one mini down

On Wednesday night, I got together with Nick and we wrapped up Crenius mini. I'll let him blog about it first, as I don't know what action/adventure/sultry liasons he wants to keep a secret from the party. A brief reveiw is needed, though.

We figured out quite a few of the areas the Crenius needs to grow in, which is good, cause it adds a LOT of depth to him as a character. There are some hard questions he's facing, and some hard challenges he deals with every day. Made for some damn good role playing, AND gives a lot of promise for a night, if ever everyone is in character, of some serious sole searching in the party.

We also set Crenius up on the path to Geometer. At least got him interested in that direction. In this game world, the Nyran's, which is the culture that lived in the river valley before the Empire wiped them out, centered their magic and their religion around geometric shapes, functions, and the like. (Gives me all the more reason to read the book on Euclid geometry that I have. Hehe.) Crenius is starting to figure this out and find it very interesting... He's also discovered he rather enjoys translating old texts. From a DM's point of view, this is a beautiful thing. "You found this old map..." "While translating today, you discovered the legend of..." "Next to this young hotty is the numbers 8675309...." Hook city. Too damn bad I'd done away with hooks already.

All told the session took four days of real time, which gives us some wiggle room for Levvy. Gregorious and Zeke might have to find something to entertain themselves with.... Of course, I have to speed their session up. We're playing that one by email, and almost a week after we've started it, they're just now buying drinks in the bar. Go go gadget one line emails.

(Boy, if you're really dislexic while typing, 'emails' can become smaile. I'm gonna use that as a place name I think.)

On another note, Wendy's out for gaming Saturday, so my campaign's on hold. Despite the lack of hooks, the next adventure(s) really focus on wrapping up the kidnapping of Levvy's parents. It's wholly possible that she follows a bad lead and in the meantime Zeke, Gregorious, and Crenius wrap up the whole thing, but that would be entirely accidental since neither of the three have shown any interest in helping her investigate the issue. Of course, she hasn't asked, either... Regardless, it's a prime opportunity for some character development for her, and some team development as a whole. I could play Levvy as an NPC, but I learned that's bad with Jethek. John missed out on some good RP opportunity not being there when Zeke's little friend left....

So, it's shaping up to be a night of rolling up characters for John Montezuma's Cold Nights Warm Booties campaign. Sounds good to me. I got a selfish Warlock I'm jonesin to hash out.

Open campaigns

Here we are, in a campaign. Orginally, I'd developed story arc A based on the location I was putting the PCs ins. However, turned out with the character backgrounds, story arc B and minor arc C were more appropriate. (yes, Virigina, I am starting this blog entry with absolutely no introduction. I'm grumpy. Try to follow along. And NO, the subject of the blog in no way makes me grumpy. In fact, this shit gets me super excited.)

I've been kind of worried since the start of the campaign that, while it made sense for the characters to pursue B and C, the players might not be interested in fighting the villains at the end of the road. This morning, I came up with a solution.

Rather than leading the PCs along on a certain story arc, I'm gonna essentially let them decide which aspects of each arc they interact with. The stuff's gonna happen whether they're around or not. Essentially, I've got like 4 major factions working toward goals that the PCs can interfere with if they want AND if they pick up on the clues.

The real challenge here is gonna be maintaining a timeline consistant with each factions overarcing goals, figuring out how each faction's success or failure changes the plans of the others, and making damn sure I drop enough hints and clues to give the PCs the opportunity to pursue certain things that are relevant, but not so many clues that the players see it as a 'hook' that they need to take.

For instance, the faction from arc A wants a certain item. arc B wants an item related to A's item. In the meantime, faction C is in direct conflict with B, but very far removed from the PCs, and faction D wants to help itself by helping the PCs to hinder a subset of faction B. No one knows of faction A, but upon their discovery, B is likely to bring all of it's guns to bear on A, possibly enlisting the aid of the PCs and forcing them to decide whether B is better than A, and also bringing to light the nature of B's subset being targeted by D (which just happens to be a hated enemy of the PCs). Unfortunately, the PCs hate D, hate the subset of B, probably identify with C, might hate A, and may be willing servants of B while being unwilling servants of D. Now that's some fucked up shit. I love it. Here is the mind of an evil genius that thinks partly in game terms and partly in abstract algebraic formulae not translateable to the keyboard. Mwuhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahah. Mwuha. ha. ahah. haha. aha. ahaha. ahahahahhahah.

Oh. Sorry. One last teehee and I'm out.

A not so well kept secret

http://www.moviehole.net/news/5503.html
http://www.comingsoon.net/news/topnews.php?id=9301
A little bit of news about a coupla potential Star Wars TV series. Nice. Wonder how I can get a job on the CG one.......

missed one

Dang. Forgot to post yesterday. Sorry. Judging by my comment on Joe's blog, I'm feeling rather longwinded, despite being as grumpy as a bloodhound with a rectally implanted DONTBARK shock collar. I could rant about how pissy I get when people don't respond to their emails, but I won't.

