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Yeah, this is a post about a dream.

Last night, I dreamed that there was a huge trip going on. It was a big deal. It was a huge event. Everyone was going, and I do mean everyone. My entire family was going. Essner, Spaeth, Droid, all my IRL friends were going. Most of my internet-style friends were flying in to go. This was a huge event!

I wasn’t going.

I started out okay with this, but soon, as I watched everyone gathering on the front lawn with all their stuff, I realized that kind of sucked. Soon, someone from work relinquished their spot. I could take it! I could go!

I told my mother the good news.
“You can’t go. You have class.”
This started a huge argument about how totally unfair that was, especially seeing as everyone else was going to miss class for this trip. Meanwhile, I knew the clock was ticking. Everyone was going to leave soon. I was arguing with my mother while she finished packing to go. I also realized that there are people waiting that I had never seen in person. Even if I failed to get to go, I needed to get out there and see Brer, and Cris, and Ecks, and all my good friends I’ve never seen in person before. But I was stuck in this argument. My mother kept seeming like she would give, but wouldn’t. I couldn’t figure out if it was futile to keep arguing or now.

I woke up with all of this unresolved, and feeling very actually frustrated.

I guess one could really analyze this dream. Something about how both my mother and school feel like they are keeping me away from fun and the people that I love. There’s probably some level of truth to that. Not an infinite amount, but some level. Either way, it was an extremely clear dream. I remember all kind of details. There was some sort of huge valve in the basement that Mom was shutting off to prepare for the trip, for example.
Man, I don’t know. I rarely have such serious dreams. I felt like sharing.

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!

I bet when you ask a wrestling fan what they want from a wrestling game, they would say they want all the moves, a hardcore fighting game where they can do everything from the show.

They’re wrong.

The wrestling part is such a small part of wrestling. The vast majority of these shows aren’t the fights. It’s the soap opera. It’s the backstage plots, the betrayals, the trash talking.

I don’t claim to know much about wrestling or wrestling games, but I certainly haven’t HEARD of a wrestling game that really covers all that backstage drama stuff. With TNA Wrestling for the iPhone and iPod Touch, that is the majority of the game. And goodness, it’s pretty darn awesome.

I’m sure if I were a fan of TNA Impact! I would probably love this game even more. It certainly seems to have a full list of people whose names I should know, who I can either insult, fight, or team up with and befriend. I mean, I don’t know these people, but it seems to have everyone, and after you beat them, then you get their signature move to use in the ring, which would please fans, I would think.
However, I can only look on the game as a fan of dialog-driven RPGs, and as one of those, this is by far one of the best gaming experiences I’ve had on my iPod.

You start the game by making your wrestler. There’s not an overwhelming amount of customization options, (You can only choose between three facial portraits, for instance, though they change color based on what you’re wearing, your hair color, etc) but you can choose all your colors and what kind of things you’re wearing, and generally make your guy look unique. I picked a really creepy picture, and created Taco, a wrestler with green hair for the lettuce, a yellow wife-beater and boots for the shell, and a pair of pink briefs, for this spicy hot nature. I then jumped into a world of wrestling and intrigue!

The majority of the game is conversations, which are very important. There are branching paths depending on your choices. You often have at least 3 dialog options any time the game stops you. Every time you say something, you get general XP, as well as experience in one of two areas: Face, where you are the kind of wrestler who the crowd loves and works the crowd to your advantage, or Heel, where you’re a villain character everyone loves to hate. These unlock various “Crowd Support” powers, depending on what you level up. You also gain new wrestling moves in the ring from your general experience.

The combat itself is completely turn-based, and is oddly kind of similar to Fallout. Every turn, you have a certain number of BP. You spend these BP on various actions. Slapping someone only costs one BP, but if you want to clothesline someone, you spend a BP to run and bounce against the edge of the ring, and then another to slam into them. As you level up, you unlock combos: lists of moves that, if you do all of them in a row, you do a special finisher. These start out simple, like grabbing someone’s head and slamming them to the ground, but end up, towards the end of the game, being things like throwing people out of the ring and then jumping off of the ropes onto them. Each of these moves requires a kind of “quicktime” event of sliding your finger about or pushing a virtual button. They work well and are pretty fun to do. (and having to hit two buttons at once for “Eye Gouge” is just too awesome.)
To counter these moves, each wrestler gets three “defenses” per match. These are gone once they are used, but can be regained with enough crowd support, though they can only be recharged once. Avoid simply makes you run out of the way, avoiding an attack. Counter turns an attack against your opponent, and Reverse not only turn the attack against your opponent, but ends their turn, even if they still have plenty of BP.
At first, you’ll feel like there’s no way you can lose. That would be fine for me, since it’s a pretty casual experience. But you soon figure out that there is much more strategy to it than you would first think. If you don’t use your defensive moves correctly, you WILL get schooled, and it quickly becomes very important to use your turns pumping up the crowd to use your crowd powers. It gets surprisingly tough. I kinda liked that.

