wudaweek

Man. Hopefully I can knock out a post before the moron chatter next door drives my brain into a radioactive puddle of goo.

Lessee, what's been up this week? Gen Con schedule has been posted for registration coming up soon. That's taken a lot of my time, because there's over 5200 events to choose from over four days of gaming, pretty much non-stop from 1am Thursday to 8 or 10pm Sunday. I still have to figure out how much face time I want to put in with the Publishers, too....

At work I've taken on a project or two that really eat up my time, but of course, there's no relief on my other duties while I'm dealing sweaty palms patients. No big, cause it means I get to mingle with people outside the department and it means that if we start seeing job cuts because the upper crust here has taken on a fiscal policy modelled after Bush's (spend, regardless of income), I have a bit more security than some of the other team members.

On the gaming front, SR4 has been hit or miss, and will continue to be all summer due to schedule conflicts. I'm out two weekends in May and every weekend in June, and I don't think anyone else can start early enough for my tastes for a midweek session. Wednesday saw the death of both characters in a late D&D session (that I'd rather not repeat). Unfortunately, nobody cared, in part because it was only the third session, and in part because of the prevailing attitude that these characters didn't matter becuase they're temporary.

The latter is pretty frustrating for a multitude of reasons. When the players don't care about their characters, they don't roleplay, and when they don't roleplay, I don't either. The game spirals down into a "let's get into some action" mentality and a contest to see who can hit harder. Advantage - DM on that one. Second, "fuck it, I'll just roll up a new one" is a pretty common reaction, so the characters get real brave, real fast. Really, though, except for the lack of RP it doesn't matter as much. Both players are pretty amiable toward testing rules and shit for me, and we've already come up with three valuable pieces of information for the future campaign.

1 - Action Points rock. I might tweak a few options from Unearthed Arcana, but that's for flavor. The mechanic is solid and it defintely gives the PCs a little extra oomph to set them apart from the rest of the world. I'd actually like to try a campaign where every person on the world was either an expert, warrior, or spellcaster (generic classes from UA) and all that set the PCs apart is their Action Points.
2 - For Gestalt Characters, Monster classes throw things off. The ability bonus at several levels combined with still progressing in a PC class gives them an unfair advantage. One fix I might try is that a gestalt monster advances in its monster class at every level, but only advances in a character class when it gets an extra Hit Die. For example, at levels 1-7 an aranea advances in its aranea class every level, but only advances as a fighter (or whatever) at level 1, level 3, and level 5 (I think those are when it gets extra hit dice), so at level 7 as a gestalt character, it's a level 7 aranea, level 3 fighter.
3 - Some players can play without alignment. Some can't. Some players pick an alignment that's close to their personal beliefs so they don't struggle much to play the character accurately. Some pick an alignment that fits the total concept of the character they're making. The latter are the ones more likely to dig on immersive role playing. Either way, it's a lot of fucking work to NOT use alignment at all. I was going to do that for Iorthim, but I've changed my mind. Until I find a good alternative (I don't like the taint/sanity system presented in Heroes of Horror for this group. We'd all giggle to much anytime someone's taint shifted.), we're using alignment, and N, CN, NE, CE, & LE are out. And I'm not talking the personal and national moral standards and beliefs that so many of us use to break the D&D alignment system down into an argument about what Batman's alignment is. I'm talking galactic/planar forces and energy. Capital G for good and alla that shit. Kind of kills a few plots I had in mind, but there's time to come up with something. In the meantime, standard alignment baby.

And those three points ran long. I'll spare you the remainder of the mad ramblings that have build up over the week and leave you with some interesting info about using color to describe characters.

sorry

No post in awhile. Been too busy at work lately and the chicken coop on the other side of the Wall has been consistantly driving intelligent vocabulary out of my head with the sheer stupidity of their overly loud clucking.

Earthsea

A friend of a friend is living in Japan (I have another friend that's moved to China. lucky bastards). Over on his blog, he's got a photo of some advertising material from Studio Gibli's next big picture. It's based on the Earthsea series by Ursula K. Le Guin. Kick ass. I read one when I was younger, might have to finish the series (wasn't really cognizant of it being a series until Wendy's dad gave us a ton of his books a couple of years ago). Regardless, it means there's a Gibli quality flick coming out with a more western style setting and Dragons (yay).

