Second Star to the Right

Person. In. Building.

It's the morning of July 4, and I'm at work.  But that's okay... it's time-and-a-half.

It seems we have tentative plans to visit Luta this evening out at the homestead, hangin' with her familty while they barbecue and blow shit up.  *grins*  Sounds like fun!  I say "tentative" because, as always, it really depends on how Roulette is feeling.  And we've both been sick this week, some sort of bug I think... which, when you pile that on top of her more typical pre-natal issues, adds up to some Very Bad Stuff (TM).  I'm hoping the worst is behind us... Not only does it really suck to be sick on a three-day weekend, but I know she'd really like to go tonight.  Besides which, I kinda have to take a trip that direction anyway... my sister-in-law has my guitar for me, and the carnival's parked up in Newton today.  I miss my guitar.  It was an exhibit in Skrat's art show at the Carnegie in Dodge, which was apparently something of a rousing success.  I'm really glad I loaned it to him, since I understand that it got a lot of attention.  (I told him he could sell it, if someone offered enough for me to buy a new Les Paul Special Limited Edition... which is about $2500.  His other items were listed in the low hundreds, so he probably found that idea a tad unrealistic.

I will certainly entertain any offers, however.  I love my guitar... it was my very first axe... but I suppose I'd part with it for enough cash.  There's a picture of it at www.myspace.com/orryn_emrys *grins*

Well.. I suppose I should get back to work...  I've got a radio show to voice-track yet for tomorrow afternoon.

Cheers!

Three 4th-Edition sessions in the can... and I am not happy.  Last night's session was nothing but combat.  For four hours.  And while I can certainly confess to running more than a few overly long 3.5 battles, even ones that virtually engulfed a game session the way this one did, the feel wasn't even similar.

I've had my suspicions about the new edition's compatibility with my gaming style for a while, but that hasn't kept me from investing in the books and beginning a trial run.  But I take my obligation to run a quality game very seriously, and I'm starting to form a very strong opinion about what I need to do to retain the level of quality my players expect.

I know that the reactions amongst my gamers is quite varied.  There's a definite learning curve for 4E combats, and two or three of my players are hard-core enough to appreciate that challenge for exactly what it is.  Others are obviously becoming frustrated with the process, however.  Then there's the grid...

The "grid" I'm referring to is the battlemap.  In prior editions of the game - including, to the horror of some, 3.5 - I insisted on running all of my combats "off the grid".  For larger battles, I would use my own map for reference, but not for the players to see.  I run combat as an ongoing narrative, and the players have to rely on my descriptions and whatever questions they have, and my judgement in providing the best interpretation of their actions to give them what advantages they might be able to gain.  In fact, DM Genie provides a fantastic utility to managing tacticals.

In 4th Edition, however, the grid is necessary.  Many of the powers the characters have rely on a very specific idea of the tactical situation.  This is, to me, a problem in and of itself.  One of the primary reasons I've always kept it off the grid is that I don't feel that it's entirely appropriate for the players to be capable of making decisions in combat based on precise distances and relative positions.  Combat is fast-paced and confusing, constantly shifting about.  I use my narrative to express this, keeping things always in motion.  The grid creates a more static impression and allows the characters to take action with too much information and a virtual tape-measure.

I've been trying to maintain a sense of "flow" in combat, providing consistent descriptions, and at least a couple of the players have been taking efforts to inject personality into their actions, but the battlemap has become the focus of the game.  My narrative is quite simply unequal to its detraction...

I'm frustrated.

 This is so frustrating!!  I almost never use my blog to complain or say much of anything negative, because I really just don't have that much to bitch about.  But I just finished composing a rather lengthy complaint about my experiences with 4E D&D thus far, and it just disappeared into the ether when I hit "submit".

Screw it.  I'll try again later....

I would venture a guess that I'm hardly unique in my quest to determine the future of gaming in my own house given the release of 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons.  I've spent the past several months anxiously awaiting this newest iteration of my favorite game, soaking up every bit of trivia about its development that I could and enthusiasticly sharing it with my colleagues at every opportunity.  It was, if nothing else, fun to extrapolate what I could about the upcoming system.

So now it's here.  And I like it.  There are, however, some concerns.

The central focus of D&D, mechanically speaking, has always been combat.  The game's roots are firmly entrenched in strategic war games and miniature-based skirmishes loaded with vast sequences of extremely tactile rule systems.  In its simplest form, D&D enjoys a very straight-forward system of combat resolution that doesn't require any kind of degree to properly employ, laced with a collection of essential statistics that give the characters and creatures in the game a sort of general form and function which allows them to interact with the combat rules. 

During the later years of 1st Edition AD&D, subsystems appeared to support non-combat elements of character development, particularly the nonweapon proficiencies introduced in the Dungeoneer's and Wilderness Survival Guides.  Additionally, the elements of the game have always supported other archetypical features of a fantasy tale:  magic and miracles, wondrous and dangerous environments, treasures and artifacts, thievery and skullduggery, etcetera, etcetera.  The idea of the game gradually moved from a simple invade-the-dungeon, kill-the-monsters and take-their-stuff formula to a much broader sort of simulationist game in which you could easily enjoy any approach to characterization that was feasible in a fantasy world.  The 2nd Edition AD&D game capitalized on this idea with a bevy of products intended to provide players with the tools to expand the simple concepts presented in the core books in as many directions as they could come up with.

3rd Edition D&D took this concept to a new level, implementing a "build" system for character design that allowed players the most dynamic construction tools they'd ever had the opportunity to play with, at least in the realm of Dungeons & Dragons.  By this time, the RPG market had enjoyed a significant boom, offering players a plethora of options for roleplay in a variety of genres and systems.  We flirted with some other games during the 90s, particularly ICE's Hero System and White Wolf's Storyteller games, even Palladium's Rifts... but nothing was ever as lasting as our weekly D&D games.  And with the turn of the century, and the release of 3E, it Just. Got. Better.

