June 27, 2009

Exploring Templ(beta), the hottest new Web 2.0 dungeon.

After, what… months? Month? We finally managed to schedule another play session of high-level DnD campaign. And man, it was an epic one, lasting into the wee hours of the morning and being entertaining! Maps that spanned literally every doodling surface we had! Puzzles! Destroying priceless art! Me having like a million action points and then not using them! Madness!

As we started exploring the temple that we got into last time, we realized it seemed very badly constructed (“I know it’s not a perfect hexagon, but I’m not redrawing it,” Jonathan said) and since there was another temple just right next door, we assumed this must be the beta test temple. I mean, obviously. Just, you know, to give the builders an idea of what the real temple will be like, and test a few things…

So yes, Templ(beta) was filled with many golems. Golems are the magical robots! And Liendshauf (I don’t know how to spell your German character name, man, back off!) found a remote control, and used it to bash many priceless works of art. We also found a rock, which Jonathan represented with a Dire Badger. “That is a very dire rock.” “That’s it. It must be a dire rock. It’s got those spikes all over it.”

The Dire Rock was a very formidable foe.

In any case, the whole building was based around some puzzle ACTION where this crazy system put up barriers to block our path that we could only switch when we were all in certain rooms, and we had to figure out how to traverse the whole temple (or templ, if you will) to get to the bottom. It was actually a pretty well-designed puzzle. I have to give Jonathan props for that. Then again, I was distracting everyone by telling jokes about how “I can’t use this key to open the door! I have to insert the key into the door! That’s like raping the door!” “But look how sluttily the door is dressed!” “Dammit, it is asking for it, isn’t it…” (I don’t think Shauna liked that particular joke. I blame Jick for making me make rape jokes.)

There were also some combats.

The first combat was against a whole bunch of Manticores. In searching for an image of a manticore on his iPhone (for Shauna did not know what a Manticore was) Spaeth came up with this image. That seems like a pretty good representation of the battle.
Or not.
Well, okay, basically, we all ended up clumped in the corner of this library except Spaeth, who charged right in. So he was basically being attacked from all sides while we all lobbed ranged attacks and heals in there. A highlight was me moving into position to use a bit of Magic item that heals 1d6, and got attack of opportunitied for like… 26 damage during the move. A good tradeoff, there!

There was also a very dramatic boss battle against a Mummy who may or may not have been a Werebear. He was a total dick, because I tried to talk to his spirit, being a Shaman and all, and he just punched me. It was probably because he was some sort of Ioun spirit. I decided that Sehenine didn’t much care for his stupid ass or stupid religion!
Spaeth was Immobilized for like… this whole fucking battle, so we basically were having to use all our teleporting skills and such to get him into position, seeing as he deals fucking Sicknasty amounts of damage and we needed him. The boss had some really crazy high amounts of damage dealings as well. We were getting hit for like… half our HP. Lucky that 3/5ths of our party are healers then, huh? It also helped when I used my newly gotten utility power that lets me teleport people to switch places with my spirit companion to yank our Cleric out of the way of a particularly intense attack that would have downed him. (Sorry, my highlights are the things that I did that were awesome. I am biased.)

All in all, it was a damn, damn fun time, and just goes to show how much of a shame it was that we don’t manage to get our schedules working to make that happen more often. Hopefully we can get back together soon. Templ RC 1 is waiting for some exploring!

May 15, 2009

In which Alena crawled out of the guts of an alligator and dealt significant damage.

So, on Tuesday, we got to finally play more Dungeons and the Dragons! Huzzah! It had been awhile, but I’m glad it didn’t peter out. I’ve been having too much fun at it. So we all sat down, tried desperately to remember where we were, and set off into the desert.

Our first order of business was to cut down a palm tree for no reason. Ledeinshaft (also known as Guy de Purplopolis in some circles) fucking criticaled that tree! Then all the boys went on ahead while Canadia and I had some girl talk. Then people started to get eaten by burrowing sand alligators. I told them to stop dicking around, we didn’t have room for pets on the Astral Skiff, but noooo, they just kept getting eaten anyway!
The battle itself was fairly straightforward. I didn’t do much, as usual! Cause I can’t hit the broad side of a barn, it seems. We also didn’t pay attention and realize there was a gimmick about the place, but we crushed those lizards anyway. They were bastards.
The battle ended with the last lizard eating me, and Lord Captain Allouishous slicing off his head with me still inside. I had to climb out through disgusting alligator guts! I complained. “But we got eaten too!” they said! “Well, you just got thrown up nice and easy, I had to climb out! Stop playing with lizards!”

