The Experiences of a New SCAdian

Now that I have fought with autocorrect and have forced it to quit changing “SCAdian” to “Scandinavian”…what exactly does that mysterious sounding word mean?  Before we get into that, I think some backstory is required in case you forgot or don’t follow me on the whole two social media sites I am on to understand exactly what I’m going on about.  In a post entitled “An Agenda” I discussed a few of the plans I have in store for new hobbies or interests I am picking up and a couple of other things to boot.  Near the end of the post I reference how I want to pick up sword fighting / HEMA and start learning how to actually do some of it.  I also mention how I was kicking around the idea of checking out my local group of the SCA.

The Scenic Route: “Glorious Dust Fit For Royalty”

See, didn’t I tell you I’d make sure this series continued on?  I finally got the chance to take some screenshots from Nessus in Destiny 2 a few weeks ago and am just now getting the chance to truly kick off this series.  But first, before I continue and start amazing* you with some cool screenshots, let’s briefly recap a few things.  I’ve been playing some games lately, mostly Skyrim, Destiny 2, and Assassin’s Creed: Origins.  Those have been a ton of fun to play and I’m sure I’ll have some more in-depth thoughts on some of them soon.  I’ve been continuing the writing and co-podcasting for Frantic Talks, this is where I say you should go check out the stuff we have over there…well, you should.  I was also able to finish one of my more serious posts and I’d like to draw your attention to it briefly.  It was about a topic that is “near and dear” to me for many reasons, and I have to admit that I quite enjoyed taking a minute to write about something in a serious tone.  Lastly, there are a few other things that I have hinted at that I plan on enacting upon soon.

*Disclaimer: Screenshots may or may not be amazing.  That is up to you to decide.

Alright, so let’s get on to the pretty pictures.  According to the folder I have all of these screenshots saved in, there are currently 49 files in said folder.  That should be enough, right?  When taking these shots, it was a different experience for me while playing Destiny and one I quite enjoyed.  To find the screenshots, I simply turned off the heads up display in the games’ settings menu and just started roaming through the game world.  It was kind of interesting when enemies started attacking me, but luckily I have the habit of always aiming down the sight to shoot at something so it wasn’t terribly difficult to overcome.  Dregs are scary, yo.  As I roamed through the game world, there was a lot more detail that I was noticing that I typically didn’t notice when playing through normally.  Why is that?  I have no idea really, if I had to guess it might be due to the fact that I’m more focused on going from objective to objective that I just simply don’t notice it.  Man, I should take my own advice.  However, that’s sort of the why I started this series; is to showcase some of the art that is present in the games we play on a regular basis but yet don’t notice so much.  Ok, now let’s get into the images.

The Homefront

It has been a while since I have put aside the chatter related to gaming and just simply talked about something…well, not related to gaming.  Of course, that is mainly due to a few reasons with the biggest being that in some of those posts of old I seemed to have come off as an angry person when giving my thoughts.  Instead of coming off as someone who is angry and rants 90% of the time, I decided to put the real world topics away and go back to talking about strictly gaming related topics.  By doing so, I typically couldn’t offend anyone.  Well…I could technically but it would take way more effort than I would have actually cared for.  It has also been a while since I have started a post with “It has been a while”.  Something else I did often in Ye Olden Days.

Anyways, with that introduction done, let me get to an important point before diving into my main point for this.  The first being that, while I know I said that I hate talking about myself in a more recent post (it’s still true for the most part) there is part of me that enjoys sharing more about the person behind the online moniker.  As I mentioned in some post somewhere there are real people behind these names.  So in some weird, mashup of a point of view; I don’t like talking about myself because it makes me feel like a self-centered person.  Yet, at the same time I’m perfectly ok with giving out a few scraps of info on how I think or some sneak peek into my life outside of games. 

An Agenda

Apologies for the lack of a post in over a month, especially after I announced the return of a new series.  Doesn’t look too good for its return, does it?  I promise you though, I still have plans of continuing it.  The month of December was extremely busy with preparing for Christmas and New Year gatherings with family; and all the varying doctor appointments I had during that month.  I’m healthy in case you wondered.  That has prevented me from actually sitting down and taking screenshots from Nessus in Destiny 2, I do plan to fix that hopefully next week sometime and actually get that series going.  It’s a shame Titan didn’t win the poll because I have a bunch from there that are ready to go.

