Weekend Review: Sep 7th & 8th

Every weekend there are new sights, sounds, and taste to consume. There are other sensory inputs that tickle my brain too, but saying there is stuff to feel sounds creepy. This is a weekly journal of my weekend endeavors. Enjoy!

The Wire
I've been waiting for most of the summer to talk about this show here. Crystal and I decided to give it a go and see if it lived up to the hype. Three seasons later and we can both confirm that it beats and exceeds the hype. We are still watching it at a regular clip (3-4 episodes a week) and we are consistently blown away by how good it is.

Saints Row IV
Earlier this year I caught up with Saints Row: The Third, a game that I should have made time for in 2011. It was an absolute blast. What started as a GTA clone turned into a goofy parody of the videogame world. Often breaking the 4th wall and throwing out reality and tired tropes in favor of fun. The fourth game in the series actually started as a DLC pack for the third and then ballooned into it's own game. It stands on the shoulders of the third (engine, mechanics and world) and then breaks all of it's rules. Your character is now super powered. Gliding through the air, sprinting at the speed of light and leaping over buildings. There is no need for a car or even guns later on, but the game manages to stay balanced and challenging even as it gives you loads of power. The humor is the main course still though. Eliciting consistent small giggles and even the occasional belly laugh. Totally worth a play through, though you may be better served playing the third installment first.

Putty & Paint
I think I've finally come to terms with the fact that I will never paint a 40k army. I like the idea of painting things to never play with them, but I've only ever painted two minis to completion (Mirado and Odarim) and they were for active tabletop characters I was playing. Seeing as I like the idea of painting and never actually paint. Putty and Paint is the perfect scratch to my itch. Professional level painters showing off their skills and wares in a better looking format than Cool Mini or Not.

Weekend Review: Apr 20th & 21st

Every weekend there are new sights, sounds, and taste to consume. There are other sensory inputs that tickle my brain too, but saying there is stuff to feel sounds creepy. This is a weekly journal of my weekend endeavors. Enjoy!

Django Unchained
Another film we didn't make time for in 2012. What a shame, because I love 99% of Tarantino's work and this one was no exception. It was violent, dealt with race in sometimes uncomfortable, but direct ways and was crammed full of humor to take the edge off. The dialogue is top tier work, Waltz and Sam Jackson execute it masterfully. The soundtrack was killer. Evoking an audible cheer of glee (from me) when a Rick Ross track came on half way through the film, that was otherwise full of great spaghetti western style tracks.

Fire Pit
We had a new patio put in last weekend. We've spent nearly every night the past week hanging out and grilling on it. This weekend we sprung for a fire pit to add to our new outdoor living area. I like a good camp fire and this is a great alternative to building an actual stone pit (which was a consideration). Plus I get to secretly burn up all the branches that I end up piling up over the course of a year. Like a prisoner dumping dirt in the yard. Plus, burning stuff is totally cool.

D&D Podcast: Mines of Madness
Post Eberron game night, I haven't quite been feeling table top gaming. Nothing has gotten me excited to do it again this year or at least go through the preparation time. I needed a muse and got one this weekend. Like the Penny Arcade episodes of the past I wanted to grab some friends, dice and a table and throw down right then and there. The Mines of Madness is an adventure written by Chris Perkins and Scott Kurtz for this years PAX East. The podcast is Kurtz and friends playing through the adventure and it is pretty great.

How I DM: Feb 2013 - Eberron Ed.

As mentioned earlier this week, I ran a game last Friday night for six friends. The D&D Next play test was the rule set of choice, but we would have had fun no matter what. We play at most once a month and we don't always run campaigns with a through line. Friday I decided I would kick off a brand new campaign though. A fun exercise, but a lot more leg work than continuing an ongoing campaign or running a one shot. World building is probably the hardest part, but couple that with encounter building, group dynamics, character backgrounds and it takes a lot of work to get a new campaign off the ground.

Eberron Next
Setting as it turns out is hard to convey. The burden of world building is a heavy one, so relying on a campaign setting is a nice short cut. Previously I ran a Dark Sun campaign that mostly felt Dark Sun-ish, but also occasionally presented problems. This time around I decided to try out Eberron. The linchpin behind it being a fantasy world that has gained technology through magic. That means airships powered by ancient elementals and automatons birthed from eldritch machines. Sounds great, but how do you fit it all in one night and not make the story feel cramped? I don't know that I did a great job or that any campaign setting can ever do a great job. Maybe it is me.

In any case I started out the night with a letter for each player on parchment and sealed with a wax skull (below). Each one bought the players together in the cloud city of Sharn. From their they escaped the city on an airship as it was destroyed by a vortex in the sky. Pirates attacked and blew up their elemental. The ship crashed in a jungle and they dungeon crawled their way to midnight.