Patiently waiting, My Ass

Here's some mega BS for all of us fuel consumers. There're fuel shortages in and around Virginia because of the transition from MTBE to ethanol as an anti-smog additive in gas. Now, this shouldn't surprise anybody that reads my blog, because I've posted about the impending doom before. The transition is happening because Congress won't give gas companies a get out of jail free card on lawsuits concerning the fact that MTBE fucking pollutes the shit out of our water supply. What gets my goat about all of this is that the world has been aware of this change for MONTHS at least. If the fuel industry had manned up to the change like a company that cares about their damn customers would have, the switch would not have been so abrupt and would not be causing disruptions.

You'll note near the end of that piece that some knuckle head with the industry says "We're patiently waiting for the [government to bow to our demands and cover our asses yet again]." (The part in the brackets is my asshole to English translation.) Man, do you realize how hard it is to not let this degenerate into a swearing, boot stomping rant that looks like some other pissed off hippie railing for the environment with no thought to economics, quality of living or anything else that makes it easy for sensible people to ignore the opinions and sputtering of lefties, evangelists, and fundamentalists? The whole thing is assinine. (Yes, I realize there's only one 's' in that word.)

Why? Whats happening here is that the fuel industry is attempting to pressure the consumer into pressuring the government into protecting the fuel industry from the consumer.

Regardless, it's one of those things I'm watching and filing into the "will I vote for you" pile over the next few years. It's kind of like how I'm not voting for any of my local state people that vote in favor of the Twins stadium proposal that's up right now. Why? Shouldn't be taxed for the benefit of a private company, etc, law against raising a tax like that without a vote by the people, blah blah blah, you've heard all of it on the radio if you live up here, and don't care if you don't....

A vote

Iorthim or Turland?

You decide.

BTW it's pronounced Yee-or-thim.

monuments, myths, and Dim Sum

Turland. I think that's gonna be the name of the planet the new campaign is on. I think. I might have named it before, wrote it down somewhere and forgot. Hell might even have done it here and just don't feel like rereading everything. I should put a "Campaign Guide:" tag or something in front of the relevant blog titles so I know which ones to read. Huh.....

Anyway, made a little progress in my many walks today (another day of inexplicable claustrophobia inside the cubicle). Came up with a few setting ideas and shit like that. For instance, there are a few monuments that most people think of as great. There's the statue gardens in Freetown; the Celestial Palace, which is the home of the royal family and Pan Lung (dragon god) in the oriental nation; there's the Wall that said nation is building; there's the temple (as yet unnamed) in the theocracy nation. Shit like that.

I have the name of the oriental place at home, as I started serious development (classwise) there, but can't remember it. Regardless, their dragon is named Pan Lung. The rival theocratic nation is named Hawfynfr. That's pronounced Haw-ven-ar. The people just named their nation after their Dragon God. There was a dragon that watched over the Border Lands named Yarisella, but It was supposedly killed in a great battle with Pan Lung and Hawfynfr. That claim is contested by that fact that generally when one of the Dragon Gods dies, the land where it's body lies suffers a great blight. (That's the explanation for the great desert west of the mountains, as easterners believe the heathen Turu killed all of their Dragon Gods and destroyed the land.) There was no known blight in the Border Lands. Both the oriental nation and Hawfynfr say this is because Yarisella was not a true dragon and Its followers are all burning in hell. Despite that, many residents of the Border Lands still worship that particular being and only pay lip service to either Pan Lung or Hawfynfr based solely on which military/priest/whatever is in power in their village at the time.

There are a lot of myths concerning the breech phenomena. Most deal with the uneducated populace protecting itself from the beasts that slip through and avoiding stepping through a gateway themselves. There are expensive oils and perfumes you can soak in to protect yourself and tons of shit like that. What works and what doesn't is anybody's guess. One of the constants, though, is the traveler's tax. While the rate itself varies from village to village, every village has a tax of at least 1 cp to enter the walls of the town. That's because everyone believes that copper can't pass through a breech gateway and Outsiders can't carry native copper. If you can't pay the copper tax, you're banned from entry at the best. You can imagine the worst. Most travelers will sew a copper coin into their clothes somewhere as a protection against bandits taking all of their money and then being mobbed at the next village. The nice bandits still leave a traveler with at least one copper, though.