What’s mostly entertaining about the game, though, is the dialog. I don’t know if wrestling is normally this bad, but EVERYTHING in this game is so ridiculous and stupid, it is hilarious. I constantly found myself laughing at the absurdity of it all. There’s something special going on when someone threatens to take you down with his special move, “Defribri-see-you-later”. The writing was entertaining. Oh yes.

So yeah, I have completely gotten my $5 bucks worth out of this game. It’s of a solid length, and it is funny and a lot of fun. Granted, it didn’t work for me immediately, but after some help on that front, I have absolutely no complaints. TNA Wrestling is a very easy recommendation.

(This is something I used to do all the damn time way, way back in the day: A clip of the story I’m running through my head. I haven’t done it in forever, but I feel like it now, so I am. Maybe I’ll do more later. Who knows.
This is from my Roleplaying universe, which is in a corner of my Reverse Side universe, although Roleplaying is quickly becoming, more and more, the main story of this world.
Anyway, here we go. Sorry if this is boring.)

Combat! Nicholai vs Amy, Chameleon Assassin!
A Roleplaying Minigame

“Why, hello there, beautiful.” Nicholai grinned as he walked into the room. Across the huge, high-school gym-sized warehouse was a small bunny. She seemed to be wearing a light, floral-print dress and a frilly apron. She was smiling softly, the way a frustrated mother might still force a smile towards her children.
Oh, and she was holding one of the most impressive sniper rifles Nicholai had ever seen. It certainly seemed a little too big for her to be carrying. The game system must be running in here.
“Now’s not the time, Nicholai…” Grace said, stepping out from behind him. She looked over her glasses and called across the room. “Where’s Rebecca?”
The rabbit girl flashed an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry, but Euphoria is a bit occupied at the moment… she asked me to keep you company.”
Nicholai grinned, starting to walk across the room, dragging his huge wooden sword behind him. “Well, hey, no worries. I’m sure we can find something to keep ourselves busy, hm?” A shot rang out, hitting the ground right in front of him. Nicholai only grinned bigger, stopping in his tracks. “Ooh, or we could do that…”
“Nicholai, we really don’t have time for this, we…” Grace started, frustrated.
“No no, honey, YOU don’t have time for this… I’ve got all the time in the world…” Nicholai grinned over his shoulder. “How about you start this fight up, and I’ll cover you while you go find Tailrazor, eh?”
“But…”
“Look, I know you can handle yourself, honey. Just hit that button, make this start.”
The bunny across the way smiled softly. “It’s a nice plan, but I really can’t let you do that either…”
Grace sighed, and hit the button on her wrist. The HUD came up over her eyes, and she pulled out her nettop, typing like crazy. She didn’t approve of this plan, but it wouldn’t be hard to remove her from the rules of battle, making it easy to slip past this woman.
Nicholai swung his sword in a lazy arc as the HUD came up over his eyes. “So, sweet thing, are you actually any good with that gun in a fight, hm? Seems a little big for you…”
The announcer’s feminine voice boomed through the room. “Battle accepted. 1 on 1 match confirmed. Nicholai, Quixotic Paladin, Team Affiliation: Team Tailrazor. Versus. Amy, Chameleon Assassin, Team Affiliation: Team Euphoria.”
Nicholai and Grace blinked, and shared a look. Chameleon?
“3… 2… 1…
FIGHT.”
Grace started running towards the door behind the bunny, paws clapping on the floor. Amy raised her rifle and pulled the trigger. The announcer’s voice boomed. “Unauthorized target. Warning Administered. Next offense: Disqualification.”
Amy let out a little sigh, still smiling. “Well, alright. I suppose you two do have me there.” She turned to the other rabbit. “But my puppeteer has a lot of professional pride… she’s at least going to kill you, you know.”
“Good luck!” Grace yelled as she ran out the door, towards her destination.
“Now that that’s out of the way…” Nicholai purred, “Let’s dance, eh?” He started dashing towards his opponent, who raised her rifle. “KAMAKAZE AEGIS!”
One, two, three bullets bounced off of his straitjacket, and he slashed at the bunny, who suddenly wasn’t there. “Woah, a fast one.” A bullet hit him in the side, and he crumpled for a moment. A glance to his peripheral vision showed that took off near half of his HP in one hit.
“My puppeteer is a professional, as I said… she’s not going to lose.” Amy said, eye through the sniper scope. “Move, and I’ll finish this.”
“What’s all this puppeteer crap, anyway? You can’t be serious about you really being a chameleon. I mean, maybe in the sense that I’m a paladin, anyway. Fantasy shit.” Nicholai said, pushing himself to his feet. He slashed his sword as a bullet zipped towards his head. It flew off to the side.
“I’m not a fighter by nature, Mr. Nicholai, was it? It’s her idea, not mine.” Nicholai rolled to the side as another bullet barely missed him. She sighed. “This is always the annoying part.” She pressed a button. A clip fell out of the gun, she started pulling another out of her apron.
Nicholai grinned, dashing. “See, this is the problem with guns, eh? Always running out of bullets… SMITE!” His sword glowed, the clip clicking into the gun as his sword smacked Amy upside the head, sending her flying off to one side, though her grip stayed on the gun.
It was then that Nicholai felt a hard stab in his back. A hoarse whisper sounded in his ear. “You’re biting off more than you can chew, here.” Another stab. Another. Nicholai stumbled forward, out of range of… whatever was hitting him. Hopefully. His HP was already dangerously low. So quickly, too. That’s no good.
Amy, her body having been oddly limp and unmoving but moments before, jumped back to life and picked up where the whisper ended. “If you give up and go home, giving me time to catch the Siamese, maybe she won’t have to kill you after these silly holograms dissipate.”
“Divine Respite…” Nicholai murmured, starting to glow. Without Grace or Tailrazor to draw aggro, he wasn’t going to get much regeneration out of this, he knew, but he was going to lose without more HP.
“Now now, stop that…” Amy fired, and Nicholai had to dive out of the way again.
“Shit, not anywhere near enough to absorb another sniper round…” he murmured to himself. Oh well, he’d have to go with what he had.
“I really don’t like killing, you know. I really will let you go.” Amy said, aiming right at the rabbit. “Even my puppeteer doesn’t like it. Family business, you know. Expected of her race. Doesn’t mean she won’t do it.”
“Sorry, sweety, but I’m not really one for surrendering. Never did me much good.” Nicholai forced a grin.
Amy pulled the trigger.