When 2nd Edition was released back in '88, I avoided it.  I'd been running 1E for years, and I had every book... I just didn't see a reason to trade up.  When I eventually clicked with a group that played 2E, I gave it a chance.  And I realized that my stubbornness had cost me a couple years of enjoyment.  So when 3E was announced, I pounced on it, watching the internet for rumors and tidbits and reading the "Countdown..." articles every month in Dragon Magazine.

It had issues.  When 4th Edition was announced, they started fingering 3.5's issues unapologetically.  And they were right.  A number of my current problems with system are items that they elected to address in the construction of 4E.  Encounter building, monster customization, tedious combats, and the loss of earlier editions' ability to throw larger clusters of creatures at your heroes and still present a comparable challenge... these and other factors had long since become unsatisfactory for me, though I had more trouble pinpointing them before they were called out to account for themselves.  Which isn't to say that they weren't problems before I knew what they looked like... I just worked around them.  Just like everyone else, if they found them trying in the least.

So now what?  I've only had a single session of 4th Edition.  I've read the books... I consider myself a relatively experienced judge of system mechanics, and I can easily recognize the grace and elegance of the new game system, the clever manner in which it sets out to do precisely what it intends to.  Characters are balanced, powers are cool and interesting, encounter-building and monster customization is simple and powerfully flexible... I love the skill system, I like the tier-based advancement philosophy, and the half-your-level scaling of attacks, defenses and skills.  It's good, and it's gonna be a lot of fun.

But it's a one-trick pony.

It makes everything fun, but it doesn't make everything possible.  And I can more clearly see how important that is now for my players and our gaming style.  For example, character optimization is key in 4E, so you absolutely cannot construct a sub-optimal character, or a character who lacks prowess in battle.  The character roles defined by the new system are a powerful tool, but they're also a straightjacket.  Blurring the lines between them too effectively would damage the ability of the system to deliver what it promises, but many players want precisely that kind of blurring in their characters.  It isn't to make them more powerful... we all know that only a very few approaches to 3E multiclassing are anywhere near effective enough to significantly increase a character's capabilities, rather than watering them down... just to make them who and what they want them to be.  Roleplaying such characters can be a rewarding challenge in a D&D game, and 3.5 continues to make it viable.  4E does not.

And that's really the point.  What's possible.  My D&D game has always made it possible.  We've enjoyed long, rich, memorable campaigns that hinged on characters who have had to forge their own paths to success, not that handed to them by the optimization of the system.  We're gonna do some 4E for a while - I think our current campaign is perfect for it, as the group pretty much made combat-capable 3.5 characters that translated fairly easily to the new system - and I know we're gonna enjoy it.  But I think that it will wear out its welcome before long.  There's only so many games that we're going to want to play to enjoy the challenge of employing our combat-capable PCs as a tactically-effective unit, in games focused primarily on individual combat encounters.  For my convoluted political campaigns or games that focus on the social implications of the characters' experiences, I could do it 4E.  Sure I could.  But I could it better with 3.5.

Now I've got to figure out what I would do to my 3.5 game to take advantage of some of the powerful tools they've implemented.  It's tough... they've really intrically tied their new mechanics to the their core design philosphies, so it may only be so possible to do.

*passes out cigars*

Went for our sonogram this morning, and there was absolutely no mistaking the gender...  I'm stoked!  Due date: November 14.

Damn!  We've got a lot to do before he gets here...

Okay.  4th Edition.  I'm gearing up, getting ready for Monday's soft-launch, and looking forward to a prep-heavy weekend.  I don't so much need to familiarize myself with the adventure material at this point... I went through it all once for the "3.75" game I've been running, since we're converting over for session number 6 of the campaign.  It is, however, my first 4th Edition session... and I need to make the transition as smooth as possible for my players.  The more prepared I am, the better the session will be.

Interestingly enough, however, there is one major adjustment looming on the horizon.  For me, at least.

I remember getting into 3E back at the turn of the century, and quickly discovering how complicated it could be to run.  I developed my own sheets and forms for tracking PC statistics, initiative rolls, and conditions and modifiers.  I had been an avid user of the 2nd Edition Core Rules software in the years leading up to 3E, but, although the character creator that came with the PHB was handy at first, the promised Master Tools program never saw the light of day.  So I came up with other ways to compensate.  I used initiative cards for a while, inspired by the free download offered by Game Mechanics, tailored to fit my needs.  Then I got a Palm Pilot and found a couple of PalmOS utilities that turned out to be useful, particularly an initiative tracker.  I had a Palm IIIc with a fold-out keyboard that it mounted on top of, so it worked out really well in the niche behind my DM's screen.

Then, eventually, I started shopping around the software suites that were being peddled for use with 3E.  I looked at PC Gen, DM's Familiar, and Campaign Suite... but it was DM Genie that really did it for me.  The others weren't as intuitive, and didn't necessarily do precisely what I needed.  Specifically, I required a utility that would manage combat for me.  I wanted to be able to focus on the narrative, not the mechanics.  Of course, a solid character generator was a plus.  A few years ago, it even reached the point where most of my players acquired copies of the program and ran their characters on their laptops as well.

For 4E, however... I've got nothin'.  No utilities, no character management software.  If I'm going to use other aids (and I will!), I'll have to craft them myself, probably using some of the ideas that are being bandied about on the internet this week.  The real adjustment, for me, will be having to track everything manually.  Now, I don't think this is going to be a problem... it looks like 4E combat will be much easier to run than 3.x.  Still... I'm used to having a computer to help manage everything.

Now keep in mind that I'm not exactly throwing out my laptop or anything.  Currently, my campaign details are listed in DM Genie, and I'll probably continue to reference there rather than print them out.  I don't want to use the ink, and I don't really want to have to flip through pages.  I'll have to do enough of that with the handbooks as it is.  I'll probably print monster stats and such on cards, along with character powers, for easy reference.  That's the kind of prep I'm lookin' forward to this weekend.