Language wise, the human tongues all descended from elvish. I want to work up a language system that takes that into consideration, so that even if a character only knows Hawfynfr they can still understand many things in "common" and can probably still survive in the house of Pan Lung. Whether that system includes skill checks or not, who knows?

Testerwhat was I saying again?

Here's one for the ladies. Basically, the study shows that high testosterone dudes are less likely to drive a hard bargain around hot honies. Really, though, what I took from it was that you can tell if you got high doses of testosterone in the womb by whether your ring finger is longer than your index finger. If it is, you did. I did. That makes me a man's man. So there you go. Next time your woman nails you for checking out the cutey patooty serving up your ice cream cone, show her yer hand, "Look, I can't help it. See the difference! It's hard wired....kind of like being gay."

Of course, that's like global warming and whether Pluto's a planet, so it depends on which scientist you talk to. Still, I always get a chuckle out of studies that show something that most people already know.

Orgasmo Explosivo

Treasure cave go Boom Boom. That's right folks, a woman in El Savador was caught smuggling marijuana and an M67 grenade into a prison....in her VAGINA! Now, for those of you that don't have the time to look into how well M67s and vaginas go together, here're some stats.

Explosive wise, the average user can lob one of these puppies about 40 m (like a baseball basically), and they have a 15 meter casualty radius, with a 5 meter fatality radius. There's a 3-5 second fuse inside.

How big is one? Try 2.5 inches in diameter. Stick it in a cylinder with some weed and I'm betting at least 3 inches around. That's porn star cock right there. If I wasn't at work, I'd do a side by side comparison for you, but since I'd get fired, you just get the grenade.

Roomba: A review

So over the weekend I grabbed a little red Roomba. That's the robotic vacuum cleaner from iRobots (I think). Man, it rocks. Pick up anything you don't won't tangled in the rollers and just let it go. It won't roll down stairs (so if you're lazy, you can use it on your bed or couch!), and it's got a little bumper on it that tells it it's running into something. A dirt sensor'll make the little dude spin in one spot if it needs extra cleaning. It takes about an hour or so for the thing to ramble around my apartment, but it's quiet enough I don't mind just turning it on and letting it go every other night or so. Our carpet's never been cleaner (cause I forget to vacuum regularly) I think. In honor of its robotiness, we named it Rosie, after Rosie Perez. No just kidding. It's after the Jetson's maid..... Although Rosie Perez could probably vacuum for me in a skimpy red outfit, too......

We'll prolly pick up a Pleo once that guy's for sale, too. Just to get another pet/member of the family in the house. :) Robots rock.

Flickage

Here's a fun looking antihero western, that could be ripe with some uncomfortable scenes. Gotta love the flick that makes you struggle with who to root for...

Offshore Drilling

There's a proposal by the US Interior Department's Minerals Management Service (MMS) to lease more offshore areas of the Gulf, Alaska, and Virigina for oil and natural gas drilling. Right now, a shitload of the HoR is against offshore drilling in site of rich developed neighborhoods, but I wouldn't be surprised to see something go through farther out. Most of the oil we have left is in those areas. The trouble with oil estimates for these things is they fucking use terms like, "In its recent five-year leasing proposal, MMS estimates undiscovered resources to include 85.9 billion barrels of oil and 419.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas technically recoverable from all federal offshore areas." (That's from an article linked to over at futurepundit.com) I mean, if the resources are undiscovered, you don't really know they're there, right? Come on, if anti-emission control people can say that global warming thinking centers around unfounded estimates and computer simulated models, then can't the anti-ANWAR drilling people and similar factions argue that those same tactics render even the best mathematical estimates and models for how much oil/gas is left where illegitimate as well. Goose and gander discussion right there. A guess is a guess no matter how educated it is. Personally, I'm with the futurepundit guy on this one. If we're gonna do it, tax it and earmark all the tax money for grants and research funding for energy alternatives and creating new infrastructure. And I'm not talking efficency increases. I'm talking flat out switching off oil. A 10% tax on nearly $9 trillion is almost $1 billion for that shit.