We soon ended up in an impressive set piece of a temple. There were tons of guarding spirits about that I could see with my Shamanvision (TM) but they were all untalkative dicks. I told them as such. We headed into the temple of Ioun, where, after wandering about a bit and a equally untalkative spirit helping me to find a secret passage, we managed, in our infinite wisdom, to turn on some robots.
It was then that something odd happened. We attempted to employ strategy. Talk around the table became about how to lead these robots through the passage to pick them off one at a time. I didn’t much like the plan, mostly because Sehanine doesn’t seem like the planning sort of goddess, and she’s MY goddess. But whatever, they enacted the plan. It didn’t work perfectly. The line was broken. But it was shockingly effective. The main enemy got bonuses for being around its minions, so our strategy managed to neutralize that pretty well, after he pushed through our ranks and we worked to hold the rest behind our line. I also managed to, GASP, deal damage! I got a crit with pretty well my heaviest hitter, Spirit Tide. That dealt 25 damage to the target, and 10 damage to all enemies within 5 squares… which was everyone. It was a shocking feeling, actually doing damage. Man, is this the rush Spaeth gets every time he attacks, I thought? But eh, such is the life of the healer.

In any case, we schooled that encounter too, much to Jonathan’s surprise, and we leveled up to level 12. I gained… a not very impressive utility power! I can teleport anyone to switch places with my spirit companion once an encounter now. Useful, but not really exciting. I also get a feat, but I have no idea which one that is. I might just take Paragon Defenses, I dunno.

Still, I hope it’s not another three week or whatever gap before we can play again. Dungeons and Dragons be fun times. I know this may come as a shocker, but it’s true.

April 23, 2009

Easily distracted from problem solving.

When we last left our heroes, Lord Captain Alluishous had jumped directly into a slime and got his ass devoured. Luckily, since then, we got another party member… who was with us the whole time! Of course! Originally, I thought it quite unfortunate that he didn’t go Barbarian as I was expecting, but instead went Cleric. Yes, this brings our party to THREE healers and 0 tanks. But, it worked out well. He built him up as muscular, beefy, and hit-stuff-style as was possible, basically. It worked out well, with him on the front lines next to Spaeth, I think. With two melee-style people, we were looking a lot better.

This temple-thingy was the first actual “dungeon” I’ve probably ever been in while playing this stuff. We’ve been doing it wrong all along! Sort of. There was a fairly solid fight with some slimes and some rats, and a small little interlude with a Mimic of all things. It was good times. Still, I was OVERWHELMED by how badass Alena’s healing is. Man, I used my Spirits of Battle, and suddenly, healing the entire group was effortless thanks to my paragon path, since everyone was always in a zone of conjuration I made. It was kind of obscene. If I wasn’t so fragile, I’d say Shaman was kind of broken. As it is, I know if I was focused on fully, I’d go down like nothing.

I got to try out my Spirit of Shielding Flame, and it was as excitingly neat and as frustratingly situational as I expected! Still, I love the flavor. Setting up a protective barrier around a person that lets me burn anyone who hits them is fun, fun, fun for a healing/defense-oriented person like myself.

Mainly, though, there was problem-solving in this dungeon. And I amaze myself in how I work. Maybe it’s just because I was so tired, but man, the first thing I thought of to do was the solution, and then, suddenly, everyone starts coming up with humorous, silly ideas, and I get so caught up in playing along that I forget to even suggest what I knew, from the very first moment, we were supposed to do. I suppose it’s a good thing that we’re having such a good time and messing around so much. Fun is fun! Having fun is good! But goodness, it’s almost frustrating when I realize I’ve been sitting on the answer the whole time and I just forgot to say it while we were cracking jokes about my character stripping in front of everyone (to change armor, of course!) and people screaming at walls to create avalanches.
It’s also kind of amazing how wrapped up we can get in our own bullshit narrative around what the real narrative is. Every time I have to recap to explain what we’re doing (although I never remember any names or anything, so there’s a lot of “that dude” and “that one guy”) everyone is kind of amazed and finding it odd that that’s what we’re actually doing. Such bullshit we are spinning, let me tell you!