Believe it or not, there is a bright side to this development.  The trade-off for using a computer program to track everything is that I found myself tailoring the elements of the game to fit most easily into the software's construction.  If I had an optional rule I wanted to try, for example, I wouldn't imlement it unless I could find a way to make the software do it.  DM Genie is very customizable, but my scripting ability is fairly limited, and though there's a sizeable community of scripters out there on the web, they're not necessarily writing up precisely what I need.  And, of course, treasures and items that I had to write up myself became rarer and rarer.  Even if I had something written up in my copy of the program, I'd have to export it to the other players for them to have it.  And sometimes, I didn't want them to have access to the details.  All doable... but kind of a pain.

I've noticed this trend, and found it more and more disturbing in the past couple of years.  By going back to pen-and-paper, however, this limitation magically disappears.  Not that I wouldn't use such a utility for 4th Edition should it be made available... but for now, I think it's time to get back to basics.

Wish me luck!

 I am not well, today.  Touch of the stomach flu or somthin'.  But strangely, it's made me loquacious.  On the messageboards, anyway.  I've posted more on ENWorld today than I have on any one day for the past couple of years.  I don't know what it is... Do I have more to say, just because I'm physically out of sorts..?  Or mayhap I'm feeling that my opinion carries more significant weight today than on other days.  Either way I'd probably better just shut up and go to lunch.

Even though food doesn't even sound remotely of interest right now.

***

Damn.

 Yeah... I know.  Not such a creative title there.

We're converting...!  Yay!!  *throws confetti*  It's not a very friendly process, much as we were warned by WotC back during the dark days of development that led to this particular moment.  But the new campaign is still very new, and the characters fairly undeveloped.  It seemed something of a no-brainer.

That's right.  I Wasn't Using My Brain.

But seriously, we're pretty excited.  The long-anticipated ruleset which has now touched down on our expansive gaming table in the form of a parcel of blue-and-white textbooks brings with it a certain air of anticipation.  There's some anxiety in there as well... particularly as the conversions have gotten underway.  We knew that the characters would inevitably look a little different, but I hadn't anticipated how some of the seemingly, almost-cosmetically minor design decisions put into play during the first five sessions of the campaign (which was long enough to complete the first adventure... and yes, I'm aware that I've only posted journals for three of them.  Gimme a break.  I'm a busy man.) would present hurdles enough to dampen spirits a bit even for my most open-minded victims - er... players.  And yes, they were aware of the warnings about trying to convert as well.  It just all requires a kind of shift of focus.

Technically, this is just a trial.  If we don't like the 4E experience as a group, we'll simply change it back and continue with the story from wherever we're at.  Would we still play 4E after that?  Of course... we bought the books, didn't we?  But with a fresh game intended to be 4th from the start, it'll be a little easier.  Even so, this group seems ready... and as of last night, the conversions are in.  I have seven 3rd-.level PCs: a cleric, a fighter, a paladin, a ranger, two rogues and a wizard.  Post-conversion... it's a sizeable group for 4E, but I think it'll be a very effective one.  And a fun one.

Now for the campaign material.  Incidentally, I have quickly discovered one of my absolute favorite elements of the new rule system:  encounter building.  With monster roles and the XP-budgeting system, it's very elegant.  And I think it will make everything so much easier to run than 3.5 ever did.

I'm anxious to get started.

5/19/08

1 Deepwinter 459 (New Year's Day)

An eerie silence hung in the crisp morning air, the chaos so readily hidden by the gloom of night having fled ere the sun's gentle rise above the eastern peaks. From one of the many tiny alcoves that surrounded the temple's crowded sanctuary, Alyssa watched as the grey light of dawn crawled steadily across the frozen cobbles. New Years decorations, once suspended from lantern posts and skybridges and the walls of nearby structures, lay trampled in the mud. She shook her head. There would be no parade, no Festival of Dreams. Dark omens lurked in the shadowed streets of Gate Pass.

There was movement in the sanctuary. Alyssa peered between the sheer draperies that separated the alcove from the prayer chamber. Similar curtains hid most of the walls and numerous niches surrounding the room, an element common to temples devoted to the Order of the Aqualine Heart. It added an etheric quality to the chamber, diffusing the sunlight and isolating worshippers from the harsh realities of the world outside. The temple was a house of healing, but little succor could be found herein for the man who now made his way through the chapel.

Alyssa remained hidden, unprepared for any further drama this night. Too much lay between her and her brother Joshua... too many secrets, too many lies. The shame no longer threatened to consume her, but it lingered far too near when her brother was nearby. Much like the people of Gate Pass, she would carry scars of her own this night.

Having received far too little rest but sufficient treatment to heal their wounds and restore their vital energies, the party makes their way through the quiet streets of Gate Pass to Gabal's School of War, the magic academy more often referred to by locals as The Castle. A mob has gathered outside the academy's gates, but is calmed in fairly short order by the appearance of one of the school's more charming prefects, a magus named Diogenes. Recognizing that the heroes mean no harm, Diogenes admits them to the courtyard and leads them inside, inquiring as to their business. A brief conference in the academy's kitchen reveals that the young wizard is fairly confident that he can identify their missing Shahalesti agent, an elven sorceress named Shealis Amlauril, who keeps company with midnight visitors and, upon occasion, a lantern archon.

Diogenes warns the heroes of the wizardess's power, however, cautioning them against a confrontation. He does suggest, however, that he could help subdue the woman by challenging her to a spellduel, if the party would be willing to pilfer her spell components before she enters the ring. The heroes agree, sending Basil and Jasmine to attend to the necessary bit of larceny in newly-acquired vestments appropriate to the school. Meanwhile, Derek steals away to locate Shealis's chamber in the west tower and determine whether or not she is in residence. Once she has left for the dueling chamber, the remainder of the party makes their way to her room, where they discover her guests.

With an oath to the archon that they would do no harm, Joshua and Elessar are allowed to interrogate Shealis's guest, a Shahalesti spy named Larion Prevarieth whom the party most recently encountered disguised as a misshapen gnome. Larion, though unwilling to aid the party directly, eventually reveals that the metal case the heroes seek is in the hands of Shahalesti agents secreted in an elven ghetto two city wards to the east. He additionally cautions them that the case will not be taken without a fight, and urges them to leave it in the care of the elves.

