An Axe-citing Birthday

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

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!

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

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

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!

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!

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!