Instead I'll brainstorm on the flat world, campaignwise. See, here's my problem. The PC's are on a desert continent, in a fertile river valley, in an area colonated by a vast empire. The Ichian Empire owns every piece of livable land in the known world. Trouble is, they don't know much about the known world. I want two distinct cultures outside of the influence of the IE. My original thought was that sailing one way met with a series of islands and riptides that made further progress impossible, but sailing the other way meant a voyage that was so long it was highly improbably the expedition could carry enough food. That's a long way considering how much food a high level cleric can summon. That makes for a HUGE world, and realistically, a huge world modeled after our own means mega gravity.

So, instead, I'm gonna throw the whole "modeled after our own" part out the window. Besides making the world unique (well, at least not as common as other fantasy worlds), it gives me a little slack when it comes to world building. Bottom line is, I can ignore all of Nick's questions about tectonic plates. Not really, but sounded good.

Now, I'm not talking the Great A'tuin here. Just a world that looks like its map.

Geographically, the Ichian Empire spans a whole continent in the southern half of the map, controls the fertile river valley on the northern continent, and has colonized every island within sailing distance. Outside of that, they're nothing. Waaaaaaay East of the empire is the aptly named Cliffs of Despair. Why Despair? Halfway there, sailors despair that they'll never make it. And of course, any ship that sails into any gap in the cliffs never comes back. See, the Cliffs of Despair are really portals into other planes.

West of the Ichian Empire there's the aforementioned riptides/island chain, with submerged mountains poking their little peaks out, but these dangers are exacerbated by a world spanning fog cloud. Again, ships that sail in, don't come out. Mostly, though, that's just cause on the other side of the fog, the wind changes, the tides change, compasses change, the sky changes, and while finding your through the mists is difficult enough, once you lose sight of them, finding your way back to the mists without first learning the new navigational standards is pretty damn hard in its own right.

On the other side of the mists, it's a whole new ball game. I'm definitely thinking there's an Eastern influenced culture, possibly a little more advanced technologically than the IE. Of course, since I'm going all wacky anyway, I could just say there's also a series of cliffwalls protecting an area of the world that just turns out to be Eberron, too. But then I have to answer this question. If it's Eberron, and Eberron's so packed with magic, why haven't the people of that area ventured past the cliff walls and encountered the closer Eastern nations or the distant Ichian Empire? Maybe they're protected by the Cliffs of Not Teleporting Past Us.....

Nah, dumb idea. But, since I've mistyped the last three sentences, I think it's time for me to cut this short. Good thing, cause I think the brainstorm was going nowhere, and, cept for the Cliffs of Despair, I can't see the PCs giving two shakes about any of this anyway. Well, maybe Crenius if he spends a little time studying portals and gateways. Maybe Zeke if the other side of the mists is nothing but evil. *shrug*

more world stuff

Here're some random thoughts I've had about my campaign world. Since thus far, the players have done a damn good job sepearting player knowledge from character knowledge, I don't mind talking about any of it here. None of it's common knowledge, which is why it hasn't come up in game, but some of it might come up later. *shrug*

We'll start with the elves. I recently read a thread at ENworld.org dealing with what everyone's favorite style of elves were. I don't really have a favorite style, cause I've lived with D&D elves all my life, so that's the base everyone else is judged from. Aside from the D&D elves, though, I like Pratchett's elves as seen in "Lords & Ladies" and a few other story realms that make elves less human and more fey/exotic. So I started thinking, "How can I work that into my campaign?"

Here's the trouble. There's a half-elf in the party, the characters know there's an "Elven Isle" somewhere that all the elves live on at least part of their life, and they actually had help from an elf scout when it came to rescuing a friend. She presumably gave them a little background info on the state of the Elven Isle, because there were some questions concerning how this elven scout can be the 'cousin' of the orphan human child the party was rescuing. (Turns out her grandparents cousin married a human, and their half-elf offspring continued on with the human relationships. These things are possible for a race that lives an estimated 1000 years. Think of the Social Security difficulties that would cause for our current government and administration...)

So, the elves the PCs know are very strongly founded in "traditional" D&D elven lore. And it just dawned on me that I should compare/contrast the two for the readers not familiar with each. D&D elves are a little more strongly based on Tolkein's elves. They live in the woods, look like androgynous humans with pointy ears, are very dextrous, but not quite so adaptable and healthy as humans, tend to be good with magic, and all have training in sword and bow use. Pratchett's elves are a bit closer to the traditional real world elvish lore. They live in the realm of faerie, tend toward being tall and slim, are extremely beautiful but absolutely alien in that beauty, are very conceited, and delight in causing pain and anguish of a psychological bend in humanity.

