Gaming, Running, Politics, and other Randomness.

So I'm moving, to Google's Blogger.

My new blogging home is at http://runningwithdice.blogspot.com/

I've migrated all my stuff from here on LiveJournal over there.

Why/how/etc? Maybe a little boredom with my current digs, I suppose. I don't have any major gripes with LJ, but I'm moving anyway.

So, if you're interested in staying tune to my rambling entries, please update your feed reader or links. It'll be more of the same, I promise. Long posts about Dungeons and Dragons and role playing games, me whining about or bragging about running, depending on my level of motivation, some politicking, and other assorted randomness.

I intend for this to be my last post on this LJ. The journal will remain, and I'll continue to read my friends list, for the one or two folks who do friends-only entries.

See you on the other side!

I'll entertain you with the following:

Keyboards can be a source of mild entertainment.

rwxgbiqFGro

There! That is a (not actual) example of my password, typed when my fingers are on the wrong home keys! Yay touch typing! I always catch it almost right away, but there's always half a second of confusion, where I wonder if I've had a stroke, or if someone has randomized my keyboard.

Speaking of home keys, a great prank to play on your friends that rely on hunting and pecking is to move the keys around on the keyboard! You can even do this with just a couple of letters on the keyboard to totally throw them off. Ahhhh good times.

Besides, I'm sure your hunting and pecking friends needs a good excuse for punching you in the face. Everyone wins!

I meant to make a long rambly post some time ago about "Actual Play" posts and so forth. A clever person once said that all of the "in game action" posts in the world do not interest them, but what gets them going are details about how the game works around the table - what are the players saying or doing, how are they using or abusing the system, and how are they interacting with it, on a metagame scale.

My posts regarding the D&D games that I've running have attempted to kill two birds with one stone, getting both "in game" stuff, and "actual play" stuff, but I have always come down more on "in game" stuff, I think because it sticks in my mind more. I have more difficulty remembering the details of how everyone is interacting with each other and the system, probably because I'm so focused on running the game, and only have so much attention.

Anyway. In response to my last post about our most recent D&D game, Matthew asked "How did the players use the game system outside of combat?"

My first response is an observation, take it how you will: D&D (all of D&D, 4e is no exception) is 80% rules about killing orcs, and 20% other stuff.

Much of the players interaction with the game world outside of combat is not governed by hard and fast rules, the same way that combat is. This may be more specific to my own style of running it, than the way its written, I'm not sure about that. To take a very basic approach in building an answer to Matthew's question, let me outline it like this.

Just as with combat situations, I begin by outlining "what's happening and what's here." I try to aim for somewhere between "So you're at a city, what do you do?" and "The crumbling limestone walls of Wyvernsbrook, loom menacingly over you, the scars of many previous sieges and battles evident on their surface .... [30 minute exposition]". In a combat situation, the rules kick in right away. The players start moving the number of squares that they're allowed to move, and start hitting things, as outlined by the rules. Non combat encounters, whether investigative or dialogue based, I'm happy to free form as long as is possible.

I try really hard not to keep clues and information from the players, but I also make an attempt to have them do just a little work for it, instead of simply handing it all out, totally free. When they arrived in Illyes and began to poke around looking for information on the kidnappers and farm family, I inquired as to how they were going about it - who are they asking, where are they going to find out this information? John and Andrew, being the most vocal at the time about the search, both ended up making dice rolls. John, beat me to the punch, and went ahead and rolled diplomacy as we were discussing his investigation, while I asked Andrew to make a streetwise check. Certainly, I could have not even had them roll the dice, and handed over the information, but as I mentioned, I don't want to simply hand it out, I think that my players expect the kind of play in which they'll need to do a little dice rolling and talk to some people before getting what they're after. What if they got terrible rolls? Well it would influence the information that I gave them. At worst, I'd tell them that they'd come up empty, but that Shadowy Bob might have some information, if they can track him down... To get more game-philosophy-y, I think that's part of why the dice are there, in their randomness, to provide easier or more difficult routes to victory.

When the party made it to Drugen, they were again looking for information, and digging around. In situations like these, I tend to not role play every bar tender and street urchin as they're pumping them for information. I find that it eats up huge amount of time, can create lots of red herrings, but most importantly, I'm just not that strong of a role-player myself, and it seriously taxes my creativity and quick thinking. "Um, yeah, the urchins name is... Galanon...en.. Galanonen. He's short, and about yay high, and looks pretty dirty. He stares at you sullenly." I should also mention that its been pointed out to me by more than one person that my "default NPC personality" is that of "Surly Asshole", who is annoyed at you for wasting his or her time, and not very interested in helping you out. Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked.

In Drugen they did more investigation, and again, after we'd spend a few minutes discussing what kind of things we were trying to do and how we were trying to do them, I went to dice, letting the dice be a barometer of success/return.

Now - I feel compelled to mention that there are more mechanics for things outside of combat. There are skill challenges, and all manner of diplomacy/bluff/streetwise/etc. But I tend to play fast and loose with the rules, when the game and my players will let me get away with it. Bluff jogs my memory. Both Andrew and John did a little bit of lying to Athurn, John giving him a fake name, ("Did you just tell him that your name is Beverly?"), and Andrew posing as a drunk, trying to get into an advantageous position when he thought that they were about to do bloody combat, and then settling for swiping the guys money pouch when he realized that it was not the time for fighting. And so in both cases there was a dice roll to determine their level of success in their lying.

Some dialogue and encounters I'll actually play through. Two that come to mind are their meeting with Nusak (immediately named "Nut Sack" by the players, thank you, random name generator, and not having enunciated them once first before telling the players the name). He was the guy who was hiding in the barn. It was really more of a monologue, not that I didn't let anyone interrupt me, but he gave his story, they asked a couple of questions, bad guys came up into the trees, Andrew knocked Nut Sack out, presumably to keep him from running away, they fought the bad guys, then sent Nusak on his way to Illyes. I also played their meeting with Roric and Athurn in more detail, playing each one. I guess it comes down to importance, and likelihood of someone "doing something". For folks who are important, or who have something important to say, I try to role play them as best I can. Usually I'll quote their dialogue, but occasionally, especially if we're wandering off topic or if they've already given their Important Information, I'll start third-personing it, "Yeah, he says that he's never seen the guy, and doesn't know why those other guys were there." Also, if I think that the party is likely to spring to the attack or something of that sort, I'll speak the dialogue, it lets us do better for accounting for time, order, and so forth.

So... that's perhaps about 1,500 words more than Matthew was looking for, and I'm not 100% confident that I answered the question fully, but that's my stab at it. Also, I love me some exposition, sometimes.