Still, our planar adventures are continuing. It looks like we won’t be able to play again for awhile, but hopefully this one doesn’t drop off and disappear. I’m having a really great time, to be sure, and I would like it to continue. Here’s to hoping scheduling prevails! Yay scheduling! I think!

April 15, 2009

We went on behalf of our good friend, M-dizzle.

So, last night, we got in some more inside-tense Dungeons and Dragoning. Fun times were had! And I guess we’re going to have more next time (Tentatively scheduled for next Wednesday) since we have an additional party member joining us, in the form of that guy I sort of remember that is a friend of Shauna’s that I played DnD 3rd edition with one time! He’s going to be a Dwarf Barbarian, I think. So, still no tanks, but having another front-liner will help, as we are a horribly distance-focused party at the moment.

Combat, however, went only marginally better for me than last time. I missed with every single one of my encounter powers during the bit of combat we enjoyed, though I was a bit more effective overall, hitting with Haunting Spirits several times, as well as getting to use Spirit’s Shield, my spirits Opportunity Attack, to heal Spaeth a little. So I suppose all went well. Speaking of Spaeth, he used his Paragon Path encounter power, got a crit on a guy we hadn’t touched yet, and killed him in one hit. The man is an avenging MACHINE, let me tell you. Shauna focused much more on her distance attacks than last time, which was good. I was worried she was specced out wrong, if you recall, because she relied mostly on her beast form last time. Kevin… was Kevin! I don’t remember him doing anything too effective. I only remember him starting out combat by jumping into water so crazy cold so as to do him damage, like a wonderful idiot. He also dealed out some pain with Rolling Echo again. That move is crazy good.

The more role-playing bits also went pretty well. I continued to have Alena put on puppet shows, as it’s pretty clear at this point that that’s what she does. She found a new totem after the last combat, so she keeps having it talk to her old totem. They’re good conversationalists.
Shauna had notes that helped us remember things. She remembered this Amulet we had gotten last time and flashed it at the right time, basically shocking Jonathan. I also dropped a bit of a surprise when I actually knew why we had come to this other plane. Nobody else really knew, just that we were trying to get to this person, and so I did some interviewing… and then went back to playing with my totems. They’re so cute and fun!

Anyway, the night ended with Spaeth jumping down a hole and being absorbed into a slime. It’s going to be the exciting times next time, I assure you!
Probably.
I may also use some action points and some dailies next time. I keep not summoning spirits besides Keiko. I’m a Shaman! I should summon spirits! Maybe!

April 6, 2009

The map is donut-shaped, like the city. Please don’t eat the map.

A new DnD campaign has begun!
And gods, I sucked at it. But more on that later.

It was pretty obvious early on we were in for a kind of odd new campaign. For one, we don’t have a tank. Our four person party has an Avenger (damage-dealer), a Druid (Controller, debuffer-style as opposed to AoE style like the Wizard), a Bard (a healer, but Kevin focused more on debuffs and controller-style moves, so…), and me, a Shaman (specced out almost full healer, with a bit of a buffing undercurrent, since one or two of the buffs were so cool I couldn’t pass them up). It’s not a normal party! Spaeth’s Lord Captain Allouishous is the only melee attacker, and he’s almost always going to focus completely on his “I hate you” target. Although I suppose Shauna’s Druid was focusing a lot on Beast form and getting up in the grill of enemies as well. It’s certainly different from the few other combinations I’ve played.
It’s also not going to be a normal campaign when Justin Spaeth is being the voice of reason and logically progressing things. Kevin and I were running the two “leader” characters but we just kept up (totally fun) bickering the whole time. I was attempting to play my character a bit, actually. She’s a multiclass Cleric, and I figured that if she was going to worship a god, as someone who is so in tune with nature and spirits and such, she was probably going to be pretty fairly dedicated to that god. So since she’s a follower of Sehenine, I was really pushing the “Blaze your own path, see new things, don’t commit” that Sehenine teaches. I did things that seemed neat. I talked to people who weren’t there. I argued that we should be going in random portals instead of actually finding our way places. Meanwhile, Kevin was being a Gnomish ladies man, and fighting hard for his right to follow every female we met and hit on them.
So while this fun stuff was going on (and it was fun, I hope, for everyone. I assume it was. We do this shit all the time when we play) someone had to step up and take the lead. I assumed it would be Shauna, because she actually gets into the roleplaying part more than you might think a girlfriend pushed into it by her boyfriend would. But no, it was Justin Spaeth, the most ridiculous person I know (and I love him for it!), who stepped up and made it happen. Intense.
The plot itself makes me happy for one simple reason. It seems to take place in the multiverse of the DnD world. This is super cool, because it means Jonathan is using the Manual of the Planes I got him for his birthday. Score! Useful gift! Bam!

