Non review: As You Like It

We were gonna catch As You Like It last night. Too bad I spent the evening on the crapper. Oh well.

So, I got nothing. Haven't even paid attention to the news in the last few days, so no rant there either. So.............haiku.

I got no blog stuff.
So now you get haiku stuff.
Sorry if you're sad.

Gamers don't kill peeps.
So leave video games and
RPGs alone.

Haiku rocks socks off.
Just like Tenacious D does.
Count my syllables.

And finally:

Read my blog daily.
You might find wisdom unheard,
Or just waste your time.


I should publish a book.

Review: Gunner Palace

Gunner Palace is a documentary about Iraq. Unfortunately, my horrid ability to remember names has kicked in, rendering me unable to tell you which battallion it follows. I believe it's 2/3 FA. I know it's an artillery battallion originally created to blow up any invading Russian army. Regardless, said battallion, and more specificly Charley Battery is stationed in what they've named "Gunner Palace". It's a mansion that Saddam built for his first wife after the first Gulf War and later gave to his sone Uday.

The flick is a good documentray. That is to say NOT in the style of ass rod sensationalist fatty. Fortunately, my name curse has kicked in here too. Other than sounds of gunfire and a brief shoot out at the beginning of the movie, you get very little combat in the movie. The unit makes a number of arrests in the 90+ minutes, but that action happens primarily off screen. That means this is not a movie you go to for mindless entertainment.

I have to give props to the flick for not focusing on soldier death, either. There's one near tear jerker that actually takes place while the film maker is at home, cause he happened to close to the soldier in question, but that's about it.

Are you missing out on a crucial piece of the Iraq War if you don't catch Gunner Palace? Not really. Do you learn bunches about being a soldier in Iraq right now? Depends on what you know about being a soldier in the first place. Is there an underlying story to the whole thing? Nope.

Still, it's a good flick to see. You get a lot of soldiers rapping and rocking, you get a limited number of "put a human spin" questions on it, and you get a little feel for how Iraqis tend to react when there's an American news camera around. Most importantly, you get a real face to the soldiers, and most of them are pretty damn likeable. You get an idea of the grit. A little bit of the frustration of everyone involved comes through, soldiers and citizens alike. A whole lot of the confusion of the situation comes through, again on both sides. It's pretty clear that no one wants it to be the way it is, but everyone involved hopes that the end result is better than the lump of clay the sculptor started with. Let's hope our administration paid attention in pottery class.

Now, I've got to say, I love me some Landmark Theater. First of all, I didn't realize there was a full line of theaters that play nothing but independant films. Second, this is one of the rare flicks I went to that I actually want to see every film they showed a preview for, NONE of which I knew about to begin with. Most of all, I'm jonesing for "Dust to Glory" which is a pseudo documentray on the Baja 1000, a personal goal of mine since I was 7. My complete lack of training, rally experience and spare cash flow allowing for building a vehicle capable of such a feat probably means that flick is the closest I'll get. So, I'm there. April 8th it opens. I'll prolly have to wait and catch it April 11. I'm still there. I don't care. Cut off a finger for that flick if I have to. Thank you Landmark. Just call me One Thumb. Or mabye Unadigit. Actually, I like Crafty Nine Fingers. Hell, I'll cut off my middle finger and go by The Bird. Yeah, I like it.

So, to wrap things up, Gunner Palace. Good flick. Not great and certainly not date material. Catch it with your friends and bitch about the guy that says "After this, you'll go talk about the things I say with your friends. But then you'll forget me." And remember him next time the pizza's late (you'll know what I mean if you watch the movie.)

PSP: A review

First off, let me start with a free comic offer. Joseph's Rants over at TORC Press has the ho down on his SPACE Cadet mini comic and offer for a free issue, this week only. Check it out and email him.

Last night I got to play a PSP. Holy Honest Congress Batman! That thing is sweet. The first thing I noticed was the clarity of the screen. At least as clear as my Sony LCD monitor, but probably more clear in a side by side comparison. Watched some DVD previews on the sample disc on it. There's a little eye tweaking in heavy action, but not enough to cause a headache. Beautiful regardless.

Add to that the solid selection of games for it out of the gate and it's purty cool on that front to. Mix in the ability to view photos and play MP3s off of a duo stick memory card, AND the ability to buy movies and music video discs for it, and it's a solid little buy. My finances don't let me drop $250 for a mini console right now, but the damn thing's still sweet and worth the price of admission if you've got spare cash.

My coworker bought the super pak with it, so he got the PSP, four games (of his choice), two movies (I think, but at least one), a shiney metal carry case, headphones with a remote (cause let's face it, you'll be watching that 4.3" screen from across the room) and a few other doodads. He paid $500 for alla that, which seems a bit hefty to me. I think the games and movies woulda ran about $190 alone, so I'm not seeing where the extra $60 came from, let alone any kind of savings, but maybe he left a few things outta the list of gadgets he got.

Still, it's coo. The PSP rocks.

Typed and ready, but no.

So today I whipped out the D&D race that's been sitting in my notebook for a few weeks. I shoulda emailed a query about it to Dragon, but haven't yet, cause I suck at "estimating" word count. I would have estimated it at about 3k, but when all's typed up, it's less than 1500. Ouch. But while typing it, I realized I wasn't done. The religion section very clearly states "X worship their own pantheon detailed below," but there is no below. Oops. Better whip that out. Maybe a duotheism, siblings, one represents water, life, happiness and love, the other represents fire, death, anger and chaos....there has to be some worshiping of death, cause fire brings light and the race doesn't have darkvision....hmmm.

That's all I got today.

An addendum

Barring gunpowder from a D&D setting, ships could still have cannons instead of catapults/ballistae. How? Ship wizard and a wand of fireballs. Same cannon set up as with gunpowder, but instead of lighting it, the wizzie just pops a fireball into the cannon.

Now, why do that instead of just hitting an enemy ship with a fireball?

1) Damage control - Fireball's obviously gonna light the bitch up, burning the ship and treasure....makes plundering a bit difficult, unless you like your booty cajun style.

2)Awe - If yer pirate ship is the only one blasting lead balls into yer opponents, everyone's gonna fear Captain One Thumb and his Brass Balls Boyz in their ship Shot Through the Heart.

Maybe the whole arquebus thing below is misinformation meant to throw my players off of the real plot, that being hordes of imps invading the Prime Material with the sole purpose of invisibly sodomizing Crenius (and making Rachel watch to ensure she really knows what sodomy is).

No Dice

Bet you're all expecting a rip roaring game report here. After all, it's Saturday, we game it up on Fridays. Sorry. Disappointingly, we didn't play last night. Thursday I had a 12 hour overnight shift, getting me home just before 8am Friday morning. After a four hour nap, I hit B&N. Turns out, J Dogg was pumpin the beat at Goth Night at Ground Zero all night Thursday, and Nick's shift at Joe's Friday went til about 11pm. Add to that Wendy's need to cram for the GRE today, and we opted not to force ourselves to roleplay.