So the gang was gathered for some more D&D.

Krissi and her ranger were suffering from a headcold, and so they were not with us.

This week's adventure was a change of pace for all of us. Our previous sessions have been spent either in the underground or in the wilderness. Aside from a few villagers, most everyone they met was interested only in a good fight. So, our previous sessions could easily be categorized as Dungeon Crawling. This week, they got to test their diplomacy and socializing.

When we'd left off last week, the group had just arrived at the gates to the town of Illyes. Of the three towns that form the majority of this community, Illyes is the religious center. Pretty much all of the good and neutral aligned deities have a temple of some size here. Jerry's cleric went off and spent a little time at the temple of Pelor, Maddie's paladin went and spent some time at the temple of the Raven Queen.

Jerry and Maddie both asked at their temples about jobs - side quest time. Which was totally cool, but left me in the lurch for just a moment. As I mentioned, this week was a pretty serious change of pace for us. I'd been a touch anxious about exactly this, leading up to our game. Maddie wanted to secure a holy symbol of some kind for her Paladin. Jerry wanted to build up some good karma with his people. After a moment of quick thinking, I explained that the head mistress of the Raven Queen's temple wanted Maddie to go to the down of Drugen to pick up the unclaimed corpses of a family that died in a fire. The disciples of the Raven Queen took it upon themselves to handle the unclaimed or unwanted dead. Jerry's cleric meanwhile was asked to take a minor relic to Drugen and bury it, in the hopes that it would help to hasten the coming of spring, since winter was turning out to be particularly harsh this year.

The gang also spent a little time going around town, some to the temples, others to the barracks to inquire if any unusual travelers had come through recently - as they were tracking the missing farm family and their kidnappers. They were told that yes, an agent from one of the well-placed families in Drugen had passed through recently. Obviously, all signs pointed to Drugen.

We also noted that the party was pretty close to third level. In an effort to encourage my players to come up with background stories for their characters, I'd offered a reward of 1/10th of a level worth of XP for a background. Jerry and Jeremy had taken me up on it, contributing toward the entire parties advancement, and with level 3 being just about 30 xp away, John and Andrew both quickly committed their backgrounds to paper, and bumped the party over into level 3. Woo!

The party headed for Drugen, and managed to provide some security for a large train of wagons carrying grain. This netted them some cash. They all looked a little disappointed though when I did not spring an encounter on them. Noted.

The party started digging around in Drugen while the cleric and paladin went about their side quests. Andrew's thief and John's warlord kept their ear to the street, while Jason's fighter passed the time sparring with some of the militia. Nate the thief put out word that he was interested in slaver activity, and they waited to hear from someone. They didn't have to wait very long, as a page boy approached them, and said that someone wanted to meet them at midnight in a disused barn outside of the town.

The party headed there early and staked the place out and waited for Midnight. Andrew's thief and John's warlord headed inside, while the rest of the party stayed outside, hidden in the nearby trees. Soon, a fellow named Nusak showed up, and told Nate and Devlin that he was on the run and hiding from someone people that he was certain wanted to kill him. He'd been invited by someone named Osric to a "secret meeting". He went, along with a couple of other first timers, and found that the meeting had people in long red robes with masks, who brought in a young man, killed him, and drained his blood. He left, and was not interested in going back, neither were the other two first timers there. And he'd learned that they'd both been killed, and that someone was staking out his place. He fled, and contacted the characters, hoping that they could help him. About this time, Maddie's paladin noticed a group of armed people moving in toward the barn, and the fight was on.

The party dispatched most of the bad guys, capturing their leader, a guy named Roric. He was a simple sell-sword from Drugen, who said that he'd been hired by a guy named Athurn to come and kill Nusak. The party learned or was already aware that Athurn was a retainer for house Lathien- the patriarch of which was the head judge in the town, and his son, the subcaptain of the town militia. Devlin (John) convinced Roric to head back to Drugen with them, and to tell Athurn that the job was done - the party would pose as the other sell-swords that were with Roric. He agree'd, and they headed back to Drugen and staked out the Fiery Griffin tavern, a working-class drinking hall frequented by rough necks, sell swords, and town militia. Soon, Athurn and some of his men showed up as expected. He conversed with Roric, who assured him that they'd done the job and killed Nusak (who they'd actually given some money to, and sent away to Illyes to lie low.) Athurn seemed pleased, and bought them a round of drinks. Devlin gave Athurn a false name and asked if he had any work available. Athurn said maybe, and that he'd look him up if he needed people. Athurn and his men left. Roric and Dzur (Jason) drank up, and they went their separate ways, the party sending Roric away to Moore's Creek.

A day or two passed, and Dzur became very ill - apparently from poison. With the help of Father Kreuz (Jerry), he pulled through. Sorrow (Maddie) got a message that she had a package at the north gate. Upon arriving, she was told that some farmers had brought in a body that they'd found along the way, and they wanted to turn it over to one of the Raven Queen's disciples. The body was that of Roric. Dead by poison, presumably.

The party decided that their next course of action would be a meeting with Athurn, who they'd been keeping tabs on.

More notes:

As I said, this was a real change of pace. This session differed greatly from the previous ones in that our previous sessions have largely been combat with cut scenes/travel/dialogue between. Like I said - kinda Dungeon Crawl. This session was mostly talking and intrigue. I think that it took everyone a little bit to shift gears, I know it was a transition for me. It felt a little strange - I've run tons of games, mostly Werewolf and TSOY, and done tons of unplanned dialogue and city stuff, and not had any qualms about it - but this felt a little different somehow, I assume just because its D&D. But it went down really without any problems that I observed. Intrigue games can be tricky, one wants to be careful that they clues aren't too subtle or difficult to find, cause then the players sit around and get bored/frustrated. The clues and/or action should pretty much come to them, which is what I did. But again, it was a transition. Combat heavy games just require a little tactical planning, and so when you switch to requiring deduction, reasoning and a little cleverness, it can throw folks for a loop. But I'm going on about it, only because it made such an impression on me. My players seemed to run with it.

Good side quests are a little tricky though. I was kindof on the spot, and so I just threw out the first things that I came up with. I'll have to writeup some ideas for this kind of thing so it doesn't blindside me next time. I want to try to avoid "Uh, yeah, the baron needs you to deliver a letter to, um, a priest." Cause carrying letters and packages back and forth is boring, and more the territory of CRPGs. I can do better than that. :)

This will mean little to most of you, but still I celebrate.

http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&threadid=90563

Hearts of Iron 3: late 2009.

OH YES!

So... I haven't had the blogging bug lately, it seems.

