Obligatory Update

I’m going to keep this short because it’s dead week, and I’m emotionally drained. We haven’t had a D&D game since October, and I just finished Mass Effect 3. I may post a full review of it here (as non-spoilery as possible) later, after I make it through the aforementioned dead week. And finals, obviously. There’s a lot I need to say about that game, and I have to get it off my chest somewhere.

Sorry for the scarcity: school comes first.

Kingmaker 4th Edition Recap; OR, How That Vampire Noble Has Been Working Out

Unexpectedly, most of the new(est) players couldn’t make it, and our half-elf ranger never showed up, so it was down to:

• my character, Devon Surtova, the vampire nobleman,
• Ašra, Dragonborn Paladin of Bahamut,
• Nara, the shifter Druid,
• and newcomer Alebeard Axebeak, dwarven warpriest of Kord, as played by our DMs father.

We all met up at Oleg’s place and had our introductions with the cleric, and then had a look at a number of posters advertising things that Oleg and crew wanted killed. Kobolds, some giant scaly worm-like thing (I have it on good authority that they’re called “tazylwyrms,”) a massive boar that had given hunters trouble for some time, and (of course) bandits.

We set out exploring after escorting a cleric (or possibly Druid, it’s hard to be sure) of Avandra to the temple we’d cleared out a few sessions back. The trip to the temple was mostly uneventful, though some mites tried to steal our goods while Devon was on watch – they frightened easily enough, though, and there was no need for violence. Yet.

So from there, as I said, we struck out for new territory. We stumbled on some elven ruins in a swamp (“if they built more like dwarves, there’d be more left,” Alebeard informed us, and many jokes about elves foolish enough to build stone buildings in a swamp ensued.) There were some faded inscriptions, but nothing readable – Devon copied them out into his journal, regardless – and a hidden cache of gold and gems indicated that someone had been there recently. After discussing the issue, we opted to hide and wait for whoever it was who lived there.

To make a long story short, we were attacked by some frog like thing riding a giant slug. Apparently. At least, that’s how Devon chooses to remember it; the truth is that Devon fired the first shot with his crossbow. It was a warning shot, of course (read: exceptionally bad roll) and the resulting knock-down-drag-out fight was extremely… Slimy. Mainly because we were in a swamp, but also because the slug slimed us and tried to knock us down. Luckily I kept my footing. In the end, the frog creature was no match for us, and after the rest of the party had it cornered, Devon hit it with his Dark Beckoning power. And it died. Or, as I will tell the story forever, it died when I glared at it particularly hard. Apparently, Devon’s mind (and gaze) is just too powerful for a swamp dweller to handle.

We found one of the tazylewyrms sunning itself on a rock, near a rocky dam filled with dead bodies and brush. Devon volunteered to sneak up on it (“you wait here, Madame Clanks-a-lot,”) and reached out with his mind to goad it into attacking. The rest of the party quickly came to his aid, and it was lucky they did, since a second wyrm came out of the water…

Anyway. There were three fights, over several days in game, and I used my daily power in all of them – and laughed maniacally as I did. When your daily power involves transforming into a swarm of bat like shadows, the evil laugh is mandatory, regardless of your alignment. I ended every fight with an extra healing surge, which left me at full hit points without need of help from the cleric (just how I like it) and was pleased with my performance both as a player and a character. Long story short, the character is really fun to play and works pretty well. I’m very happy with him.

This was the first session in which I never became bloodied. It was also the first session in which no one else was knocked out of a fight at any point. Between the cleric and the paladin, we do a MUCH better job of surviving.

When the session ended we were up by around 1000 gold, and had started helping some Kobolds recover their missing “god,” – and we’re pretty close to convincing the kobolds that Ašra is stronger than their god and their shaman put together. At the end, though, this means that we’re still in a cave full of mites under a sycamore.

Ah, haha. Nearly forgot. Bonus story. When Devon found the hole (making a rather appropriate Princess Bride reference before announcing “I found a hole!” loudly,) Alebeard came over, asking, “where?” and promptly fell in. Much laughter resulted. I really enjoy role-playing with Alfred, he really gets into his character. Of course that character is usually a dwarf, but that’s part of the fun.