hobblin hobgoblins

We finished up Wingclipper's Revenge last night. The duo of Ali G(gestalt fighter/scout) and I can never remember Nick's character's name (gestalt spellthief/aranea [monsterclass]) started off by breaking all of the parameters of the adventure and pretty much just walking up to the hobgoblin army under the guise of trading off some cold iron. The end result was the aranea tied, blindfolded, gagged, and escorted to the hobby base camp, with Ali G surprisingly going stealthy despite wearing scale mail. Unfortunately, a combination of not knowing all of the facts and a series of bad bluff rolls left Wingclipper seeing right through Nick's lies and the duo fleeing as fast as possible, but not without whooping Wingclipper's 2nd in command, his animal companion, and a couple of his hobby guards. Oh yeah, and Nick got knocked out by a very solid crocodile tail slap. Guess now he knows that there's two business ends to a big fucking lizard.

After recovering a bit, the duo opted for special forces tactics and started ambushing the hobgoblin patrols while they were out searching for searching for the characters. In about two days work, they'd pretty much slaughtered most of the force and opted for an attack on Wingclipper again before the force could regroup and take a more defensive task or get reinforcements. They assaulted Wingclipper's hold. Stealth mode brought em with no encounters (and a bit of clock management, since Nick was well beyond tired).

The aranea used his climbing skills to get a solid jump on Wingclipper, landing a pretty solid blow, but just as Ali G was able to enter the fray from below, spidey got knocked out again. Definitely not a combat character, this one. Ali's expanded crit range with the falchion he uses saved a whole lot of ass, and he managed to decapitate Wingclipper as the ranger realized his quest had failed. Of course, the satyr needed some evidence back and just attacked Ali, but he somehow managed to tough it out against the goat man enough that Banba opted for buying the evidence back rather than outright slaughter.

For anyone that knows the adventure, a lot of shit went differently. At the point the duo fled the scene and opted for a stealth approach, I pretty much threw the adventure out the window and winged it from there. Since they pretty consistantly rolled 25+ on survival and hide checks we free-balled a lot of stuff. Made for a pretty fun game and I think the amount of neck shots, chest ripping, decapitations, and flat out cutting dudes in half gave both characters a chance to shine and got everybody's combat fix in. I hope the players had as much fun as I did.

51/70

Hey dig this. We're up to a whopping 51% of all paper used in the U.S. being made from recycled paper! Whoot. That means only 49 million tons of paper used in American wasn't paper before it was paper. hey hey.

Unfortunately, oil is up over $69 a barrel this morning, and we're looking at the possiblity of $80 a barrel very soon. Why? Well, in part because Saudi Arabia said that while it could increase it's production by about 35%, that means it would reach it's peak oil production in only 20 years. Ouch.

Now even OPEC is saying that the big oil consumers (that's us and China) need to really start taking steps to cut down on demand. It's interesting how closely timed this all is to Iran's nuclear announcement. I can see the OPEC nations looking at slower production growth as a long term consideration for their economic health. On the other hand, everyone's got to be considering that there's a breaking point somewhere, where industrial nations shift so far over to renewables that oil is about as valuable as steel. Although, considering all the other crap you can make from oil (a lot of plastic for example), it'll never completely become worthless.....

intergalactic planetary

The funny thing about this is that I don't consider myself old, but a lot of the things my friends and I learned in school have turned out to be wrong. Pluto could be another casualty. I mean, seriously. Pluto?

Let's see. What are some other educational casualties....

A.D/B.C are gone. It didn't register on my radar so I don't miss em or even really know what they changed to, but I'm pretty sure it's BE now, not BC.

Dinosaurs have gone through about a million transitions.

If my little bro Braxton has kids, they prolly won't learn as much about Einstein. I say this because of how many theories and science articles hint at something like, "Could Einstein have been wrong about X," and how some young physicists flat out try to refute some aspect or another of Einstein's work to make a name for themselves. Eventually, something will stick. Watch scientific discovery boom again once we get a government that accepts facts as facts.....