On the running front: things were good for a week or two, then late last week I got de-motivated, and didn't run on thursday, saturday or sunday when I should have. I got back on it this morning with 8 miles, and it was a good run, and I'm glad I did it, but I can't say that I enjoyed it. Just not feeling motivated. I'm really quite lazy at heart, you see.

I need to get my ass in gear and do my session writeup for D&D for this past week.

I got together with Michael and Kelly and ran some Jedi in the Vineyard the other day. I started to do a longish, somewhat detailed writeup, but I got two or three paragraphs in and then got tired of writing and busy at work. In brief: it was pretty cool. I like the "* in the Vineyard" system, but its pretty tricky. I said the other day that every time I run it, it feels as though I've just donned a super shiny and sleek and awesome space suit, and that its about two sizes wrong and stiff in some uncomfortable places, and just needs to be broken in and grown into. Enough analogies. Moving right along.

I have kinda been in a computer gaming funk - like some people are with books, I'm never not in the midst of playing some computer game. I played a few real time strategy titles, before dusting off my copy of Fallout 2 and cranking it up. Such fun! (I'm serious. Fallout 2 rocks.)

I'm sure there are some other things that I'm forgetting about, but that's my roundup for now.

So, blogging is slow going for me lately. I'll have some content again soon I'm sure.

Meanwhile, here's more fuel for my "The Media and Politics are mind numbingly stupid" thing.



(Image from Todd Alcott's livejournal)

So.... McCain is totally right. It is wrong for one nation to invade another. Wait - why does this sound somehow familiar?


(Image from Frostfirezoo)

This is dumb, but not altogether shocking. I'll call it "We Are Winning The Olympics!" spin.

So, I'm off to a pretty good start with my running.

As I mentioned, I've taken to getting up early and going out for a run.

Last week, in addition to my semi-disastrous 3.5 mile run, I managed a 6 on Tuesday morning, an 8 on Wednesday morning, another 8 on Friday morning and a 4 on Saturday.

I had a long run scheduled for Sunday, and I got up at 6AM and hit the streets in the light ran and cranked out 12 miles in 2:07. I'm pretty pleased.

The gamers assembled and soon we were playing!

We transitioned almost immediately to an encounter, as the party continued their journey south and west toward their destination with the villagers in tow. They'd come out of the rugged hills into more gentle terrain. Ahead, they saw carrion birds gathering, and soon came upon a scene of carnage. There was a pile of a dozen or so orcish dead, and another five staked out on the ground and slit open. Most of the dead, and all of those that were staked out had their faces painted with ash and coal to resemble a black skull. A few of the dead had a large red handprint dyed onto their armor. Amidst the dead was a broken banner, baring a large skull. They sent two still-living orcs on to meet Gruumsh, and then saw a party of Red Hand orcs come over the crest of the hill nearby. The largest among them called out "Blood for the Blood Lord!" and they charged into battle. Maddie's paladin was closest to them, with Andrew's thief not too far behind. The paladin charged right up and engaged them, as the rest of the party began to close in. The orcs swarmed around the paladin though, and very nearly brought her to the ground.

So, the Paladin was in the thick of things, but the rest of the party swarmed in and kicked some Orcish ass.

They pressed on, and soon came to a farmestead, not far from the village that they were headed to. They made it to the village, and made arrangements to leave their charges here, to be incorporated into the community. Illgiliant made sure to leave some gold with them to help them out. There was a feast held, and it was revealed that something was stirring in the Shadowdeep, a forest nearby. Recently a family had gone missing from their farmstead not far from the Shadowdeep. Smelling a quest, the party was soon headed in that direction, after Father Kreuz spent a little time healing sickness and illness among the villagers.

They entered the Shadowdeep, and were soon set upon by a greeting party of kobolds. The kobolds were hidden in the dense foliage, and it took a little doing to get out there and engage them. Once they'd dispatched the kobolds, they wanted to know if there was any sign of tracks, to see where the kobolds had come from, hoping to track down the missing family. The kobolds tracks led into a low, narrow tunnel carved into a huge and thick hedge. After a bit of hesitation, the party went hands and knees into the hedge.

They moved along for some time, before coming out and landing right in another ambush. This time, a number of minions and a couple of dual wielding kobolds attacked them. Between Andrew's multiclass Thief/Wizard, and Jason's Dragonborn breath weapon, the minions fell quickly, and soon it was two vs seven, and the remaining kobolds fell.

Moving quickly between encounters, they pressed on toward the center of the forest, and found a circle of huge trees, obviously not just mundane. Within the circle waited a group of heavily armored kobolds. The wind whispered through the trees, and they heard a voice on the wind, "Kill them, my little ones." And the party leapt into combat.

Again, the party wiped out the five armored kobolds pretty much without breaking a sweat. Then the Witch stepped out of the tree. She darted *out* of a tree, across the grass, fired off an attack at the party, and leapt *into* another tree. Smelling a tricky fight, the party began to spread out to the trees in the circle, to try to catch the Witch. As she'd dart from one tree to another, she'd beckon large tree branches to sweep down and smack some of the characters, or she'd whisper on the wind to one of the characters, and that character would turn and strike his or her companions! At one point, she reached out of a tree, grabbed Father Kreuz, and pulled him into the tree. Half a second later, he fell from the branches overhead. The party soon caught her in the open, and worked desperately to keep her from vanishing into the trees again. They swarmed around her, as she fought fiercely against them, turning two of them into trees, and dealing out powerful attacks. When the paladin bloodied her, the entire ring of trees began to flail with their thick branches, striking most of the party and knocking many of them down. Finally, despite the trees healing her wounds, the party brought her down. One of the trees gently lowered its branches and gathered her up. She spoke to the party, telling them that the stars carried portents of the Blood Lord. Also, that the family that they sought went West, with their kidnappers. The kidnappers had bought passage through the Shadowdeep, and she gave them the mace that they'd use to buy their way through. With that, the tree carried her up into its branches and out of sight.

After resting, the party carried on west, and after another few days of travel, they made it to the gates of the three communities that they called home.


Now some notes and thoughts about the game.

During the first encounter I realized that we'd failed to mention whether any resting had occurred between the last session and this one. Quick mechanics: characters can take a short 5 minute rest, which recharges their "encounter" powers, and lets them use healing surges and such to regain lost hit points; or they can take a "long rest" that will regain all healing surges, all hit points, and recharge "daily" powers. They can only take a long rest once per day. After a long rest, action points, which they can accumulate after successive combats, reset to 1, which means that unused action points can go to waste.