By next time we go back to Oleg’s, I expect to be wearing a new outfit made from Tazlyewyrm hide. I’m thinking boots, and something with a hood…

Kingmaker 4th Edition Approaches!

Another weekend of D&D is coming up, assuming the world doesn’t end tomorrow. And, thank goodness, I don’t have to run it, which means I can get back into the game as Devon Surtova, my Vampire (who multiclassed into Assassin at 2nd level and has yet to regret that decision. The feat support unlocked is worth it by itself).

More amusingly, we have a total of seven (7!) players signed up to start with us this session, assuming everyone makes it. Which, as some of you know, is a lot. Especially in 4th Edition D&D.

Again, I’m glad I’M not the DM.

I’ll post again after the game to recap… which reminds me, I STILL haven’t gotten around to posting my thoughts on the game of Swords and Wizardry I was in a few weeks back. They’re coming, eventually.

Unsurprisingly, given the season, much of my time and energy is occupied by thinking and studying, so I hope you’ll forgive me if my blogging takes a back seat occasionally. Hopefully the chance to just PLAY the game again will help matters and get my creative juices flowing.

So, the next three things I need to write about here (assuming that I manage to hold myself to this at all):

1. Kingmaker 4th Edition Session Recap (pending this weekend).
2. Swords & Wizardry: Session Recap, What I Liked (And What I Learned From It).
3. What Fable 3 taught me about fantasy gaming.

Also, also: if you’re not already reading d20monkey, you should start. It’s fantastic. Brian does a really great job producing some exceptional webcomic, and you should support him at it. Maybe even pick something up from the store.

Take A Break Monday: It’s The Costumes

I was lucky enough to stumble on this earlier today over at buffalog:

It just makes me smile. It’s well worth clicking through to the site to read the author’s commentary.

Now Experiencing Technical Difficulties

In a fit of rage, as I am wont to do, I decided to wipe out my OEM copy of Windows entirely and replace it with the copy of Windows 7 Professional I got during my computer science classes a year or two ago. (Incidentally, word to the wise: if you’re taking community college classes anyway, check to see if your college is part of the MSDN Academic Alliance, and if it is – sign up for something in the CS department that qualifies. Talk to the right teacher after that, and you can get all SORTS of stuff cheaply or free. Well worth it.)

So I’m having some minor issues caused by the wipe and restore and certain things just not being there yet. But overall, it went much smoother than it might have for a number of reasons.

For starters, I had the chance to back up the most important stuff to my external drive.

My browser data all syncs through Chrome, so my bookmarks and extensions were all restored when I signed in through Chrome.

Dropbox kept a lot of other data safe.

Ninite.com made installing my most used free programs quick and easy.

And the nice folks at Lone Wolf Development were kind enough to offer me an early license reassignment.

So I’m pretty much back in business, now, or I will be once I re-install Photoshop.

DC Reboot?

So, that happened.

There’s this reboot thing I’ve been hearing about all over the internet, and I have to take a moment and… wait. Is that…

Oh. My. Zod. They ditched the trunks. I don’t… what is that I don’t even…

Okay, so I’m not totally sure how I feel about all the changes (ZOMG THINGS ARE CHANGING) over in the 52, but I’ll admit I don’t think it’s all bad. Don’t get me wrong; I’m a fan of the iconics. I liked the DCU just fine the way it was. But change is the only real constant in comics – aside from (possibly) the death of Uncle Ben.

Overall, the redesigns are pretty solid (with one or two minor exceptions…) and I’m sure that a lot of great stories will come out of the changes, like they always have. I’m on “wait and see,” mode, in other words.

There’s just one costume I have a little bit of a beef with.

What is this I don't even

I mean, I hate to say this, but Wonder Woman’s look is an upgrade… this… feels like a step backward. It looks… odd.

Am I the only one who feels like the skirt was okay?

Then again, I still feel nostalgic for the Linda Danvers’ Supergirl, so what do I know?

The Ipad DM: Goodreader (via www. Newbie DM .com)

Excellent review of a very useful app for anyone with an iPad, gm’s, players or students alike. I remember using the iPhone version of this way back in the day, but it’s gotten a lot better since then – and at the time it was pretty fantastic!