 3D Terrain
For Friday night I took a decent portion of my prep time to put together 3D terrain. I have openly loved the idea of war gaming for almost a decade now, but hated it in practice. I like painting minis and would build a big permanent battlefield covered in flock in my sun room, but I don't want to regularly play a war game. So when I get a chance to work on terrain for my campaigns I jump at it. I work quick and sloppy, knowing that I will use it once and never again. The steps are as follows, I wish I had taken pictures along the way:

1. Materials: Purchase polystyrene insulated sheathing from a local hardware store. It is cheap and comes in lots of sizes and thicknesses. I bought a 4' x 8' sheet a year ago and still have plenty of it.
2. Cut and prep: I use a mix of tools for this work. A box cutter and x-acto knife for the basic shape, occasionally a medium sized bumpy stone to add texture and the back of a pen to slightly engrave a grid once I layout 1" dashes with a long ruler.
3. Prime: I have used a big brush and cheap acrylic paint in the past to do a quick base coat. I used a spray acrylic this time and in light passes it was fine. When I went hard in the paint though it started to melt the polystyrene. Which was not the intended result.
4. Dry brush and/or flock: I have done both, but dry brushing is easier/faster and gets great results. It makes the engraved grid stand out so the terrain does not impede the mechanical nature of combat resolution. Flocking does impede things a bit, but looks way cooler.

How I DM: Next Ed.

Friday night I ran my second play test of D&D Next. Since May of last year I have been batting around the idea of it in my head though. With very little D&D history to fall back on, I'm beholden to what I know about fourth edition (4E). It was the first system I learned, loved and made my own. It was and is a great system. It was marked by slow combat and weighed down by complexity  for complexities sake post the heroic tier though (levels 11-30).

My Dark Sun campaign probably suffered from a self imposed rapid progression. I adopted a level per game night rule instead of doling out XP. It was a mess of modifiers and option paralysis by the time they got to level 14. Pace of progression was something I could have managed better. The result at the table would be the same either way. Hour long encounters when we only had five hours a month to play.

Next

What I want out of Next is a simplified 4E rule set, something that Essentials barely scratched the surface of. What Next offers, right now, is pretty close to hitting that on the nose. It feels a lot like the former system, but without the stat inflation and less to tack on to the character sheet at every tier. There are of course balance issues. Friday night some at the table questioned the moderate difficulty check being set at 15 for all characters. Or level 1 spells that had no chance of hitting level 1 monsters (see: Sleep). Issues like these are just math problems though. It is after all a play test, you can just add and subtract your way to balance through trial and error. Right?

There are annoyances that I would like to see permanently dealt. For instance speed and range being communicated in feet. It is easy enough to do the math of 5 feet = 1 square on the grid, but it is annoying as well. When this reaches into to pre-made modules though it is down right frustrating. Over the summer I looked at a map that came with the play test, where 1 grid square = 10 feet. Which meant each square was a 2 x 2 matrix of 5 foot squares. It was a pain in the ass to transcribe to my actual grid. I'd think the reverse, communicating in grid squares, would be easy enough for "map of the mind" folks. While making the grid loving DM (me) a lot happier.

Finally the known unknowns are still unknown, in practice. By that confusing sentence, I mean the modular approach they are taking to satisfy "everyone". There will be a core rule set that seems to be represented by the current play test. Then there will be all kinds of additional rules to allow DMs to play the way they want. They have done a good job of communicating examples of those rule sets, but we have not seen them in the play test yet. Some will be easy enough to add and maintain balance and others will be add at your own risk. You could turn your game ass over teakettle if mixed without forethought. How these will play out as "official" options versus what a DM might have just home brewed any way is still unclear.

Next of Next
If they get the rules right. I am hoping and assuming they will. What I want next for Next is the modernization of the supporting resources. My players and I relied heavily on the web based character builder and compendium in 4E. The monster and encounter builder, where less than good though. What was missing from all the tools was proper mobile support. I want it all available on my iPad. Interactive character sheets, encounter tools and even the books. If they have to sell a physical book and pair it with an interactive digital download, for a few bucks more, than so be it. On Friday night every player that sat down at the table owned a smart phone, tablet or both. There were workarounds and third party tools last time, but nothing that add up to a great experience. I want it better this time.

Weekend Review: Feb 23rd & 24th

Every weekend there are new sights, sounds, and taste to consume. There are other sensory inputs that tickle my brain too, but saying there is stuff to feel sounds creepy. This is a weekly journal of my weekend endeavors. Enjoy!

The Cabin In The Woods
Horror movies are not my jam. Part of the draw for Cabin in the Woods though, was the buzz created around the film at it's release. Not the normal horror crowd. There were lots of people talking about how good the film was and why it was worth not spoiling he premise/reveal for yourself. Almost two years later I was still in he dark oddly enough. The film plays in the realm of classic horror tropes and then turns them on their head. Saying any more might ruin it. Seek it out and enjoy.

Crysis 2
Far Cry 3 was the last game I really bit my teeth into and that was back in early January. Some how I got it in my head that the folks that spawned the Far Cry series were worth revisiting. Crytek made the first Far Cry game, a technical marvel at the time and then moved on to make Crysis. Crysis at the time was too much game for any PC of it's era to run it at max settings. If you could run it at any level though it was beautiful.The story had very little substance though and the mechanics where akin to turning on a cheat mode. Crysis 2 took that boring ball and ran with it.

D&D Next
Friday night I played DM for 6 of my friends. After not sitting behind the screen since July of last year I felt rusty the whole night. I prepped too much again and by the time I was through the whole thing felt a bit too on the rails. Letting go and not over preparing has been the bane of my DM experience. I think I will eventually get there, but taking off what was pretty much a whole year didn't help. All that said and I still had fun. We rolled dice, drank beer and made dick jokes till midnight. Expect a bonus post later this week.

Weekend Review: Jan 12th & 13th

Every weekend there are new sights, sounds, and taste to consume. There are other sensory inputs that tickle my brain too, but saying there is stuff to feel sounds creepy. This is a weekly journal of my weekend endeavors. Enjoy!