A few times before I'd forced long rests on the characters, due simply to in-game time progression and lack of bad guys to fight. This seemed somewhat unfair for the players, so I offered to let them take a mechanical/metagame long rest that would recharge them, but also reset their action points, or to let them take a long rest, that a bunch of people would normally do once per day - but would them them keep their action points, and would not reset their surges or dailies. They liked this, and we're going to run with it.

The other thing that I really noticed in the first encounter, and through the rest of our session, had to do with the balance of characters vs bad guys in a fight. Maddie's paladin ran in, got surrounded, and got pretty beaten down. Obvious point: a character, even a defender, is pretty quick work for the concentrated attention of three or four or more bad guys. This is pretty normal, and I only mention it because I'm picking the mechanics apart. On the other hand, I noticed repeatedly during this session, that the party seemed to make incredibly short work of the opposition. To the point that I am going back and closely looking at encounter setup, trying to make sure that its' appropriately balanced. I won't say that the combats have necessarily been a cake-walk for the party, but at least two combats were over pretty much within two rounds.

I think I've mentioned before how simple monster design is. I love how easy it is to change and tweak beasties. For instance, there are orcs in the monster manual, but none that are 2nd level. So I just took the orc "types" that I wanted, and reworked them for the appropriate level. Took maybe 5 minutes to do. Its easy to create "powers" and abilities and such as well. Instead of using a bunch of stock powers and such for monsters, I'm creating my own with no hassle, just coming up with some cool fluff description, thinking about what I want it to do, doing a quick comparison with similar level stuff for power balance, and I'm done. Again, five or ten minutes max. The Witch that they fought - not in the book. Made her up whole-cloth. And she was a fun fight.

So after my hard-learned lesson, I endeavored to get up early, before 6AM, and go for a good 5 or 6 mile run.

I made it to bed after some hard core rock band drumming last night, around 10:30. I oozed from bed this morning when the alarm rang about 5:40. Got my running gear on and hit the streets. It was just starting to get light out, so I wore my bright yellow reflective vest, figuring that being clipped by an inattentive driver would not be a fun way to start my day. I did a little bit of brief stretching before, but it took about 5 minutes and half a mile for my body to get warmed up and my legs to stop complaining. It felt hot and muggy out, but in truth, it was around 75 degrees.

It was a really good run, I cranked out 6 miles in 57 and a half minutes, without too much difficulty. I'll be curious to see how it affects my energy level today, whether I'll be good all day, or totally crashing around 3pm.

I figure I'll need to keep this up while its ridiculous hot outside, so maybe for a couple of weeks. I'm slightly terrified about the marathon in December, and I desperately want to train adequately. I'm technically already behind, and off to a slow start. I'm going to push it, while being careful not to overdo it. Wish me luck.

So, because I have very little proficiency with formatting html tables and junk, here is a link to the schedule that I'm going to be working on for the St. Jude marathon in December.

http://www.marathontraining.com/marathon/m_sch_2.html

To provide a legend, Week #1 is, well, now.

By the way, it is hot around here.

I went out for a run two Sundays ago, the 27th of last month. I planned to do 8 miles. I got 5 cranked out before I was just to spent to continue running. So I walked the remaining three. It was just ridiculously hot. And it was about 10:30 or 11 in the morning, so the sun was nice and high. Made it home in time to get a heat induced migraine.

Yesterday, I set out to get a run in. Of course, I did not wait for any time that did not qualify as The Hottest Part of the Day. It was about 2pm when I set out, and I only really planned to do between 3 and 5 miles. By my turn around for 3 I was feeling pretty good, so I pressed on, and made it to the turn around for 5 miles. I headed back, and then the sun kinda opened up on me. It was somewhere between 100 and 105 degrees. Walked about a mile or a mile and a half of that. Made it back in time for a migraine, again.

So the lesson that I have learned is this: Do not run in 100 degree heat in the middle of the day. (Moron.)

This still leaves me though with needing to crank through miles and miles, and its still August here, and the weather has apparently not gotten the memo about my training schedule. There is a gym just around the corner from my house though, that does month-to-month membership. So I may do that, just until its a little more survivable outside.

When we'd left off last week, the group had just defeated a group of hobgoblins slavers, and saved the villagers from being thrown off of the cliff. However, another threat loomed. Just over the hill came the hobgoblins advanced party, an orc barbarian, two goblin blades and two guard drakes.

Maddie had been called in to work, so was unavailable for the first fight, but she managed to make it for much of the rest of the session.

Combat was joined. The party immediately identified the orc barbarian as the largest threat, and our wizard hit him with an effect that slowed the orc. The goblins and drakes charged in, with the orc moving more slowly behind. The drakes turned out to be a threat as well. They do a whopping 1d10+9 damage on a hit when they're within two squares of an ally. So the goblins egged them on, and when they bit down on the meaty parts of our heroes, they sure felt it. The orc finally managed to get up into the melee, but just barely. It moved into position, but because of the slow effect, and its efforts to charge into the melee, it suffered a huge penalty to its defenses. The party flocked to it like lions to a wounded cow, and started hammering away at it. I think that the menace implied by this orc was a mechanism both of my description of its huge and terrible axe, and the players own understanding of the elite orc barbarian. The orc ended up right next to John's warlord, who is not a "soft target" like our wizard, but is not quite as hard a target as our defenders, either. Over the course of a round, the party pummeled the orc with everything that they had, pretty much. He was bloodied in no time, which arguably made it a bigger threat, since it did even more damage with its huge axe when bloodied. But my players get a round of applause for their efforts, as they were able to drop the orc dead in its tracks before it even got a swing. I was only a tiny bit disappointed ;)

The goblins and drakes were swept up in fairly short order. The drakes bite hard, but go down reasonably quickly. A+ for John's warlord: they were fighting atop a tall cliff, and John used a power to push one of the drakes right over the edge. I briefly considered giving the drake some kind of save or check to at least hang onto the edge, but I went with the "players win with their cool powers" theory, and over the edge he went.

The party rounded up the frightened villagers. It was chaos for a few minutes, as they tried to keep them together, and answer their questions and assure them of their safety. A tall, muscular fellow, perhaps a smith, asked them about his wife and children. He, and the villagers, wanted to know the fates of the family that they'd been separated from, some of them having been left with the goblins back at the village. The party told them, sadly, that no others remained alive. The man buried his head in his hands, and walked back amongst the villagers, and walked a few more steps and threw himself off of the cliff.

The party worked to calm the villagers, and finally formulated a plan by which they would rest amidst the trees nearby, and would protect and escort the remaining villagers to another village some distance to the west.

The hobgoblins that they'd dealt with had a large chest with them, that the party grabbed and were finally able to open. Within was a treasure trove: some +1 plate armor, some magic bracers, an everfull provisions, and a +1 wand, as well as a bunch of cash and a couple of ritual scrolls.

