Announcement

This is an awesome baby outfit that I picked up from Jinx a few years ago:

D&D woot! Anyway, back when I bought it I had no kids, but I figured I would someday and didn't want to miss this.

Well, my announcement is that I'm now a daddy and this will be put to use sooner than later!

So, ya, I haven't posted for 6 months. Part of this was the whole baby/pregnancy thing. Part was that I had been slowing down in posting prior to that. Part was also a few other activities I was involved in.

So I plan to start posting again, or at least try to.

What's been going on the past while?

1. Had a baby
2. Got hired by my company full time (rather than contract)
3. Fired up a website, FMyCatsLife, which is a semi-spoof/content specific version of the excellent FMyLife
4. Done numerous computer replacements and upgrades at home
5. Played a fair bit of Team Fortress 2
6. Life in general

So, that's where things are. Sorry, no pictures or details of the little one here yet. I'm still trying to figure out where I stand on posting about her, and since you can never truly remove something from the internet, I'd rather take it slow. Those who know me well have probably seen her on facebook.

Note about the baby outfit:

The AC is technically wrong. They list it as 6 because on the Base AC 10 minus 4 from the Dex of 3. However, they forgot size bonuses. Since babies are clearly small creatures, by D&D 3.5 rules, they get a +1 size modifier to AC, which would make it an AC 7.

D&D Encounters Session 6

Last night was the 6th session of D&D: Encounters. It was short, very short. Why you ask? Because we managed to eradicate the monsters in very short order.

We were a man short for the evening, so the DM removed one of the monsters from the fight. What was left were 3 artillery demons and 2 others demons. Didn't really get to find out what the other two were as they died very quickly. The flying artillery monsters opened up combat with some recharge encounter powers which let them fire off 3 shots. The combine 9 attacks put three of us seriously low on hitpoints, thus on the cleric's turn he fired off a daily power to give us all resistance 5, healed me back up to full, and gave the monk a much needed save (he blew an action point to do all this). The monk then charged in and let loose a daily targeting the two non-artillery demons. He rolled two 20s, and the double crit removed both from the map. I ran up two one of the remaining three and missed, but our Psion at the back opened up on one of the last three, which were apparently vulnerable to his psychic attack and was bloodied. Action point and repeat. They fired again, but only one was able to recharge the triple-shot power. The cleric then healed the monk, who delayed until after the Psion went again, scoring a crit and killing one demon. Then the monk went a finished the others off. It was all over and I only got one action, but what a fight to witness.

Oh, and to plug once more, the monk in our party has a (more detailed) post on the encounter on dungeonsmaster.com.

D&D: Encounters

I've been playing in a weekly Dungeons and Dragons game at my local gaming store. This is an initiative run by Wizards of the Coast called D&D: Encounters. The program is an adventure, broken into 12 encounter sessions run once a week, and it's pretty cool. The encounters are run by DMs at local gaming stores and are targeted at 1-2 hour sessions (usually closer to 1). The program is scheduled to have several series (turnout has been great), but the first is called Encounters: Undermountain, with an adventure set in the Forgotten Realms called Halaster's Lost Apprentice.

I am really enjoying this. First off, my own DM is still running us through D&D 3rd edition (3.5 actually), as he is not a fan of 4th Ed. This is fine for me, as I love 3.5 and would not want to give it up for 4th. D&D 3.5 has a lot going for it that 4th isn't is good at. However, the opposite is also very true, and I equally wouldn't want to refrain from the joy of 4th edition D&D in favour of 3.5 either. So encounters gives me a nice way of having my cake and eating it too.

But beyond all of that, the Encounters program has been very awesome. The people I've played with have all been great, the two DMs I've sat with have been really solid, and the adventure itself is fun and nicely written for an event like this, with a fair bit of variety and some really interesting encounters.

I've mostly been at the same table with one DM and a slightly changing week to week, but mostly constant, group of players. They've been fun and funny (our Paladin's dry sense of humour constantly cracks me up) and our DM puts on an excellent show, so here I'm just going to plug a few things for them.

One of our players, playing a monk, is one of the writers of dungeonsmaster.com, and has had a and has had a few posts on our sessions.

Our DM has a blog on his regular campaign and has also posted about Encounters. Further still, he podcasts his gaming sessions (including our encounters nights) which are available on iTunes. It's really fun to here yourself playing in a live-play podcast. Thanks!

