Update: What a Couple of Weeks

Ah so as you can guess from my title I have decided it more efficient just to do a generic update rather that to post individual thing I have been buzzing about; after all I am just one busy (very lazy) frood. So without further ado the stuff

- On new ground the other week I found this interesting flash game that is at the same time brilliantly executed, unbelievably cute, and vomit inducing (quite literally), it is called Spewer, as the subtitle says: "a game about puking", I admit it is not much more than that though it ma help to say that it is a platformer with great (if slightly wonky) physics , in which you primary puzzle solving tool is projectile vomiting (just like elementary school) to your target. But be warned this game is very tough, and those who do not want to be frustrated by repeated gruesome (if undeniably cute) deaths of your puking worm-thing.

- Last weekend the adventures of my band of chaotic treasure-looting mercenaries continued, the first "real" dungeon of my campaign was completed and the next is up coming. The mantle of divine spell caster was taken up by a new player: Bridger, another veteran of d&d and a druid. Yet again the party proves the old constants of being perfectly unpredictable, trying their best to temp death, and taking the violent solution above all others. There was also the bit of starting up a hither to unknown to me "zombie campaign" to pass the time at five in the morning when we were all to inebriated (mostly due to caffeine, late night, and propane fumes) to continue within a narrative structure of a traditional campaign.

Yeah, something like that

- last week I also found a relatively new roleplaying system, pathfinder, currently in an early stage a good portion of the manual can be downloaded on their site: paizo.com (Pathfinder RPG). I would basically refer to It as AD&D v3.75, for it is clearly a direct decedent of the game (certainly more so than fourth edition), I personally chose not to use it because it is basically interchangeable so therefore would be more difficult to convert (you know, people not remembering what they are playing), and may of the "significant" changes I had already included in my home-brew update/setting which I use for my campaign (though it is still mostly D&D), though one thing that may make little difference to those dedicated Role-players is the overly stylized (gamer english for: can't draw) Anime-ish art style

- I have just finished the fist cycle of the Elric novels by M. Moorcock , they are good, origional in the description and function of the planar multi-verse if a bit to existentialistic at some points for my general enjoyment of continued existence. the story kind of "pulpy" (as in the 50's-70's episodic type writing) Elric's adventures consist of moping, gaining hope, going fantastic places, meeting interesting characters, then after the struggle being driven to kill then by his psychotic-soul-sucking sapient rune-sword: Stormbringer, to relate this to you purely vidogaming types; Aurthas' (you know warcraft) blade Frostmorne took it's name and powers from the twin blade of Elric's; Mourneblade, in fact much of Aurthas (early on) was based upon Elric.

DnD party tonight! Wut?!

Well were am I(the internet I guess but that's not important right now), for the first time in my years of DM-ing Dungeons and Dragons I have managed to keep a campaign together for more than three sessions. So in an characteristically show of optimism I am promising a play by play of my campaign to whoever is interested (most likely only the 1-1/2 constant reader(s) of this blog).

As you could have concluded from my previous post "WTF! Fourth Edition" I run a V3.5 campaign, this campaign is set in my own world, one which nerfs the gnome, makes arcane spell wielders less common and more powerful, and puts less emphases on the adventures being mighty heroes and more on them being mercs. This campaign began with the now (in)famous (within my sphere of influence) "stone(ed) goblin dungeon", which was the originally the basic "merchant needs stolen goods returned" kind of mission. Then I wanted to make a properly sized goblin warren, so the leap of logic was to make the merchants "special goods" a powerful sedative drug "swamp weed" which would make the majority of those goblins unable to fight. what I didn't count on was they would cut through about twenty stoned goblins (bloody Coupdegras) before they realized that there was no need, this lead to an botch so epic that it is still talked of the Fighter Richard (known jokingly as "dicky") tried to change up the stab-fest by strangling himself a goblin, which he botched, (like a critical I roll twice for botches) roll again double botch , at this point he is being strangled by a stoned goblin, if it wasn't for the rouge Sydne ("Ninnie") with a quick dagger to the spine, the unluckiest warrior would've been the deadest.