In the dueling chamber, Diogenes soon manages to subdue the sorceress and leaves her in Jasmine's care. She and Basil secure the woman, rendering her incapable of using her magic, before Jasmine sets to questioning her. Suitably convinced of her captor's moral flexability, Shealis proves unwilling to give up the names or locations of her contacts, but is quick to try and negotiate her freedom, offering the name of the wizard to whom the case would be taken in Shahalesti. Jasmine accepts her terms and leaves her breathing, if bound, whilst she and Basil rejoin the others.

The party takes to the streets again, making their way deeper into the city. The ghetto for which the heroes are searching proves to be easy to locate, but difficult to find a way in to. In attempt to locate the most likely place for a secret entrance, Jasmine scales a nearby apartment building, peering over the walls to note the location of the buildings beyond. Selecting the most likely length of wall on their end of the compound, she returns to the street and helps locate the door. Once the party has gained entry into the ghetto, they begin their search in earnest for the gatemaker's shop described by the elf. A group of elven children playing in the street proves to be some assistance in this endeavor, indicating that the party should proceed to the north side of the compound.

Ironically, the gatemaker's shop sports no obvious entrance, having instead a painted door and windows decorating the face of the structure. Further aid presents itself, however, in the form of a disappearing/reappearing talking rat, who directs them to the entrance and warns them that it's trapped, in return for a promise to turn over the case that they seek... though the contents are theirs to keep. Despite the enigmatic nature of their benefactor, they agree to the terms and make their way inside. No one is struck by the trap in the door, but the party fails to prevent an alarm from being sounded.

The lower story of the gatemaker's shop is an obstacle course comprised of wooden doors in various states of construction, many of which hang or swing on free-standing frames. The resident Shahalesti elves descend onto the staircase across the room and begin launching arrows across the intervening space whilst their guard animals, a bad-tempered trio of celestial badgers, attempt to slow the heroes down. The party divides its efforts, and Joshua and Elessar make for the stairs as the others deal with the beasts. The elves retreat to the top of the stairs, the nearest of them drawing his blade to confront Joshua in the confines of the stairwell. The large cleric is grievously wounded, but Jasmine, Elessar and Charmalina press the attack. The others follow, bringing the fight to the upper story, whilst Torrent pauses to revive their fallen comrade. The battle is bloody, but the heroes are victorious.

With the carpentry tools downstairs, the party manages to break open the case and retrieve the contents. The rat, which has since transformed into a raven, alights upon the broken case, reveals itself to be some sort of tiny devil, and disappears with its prize in a gout of flame and smoke.

 

*sigh*  Eventually, I'll post Session III.  I have it written, but I wrote it on my laptop (in DM Genie) while I was sitting at work, where my laptop lacks access to the internet.  I've since had the computer out at home, where I could upload the journal via my own spotty wireless-y goodness... after all, I ran Session IV on Monday... but I had to get a couple of details from one of the players to fill in the blanks and didn't feel like messing with the upload once I had.  So, it's coming.

My campaign is off to a fair start.  I ran into one kind of unexpected foible early on... I like the source material for a lot of reasons.  The adventures are well written and very original, with a lot of cool intertwined detail that will easily spread through the whole of the campaign.  One of the things that I find so charming about it, in fact, is the lack of serious railroading.  The plot develops along the lines of an anticipated chain of encounters, but it doesn't strictly require the PC's to take any specific steps to gain the next goal.  It doesn't even really matter what alignment or affiliation the PCs have, just that they have some reason to respond to the general stimulus provided by the story.

This creates something of a sense of "looseness" to the game, whereas the players are frequently left to their own devices.  You'd think that most players would appreciate a plot that doesn't shoehorn them into a specific series of action... and I think that this theory essentially holds true, except when put into practice.  The PCs largely responded to this kind of freedom by standing around debating their options and obviously feeling very uncomfortable having to make decisions with no clear indication of what will work and what won't.

As Roulette so delicately put it... that's life.  We have to make decisions like that every day.  And it sucks.

So I tackled Session IV with a slightly skewed approach, using NPCs and events to kind of subtly move things along in a way that seemed most equal to the characters' aims and means.  Given that several of the PCs are locals, for example, I began outlining details that gave them information based on their PCs' experiences in years prior.  This allowed me to engender trust or suspicion where I liked it based on a person's prior knowledge of the subject.  Things like that.

It still doesn't feel railroaded.  I've used the same tactic in prior campaigns, though my players are long-since accustomed to the idea that my NPCs are individuals with their own ideas and agendas who might occasionally be dead wrong about a thing, or lie to achieve their own ends, or simply be trying to manipulate them in some fashion... or just have their own spin on events that may not be entirely accurate or in the PCs' interests.  So far, it's made a significant difference.  We'll see how things develop.

The 4th Edition books come out next week, by the way... though it'll likely be a week further before I see them, courtesy of Amazon's slow-ass free shipping.  Is cool.

5/12/08

1 Deepwinter 459 (New Year's Day)

The bombing had stopped. It was by no means quiet out, with alarm bells ringing throughout the city and the evergrowing mass of confused and frightened people gathering in the streets, but to Arlyn's well-trained ear, it was deafening. He glanced at his companions. Only the human swordswoman, leaning over one of their unconscious assailants, cocked her head as if listening to the night. Everyone seemed focused on their prisoners, quietly discussing their options. Almost everyone, Arlyn corrected himself. Basil stood slightly apart, fingering the hilt of his narrow blade as he watched the skies.

Studiously ignoring the muffled discussion of his comrades, Derek slid one of the prisoners' distinctive red armbands from around his bicep. They had all been wearing them. A black horse-head decorated the accessory, familiar runes splayed across the icon in thin white letters. The wizard frowned. The symbols were familiar to him, but the words were not. He shook his head, stuffing the armband into his pouch as he got to his feet.

"We need to be going," Torrent said. Jasmine glanced up as Joshua rose to his full height, nodding at the pale-haired priestess's pronouncement. Sounds of battle drifted through the city, probably from the western wall. Jasmine sighed. She knew that the towering cleric was frustrated that they hadn't the time to properly interrogate the prisoners, but that certainly didn't weaken her resolve to be rid of the men entirely. After all, the only good Ragesian...