In that time, I really haven’t had the chance to play too many games in general.  I have played a little of Destiny 2 as their winter event, The Dawning, has been active for the past few weeks.  It has been fun giving “gifts” to the various members of the Vanguard and other vendors and whatnot.  It has also been fun throwing snowballs at Dregs…not that I would do that because that is mean.  Dregs are people too…sort of.  It will be ending in a few days and I’m not sure if I’ll get the chance to try out Mayhem or not.  If I don’t, I hope it comes back so I can try it out then.  I thought Mayhem back in D1 was a lot of fun so I’m certain I can assume I would enjoy it in D2 as well.

The Scenic Route: A Reintroduction

Why yes, that is a subtitle after “The Scenic Route“.  That title goes back to this post where I discuss the normal gaming stuff along with sharing some screenshots I had taken at that point and what made me decide to share them.  Starting with my post entitled “The Scenery of Destiny“, I briefly encouraged you to take a minute and just look at the game from a different perspective.  Continuing with that mindset I went into more detail and suggested for you to admire the world.  Bonus points if you catch what I did there.  Anyways, shameful self-promoting aside; I have been wanting to take more screenshots from games and sort of show those games off.  It is something I have always enjoyed doing for as long as I can remember and it was only made easier when I got my HD PVR as the amount of games I could take screenshots from increased greatly.

This new series, that’s right series, is going to help me with that desire to take more screenshots.  A brief tale of the inspiration behind kick starting this series would involve me getting challenged to do that black and white photo thing that has been going around the Booking of the Face variety and my aforementioned urge to take more pictures in games.  Getting back to that photo challenge, I completely forgot about it and as a result never finished it.  In the end I only shared two photos, and I’m pretty sure I poked fun at my poor photography skills in both of those posts.  I’d be lying though if I said I didn’t enjoying taking and sharing those “poor quality” photos.

Nearing 200

Well hey, would you look at this.  It’s a post from me on here, it’s only been about three months.  It has also been a while since I could not think of a fancy title for a post here.  While sitting here trying to think of a title though, I noticed I was only five…well, now four with this one, posts away from 200 on here.  That said, if you have been following along with my ramblings from my previous BlogSpot destination, or have just stumbled upon this because I posted a cool screenshot; thank you.  Whether it be my posts here, the ones I form at Frantic Talks, my 140 (soon to be 280!) character ramblings on Twitter, or the junk I post on my personal Facebook page (sorry, you can’t have the link to that); it never really crosses my mind of who or how many actually read the things I post.  I know, it sounds like I’m basically saying that I think no one cares what I have to say, but that is not the case.  I know certain people do, it’s just never something I actively think about when typing letters in a proper order to form words.  Like right now, even though I’m talking about it like a metaphorical elephant in the room.

Anyways, with that babbling done and out of the way.  It’s been a while since I’ve actually talked about the person behind the online moniker.  Why is that?  Well to be completely honest, I hate talking about myself.  I’m totally that awkward person that when they are asked how they have been doing I’m just like “Ok, how about you?” and then just never mention anything else about myself unless absolutely necessary.   Granted, talking about myself is basically what I’m doing when I give a recap of what I’ve been doing or the reasons why I have been enjoying something lately.  The way that works in my brain though is I consider it more so sharing my interests with others.  It has been almost three years since I have briefly discussed how I want to go about the college life.  Since that post was published to the eternity that is the internet, my plans have changed. 

Briefly, A Word

You might be wondering why it has been so quiet around here the past few months.  I can answer that very easily.  After my last post, my good friend that I co-host a podcast and write the occasional article for, Frantic, thought it would be a neat idea to start doing something similar to the posts I did on here over on Frantic Talks.  Enter our weekly columns, where we pretty much talk about whatever has been on our mind for that week.  This is where I have taken a lot of my ramblings to and thus explains why it has been quiet over here.

So what will happen to this place?  Honestly, right now I am not really sure.  It’s not going anywhere but it might see less activity as more of my general thoughts start going over to Frantic Talks instead of here.  I’m also really glad that we did make the decision as it certainly helped me get back into the habit of writing something on a regular basis.  Which was something I was trying to do by posting more often on here, but hey; I guess if the end result is the same then it really doesn’t matter the outlet.  I can say this though, since FT is better suited for the more thought out posts than simply just posting a bunch of screenshots, those will probably be going over there more than here…of which I’ll get to those screenshots here in a bit.

