are a currency. Depending on which townie wants to do whatever they will with your old cats (or new kittens), they'll offer new unlocks for your game. What I mean by that is, for example, for every 5 cats with diseases or mutations, you can trade them into the mad scientist (Dr. Beanies) for a new inventory item that strategically changes your game during the next run . . . or giving cats older than 5 years old to the store clerk (Tracy), which then causes her to offer you more items at the store. The best return on investment so far seems to be giving away cats for a bigger house or a bigger inventory.

Boon County . . . where you, uh, trade cats for boons.

Ultimately, I've had a lot of fun with this game. Super lighthearted, surprisingly difficult, and easy to play. I give it two dirty paws up.

Happy Dueling!

Skip and Julia Sailing the Hungry Seas in Windrose

2026-03-01T19:02:00.002-06:00

After our last foray into Diablo 4, Dylan and I have been looking around for what we could play next. We have a lot of ideas, and with lots of demos available on Steam right now, we decided to give Windrose a try. Actually, it unfolded like this . . . I get a text from Dylan saying he's ready to play Windrose, along with this character picture attached:

The scurvy looks have just begun!

This was not just a Skip Legday, but a whole gosh-dang Skip Gymday. In my mind, it just looked like a sorry bag o' bones Pirate that needed to be fed, so who better to join Skip Gymday than Julia Child.

Sailing the good ship Quiche Lorraine, mind you . . .

Thankfully, Windrose didn't disappoint, and there was a whole slew of things Julia could cook up for Skip in this Pirate-based Survival Game Demo. I was making coconut smoothies and grilled dodo kabobs a plenty!

. . . also smelting a lot of copper ore

Honestly, I wasn't expecting much from this demo, but I came out of it pleasantly surprised. There was a nice quest system tied to our experience, and even a few islands beyond the "tutorial isle" you could get to. Ultimately, it was all about crafting a camp, finding a shipwreck, fixing it up, freeing your crew of jailed buccaneers, and sailing the seas to engage in broadside combat. End of demo.

A pirate with a whole crew out to cause trouble on the high seas!

The combat was satisfying and fun, and t'was also incredibly familiar. To be honest, it felt a lot like a less realistic Icarus crossed with Valheim and a side of Pirate101 (or perhaps Sea of Thieves). Pirate101 you say? Well, not a turn-based story-based game, but that broadside combat alongside Skip felt really good: both of us shooting cannon fire at a ship, get the enemy ship's health low, then dock and engage in hand-to-hand combat with the scallywags on deck . . . you know, THAT part of Pirate101 ship combat.

Treasure and Charging Boars await us in the ruins!

The Windrose Demo lasted about 7 hours in total, and if there was more to play, we'd still be playing it. I'm going to keep this one on my wishlist and give it a real play when it releases. Let me know if you've played it and what you think!

Happy Dueling!

Mewgenics is Meowvelous!

2026-02-20T16:37:00.001-06:00

My oldest picked up Mewgenics yesterday, and since we are on a family Steam account together, I decided to give it a spin.

Sorry Skisee . . . General Grievous and Dotsy were just too alluring as my first two.

I had heard so much about this game already . . . just from buzz alone. First off, the list of meowing cameows is pretty amazing. (That's more influencers than you can shake a cat toy at.) Then there's the conpurrent player count that made Forbes news from Paul Tassi. I've even had a couple people hiss me up about it, so . . . I had to try my paws in the litterbox.

I used that same randomized naming string functionality in a Game Jam game once. Love it!

Mewgenics didn't disappoint. I can see why it's so successful. What do we have here . . . a turn-based quasi rogue-like with disposable units? Yeah, that's a great recipe. OH, what else do we have . . . freakish looking cartoon cats making babies (doing-it-like-they-do-it-on-the-Discovery-channel mind you) that are a visual combination of the parents? YES PLEASE! That's some primal, stupid humor stuff I can get behind.

OH MY WORD! WHAT DID I JUST WITNESS!?

Not to mention the game feels really great. Everything from the tutorial to the feedback of the gameplay to the synergy of items and powers. It's incredibly clever and well done. I've only played it for 3 hours and I could see myself dumping hours of my life into this game.

Go Crunkite! Make your parents, Jordy and Walkyria, proud as a new fighter class cat!

So far I really like what I'm seeing with this game. Hope you're enjoying playing it as much as I am. Let me know what you think.

Happy Dueling!

A $10 MMO? Ok Quinfall, what's this all about?

2026-02-16T11:18:00.002-06:00

I was looking around the store and stumbled upon an MMO called Epitome that was soon launching, so I wishlisted it and started reading the comments, when I stumbled upon this:

Hello, Salty MMO player, what's this about Quinfall?