The players also used this opportunity to level up. This took us nearly an hour, I think. I think that the biggest confusion had to do with applying the "one half your level". You apply this modifier to ability score mods, and to your defenses. By accident, some of the players were applying it twice, once to the ability score mod, then again to the defense. In fact, its supposed to be applied separately, but the character sheet was a little confusing about this, and it took awhile to find a clear reference to it in the book. People seemed pleased with getting more hit points, and with their defense and attack generally going up, but were a little disappointed with feats. A number of players said that the feats felt uninspired and limited in selection. John was excited to take a multiclass feat into Paladin.

Maddie was able to join us at this point, and so once everyone was all set, we pressed on.

The players were given two options. Based on their limited understanding of their location, they had two routes to take in order to reach their destination, the village of Krandal Creek. They could go west, a route that would take them through gently rolling hills, and straight through Skull Hammer orc tribal lands, or they could go south and west, a route that would take them through more rough and rocky hill country, but that was likely to have fewer orc problems. The party chose the more southerly route, hoping to have less orc trouble.

They set off, and sure enough, the path grew steeper and more treacherous, with cliff faces plunging away hundreds of feet. After some hours, they saw ahead on the path a makeshift camp, with a figure tending to it. The camp was before a small cave in a vertical cliff face, the path was thirty feet wide or so, with a small cliff face, dropping about ten feet. As they got closer, they could see that the figure was an orcish woman. She put her hands on her hips and watched them for a moment, before going into the cave and returning with a large halberd. As they got closer, she dumped a small bag of powder into the cookpot, which immediately began to billow heavy smoke, completely obscuring the area. The fighting types charged into the smoke, where they could only see for about five feet around them. Jason's fighter charged in first and nearly bumped into the orc. They traded blows, and she vanished into the thick smoke. So began a game of cat and mouse in which the party searched around in the thick smoke for the orc. Once or twice, they bumped into her and the clang of metal on metal rang out, but each time she vanished again into the smoke. At one point, she emerged from the opposite side of the large smoke cloud and charged right at the cleric, dealing a couple of wicked strikes to him. The party all charged back in that direction and began laying down the pain on the orc. She wielded the huge halberd like a tornado, laying all about her with its blade. The warlord even manged to get his hands on her to grapple her, but she escaped and again vanished into the smoke. Finally, the Andrew's rogue bumped into her, and used a power to slide her four squares, and managed to slide her right off the 10' cliff nearby. Maddie's paladin charged over and leapt down to continue the fight. Her scythe was true, and the fight was over.

Fearing that the smoke, which had formed a tall column, and was quite visible, was a signal and that they had angry orcs on the way back, the party took refuge in the small cave, where they found some money and a set of darkleaf hide armor. They and the villagers rested briefly. No enemy showed up, and soon they moved on.

Their next encounter found them a few hours later, trying to navigate a high and narrow trail. On their left the cliff face was vertical and towered high above them, and on their right it plunged away hundreds of feet. The trail was between five and fifteen feet here, and twisted around the rocky outcroppings like a snake. In a few places, loose stone and steep grade to the trail made the going very difficult. As they made their way carefully along this dangerous trail, they heard goblin voices from high above them, and stones started to come sailing over the cliff above, down onto their heads. The party did their best to shield the villagers with them, and began moving along the trail as best they could. Jason's fighter led the way, and came to a wider section of the still precious trail, and noticed a number of deep rifts and holes in the rock cliff face to his left. He also noticed that there were dozens and dozens of small drakes lurking within the fissures, and suddenly they swarmed out upon him. He was caught somewhat isolated, ahead of the party, and so he bore the full brunt of their assault. They pulled him to the ground and ripped and tore at him. In one round, doing more than 40 points of damage, and sending him into negative hit points.

I froze for a moment. I thought that surely I'd just killed the first characters, and I was even more horrified because if Jason's fighter was dead and out of the fight, it was going to spell bad bad news for the rest of the party. He wasn't dead, and because Jerry's cleric is a freaking healing machine, Jason's fighter was back on his feet in no time flat. The needlefang drake swarms continued to attack the fighter, and as the other party members moved in, they felt the sting of these creatures as well. Mechanically, these monsters have a minor-action attack that lets them pull down a victim. Normally, their damage is 1d10+x, but against prone targets, its 2d10+x. Ouch! This was a tough, tough fight, in my opinion. The party was stretched out and not able to focus their effort. The monsters were "swarms", which means that normal melee and ranged damage only inflict half damage on them. Jason's fighter went into negative hit points at least twice during the fight. They pulled together, and started dealing some effective damage to the creatures, but what turned the tide was a power from Jerry's Cleric that let him push a couple of the swarms over the cliff. After that, while they were still tough, simply for their damage output, it was just a mop up operation.

Then the moved on as quickly as they could.

On the way, they did find a scythe that turned out to be a +1 terror weapon. Woo!

No D&D for us this coming weekend, due to three players being out of town, but we'll reconvene in two weeks.

So we went and joined our new gaming buddy, Michael again last night.

His friend, Kelly, was unavailable, and will be out of pocket until early August, but we decided to get together anyway and goof around with some gaming stuff.

I'd planned to try out Inspectres or Jedi in the Vineyard (Dogs in the Vineyard, tweaked for Jedi). Inspectres is something that I got my hands on awhile back from Matthew, but had not actually played, though it seemed very fun. I've done Dogs before, in a previously mentioned abortive effort - Oh look, I apparently never posted a recap of that session - this may be a two-for-one post. I'll get to that later.

Anyway, we headed to Michael's place. I brought with me a TON of gaming material. He's been interested in getting his hands on all variety of games, and I'm happy to help. So I lent him a huge stack of books including gems like Feng Shui (which I pimped hard), Dogs, Donjon, Sorcerer, Burning Wheel, Riddle of Steel, new World of Darkness, d20 Modern, and a few others (but not Shadowrun, as I couldn't find my shadowrun 4 book).

So after a quick game of Jungle Speed, just for kicks, we cranked up some Inspectres. For those of you unfamiliar with Inspectres, in brief, it is a simple little game based on Ghostbusters that borrows thematically from Men In Black and, well, like I said - Ghostbusters. Its pretty highly narrative, having mechanics that let the players take over the direction of the story.