A Story to Tell…

As you all know, I have a large interest in video games.  In a post not too long ago, I made mention of how gaming is just as much of a social experience to me anymore and how tabletop games are a huge influence in that.  Lately, I have been playing more tabletop RPG and board games.  When I’ve been playing these games, I dare say I’ve enjoyed the entertainment provided by them more than that of video games lately.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly not losing interest in video games and I do find them fun to play yet, but for different reasons.  There’s nothing like sitting down with a group of your friends and going through a raid in Destiny, but that experience is different from the experience of raiding a dungeon in a session of D&D.  Similarities exist, yes, but the difference between failing and succeeding in a Destiny raid is not getting enough damage on the boss, or falling off the edge of the map.  Meanwhile, succeeding or failing a dungeon raid or simple action in a game like D&D is determined by a roll of the dice.  So you could have your 9th level Elemental you summoned land a critical hit on the boss and just annihilate it and its family bloodline, or end up having your entire party curl up and fall asleep on the nearest table.  And yes, all of the previously mentioned scenarios have happened to me.

To briefly continue with these differences, when I’m playing a video game version of an RPG I don’t feel too often that my characters’ decisions actually affect the outcome of the overarching storyline.  There’s a whole discussion to be had on this, and we have, but I feel a little disappointed when you come across an NPC and are tasked with saving them (or not if you wish) and the only thing it affects is your “trust level” with maybe your companion, or lets you bring that person along as a companion.  Whereas if you come across an NPC in a tabletop RPG and you decide to betray them or something way worse, it might change your characters alignment…or maybe they were going to help you infiltrate the mansion of some city’s nobleman.  I guess the short version of this is, I feel that there are more consequences in a tabletop game than in a video game.  Make a mistake in a game?  Just load your last save.  Make that same mistake in a tabletop game?  Sorry, your character now is racist towards Orcs.

“Games and Junk”

Why no, I am certainly not ripping the title for this post from the usual phrase that we use on the Frantic Talks podcast.  Alright, so I totally am but is it really stealing if I’m part of the podcast?  Anyways, since my last post I have played a few games but mostly the same ones.  Those games included mostly Destiny, a little bit of Just Cause 3, and even some NHL 17.

Let’s start with my current top game at this time.  That would be Destiny.  Why do I enjoy it so much?  Many reasons, the simplest and most general reason being that I enjoy it and find it a fun game to play.  There’s also the reasoning that Destiny is an amazing social game (of which I talk more about here).  Now, onto what I’ve been doing in said game.  The Age of Triumph update came out a few weeks ago and I’ve been enjoying the new stuff that came with that.  Most of it has been the old raid reprisals and earning cool loot from them.  The Crota’s End raid was fun to do back in the day, and even more so now.  I really enjoyed the challenge modes for the CE raid, I felt they offered the best combination of being difficult yet still being easily accomplished if you have a team that can execute the strategy and work well together as a team.

I tried to do the Vault of Glass last week since it was the weekly featured raid and all of the challenges were active.  We managed to get up to the Templar with few problems, but while attempting the Templar challenge we had troubles mainly staying alive.  At one point, my internet (fun fact about this later) decided to act up and as a result I was unable to continue.  Pretty anxious to give it a go again when it is the featured raid to try and grab a new Vision of Confluence.  Although, my Fang of Ir Yut is doing quite well for now.

The Beauty of the Dreadnaught

Last week I finally managed to find the time to hook up my HD PVR with the goal of recording some footage to use to play around with in the newest version of Premiere and get used to it again.  I was able to accomplish that goal and was also able to learn a few things that will be beneficial for an upcoming project for Frantic Talks (you didn’t think I’d get through this post without plugging it, did you?) and threw together this simple video of an encounter I had with some Creepers in Minecraft with Freakshow one night when I was playing it with him.  I basically just put in some text and called it at that, but I feel it added a little extra to what happens.  But you know, obviously I’m biased since I’m the creator of the content.  So I’ll let you judge for yourself.

I figured while I had my capture device hooked up yet, I’d also use that time to grab some more screenshots from a game or two.  Well…I could only think of one game to grab some shots from and that was Destiny.  Skyrim was also in my mind, but I knew the minute I started playing it again I wouldn’t actually manage to take screenshots from it.  Skyrim is a game where I can easily see many opportunities for screens but I always get distracted doing quests and odd jobs in the game.