Ascension in Brief

Recently, I got a chance to play Ascenscion:  Chronicles of the Godslayer.  It's awesome.  It's a deck-building game like Dominion, but with notable differences:

• no dead cards - Victory points (aside from ones on separate tokens) are included on most purchased cards, so it's like every card is a Harem or Nobles.  
• unlimited actions & buys - One is free to play as many cards as one has during the turn, and may similarly buy as many different cards as one can afford.  
• fluidity within a turn - One can go action-buy-action or buy-buy-action-action or whatever.  This mostly works well because of the nature of the cards included in the game.  
• no repeat attacks - Instead of purchasing attack-type cards to include in one's deck, attacks come in the form of slaying monsters.  When a monster is slain, its gives a Reward, which sometimes includes effects that hurt all other players.  Then, the monster is removed from play.  This would be the equivalent, in Dominion, of having to trash an Attack card to get its attack effect.
• 2 types of currency - Runes basically act like Coin in Dominion, but there's also Strength, used separately for killing monsters.
• The cards keep changing! - Instead of fixed stacks of 7 standard card types plus 10 stacks of cards that vary by game, the available cards throughout the game change continuously.  

I might do a more thorough review in the future; as this one stands, if you're not familiar with Dominion (or at least Thunderstone), then this probably makes no sense.  However, I stand by my review on the grounds that I'm overdue for bed.  Also, Ascension is awesome.

Vampires?

Well, I didn't manage to win NaNoWriMo this year, but I've learned some things, and hopefully I can do better next year.  Speaking of that, one thing that I'm considering doing is something about vampires.  The main reason for this is that vampires have been getting some odd treatments lately, most notably in the form of Twilight, and I thought that it might be nice to take vampires back on the ancient magical beings route, rather than the mutant/nanotech/retroviral stuff or the, y'know, sparkly romantic stuff.
One idea - not thoroughly developed, mind you - had to do with vampires in the Roman senate - or, since they would probably meet during the day, manipulating the Roman senate from afar.  Though, if I wanted to do that justice, then I'd have to learn about ancient Roman politics and the like - SPQR and all that.
Whatever it is, I'd like to choose my NaNoWriMo 2012 idea before Xmas, so that I can start researching and outlining and all that.

On NaNoWriMo 2011

Well, NaNoWriMo is nearly over, and unless some sort of miracle happens, I'm not finishing my novel on time.  I'm still going to write with what moments I have, but 50,000 words it won't be.
Still, it's not the end of the world or anything.  The whole point of this is that it's essentially practice.  I've learned some things, though, that should help next year.  I think that the main one is that I should make a much more detailed outline before the month begins.
Before NaNoWriMo began, I set Steam to not start on boot-up, and I turned it off.  That meant no TF2 for me, among other things.  So, I've missed several weeks' worth of item drops, but I don't feel worse for wear about it.  In fact, I'm considering leaving it off through December, too, especially considering that I'll be using December and January to play the very last of LEGO Universe, which is sadly ending. It'll also help me to avoid the annual temptation to buy XMas-related stuff (i.e., winter keys for festive crates, or whatever).
Meanwhile, I just need an idea for next year's novel....