Now, how to blend them. In D&D, the cosmos is made up of 'planes'. The real world is the Prime Material Plane, deities tend to abide on the Outer Planes, the elements have their own Inner Planes, and there a few transitive planes such as the Ethereal, Astral, and Shadow Planes that span the breadth of the cosmology. Some Alternate Prime Materials exist as well, and some campaigns add in a "Far Realm" which is where all of the Cthulu influenced monstrosities exist, as well as any "All God" figure there may be, and some go so far as to place the homes of various abberations in the Far Realm as well. Planar theory is a whole other blog entry, though, and this ones about blending influences into a gameable race.

Back to the original question of "How do I fit fey elves into a world/campaign that already has a traditional elven setting?" Simple. Superman. What? Superman? Yep, Superman. No, I'm not crazy.

Dig. On Krypton, Supes and his people were essentially us. Humans. Supesy's powers stem from the influence of our sun.

So, in my campaign, elves are originally from another plane. I actually haven't decided whether it's a new plane or just an alternate Prime Material. I'm thinking it's an alternate Prime known simply as Fey. All the faerie influenced critters originate from there. On Fey, the natives are one way, but because of the magical influences of the character's Prime Material, they're the way the PCs know them as. Really though, is there much difference between an alternate Prime Material and a new/different Outer, Inner or Transitive Plane? Not really.

Elves are elves as the PCs know them on this Prime, but on Fey, they're more Pratchett-esque. Tall, possessing great but alien beuaty and mindset. Very smart, very dextrous, very thin. VERY VERY conceited. In their minds, they rule Fey and are quite content with that, not really attempting to conquer other planes. However, like all of the faerie land, they're very curious as well. Outside of Fey, they unwillingly take on the baser characteristics of the lands and tend toward the better known D&D style of elves.

While all elves know of Fey, not all want to go back there. Some make regular pilgrimages, but make the sacrifice and return to other planes to further some elvish plot or what have you. Others avoid Fey altogether. These tend to be the elves not born on Fey, for they tend to hate the conceitedness and self absorption that takes them when they return there. Fey Elves tend to think of these "dirt skins" as lower than they think of their slaves. The elves that bounce in and out of Fey tend to be the lower class citizens in Fey with the purely Fey Elves being the superior members of the race in their minds. Because of the magics involved in planar travel, it's rare to find a Fey Elf in 'fey form' outside of that plane, but when one is encountered, beware, as it requires considerable power to avoid the transformation that takes place when plane walking.

The land of Fey itself is pretty close to all of the faerie legends of the place. Strangely beautiful and surprisingly dangerous. Warnings abound about traveling there. Eating any fey food is prolly a bad idea, as is sleeping much. Fey Elves tend to view tourists as nothing more than entertainment, and their sensibilities about right and wrong are far different from denizens of other planes. Worse is the maleability of the reality of Fey. The denizens of the land, and most especially the Fey Elves can warp the land itself to match their whims. It's not unknown for Fey to closely resemble the Prime Material to dupe unwary travelers into mistakenly doing something to get them stuck their permanently.

For the brave, and possibly dumb, how does one reach Fey? They easiest way is to find a faerie guide. Elves can take travelers there, but most non-Fey won't. Any of the other faerie (such as pixies and the like) can do the same, but again, most don't. Portals to Fey tend to be found at borders. Where ocean meets shore, nation meets nation, old doorways to decrepit houses, cave entrances, forest becoming plain, mountains leveling off...these are all places to accidentally find fey portals. It's not recommended that travelers enter.

Another warning. In Fey, time is different. Hours in Fey could be days on the Prime Material. Days could be hours. The portals actually relegate time, and it takes great power indeed to relegate the portals.

Are there any known stable portals on the Prime? Obviously the elves have at least one. Probably on the Elven Isle. Who knows about the rest.

As for game knowledge, not all of the elves know a lot about Fey. In fact, PC elves prolly know jack or at least not much more than non-elves. Half elves that haven't been to the Elven Isle are treated as non-elves. Knowledge(planes) can come up with some info on Fey, but the PC has to have a reason to go looking.

As for our campaign specifically....Zeke could probably convince Crenius to look for info on the Elven Isle if he was worried about Jethek. Since the elven scout chic was pretty competant, Jethek confirmed her story, and he went with her sort of willingly (ignoring the angst that any 12 year old uses to deal with such a major change), Zeke's prolly not too worried though.

Tune in next time for Holy Crap, The World Really Is Flat!

Game night sans game

Well, last night was our weekly D&D night. Original plan was to wrap up Zeke/Gregarious mini-adventure and catch Kung Fu Hustle. Trouble is, Nick got off a lot earlier than he's supposed to and KFH only had super late shows available. The minis are semi private so I didn't want to run one with the whole group here. Instead, we played Lunch Money and beat the crap outta each other with cards.