Elessar hefted the other man, carrying him gently toward a nearby alley. Jasmine lifted her own charge and followed him, rolling her eyes as she watched the paladin gently lower the injured thug to the ground. Jasmine grinned at him pleasantly as she unceremoniously dumped her burden in the same relative vicinity. She trailed behind slightly as the party lurched into motion, speculating at her chances of catching them up were she to double back briefly and rid the world of a couple of minor Ragesian irritants.

Frowning slightly, she hurried to catch up as the others were swallowed by the swelling crowd.

Torrent leads the party in a generally easterly direction, doing her best to avoid the thick knots of frightened citizenry. The group stops occasionally to offer aid to the wounded or rescue those in need, then hurries on their way, determined to make the scheduled rendezvous at the depository. At the gate to the between city wards, the masses become frantic as a dragon flies low overhead, inspiring terror amidst the milling crowd below. Doing their best to avoid being trampled, the heroes take advantage of the opening left in the wake of the panicked populace to work their way into the back streets of the next ward. Minutes later, they find themselves outside the eighty-foot-tall stone tower that Torrent had spoken of.

Identifying herself to the guard at the gate, Torrent wins admittance for the group and makes her way inside. The tower's interior is dark and quiet, the sounds of the city muffled by heavy stone. Letting their eyes adjust to the wan light of a single lantern, the heroes ruminate for a moment just inside the main entrance before making their way to the stairs. They're met on the ramp by a misshapen gnome, presumably the Lyceum spy Rivereye Badgerface. Acting as if he expected them, the gnome leads them up to the second floor to one of the tower's many heavy lockers. The party becomes suspicious, however, since he seems to have misidentified Elessar as his anticipated contact Peppin, with whom Torrent is certain that the gnome is already acquainted. When the gnome explains that a password is necessary to access the case that they are there to collect, Elessar attempts to gently explain that Peppin is not among them, and has instead been recently found slain. The gnome immediately takes flight, escaping onto one of the tower's numerous balconies and managing to disappear into the night.

The tower's guards soon arrive and search the premises. A group of sentries stationed in the depository's interior are located on the top floor, bound and gagged, along with the actual Rivereye Badgerface. Once the heroes have illuminated the diminuative spy regarding their intentions, Rivereye informs them that they were captured by a group of elves who intended to open the case. The gnome managed to convince them that some sort of password was necessary, lest the contents be magically destroyed. Thus the charade. He is unclear where the elves have taken the case, but he knows that they have a contact at Gabal's school of wizardry.

The party decides to take the gnome to a nearby Resistance safe house, located beneath a church devoted to the Order of the Aqualine Cross. As they are leaving the depository, however, they witness a brief aerial encounter in which one of the city's griffon-mounted defenders successfully lances a Ragesian wyvern-rider. The beast falls to earth just a few blocks ahead, and the party soon arrives at the scene. Though the wyvern is obviously dead, the rider seems to have survived and fled into a nearby alley. Joshua implores Torrent to proceed toward the church whilst he and the party track down the Ragesian soldier.

The follow a trail of bodies in the blood-soaked snow to small dwelling, where they corner the Ragesian and attempt to subdue him. The battle turns vicious, however, and Charmalina is nearly killed. The heroes converge upon the wyvern-rider and quickly cut him down. Gathering up the household survivors, they follow Joshua through the streets as he cradles the wounded halfling in his arms, bearing her to safety.

Lending what aid they can to the healers of the Aqualine Cross as they tend to their fallen comrade, seeing to the security and welfare of their tiny refugee-filled chapel, the party settles in for the night.

5/5/08

1 Deepwinter 459 (New Year's Day)
Midnight

"Trehann Finner, owner of the Poison Apple Pub, has been taken into temporary custody under the protection of the city guard, until such time that he can be questioned by representatives of the Ragesian Empire, and found innocent of hostile collusion. The Poison Apple Pub is hereby closed until further notice."

Charmalina's lips moved as she sounded out the words. Some of them were strange, but the meaning was clear.

The pub was closed.

The pretty swordswoman behind her let loose with a vile invective, and the halfling clearly heard the word "Ragesian" buried in there somewhere. A murmur ran through the group as they gathered close. Only her brother seemed relatively unaffected by the revelation, focusing instead on the shadowed street as it stretched either direction into the night. Charm grinned and rolled her eyes. He was always on edge.

Heedless of his diminuative companion's amusement, Elessar Heartsblood, devoted champion of Holy Thaeos and sworn knight of the Sacred Blade, squinted slightly at the scrawled message pinned to the pub's main entryway. A glance to either side showed that steps had been taken to secure the property, the doors and windows boarded shut. There were no obvious signs of life in or about the tavern. Straightening up, he tossed a curious glance at his brother-in-faith, Joshua. The young cleric stood quietly in the party's midst, towering head-and-shoulders above most of his erstwhile teammates.

Elessar cleared his throat. "Are you sure this is the place?"

Joshua nodded. "There's a door in the alley," he said, his clear baritone echoing slightly between the buildings. Setting action to words, the massive cleric turned quickly to one side and led the group across slush-coated cobbles to a narrow passage along the east side of the pub. A sputtering lantern suspended from a building across the street did little to dispel the deep shadows of the cramped alleyway, but the priest had no difficulty locating the narrow entrance. With a single glance around him, verifying that his motley assortment of would-be insurgents had managed to remove themselves completely from the road, Joshua rapped on the door a couple of times with his heavy boot. A moment passed, and the door finally opened.

The pale-haired young woman they'd been sent to meet took a moment to study the group before opening the door wide, motioning for them to enter. The tavern within was a little dingy and very rustic. Chairs and tables had been stacked against the wall and covered with sheets. A tiny lamp struggled to light the corners of the room from atop a single, centrally-located wooden table. A small keg of ale was situated alongside it, surrounded by a half-dozen mugs. A similar number of chairs were arrayed nearby. The woman moved to the table and started pouring drinks. Somehow, even this simple movement spoke of endless determination. Bits of sea-green plating were visible beneath her cloak, and a wicked-looking battleaxe was strapped across her back.