Instead John and I started a season on good ole Madden '04 as the Steelers. Gotta say, it's fun to run with Bettis. Still, two weeks into the season and we haven't won a game yet. There's always one play that turns the tide on us and we go to shit. One time we missed a kick return and started at like the 2 yard line, promptly throwing an interception. The next game I fumbled a kick return, which the Chiefs returned for a TD. *shrug* Oh well.

Regardless, here's a little D&D chat for all you folks that love to read that action. Presently, the campaign is set in a fertil river valley similar to that of the Nile. The valley has been colonized by an empire from the continent to the south called the Ichian Empire (that's pronouced i-kay-en whether it's spelled right or not). Now, there's a few minor and major plots and subplots going on here I won't mention, due to the PCs possibly being involved in them later (or now, mwuhahahahahaha).

So, today I had a super sweet idea that I *may* put into place. I figer Nick might not like it, or he'll really love it. I haven't got Wendy or John's gaming number yet, so I don't know, but I doubt Wendy hates it...she's not grown up with the D&D canon like Nick and I have.

Regardless, aside from the wasteland continent the PCs are on, the Europe-esque continent of the Ichian Empire, and the archipelago of islands bordering it, there are a few other unknown continents on this world. PCs don't know that of course, but the players do (or should if they listen to me rant about game ideas I have, regardless, they do now). They're not fleshed out, cause I don't need to yet. I was thinking one might be more eastern in make up, though....

Which leads me to..... AN INVASION. But not just an invasion of clashing societies (eastern honor versus western consumerism and what have you). Something more sinister. Something more evil. An invasion of superior technology. For the most part, I think it'll be typical D&D level tech. Hell, I'm thinking there's a line of magical rip tides seperating the hemispheres, so first, the invaders have to overcome that barrier. Once that's done, they're in. With their guns blazing. Literally. Remember the arquebus of 2nd edition? I had a player piss and moan so much I finally let him have one. 1d12 ranged attack anyone? Sweet. Specially when he rolled a 1 on his d10 with each shot and the damn thing blew up in his face. Unfortunately for him, he had a penchant for rolling 1s. Heck, we even made him use an special arquedie that rolled high for everyone, except him when he used it for the backfire roll. Hehe. Loved it. Good times.

So, fair warning, next week we're planning on catching Sin City on Friday night, so we'll game on Saturday or Sunday....or possibly start gaming Friday after the flick and just play all weekend depending on when peeps have to work. So that report will be delayed.

Regardless, tune in next time for Goblin Gas, Courtesy of Your Friendly Neighborhood Mexican Restaurant or Four Monstrous Characters Step Into a Bar.....

FEC takin a look

For those of us bloggers that occasionally comment on politics, we've got something to watch over the next few months. The FEC is considering some rules changes about how the internet is used in the electoral campaign process. For those of us that occasionally comment on politics, who knows if it'll even affect us, but for those that use the blog specifically for that sort of thing, they mind find some new rules kickin em in the mouf. Regardless, it's not sticking me in the ass, so I'm not doing too much research on it. But this guy here has plent of info on it if you want to read the stuff.

Labels U3738

I got nothin. Twelve hour shift tonight, followed by four at some point tomorrow. The good news is with the extra shifts and OT I picked up this pay period, I'll get almost 20 extra hours on my paycheck. Bad news is, well, I'm working more. *shrug* Still wavering over whether to pick up an assload of hours in April. I's kinda looking forward to doin my normal schedule, but the fact is, I could use the moolah. We'll see.

Regardless, I built a cabinet today, so no Deities and Demigods review yet. I wanna work on Myrrlanthus or possibly an adventure for tomorrow tonight, so I doubt I read it much tonight, either. On top of that, I still got a couple hunnerd pages in the Minnesota Small Business manual. We'll see.

Let's just say that, thus far, Deities is interesting, but dry reading. I've got a few ideas for campaign altering events from it, but they aint happening at level 2. I suppose I could make em happen around the PCs just to show that the world doesn't work around them, but really, why bother? I think my players wouldn't care one way or another if the world DID revolve around them. And their characters? They're pretty well mixed about whether the world revolves around them or not.

Still, I am inspired to add a line of pantheon books to the old Organ Grinder line up.

Complete Adventurer: A Review

So, Monday I scored CA, today, Deities and Demigods. I'll review Complete Adventurer today, since I haven't had much time to read through D&D yet. Unfortunately, I left the book at home in case Wendy wanted to check it out, so it won't be a chapter by chapter review. Doubly unfortunate, I think I told John most of the stuff today at work, so there isn't much in this bad boy for him to read. Sorry J Dogg.

So, as with the other Complete's, we open in the first chapter with three new classes. These of course are rogue replacements, or rather upgrades, essentially. Do they replace the rogue? Poop no.

The ninja replaces it's sneak attack with a "sudden attack" which is basically only useful when your opponent is denied his AC (ie surprised or tied up). Trading the utility of the sneak attack, along with some skill points, the ninja gets the ability to hide more effectively and eventually be invisible and what not.

The scout comes closer to replacing the ranger than the rogue. He's definitely a wilderness madman and specializes in skirmishing. Skirmishing acts like the rogue's sneak attack, but is applied only when the scout moves 10 ft or more in a round. Later in life, skirmishing adds to his AC. Trading in a few skill points, the scout gets a higher HD, better attack progression (I think) and a few minor trades in evasion-like abilities.

The spellthief can grab spells, spell-like abilities, spell resistance and all kinds of handy magic from his opponents, on top of casting spells himself.

Like all the other Completes, this one's got a hefty load of prestige classes. Most of them are from the older paperbacks like Song and Silence and Masters of the Wild, but check out the Ghost Faced Killer. That's a bad mamma jamma.

There's some good advice in the next chapter on skills and their uses, working together in forms other than "aid another" and a lot of info on skill synergy. Several of the feats promote odd multi-classing, such as the feat that gives a benefit (which I've forgotten) for using your rogue sneak attack ability in tandem with your paladin smite ability. In fact there's a lot of paladin and monk specific multi-class feats. There are a lot of good ones, but not as many ripped off the pages like the Draconic Heritage feats in Complete Arcane.

I thought the equipment chapter was probably the weakest in the book. The little oral tablets probably won't make it into my campaign. Kind of gay if you ask me. All of the weapons are exotic variants on others, and I've yet to decide if it's cool that you can apply the normal weapon's feats, such as Weapon Focus and the like, to the exotic variant or not. I mean, if it's close enough for those feats to work, why do you need to spend an Exotic Weapon feat on it. *shrug* Guess we'll see in playtesting if any of the players wanna go that route.

The book wrapped up with a chapter on organizations. Much like the final chapter in all of the other Completes, if you're a DM short on time, experience, or just not interested in working on this sort of thing, you might find some of these handy. Even if you've made world after world in your 15 year tenure as a DM (damn I'm getting old), read through them. They'll either spark an idea for your world or make you ask some interesting questions about the organizations you have made. The very end of this chapter wraps up with some random generation tables for organizations along the same vein of those in the DMG for towns/cities. Good stuff there for sparking ideas as well. I'll prolly roll up one for every town I make, just cause it gives a chance for a bit of flavor you might not expect.