In the end, Nick one four games, I won three, Wendy won one and Luke matched her. John, despite frequently kicking everyone in the nuts and hitting everyone with his nuts AND letting Lukas hit Wendy with his nuts, failed to win even won game. My personal best move was using a "2fer" and knocking both Nick and John out with Wendy's breasts.

Regardless, much rum & coke was had, along with more fun than should be.

Shonen'll make ya jump-jump

That's right. The subscription paid off real quick. Got the newest issue of Shonen Jump in the mail a couple days ago, and the bitch aint even in stores yet. Score. So, here's my pre-release review, without spoilers.

Opens with a preview of the new title I"s. Nother teen boy in love with hot school girl but he's too scared to ask her out story. She's a bikini model. That seems to be the gist of the title and the preview issue was kinda boring. Not to mention a little unnerving as yer thinking "Damn, that's one hot 16 year old."

I skipped Yu-gi-oh, which I always do.

Naruto had a couple chapters with a little illusionist battle at the end.Mostly these were just lead up chapters to some more action, I hope, cause these were a bit boring.

But then, there's One Piece. Ah, glorious One Piece. The meat of the book this issue. We finally get the wrap up of the battle with Don Kreig. Several of the characters come to some realizations that the average reader prolly saw them reaching three SJ issues ago, and a little fore shadowing plays out. Again this issue's OP rocked serious tasty manga abs. The kind 16 year old bikini models in I"s day dream about. Best part? You get like six chapters of One Piece. Whoot.

Then there's Shaman King. SK ties with Naruto for my next favorite title, but this issue, Shaman King whooped Naruto. Yoh's battle with asshole continues and nothing really wraps up, but it's good action nonetheless.

Yuyu Hasa-whosat just continues where it left off, again with nothing spectacular.

That's as far as I got on my lunch break. I'll prolly wrap it up on my dinner break unless I decide to explore the mind of a minor villain coming up in my campaign. Depends on how maniacal I feel with an almost completely untrained staff tonight.

Bottom line is, this issue rocks if for no other reason than One Piece. Rockin Shaman King is just icing on the cake, and anything I find near the end of the book will turn out to be little cinammon treats hidden in thecake itself. mmmmm.

*Edit:* Finished up on my break. Whasitsname No Go was good. Not a lot of action, but I like the characters, so it's good even with my crap understanding of Go.

minis

Well, each of the three semi-solo mini adventures I wanna run is almost wrapped up and ready to play. Hopefully we can run through the Zeke/Gregorious bit Friday and have Levvy's and Crenius' played out soon enough next weekend that I can pump out the next big adventure for 4/30, which is our first Saturday game.

Kinda big expectations on this one, partly cause none of us should be EXTREMELY tired, and partly cause it's a sort of closure for one character's background and a start of the hopefully major story arc.

So, what I'm going for is to give the player's an opportunity for some serious roleplaying in the minis so that both the players and myself get a better understanding of the character and how he/she is being played. This'll be the barometer that I use to judge the players for roleplaying XP bonuses and hopefully it'll help me come up with better adventure hooks. I think the last few have been slightly lacking and I'm worried the players went along with a couple of em just so we could play. What I'm really hoping for is to get a guage on character motivations so I don't need hooks so much as just need an idea of what info will be pertinent and I can let the players decide what/when/where/how to go forward. Sure, I'll still be making adventures each week, but they'll be based more on what the characters did last week and less on what I want to make as an adventure. Of course, the world will still be happening around them, but I can focus a bit more on that this way in theory.

On top of all of that, hopefully letting the players grow into their characters without the group influence will bring us a little closer to everyone playing in character most of the night. We're making major strides in the direction already. (Trouble is two of the characters are so similar in personality to their players that it's hard for me to seperate the two.) Theory again here, but hopefully this will help me to actually roleplay the NPCs that need roleplaying. Gotta work on my ability to jump from the head of a monstrous spider into the head of a female patrol officer that thinks men doubt her ability to do her job. That or stop making that shit up ahead of time.

Might be a good idea...just make my own list of character traits as I think them up and check them off as I use them... I have a tendancy to forget things if I don't write them down.

Finally, the area I need the most improvement on, in my opinion, is describing the game and the game world to the players as they interact with it. Case in point, forgetting to mention the lesser vargoille's scream is what paralyzed half of the party.

So, here's to slowing things down for a week or two and then hitting the world saving events hard and heavy after that. Cheers.

gotta dookie

Dang. Didn't have time to read today's WOTC page updates. I know the second part in "Controlling the Battlefield" is out... John reads alla this stuff too, and occasionally there's a bit of info in the articles that a player could learn. Wish the other players would read the site more regularly. *wink wink, nudge nudge*

Been reviewing a lot of d20 tomes lately, in fact. I'm most impressed with the work of Malhavoc Press, Mongoose Press, and Green Ronin.