Star Wars #1
Continuing my 2012 man crush on Brian Wood, I read his new Star Wars book over the weekend. I have had little success in the past with Star Wars books or comics (save a few exceptions), but this seems to be another exception. Wood's Star Wars takes place in the three years between episode IV and V though and it is actually good. Leia and Luke are out hunting for a new rebel base and the emperor is shouting at Vader. All on the back drop of art that looks great and not like it was overly referenced from the movies.

Hundreds (cont.)
Back in October I posted about a flash game that would eventually become an iOS game. That thing happened this week and it grew from it's core concept to something even better. New mechanics are slowly doled out every few levels and then iterated on in cool ways. It is more puzzle than twitch timing. Maybe not worth the $4.99 price tag, but I got it on sale for $2.99. What the fuck am I saying, that is the price of a cup of coffee, just get it already. Then again, is it one cup of coffee or five $0.99 apps? Apple you have both fucked and grown the gaming market place with your bargain basement pricing. I'm so confused!

Eberron
I'm mid-swing on a bunch of my 13 in 13 activities already. Running in January when it is almost 70° out is easy peasy, but scheduling table top time can be the hardest part of the hobby. So I just did it. In late February I am hosting a D&D Next game for 6 players in the Eberron campaign setting. There is no Eberron  Next yet, but I am mostly using it for flavor and home-brewing 4e Eberron when I have to. It will be all warforged and airships come the end of next month. Planning it out has got me pumped to roll dice.

13 in 13

Friend of this blog and friend of me, Mike put a bug in my ear last week about his goal of thirteen hobbies in 2013. A noble, if not dangerous endeavor. Considering my life is already stupid full of hobbies I don't have enough time and money to keep up with. So add thirteen new ones to the mix you say. Sure, what could go wrong. Note: most of these aren't new, that would just be crazy!

1. Running
I started back up with running in 2011 and full on committed to it in 2012, but I plan to take it even further in 2013. I am already signed up for more events and more miles than last year and will have to commit even more time to training for those. My gear situation is in a better space and I should have more time to get out and pound the pavement as Ward gets older. Richmond half here I come!

2. Drawing
I've drawn more in the past year at the request of my three year old than I have in the past ten years. I used to always have a pad of paper close at hand. From grade school through sometime in the middle of college I logged thousands of hours doodling. Then I stopped, almost cold turkey. I think it is healthy for me to get stretch my creativity muscles. It is why I write here and why I will try to start up drawing again this year.

3. Table Top Gaming
Another thing I already do, man this is straight up cheating. I barely rolled any dice in 2012 though. I wrapped up my last campaign in January and went dark till a single game of D&D Next that I hosted in the summer. There were a handful of games at Chuck's house too, but I have been missing my roll as DM all year. 2013 should see the return of my DM cape. Though I have no clue under what system and with what group of regulars.

4. Mountain Biking
I spent a large portion of the early aughts on a mountain bike. Either as a weekend warrior on local single track or traveling a regular amateur racing circuit. It is what started my adult love affair with cycling. I already have a regular road group every Sunday, but in 2012 we dipped our toes into trail riding. I only got out for three rides, but it sparked that flame again. In 2013 I need a working bike, but I plan to get out more frequently.

5. Stretching
The only time I stretch regularly is when I get hurt. Pull something in my back, stretch till it is better. Fuck up my knee playing basketball, stay off it and stretch till I can go again. I know stretching and strength training regularly would probably help prevent these sort of injuries in the first place or at least make them not as bad, but I never make time for it. 2013 is the year of the loose hamstring!

6. Gundam
In the back half of 20 doz I finally scratched my Lego itch with Gundam. I want more of that this year, maybe a model a quarter? Making for a collection of five total at the end of the year. I could totally get down with that.

7. Data
Capturing data for my 2012 annual report was done with very little of the year left. I was beholden to what services I use that capture data for me (Steam) or those that I log as a matter of course anyway (GoodReads and DailyMile). In 2013 I plan to capture more and better data. The Fitbit was my first stab at that and already was a failure. I'm looking at Daytum right now and a few other options to make this goal as pleasant as possible. There is always Excel.

8. Camping
Crystal and I used to camp. Then we had kid number one and took a hiatus  Just when we were getting into the sweet spot of camping with him we had another one. It turned out last year that I camped for three days, thanks to Cycle NC, but our family did not make it out. This year it might be a segmented portion of our family out and camping, but we will set a few tents up either way.

9. Hiking
Unlike camping we can get out and hike with or without the overnight stay. There are plenty of places to go locally and even more when you expand the radius to within a hours drive. It is great family exercise and even more so for me when I throw Ward on my back.

10. Fish
When I told Crystal about this one she thought I meant fishing and turned up her noise like I was describing my last trip to the restroom. I quickly corrected that I meant cooking fish. While I will never claim to have mastered the other core proteins (chicken, beef, pork), I certainly have a firm enough handle on them. Fish however escapes me. I want to grill it, smoke it and bake it in 2013.

11. Bike Maintenance
Rolling in from a long bike ride and shoving my bike into our sun room for another week has become a bad habit for going on two years. The most love my bike gets these days is a few gasp of air in the tires 15 minutes before I am supposed to ride. I'd like to start a regiment of regular cleaning and care on my road bike and full on repair for my ageing mountain bike.

