Categories
Game Group

Next Game: Dunno

This upcoming Friday is the 4th of July. Do we want to meet some other time this weekend (Saturday or Sunday), or does it just not match our schedules? Let me know if any time is particularly good or bad and we’ll see if there’s sometime that works for everyone.

UPDATE: I spoke with Kev last night. He’s working unavailable Friday, works 1-10 on Saturday, and 11-7 on Sunday. It doesn’t look like we’ll manage to get our normal game up and running, though Jennifer and I are discussing backup options if there’s interest and availability.

Categories
Books

Little Brother X

I wolfed the book down. It kept me up several nights– I kept thinking just one more page, one more chapter. It was well written, and I really liked the characterization. As Jennifer said when she finished reading it, this book is going on our gift giving list. It has a lot to recommend itself to everyone, adult and teen.

Categories
Misc

Moved to a new space

After struggling with infection and slime on llamafodder, I gave in and created a new blog. I imported the old posts and comments– so after a very little while we’ll be all the way up to speed again. Let me know if you have any problems!

Categories
Books

Valedemar: Winds and Storm Trilogies

Another solid six books in the series and a good conclusion to the world.

The Wind Trilogy is Elspeth’s and is about her long journey, training, and return. She’s a more complex character and not completely sympathetic, which is good. She’s given a number of gifts and talents, which seem to exceed the demand that’s put on them by a pretty wide margin much of the time. The book also introduces Darkwind who has a lot of POV chapters and his own struggles for the first two books before falling in beside Elspeth for the conclusion.

The Winds trilogy returns to a tighter set of POVs; typically Karal (the Karsite scholar). As the series goes on other POVs become more common, but the story is still Karal’s. Karal gets a lot less cool powers and status– most of the time, his efforts are like a Buffy scooby– inspiring, but not the person slinging the power or beating the bad guys by himself. The second book’s conclusion is a little disappointing, mostly because the third book’s conclusion is so similar. If you’re annoyed by “reunion books” where everyone in every other book makes an appearance, you might be annoyed– but it’s handled quite well and doesn’t dominate everything.

Categories
Game Group

Next Game: Friday June 27th

Please let us know if you’ll have any problem with making it this week. We left off just after your ambush of the Ogre camp, the rescue the gnomes, and the interrogation of the fallen Ogre. We’ll resume next with with the characters at 6th level. See you then!

UPDATE: As Kevin mentioned below, he’s not going to be able to make it when we start, but he encouraged us to begin without him. Unless you hear otherwise, we’ll play as usual tonight.

Categories
FATE Games

Cool Initiative Idea

Bruce Brown had a great idea on the FATE list for initiative.

The theory goes that GM calls out the adjectives on the ladder in descending order. Players can then use any skill that matches or exceeds that at any point during the round.

Continue reading “Cool Initiative Idea”
Categories
Books DnD Roleplaying

4e Month One: Links n Stuff organized

Game Resources
Chatty’s Tool Roundup, and Dragon Avenue’s Resource Page.
A 4e Form fillable auto-calculating character sheet (.zip)
Supplement tables, Reference screen (flash)

Setting and Adventure Ideas
Chris Chinn’s Five blades of Bahamut, Quest seeds, Airships
P3’s short series (a quick post each for 1-10, 11-20, and 21-30) extensible with lots of options.

Continue reading “4e Month One: Links n Stuff organized”
Categories
Roleplaying

Gnome Stew

I don’t know if I mentioned it, but I’m currently writing articles for Gnome Stew. There are a lot of great authors, most of whom came from the Treasure Tables blog and forum communities. If you’re foolish, you can read only my posts this way.

If you have a comment that’d be a good part of the conversation, head on over and join in. If you’d rather chew me out, here’s a good place to do it. 😉

Categories
Politics

Masculinity and other cool quotes

A great quote from Hilzoy:

And besides, this all plays into a pretty ludicrous conception of masculinity, according to which George Bush’s swaggering and bluster are supposed to show that he’s manly, while — well, something, though what exactly is never clear, is supposed to show that Obama is not. If I truly thought that masculinity was anything like the sneering, bullying caricature that people try to foist off on us every four years at about this time, I’d either take a vow of celibacy right now or spend some serious effort trying to discover whether it’s possible to become gay by sheer force of will.

The whole post is good, but I was tickled by her concluding paragraph (above).

Afterward, I found a great post from Kameron Hurley about finding happiness and fearing it. Here’s one (of many) good paragraphs:

I worry that happiness is a dangerous thing. I worry that it’s not something we should strive for, but just something you get periodically, a lull between the long stretches of darkness, like the short, sharp Alaskan Summer. Those three months of intense, gorgeous, beautiful life and sunshine that make the 8 months of winter worth it.

Categories
Roleplaying

Lots of finds, heavy on 4e

4e related:
4e random encounter maker
4e pointbuy calculator
4e character sheet (pdf, for printing)
4e Form fillable auto-calculating character sheet (.zip)

Bankuei’s 4e playaids: Requests and some solutions.

Keep on the Shadowfell review, very positive. (No spoilers.)
The Chatty DM plays 4e: initial thoughts, Into the Shadowhaunt (spoilers!)
Martin reviews 4e books in detail. An excellent review.

From Doyce: Watching the 4.0 DnD release, and The DnD 4.0 game with the seven-year old got even more awesome.

4e FAQ (from Reading Dragon mailing list):

My response from Customer Service is that if a monster has two or more basic attacks, you can select which one you want to use in and opportuity attack situation.

Standing from prone does not generate opportunity attacks (OA). gleemax thread

Here is Customer Services ruling on slowed shifting. It exposes a new way to deal with rules precedence: “can’t trumps can.” As suggested in the basic mechanics of the game on page 11, specific trumps general, though when specific and specific conflict (as in this situation), we rule that can’t trumps can. Thus if you’re slowed, you’re limited to two squares of movement, regardless of the type of movement, unless the power/ability specifically says otherwise.

Now more than ever– is it time to buy Firey dragon counters print them on cardstock?

Dragon Avenue crusades against 4e naysayers.

Roundup from Elonian Nomad

RPG Digest roundup

Rob Donohuge preps 4e: 1, 2, 3.

Continue reading “Lots of finds, heavy on 4e”