I eventually decided to continue the campaign from there, collected a group (well, 3 constant members), and began spinning the tail of the "Witchlord saga". Currently these are the constants "Dicky" is the fighter, Sydne the rouge, and Cooper, an veteran of d&d is the wizard, the cleric is whoever else happens to show up. The first official dungeon was yet again fairly basic but the adventure led to several counts of the players being chaotic evil bastards. The next promises to be awesome, both in structure and in the short story arc it starts off (hopefully).

I Realy Want to Play D&D

The title says it all, I just want to play D&D. It has been at least four months since my last game; Which I had intended to make into a habitual series of bi-weekly events, but as always seems to happen with my life, things fall apart, get delayed, etc. this comes up primarily because I am feeling the withdrawal symptoms and because of a recent penny arcade comic.

And So It Begins, Part One

And So It Begins, Part Two

And So It Begins, Part Three

And So It Begins, Part Four

man I need to get a crew back together.

Now that I think of it every time a friend of mine wanted to DM I acted in the same manor.

WTF! 4th Edition

D&D 4th edition promises to do alot to take away from the d&d experience; for one thing, they have eliminated 2 key classes, the bard, some people like playing as a Tom Bombadil loook alike, or manipulating the class to be more like an Olmsford with the wish song(me), and the barbarian, I mean c'mon it's a classic, who doesn't like going 'Conan' on your foes *ss*s and leaving a trail of severed body part were ever you go. Then there is their self-righteous 'improvement of combat' by leveling monsters down to improve 'flexibility', or 'redesigning' the mechanics of certain monsters act more like themselves, WTF! 4th ed. do you think that DM's are idiots or do you want to make the 'throne' of the DM accessible to the average nitwit, if it is the later your a bunch of greedy bastard wizards (of the coast), and if it's the former I'll fire bomb your new head quarters! so were was I; ah the race changes: The addition of the Teifling was just a poor choice by wizard, due primarily to the fact that Teiflings are an uncommon race and the player races should represent the most common 'civilized' races in the d&d universe, and Teiflings should not be common unless 'fornicating' with extra-planar evil beings is a common thing, which it hopefully is not. Then there is the addition of Dragon born, which my only objection to it is the same as the former (not common enough) unless you adjust your campaign setting accordingly, and that I have already created a similar looking race and acting race of endothermic humanoid reptiles for my campaign setting. but in a totally different direction along the line of races I am 'Incredibly' happy that they finally did away with gnomes a player race (though I did that months ago for my games). Another thing that I have to say 'finaly' on is the Halfling background being changed to peaceable river folk, rather that clans of midget gypsies, though I hope they correct their horrible mistake on a Halfling's looks Halflings are short plump folk with overly large and hairy feet (think hobbits, since that is what they are) not perfectly statuesque ethnic midgets. They also are removing all the sub-races in many cases considering them mere social differentiations of the same race, wow! WTF! Has 4th Edition gone completely liberal forsaking that races have different innate abilities, c'mon think for a second an elf that has been raised in a High Elven city is going to have different abilities than an elf that was raised in the nomadic life style of a Wood Elf, even if they are genetically identical (which i doubt they are), they are going to be different, and these differences are represented through the stat and ability changes. Finaly I am nearing the end of my complaints, The 4th Edition has decided that it will change it's cosmology 'Again' to a 'sea' instead of a 'wheel', yet another example of liberalism; here what seems to be going on they decided they didn't like that alot of plane where classified as minor planes so with this 'sea' all the planes are going to be like crappy little islands floating in the the astral plane, see no difference they are all equal, Bah! My belief is that the wheel is how they chose to represent it because it shows the players perspective on the planes (their plane is the most important and the center of their personal universe) in comparisons to other planes, or maybe I'm insane and they think their players where too 'Neanderthal-esque' to figure out the principle of a wheel. So thats it, 'you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here'.