"There are more of you than I was anticipating," she offered. Her voice carried a pleasant lilt more commonly heard in the hills of distant Sindaire.

Joshua grunted, glancing at the irrepressible young halfling who was already eying the cask of ale. "More than I was anticipating," he echoed, but offered no further explanation for the cryptic comment. The woman smiled and nodded, motioning toward the table.

"I'm Torrent," she added, taking a seat. "Please, have a drink. Just because we're about to go to war doesn't mean we can't celebrate the new year."

Gathered about a table at the Poison Apple Pub, located in a poorer district of Gate Pass about a mile from the city's western wall, Joshua, Jasmine, Elessar, Derek, Basil, Arlyn, Charm and Torrent discuss the fate of their city, and how they might forstall or even turn back the Ragesian tide. Torrent explains that a number of fools on the city council are pushing to allow Ragesian inquisitors, agents of the dreaded Scourge that threatens to destroy every mage and cleric who fails to prove loyal to the empire, to bring their witch-hunt into the ciy. The Resistance, with whom most of those assembled are loosely affiliated, considers any cooperation with Ragesia just a huge step toward further subjugation. But Ragesia's armies are sizeable, and Gate Pass cannot hope to hold them back for long.

The wizards' academy of Lyceum, due south in the distant port city of Seaquen, has announced its intention to resist the Ragesian Scourge, calling for those who would fight to flock to its banners. The Resistance wishes to seize the opportunity to establish an alliance with the mages, hoping to bring the forces of Seaquen and Lyceum itself to the aid of its disant cousin to the north. Torrent asks that the party undertake this mission, after they retrieve some vital Ragesian intelligence from an agent expecting to meet his contact less than an hour hence.

Just as the party reaches a consensus regarding their approach, an ambush occurs. Arlyn and Jasmine note the presence of someone traversing the upper story just moments before the front door disintegrates into splinters beneath the weight of an enemy battering ram. Ragesian thugs make their way into the room, demanding the heroes' surrender. The first of them falls beneath the wooden table itself as Joshua brings it crashing down onto his head. Jasmine, Elessar and the halflings make their way quickly toward the stairs, as Basil slides over to the far side of the door, plunging his rapier expertly into the back of one of the attackers as he steps through the wreckage.

In the stairwell, Elessar is brought up short by the appearance of yet another pair of Ragesians. As he closes with the first of them, Jasmine leaps nimbly atop the narrow bannister and drops between the two assailants, shoving one of them deftly in the paladin's direction with a well-placed kick. The other proves less cooperative, and the two of them are soon grappling in the stairwell. Joshua, meanwhile, slips through the ruins of the front door and out into the street to confront their leader, a swordsman standing idly by on the far side of the road.

Just then, an explosion shatters the night. Fiery timbers sail from the upper story as it is suddenly reduced to kindling. Combatants in the tavern below find themselves dodging trails of fiery oil streaming down from above. They finish their battles quickly, recognizing the need for a hasty retreat from the failing premises.

The Ragesian captain orders his remaining thugs to retreat, apparently unwilling to suffer any further losses, and disappears into the night.

Turn around, look at what you see,
In her face, the mirror of your dreams,
Make believe I'm everywhere,
Given in the lines, written on the pages,
Is the answer to a neverending story...

It fascinates me how, once you've begun to accumulate a broad spectrum of bloggers on your LJ friends lists, your friends page tends to develop something of a life of its own.  So few of my real-life friends feel a need to blog, though a few such notable souls do make the occasional effort, that I've built this august company from the ranks of individuals with ephemeral connections to some of my own diverse interests.  In some cases, as I'm sure most bloggers can relate to, these connections are very blatant.  I have LJ friends who are gamers and game designers who blog explicitly about gaming and... well... game design.  In others, I might have hit upon some common interest that brought them to my attention, but reading their blog quickly reveals them to be a very different person than I am.

I also have a MySpace page, and I've noted a similar phenomenon... though far more colorfully illustrated by the medium.  But far less interesting.  I mean, its kinda fun to visit the pages of people you know and see what they do to represent themselves on the web, and it can be fun to get acquainted with the online presence of people you don't know but have some common interest with... but its a fairly shallow glance into the individual.  Flash in a pan, if you will.  A page may be designed to intimately represent the individual to whom it is tied, but it really doesn't change or grow very much unless the wielder is very dedicated to making it so.  And, of course, there are blogs... but they're easily buried beneath surface.  You really have to look.

LiveJournal, on the other hand, though relatively customizable on the surface, is only what you make of it.  Without persistant input and updating, the page remains an archive of your offerings, rather than a snapshot of who you were when you last updated it, but it quickly fades into a semi-sordid obscurity.  It remains, of course, only what you make of it.  If your blog is a treatise on the joy of legos, that might be something of a peek into one of the peculiarities that most readily defines you, but it's hardly a glance into the person behind the tiny plastic blocks.  So your mileage, invariably, tends to vary.  *grins*

All of this adds up to a daily buffet of widely diverse offerings, some of which are superficial (which is certainly not a criticism), some flippant, some deep, some relevant to me and life in some fashion, and some completely beyond my immediate grasp.  But not a one of them, if for no other reason than the fact that someone out there felt that it was necessary to go through the trouble of posting it... not a one of them without value.  Which gives my unassuming little friends page, and it really isn't that expansive since I have far fewer friends than many of my fellow bloggers, a truly life-changing potential.  Whether I walk away with a new idea rattling around in my head, or simply find a moment to giggle quietly to myself, or find that I am somehow tragically bummed by what I find there...

... My life would certainly be different without it.

Good morning, friends.  I hope your day is a good one.  Perhaps, if I read between the lines, I'll be able to tell....