I’ve defeated the basement.
Well, okay, I didn’t “beat” it. It doesn’t end. It just gets progressively harder. But I’ve gotten to the end of the rewards.

I started the basement a long time back. Once I had decided to stop ascending for awhile, and level up to level 30 to get the Scourge of Seals trophy, it just seemed like an easy thing to also swing down to Fernswarthy’s and pick me up a telescope. What could be simpler?

The basement was about the most frustrating thing I have ever encountered in Kingdom of Loathing. Oh man. It was tedious. It rarely felt like I was making much progress. Even at my highish level, it was fairly expensive to get down to level 500. Ugh. I hated it. I hated it so much that I could barely make myself stomach doing more than, say, 20 levels a day. Since I have no free time to play Vidjeo Games anymore (though hell, that does not stop me from continuing to purchase them!) and rarely even played those 20 turns, that made my progress… almost nothing for a long time.

This weekend, I noticed my odd work schedule. “I have two full days off,” I said to myself. “I should just power through and be done with that shit.”
And I did.
And all I got for it was a telescope.
Yeah.

Anyone who thinks I’m going to do this another, what, 6 times to get all the upgrades is a little off in the head.

You know, a ball. Towards some pins.

So this Friday marked the second consecutive Friday I have went out with people from work and bowled like crazy at the Thunder Ally Cosmic Bowling whatever the fuck thing. It has done nothing but rekindled my love of bowling. I don’t know. I’m not a sports person, and I certainly don’t care about being “the best” in this either. But it has the addictive “mostly just working against yourself” factor that draws me to golf, but is significantly less physically taxing and time-consuming than real golf. (Real golf has so much downtime, even in a cart. I think I’ll stick with video game golf, where I can just teleport to my ball again and again.) It also doesn’t hurt that I’m pretty good at it already. I mean, I’m not going to blow you away (IGN.com) or anything but I can fairly consistently bowl, say, 150? And that’s plenty for me. That’s better than most “casual” bowlers. I’m happy with that.

But yeah, so I love bowling. Still, bowling with the people from work is… kind of surreal. The first time I went, I had just this strong feeling of “Oh, so this is what ‘normal’ people do with their free time.” People were drinking, smoking, flirting. There was a fight in the parking lot. Loud rap music was blaring the entire time. People went to a strip club afterward, and were up until 7 in the morning. (I went home right after the bowling.) This was not a world I was used to! I was out of my element!