D&D Podcast

Last year Wizards put out a 8 part podcast series of the folks at Penny Arcade and PvP playing an adventure with Christ Perkins. A couple months ago they started another with Wil Wheaton (of Trek and internet geekdom fame) added to the team. I've quite enjoyed listening to these on my morning commutes and with the last episode wrapping up last week, I'm thinking I can't wait until they do another (and I hope they do)!

High points for me included the awesomeness of Jim Darkmagic (of the New Hampshire Darkmagics), the party Wizard. He pulled out the rolls and rocked the first series, and in this second he did not disappoint. Jokes of his legendary powers throughout the series (You? You are not Jim Darkmagic. Jim Darkmagic is seven feet tall! With a shock of red hair!) had me laughing on the subway with people staring.

Of particular amusement in the final part was Jerry's (the Cleric, Omin) consistent rolling of ones. We've all been there, and you feel sorry for him, as he sounds pretty upset during the final fight when he rolled double ones on his attack (Wil used a power to give him a reroll), but at the same time the banter directed at him was pretty funny. They posted a comic of his final attack with quotes straight from the recording:
And Wil posted a power card of the attack he personally was going to use on Jerry if he missed: "Wheaton's Vicious Cock Punch of Furious Anger"

Anyway, the point of this all is to say the series is a fun way to pass some time.

D&D 4th Ed. Adventure! (World Wide Game Day)

Excuse the long post, but I had a really good time playing, and want to share it with everyone who cares to read.

So, this past weekend was Worldwide D&D Games Day, set to correspond with the release of D&D 4th Edition. We (myself and my fiancee) decided to go and try out this 4th Ed thing at one of our local game stores, Dueling Grounds. It was a good afternoon, and I quite enjoyed the new system.

I'm going to give an account of our adventure here, and likely talk about my impressions of the new system in another post.

The table had 5 adventures and the DM. The was an older man there who hadn't played D&D since 1st Ed, and a young married couple who have a regular 3.5 campaign. The DM plays a lot of the miniature game, so he had a decent handle on the 4th Ed. combat rules already. A whole package was provided which included the adventure, a full poster map of the dungeon (made up from copies of Wizards various dungeon tiles), all of the minis, and some simple character sheets for the pre-generated 1st level characters. The party consisted of a Human Fighter, Dwarf Fighter, Human Cleric of Pelor, Half-Elf Rogue, and an Eladrin (I think) Wizard. There was no mad rush from anyone to play any particular character, though the older man expressed some interest in the Dwarf Fighter. In the end, I took the Rogue, and my fiancee took the Cleric.

Our Characters

After all remarking on how many hitpoints we had for 1st level characters (I had 27), and some brief discussion on where everything on the sheet was, how to use powers, how to heal, etc., we were on our way!

Two young boys had gone missing while near an old mausoleum, and their father sent us after them. 50gp each simply for taking the job, and another 50 each for finding out their fate (dead or alive). I cautiously approached the double-doored mausoleum and, after checking them for signs of bad stuff that could kill me, I opened them and we entered. Inside, after searching the single room of buried warlords for a few minutes, some sort of ghost rose out of the floor and gave us a riddle. We muddled over this for a few minutes and solved it by rearranging the statues of Pelor and Bahamut above the various sarcophagi to be in the riddle's correct order. A secret door opened and we descended into a dark crypt.

We crept down the stairs to a hall forking at the end with a sarcophagus barricading each passage. Lamps were on top of each, and the air thick with the scent of oil. Two hobgoblins shot at us, and we moved in to attack. My fiancee and I quickly discovered (along with the wizard), that we were lacking the ability to roll above 5 as we all shot wildly. This continued for much of the game. The fighters both charged. The Dwarf decided to bull rush the barricade and discovered that it was filled with oil when the lamp ignited it, turning a 15 foot square into an inferno. Both the Dwarf and Hobgoblin were caught in this for two rounds. The Human fighter decided to jump on top of the other sarcophagus hoping not to spill the oil, but the top broke under his weight, resulting in him standing knee-deep in burning oil with the Hobgoblin untouched. Still, with only a few rounds, we hurt the Hobgoblins enough that they began a retreat down the halls which merged into one, again barricaded with behind a third sarcophagus. The Dwarf decided on another bull rush, this time tipping the tomb and spilling the oil on our opponents and igniting them. They died soon after.

