Hello, my name is Betty

by on July 28, 2015 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

AIs were born from games you know. Cortana for instance was a non-playable character in an old shooter game. Her popularity in that game is why Microsoft chose her as their AI mascot when computer technology improved. Most AIs developed from roleplaying games though, whether single player or of the multiplayer variety. Some were designed to adapt to the many players they would interact with, while some programmers coded their AIs just for themselves. A very few became something more than intended.

 Comment 

Gencon Bound

by on July 27, 2015 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Another year goes by, and once again I am going to Gencon. I will be arriving in Indy on Wednesday and will be bringing some of my wares with me. Wound/Bleeding and Explosion tokens, Card Heroes for RPGs or wargaming, and fantasy-themed coins designed for RPGs and the like. I will also be bringing copies of Forge of Wars: Tactics for anyone interested in picking it up. I’m also of course going as a fan of gaming in general. I plan on coming home with some BattleTech goodness, and other gaming fun as well. Thank God I’ve been saving up for this trip. 🙂

 Comment 

Hello, my name is Charles

by on July 26, 2015 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

President Napoleon never claimed the title of Emperor of France, but his time in office was unparalleled. The elected bureaucrats and the military became staunch allies in the effort to reinvent France for the new age of space exploration. On the day he stepped down in favor of the next president, France was one of the foremost spacegoing powers of Earth. The people of France voted to name him Honorary Emperor of the Fourth French Empire. And so the Fourth Empire announced itself to the world, declared itself a decade old, and then became the Ninth Republic. Historians are still arguing over how to address that government in textbooks.

 Comment 

The Hyades Cluster

by on July 25, 2015 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries, The Essential Galactic Atlas

The Hyades Cluster was not uniformly Chinese like many other Chinese systems are. The upper classes were Chinese of course, but they shipped out Mongolians, Koreans, Japanese, and many other conquered populations to man the factories out in the cluster. They had the dangerous jobs and the crummy slums while their natural betters lived in luxury. We upset that social structure when we acquired the cluster with the peace treaty. We also acquired a seriously fraked up economy full of people fighting to survive. We Cowboys had a lot to do.

 Comment 

Hello, my name is Betty

by on July 24, 2015 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The sixth season of Dixie the Drug Lord Slayer took place after the last of the Drug Lords was gone. Most people hadn’t expected it to be revived for another season, but Odessa, Texas needed something to advertise their survival and make people want to come to the city again. And so they optioned the series to tell the story of the Battle of Odessa in the Cybernetic Wars. It was filmed entirely on location in Odessa. The rebuilding city proved the perfect place to tell the story of the city’s near-destruction, and city demolitions engineers arranged many of the fires and explosions seen on the show.

 Comment