All in all, a good buy. If I had to rank the four Completes in order of preference for me, I'd first have to state that this ranking is biased by two things. A) My preferences as a player. and B) The needs of the campaign I'm running right now. Regardless, here goes.

1. Complete Arcane - Big surprise considering I loves me some magic, eh? For arcane casters, this book brings a lot to the table.
2/3. Complete Adventurer/Complete Warrior - Each of these books brings something a little different to the table. Tactical Feats rock, as does the Hexblade and Swashbuckler. The Scout rules, and really the only thing lacking in CA is my interest in the equipment preseneted.
4. Complete Divine - The last divine spellcaster I played as a player OR DM was G-leaf. He rocked, but was a 3.0 Geomancer, so I didn't even use this book. Still, the Spirit Shaman might see play from me in Monte's campaign, and I'm using the Celerity domain for my Thri-Kreen. An upcoming villain did take a few feats from this book, but other than that, my style and the needs of the campaign don't call for it much. Still, that might change if I use that Spirit Shaman.

Now, I'd like to go read Deities & Demigods, but work calls.

A blank slate

OK, I just spent a considerable amount of time distracting myself from the Robots review so I could come into it fresh, but to no avail. So, this one's gonna be short.

Basically, the movie was good, but more at a movie rental price than a theater price. I don't feel like I wasted my time, nor my money, but neither would I watch it again. The story was a tad too cliche and the characters a bit too formulaic. Wendy thought the timing was off a wee bit as well.

That's really all I got. It's hard to write a review for a movie you really have no strong feelings for either way. On the plus side, I thought it was way better than Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real which we watched on Animal Planet later in the evening.

Maybe if I feel like writing anytimet his week I'll bust out a review of Complete Adventurer. That's a solid buy, if only for the Scout class and the "Making an Organization" section in the back. The book works real well with Races of Destiny I think.

Robots: A Review

There's a reveiw for this movie somewhere in the future, but today, I'm too damn grumpy to do it. An hour into my shift, and I'm already tired of whiny kids and crazy old people. I knew it'd be busy today, but I'm still none too pleased about it.

a druid and his rat

When we last left our characters, Zeek the gnome was just regaining consciousness from a door that led nowhere. The party was scaling a mountain looking for what they thnik is a murderous 1/2 orc druid. The inn they were staying in was attacked by dire rats and the trail, followed by a 14 year old orphan named Jethek led them to where they are now. Levvy, the halfling rogue and Crineus, the teifling abjurer, had been discussing the immediate future for the last hour while Zeek slept off the effects of a minor poison.

While Zeek slept, Crineus had discovered a ledge that looked like a trail leading up the side of the cliff. When Zeek recovered, the party decided to follow the trail. Wisely, they broke out Levvy's climbing tools and tied themselves together with her rope. She also kept her grappling hook handy in case they fell.

And fall they did. The 150' long winding trail, which should have taken them about 2 1/2 minutes took almost an hour. The rope and Levvy's quick reflexes saved many a life. She's definitely bruised, though, and might have damaged an ovary or something as often as her waist was yanked away from her. DM'S NOTE: This was unarguably the funnest and funniest part of the evening. Balancing on the ledge required a DC 10 Balance check. Failure by 4 or less meant no progress, while failure of 5 or more meant plummeting. Crineus rolled 3 natural 1's in a row, and probably 8 the entire time. The most hilarious image was that of all four characters dangling by the rope, with Zeek's feet a mere 3' from the ground because they fell so early in the trek.

After finally reaching the apex of the trail, the party discovered a door, badly camoflauged by a stone colored blanket. Learning from the other door, everyone took a part in searching the traps, cept for Jethek, who was a bit shaken and doubting his choice of traveling companions.

Secure in the safety of the door, Zeek offered a prayer to Heironious and openend the door into an unworked cavern littered with debris. Crineus, with his devilish darkvision, very clearly saw what could only be a fiendish dire rat and loudly informed his companions. Jethek, eager to prove himself, rushed in, but Crin stopped him quickly. Zeek's warmage training kicked in and he quickly caused the cavern roof to rain fist sized stones upon the rat, which promptly charged and attacked him. It just now struck me that he caught filth fever from that battle, but I forgot to apply it later in the game. Oops. Sorry Crinius. I'll get him next time. Two short rounds and a shocking grasp later, and Zeek had crispy fried the rat. He chugged a cure potion and the party spent about 10 minutes recovering their wits and searching the room.

They headed deeper into the lair and discovered a bedroom. Looting ensued. Levvy grabbed a climbing kit and pilfered some gems without the other character's knowledge, but when she gasped at the sight of a pile of gold in a chest, everyone jumped in, splitting up 400 gold with promises to put it back if the owner wasn't dead or evil.

A group effort managed to open a door that had swollen in its frame, but made a lot of noise. Crineus had Levvy put out her torch, plunging the cavern into darkness and the party formed a bumbling chain of blind led by a half devil. Talk about trust. At the end of the tunnel, the party entered a huge cavern behind a waterfall, and were met by the half-orc, holding a scroll and angry at their invasion of his home. As soon as he spoke, Zeek lit the area up with a spell and Levvy started to light her torch again.

When he asked why they were there, the party's weak explanation was that they were hunting a killer that had sent dire rats against the village. The druid replied along the lines of "I didn't send dire rats, but speaking of, how'd you get past my companion Elorg?" Telling him they'd accidentally crispy fried the rat didn't help and the orc quickly read down his scroll. As soon as that happened, Crineus cast true strike.

The orc had summoned yet another dire rat (cause I didn't feel like rolling up hit points for something else more appropriate), but didn't attack until someone attacked him. I don't remember the exact order, but I think Crineus threw his dagger at the orc, the orc dropped a swarm of spiders on Zeek and Crineus, Levvy lit a torch, Jethek smacked the rat, and the rat charged Crineus (being as he made the first attack). Zeek hit the orc with a hail of stone. Crineus rushed from the spiders and managed to cast daze before feinting from his wounds. Levvy swiped at some spiders with her torch, but missed, and Jethek tried to hit the swarm as well, but missed. Zeek gave himself fists of stone.

At the end of that round, both the swarm and the dire rat were unsummoned, so Levvy rushed the orc and flung an axe at him, getting a good swipe against his arm. Jethek was frustrated at the loss of his rat opponent and did nothing, while Zeek attempted to charge the druid with a rock hard punch. Unfortunately, he slipped on the wet floor and slid into the back of Levvy, dropping her prone with him. This gave the half-orc time to recover his senses, and realizing he was outnumbered if not outclassed, swagged a cure potion and decided to test his skill with his 2nd best friend, the waterfall. A quick cure potion recovered Crineus and the party searched the rest of the home.