So I looked up Quinfall, and sure enough, it's a $10 MMO that just released. I started looking at it and thought, meh, I've played worse for far more and dropped the 10 bucks for the game. After playing for an afternoon, let me tell you what I've gathered on the game so far.

1- Character Creation -- There's really only one race, human, which is fine. It's pretty impressive how you can tweak your character, given there is really only one race: lots of bone options, tattoos, scars, facepaints, skin colors, etc.

I think I'd like to go for that Mid-life crisis in the Bahamas look . . .

My one big complaint here is that although they give you 6 standard body looks for both male and female, there's no randomization button from what I can tell . . . I mean, that's part of the fun of a character creator, isn't it? I want to click randomize to see what kind of monster creation is possible!

2- The backstory and its voice over -- You can't really listen to this intro movie explaining the back story and think, man, that's some quality voice over. I'm having a hard time placing the accent because the person might also have a lisp? Sorry, personal nitpick.

Basically, there's five biomes on one world (Quinfall) that was created from five worlds embodying the five personality traits of the original, solitary god, who also created other gods who then started messing stuff up. Now it's up to the brave adventurers to try and clean up the riff raff and bring Quinfall back to its peaceful state.

The solitary god doing his thing in the backstory . . .

3- Playstyle Comparisons -- To me it feels like an amalgamation of Project Gorgon/Runescape-esque Skill System, Rift's community rift raiding, Potions and Pets from Diablo 4, and a type of combat style similar to New World. It feels like there's probably even more borrowed ideas from other MMOs, but I'm only citing what is recognizable to me. As for the graphics, they are giving me something that would be a cross between LOTRO and Valheim so far? I don't know how to describe it . . . it's its own thing.

There are 10 weapon styles that you can level up. Because I liked fighting with a staff in New World, I opted for the same in Quinfall.

To level up a weapon, just fight with it. As you do, you unlock your spells and can start leveling them, but only if you can find a skill book to do so. There are also augments you can slot in each spell to give it a little bit more oomph.

Necromancer is a locked class?

The best way I've found to do combat is to just back up while nuking or strafe in a circle around my target. They like to swing and miss if you're constantly moving around. The only time I really get in trouble is when I stand still.

Shazam!

There's also a big list of life skills you can level up, and, much like Project Gorgon, you can level them all up as you see fit. you don't have to stick to mining or herbalism . . . just level them all if you'd like.

Oh man . . . there's a lot there . . .

I've only done the rifts solo so far, but these appear to be hot spots where you can have a little open-world co-op to close rifts and earn Rift Scrolls (used in some kind of crafting I don't know about yet) and other loot. If you like combat, just grinding these could be where it's at for you.

The game gives you a pet and a mount pretty quickly. As expected with a Project Gorgon skills type game, you can tame and level pets and mounts.

Bee pet and a beginner horse for the win!

It feels like my pet's only purpose right now is to pick up loot off the ground for me and slowly eat acorns. I'm not sure it's fighting for me . . . at least yet.

4- Use of AI -- There is a warning when you buy the game that AI was used to help make UIs for the game.Because this game really feels really indie . . . I don't know . . . it seems to be a forgivable sin if you view that as a sin.

Anyway, I've just begun to explore here. For $10 bucks, it was worth a shot. I'm unsure how much I'll be playing or not, but for now, I'm level 15 with my sights set on level 20. If I end up playing more, I'll be sure to have some follow-on thoughts.

If anyone out there is playing this game as well, give me a shout and let me know what's what.

Happy Dueling!

Comic Book Store Fantasies and Anime Elves: What I've been streaming

2026-02-01T22:05:00.009-06:00

I haven't done a post like this in a while, but I thought I'd talk a bit about the stuff I've been watching on a few streaming services lately. I love me a good nerd show or two. Let's see:

1- Comic Book Men -- Ok, there's this side of me that always wanted to open up a comic book store. I wouldn't really know where to start, actually, but I love the home-grown grittiness of a good strip mall comic book store.

Ahh, my old favorite strip mall comic book store back in Texas

About four or five months ago I was clicking through AMC+ and discovered something I didn't even know was a thing -- a whole, dang reality show based on, not only a comic book store, but a comic book store owned by Kevin Smith of Clerks fame. I binged season one and found myself smiling more than I thought I would at the really bad jokes and staged comic book bargaining negotiations (it is a reality show after all).

On Friday, I finished up the last season and watched in awe as the crew was immortalized as Pop Figures, and then it all suddenly ended. Crazy.