Totally lost my train of thought though. Rather, it was derailed by a coworker's error that could have been fatal to a patient if one of the twelve doctors and nurses hadn't noticied. Good for them. Trouble is, this is the fourth time she's made this error. *grumble grumble* On top of that, thrice she's lied about it THIS time. Once she passed the blame and twice lied about the information that was available.

So much for work ethic, eh? Good thing other staff are observant. I'd hate to know someone died because of a numercial error.

Out like a lion

Whoops. Been a week since my last blog. Last short week forever, as next week my schedule changes. I'll get every weekend off, but that means I'm Monday through Friday evenings. *shrug* Could be a good thing. Could suck. Can't change it now. Regardless, no major highlights from last week, as there was breif illness midweek.

Friday night, however....whoo. Started off with Minnesota Swarm and their last home game. That's professional lacrosse. Pretty good stuff and definitely worth the NO money I had to pay. Thanks John. Honestly, considering tickets are $12 a pop plus the $5 "we call it convenience" charge, if ya like lacrosse, buy the season tickets. I think John said there were right around 100 for the year. The Swarm won 14-12 and there was some sweet scoring in there, along with a couple of great almost fights.

We came back to Lukas midway through making a new character and pronouncing Gregorious was gonna die and be replaced with his brother. Now, up to this point no one's really all that pleased with Gregorious, but that's mostly a roleplaying issue. As Nick explained earlier in the week, Luke's previous RPG groups have sucked, so it's taking him some time to find himself in ours. We're prolly not helping enough.

Regardless, my games are USUALLY about story. Most times it's story in my head and the players don't see the big picture, but still. I'm not about to let someone just make a new guy cause they didn't spread their attribute points around correctly. He dies in game, fine. He leaves in game, fine. However, just like Nick's call to boot Zeke, we take care of it in game. We can talk about the problem late into non-gaming nights all we want, but the real results show when the role playing happens.

Still, I told Lukas if he wanted, a new guy could be introduced when we hit the city, BUT no half elf, no ranger, and he's one level lower than everyone else. Later, I emailed him about the stipulations of a new character (mainly he's gotta take the initiative, contact me in a timely fashion and WE work it out before the next game session. Three days later and he's still not responded to my email, so he'll prolly be playing Gregorious simply because of lack of effort on his part.)

So, when we left our characters, they were in a tomb/cave sheltering from a storm. Dead wererat corspe by the door and halfling rogue named Jack barely avoiding a whooping from Zeke. When we started play, EVERYONE went to sleep. No guard, nothing. I coulda been a dick, but instead, I just let the published adventure play out, with lightning hitting the tor and scaring up some rats. Doors fell off their hinges and rats swarmed in.

Zeke and Crenius were sleeping across the room, so it took them a bit to get into place. Gregorious grabbed a flaming log and attempted to scare the rats around everyone. He did and no one got bit, but Levvy, Greg, Zeke and maybe Crenius did kill a few rats in the process.

Then. Everyone went back to sleep. Crenius only had his scrolls left, so he was intent on regaining his spell casting powers. Player note here - Between sessions, if your DM asks "Do you, as a player, want to explore the tomb?" and you say "yes," you should explore the tomb. No spells or not. At the very least, set up a guard (and you can't tell me that any adventurer is not going to set up a guard when sleeping in a musty tomb that was made in ages past.).

Regardless, a gutteral yell woke everyone up to see Jack being stabbed by two hobgoblins. Rock, the cleric, pulled Jack outta the frey and healed him as everyone jumped these two fools. How'd two hobgoblins get into a sealed tomb? No one asked. I'll tell ya anyway. There used to be a lookout tower on the tor. Blasted by lighting, it crumbled and the there's a hole in the basement.

Regardless, I don't remember how these battles went, but Gregorious killed a hobgoblin and the other one was teamed.

Then, everyone went to sleep but Levvy. She was a little frazzled by now, and the fire was dieing down. Too bad, cause out of the darkness leapt a monstrous spider, which promptley webbed her up. She got out of the web just as everyone else woke up and jumped the spider. Again, no one took damage, so everyone was gonna go back to sleep.

Unfortunately, all of this noise had woken up the resident lesser vargoille, which busted into the room and paralyzed everyone but Crenius and Levvy. Surprisingly, Crenius made short work of the evil outsider. Then he went into a frenzy of mutilating the beast he though of us nothing more than devilish vermin.

The vargoille's paralyzing scream had raised one final denizen of the tomb, and before Crenius' frenzy had abated, the bugbear zombie that was originally buried here with full honors from his barbaric civilization shambled into the room. Had I been thinking, I would have changed many things about this adventure, including making it a human zombie. Oh well.