12. Brunch
Many of these activities require that my lovely bride either participate (see: Hiking) or in many cases facilitate my time away from the family (See: Running). So this one is for her as much as it is for me. When we don't have a 1-3 month old in the house we occasionally are gifted a date night by from our parents. Post date night we occasionally get brunch and it is fucking great. I don't know how many date nights we will see in 2013, but when we do we will brunch. And when we don't I will make it!

13. Music Exploration
I like raps. Besides not listening to rap because my children are in the car (I introduced the eldest to Beastie Boys this Fall) I exclusively listened to rap in 2012. That is a bit limiting, I guess. I don't exclusively watch shows about spaceships or only read comics about super heroes, so why just rap? In an effort to expand my cultural horizon I'll reach out this year and sample what the music world has to offer.

Weekend Review: Nov 24th & 25th

Every weekend there are new sights, sounds, and taste to consume. There are other sensory inputs that tickle my brain too, but saying there is stuff to feel sounds creepy. This is a weekly journal of my weekend endeavors. Enjoy!

Cthulhu
Chuck's birthday game night is becoming a bit of a tradition now that we have rolled dice for two years running. This year he picked Cthulhu in a modern setting. Two drug enforcement task force agents (Wayne and I) set against a synthetic drug slowly eating away at Chicago. There was only three of us at the table, but we had guest NPCs throughout the night. Two on an iPad in the center of the table via FaceTime and another answering questions as an informant via text message. It was a really fun way to get folks who could not attend in person involved. The game ended with the end of the world, as any good Cthulhu game should, but the real take away was more remote players at the table is a good thing.

Sweet Tooth
A recent lunch time conversation brought me to the conclusion that I value good writing and story over art. Art might get me in the door, but it soon becomes secondary to a good yarn. In the case of Sweet Tooth, I had heard the swell of praise from the internet, but had been put off by the art. Long weekends tend to exhaust media stock piles though. So Sunday I picked it up and devoured volume one and two. The story is fantastic, building interesting characters right out the gate and growing them at a quick pace. The setting and premise help to. A deadly virus has left the world in shambles and all children born post virus are animal hybrids (read: mutants). It is solid stuff.

Gingerbread Stout
What beer is worth waiting in line for on a chilly Wednesday afternoon? Hardywood Park's Gingerbread Stout. The right mix of locally grown ingredients and know how produce not just the finest beer in Richmond for my money, but also a bronze at the 2012 World Beer Cup. It is a sweet beer, but more of subtle taste of honey and ginger than the saccharin finish I hate about some sweet beers. I picked up a four pack of twenty twos Wednesday after 30 minute wait in line and they are gone already.

Micro Miners
I need more games like Kirby: Canvas Curse in my life. Not that Micro Miners provides that exact style of game play, but it sure does scratch a similar itch. The mechanic is simple. Drawing with your finger (or stylus) on a screen to manipulate an environment. Micro Miners presents lemmings style creatures in a vertically scrolling mine. You draw their path and they follow devouring any deposit of gold, silver or coal they come across. It is a simple concept, but gets difficult quickly as new miners are introduced and you are multitasking your way through the earth.

Weekend Review: August 25th & 26th

Every weekend there are new sights, sounds, and taste to consume. There are other sensory inputs that tickle my brain too, but saying there is stuff to feel sounds creepy. This is a journal of my weekend endeavors. Enjoy! This weeks post turned into a walk down memory lane.



Liknuts
Tha Alkaholiks were somewhere down the chain of my Wu Tang phase in high school. I bit hard on their sound and my first car probably has an imprint of the CD art in it. Liknuts is the combination of The Liks and The Beatnuts. Another group I spun a lot in my youth. Tash and Juju kill it on the track above. I hope to see more of this collaboration in the future. P.S. Though their website looks like a late 90's hot mess.

Kingdom Rush
Between Iron Brigade and Kingdom Rush I have been getting my recommended daily allowance of  tower defense games. It is the best one I have played on iOS so far and looks the best doing what it does too. I beat it this past week and this weekend I jumped into the additional challenge modes. Which go quick, but are brutal.


10000000
Another app that got a fair portion of my weekend. 10m is a match three paired with an Atari-esqe dungeon crawler. The upper half of the screen is a side scrolling adventurer, who encounters monsters, looked doors and chest. The lower half is a match three, where the tiles represent the solutions the adventurer needs to advance. Swords and magic wands for monsters and keys for everything else. You collect resources along the way too. Which you use to upgrade (more time, stronger weapons, perks, etc). Really sinking my teeth into this one.


Day of Defeat: Source
Day of Defeat was a mod for the first Half Life back in 2000, I played it on a 56k modem in college, if that helps date it. I played a lot of it. It was the first game I played competitively. When it became an official game thanks to Valve, I kept playing it. When it was re-imagined on the source engine I transitioned to it and kept competing. DoD in all it's forms is probably in my top 3 games played (hours)of all time. Now it has been ages since I played it though. Over the weekend I installed it (source version) and went back. The nostalgia came rushing on. It still looks great, plays great and is a lot of fun.

Magic
Back in middle school I read a lot of comics and at some point I got into collecting comic cards. Mostly for the the art, they weren't useful for anything beyond that anyway. In 7th grade when I first heard about Magic the Gathering, I thought cool, cards, art and game. I promptly bought a long box full of cards from a kid on the bus. A week later I realized none of my friends wanted to play it and I sold it back. Not until this past Friday did I play again.