I'm so glad I got to watch this series. It let me fulfill that weird comic book store fantasy without any of the actual risk and hardship of running one. Thank you, Kevin Smith, Walt Flanagan, Bryan Johnson, Mike Zapcic, Ming Chen . . . and even you, Jason Mewes, and (RIP) Rob Bruce.

2- Frieren -- A coworker of mine turned me on to this anime, and it was fantastic. Have you ever been watching something and you just get that cozy warmth vibe while at the same time getting that Dungeons and Dragons fix you so desperately need? If not, watch Frieren.

Silly Frieren can't resist a good mimic

It's a great show that begins at the end, well for the short-lived humans of the party at least. The elven mage (Frieren) on the other hand, has a few lifetimes left to live if she can survive long enough.

I started watching this one alone and then brought in my kids because I knew they'd love it. By the end of season 2, I had watched it all through a couple of times because I couldn't help myself from watching ahead.

The first two seasons are fully dubbed in English on Netflix, but Season 3 has already begun on Crunchyroll. My guess it isn't dubbed yet (only subbed), but I haven't investigated it enough yet.

3- Wonder Man -- Meanwhile, over on Disney+, the Uber Wife and I stumbled upon this new Marvel series, and binged it all last week.

It was a good one for sure and especially since it brings back that easily forgotten character of The Mandarin and a new-to-us hero of Wonder Man, an actor who happens to have superpowers and can't help himself from blowing up every once in a while.

My official review is that it's easy to watch and too short for its own good.

4- My Hero Academia -- I've been watching this one on and off for several years, ever since my fellow game designer, Andrew Riehm (Of KingsIsle fame), introduced me to a quirky little show about super hero quirks.

Knowing that Friren was on its third season on Crunchyroll was the tipping point, and I got a subscription . . . and while I'm here, I started getting back into the last two seasons of My Hero Academia that I never finished watching.

Image from IGN

Remember when I was playing the MMO for a while? Man, good times!

5- Solo Leveling -- I had heard good things about this one and ended up watching the first six episodes tonight. It was pretty cheesy at first, but I think my oldest and I are now into it enough that we'll finish watching what's available to us.

I'm a sucker for a good fantasy anime, and the fact that it treats the whole process as a gacha MMO-like Tower of Fantasy game helps a lot. I'm excited to watch more . . . probably more than I am to finish out the last two seasons of My Hero Academia.

Anyway, those are the kinds of shows I've been watching when I haven't been catching a local hockey game. If you have any good shows in a similar vein that you'd think I'd like, let me know in the comments.

Happy Dueling!

D4, Project Gorgon, and Riding the Road to Redemption

2026-01-30T18:22:00.002-06:00

Team . . . I just haven't had the will to blog! Like at ALL! What is going on with me?

Well, since you didn't ask:

1- Diablo IV!! -- Dylan and I have been playing the new Paladin class in the most recent season. Now, we've had some great themes before like The Southern Gentlemen and the half-muscled twins, Skip Legday and Tree Trunks McSkinny. So in that vein, I present to you MonteCarlo and GranTorino, our 70's Cars in Hell!

Riding the Road to Redemption!

The new paladin class is pretty cool and currently it feels really good to play. Dylan made a type of character where really he just walks around and things die in his presence. I opted for the Hammerkuna Shako variant of the Blessed Hammer build up on MOBAlytics. Basically, I hold down right-click and hammers swirl out from me in a whirlwind of death.

Since half of the fun is dressing your character in an outfit, I opted to model myself after a light blue trim Gran Torino.

Blue Metal Power, Baby

Also Blue Metal Power, Baby

As for Monte Carlo . . . he just kind runs around with no shirt, economy-class style. It didn't take us too long to get ourselves up to Torment 4 and equipped with a few pieces of Mythic armor. At this point we're just finishing out the season journey and working up to 250 skill points. (I think I left this morning at around 217?) It's a good time.

2- Some Project Gorgon news -- YO! Did you hear that Project Gorgon officially launched?! What the heck! Yup, that quirky MMO I put a thousand plus hours into back in 2020 finally did it, they moved out of Beta like a boss. So proud of that game!

Part of the launch was to implement improved character models, so when you launch the game now, you can update the look of your dude to something a bit sexier. The Human Models look pretty deluxe tbh.

What a freakin' model . . .

The Raksasha on the other hand . . . mmm . . . I'll get used to it.

Those teeth though . . .

Anyway, it was great to earn my Beta Tester Badge, log in, and play a couple games of match 3 in the casino. Looks like whatever guild I was in has disbanded, and it felt a bit like a thing of the past for me. it's almost like I'd have to start over and play from the starter island again to get a feel for it.