Regardless, the damn thing almost killed Gregorious twice and Zeke once. Rock, the cleric saved everyone's butt, but he's most likely not being their henchman anymore. SO YOU SHOULD MAKE A CLERIC LUKE. *cough*

This time, the party set up a watch schedule. Unfortunatley, Levvy was first, and after trying to stay up all night, she fell asleep on her watch. Poor girl. While she was out, the storm abated a bit, so Jack got up and looted the tomb. A dastardly thing to do, but since the party had saved his life innumerable times that night, he left them most of the loot. Then he slipped away into the darkness.

Tune in next time for That's Him, That's the WereRat That Ate My Baby! or A Gnome Warmage Zealot Walks Into A Bar....

fooeww

Man. Talk about doding a bullet. Sitting at work. Nurse comes up here to inform us that there's a Radiation spill and we're getting two patients. YES, that's right...radioactive material has spilled onto multiple persons, two of which are being brought to my hospital. Unfortunately, it'll take 20 minutes for us to set up our decon cleaning station AFTER the engineers get here to do it. And the nurses aren't calling the engineers until we know for sure the patients are coming.

Twenty minutes goes by, during which time I'm pumping the nurses for more info about how my department's supposed to handle alla this without my coworkers and I eventually having babies with two heads. (I of course would name them Bill S Preston, Esq and "Ted" Theodore Logan) Still, the ER staff knows shit about when or even if the patients are coming.

So, I go talk to security, cause they're the ones blocking alla the roads and what not, since Mpls PD is mysteriously absent. Turns out, our security, for once, is the dudes in the know. Wasn't a radioactive materials spill. Some chemistry students in the lab had left some toxic chemicals open and that was causing discomfort in people's eyes. Chemicals closed up, peops eyes washed off on scene, and everyone sent home. Dammit. I's so hoping to birth Wyld Stallyns. They'll just have to live as a raven familiar for a crazy gnome with too many names.

In other news, my latest Jones is for some serious desert off road racing, alla the Baja 1000. Let's see if I can hold onto that one for the minimum 6 years I figer it'd take me to save enough money and get into good shape to run it. If I did a motorcycle, it'd be $1350 just for race fees and insurance. Add in radio fees, GPS monitoring for safety crap (think that's almost required now) and whatever funky Mexican licenses you need to drive really fast down dirty roads, and its looking like $3g before we even think about traveling to just south of Tiajuana, buying parts, building a bike, and putting my homey support team up in a sweet Mexican Prison,err Hotel.... Sweet, but pricey. Still, gonna do it someday.

Night Watch

http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox_searchlight/night_watch/large.html

Damn this looks cool. I'm not big on horrors, but I may have to hit this one.

game central

We gamed Friday night, as usual, and I shoulda blogged today about it. I didn't. Trouble is, it's busy as shit at the ole hellspital, and I's don't feel like writing in between patients.

Here's a brief recap. The team set out to head home. Scared up some wolves, which ran off. Then, right before they woke up the 2nd day, some loggers mistakenly chased a boar into camp. The group had it finished off before the loggers even showed up, so there was a bit of pig for breakfast and the poor peasants got the scraps.

The next day, with the spell flingers late for school, a hail/thunderstorm hit, forcing them into a tomb. There, they ran into a squabble between what turned out to be a rogue and a wererat. Killed the wererat and Zeke got pissed.

Then we stopped.

Yeah, that's a crappy recap. Sorry.

One Piece

Haven't got to finish the book yet, but this months Shonen Jump again leaves you wanting more on the One Piece front. Bastards. Check it out, though. Sanji's fight with Gin wraps up and 'chore boy' (sorry, love calling him that) gets his one on one with Don Kreig going. Whoot.

Oh yeah, and SJ needs to rethink Dr. Slump. WTF? That first short is taken straight out of an episode of Chobits, just a different spin....man needs to buy girls underwear for his chic robot. I know that Japanese culture has the whole little girl underwear line of gags going for it, but Chobits did it much better. Wasn't too impressed with Dr. Slump. Hell, the football manga they previewed awhile back is really the only preview they've had that's interested me.

But still, so far, Shonen Jump's rockin this month.

Sin City: A Review

Swoosh, Bang, Poop, Wow. Caught Sin City yesterday. S to the weet my friend. Personally, I think it's the best comic to movie transition ever. If you want a review of how well that transition is, check out my boy Joe's review over at www.torcpress.com/blog.html.

Me? I'm gonna talk briefly about the style. I'm sure that part of what made the shit so cool for me is that not only do I know how to do alla the film effects in the flick, but that I spent a great majority of my time at Flash producing similar images. "Touch of Color" we called em.

At this point, I'd like to point out to alla the ladies at Flash, LOOK AT THE EYES IN THIS FILM. Blue eyes showed up, darker colors did not. Know why? Brown eyes look red when surrounded by grey and 'hazel' doesn't show up at all. Cinematic proof.