So we blazed through character creation, which took us all like 10 minutes, cause its crazy simple. I setup the deal: they get a phone call from the Director of Public Transportation in their home city of Fairview, a bustling metropolis. They meet with the Director, who tells them that he has a major problem. A little while back, he says, the lights on subway platform B started going out, right at 12:47AM, sharp. They'd stay out for a minute or so, and then come back on. They couldn't figure out what the heck was going on with the lights. Then, last night, when the lights winked out, when they came back on, two people who were there when they went off, but were gone now. The director needed the characters to figure out what was going on and fix it before the media caught wind, and he had a major problem on his hands.

The players headed straight for the station and started digging around. They asked about the station, and I described it to the players, tile walls, trash bins, graffiti, crappy wall murals, your completely average run of the mill inner city subway platform. I described how after a few minutes passed a throng of people assembled on the platform, a train came, they got on while others got off, the train whisked away and the crowd bustled on their way. In passing I mentioned a guitarist playing in the hall that lead into the subway station. Jason's character wanted to go chat him up and see what he knew.

I froze right here for just a moment. The game indicates that the GM comes up with the basic premise for the session- and then says something to the effect of "through role playing, negotiation with the GM, skill rolls, and Confessions, the players can steer the course of the game". So I spent a moment, considering role playing Jason's chatting up the guitar player. I could either role play the encounter, with the musician knowing nothing, or knowing something, and sharing those details with Jason, which I would make up ("Sure, Jason, he tells you that he saw a dark guy in a long cape right before the lights went out, standing right behind the two guys that went missing. Weird, I don't see many people wearing capes...") but part of the point of this game is to let the players steer the game and create the story, instead of me doing it.

So I had him roll his Contacts dice, which he did, and I asked him, "Okay, Jason, what's the guy know?" Jason responded quickly, stating that the fellow told him that the lights had been going out for a much longer period of time than the Director had told them (or that people had been disappearing for awhile now, between Jason and Krissi, both of these details came to light). He did fantastic with it, and then turned to me and said "So is this how this game works? We just say what happens, and do the story?", "Yeah", I told him. "So what's the GM for?" he wanted to know. "I'm playing bass," I said, using Ron Edwards' analogy. I create a foundation, and you guys build on it, and I help to transition from scene to scene." He looked skeptical. But Jason has deep roots in non-narrativist gaming, so anytime he, as a player, gets to dictate more than what his character wants to do, he gets a little squeamish.

We spent a few more minutes there, Krissi wanted to talk to the ticket agents and the cops there in the subway station. No problem, again, I had her roll dice, and narrate what details she got. So by this point, they'd found out, thanks to narration from Krissi and Jason, that people had been going missing for awhile, and the lights had been going out for awhile too, but these details did not seem to be directly linked to each other. Krissi also narrated that the lights did not go out every night at the same time, as they'd been told, but instead went out every night when train number 58 came through the station.

I thought all of this was very cool.

By the way, you "win" the session by collecting "franchise dice", which you get when you roll well on the dice, or by solving the mystery. They were rolling well and were already up to three or four franchise dice, out of the ten that they needed for success.

I asked what other research they wanted to do, and it was suggested that they head to the library and do some digging. They rode the subway to the library, and started looking for old news stories about the subway. Still trying to get a good grasp of how the game and system was supposed to work, I went ahead and narrated what they found - maybe I should have let them narrate this part too - I explained that there had been a terrible subway accident some years ago, involving train number 58, at subway platform B. Also that recently a local asylum had closed, and most of the people that were turned out were sleeping in the subway.

They wanted to head back to the subway platform, and I asked, while thumbing through the book, if they wanted to do any Technology rolls to get some cool equipment. They were all totally unsure on this front - what do they need? And how does this work? I spent a few minutes paging through the little book, looking to get some direction with regards to tech. I was not able to definitively determine if they asked for a piece of equipment and then rolled for it, or if later they said "I pull out my super ecto chaos de-atomizer!" and then do a tech roll. So I let them come up with some stuff they'd want (walkie talkies, night vision gear, a camera that can see ghosts), and make tech rolls. Again, they were rolling well, and were racking up Franchise dice.

Soon they headed back to the station. Earlier, while at the library, Krissi had gotten some blueprints. I let her narrate what they showed, and she said that they showed that the current subway station B was build right on top of the original station B, and that tracks still lead through that old station. When they got back to the subway station, they wanted to find a way to get down to the old platform. Having already found the blueprints, and being close to their goal of 10 franchise dice, I didn't make her roll to find the way down, but on a lark, the door was locked, and Jason rolled his athletics to bust it open. They went down to the abandoned platform and looked around. They asked what all was down here, and I sortof froze. I described the old platform, but for some reason nothing clever came to mind, and so it was a pretty empty and boring place. They asked about what lay down the subway tracks, and I flailed about mentally for a moment, before pulling something totally out of my ass and describing a large metal web in the subway tunnel. They investigated closer and saw that there were cocoon like objects on the metal web. Jason wanted to climb up and check out one of the cocoons. I had him roll his Athletics to bust one open, and let him describe what was in it. It turns out that it was one of the missing people, and that he was alive. By this time, they had already gotten the necessary Franchise dice, so we got into wrap-up mode. The guy in the cocoon indicated that they'd been snatched by -oh no!- the guy coming up the subway tunnel right now! It was a one legged ghost, strangely enough. He was the first person that had disappeared mysteriously. He claimed that the subway took his leg, and that he was kidnapping these people and keeping them alive, then letting them go later, because "it had been they're time, and the subway was going to take them!". Krissi jumped onto the only Confession of the night, and narrated that she was glad that they'd thought to bring the priests kit, in order to give final rites to this specter, and he passed on into the great beyond.

That was that. We only were at it for about and hour and a half - it blazed by. We killed some more time by nerding it up and talking about the games that I'd brought down to lend, and Michael told us about the Toon game that he's working with to game with his daughter.

So we had a great evening, and I'm glad to have had a chance to run Inspectres.

Now some observations about it:

I was a tad disappointed by Inspectres. I think part of that is due to the normal shakiness that occurs when I pick up a game that I've only read through a few times and run it live. That's normal, and there are bound to be hiccups, and misinterpretations, etc. Part of it too is that this is the most Narrative I've participated in. Dogs and TSOY both have some strong narrative elements, but neither gives as much control of the game to the players as Inspectres does. Don't get me wrong, despite being disappointed, I did have a good time, and I think that the players enjoyed it as a short distraction as well. I have to commend Krissi, Michael and Jason, as they all did a fantastic job. In fact I was impressed with their eagerness and creativity in narrating details. That said - I see alot of potential in it. Run well, its a ton of fun to have a truely collaborative story effort, one that is not the typical model - crafted by the DM and interacted with a little bit by the players, but one that is actually crafted pretty equally by everyone. I think I was a little disappointed with how quickly it went through as well. It is self described as a pickup game, and maybe I should have paid more attention to that, but it just felt short. It felt like we only had just enough time to "get it going", and then it was done. So it felt a little flat to me, in a way.