3- Real Life -- Honestly, it's a good thing these days when I don't have to mention something. I've just been living, and that's pretty amazing. I'm vertical, and it feels good. We've shifted CAT Scan reviews to every 9 weeks from every 6 weeks because I've shown a lot of improvement. Let's just hope that holds, right? 2026 is going to be amazing!

One of my new favorite pictures of 2026 is me giving my older sister a hug. She came for a quick visit as we had a celebration of life party to celebrate what would have been my mom's 93rd birthday.

My sisters are amazing!

It was a great way to start off the new year. I hope it's only up from here. I'm continuing to connect with old friends and get more used to my new normal. I can't believe it's almost been 2 years since moving back to Utah.

Speaking of Utah . . . Go Mammoth! Cheering for the newest NHL Hockey Team has been consuming a lot of time. I even started collecting a few Hockey Cards because of it. Who woulda thunk I'd ever get all sport ball about something . . . I actually am starting to understand how the game works LOL. If a Mammoth game is on, Uber Wife and I are usually watching it.

From Coyotes to Utah Hockey Club to Mammoth. Let's go, Team!

Happy Dueling!

Trying to make 2026 awesome: Dune, BG3, and Quest 3S

2026-01-05T18:38:00.001-06:00

Hey all, welcome to 2026! I've had a really hard time writing on my blog lately. I don't know what it is . . . I guess after Dune and all my cancer nonsense of last year, I just fizzled out a bit. If you don't mind (I'm sure you don't), Imma just journal a bit here and catch up to the present. M'kay? M'kay!

1- Real Life -- Couple things to note here. Mom died. It's ok. She lived a good, long life. I officiated the funeral for the family, and my company granted me a week of bereavement leave. I wrote up her obituary and went with my sister to decide on the casket, flowers, and etc. It was painful, but necessary and important family work.

My kids were very respectful pallbearers

At the same time, I got hit with the Flu that's been going around. It's like 2025 was trying to give me a final punch in the gut. Can 2026 just be a bit more awesome please? Luckily Tamiflu knocked it out of me in time for the funeral.

As for cancer, well, I'm still doing immunotherapy infusions every three weeks. It's my new normal. Hopefully, my upcoming CT Scan shows continued improvement.

2- Dune -- yeah, I haven't really logged on to do anything on Dune more than just refilling my base's (and Dylan's bases') power supplies. It's dry gameplay that just isn't that fun.

Oh, you know, just spending an hour collecting fuel cells to power the bases . . .

On the upside, everybody on our server's sietch is jumping ship to a different sietch and changing over to a new guild, so that might actually get me logged on to do the same. I don't know. When a game becomes nothing more than chores you have to do, it feels a bit . . . dead. The third DLC is supposed to be dropping sometime early this year though, so if that happens, I'll for sure be joining in to play through more of the story.

3- Baldur's Gate 3 -- I should probably dedicate an entire blog post to my recent playthrough of BG3, and actually, yeah, I think I'll do that at some point. The short story of this playthrough is that my son started DM'ing a game that takes place in the Feywild, and I'm playing a clown-based Mischief cleric named Dandy Goofus. I was so excited about this character that I made him over in Baldur's Gate 3 to see how he plays.

Clown makeup secured!

The original goal was simply to get him to Act 3 so I could get him the clown makeup from the circus, but I ended up really going crazy on Act 3 and doing everything I just kind of skipped through in the past. That means I actually helped Shadowheart with her Mother Superior problem. That means I helped Asterion become a Vampire lord. That even means I saved Minsc, fought Raphael, destroyed the steel watcher factory, and got Orpheus's hammer.

BG's newest vampire lord in the house!

Really, all that's left in this play through is to get the last Dribbles the Clown body part (this is just some clown-to-clown good deed stuff I need to do), finish up the Orin fight, and take the final fight to the brain. I'm near the end, and I kind of don't want it to end. :(

4- Quest 3S -- I got TWO Quest 3S's for Christmas: one for me and one for my youngest. They were on sale for $200 at Costco during the holidays, and I couldn't resist.

I've told a few people who read this blog already, but I'll repeat myself here: I don't think I realized how devastated I really was when I had to return my Quest 3 engineering model to Meta when WIMO folded. It felt like a larger metaphor in my life for some reason (as weird as that may seem). I put that thing on after opening up my Christmas present and played Smash Drums until the battery ran out. It felt really good. It felt really cathartic.

Smash those drums!

I've played a few other games on my Quest 3S since Christmas, and that means, if I can get to it, I've got more fuel for the blog post dumpster fire in me!

Anyway, that should catch you up on the holidays and the start of 2026. Thanks for reading, and let me know your thoughts. I love hearing from readers and old friends. I appreciate it and hope your holidays went well and that your 2026 is starting off right.

Happy Dueling!