That's it off the top of my head. Really looks like math is about the only field you can actually have some faith in once your out of college. ;)

King George's Butt

Guess what I just learned. When astronomers first discovered the 8th planet, they named it something like Georgium Sidus. That's right, Uranus was first named George's Planet, in honor of the astronomer's patron, King George III. hehe.

Spring Attack

70ish yesterday (went outside and took a nap at lunch, yeah), about the same with chance of rain today. Spring is here, baby. With the potential explosion of pollen in the air, my brain is overloaded with.....creativity. On top of the mega-pdf I've been working on (and it's about time I have motivation for the thing now), there's about a million ideas roiling around in my head. Here's what we've got:

• 2 potential Dungeon articles and at least one adventure
• Tons of crap for the campaign (which I'm just calling The Breech while it's in development) including an actual story arc to offer the characters that I'm comfortable executing even if they ignore it and do something else
• 2 music videos (really, though, these have been stewing in the brain pot for ages)
• More video ideas for BC's rock show
• Animation/cinema out the wazoo
• The SDF RPG

Now, here's the problem. If I tackle all that shit at once, I'll burn out purty quick. Obviously, some of it is pretty vague anyway, in part due to a lack of focus and in part due to just not wanting to give away any potentially marketable ideas. If any of the latter don't pan out or I decide not to pursue them, I'll certainly toss em up here for someone with the right motivation. *shrug* For instance, there's no marketability in the music videos, and I wanna do one for Dust to Glory (no song picked yet), and one (or more) for LotR (Professor Nutbutter's House of Treats - the invasion of Minith Tirith). I digress. The point is, the shit usually happens this way. An overflow of ideas, then a lack of time management culminating in either A)busting ass on one or two projects to the exclusion of most else, then burning out and doing nothing productive for far too long or B)setting a viable production schedule for several projects but not having the self discipline to maintain the schedules (damn ADD).

The problem is twofold. First, as I've discussed before, I'm now working during my prime creative time (between 10 and 2 really) and can't figure out how to shift that to a post dinner schedule. On top of that (and I hope this changes with the early sun), getting out of bed is just a pain in the ass, hehe. If this morning is any indication, it's gonna get easier to get up, especially if I stop sleeping til the end of MPR (the alarm has an hour limit). Second, none of the potentially new projects have any sort of professional deadline. I'm a chronic procrastinator, so that always lends itself to "another round of BF2." Trust me, I've tried setting personal deadlines. Those only work with finances for me. Self flagellation doesn't work either. I'm talking things like "I can't play BF2 until I get X finished," because that quickly turns into "Well, if I do Y instead I can play for awhile."

BUT ENOUGH COMPLAINING! The main point is excitement. Spring! Rebirth! The lining up of projects and whether I finish all of the shit I decide to due this year or not this is the time of year that decides what the next 8 months are gonna look like for me. Joining Team RIP might be the downfall on BF2 (until BF 2142 comes out), since I tend to NOT want to play when I feel like I HAVE to play (which is why I'm trying to set Wednesday game night up as any game, not just D&D). So that leaves disc golf, rpgs, and Twilight Imperium on the leisure front, plus shit with just Wendy, like the conservatory, zoo, etc. Nick called last night, and I'm hoping that was for disc golf, which means he's figured out my temperature zone and we can start rocking the outdoors. John gets back from Cali in June, so that'll up Nick's level of competition. Hopefully that means MORE action and not less. ;) What I need to do is get Phil and Snyder involved in some disc golf or RPG gigging so that there can be some animation talk from time to time and I can get my Jones on for that. Trouble there is that aside from Country's action, none of the animation ideas I have are too concrete....

Anywho. This is a book, so I'll get done now. Was gonna review Lucky Number Slevin, just don't feel like it. Good movie, though. WATCH IT!

just keep on rollin

Oy. It's one of those days where the car is rockin, and you just wanna drive. There's no sun, it's windy as hell, kind of wet, and things just look grey, but the shit pumping outta the speakers might be the only thing keeping you alive today. Stop driving and die. One of those days.