So yeah, there's that. The stark contrast in colors and lack of colors is just one of the cool things on the flick. Lot harder to do in moving pictures than in portraits, but it's all just a matter of time. Aside from the color choices directing the eyes, you get the stark whites playing with you, too. Blood, glasses, the occasional cross, scars tend to get lightened a bit on the screen; white gets used another sharp contrast to direct the eyes.

Cinematicaly beautiful film.

Pacing is fast and hard, just like the stories. There's little to know transition from one book to the other, as it should be. The characters come across strong. All of them, which is a feat considering the volume of characters in the film. Best of all, the City itself comes across strong. You know this is a place where greatness is made and broken on a daily basis.

Story comes out strong as well. Even covering three arcs, when this flick ends, you know how the important bits turned out. Loved the circular story line.

Acting? Well, we'll just say that all of the actors have already proven themselves in other flicks, so no surprises there. Personally, I was surprised out how good ole Josh Hartnett played the assassin. Pretty smooth, that one.

So far, Sin City's the best movie of the year. Not the best comic movie, not the best action movie, not the best cop movie or detective movie or black and white movie or genre movie. Best movie.

Oh yeah, and did anybody else notice the bomber was the guy that tried to kill William Wallace? Pretty funny that he got a sword in the back in both flicks.

2 to 5

Last night was game night. Unfortunately, John was sick and Lukas was joinin a sorority. Yes, I know dudes join frat, but he was becoming a 'little brother' in a sorority. Harvey Danger has a song about Lukas. It's called 'Flagpole Smokin'. :) Still, the man's gettin mad booty, and that's all any man can ask for in college.

Unfortunately for everyone, the adventure I was running (straight out of Dungeon magazine) was set for level 3 characters, and I's a bit too lazy to adjust it much. So, it was imperative that the whole crew come along AND bring help. Rather then me run 3 PC/NPCs, I had Nick run Zeek and Wendy run Gergorious, along with them running there own characters. Like Nick said, that's like wearing someone else's underwear and it made the game a little less fun. Wendy still had a blast though, and it's hard to tell with Nick. He was purty tired and I forgot to offer more coffee.

The game set off with Crenius' return from filth fever quaruntine. Luckily, the clerics were able to lesser restore his Dex to full, but his energy level was still a bit weak. Cren was introduced to Gregorious, and had the same "who's this wanker" reaction that Zeek did. Levvy took Gregorious under her wing like a new puppy....sort of like Zeek did with Jethek.

Speaking of Jethek, Zeek informed the crew that yesterday, the little runt had told him a story about a pixie/faery that gave Jethek a vision of a goblin cave. Jethek wanted to go on another adventure with Zeek, but Zeek suggested caution and waiting for Crenius to help them. Next day, not only was Jethek gone, but a mysterious map was in Zeek's room tied to a mouse.

There was some debate about whether to search for Jethek or not, when suddenly, a gorgeous elf came into the inn. Davik the innkeeper directed her to the party. She introduced herself as Kanessa Birchbow. She was looking for a boy fitting Jethek's description that was her cousin. Turns out an aunt married a human, and that half-elf started a line of family with human partner that quickly became less human. Jethek was a 3 or 4th cousin. There is "unrest" in the northern provinces of the Ichian Empire, and Kanessa's father sent her to round up the family and bring them back to the Elven Isles. She only made it in time to see Jethek's parents hung as traitors. After a quick rescue of the boy, she fled north to the port city and began looking for transport back to the Elven Isles. After securing passage on an elven vessel, she returned to the inn to find Jethek had run away, with a note about starting his own business after adventuring for awhile. He didn't want to live on an island full of elves. Three weeks later, the young scout had tracked him here.

The party told Kanessa about Jethek's adventure, and all agreed it might be a good idea to go look for him. Levvy attempted to wrangle some pay out of her, but Zeek convinced everyone that this was a rescue not needing pay. Kanessa still suggested that if there's goblins, there's treasure, and the group could have what they found.

Following the map, the crew made it to the cave with a minimal struggle up a steep trail. The cave was on the opposite side of a lake, so with much stealth, the group around the lake, only to encounter one of its residents. A medium sized constrictor. As soon as it rushed the party, Zeek blasted it with a lesser orb of electricity, Levvy nailed it with an axe, Gregorious rushed it with swords drawn, but missed horribly, Kanessa may or may not have hit it with an arrow, and the poor snake narrowly dodged a ray of frost from Crenius before slithering into the lake to find something easier to eat than a gnome with big friends.

Unfortunately, a goblin look out happened to hear the spellcasting, notice the fight, and alert his band. So, when the group arrived at the cave, an ambush was set up. Surprisingly enough, Crenius was able to sneak into the cave regardless of the goblins attentions and check out the lay of the land. He didn't notice the goblins hiding in the rocks, though. When he retreived the party, they entered the cave. Right before the gobs sprung their trap, Kanessa noticed one and shouted, saving the party from surprise.