Had a conversation with Alydhian the other day.  He was on his way to work, kinda casually listening to an infomercial playing on one of our stations, a health program that was trying to peddle some off-the-books wonder-drug.  I don't know what the drug was all about... I wasn't inspired enough to look it up on the logs when I got to work.  But they did talk quite a bit about the Adrenal system, and how it ties into our bodies at so many levels.  And Alydhian posited a theory, inspired by this fact and something else he'd been considering and some discussions we'd had on numerous prior occasions and the Queensryche CD he then popped in to escape from the infomercial and probably some flight of birds he saw drifting by and the color of some lady's toenails and what he'd had for breakfast and who-knows-what-else....

It regards a sort of general malaise that seems to infect so much of our society in today's world.  Our adrenal system is, of course, a hormone-control system, but it basically does one thing and it does it well.  At the most fundamental level of our physiology, our adrenal system creates an essential ability to react to stressors with focus and control.  Or on a broader level, perform effectively in the face of danger.  In a prehistoric context, this function relied on our instincts... our fight-or-flight response patterns and our need to physicially provide for our most basic needs on a daily basis.  But this was never intended for more than sporadic exploitation.  Our system requires time to recharge, to revitalize its components.  Some amount of damage has been done to our minds and bodies, physically and chemically, and it must be allowed to heal.

But in today's fast-paced world, where we're constantly on the go and laboring under a deadline, this system operates in overdrive.  And our minds and bodies are never given adequate opportunity to recover.  And when the stressors become extreme, particularly when they're beyond our control and coming from a lot of different angles, we seek release in ways that provide a completely different type of stress on the system.  Not all of us, and not all the time... but ultimately, the most satisfying escapes are the ones that leave us drained... because our adrenal system was still hard at work.  Sex, inebriation, partying, dancing, rockin' out to fast-paced music... laughing, singing, ranting, crying....

We're burning out.  There's really no way to stop it, so we try and adapt.

Hmm... interesting theory.

Ladies and Gentlemen... I give you Darius Rucker!  Live from the Kissin' Studio, on May 6, 2008!!

*winks*

 

It started off well.  Despite a rather cantankerous sunburn, courtesy of a zoo remote I teched on Saturday, I spent the majority of Sunday and Monday laboriously trudging through my final preparations for Monday evening's launch.  It was a little tricky... the players have a bevy of custom rule material to adjust to, but they seemed to catch up quickly.  Happily, I don't think this particular group has ever been quite so prepared for their new characters.  Backstories were solid, with lots of hooks and quirks to be exploited.  And I even asked the group to arrange a sort of loose association, or at least a string of relationships that could be easy to pull together at the beginning of the campaign.  I don't typically do that, since it invariably saddles people with relationships that, once they get into the game, don't really make much sense.  (I once had a player who decided to invite a sporadically-involved compatriot to play his character's twin brother, only to be frustrated at every turn by the other PC's unrealistic behavior patterns that seemed strongly at odds with their common background elements.  Interestingly enough, one of these characters became one of our group's most beloved PCs ever, the other our most reviled.)   It seemed to work out really well this time, however.  I am inclined to conclude that this is a direct result of the players' dedicated efforts to develop initial characterization elements.  Of course, everything's subject to change... best-laid plans and all.  We have yet to get to know these characters, and I've already been surprised by a couple of turns.

It was a strong first session.

Yesterday, Darius Rucker was in studio... you might think of him as Hootie, of the Blowfish...  He's a country singer now.  And he smiles a lot.  Worked out well for me... I'm collecting autographed pics from former rockers who have gone country.  Jewel was getting a little lonely hanging on the wall of my cubicle.

Riverfest is this weekend.  Wichita Riverfest is, I'm sure, fairly comparable to the biggest annual festival in any sizeable community.  Unlike Dodge City Days, when I lived out west, however, Riverfest doesn't take over the entire city.  Just a small section of it.  Unfortunately, said province is just a few blocks from the house.  Lemme tell ya... that's a pain.  Traffic is hell.  On the upside, Channel 963 is bringing Colbie Caillet to town on Friday, so I'll be helping set up the show and get to hang out with the artist a little bit and stuff like that.  And she's cool.  Our syndicated morning show had her in studio yesterday for about half an hour.  And I must say... I wasn't particularly excited about Colbie Caillet (rhymes with 'ballet') before that, but her easy manner in the studio and the quality of her acoustic performance was more than enough to get my attention.  I think I want her CD now, and I'm really lookin' forward to the show.

So... busy Monday, busy Friday.  Wednesday seems a little surreal.

Main Entry:  K-Factor
Pronunciation:  KAY FAC-tur
Function: noun

Definition: A circumstance of unpreparedness as characterized by any of the following factors:

* the announcement of a complex scholastic project requiring parental involvement, up to and including the possibility of a necessary acquisition of supplies via a third-party resource, no more than 36 hours prior to the deadline - which is characteristically somewhat less, frequently in terms of numerous days or even weeks, than the time allotted by the instructor.

* the interminable delay of some relatively simple but marginally unpleasant task requiring a modicum of effort and generally no more than 15 to 30 minutes to accomplish, which can frequently take up to 4 or 5 days to resolve, often when much more drastic action than seems dictated by the initial reticence must be employed.

* a general irritant that, when prohibited (often as a consequence of point number two) from seeking entertainment dictated by parameters of its own intent, will under no circumstances be disenfranchised for a period exceeding 120 seconds.

I love her... but sometimes she can be a real pain.
 

The Desert of Desolation is, now more than 55 sessions into the campaign, finally behind us. Last night's game session (Alydhian's new work schedule has forced us to move it to Mondays, at least for now) saw the triumphant, if somewhat anti-climactic at times, finale of the 1st-Edition (and boy! was it fun to convert!) mega-adventure.  It was, as always, a very cool ride... but I knew by the end of it all that it would just feel like a means to an end.  Something they had to get done before they could move on.  The real story's yet to occur... and I decided to end it with plenty of questions to help get things started.