A little worried about making an enemy for life, though (cause everyone knows DMs love that sort of thing), Crineus wrote a rather eloquent letter to the druid explaining the misunderstanding and apologizing for the death of Elorg. Realizing it's a stupid move to apologize after looting someone, the party (Levvy reluctantly) agreed to put all of the gold back in the chest and not take the druid's holy chalice or loot his alchemy lab or scroll materials. Of course, no one knew Levvy took the gems or climbing kit, so she kept those.

Upon returning to the village, Crineus had a brief argument with the gate guards, but Jethek freaked out and got everyone inside the walls. A congratulatory party was thrown at the inn and everyone was so drunk by the end of Levvy's recounting of the tale that no one picked up on the fact that the druid escaped, but neither did they grasp that he wasn't guilty. Crenius picked up a slightly older woman "that still has all her teeth", finally made some beautiful fortitude checks and kept Levvy up all night in the room next door with some serious porking. Levvy finally drank herself into oblivian.

The next day, Crineus' filth fever hit him full on. Five days and four Constitution point later and he recovered, but is severely weakend. In that time, Levvy met a knew friend, tentatively named Gregorious. Seems he's a ranger looking for somewhere to hunt something other than rolls. A bit poor, he definitely knows how to listen, which is what Levvy likes in a friend. The story came out that she's gotta earn some money fast to buy her family out of imprisonment from a theives' guild debt, but Crineus would rather pay off his "Lay Fee" so he doesn't have to enter military duty after graduating from the state funded warmage/wizard school he and Zeek attended. Zeek doesn't mind the thought of military duty, but neither does he like the thought of helping free a family of rogues and smugglers, wrongfully imprisoned or not....making him an uninterested party in any forthcoming arguments between Levvy and Crin on what to do with any treasure. Grego has no clue what he's getting himself into.

Aside from befriending the ranger, while Crin was recovering Zeek did his fair share of preaching about Heironious to Jethek. Now the poor boy's confused. During the hike up the mountain, Zeek marvelled at his tracking skill and suggested he should become a ranger. Now, he's suggesting cleric of Heironious. Regardless, from the interest the young barmaid showed him the night of their return, he's not sure he wants to leave the village just yet, so heading to Myrrlanthus to seek teachings from a deity of valor isn't the path he wants to take just yet. He's confused, as young boys always are, because Zeek's his hero, but is a bit reserved when Jeth brings up women. Levvy, of course, always tells him something like "Ask Zeek about the gnomish Cack Thwap," adding further to the boy's adolescent "wha?"

Now, though, the characters want to return to Myrrlanthus and rescue themselves and their families from all of their troubles, because the "gold rush" that got them to this remote village was a bust.

Tune in next time for Get Your Hand Off My Woman, Teifling Fucker or Wow, Jethek, That's Huge.

game night

It's game night, so don't expect to much bloggerature from me tonight. Full report tomorrow. In other news, though, I may be switching gear on the whole Senate hydrogen letter. It's taking me awhile cause I'm carefully researching each point I want to introduce, which means I keep coming up with new info and restructuring the damn thing. This morning, I discovered that this year and next our federal budget for improving hydrogen seperation, fuel cell technology and infrastructure is almost $200 mil. Not bad. Could be more, should be more, shoulda been that much five years ago, but that's what we got. I found a "progress" report on the US Dept of Energy's website, so I'm gonna read that when I have some time.

So what gear am I switching to? Well, I found an article about Daimler Chrysler, woefully slow in the decision making, but on the right track, partnering up with Shell Hydrogen (remember my rant about oil companies understanding) to start pumping out Jaguar hydrogen cars. In it, a rep from Shell Hydrogen said energy companies will take hydrogen a bit more seriously when consumers show interest. Chicken and the Egg man.

1. Energy companies will invest more when consumers show interest.
2. Consumers will show interest when hydrogen is a viable market alternative, such as used in cars.
3. Auto makers will make cars when consumers will buy them, but consumers won't buy a car they can't drive outside of their home area (except in California, where they electric grocery getter is becoming popular.

So, I gotta target the letter to the government AND the energy companies (I do like that they're calling themselves 'energy' and not 'oil' companies now) AND auto makers AND consumers internationally. Oy vey. Gonna be a big project. Gonna be a big letter.

delayed

Damn. I was gonna post a letter to the Senate/House regarding hydrogen energy, but alas, St. Pat's is the busiest night of the first quarter in the ER. It'll have to wait. Sorry. Here's an article to tide you over.

20%?

Just a quickie and then I'll head home.

In response to my rant below, John points at that Nature magazine says there's only a 20% emissions savings because of the nitrogen oxide released in pulling hydrogen out of natural gas. Since Nature is a bit elitist with their website and won't let me read their articles without paying $30, I couldn't read the article, but I believe John.

Except for their article, though I couldn't find any other source to say yes or no on the 20% savings. I did find an article that verifies nitrogen oxide is indeed a byproduct of pulling hydrogen out of natural gas. That article is here:
http://www.science.org.au/nova/063/063key.htm

However, and again, I don't know if the article in Nature mentions any of this, the above linked article points out the green house gases are released by a method known as steam reforming, where the natural gas is superheated to the point the molecules actually break down. Other methods such as electorlysis let us yank H out of H2O with no negative emissions. Some other methods have less to no emissions as well, such heating the natural gas or other materials to a lower temperature for a longer time. Steam reforming just happens to be the most common method used at present.

But now my boss is here and I have to go home.

Gassed enough to piss me off.

Well, they done went and did it. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=615&e=2&u=/nm/20050316/pl_nm/energy_congress_dc The Senate pumped the budget through to drill in the Arctic. Fuckers. Not guarunteed to happen, cause the House can make it not so, but I doubt they will. We'll see. I gotta find Domeneci's email address. Someone should tell him that producing another 2% of our oil used daily is NOT going to make us independant of foreign oil. If you, as a Senator, Republican or other, see a looming oil crisis, why not push steps through to wean the nation of off oil as a fuel product entirely? Instead of fighting to drill in the ANRW, why not fight to fund hydrogen car production?

And I can't completely buy the "politicians are in big oil's pocket" reasoning that so many Dems and eco-freaks stand on. Unless I'm just that much more intelligent than most corporate officials and politicians. I have a solution, and I can't believe no one on the Hill hasn't thought of it. Hell, with this administration's irresponsible fiscal spending, now's the time to punch this shit through. Here's my plan. Feel free to comment and add to it as you like:

The primary thing holding back hydrogen as a viable energy source is infrastructure. It'll cost assloads of monkeys to refit gas stations with hydrogen filling pumps, not to mention transportation, training for attendants, et cetera. Big oil doesn't want to pay that while they're cutting their oil producing throats.