Still, everyone seemed to want me there anyway, and I had a good time bowling, even if I was just kind of quietly eavesdropping on the conversations, not really being equipped to join in with them. It happened similarly the second time. But even with that awkwardness, the fun won out. I had a great time. Since I never do anything Friday nights, I’m really thinking of making this a regular occurrence.

And with the idea I’d be bowling on a regular basis comes the idea that I should get some equipment. I always waste a game getting used to the new shoes, the new ball, and everything. Why not get some affordable bowling gear? Some shoes, a bag, and a ball. I don’t need a crazy expensive ball, because I’m one of those “straight forward” bowlers, who doesn’t put a ton of hook on it, and in fact would rather my ball DIDN’T hook very much. The balls that don’t hook are the cheap ones. Initial web pricing would put the entire ensemble at about 80ish dollars. I spend that kind of money on vidjeo games I only play twice all the damn time. It doesn’t seem unreasonable.
However, I couldn’t pull the trigger online. Getting all the drilling worked out online was much too stressful. Still, I don’t especially want to go talk to the guy at the pro shop. I always feel like such a poser going into such niche places like that… I feel like that when going into a comic shop too, for instance. But eh, I’ll get over it, and check it out next week. Hopefully I can order a ball in some crazy, eye-hurting color or something.

Or maybe I’ll change my mind again! I’m awesome like that.

I used to be down on IoTM equipment. “Why would I equip that? It’s just going to fill a slot that I could use for some other cool thing I found in the game that may be more funny.” Then again, I used to be down on IoTM familiars for the same reason. I came around on familiars because I realized that using a different familiar each run changed things up, and the IoTM ones did different things than the normal ones. Hell, all my IoTM purchases are mostly for this reason: To have an ever-growing list of things I can do, and figuring out how to use them effectively changes the game up constantly, much like the theory behind “Standard” in Magic. So yeah, when I got the Haiku Katana, that all changed, really. Here was a weapon that was fun, did funny things, and really changed up my Muscle class game. I’ve been leaning towards Muscle classes ever since it came out because of this. I’m eager to get other pieces of equipment to really change up my game. This month, KoL has the Elvish Sunglasses, a Moxie-based piece of equipment. I snapped it up.

Now, I’m still in basementing hell and ‘waiting for the Hamster Times” limbo, which is fine, because I barely have any time to play anyway. But that means I haven’t really gotten to try it yet, like so many IoTMs. (I’m going to have a series of very eventful runs once I start ascending again!) I’ve been using it for the Moxie boost for basement checks, but, you know, that barely counts as being put to good use. I mean, the stats on it are great. Who wouldn’t want those bonuses? The +pickpocket is especially nice, what with all the very important new pickpocket-only items that are now available. It’s a bonus-granted machine to the moxie classes.

However, I like a good bonus, but I like entertainment value more. The Haiku Katana gave me both: It’s got really strong boosts for a Muscle class, and it has all these crazy skills I can use and silly Haiku text to read. I like that. The Elvish Sunglasses leave a little to be desired in this department. It grants me skills I can use based on instruments I have equippped. Now, the +5 Substats for “Play a Guitar Solo” is completely awesome and useful. The stun with drums, delevel with Accordians, and extra sleaze damage with flutes are also appreciated. However, this is going to really restrict what I equip. Now, I suppose if I was making my Legendary Epic Weapon, I could use that for most of the run. Especially as a Disco Bandit with a Shagadelic Disco Banjo, I’d be doing pretty nice. At the same time, so many of the ranged weapons I have, in the past, used during a run are not instruments. I normally make heavy use of the Beer Bong, Grease Gun, and Potato Pistol during a run. These are some of the strongest items at their levels (or at least, last time I played a Moxie class they were) and they’re not instruments. The last time I really heavily used instruments as a Moxie class was during my Disco Bandit hardcore run, and that was because I couldn’t pull all my good weapons like I normally can in softcore.

Basically, the sunglasses are asking me to make a hard choice. If I want to use the skills, I have to pick inferior weaponry. I’m sure most of the more hardcore set don’t care: From what I understand, if you’re speed-running, you use your Legendary Epic Weapon for the majority of the run. But it’s unfortunate that I’m not going to have quite the access to it as I would like. Why not have a fifth “vocal solo” skill for when you don’t have an instrument equipped? It could be worst than the rest, but I would appreciate it being there.