But that's because it may be awhile before we get back to it.  This coming Monday, I'll be starting War of the Burning Sky, replete with house-rules and custom class variations that are essentially the result of my initial impatience for 4th Edition, combined with a newfound sort of skepticism that I'm going to find what I really want in the new edition when it finally arrives.  Don't get me wrong... I'm still very enthusiastic about it.  From everything I've seen, it's going to be a really fun game to play.  I don't know that it really fits my needs, however, at least not on all fronts.  I've become increasingly frustrated with many of the problems that the 4th Edition design team has cited and addressed in 3.5, but at its core I'm still very fond of the system.  Since I use DM Genie to run my games anyway, I don't suffer from a lot of the high-maintenance issues that irritate so many D&D players.  Combats run 10 times more smoothly with the software than without, if you know how to use it.

Note that I'm not defending 3.5 as is, but pointing out one of the ways that I already manage to pick up the slack.  Happily, some of the 4th Edition preview material, particularly as derived from the core philosophies of the new game, and a healthy infusion of my own house rules (and some from Monte Cook's Book of Experimental Might and the Arcana Evolved system that I love so much), has provided me the means to further tailor the game to a style of play that seems to work best for myself and my players.  It's all very experimental... but that's the fun of it at this point.  It may not last once the new rules finally hit the shelves and I've had a chance to thoroughly peruse them, but I've decided to run EN World's War of the Burning Sky saga because I strongly feel that I'll be keeping at it for a while despite the impending release.

In any case, I'd like to wish a healthy congradulations to my very innovative D&D players.  Lookin' forward to the new campaign!

In case there was any question... they do.  Still.  Perhaps they always will.

Mom and Roulette and I made the trek to Kansas City last night to see Bon Jovi in concert.  My mom's been a fanatic loyalist for the past twenty-some-odd years, and now she's finally had the chance to see them live.  One thing about living in the sticks... concerts are a pain in the ass.  No matter what, you have to travel five or six hours to see much of anything.  I think city-folk take such things for granted, though not, perhaps, so much here in Wichita.  It's been kind of a dead zone for decent concerts for the last decade and some change.  I think the last time Bon Jovi was in Wichita I was in the sixth grade.

I think the city will become a hotter spot for touring acts in the years to come.  We're already beginning to see a definitive increase in concert activity.  Roulette and I had to go to KC the year before last to see Trans-Siberian Orchestra, but this past Christmas they came to us.  And we did see Three Days Grace and Breaking Benjamin here in town a month or so back.  It's just that, with the record industry losing more and more money every year from CD sales, particularly the distributors who have been slow to become part of the internet revolution, touring is once again the best way to ensure that their artists can make a buck.  Which, consequentially, means bigger and better shows... and, more importantly, more of them.  Bon Jovi, in fact, hit KC twice... once last Thursday and then again last night.  Both shows were absolutely packed!

Okay... on to the important part.  I've always loved Bon Jovi.  My mom's fascination with their music started when I was in middle school, I think... so we always had all their albums.  Plus concert videos, video collections, recordings of television performances, etcetera, etcetera.  After the absolute craze of their 80s albums, they took four years to get around to releasing Keep The Faith when I was in high school.  This was after both Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora (who became something of an influence to me as a blues-based guitarist) recorded solo albums, the former the critically-acclaimed companion to the Young Guns II motion picture (and yes! they played Blaze of Glory last night... and opening act frontman Christ Daughtry, who had performed the song on Idol, actually joined them onstage for that one... which was cool...) and the latter a heavily-soulful offering entitled Stranger In This Town that is still, to this day, one of my Favorite CDs Evar, and keyboardist David Bryan had done some work scoring movie soundtracks.  They got together in the studio and compiled this monumentally creative effort that solidified them, to me, as genuine musicians.  They had some more hits... but it was a number of cuts that you didn't hear on the radio that really enthralled me.

My absolute favorite Bon Jovi disc came somewhat later, an almost-ignored offering that mostly only the diehards bothered with entitled These Days.  It was pretty much the last album they did that I really loved.  They've had... I think, three? more studio albums since then.  Plus a live album...  Just not so much a big deal.  A couple of phenomenal cuts off of each CD, but not enough to make the entire album(s) memorable.  Lost Highway, the release they're currently supporting, is no real exception.  It has at least one song that I'm seriously entranced with, but overall they're sound has garnered a little too much Nashville for my liking.  Don't get me wrong... I'm okay with a lot of country music, but not necessarily blended with my Bon Jovi.

All that being said... they seriously rocked last night.  They're performance was spot on, they're stage show a marvel to behold with floating, changing screens and some really cool lighting tricks, and Jon is a consumate showman.  I've gotta say... without him this band would be pretty dull to watch.  He knows how to work a crowd... and obviously loves every minute of it.  It was a simple joy to behold.  They played cuts from throughout their career, which included only one song I didn't really know ("Misunderstood" from the Bounce disc, but a good live jam), including a few of my unorthodox faves like "Hey God" from These Days, and "One Wild Night".  The hits they performed included the obvious... "Living on a Prayer", "It's My Life", "Bad Medicine", "Born to Be My Baby"... Richie sang "I'll Be There For You"... and there were a couple of their more expansive collection of Top 40 success stories.  They did "Runaway", "Bed of Roses", "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead", and "Always".  And they gave us a few of the tunes off of their latest album, including, of course, "(You Want To) Make a Memory"... which was every bit as intense as a live number.  And of course, they closed the show with "Wanted Dead or Alive".

We had a good time.  Mom was ecstatic.  Roulette was kinda fightin' with pregnancy-related stomach issues and such, but she smiled a lot and seemed to basically enjoy the show.  I despair of ever making a real concert-goer out of her... she's just too socially discombobulated in that kind of crowd.  Which I understand.  I just dig it when the crowd's all focused on the same thing and the energy is high... and conerts are pretty much the pentultimate example of that phenomenon.

In any case, despite the fact that they might be starting to show their age, Jon's still hot enough to make the girls scream... even if a lot of the girls are getting to be in their 40s and even their 50s... Richie still sounds fantastic, Tico obviously loves his job, and David's probably still just a little too pretty for rock 'n roll... despite all that, it was a fantastic experience.  I strongly recommend a healthy dose of live Bon Jovi... it's good for the soul.