In my previous post on this series, I wrote about Index Cards, a screenwriting app suitable for organizing details of your campaign.  Now, I'm going to show you Goodreader, the app I use for reading, organizing, marking, and making printouts of pdf's in my gaming library.  At $4.99, it's cheap and very useful, and I recommend any DM out there working off pdf's to check it out.  I've been running games from it and don't miss the paper books at all … Read More

via www. Newbie DM .com

Biotics: A Different Kind of “Magic” System

So, Biotics is an example of the kind of thing that makes Mass Effect (unlike Star Wars) a true Sci-fi setting. Which is to say, despite the pseudo-magical/psionic nature of the abilities, they are firmly rooted in pseudo science and techno-babble. In a way that doesn’t make you want to pull out your own hair. (%*&@ you, midi-cholorians. I’m ignoring you forever except to tell you to go die in a fire.)

Biotics are the ability in living organisms to create mass-effect fields and manipulate the physical world. This allows them to move objects, selectively manipulate mass and gravity, destroy objects, or create barriers.

The Asari are the only species which is naturally biotic (though not all of them choose to develop their gifts). Biotics of any other race are the result of exposure to Element Zero in the womb, which does NOT always have beneficial results.

Case example: in humans, 9 in 10 exposures result in a best case scenario of nothing, and occasionally causing birth defects or cancer. Only about 1 in 10 children come through with any kind of useful biotic potential, and they have to be fitted with implants that augment their nervous signals to run current through the element zero in their system and trigger the effects. Muscle memory is a key component of these effects, hence the gesturing (“physical mnemonics”).

Training is long and difficult. And the result? Somehow more awesome than most other “magic in space” variations. Tragic backstory? Check. Techno-babble? Check. Fails to piss off Star Wars fans? Check. Establishes the user as “special?” Check.

Amusingly enough, the mass effect fields created by element zero are also used for everything from interstellar travel to artificial gravity to completely replacing gunpowder, that last one making the biotic essentially a living gun in a way that “fire and forget” spellcasters can’t even approach.

It also doesn’t take much tweaking to fit into a grittier medieval fantasy setting…

Mass Effect: What I Learned From It

So.

It’s been awhile since I seriously gave thought to gaming in a sci-fi world, and I’m starting to think I was missing out.

Mass Effect has just about the coolest setting I’ve seen since George Lucas killed Star Wars, and I can’t seem to get enough of it. It has, as I’ve mentioned, even reached the point where I’ve agreed to run a one-shot game session based on the Mass Effect setting ported to Mutants and Masterminds.

Why Mutants and Masterminds? Because I like it, that’s why. Okay, fine, there’s more to it than that, but let’s just say that even though it’s a bit of a departure from the default assumptions of the system, I feel like it bends very effectively in that direction.

Plus at this point it’s either that or Fate, and I’ve never done anything with Fate. Most of my players are at least passingly familiar with d20, so it’s better for me to stick with that.

And having looked at the combat system again, I’ve found it extremely robust. I will, however, be doing something I wouldn’t do in a 4 color superheroic setting; I’ll be using a tactical map and miniatures.

What the game itself has taught me I shall put below:

• Mind your surroundings.

Mass Effect is a sci-fi world with guns, powered armor, and “biotic” abilities (which here basically means space magic. IN SPACE). The presence of automatic weapons makes cover a very important consideration for survival, something that every D&D game I’ve ever been in has basically ignored. I’m tempted to make this translate to a universal rule that all characters are defensively undercapped and thus need cover to compensate, but we’ll see how that works when I get to actually making the character pregens.

Either way, it’s forced me to make note of the rules for cover (as well as the rules for automatic weapons) and commit both to memory.

Additionally, Mass Effect forces you to pay attention to the other elements in the environment – whether cover is fragile and could be destroyed by a dedicated foe. Whether those barrels are filled with something explosive. Can your biotic abilities knock the enemy off the ledge? Despite its relatively linear nature, the game is full of questions like this. Questions that can mean the difference between life and being filled with bullets.

Characters who ignore this important point will undoubtedly be filled with bullets. (The characters. Not the players.)

• No man is an army (except maybe Shepard): OR, the importance of teamwork.