However, it's a win-win for em if the guv funds it. Seriously, give a grant AND a tax break to any company of filling stations that provides gas and hydrogen for five years. During that time, since the guv is funding it, there's a cap on what they can charge for the hydrogen. However, H still costs what it will cost when that cap is removed, but the guv takes the difference. For instance (and I realize this example is inaccurate, cause I'll be using gallons, which prolly won't be the measuring standard for hydrogen energy), for five years H costs 1.50/gallon. Filling stations make 75 cents, Uncle Sam makes 75 cents. After five years, H still costs 1.50 a gallon, but now the stations make 1.25 of that, and the guv gets 0.25. Keep the cost down, the guv recoops some of the initial cost of switching over, and the cap is set high enough that big oil, still finds the switch from gasoline to hydrogen economically viable.

Considering how much BP spends in third world countries setting up solar and wind powered energy stations for villages that can't get electricity from other sources, providing them with refrigeration, lights, etc, I can't believe that these companies are saying 'no' to a long term energy solution. At least, it's not just them, cause let's face it...if the American people stopped buying gasoline, they'd do something quick. Realistically, we won't, but energy companies don't have us by the perverbial balls they think they do. If consumers said "hey", they'd listen. Hell, I almost think it's our own fault, cause being an American is no longer working hard and eventually owning your own home. It's went beyond that. Now, it's doing what you want, when you want, failing to consider the consequences of your actions, then blaming those consequences on someone else. But that's a soapbox that'll completely invalidate my rant in the minds of many.

My point remains, there's a solution, but those in charge are either overlooking it, not considering it, or too dumb to even realize it's an option that's possible only within the bounds of our present state. Hell, a major administrative push to yank the country off of gasoline would go miles upon miles to prove to European skeptics that Iraq wasn't about oil. It'd be a line of bullshit (scuse the pun for those of us with oilfield experience), but it'd be a great PR move.

And while I'm on a roll, http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2005/03/16/AM200503161.html. Listen to that little explanation about the trade deficit. Makes me happy to be in the middle class. And let me ask you this? What have the Repubs done recently to warrant our votes on moral merits? Gay marriage ban hasn't made it to the floor to even see if we want to vote for it. Abortion? I see the Dems pushing more to stop that than any red elephant. Just goes to show you....vote for government representatives based on their ability to lead and to govern. Let your minister/preacher/priest/warlock/whatever be the one to save your sole. Save yours first, then work on others.

That's my state of the union address. Should be good for another few weeks.

And one little tiny thing. NEVER tell me how you totally agree that people are buying SUVs for the wrong reasons, BUT then say you're gonna get one because you WANT TO have two kids. Troy. Get it after you've got the two kids. Idiot.

Complete Arcane: A Review

Before anyone gripes, I didn't break my budget scoring the third of four in the "complete class" series. It's fully damaged and can only be considered one of the fringes of B&N. So, since I'd busted ass enough last week to afford two books, now I gotta figer out which two, cause I's thinking of Complete Arcane and Complete Adventurer. Maybe I'll order Deities & Demigods and get Complete Adventurer still....or I could just get MMII and MMIII and wrap up that collection. Or Unearthed Arcana. Hmm. Regardless, next month is Sandstorm and I'm jonesin for that like John jonesed for Frostburn. Prolly my 5 years in New Mexico, but I love me some desert.

Anyway.

As with the rest of the Complete series, Arcane opens up with three new core classes. At first glance, I thought the Warlock was too limited and one trickish, but wholly shit can he do that one trick well. Forgoing spells for "invocations", this puppy treats his invocations as spell-like abilities castable at will. Invocation selection is limited, but what's there is handy. Summon Swarm every round anyone? Warmage is the 2nd class introduced, and John's testing one now. We haven't actually got to see Zeek in action yet, being occupied with dieing teiflings or swimming teenagers, but on paper, he's hardy stuff. The Wu Jen is an oriental mage that gains "spell secrets" through her level progression. These affect one or more spells with certain metamagic feats, but do not raise the level of those spells. All in all, good character classes.

Chapter two, as with the other Completes, is a collection of Prestige Classes. Twenty one in all, but I think most are rehashing from Tome and Blood. Geometer or Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil might make it into our present campaign right quick, but that depends on where Crenius goes. In my opinion, though, Effigy Maker wins out as the coolest new Prestige Class yet. It's the only thing that's keeping me from blazing forward with a character for Monte's campaign. Nothing else really popped out at me in this chapter, but switching gears from player to DM over the last few weeks has yoinked me out of finding prestige classes super cool. I like to use em, but sparingly, so the PCs are surprised by the arrival of an Alienist, and not expecting every non-monster to be an Order of the Bow Initiate or Blackguard.

Chapter three is Arcane Feats. And wholly crap. I don't know what I thought was more interesting:the normal feats that give spell-like abilities 1/day, such as "Soul of the North", granting chill touch, ray of frost, and resistance; or the Draconic Feats, which give sorcerers dragon-like abilities when casting spells, such as "Draconic Breath" which lets a sorc dump spell slots for a breath weapon, doing 2d6 damage per level of the spell. A lot of the metamagic feats came over from Tome and Blood, but what was new was cool. This was prolly my favorite chapter of the book.

Number four was the Spells and Invoacations chapter. Besides introducing new spells and 3.5ing spells from T&B, this chapter introduces "swift" and "immediate" actions. These are basically free actions with limited usage. Definitely be introducing them to me game. Favorite spells? Anticapate Teleportation and Assay Resistance are gonna be great tools for Crenius. Defenestrating Sphere is pretty bad ass in my opinion. I don't see why there's effectively a Fire Wings in both Complete Arcane and Comlete Divine. Greater Mage Armor is a spell that shouldn't have taken this long to make. Reaving Dispell is pretty damn sweet. And how cool is the ability to Transmute Rock to Lava?

I sped through Chapters 5 and 6, as new magic items and arcane monsters make for slightly heavier reading, and I tend to just hit them at certain times in creating an adventure.

And finally, Arcane Campaigns in Chapter Seven is the wrap up that has a few ideas, but not a whole lot that a good DM hasn't already thought of. I liked the info on Warlocks, Warmages, and Wu Jen in a campaign, but the rest of the spellcasters "in a campaign" sections have all been printed somewhere else, either in Tome & Blood, multiple Dragon articles, or way back in 2nd edition in the "Complete Wizard's Handbook". The pacing and magic building sections have decent info, but again, I've been a DM for almost 20 years. I found the bit on Arcane Duels interesting, glossed over the "arcane organizations" section, and was saddened by the "alternative spellbooks" cause some of it happened to be things I wanted to use in a Dragon article.

All in all, tis a book I'd pay $21 for with my B&N discount, but I didn't have to. That means that thanks to Boolah's gift of Complete Divine for Christmas, I'm only paying for half of the "Complete" series. Gotta share some love for that.

I should give props to Nick as well. Early last week, he realized he had two copies of MM3.5 and probably had accidentally not paid for one. So, he gave it to me. The easily-influenced-by-the-spirit-world redneck in me wants to say that this windfall of D&D books means I'm on the right path in starting an RPG company. The securely-founded-in-the-real-world side of me realizes this font is too small AND free books just means I have great friends. Thanks guys.

Now, you're Jethek the Unwise

Last night we played. D&D. We started new characters, so here's a run down of them.