But enough of the waxing bad poetic.

Last night I started learning to play Twilight Imperium. 3rd edition. Damn fun game. Complex as all hell, but damn fun. It's a game of galactic conquest, essentially, but I imagine it's impossible to win by violently ejecting ALL of your opponents from the game. Hell, I don't even know how to do that (having not read the rules). The key goal is just to get to 10 victory points. To that, you have to meet certain objectives, one of which is a secret objective only for you (I forgot what John's was, so I won't mention mine in hopes that he forgot what it was and won't move to block it.) During the game, you have to manage trade agreements, a fleet of ships and ground forces, and technology research, as well as vote for political agendas and laws.

Here's a rough idea of game play, since there are probably little things I'm missing and nuances in strategy that I'll pick up if I ever get to read the rules.....

You start the game by blindly picking a race. Each race has certain bonuses and penalties. My insect people get a +1 to all combat, whereas John's smart squid men have a buy 1/get 1 free sort of tech research deal, but get a -1 to all combat. Mecatal Rex is the main planet/capital and sets in the middle. Each player has a stack of hex cards which they'll use to build the game board, placing a hex on their turn until the board is made. The hexes contain planets, star systems, and hazards such as asteroid fields, supernovas (going pop), wormholes, etc. Each race starts with a certain fleet, and you get two command counters for strategy allocation (used to buy secondary strategy options), three fleet supply (the maximum number of ships you can have on one hex) and three command counters (the number of actions you can take in a turn). You spend these throughout your turn and get two back after each turn.

A round starts with each player selecting a strategy card. These cards have a primary action, which you have to trigger on one of your turns (only on the card you picked) and a secondary action that the other players can buy when you trigger the primary. For instance, Logistics gives you for command tokens to put on your board, and the other players can spend 3 influence each to buy more command tokens. The cards also have a number on them and that determines the order of play that round. A round consists of alternating actions until everyone has passed.

On your turn in a round, you can move your ships, activate your strategy card, build shit, play an action card, or pass. Building is the last thing you do on each turn, but if you activate your strategy card, that's all you get to do.

When someone activates the technology card, you can buy tech. When someone activates the political card, you all vote on an action or law. So far in our game, I got voted into the minister of war position, and then got voted against causing me to get a -1 to combat for a round and lose all of my action cards. Ouch. If someone controls Mecatal Rex and uses the Imperial strategy, they get 2 victory points.

You can build ground forces, space fighters, carriers, destroyers (anti-fighter ships), cruisers, dreadnoughts (battleships) and war suns (the Death Star). Oh yeah, y0u need a space dock to build, and you can put pds systems on your planets for extra defense. Each planet can support two, but you can haul em around in carriers. Each ship has a move speed and an attack nuber (3-9). You have to roll equal to or higher than the attack number on a 10 sider to score a hit. The defender decides where the hit lands (only dreadnoughts and war suns can take multiple hits) then declares return fire. Most combat seems to result in fighters being destroyed first, cause you get 2 for $1. Dreadnoughts can bombard planets, and destroyers can make an anti-fighter barrage before battle even begins to wipe out fighters.

That's about all I know right now. Fun game, but it can be slow and take awhile.

If I had to make any theories, I'd say a good fleet might include a dreadnought, carrier with at least 4 fighters, a cruiser, and 1 or two destroyers. Good luck getting one together, though, cause your space docks have a limit on how much they can build in a round, and no planet is resourcefull enough to build that fleet in one go. However, if you bought the secondary imperial strategy action, even a crappy 3 resource planet with a space dock and Eviro tech thingy could throw it out in a couple. Warfare would let you do it, too... Now, if you want to capture planets, that's another story, but it would be damn fun to send this fleet around as a space buster squad.