One of our tabletop friends is moving away from Richmond and a few of the guys were getting together to have one last game night. The problem, for me, was that it was going to be all Magic. I own no cards and did not want to buy any. Thankfully the host, Chuck, hooked me up with a deck. After two learning rounds we jumped into a free for all game format. It was a lot of fun and by the end of the night I at least understood what my deck was good at and what I might do to make it better. I don't plan to run out and buy a million cards anytime soon, but I'd definitely play again.

Dark is the Sun - August Ed.

It has been many a moon since my game group visited the desolate waste of Athas. We rolled our dice against the old Gods in June and took off the month of July. So a return to our Dark Sun game was in order this past weekend. Not having played in so long I sent a quick refresher to the group the week before and tried to give my best summary before we got started.

Back in May the group was seeking out the fragments of ancient artifact (Crown of Dust), but had the two pieces they had acquired so far stolen from them. The Templar that pick pocked the artifacts serves a powerful sorcerer king who means to get even more powerful once he controls the crown. Now it is up to the group to stop him. They sought allies in that fight in May and thought they were going to be on the hunt for more on Saturday.

They thought wrong. I added a sixth player (Wayne) to the table for Cthulhu in June with the intention of him staying at the table once I took the DM reigns back. Enter Alek, rogue, explorer and grave robber treasure hunter. I knew it would not be a natural fit to shoehorn him into the faction politics from the last game. So I sought a more natural introduction.

An article by Robert Schwalb that was a supplement to the world of Dark Sun seemed like a perfect fit. Elaadrich, a city referenced on the map of Athas, but never mentioned in the book. Schwalb did a fantastic job of describing a mad king who shuttered his city 800 years ago and only recently opened it's doors. I loved the concept, but for my re-purposing it didn't need to be alive. So I added a plague to the timeline that killed or mutated most of the citizens. Those that were left alive were either docile, but intelligent creatures or feral beast.

After reading various articles on 3D terrain at Roving Band of Misfits last month, I tried my hand at it for Saturday night. The first being a cliff side ambush encounter on the way to the lost city (see the pic above). The second was a confrontation with the mad sorcerer king. Who took the party to be his thieving templars, come back for more of his power. The terrain was a hit and the encounters that took place on them were pretty fun too.

Hits: Getting back to 4E, adding a 6th player, 3D terrain, peach crumble bars

Misses: Forgetting creature powers, encounters that were too safe

The rest is in the pictures...

Dice Cast

A man's connection to his dice, after any significant time at the game table, is strong. I know my dice like the back of my hand, but can also appreciate the tiny polyhedrons as a medium for art. Kim Hyun has created beautiful art and also some inspiration for a super meta D&D monster.

[Via: Colossal]

Cthulhu Returns - June Ed.

Following our last Dark Sun game in May I felt a break was in order. My group had been rolling hard on 4e for a year straight. Two of them were brand new to table top gaming and 4e was all they had ever known. It was time for something different. So I asked my GM sensei to step in for a night and run Cthulhu for us. He was kind enough to accept and I spent the next month hyping up the game system to the group.

I loved the last two times I played Call of Cthulhu and have been wanting to go back to it ever since. It is heavy on story and role playing and light on mechanics. Where we all appreciate 5-6 page character sheets and loads of technical rules in 4e it is nice to take a break. One page and a character background given out by the GM means you can really dig in to owning your characters motivations.

I won't go into the details, but our group was a 1920's Boston based gang sent to the Pennsylvania Appalachians to broker a deal for cheap moonshine. What ensued was a journey into madness. Jumping in and out of each other nightmares. Confronting a village bent on sacrificing us to an ancient evil and an escape by the skin of our teeth. It was a kicking good time. Next month we will be back to Dark Sun, but this breather is just what everyone needed. It also worked to inspire me as a GM again. Doubling down on my planning to run the best game I can in July.

Dark is the Sun - May Ed.

Long stretches between games can mean ample time to plan and prepare. That or time to procrastinate and rush through planning in the week before game night. I thought I was doing the former this month and it turned out to be the latter.

The story so far has been a hunt around Athas for an artifact of great power "the Crown of Dust". Why the party was looking for it originally was not super clear. Unpaid debts and missing family members tied to the ancient item was all that was driving them. So I added some context. Now a Sorcerer King wants it to destroy their home city with the Crown. So it is either gather the fragments before him or kill him before he finds and assembles it. The group has been set on the path to kill him and now need allies to do so.

Last Minute Changes
I had this game planned since the last time we played. Not on paper mind you, but it was kicking around in my noodle for nearly two months. When I finally got it on paper last week I wasn't happy with it though. So I went into edit mode to try and take it off the rails. By Wednesday I still wasn't happy. So I decided two days before we played, that I would blow out the ending from one possible outcome to three.

All with their own map, monsters and plot points. I got it done, but after the last dice was rolled Friday night I didn't feel like I had done it well. The answer could be not procrastinating, but it could also be spending more time on my encounters. Thankfully the two encounters on deck are already done. Now I can take the next month to sharpen them to a fine point.

Motivation
Being heroes who want to do heroic things isn't always enough. Maybe it should be. Sometimes I can't get a read on what motivates the party though. It could be me doing a poor job of setting up plot hooks for them. This isn't specific to one player or one event, but it is something I need to do a better job of in general. Part of me wants to just say the hell with it and wait for the next campaign to get the hooks right, but I know I can salvage this one. Overall things are going well, it just needs some tweaking.