Crenius - A teifling abjurer haunted by dreams of demons and quite the doomsayer to the end of the world.
Zeek - A gnome warmage bent on vengeance toward goblinoids and worshiping a collection of deities to make a greek proud.
Livvy - A halfling rogue with a long family lineage of skullduggery trying to figure out how to buy her parent's out of their mob debt.

The party began the evening in the morning. Staying at the Scramble Inn, located in Fort Spentral, they had just sat down to a yummy breakfast hosted by their good friend and inn owner, Davik. Davik's wife was in the kitchen preparing the morning fair for the rest of the inn's guests when a scream erupted from the kitchen, accompanied by a cacophony of flying pans.

Sensing his friend in trouble and fearing demonic invasion, Crenius boldly rushed in. He was greeted with the site of 6 dire rats invading the kitchen from the cellar. Drawing his dagger, he rushed to save Marika, Davik's wife, for she was stranded on a table amidst a pile of leaping rats, although she did have one firmly by the scruff of the neck, which she was pummeling into unconsciousness with a pan.

Before Crenius could wade into the kitchen, though, he was quickly met and dispatched by two rabid rats. Zeek, grabbed his caster friend and drug him from the kitchen as Davik rushed in, club in hand.

Finsihing her tea, the hobbit, err, halfling Livvy, rushed upstairs to get help. When a man answered the door to his room and promised to get more help, she rushed back to the kitchen, drawing her axe.

Zeek began administering first aid to his dieing friend, but was quite distracted by Crenius' unconscious doomsaying in Infernal.

Livvy entered the kitchen, let loose with an axe and took out one rat. Davik and Marika having disaptched two already, the rat threat was dwindling. A few rounds later, two had run off, and another lied dead. A couple of clerics showed up in the dining area and helped stabilize Crenius, later restoring both he and Zeek to full health. Unforunately, Davik was near death and obvioulsy falling into the throes of a fast acting filth fever.

Zeek, who worships Heironious - God of Valor (among others), decided it was unwise to follow the fleeing rats down their tunnel without help. Much chaos ensued when Crenius regained consciousness, though, for he'd dreamt the fiends of Beator were hiding at the end of the tunnel. His mission was to destroy them. After many successful and failed attempts to talk Crenius out of it, to restrain Crenius physically, and to trick Crenius into waiting for help, Zeek finally gave in, recruited a local guide and the party headed down the tunnel.

That guide was Jethek, an orphan boy that had recently shown up in the village with a penchant for getting work done that other's didn't want to do. Armed with an imagination for adventure and a new morning star given by his new mentor Zeek, Jethek was ready to go.

The tunnel came to a bit of a halt at an underground stream. Zeek failed to jump it and almost drowned, but was saved by Livvy's quick thinking. Jethek tried next, tied to a rope, but failed to leap the stream as well. In a hurry to vanquish the hounds of hell, Crenius successfully leapt the stream but forgot to take the rope with him. Livvy went next, tied to the rope, and only barely made it, grabbing the cliff edge at the last minute and needing help getting up. In a fit of excitement, Jethek grabbed little Zeek, and leapt the stream chasm once more.

Once more, he landed in the water. Rather than freaking out at his protege's haste, Zeek simply tutored Jethek, formerly The Brave, now The Wet, with a calm and collected, "See Jethek, that's what happens when you don't wait. Now you're Jethek The Unwise. Luckily, not Jethek the dead."

While Livvy was struggling to pull the two soaked heroes up, Crenious noticed an unholy light advancing from a side tunnel. Moments later a Shocker Lizard popped out from a small crevice and began flailing around and growling, attempting to protect its lair. Having no advanced Nature Knowledge, Crenius saw this as an unholy assault and let loose with a Ray of Frost. Angered, the lizard leapt at Crenius, biting his arm as the wizard dodged. A second time, the lizard leapt at Crenius. This time, Cren managed to dodge the little bastard, which flew over Livvy and landed in the stream just as Zeek and Jethek managed to crest the cliff edge. The SHocker Lizard wisely swam away.

A brief BS lecture from Crenius to Jethek about complete lack of any chance that the lizard was defending its lair, and the party was on its way again.
Another 1/2 mile down the tunnel, complete with a cave in. A light in the ceiling that could be nothing more than a portal to Beator in Crenius Quixote's mind brought forth a frenzy of clawing and digging by Crenius. Thirty minutes later, he was tired, but free. The Prime Material looks nothing like the plane of Beator, and he regained his senses yet again.

The party found some tracks of what could only be a dire badger and Jethek knew he could track it. Everyone set off with Jethek the Wet, Unwise, But Brave, and an hour later, after Jethek lost the tracks, they found themselves on an obvious mountain path. Following this, the party came to a door inscribed with "None Shall Pass" in dwarven.

Zeek, following Heirouniuos' example, valorously opened the door. Unfortunately, a wall was on the other side. More unfortunately, Zeek passed out a minute later as the Blue Whinnis poison on a needle in the door handle set in.

Crenius took over, made sure Zeek wasn't dying and began investigating the wall. He found a narrow ledge leading up that could only lead to the fiendish demons of Beator, but this time, with his friend in danger, he managed to maintain his lucidity. Not only that, his constant contact with the demon planes while sleeping allowed him a glimpse of the immediate future. In his vision, Zeek regained consciousness an hour later.

Crenius explained that "1/24 of the rotation of the de-al" would see Zeek awakened. To alleviate Jethek's confusion, Livvy informed him that his deal was in his pants, and he'd learn to rotate it a little later in life. With that, the party waited to test Cren's vision.

And lo, Zeek regained consciousness an hour later. Unfortuantely, Nick was quickly losing consciousness, so we wrapped up here.

Good times were had by all, though, and despite not having a martially talented character at all, the party works well together. Last night was also a new record. If you count chasing Crenius around in his Beator frenzy, getting Jethek and his weapon, and encountering the fake door all as encounters, we got in a total of FIVE, two of which involved combat. Previously, our record was two if you were generous in what an encounter was. Rockin.

Tune in next week, probably Sunday, for "Crenius Conquers Crazy Chaos" or "Here Jethek, try this Wee-Jas Juice, it'll make you a man....or I will."

Doom and my man JB

So, The Rock is starring in Doom, which'll come out early next year. Other than that, they're trying to get him in another action comedy called "Ride Along", but this time next to Ryan Reynolds. Works for me. Mebbe I can get Wendy to watch that with me. The Rock's hot. Reynolds is hot. She should go. I knew alla this ahead of time, though.

What I didn't know, is that Cartoon Network's man of dating, and my personal hero, Johnny Bravo is getting a movie. Apparently, The Rock's gonna be my man JB. What I don't get, though, is why they're trying to get Wayne Newton to be JB's dad. JB's dad is never in the cartoon. Hmm. I'm skeptical on this one. If Cartoon Network wanted to dump a series on the big screen, they shoulda did something more popular. Samurai Jack, Teen Titans, Power Puff Girls maybe. I can't see JB making a good on-screen character. He's pretty shallow. Guess we'll have to wait and see.