Unfortunately, it's too late in the current game to make up something like that, cause we just have a melee coming up, possibly as early as the first round Thursday, but it's possible we all just bomb ourselves back into the stone age and then it's another arms race to Mecatal Rex. *shrug*

Regardless, I might be buying this game offa eBay soon.

correction

Well, the WotC website has a couple of articles specifically about tripping, and it says you can trip on an attack of opportunity, so there you go. Played that one right, too. That makes polearms like the halberd and guisarme really solid investments for strength based characters. Spiked chain's not too bad either. Unfortunately, the whip doesn't threaten squares, otherwise, it'd be super fun to have a scout or scout/fighter use a whip AND a non-reach melee weapon in tandem. Trip an opponent at 15', then move 10' (for skirmish damage) and attack with a +4 to hit and a +1d6 (based on level) to damage. Good times. Too damn bad it don't work that way. hehe.

One thing I forgot to mention last post is that I think these characters are gonna be tactical lessons for the group. Nick's spellthief has sneak attack similar to a thief, and John's scout/fighter gets the same effect if he moves 10' from his original spot in a round. While they can both handle the usual kick in the door tactics, they can effectively get an extra hit in each round if they can work together on movement and what not. Very fun.

hippie bugbears

Last night, we got some D&D on, finally. John and Nick played, I ran. To expedite shit for these characters, we just made them part of an interplanar A-Team type thing, so they go take care of problems for areas that either can't afford or don't have real heroes.

They started off, rolling an adventure from Dungeon magazine (as will most of the addies they play in be for awhile). A town's wood crafts were suffering because of sleepless nights. The crew went to investigate. They headed off into the woods nearby, tracking a couple of other travleres that came through town the day before.

Found em about a mile into the woods, too, being consumed by a splinterwaif. John's fighter/scout tripped it and knocked the piss outta the thing with a halberd, the Nick finished it off. One round combat. That's a record for us!

Later, the duo encountered an enchanted bugbear in a lake. The brute quickly rendered John unconcious (my fault, misinterpreted the rules, but that's why we're play testing these new options) and Nick slipped into a hole in the lake, where he encountered a Nixie and the encounter quickly turned from a combat into an information gathering conversation, because Nick's character managed to grapple/subdue the nixie and bluff the bugbear into fearing for her... Good times.

Of course, then the duo were ambushed by pixies and pelted with sleep arrows. When they awoke, they met a satyr, chatted, found out a guy was killing the fey, driving them south and that's what was keeping the villagers up at night. Agreed to hunt the murderer down. Headed off, found some magic mushrooms, and we called it a night. Hopefully next week we can wrap it up, and that'll be the fastest adventure we've played yet.

Since I hadn't reread the nonlethal damage rules (we're using AC as damage conversion), I played that one wrong, but that encounter probably worked out better because of it. After John's initial attack of opportunity on the splinterwaif, I though he shouldn't have had one because of the reach, but he still got one, just in a different square than we though (it would have been at 10' instead of adjacent). We're ok, there. Unfortunately, if I remember right, you can't make special attacks like trips and sunders as attacks of opportunity. I'll have to look that up.

Oh well. I think everyone had a good time. I did. Should be fun characters, cause they're surprisingly versatile for just two of them.

draw your search

I just emailed this link to just about everyone on my list, but just in case I missed your link, or don't know you (rare, cause I know everyone in the world), check this out. You can draw your photo search here.

http://labs.systemone.at/retrievr/

well dang. it's crowning.

I found some nice reports late in the day yesterday, regarding low resistance tires, and an alternative fuel passageway being developed up here. On the latter, Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Canada are putting in alternative fuel stations along several major interstates (I-94) for sure. There'll be hydrogen conversion plants among others, and each station will have like 6 or 7 different fuel types available. Purty cool.

However, I emailed those links to myself before going home, and Yahoo dropped the ball on that one, as I never received that email. (Weird how you can email yourself and not get it). So, instead, you get this weird tidbit:

"A nude Britney Spears on a bearskin rug while giving birth to her firstborn marks a 'first' for Pro-Life. Pop-star Britney Spears is the "ideal" model for Pro-Life and the subject of a dedication at Capla Kesting Fine Art in Brooklyn's Williamsburg gallery district, in what is proclaimed the first Pro-Life monument to birth, in April. "

Some people are just fucking weird. Here are some of my favorite quotes and descriptors from the article.