We only got to one combat, and Jonathan was feeling out the power level of 11th level characters, so it wasn’t perfect, but it was fun. Spaeth’s Avenger seemed almost broken, but I think that something as simple as a Fighter class monster who can mark him will probably shut him down. Shauna had a lot of fun pouncing people and making them grant combat advantage. Kevin did a whole bunch of weird things.
Me? I rolled like shit.
Seriously, of my first… oh… 6 rolls? Nothing was above a 5. I rolled a 1 for initiative, I critical missed my first attack, I rolled a 2 on the second… oh, it was tons of fun! I think I hit maybe two times. No, three. I hit three times in the long single combat we played. Yep.
That’s not to say I didn’t see what Alena Brighttail could do, and liked it. Cause I did! My Healing Spirit combined with my Spirit Boon of my Paragon path is kind of godly for healing, and I love it. Basically, I have one target spend a healing surge. Then, everyone who is not the target who is next to Keiko, my Spirit Companion (or any conjuration I have made) gains 3d6 + 5 HP. The first time I got that off and it became clear how much healing potential I have, I was ecstatic. I also have my Protecting Strike, which can grant all kinds of temporary HP. I also like moving Keiko around the map, setting her up for Opportunity Attacks that will never happen but I can pretend they will happen.

All in all, it went pretty well, I think. It’s unfortunate we didn’t have more time, but thanks to my 6 AM shift, we couldn’t really push it much longer. Hopefully it’s not too too long until we can play the next chapter. I look forward to, perhaps, actually HITTING with some of my neat abilities next time.

March 27, 2009

A new campaign approaches: Command?

It’s no surprise that, after the Player’s Handbook 2 hit, along with all of the awesome Gabe, Tycho, Scott Kurtz, and Wil Wheaton DnD podcasts going about, that I’d hit a fever where I’d desperately want to get some more DnD in. And I do! Very much so! I assumed, however, it was going to be an uphill battle to make happen.

I got home from class yesterday, and there was Spants rolling up a new character, and Jonathan saying he’s planned the beginnings of a Paragon-level campaign.
What a thrilling development!
I resisted running upstairs to the computer to talk strategy out of excitement.

We wanted to run a Paragon campaign because, frankly, we’d run many half-campaigns starting at level 1 through 4 before, and we had all decided we wanted to try mixing it up next time. Jonathan just pulled the trigger and made the call! I’m thrilled.

I just need to figure out what class I want to run. My initial idea was a Paladin of Corellon multiclassing Bard. A kind of hymn-singing tank with a heavy focus on heals with the Hospitalier paragon path. However, Jonathan announced when I sat down that I was probably going to make a Shaman… and dammit, I was looking over the Shaman abilities today and I really do want to play a Shaman. Having the spirit companion is cool flavor, and getting to summon him around and having their basic heal hit multiple targets is something I can get behind to make them different from a Warlord or whatnot. So watch me end up doing that instead, though I really wanted to run a tank because I haven’t gotten to yet and that would leave more options for Shauna and Essner, if he’s playing, to pick from. Spaeth is being an Avenger, which is a divine damage dealer, so we still could really use at least a tank and a healer, you know? Eh, We’ll see when I roll the character later today.

Anyway, more DnD! I honestly couldn’t be more excited.

January 13, 2009

Stabbing at a Stone with a Spear

So, we played another (short) session of Jonathan’s DnD campaign in the magical wonderland of Crystaengland on Sunday. It was exciting times, I suppose! There was only one serious combat, and that was against a big rock that Essner dealt like a million damage to in one turn. He was all gloating about it, and I’m like “Dude, you’re the damage dealer. You don’t see me gloating when I throw down some heals. Whoop dee doo, you did your job.” Yeah. That put him in his place. Yeah. Heh.