Friday Games
Ugh, the bane of our group so far has been Friday night games. We learned a while ago not to do them. Everyone has worked a full week and comes in tired and edgy. With families, friends and careers it can be tough to be free on a Saturday though. It can't be helped sometimes. The answer could be postponing to the next free Saturday or planning lighter for these off months. Neither option sounds great.

The rest is in the pictures...

Relics of the Dawn - April Ed.

As a follow up to our epic game night in February, we gathered around the table again in April to throw dice once again. It  ended up being the first full table we have ever had in a year plus of playing together. Five plus a DM had us shoulder to shoulder, but having loads of fun. The beer, soda, wings and munchies flowed like wine and we got out of the night without a single death. R.I.P. Alin.

Having crossed the astral sea last game, we picked up our story on the coast of an unknown continent. We were hoping to find the nearest kingdom full of  armed allies, but were met by peaceful nomads and an implacable 3,000 year winter instead. The assumption being we would need to pass it to get to the allies we sought. Sounds easy enough right? Throw in a 75 year wendigo mating season and it's a walk in the park.

The first encounter of the night was a wendigo ambush. If they were hungry or seeking potential mates we will never know. We made fairly quick work of them and left for fear of running across more. Afterward our trackers (Kevin and Jason) went snow crazy and then got lost with some skillful dice rolls (1s). Thankfully the rest of the party was willing to bail them out.

Our journey landed us outside of a tower in the middle of the unending snow storm. Seeking a relic that might give us the power to stop the Corpse God and hoping to end the winter we ventured inside. The tower turned out to be that of the elf God of Torture. A pleasant fellow I'm sure. He kept an undead beholder well feed until we chopped it from stalk to stalk. We perused his various torture devices, wondered aloud what a cinnamon stick was (don't look that up) and made our way to his main chamber.

After passing through the doorway we found ourselves trapped with a lich who wanted to chit-chat. We were not willing to trade him his freedom for the end of the winter, so negotiations ended with arrows and steel. Mid-battle we became aware of three figures trapped in a ring of fire in the room. The lich had asked us for a drop of Krumm's (Mike) blood to put in the ring during our conversation. As we were not budging on that his rat assassin (or ratsassin) started to trying to take our blood from us. Jump cut to us crushing the lich and his minions and pushing the ratsassin into the fire.

Lich vanquished, Krumm willingly gave his blood to the fire and was transported into a battle between gods that had been going on for 5,000 years. He killed a god (Tarhan Atan) and ended the winter in one blow. We wrapped up the evening at 3am and I drove home half asleep, but with a grin from ear to ear. It was for sure a top 5 game night and shared with good friends.

Mirado went through another transformation before Saturday. He is now a hybrid ranger cleric. It worked really well and was fun to boot, but I'll cover it in more detail later this week.

The rest is in the pictures...

PAX East 2011: Day One

Bright and early Friday morning we awoke to make what is now an annualized trip to PAX. The flight out of Richmond was uneventful, save a bit of delayed landing due to a storm front moving into Boston. It was that very same storm that pushed our day one plans indoors. Friday was supposed to be our bean town tour, but because of the rain we ended up at PAX a day early.

Before we made it to nerd Mecca though, we grabbed a bite at Caffe Nuovo for breakfast. I had the seafood omelette (yum) and Crystal had waffles with fresh fruit (burnt). Stomachs full we trudged through the rain to our hotel. It was nice, but it was not Mandarin Oriental nice. It was about a fourth of the cost though, so it all worked out. We dropped off our bags, were back down stairs and on the T to the Boston Convention Center in no time. A venue that felt double or even triple the size of last years spot.

The expo floor reflected that increased size. I immediately felt lost in a sea of blinking lights and nerd stink. There was so much to see and do that we ended up taking a break after seeing half of it to play some board games. We picked up Gloom and it only took us about hour to learn and play it. It's a card game that is one part strategy and two parts dark humor story telling. It is something I'd definitely consider buying in the near future.

Back in the expo hall it was on to touring the rest of the games on offer. We still want a Geek Chic table in our dinning room, but will have to wait till we get a new house. Those things are massive and wicked cool. The lines to play Portal 2 and Star Wars: The Old Republic were epically long, but I wish I could have tried them. Red Faction looks like it will capture everything I loved about the last game in the series minus a sledge hammer. Machine Gun Jetpack made me want an iPad more than the game itself, but it seems cool in it's own right too.

What can best be described as life sized D&D was a highlight of the show floor for us. A party of six, picked characters in the form of laminated simplified character sheets on lanyards. Crystal was a Warlock and took the Cleric. Each party member had two powers to give you an idea of how simple we are talking. We faced off against 6ft tall cardboard cut out monsters (Strahd). Rolling basketball sized rubber dice to see if we would hit. I think every group conquered the encounter, but ours did so with style. I got the killing blow from a flank.

Board game and expo hall'ed out we grabbed some dinner. Pizza and mountain dew for +5 nerd points and then went to sit in line for the Joystiq Podcast. Last year Crystal had never heard the boys from Joystiq, but walked away really enjoying the mix of humor and game talk. This year was more of the same with Bob Ball cruising the crowd in a dinosaur costume the whole evening before revealing himself (giggle) to read an email.