"Natural aspects of Spears' pregnancy, like lactiferous breasts and protruding naval, compliment a posterior view that depicts widened hips for birthing and reveals the crowning of baby Sean's head. The monument also acknowledges the pop-diva's pin-up past by showing Spears seductively posed on all fours atop a bearskin rug with back arched, pelvis thrust upward, as she clutches the bear's ears with 'water-retentive' hands."

Why? I asked that same question. "She was number one with Google last year, with good reason --- people are inspired by the beauty of a pregnant woman," said Edwards.

Here's a photo:

Remember to Print Letter

Pine nut oil reduces your appetite!

So, I entered a little stock market game today. You get a million fantasy dollars and eight weeks to make as much as you can. First prize is a Maserati. Next 25 get iPods. I dig. How do I expect to fair? *shrug* One of my crowning high school moments was getting 3rd place in the state contest in Illinois. Worldwide against professionals, though? Not sure. This kind of contest is NOT the same as responsible fiscal investment. The object is to make a LOT of money fast, with minimal concern for losses. It's more like gambling, really. There's a lot of looking for companies that are about to boom (In high school, I got almost a 300% increase from one stock in 8 weeks). That's a lot of current affairs research, guessing investor minds, etc. Little trends equal big money, which is NOT the case so much with long term investing. *shrug* I'm shruggin a lot. Regardless, it'll be fun whether I win or not. If the shit had started last week, I'd have turned a cool 300K already based on what I wanted to buy then. Here's to hoping those stocks keep riding the Up train....

Leave it to da playaz

In the new campaign, we're mixing a buttload of rules options and what have you together into one melting pot D&D thing. It's been done before, people do it all the time. Campaign's not ready to go yet, so we're just running some stand alone adventures to test various things and see how they work together. We're starting out with gestalt characters, action points, armor as damage conversion, and a couple of other things. John's running a human fighter/scout. I asked Nick to play an Aranea, cause I want to see how unbalanced it is as a class option in a gestalt setting (my guess is crazy unbalanced, even without the sorceror ability and limited HD restraints I put on it). His secondary class is spellthief (from Complete Arcane). Pretty interesting couple of characters, and I'm really glad we'll be using the armor conversion rules. Don't really think they'd live otherwise, hehe.

Trouble is, the spellthief is gonna give me some work. One of the things I've mentioned doing away with is the Vancian style magic (spellcasters have spell lists or spell books and can prepare or cast a certain number of those spells per day, based on level and one of the intellectual attributes).

I'm heavily considering using the spell system from Elements of Magic, in which casters have a certain number of mana points, and use those points to craft spells on the fly, selecting an action and element, then modifying the variables (say Charm and Plant, then modifying the area to affect the entire front yard, causing the grass to reach lovingly for the sun late in the year, rather than storing most of its energy in its roots to prepare for the impending winter. or of course, Create and Fire, then modifying the area and energy output to create an explosive fireball in the midst of the onrushing orcs). I like the style because you can tailor the casters options to fit a certain flavor (air shugenja can't manipulate Earth, but get a reduction in the cost of air spells, for example), but you really get one set of rules to work with. Not only that, but it fits the style of casting I'd like with this campaign. Casters should have something that normal people don't, or possibly that all people do but casters have specifically learned how to manipulate it. Regardless, there's no schools for it, etc. I'm digressing a bit. Regardless, doing away with spell, spell lists, and a constant number of casting options really affects the spellthief.

The most obvious solution is to just not test the two together, especially since the spellthief itself doesn't fit the campaign. It's such an easy solution that I'm rolling with that one for awhile, at least until I come up with something else, or the need arises. It's no big deal since we're likely just playing pre-published adventures for now. The real challenge, and the part that I'm looking forward to the most, is figuring out a way to run the Elements of Magic (and all of the other magic variants I'm considering) through the mixer without the player's being aware of it at all, except for a bit of foncusion (dyselexia intentional) when they get nailed with an acid arrow from someone that merely twitched a smile. It could be a silenced, quickened, stilled spell. Or I could be testing rules from the unofficial Harry Potter RPG. Or I could have just developed an entirely new feat and skill based casting system and that particular opponent has maxed out his Sleight of Hand skill, allowing him to hide his somatic gestures completely. Hmmm.