Anyway, it was fun as always. Jonathan gave us an NPC teammate for the next part of the quest, which… I dunno. We’re all being dicks. Having an NPC to be dicks to constantly… is that a good or a bad thing? WHO KNOWS. But he’s good at carrying gear, and he has a beautiful pompadour.

It’s amazing how dickish I can get, though. I’m always such a good guy when I play any kind of game like this, and yet, somehow, in this particular group of people, I’m the one suggesting we beat up old men to take their stuff and encouraging all kinds of stupid evil. It’s not a bad thing, but it’s certainly a change for me. I’m having a lot of fun with it, though… though I don’t think I could do it in different company. I can be a total ass around Essner, Spants, and my brother because they know me. Being that way around people I’m less familiar with? Probably won’t work.

In any case, we apparently are going to get in one more session before school starts up again (Fucking school… so close already! Bah.) so we’ll see how things go at the windy temple of windy wind or whatever it’s called. Maybe I can get a commemorative jerkin there, too.

January 6, 2009

Adventurtainment in Crystaengland.

So, this last night, we got to finally play some of this Dungeons and Dragons campaign my brother has been working on. It went well!
Rachel Sparklewhisper made a slightly re-specced appearance as team Warlord/Healer. I took roleplaying her much less serious this time, though. Cause, you know, it seemed appropriate. So I ate muffins and I went into battle wearing souvenir T-shirts from the temple we were trying to purge evil from… our team leader was Essner’s wolf companion (which, of course, only he could understand) so that was nice. We kept giving the wolf all our gold for safe-keeping. (Though I demanded compensation for muffins purchased, because they were a business expense.) It was fun times.

The combat, as much as I hate to say it, seemed to work a bit well overall than mine did. His “more hitpoints, less damage, very accurate” setup of the monsters kept the tension higher and generally more exciting than my builds, which were based off the numbers in the books and seem more geared for a “high miss rate, high damage” kind of experience. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But I dunno, we’ve all grown up with games like FFT where missing is a catastrophic failure, so missing as often as you hit just doesn’t feel like you’re a badass hero, you know? In any case, his combat was pretty good stuff.
It was, however, based around “battlefield gimmicks.” This is not something I have a problem with! But I’m pretty sure it’s also something that isn’t going to seem special, because I’m pretty sure he’s built every fight around a different gimmick. I would more build those as special encounters as opposed to something that’s normal and expected, and let the combat and monster mix stand on their own to make things interesting. Still, maybe that’s an error on my part. I know Essner especially loved the gimmick twists on each of the battles we did tonight, so… yeah.

I feel like I’m comparing myself to Jonathan as a DM. I don’t know why I’m doing that. I guess because I always just kind of assumed that I would be better at such things, you know? It’s not that I don’t want him to do well, because hell, if he keeps doing great, that means I get to play more DnD from the character side, which I am all for. Still, I dunno. I feel something there. I need to get the fuck over myself. Heh.

Anyway, it was, overall, a damn good time, and certainly a nice change of pace from the hard workings I’ve had to do recently. Plus, as my commemorative jerkin states, “I Rocked the Temple – Crystaengland Earth Temple”

August 2, 2008

Rapid Fire Ramblings: IoTMs, Digital Devil Saga, Shut Up and Explode, Sparklewhispers, the DnD Product Line, Expensive Electronics

Let’s start with IoTMs, shall we? First off, the KoL item, the Cotton Candy Carnie. Now, when I read what this did, Potato + Whelp, I was very excited just by that! Could it be? My two favorite familiar effects in one? There was no hesitation snapping it up. I was kinda sad when it was a Carnie, though. It makes sense, however. I just finished a run and started a 100% Hardcore Disco Bandit (For Advanced Cocktailcrafting) with him, and already I think he could easily be one of my favorite familiars. He potatoes, as advertised. He gives HP and MP at the end of battle, Whelp-style, as advertised. However, when you’re mostly full on HP and MP, he instead gives you healing items to use later, which is an awesome little tweak to make him even more awesome. He’s currently named Homespun, but I’m looking for a better name… it is kinda growing on me, though… anyway, I’m real excited to see how he plays out over the course of this run. I’m also looking forward to hopefully having a few less turns to play this run, due to the Hardcore nature. I’m feeling kinda burnt out, especially since I want to play Digital Devil Saga (which I’ll get to later).
I also want to make a quick note about my 100% Star Starfish run I just finished. I see why he’s one of the best non-IoTM familiars. I was overflowing with MP the whole run.