After Joystiq let out we rushed over to the line for the Giant Bombcast. Crystal enjoyed this panel less and ended up playing Sudoku for most of it. I explained after the fact that Giant Bomb is my go to voice for video game opinions. That their podcast is usually funny too, but it can go long and get really into game talk. After the Bombcast panel we hitched a taxi ride back to the hotel. Hitting the bed hard for some much needed sleep.

Up Next: Boston/PAX Day 2, Sam Adams and the trip we didn't take the the Boston Aquarium

Dark is the Sun - March Ed.

The third evening of our Dark Sun campaign kicked off this past Saturday night. We ate subs as a substitute to "crappy" pizza. We had four iPhones at the table and not one of them snapped a picture. The story of Fire Watch plodded forward.

Motivation
Back in October of 2010 I wrote, in the wrap up of my first D&D campaign, that I wanted to "Establish my villain sooner". I thought I was on the road to doing that with this game, but after Saturday I don't know that I am. I have an NPC the players hate, which I as a DM love. I have a few other evil NPCs that are plotting and scheming, but have not made their presence felt enough yet. Without an imminent threat I find my players lacking the get up and go I want from them. This is something I plan to rectify in the coming game nights.

Four Encounters Too Many
Our game nights usually consist of 4-5 hours of actual play. It can seem long, but considering we only play once a month it is warranted. Knowing this and knowing that encounters, no matter how you shorten them, take a hour or more, it is silly to plan more than three. Apparently I needed that lesson repeated for me as I planned to run four on Saturday. We never got to the fourth encounter, I glossed over it and spent the rest of the evening wrapping up the story elements I wanted to convey. Lesson learned...maybe.

Fatigue
My players and I all seemed to be yawning and glass eyed by the end of Saturday night. Blame too much beer, sickness, lack of sleep or any number of reasons. The result was a general feeling that the game was dragging. Something that really bugged me as I headed to bed post midnight. I awoke feeling sick and even more bummed by the prior nights game. Emails from my players with a positive outlook on the night and my own chance to reflect have since changed that bummed feeling. Now I just want to make the next night even better.

Relics of the Dawn - February Ed.

We have been trying to string together a night to relaunch Chuck's 4e campaign for far too long. The last time we played was December and the last time we played 4e was this summer. For the second act of his campaign we all agreed that we wanted the whole group to play. That didn't turn out to be the case at the last minute, but we still had a good time at the table.

The passage of time saw us jump from level 9 where we left off this summer to level 11. Picking paragon paths is a great way to kick off the return of a campaign. For my cleric (Mirado) I went with "miracle worker", a path aptly named for the miracles we would need to make it though the night. When you show up and your DM is wearing a "TPK All The Way" shirt, you know you are in for a world of hurt.

Our story picked back up with the party braving the astral sea to seek aid for our home continent's immanent demise. The first encounter we faced featured a seemingly abandoned boat full of Githyanki. They sprung their trap, but we quickly dispatched most of them before their captain surrendered. Finding him to be untrustworthy and at the urging of a prisoner he had taken we kicked him off of his boat and set sail again.

The big set piece of the night was when a ship full of demons caught and attacked our ship. With a seemingly unending supply of flying nasties we determined pretty quickly that our only chance of surviving was to escape. That was made very difficult when said demon ship launched a chained claw that attached itself to our mast. Locked to our enemy we did our best to fend of waves of demons as Alin (Wayne) boarded their ship to break us free.

The result was the loss of our entire crew (all minions), Alin succeeding in breaking us free and breaking the demon ship in half at the same time. Unfortunately for all his heroic efforts Alin didn't make it back to our ship before the other went down. It was not a TPK, but losing a member of our party was sad all the same. As Wayne mentioned shortly after though, "If losing a character at Chuck's table meant I had to leave, I would been playing with another group long ago".  Fun times all around and we are looking forward to the next one for sure.

The rest is in the pictures...

Dark is the Sun - February Ed.

Round two of our Dark Sun campaign went off without a hitch earlier this month. Unfortunately it did so with one chair empty. Mike could not make it and for the first time since I started running a game for family and friends I played without a player. Outside of figuring out the logistics of a missing Spitfire though the game went great though.

Quiting WoW really allowed me to pour a ton of time into this one. It was mostly a dungeon crawl, but I managed to introduce enough real choice and role playing to not make the whole night feel like one big dice role. I had fun running it and seeing my players wonder aloud if they were breaking my planning. I planned enough to account for most of their actions and even threw out whole encounters if need be.

Players as NPCs
I made the mistake of letting my players dictate the actions of an absent character in this past game. I was not prepared for it in that I did not have crunch for him and did not want to make choices that might effect his story. In the future when I have an empty chair that character is either out of the picture completely or I will let another player run them. I want no hand in it.

Off the Rails
Playing off the rail either requires more planning or the ability to improvise like a pro. As I am still wet behind the ears I am doing it through planning. Not getting attached to my encounters or a completely fixed story is tough, but ultimately makes for a better game. You can't plan for everything though, so I am flexing my improve muscles more and more often. I like where this is all going.

Skill Challenge Free
After stewing over skill challenges in my mind and on the web for a week I decided to bench them for the February game night. I made good use of skills in role play and in combat, but I think I am over official skill challenges. Even skill use without story or combat implication is out. My game and players will be better for it.

