2012 Widgey Awards Banquet

12.26.2012

This past week saw the end of the 2012 Widgey Season, a season in which we played a record number of games (10!). I never thought 10 games would sound like a lot to play, but when you factor in grown-ups schedules (everybody else, not me) it's more of a challenge than you would really think.

Keeping the same categories as last year, here are the 2012 standings:

	Wins & Losses					Win %			Points Rank + Win % Rank - # of Wins
	Wins	Losses	Points	Ranking		Win %	Ranking		Combined Points	Combined Ranking
Russ	3	8	28	3		27.3%	4		4	3
Jer	4	7	30	1		36.4%	3		0	2
Keith	5	5	30	1		50.0%	1		-3	1
Joe	1	4	12	4		20.0%	5		8	5
Brady	1	1	6	5		50.0%	1		5	3

The championship list is:

Wins Champion Based on total # of wins Champion with 5 wins Keith	Win % Co-Champions Based on win/loss record 50% W/L Keith & Brady	Points Champion Based on game points. Co-Champions with 30 Points Jer & Keith
	Overall Champion Lowest combined points in rankings. Champion with -3 points Keith

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you our 2012 Overall Champion, Lord Ford:

What makes Keith's championship so inspriing is that this year he had a 5-5 record. His combined record for the previous 5 years was 3-16. Somebody is taking the Widgey seriously now!

This year also marks the inauguration of the official Widgey Night Champions trophy. Wil Wheaton has the TableTop Trophy of Awesome, so it was only fitting that after years fo talking about having some type of physical award we (ok, I) set out to the eBay and got one. Note that the trophy Keith is holding above is not the correct trophy. The trohpy he's holding has the wrong dude on it. A corrected picture will be forthcoming.

And now on to the battle for 2013 trophy ownership!

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Christmas Spirit-y

12.23.2012

The ceramic Christmas tree above has been around all of my life as best I remember. Dad even remembers it. When I moved out of Mom's 13+ years ago, she tried to give me the tree but I told her to hang on to it. Sometime last year I got the tree back, but left it in the Rubbermaid box that it sat in the majority of the year. Last Monday I decided to dig it out and see if it still worked. It did - and I don't know if the light bulb in it has ever been changed.

When I was growing up, sticking the pegs into the holes for the light was a big deal. I couldn't let 2 of the same color be next to each other. I don't know why, or even where this rule came from, but year after year I would move pegs around until I could no longer obviously find 2 matching colors side by side. This year that didn't really worry me.

I put the tree on top of a shelf in my bedroom on Monday night. I even left the light on all night, which never happened growing up since there was a chance the thing would catch the house on fire (either I don't care about my house catching on fire or I have greater faith in 40 year old electrical wiring than I should). Tuesday morning I woke up, snuggled under the covers since I had left the heat off. My head rolled over to the left and I saw the lit tree. A smile came across my face, and suddenly it felt like Christmas for the first time in years.

Later that day I was streaming Christmas music and wrapping presents. For a good 3 hours. And humming along.

I haven't seen that part of me in a loooong time.

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Wrapping Over :)

12.20.2012

This year I got into a Christmas spirit for the first time in at least 4 years. It hit me Tuesday morning (which I'll leave for a later post) and I took advantage of it yesterday. I've done the bulk of my Christmas shopping online since Thanksgiving, so I've had stacks of presents piling up since.

One of the parts I like about shopping early is that it doesn't feel like a chore, and most of the time I think of something extra after the fact that I want to get someone. This year, being all spirit-y, I jumped and kept getting presents. And it felt good!

So, I had presents to wrap, and more than normal. I'm horrible at wrapping presents, maybe because Mom always did it and I never found the proper way to fold and tape. Most of the time I talk Gina into wrapping all the presents but hers. This year, I took my 3rd grade wrapping skills to task and decided to wrap everything myself.

Yesterday I got out wrapping paper, bows, tape - stuff I really didn't know I had. I loaded up some streaming Christmas music on the computer. Normally I loath Christmas music, but I was spirit-y. I then proceeded to wrap.

And I somehow enjoyed it. Even I wouldn't have recognized me had I walked through the door at that moment. Jerry walked through the door. He didn't recognize me.

Jer, Keith, and Joe came by (which I'll leave for a later post) giving me a break in my wrapping. Tonight, I finished up. The bulk of the presents - ok, all but 1 - will end up at Gina's by Tuesday. For now, I like my window display of holiday spirit.

Still not enough spirit for a tree, but almost.

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Zombie Mall - Updating Forward

12.16.2012

After 3 days of editing, re-reading, and tweaking I've managed to finish what's turned into 3 parts of the rules for Zombie Mall. Quick Start Rules (4 pages), Basic Rules (22 pages) of the details of how to play, and a Walkthru (38 pages) of graphics heavy play examples.

Now to play test this puppy some more.

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Zombie Mall - Updating Backwards

12.13.2012

While going through and making my Zombie Mall walkthrough example yesterday, something hit me as not being right. Losing combat wasn't working out like I thought it was supposed to - losing Health was happening too often. But I was acting out combat as I had written it.

As I slept on it, I decided I wrote it wrong. Today, in the back of my head, I was trying to figure out how to say it correctly. After the majority of the day (in the back of my head) I figured out how to say it.

Now I've got to pseudo-play through it a couple of times and see if it says what I think it says. Regardless, I've got to go back and re-make some screenshots. And tweak the quickstart rules. And the detailed rules.

I've also got to re-brand some tokens so when a player dies it doesn't get confused with when they lose combat and get bitten.

Lots of going backward today. I don't like it. It makes for, theoretically/hopefully, a better product, but it makes me feel like I'm spinning some wheels right now.

This is what happens when you step away for a couple of days and come back with fresh eyes. Stupid, stupid fresh eyes.

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