Over in Twilight Heroes, the IoTM is Wolly’s Index. This is… not a very exciting IoTM. No in-game content, just a really powerful effect. I normally pass up IoTMs like this, because I’m not interested in pure power. However, I picked this one up. Why? Well, because I have, over the past months, become a dedicated farmer. If that’s really what I’m going to do until new content hits, I might as well work to be the best at it I possibly can be. And that means picking up all relevant farming gear. +20% Item Drops is insanely relevant, since the highest accessory other than it is only +10%. (Well, and the Hero’s Cape, but me getting one of those isn’t happening, unless I can go back in time and convince earlier me to buy one.) So I picked one up, and I’m going to do my best to get one for investment, too, cause it will eventually be in high demand. I’m also kind of pleased that this sort of… well, I might be reading too much into it, but this sort of suggests that Ryme is dedicated to giving a Hero’s Cape equivalent to the playerbase every year (Well, with weaker effects than the MP regen, but that’s perfectly fine) which I kinda agree with. (though I was admittedly hoping for a permanent cape-type something in the Wok of Stars. Everyone wants a cape, right? Even if it’s not as badass as the Hero’s Cape?) It gives two benefits, one being that the Hero’s Cape is, by far, the most powerful IoTM, and it keeps everyone on a near level playing field while not forcing him to come up with something else that might surpass it. The other is that it had to be crazy easy on Ryme to make this IoTM. Especially after all the programming that had to be done on the plaid couch, I’m glad he could take a break and still please people. I think 1 month of break out of the year is a good idea. Don’t want him getting burned out!

So I’ve been playing Digital Devil Saga, since I picked it up from Rei since he’s, I dunno, liquidating everything he owns to get to PAX. Talking Time and Persona 3 also have gotten me all… in love with MegaTen, so I’m kinda slowly but surely picking up what I missed during the PS2 era. This game is a decent bit different from other MegaTen games, because there’s no recruiting demons and fusing them. Instead, each character is a demon, and then can take on “Mantras,” which correspond to various easily recognizable MegaTen demons stuff, and teach them their skills. Then each character has a growing number of slots to equip moves, and passive bonuses, and stuff that they learn from these Mantras Final Fantasy Fiveishly. (Though instead of equipping two categories of movies, you equip a certain number of moves total) It’s been a lot of fun, and I’ve been enjoying it, and am going to play more of it after I finish this long overdue huge-ass blogpost. I hope I beat it. It seems shorter than other games in the series (which I consider a benefit) which seems to be because there’s a “Digital Devil Saga Part 2” out there, which I may pick up if I beat this one. Anyway, it’s something to keep me happily distracted until the more awesome DS games come out in September. This and the upcoming cornucopia of awesome XBLA releases should keep me happy.

So Talking Time was talking about this anime called Xam’d: Lost Memories. They then linked to the opening, which I watched. The music was awesome and it looked interesting! So I grabbed the first couple of episodes and tried them… and really didn’t like it. But man, that song was awesome. So I looked up the band, which is called Boom Boom Satellites. They’re a JRock band with one album, and honestly, the whole thing is listen-able to me, which is very rare. There’s much better music out there? They’re not going to become one of my favorite bands? But they’re pretty good. Feel free to try them.

Last night, we had out first session of Essner’s campaign. Impressions! He did quite well for his first time, I think. HIs encounters were a little weak, but I think everyone but Jonathan wasn’t expecting “Sten the Potent” to fucking murder everyone with his trusty knife, The Stabernackle, quite as much as he did. I enjoyed playing Warlord, as I expected. It’s a pretty great class! Commander’s Strike is just a lot of fun, and I still get to heal with Inspiring Word (and now, Aid the Injured, my level 2 Utility power) and… yeah. I really like the class. I think we are going to have a crazy amount of healing, though, since Spaeth is making a Healing-focued Pally while multi-classing Cleric. If I had to make some comments, I’d make the comment that Essner was railroading us quite a bit. Do I do that? I don’t know. I try to come up with situations where they can’t help but get into my battles, but I don’t like… tell them to do this or that… but who knows, I probably do. I felt very railroaded. It didn’t really impact the fun for me, though, until he didn’t let Rachael yell at the asshole at the end and give her a piece of her mind… but eh, even then it wasn’t too much of a big deal, and I can only assume he’ll take what he learned into his next session. I’m eager to play again. Of course, that means I need to do more scheduling. Ugh. Worst part of this, let me tell you.