Gobs still won initiative I think, and nailed Kanessa with a javelin. Levvy couldn't get around their cover with her axe and skipped it off the rocks harmlessly. Zeek lit one up with a lesser orb of fire and sent that poor bastard to the crisper. Crenius put a full three of the little bastards to sleep, which I didn't know was in his spell book. Next round, I think Kanessa dropped the final gob with another arrow, cause Gregorious still wasn't hitting shit. A plague of the evening for him. One gob got away early on.

Chasing him down the tunnel, the crew spots him rounding a bend, giving the PCs the bird. Sprinting after him, Zeek and Canessa step into a pit trap. Fortunately for Zeek, Kanessa pushes him out of the way as the floor crumbles beneath them, so she's the only one to fall in. It's a small 10' pit, so Levvy and her wonderful rope quickly retreive the elf. In the meantime, Gregorious is falling in love.

Around the corner, the PCs found the tunnel ending in a rawhide curtain. Rather than charge boldly in, Crenius whips the curtain out of the way with a great use of mage hand allowing everyone to see the 7 gobs waiting for them. Kanessa charges in and shoots the obvious leader with her bow, but the leader chic returns fire and nails Kanessa hard. Zeeks next in. With the gobs split, three defending one exit and three defending the other, Zeek burning hands the three closest gobs. 1 hit point away from death, they flee at their next opportunity. Crenius casts shield but doesnt' enter the fray immediately. Levvy rushes in and sling stones a gob in the face, and Gregorius charges in as well. Next round, Kanessa drops a gob with an arrow through the eye. The female gob leader summons a fiendish dire rat to distratc the party (which I accidentally made too strong), and the gobs flee.

Crenius chases after the adept, and Kanessa joins him. Zeek, Levvy and Gregorius fight the rat until the spell wears off and it disappears. Crenius and Kanessa come to a 't' in the tunnel, with at least one gob going left and one going right. Suddenly, the three scorched gobs round the bend and stop when they see the two opponents. Kanessa put an arrow in one's mouth and the other two flee.

The rest of the party catches up, minus Gregorious who's a bit slow on the uptake. Kanessa goes to cover him, gives him a cure potion, and the two spot the fleeing goblins coming from the other tunnel and bolting for the door. The leader's not among them, so Crenius opts to move on. Zeek has to talk Levvy out of looting right now.

Following the left tunnel, the crew comes to a short crawlway into the basement of a crumbled tower. Levvy rushes through, and immediatley a group of skelingtons starts busting from their coffins. Levvy rushes on into the next room and encounters the goblin leader. Crenius follows the halfling and immediatley casts true strike on himself. Seeing him cast, the goblin bull rushes the frail looking man, but only succeeds in bouncing off of him. His allacrity kept him from dropping the alchemist's fire he'd been holding in his hand since the fight with the druid way back when.

Back in the crypt, Zeek and Gregorious were taking it the skeligntons. First round Zeek busted one up, then thought about trade blows with them. A couple of solid hits from their scimitars changed his mind, though. While Gregorious wasn't hitting too often, neither was he getting hit. Seeing Levvy and Crenius fighting the goblin leader, Kanessa rushed through the room, stabbing one skeleton and leaping to aid the others, landing to flank the goblin leader.

Crenius promptly set the goblin girl on fire, taking a little splash damage as well. In return, she nailed him with her frost pick pretty hard. Levvy's axe connected, as well. Kanessa leapt into place. Attempting to cure herself, the gobling began casting a spell, and managed to dodge all of the attacks of opportunity. Unfortunately, the fire distracted her a bit too much. Fighting defensively, though, meant that no one hit her at least.

The whole time she kept screaming for "Hezzrack" to aid her. When she turned and ran, Levvy split her spine with a critical hit.

After dispatching the goblin leader, the group, minus Crenius who was determined to stay concsious this entire adventure, returned to finish off the skeletons. Once that was done, they returned to Cren in the large octagonal room. When everyone was away from the door, an imp appeared, tossed the group a key and said, "Thanks for freeing me, fuckers. Yer friend's over there," and pointed to an eastern door. Then he fled as Crenius threw another alchemist's fire at him.

After rescuing Jethek, the party looted the caves. Turns out Kanessa did offer up some gifts for helping her save the boy. The party's a bit worried about the imp, now, though. The next day, Levvy succumbed to filth fever, and the day after that , Zeek fell into it as well. Jethek refuses to leave town while his friends are sick, and he manages to talk Kanessa into returning to Myrrhlanthus with a note from one of the clerics requesting healing supplies (she has a horse). She does, imploring Crenius and Gregorious to watch over him.

Tune in next time for Dirty, Filthy or Jethek the Unwise, Wet, Brave, Unbathed, De-al Rotating, Ball Gagged Rides Again.