Anyway - looking forward to doing some more gaming with Michael, we'll see what we end up running. Maybe we can do a little d20 Modern or Feng Shui, since those seem like they might be games that would be of keen interest to him.

Next up: Dogs in the Vineyard post.

MapMyRun.com is a cool site that lets you track your exercise and such!

Here's my page:

http://www.mapmyrun.com/user/108521354121/xjermx

I'm going to keep up with it as a train for the marathon, end of this year. Woo!

http://xkcd.com/

So, if you've ever read this blog, you may have gotten the impression that I like D&D 4e.

I let myself get drawn into a mostly polite discussion about D&D4 vs 3.x

In conversations like this, no one wins.

Still, I couldn't help myself.

I think I've gotten sick of this: "Your game sucks. its just a video game/board game/whatever. its not even a role playing game, it sucks and its boring and stupid."

It has little enough to do with the game itself. Its the classic internet troll stance.

No statement of informed opinion, no effort to try to actually discuss any differences.

I know that you're not supposed to feed trolls, but I couldn't help in this case.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

We saw Hellboy II last weekend, and Batman the Dark Knight this weekend.

I give the following rating to both:

Hell yeah!!

The players assembled, and we recalled how the characters had defeated the spiders in the cave, and were very near to the surface, even able to smell the scent of fresh air. They pressed on, and left the cave, finding themselves under a dark night sky, the moon hanging low overhead, as red as blood. They made camp, glad to see the surface again.

They woke in the morning to see a plume of smoke on the horizon. Without delay, they began to make their way in that direction. They crossed miles, heading closer to the smoke, eventually coming to burned farmsteads, and soon, to a village surrounded by a trench and palisade. From outside the village, they could see the tale of destruction. The gate of the palisade was battered down, and bodies, both goblin and human, lay where they’d fallen. As they crossed the threshold into the village, they saw, before the village stronghouse, a child and a woman, hanging by their wrists from a hastily erected beam and supports. Jerry and Andrew, the cleric and thief, respectively, charged through the village toward the woman and child, not knowing if they were alive or dead. As they approached, they noticed the smell of pitch, and the dampness of the earth beneath their feet. Two goblins burst from a small building nearby, each with a ceramic throwing bomb, lit. The goblin ambush was sprung, and they launched their bombs, one striking the thief, and igniting a huge space in the center of the village, engulfing the thief and the cleric, as well as the woman and child. More goblins emerged from hiding, and the rest of the party charged into the fray.

This was a tiny bit of a glitch for me. As soon as the players noticed the woman and child, Jerry and Andrew charged right in, while the rest of the party began to check out the barns and structures close to the entrance of the village. When the trap sprang, most of the party was way back away from the fight, and so it took folks a turn or two to even get up to the action.

When the other goblins emerged, one of them was a Hexer, and put a hex on the cleric, so that he would take a goodly amount of damage if he moved. So it was a rock and a hard place. He was standing in the midst of a conflagration, and needed to exit, but faced damage if he moved. He chose to move, and he and the thief both ran from the flames, using their hands to extinguish their clothing.

Sometimes DMs get to be a little choosy about how nasty to be. This was one of those times. I briefly considered having Jerry and Andrew remain on fire, and make saves at the end of their turns, or take a standard action to eliminate the flames. But it seemed that they had their hands quite full, I think that Jerry’s cleric was already bloodied. So fortune smiled on them, and their clothes didn’t catch fire. This was also the case when I told the players that they could move through the flames, and would not take damage unless they ended their movement within the fire.

John’s warlord ran straight in and bulldozed the support for the beam from which the woman and child were hanging. They’d been engulfed in the flames, and had screamed and twisted. He hit it and we made a strength check to see if he could knock it over. He did, and it toppled over, carrying the warlord, and the woman and child out of the flames. The party all closed in on the action – they were somewhat restricted, due to the layout of the village and where the fire was. There was basically a narrow corridor for them to pass from where they were bunched up to where the action was, on one side was the raging inferno, and on the other, a fenced and muddy pigpen, which would have been difficult terrain. A couple of goblin blades met them in this narrow corridor, and they all tied up, while Krissi’s ranger dashed across the flames to fight against two goblin javelin hurlers. The fight got nastier when the Hexer threw a cloud onto the lot of them that gave the party negatives to attack, and gave concealment to the goblins, plus, a goblin skullcleaver joined the melee, laying out huge amounts of damage with his axe. John’s warlord ran after the goblin hexer, grabbed him, and dragged him into the fire – having promised the hexer that he would burn as well, even as the hexer tried to blind Jason’s fighter.

Soon the party had dropped the two goblin blades, but the skullcleaver still stood, a serious threat. The two javelin-hurlers were keeping Krissi’s ranger, and later Jerry’s cleric, tied up, with their constant moving about. They were doing a pretty good job of sticking javelins in the ranger. Devlin held the hexer in the flames, both of them taking damage, until the hexer broke free from his grasp and ran from the flames. John’s warlord chased him to the steps of the stronghouse and threw him back into the fire. Meanwhile, they’d finally taken down the skullcleaver, and soon the two javelin hurlers went down as well.

The child, who was bound to the wooden beam, was still alive but barely, and the most that they could do was to make him comfortable. He told them, through burned lips, that the goblins had taken the rest of the people of the village north as slaves. And our Raven Queen paladin sent him gently on to the great sleep.

The party rested briefly after finding a magic belt and two healing potions. Andrew, playing a thief, wanted to steal one of the healing potions. I was a little against the idea, but he is playing a thief, and I don’t want to keep telling him “No you can’t do that.” It’s a healing potion, and none of the other players seemed to be upset at him doing so, so I let him roll his thievery check, then a bluff check. He beat the rest of the party on both, so the healing potion was his. It worked out in the end anyway, since he used it on the cleric later.

They headed with all speed north. They soon found a body, that of a villager, probably too old or sick or tired to keep up. So the goblins had killed him, and left him there for the carrion feeders. Knowing that they were on the right track, the party continued. After traveling some hours, they caught up to the slaving goblins, and could see most of them ahead cresting a ridge, as the goblins sent a party of hobgoblins back to deal with their pursuers.