Before the DnD session the other day, though, we went to Champions Games, (Man, I think that’s the name. I’m doubting myself now. Something like that.) the game store run by a cool guy I used to work with named Shane. I really hope he manages to make the store work, cause it’s much closer to what a game store should be than the bleh places that always fail around here… but Cape is just incapable of keeping a game store going, so who knows. But we went in there and bought more little DnD miniatures, because they’re pretty neat and because I’m much more comfortable getting them in the little theme bags for decent prices he has them in. I got a bag of Soldiers, mostly because there were these two bad-ass guys with tower shields, and this long-haired maybe -female letting out a battle cry and holding a flag, which I thought was very badass, and I wanted to represent Rachael Sparklewhisper. I also got the bag of Lycanthropes for Essner. Essner got a random box (cause he’s weird and likes random better. There were a ton of miniatures in the box! But it cost more than my two focused bags of stuff, so I’m not planning on ever getting one) and a bag of goblins, cause we fought some goblins last night and wanted them to use. Anyway, they’re all cool, but I do think we’re quickly approaching the like… threshold of how many we’d ever need. Which makes me wonder what I’d buy when I go in there after that. Cause I want to buy things and help Shane out, but if I don’t need anything? Who knows.
Anyway, while I was there, he had all these little sheets to preorder various roleplaying books that were coming out, and I noticed a DnD 4th Edition supplement I didn’t know was coming, which is Martial Power. More ability, feat, and path options? Yes please. I might actually physically pick up a copy of that. (Whereas some other supplements coming I am interested in, but will probably use various… dishonest methods to acquire, such as this upcoming Adventurer’s Vault.) That makes, um, two DnD books I see me buying in the future (The other being the Player’s Handbook 2, for all the other classes, such as Bard, which I want… though I don’t see it on the 2008 release list, which annoys me. Oh well, it says March. Maybe for my birthday) along with the screen thingy, cause it’s not too expensive and I’d rather look at helpful information instead of Dragon Strike information (we’ve been using the Dragon Strike screen. Heh.)

I continue to have strong urges to buy expensive electronics. I was thinking about getting an iPod Touch for awhile, and now I’m all serious about buying an MSI Wind. Mmm… I should probably resist, but… it’s been awhile since I bought a new toy like that. Hmmm… eh, I’ll probably keep resisting. Who knows.

Whew, that was a fucking long one, wasn’t it? And now I’m done, and can play Digital Devil Saga. Huzzah!

July 14, 2008

I wonder how hard it is to get a lighter in the world of Dungeons and Dragons…

Despite my better judgment, my head has been percolating and thinking and designing a character to go along with my idea for a Warlord in DnD. Gah. I want so bad to play it as a player, and not just a DM< but it’s really just not going to happen. The likelihood of it is just…  nothing. Bleh. I was going to try Dungeons and Dragons Tactics to try to scratch that itch, but Brer was all like “What, are you stupid? That game is horrible” and it is from a time before the existence of Warlords, so I mean, I don’t know. Probably wouldn’t have helped. Sigh. I sorta wish I could just force people on Talking Time to run an online campaign, but I mean, it’s all this work and I’m not going to force it on anyone, and if I start trying to take up the mantle myself, I’m going to end up DMing again, which is like… completely missing the point of me wanting to play an online game of it. I don’t know… just gotta ride it out. It’ll pass.

In other news, I asked for more hours at work! Since Ad Set is no longer going to give me shit, I have a feeling. We’ll see if that worked on Tuesday when I get my new schedule. It better have, or I will be sad. You’ll look at me, and one tear will roll slowly down my cheek. So sad.

I feel like there are other things to talk about, but fuck if I know them. I guess I should probably just stop blogging and get back to nothingness, which is my specialty. Whee!