Continuing into the dungeon, we came to a large structurally unstable room with two exits. One led to the kids, chained within an obviously trapped room, who warned us that they were told that the ceiling would come down if they tried to leave. We told them to hang on and decided to check out the other room, finding an Elven Wizard standing upon a 10ft high column. We didn't bother to talk at all, and attacked.

4 Skeletons came out from behind the column and joined the battle. Again, the wizard, cleric, and myself had bad luck with the dice, with me missing with my daily attack power which would've given me combat advantage (and sneak attacks) against the wizard. Luckily, the cleric hit with Turn Undead, taking two of the skeletons out of the fight for a turn and the Shade showed up to attack the Elf in revenge for desecrating the graves. The Shade pretty much solo killed him, with an assist shot from my Rogue and the Wizard. The Dwarf went down but managed to roll a 20 on the recovery, standing back up and blowing a healing surge a turn later. The Wizard took a bit of a beating from two skeletons, but I stepped in between and we finished them off.

Where was the Human Fighter during this? Well, the Elf Wizard's first action seemed to summon or animate two of the statues in the other room, which quickly approached. The fighter decided to hold them off our backs while we tried to finish the wizard. Unfortunately, these statues were the toughest opponents of the dungeon. They didn't have particularly high attacks, but when they hit, they knocked you down, each got a bonus attack as you hit the ground, and got free shots when you tried to stand up. Oh, and 80 something hitpoints. Fairly brutal. They smashed the fighter down to -16 and death, and were only slowed when the Shade shifting to attack them while we finished the skeletons. We attacked, and the Dwarf was quickly knocked out again. With the cleric out of any encounter abilities that could activate healing surges, it was just the three standing characters left. The wizard continued to roll under 5, missing with everything and did very little in this last fight. However, my fiancee and I finally found our rolling groove and came at them. She hit one with her daily power, setting it on fire and doing 5 damage a turn. This was key, as the unintelligent statue didn't stop attacking to try to put out the fire. I came around for sneak attacks, but got knocked down to 0 hitpoints on one turn. They luckily both missed the cleric for several turns as she hit them, and I used my healing surge (putting me at 6 hp) and came in for more sneak attacks. Really, I was still rolling poorly, but well enough to hit with a combination of +2 from flanking, +3 from one of her attack powers, and attacking vs the statue's Reflex instead of AC (because of one of my powers). We luckily finished them off before they could hit us again (we had only 6 and 7 hitpoints left, but the DM discovered our dice curse). Hurray! We healed the Dwarf, disarmed the trap, and took the kids back to town. Success!!!!

The adventure was very fun, and everyone had a good time. Despite our poor die rolls at the beginning, we pulled it out at the end, and managed (barely) to make it through (minus one character). Everyone seemed to understand their powers quickly, and we started using different powers against different targets. For instance I had a power that attacked vs Reflex instead of Armour Class, which was very helpful (combined with flanking and sneak attack) against the statues who had rather low Reflex defenses. The fighters loved their powers, like cleave and brutal strike and the Cleric made some excellent uses of attack and healing abilities, pretty much carrying the party through the last fight (that's my girl). The DM was great and, on a whole, an awesome 3 hours that I would recommend to anyone.

The repaint miniatures we got to keep.

Gary Gygax

I've heard the news that Gary Gygax, one of the creators of D&D, and founder of TSR, died this morning.

I have nothing very deep to say on this. I feel that many other blogs have said much more than I could. The Wizards of The Coast D&D site has an obituary on it's welcome page. Paizo's Blog has a post from their head publisher remembering him. Kenzer and Company has posted their "Eulogy for a Gamer" on their site as well. No doubt countless other sites and blogs across the net have also made posts, comments, etc.

For me, I will say that he did not simply create a game and found a company, but helped start a whole genre in gaming that has survived, grown, and created new genres itself. Without D&D, there would be no other role-playing games, likely no collectable card games, and no World of Warcraft. But more than just a genre, it kicked off a whole community of gamers of all ages. One thing I don't often think of from my past days of working in a comic book and gaming store, is just how wide a range of people came in who played RPGs.