Still, I very well might change my mind about it by the time I do a run with it. Just the bonuses could be a huge lifesaver, and perhaps I’ll find there are plenty of instruments to keep me going for the whole run. We’ll see. As it is, I’m slightly disappointed in it at the moment. Not a whole lot. Slightly. I do appreciate it making the basement a little easier, if nothing else.

EDIT! LATE ADDITION!
So, I just remembered they recently added a bunch of ranged weapons to the game. So I checked them out! So many of them are instruments, and so many of them seem totally worth it! Obviously they had thought of that before they released an IoTM so dependent on having good instruments for most of the run, huh? Silly me. This makes me much more excited to try it out, both because it’ll be more useful and because I just realized I have a whole bunch of new weapons to find and try. Neat!

If there was one familiar I wish I would have been able to get in Kingdom of Loathing, it was the Doppleshifter. (If there was two? Probably the Wild Hare as well.) I’m just a fan of fun, basically. I don’t attempt to be very effective at the game when I play. I just enjoy fun, and dammit, cool randomness is kind of fun, you know? I wanted to be able to enjoy that randomness over the course of the casual-style runs I do. However, it’s a very old familar, and it’s prohibitively expensive to purchase. I couldn’t begin to justify it, so I just figured I’d never have one.
So when, on the Jick and Skully show, there was more and more and more talk about making a piece of familiar equipment that made a familiar work like a Doppleshifter? I was so excited. I had my fingers crossed that the idea wouldn’t get thrown away like so many other good ideas, and that they would actual impliment it.

On April 1st, they did! The Tiny Costume Wardrobe was introduced as something that will appear once a year from now on, on that day. And I snapped it right up. No hesitation.

I haven’t really got a chance to play with it yet. I look forward to playing through a whole run with it equipped to, say, The Land-Stander, my Pet Rock. But from what little I did, it seems to work completely as advertised. At the beginning of combat, it becomes something. At the end, it changes back. What more could I want? Nothing, really.
Of course, using it means I can’t use my Mayflower Bouquet or any +weight gear, which is unfortunate, but I’m willing to trade for that functionality. And if nothing else, it seems like it could have a barely minimal pretending to be optimal use, too. If, say, you want to level up your Jumpsuited Hound Dog, but don’t want the +combat? It still gets the experience when it’s got the Wardrobe equipped, and it’ll do something else. Again, though, that probably isn’t actually optimal at all, especially since the Bouquet could give them additional experience, but whatever. The idea of being able to level tower familiars while having fun with them instead of disliking them is kind of exciting.

But yeah, it’s just a straight up fun thing. You know if you’d enjoy such randomness in your game. I sure as hell will. I was very, very glad to pick that one up.

The other game I was playing all Easter weekend was, well… Tetris.
It’s all this thread on Talking Time’s fault. There was Tetris love! And I love Tetris. Not as much as, say, Panel de Pon. But I love Tetris.

So when Rei linked to Tetris Friends, I went and checked it out.
Hours later, I realized I had just played, well… hours of Tetris.

Tetris Friends leaves little to be desired, if it’s Tetris that you crave. You can turn the “piece shadow” off and on, so if you’re a purist who doesn’t like that, that’s your option. It has the hold thing, which I hadn’t actually used before this but actually adds a great additional element to the game. It has a couple completely normal Tetris variants, which are always needed. It has 2 player VS mode, which would be nearly perfect if you could pick your opponents. I do like the “only 2 minutes” aspect of it. Makes it easy to go “just one more game” since you know you’re not going to get trapped in an epic back and forth battle. It has a neat mode called Sprint, which you can play alone or in multiplayer, which is basically a race to clear 40 lines first. The strategy is actually much different than a normal multiplayer, as setting up Tetrises is much less important.

The only really unfortunate thing about it is that you can’t pick your opponents. I can’t challenge a friend to a game of VS. It’s all done by their matchmaking. Though their ranking system seems pretty darn effective. When I get online in Tetris DS, I am immediately destroyed by power-players. In Tetris Friends, I have yet to be completely stomped in a match. When I did some complete stomping myself, the game popped up a window and offered to rank me up about 5 ranks, which I accepted. Now I’m facing people more my level faster, which is exactly how it should be. Playing with just people who are close to your skill. Awesome.

But yeah, I dunno. I have no idea how this venture is making money. One little ad can’t pay for everything, can it? Especially since I think this is licensed and not like… the Tetris Company itself putting this out? But it’s everything I could possibly want from a Tetris game, and it’s free and online and with robust stat tracking and a “token” earning system to keep you coming back again and again. What’s not to like?

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!