Reviews: Complete Warrior & Shonen Jump

Well, first, I's a little late in the ball game this month (read broke) in getting Shonen Jump. Let's start there. Joe was completely right in that One Piece rocked. Again. Solidly. Dragonball Z wrapped up and they're moving that over to monthly's. Naruto wrapped up some combat and whatever it's called Go just moved the story to the next arc a bit. Regardless, twas a solid issue that I read in one night. Good stuff. But the One Piece, as usual, stole the show.

So, originally, I was going to get MMII and MMIII this month (well, actually, MMI, but Nick had two, so he gave me one. Rock on Nick. Rock on.). After a bit of review, though, I came to this conclusion. MMII is primarily CR 7-10 monthers. Sure, the lowest is CR 1/6, but the lower end stuff is on the rare side in that. At least the lower end stuff I'm interested in using. This initially wasn't a problem, but the 8th level party got moved out of the story arc and onto the "episodic" backburner, meaning they're our fall back group. If someone in the story can't make it, we'll play them. Otherwise, we're back at level 1 (2 really since Nick's got a teifling). So, the MMII and III got moved into the realms of collection for awhile.

Conversely, our monster campaign is a Barb, a Fighter, and a Fighter/Cleric. Complete Warrior seemed the way to go. I read it in one night.

First chapter is the new "base" classes. Quotes because any DM can simply say no. Hexblade is a pseudo-spellcasting sword swinger with the ability to give opponents negatives to dice rolls. Kinda cool, but doesn't fit my play style, which is why I want to play one. Like to challenge my RPG box.

Samurai is crap. There're about 5 d20 samurai variants, and this one focus on dual weilding the daisho, with a bonus to staring basically. Maybe it wouldn't seem like crap to me if our players were different, but I don't want to encourage Nick to stare at anything, and nobody else really thinks of doing something other than full on attacking.

More my style is the swashbuckler. Basically a fighter, minus feats (almost said proficencies...damn 2nd edition), but with a bonus to reflex saves at certain levels, and the added bonus of some interesting jump/tumble maneuvers, and the ability to add the Intelligence bonus to damage with the Strength bonus. Good times.

Chapter two is a buttload of prestige classes, as these have been the bread and butter of most of WotC's "expanded" rules since the beginning of 3.5. Some look pretty fun, like the Whirling Dervish. I'm sure all of them have a spot in some campaign or another. But I learned at the start of the last campaign, it's better to build the campaign around the players than to give em a set of standards that are required. Sorry, Monty, it's true. The players will either A) balk and find a way around it (woe to the DM that says 'no' to something after a player finds a loophole. that's a good way to ruin a game session.) or B) completely ignore it (also known as Spymaster=Elemental Savant=Windrider=halfling monk syndrome). If you like prestige classes, this book's worth the money for this chapter alone.

Supplemental Rules is next, I think. It's all feats. Most of the Divine Feats are reprints from Defenders of Faith and Masters of the Wild I think. Hell, a lot of the regular feats are rehashing of old ones, but 3.5 edition. The two coolest parts of this chapter are the Tactical Feats and the Weapon Style Feats. Tactical feats are a set of very specific feats rolled into one general feat. For instance, Uncanny Defense (or whatever the hell it's called), let's you dodge a flank attack AND make your attacker hit his comrade, OR cause an attack of opportunity by moving out of a threatened aread AND then get a free trip attack in if your opponent misses (cause he's now overextended), OR do something else very specific that I can't remember. Weapon Style Feats give you a little bonus if fighting with certain weapon combos. Fighting with two maces? If you hit the same opponent in one round, you get an EXTRA attack on that opponent. Sword and dagger? I think that one gives you a free disarm attempt if you hit with both weapons. Good stuff.

There're some new spells in here, but I glossed over those in my reading. Nothing super cool. And finally, the book wraps up with some ideas on PCs in warfare (coulda used that 4 months ago, although it's mostly stuff I'd thought of, just in a random rolls chart), as well as some combat-centric deities and a good section on running a low magic campaign.

I thought the page count was a little low for the money, as I thought the same thing about Complete Divine. John and I are in agreement that they could have went two ways with the 'complete' whatever set. Either mix Divine and Arcane into one book and charge $40, same with Warrior and Adventurer, OR, made a Player's Handbook II, which included all of the new base classes, as well as spells and rules variants, and just put all of the prestige classes into a Prestigious Maximus type of book. Granted, that would have REALLY screwed up WotC.

Gotta post, changing computers.

Bruce Campbell

I got nothing today. So, here's an interview with Bruce Campbell. I think I'm gonna study this man and become his prodigy. First step? Stop being lazy. But that's really the first step in any road I want to walk along. Right now I'm coasting along on a bus ride of societal norms. Granted, the heavy D&D action I got going on right now makes it a British double decker bus, and I'm on the roof, while the bus is being driven through Arizone, of course. Still, it's a bus, on a road, and a shitload of other lazy people that are just satisfied with life enough to not quite get off the couch and do anything are on it with me. I make occasional attempts to get off the couch. Like sending an email out to a former teacher to see if it's worth my time to give him a demo reel. I suppose if I's really interested, though, I would have just submitted a reel. So basically, I just got up to get some water there....then right back to the couch.

It's all a piss poor, convoluted metaphor with poor paragraph breaks. So go read about Bruce Campbell.

Pericles

I should mix up the colors of my blog a bit. The text in the blue bar bugs me, cause NO ONE CAN FUCKING READ IT.

Anyway.

So, last night, we caught Pericles. One of Shakespeare's earlier works, tis more comedic and less tragic than later stuff like Macbeth/R&J/etc. Tragedy befalls Pericles throughout the play for sure, but the humor prevails nonetheless. Good stuff all around. If you're not familiar with the story, Pericles is a prince that goes to another country to win a bride by solving a riddle. The answer to the riddle is that the King is porking his daughter. The king gives P-cles 40 days to live, and if the secret's not out by then, laters dude.

So, Pericles goes into hiding. He's shipwrecked, but then wins a jousting tournament and gets married. Knocks up his wife and the evil king dies along with his daughter, probably of syphilus. On the way home, Pericles wife gives birth but dies. The sailors are a superstititous lot and make the P man dump her ass overboard. Cept she's not dead. She washes up on shore.

As if that's not enough, because of the storm they're in, Pericles goes ashore to ask a few friends to take care of his new baby, til the seas are calm. Then he goes home.

Neptune was pretty pissed, cause it took 14 years for the sea to calm. In that time, Marina, Pericles daughter, turns out to be a super nice hotty. In a fit of jealousy, the bitch raising her has her killed. Only the dude doing the job is worthless and instead of death, pirates kidnap Marina. She's bought in a market by a brothel.

Gotta get to work, so I gotta paraphrase the rest. Basically, Pericles goes into morning, gets shipwrecked again (I'd stay off the sea, dude, that's almost three times), finds his daughter, has a dream sent by Diana, then finds his wife. His daughter gets hitched, and now he's the good king of four countries (that's implied anyway), cause he went back and razed the castle of the fucks that tried to off his daughter.