In Mass Effect, you have tech, biotic, and combat focused characters. Each have abilities that are more or less useful in certain situations, but teammates are there to help cover your weak points. In general, it’s a good idea to have a variety of abilities covered since you don’t know what you’ll be facing ahead of time.

Well, that translates PERFECTLY to tabletop RPG conventions, doesn’t it?

• Aliens ROCK.

The thing I’m really enjoying about Mass Effect 2 (never got to play the first game, sadly, but looking forward to the third) as a sci-fi fan is the in depth alien races, with their histories, cultures, evolutionary commentary, and so on. And thankfully, most of them DON’T suffer from the issues that plagued Star Trek and Star Wars way back when… or that is to say, most of them don’t look like humans in makeup (some of them, maybe, but not all). There’s a lot of really impressive information in the in-game codex as well as on the Mass Effect Wiki.

The best part, though, is that the vast majority of the alien races are just plain COOL. Not in a, “humans suck by comparison,” sense of cool, but in a, “unique and different in an intriguing way,” sense. Their characters are compelling enough that the fact that they look different isn’t a big deal. At least not to Shepard.

Granted, a few of them are just distressingly alien, but that’s sort of the point, isn’t it? This isn’t a horror story in space… well, most of the time. I shall say no more to avoid spoilers.

• No one worries if you’re on rails when you’re on the train to Awesomeville.

Like I said, Mass Effect 2 has its moments where it feels a little linear (in missions, to be exact) but the linear plot doesn’t matter too much when you sit back and realize that it’s AWESOME. Besides, a few linear missions in the context of a larger game where it feels like you’re in a living breathing galaxy where your actions MATTER? I can handle that.

• An overwhelming threat is a powerful unifying force.

Sauron. The Borg. Magog. The Reapers. They all have one thing in common: they are powerful, almost elemental foes that are designed to terrify the lesser races and push all our horror buttons. The Reaper Threat is very real, and it’s going to take more than just humanity to overcome it. Thus providing  a solid motivating force for our group of heroes.

I’ll write more about the setting and lore later on, and throw in some character writeups when I have them finished. Enjoy!

I Got My Mass Effect In Your Mutants & Masterminds

Just a few preliminary thoughts before I really get going on this idea:

1. Characters should be built to about PL 6. Possibly as high as 8. The reason being that I want them to feel “superior” what with the powered armor and whatnot, but I want them armed with basically standard firearms out of the core book. Most of which (not counting the rocket launcher and whatnot) are about Damage Rank 5. So that said, most characters are likely going to be SLIGHTLY shifted toward accuracy on their Accuracy/Damage tradeoffs. At least with ranged attacks.
2. Everyone involved is new to the system, so I want to make the character generation portion of the game as simple and streamlined as possible. This most likely means either pre-generated characters (IE, Archetypes) or putting together a set of genre related templates. Either way, I need to cover the following bases: Adept, Sentinel, Engineer, Infiltrator, Soldier, Vanguard.
3. Powers come from three basic sources: Training (combat related powers, anything that lets a person use guns in an atypical way, things like variable descriptor for bullets), Biotics (telekinesis, “mass effect fields”, gravity manipulation and similar, and occasionally things like mind control) Tech (advanced hacking, combat drones, holographic manipulation, cloaking, etc). There may be some overlap between areas, IE, I’m not opposed to the idea of finding a way to use biotics to do stealth just because it doesn’t appear in the source material.
4. The Archetypes/Templates: Adapt is pure Biotic, Sentinel is Biotic/Tech, Vanguard is Biotic/Combat, Engineer is pure Tech, Infiltrator is Tech/Combat, and Soldier is pure Combat, where in this case Combat means “guns,” as opposed to the combat portions of the game.
5. Cover is the most important thing in Mass Effect, and I’m going to work to make it important in this game session, too. Partly this will be about encounter design, and partly it will be about giving the bad guys lots of automatic weapons. Bottom line, by the time I’m done I need to REALLY know the rules for cover and automatic weapons and make the players PAY when they don’t bother with cover.
6. I’m still deciding what to do about alien races. Hm. Each one should get a write-up here, though, and some thoughts about how I’d handle each.