All of the combats ended up spaced out weirdly today. The hobgoblins came at them in a tight line formation. I started the combat spaced widely apart, since no one was surprised by the other, and could see the approach. They started, perhaps 20 or so squares away. The first two rounds was spent just closing, the hobgoblins in their tight formation, and the party charging up. This was a pretty brutal fight. The hobgoblins were all level 2 soldiers and level 1 minions. The minions dropped relatively quickly, as is their duty, while the soldiers had terribly high AC, and high to-hit rolls. This resulted in a lot of swinging wildly at the hobgoblins, while being whacked around by them. I think that it was during this fight that Jerry’s cleric, Father Kreuz, took a wicked hit and then took a bit of a dirt nap. The party responded quickly, and got him back onto his feet. Eventually, they pounded through the defenses of the hobgoblins and were victorious.

I told them that ahead they could see the remaining hobgoblins and their slaves, the slaves chained to each other at the neck. The party, desperately in need of a rest, went ahead and took a short rest to heal up and refresh their encounter powers. They then ran after their quarry. They caught up with them at the top of a hill, beside a tall cliff. Again, this combat started with the parties far away from each other. I did this so that, as the party approached, and the hobgoblins were aware of their approach, the hobgoblins could start doing Bad Things, which would just hurry the party, and reinforce the Wickedness of the hobgoblins, against the innocent and defenseless villagers. What bad guys don’t deserve a chance to kill some innocents? This combat started out a little further even than the last fight, I think. A few of the hobgoblins started pushing the villagers, all chained together, toward the cliffs edge, as another started killing villagers at the head of the chain gang. The party crossed the distance as quickly as they could, trying to get there before the whole group of villagers could be pushed over the cliff. Just as the hobgoblins were shoving them over, and one villager had already fallen, but was suspended by the chain on his neck, the party got in range and started handing out damage, killing two of the minions who were doing the shoving. I let Krissi’s ranger and Jeremy’s wizard, the two who’d gotten up there and started hitting folks, both do intimidation checks, to see if the last remaining minion was scared enough of them to turn his attention away from the pushing of the villagers. He was not, and kept up the pushing. Soon the entire party was there, and squared off against the hobgoblins and their warcaster. The warcaster used his force ability to try to push our ranger off the cliff, while our wizard helped to pull the villagers back up, and away from the cliffs edge. The party tied up with the hobgoblins, and again, it was a tough fight. These guys were soldiers as well, and so again had high AC, and high to-hit. There were fewer of them fortunately, and the party was able to overwhelm them and their warcaster.

By this time, it was 4PM, and everyone looked somewhat tired. I’d planned one additional encounter, that was somewhat optional. I addressed the group, and told them that an advanced party was coming back, having heard the fighting, and they could see a few hobgoblins and a huge orc headed their way. I asked if they wanted to meet them in combat, or try to run. I was willing to allow them to run and get away from the enemy. For the most part, the group wanted to take on the fight, but it was decided that we’d wait until next week to do so. The party is in a pretty bad way, and will not be able to do a short rest before the enemy is on them. So it promises to be a tough fight. Few or no healing surges left, daily and encounter powers expended, and already hurt.

The hobgoblins that they’d just dispatched were carrying a chest with them, which I let Andrew try to do a skill challenge to open, basically a hugely complicated lock, featuring three rotating knobs, like three combination locks. He failed, and so they’ll have to try again later to open it.

So we’ll pick up next week. Unfortunately Maddie is scheduled to work on Saturday, so we may be without our Paladin, but we’ll hope that she can be on-call.

A few times during combat this session, I felt as though it was taking ages to move around the table. Players were pacing and leaning back, and anxiously awaiting their turn. I’m going to have to pay closer attention to this aspect, and get some help from my players as well, to determine if this is something that we can help to correct.

For my part, I need to do more prep for the combats. My spreadsheet is super handy for combat, I love how simple it makes tracking initiative and monster’s hit points. It slows everything down though in the beginning of combat for me to get it set up, I think. I may set them up in advance for each combat, and just open up the combat sheet when we’re ready for it. So I don’t have to plug numbers in at the table while folks wait. The same is true for referring back to monster to-hit, damage, AC, saves, etc. I need to have a better way to work these onto my combat sheet, to minimize flipping pages in the book, etc.

Before we started play this session, I had a question for my players about treasure items. Previously I told them that they would manage handing out magic items to the party, so that it was relatively fair and everyone got stuff. When it comes to magic armor and weapons, it falls onto me to make it for specific players, or groups of players, since not everyone wants magic plate, or magic leather, or a magic scythe. I offered the idea of when they find “magic armor” to decide on the fly what kind it is, so that it can be given to whoever seems most in need of it – basically they get to decide what type of armor it is, whether plate or chain or leather, etc. The consensus though was for me to just keep tabs of what folks had, and ration it out accordingly. I’ve asked the players to give me “wish lists”, of items that they’d like. It won’t be a shopping list, but it gives me a way to have some valuable insight into what they want. I’ll also work on tracking what each player has, so that I can make sure that I’m handing things out evenly.

The party is technically level 2 now, but they’ll have to wait until next week, after they’ve taken care of this upcoming fight, and then had a chance to rest, before the benefits of the level will kick in.

So I love to gripe about email forwards. They seem to both frustrate and entertain me.

I got one about some Chris Angel zodiac thing, basically just a reheated astrology calendar.

This is in the first part of the email that was forwarded to me.

"Read your sign, and then forward it on, with your zodi ac sign and label on the subject line. This is the real Deal, try ignoring or changing it, and the first thing you'll notice is having a horrible day starting tomorrow morning - and it only gets Worse from there."

So... my question is simply this. Assuming that you bought into the truth and power of it in the first place, why would you forward something to a friend or relative that has a chance of giving them bad luck or a terrible day? It sounds like the beginning of a B-grade horror movie.

"My great great aunt sent me this ancient Egyptian puzzle cube! It says here that if I solve it, I'll get riches beyond my wildest dreams, but if I turn it the wrong way, demons from hell will come out and flay my skin off!"

I'm just saying...

Bring on the bad luck, bitches.

Sorry for the spam, feed reader people.

It also occurred to me that, when running TSOY games, I can liven up stakes by doing things like this:

If you win this conflict, the fellow does what you say, and leaves the room, shamed. If you loose the conflict, you are embarrassed and humiliated, and you leave the room, but you'll get a clue about the location of the lost mcguffin.

As an addendum, while its in my head, I think that when we meet up for another session, I'll go ahead and discuss having some stuff happening "off camera". I don't intend for the crewe to have to spend every moment with role playing going shop to shop, strong-arming every store owner for protection money, cause that's only cool about three times in a row, maybe. That stuff can all be happening off screen, and we'll just focus on it when something about it gets interesting (which it will). That leaves them more time to focus on things like the bad guys other interesting NPCs in the game, and looking for lost gem couriers, and stuff.