My only complaints are that the small cast felt the need to do different accents in their different roles, meaning the Spartan knight sounded German and what not; the doorman for the brothel, as well as the brothel master, was way too over the top MODERN gay; and that the saggy breasted brothel mistress sounded and looked like Aunt Jemima, which just seemed like a subtle rub toward the racial disparity in the Twin Cities....

Major props to the set designer, though. That shit was bad ass. A lot of the props were reused for different accessories, but all were believable and solid. And more props for the actors for playing each of the roles well (cept for the accents), but especially a Big Up to them for pulling off the horses. They basically wore a horse strapped to their shoulders, so that upper body was man mounted on horse, and lower body was the horses legs. They pulled it off so the legs acted like nervous horses, pawing the ground and what not, the upper body moved like mounted knights, and the horse bodies reacted appropriately (such as shying away from the king). Pretty sweet.

Oh yeah, and none of the actors were as attractive in real life as they were in their photos. Cept the bald dude, cause in his photo, he wasn't bald so much as balding. And in one photo, an actress looked like my ex Brooke, cept black.

B&N calls. Go read Nick's Blog for some damn humorous knife reviews. "Open carefully and cut away the crutch of convenience," cause Nick's got 3.5" of laughter in his pocket with your name on it.

Hoppy and the Bone Gnasher

Game night came and went last night. Twas actually more of a continuation of hanging with Nick really. Thursday night he came over and we talked D&D minimally and just had an overall good time BSing the night away. We kicked around a few ideas about changing up the DMing style for the next two campaigns we're starting, and he came up with a great, but at the time naked, idea for the monstrous campaign.

Yesterday at B&N, John decided he wanted to play a Minotaur, which we figured wouldn't be too much more in ECL from a Lizard man. With that, he was going to steer (no pun intended) toward slightly evil.

Well, it turns out the ECL for a Minot is 6 or 8. Way more than the 2 (maybe 3) for a Lizard man. So, that's out. In addition, since Wendy was the only one with a solid character idea, we're basing the shit off of her, and her Lizard man (woman actually) was being reformed, and still wants to reform and become good, but also still feels an overwhelming need to chew things. So, looks like we're going neutral, with leanings toward a goal of grudging acceptance by the greater world.

So, Wendy rolled up a Lizard woman Barbarian that's dumb as a post, but her other scores are at least slightly above average. Nick said no equipment, so personality is all we can go on. She likes to use a tail blade, can instantaneously rage, and again, has a tendancy to mindlessly chew on things. Her name is Davanthus or something like that, but goes by Dave. Apparently, whatever method of reforming her evil ways they were utilizing, they didn't include any examples of sexual deviance in names. That being said, if your interested in an evening of exquisite phone conversation with this sultry, seductive, and oh-so-easy lizardess, please dial 1 on your touch tone phone now.

If your 1-900-Xenophile interests run more masculine and chitonous, let us introduce you to young Cli'Nack (I think). Another of our beasties with an intelligence of 7, you might find this lout to be abrassive and pushy (Charisma of 5 in game turns). Regardless, this Thri-Kreen cleric, with the multiattack feat can whoop your ass endlessly with four cats-o-ninetails, all at the same time.

This bad boy is mean. A Wisdom of 17 and Strength of 16 make him a solid fighter/cleric (the route he's gonna follow), and a whopping 20 Dexterity means he doesn't get hit much. And talk about mobility. An untrained Jump modifier of 37 means this bastard can just about fly.

I was originally thinking a cleric of Kord, but wasn't too pleased with that the more I thought of it. So, with Nick's permission, I'd like to use the Thri-Kreen deity I made up this morning. Her domains are Insect (which I made up), Celerity from Complete Divine, Travel, Strength, Fire and one or two others I can't remember. My boy would take Insect and Celerity as his domains. Funny thing is, the big benefit for having the Insect domain, this guy can't even use. The Insect Domain lets you turn vermin and swarms as a cleric turns undead. My guy's Charisma isn't high enough.

As for progression, levels 2 and 3 will be in fighter, and he'll grab Mobility and Spring Attack as feats to enhance the jumping attack motif I'm going with. Pump his Charisma one so he can turn undead and insects at least once a day, and grab a 2nd level of cleric at 4. That's about as long term as I'm gonna think with this guy, cause I think we're heading to a penal colony ala Australia. (really hard not to type penile there).

As for my campaign, Nick made an tiefling Abjurer that's convinced his demonic father is going to invade the Prime Material and cause much destruction. He didn't finish, though, so I don't know much about the guy.

All in all, a fun night, despite being down half the team.

Herr Dund-er-head

Well,here's a dilemma. Damn, spelled it right the first time. Sweet.

Anyway, Friday's are D&D night. Tomorrow night wasn't gonna happen cause Nick had a camping trip planned. That's not gonna happen now, so Nick's open. I'm gung ho, Nick's rocking and ready, and Wendy's pretty pumped to get together and make characters tomorrow night, cause we reached a turning point in the campaign and just decided it's a bit too much work and stretching of the imagination to get the characters back to a good story point. That's what happens when you fail in an epic, world saving quest without dieing.

The dilemma?

Well, also this Friday is a big bash at a co-worker's house. He invited me last week, I forgot about it, then John reminded me. I didn't say Yea or Nay, cause I tend not to do say Yea anymore at first. Usually, if I do, I end up not going because someone in the group doesn't want to (like Wendy after a long day at the Tree of Evil, or Nick when there's a bar involved). Trouble is, John is really rearing to go.

Sure, we could make characters without him, but that's not as fun, since we really want to have everyone involved in the starting of the campaign and which direction everyone wants it to go... Sure we could try to make characters and go the party later, but Wendy doesn't get off til 8:30ish, so later for her will be midnightish, and if we do characters before she gets off, we're back to missing a person at first.

*shrug* Guess we'll see.

In more important news, a spokesperson for OPEC said he wouldn't be surpised if oil hit $80 per barrel in the next two years. Welcome to $3 for a gallon of gas. Guess I should get on the gas/electric hybrid list now, cause there's already a 1 year wait in the Twin Cities for one of those things. Not sure how I'd pay for it, though. As it stands, without picking up extra shifts, I'd have $5 in "discretionary spending" left at the end of March....

Oh yeah, and I gotta decide whether to pay in $10 on my taxes or pay H&R $30+ to possibly tell me I still owe $10, instead of the $800 return I'd expected. I better revisit those sometime.

But not this weekend. This weekend is hiking and Pericles.

Excuse me, I'm unconscious...

So, we have a sign in the ER that says "If you're experiencing any of the symptoms below, please seek a triage nurse or security office immediately." On that list? Severe bleeding, children under 8, difficulty breathing, etc. My favorite?

Unconsciousness! If you're unconscious, please seek out a nurse or security officer immediately! Please. For the love of God, don't just lie there on the floor or in your chair without telling anyone. Help us help you.