How I DM: Skill Challenged

How I DM, is a series of articles that reflect back on my time as a dungeon master over the past year plus. I am currently DMing a Dark Sun 4e campaign for a group of friends and family. Today's article will focus on my use and experience with skill challenges.

I mentioned in the recap of my first Dark Sun game night that I was frustrated with the way skill challenges are presented by WotC. As a DM, who is still learning the ropes, I shied away from using them at first. I wasn't quiet clear on how they would fit into the story. My first attempt at using them was four or five game nights into the Bloodlines of Fate campaign I ran this past summer and fall.

Assuming that the company that puts out the game I run for my players knows what is fun. I ran it word for word like they write it. The group needed to get behind a tavern to stop a weapons deal a cult was brokering. So I presented them with a pass/fail criteria like every module I have seen come out of Dungeon magazine. Something to the effect of "you need to make six success rolls before three failures and here are the skills you can use to do that: 2x Stealth, 2x Bluff, etc...". My players were confused. I ended up explaining it two more times before they ever rolled a dice.

It didn't add to the story and felt shoe horned into the evenings other events. Afterward I determined that I must have been doing something wrong. So for the game this past Saturday I took the the approach of wrapping it in story. I started by letting my players know they had 3 days of rations each and that traveling to their destination would take 3 days. Each day I presented a scenario that was coupled with a skill check.

On the first day of your journey you all come across a fork in the path. One way leads into a valley and the other over a craggy slat flat. Go ahead and roll a nature check to determine what you might know about these two terrain types.

If they passed, they add no time to their trip. If they failed they would add a day to the trip and increase the chances of sickness or death by travelling without supplies. I allowed both trained and untrained rolls, but noted that any untrained failures would cancel out successes. It worked fine I guess, but still felt like it was not a part of the game or story. After that night I think I have finally determined where they fit and don't fit at my table.

During Combat
Using multiple skill checks or challenges during combat can build drama, risk and role play into an otherwise boring encounter. The best experience I have had with it are traps that round after round will damage the players until disabled. An arcane based trap that requires 3-4 successful skill checks before it is disabled forces a player to choose between killing creatures or deactivating a constant source of damage.  Better yet a trap that works like an alarm system. Allow it to go off long enough and it will bring more enemies to the fray.

During Role Play
This is how I always have understood skill checks. Want to lie to a town guard, skill check. Want information from the town drunk who isn't cooperating, skill check. It plays out naturally on it's on and usually falls to me to be reactive to player decisions. On occasion I have a few planned out ahead of time. E.g. A NPC will lie to the players and not reveal his/her true intentions unless they call him on it. If it takes away from the story or leaves out a crucial piece of information I might lead them to it. They usually are quick enough to ask on their own. "Can I roll insight to see if he is telling the truth".

Crammed Between
The formality of either announcing "this is a skill challenge" or putting book ends on the mechanic by changing tone is what makes them feel out of place. To my mind all of the fun that a formal skill challenge should offer is already covered by skill checks in combat and role play. So why have them at all? The more I think about their inclusion into 4e, the more I think they were added as a way to make sure skills got used. Not to justify the inclusions of skills, but as an easier way to present skill use to first time dungeon masters. It's a poor substitute for just integrating it into regular play.

Dark is the Sun - January Ed.

So way back in August I decided that I would sunset my 4e home brew game and start up a Dark Sun one. Planning complete, we rolled the first dice of the campaign Saturday (1/8/11) evening. I started my players off with almost an hours worth of role playing before they ever stepped into combat. Which I delegated mostly to the Marauders of the Dune Sea module. In total they got through bunches of role playing and two bigger encounters for the night. All in it was a success.

Story vs. Combat
I have limited time to prepare as a DM and I usually prefer to spend that time building cool encounters and creatures. After a gajillion hours worth of video games I have a good idea of what makes an encounter or mechanic fun and challenging. I have a lot less experience as a storyteller. Using the canned module gave me way more time to focus on my plot and it panned out. I spent at least two weeks before Saturday helping my players work on their back stories and design hooks that would hopefully be meaningful to them. Sure I tweaked the encounters to make them more interesting, but most of my time was spent telling a tale.

Committing to a First Person Voice
I have been building the courage to commit to only using first person voices for the NPCs in my games since I started. I have dabbled to some success with it in the past, but never committed for all of them. I did just that for our first Dark Sun game. I slipped once or twice, but got back on course as soon as I relazed I had. I liked it. It still feels silly, but I think it makes the game better.

Halved Hit Points
Big high level monsters create challenge and put the fear of failure into the players. They also come attached with loads of hit points that can drag an encounter out for hours. Reading about on Robert Schwalb's blog months ago and then seeing it in practice when Ethan DMed sold me on the practice. Beyond bugging my players to keep their turns snappy, this is the biggest improvement to overly long encounters in 4e I have seen so far. Highly recommend it.

Skill Challenges
Maybe it was my own fault, but trying to run skill challenges the way WotC prescribes them is both confusing and boring for players. Achieve 6 successes before 3 failures using the following skill checks: Endurance, Nature...blah blah...BLAH! It doesn't make sense in the context of the story and it destroys any immersion already established. Marauders third encounter called for one. It's intent was to play out the players trip across the desert (Athas), but did so in the manner described above. So I changed it. I tried to wrap it in story and things they came across on their journey. It was not as bad as what I have attempted in the past, but was still the weakest point of the night. I think I am done with them all together.