August 4: I drove my Chevy Cobalt to Mingo Junction OH from Akron OH. I met up with James Sutton, Dawn Marie Sutton, Carsten Damm, Jason Wallace, and Kathy Schad and met Dawn’s dad and I transferred into the JamesDawn van. After a long trip bordering on 8 hours, we got to the Meriott hotel in Indianapolis. We met up with Chad Booth after his flight up from Louisana and Jacques from Chicago and his girlfriend Dawn Marie who is from Indianapolis. Jacques and Dawn suggested dinner at Scotty’s, because of it being $9.00 draft beer pitcher night. The food was good and the service was excellent. I ordered Wedge fries and they gave me Waffle fries,... and they gave me a free order of Wedge fries for the mix up!

August 5: After breakfast, we drove down to Kentucky to visit the Mammoth Caves. We had lunch at the café before entering. We had lunch at the cafe just before entering. I had a decent grilled cheese sandwich and some fries. I took a bunch of pictures of rock formations. For dinner, we went to Bazbeaux pizza and got 3 big pizzas. I had a pint of good guinness.

August 6: After breakfast, I went and visited the Mongoose Booth and eventually broke down and bought two Magic placemats of Chandra Nalaar and Liliana Vess. I went to the 11:00 A.M. Wil Wheaton talk about gaming and his life. He shared anecdotes about games and his family, managing to be both funny and sympathetic at the same time. It was the highlight of the con with many good quotes. After leaving there I met up with Chad, Jason, and Dawn Sutton, and we crashed Bogie’s game. We returned to the Mongoose booth and rallied up everybody including Damien, Patrick, and Jeff Laubenstein! We went out for lunch at the Ram. They really went all out on Gencon even naming their dishes after fantasy fare. The decorations of fantasy posters were a nice touch. My beer was good. I had the beer battered fish. For 11.99 I got three very tiny fish filets, so I was not pleased. Then I asked for water and 5 minutes later our waitress asked me if I had asked for water. Not the best portions or service. I went to the 6:00 P.M. Friday Night Mega FNM. I won 1 and lost 2 matches in swiss rounds. I got Dragonskull Summit, Sword of Vengeance, Leyline of the Void, Birds of Paradise, Dark Tutelage, and Destructive Force. Everybody got foil FNM Krosan Grip just for participating.I can't complain too much about my pulls.

August 7: After breakfast, I went and visited the Mongoose Booth. I bought a Bag of Holding so my fiancee would have something to hold her Magic cards in. I went to the 12:00 Noon Whose Run Is It Anyway? Shadowrun done in the style of “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” Like all improv comedy, it was very hit and miss. Some of the audience members participated and one was the most funny of the show. He played a dwarf rigger watching other movies and channels while being on the set of the Shadowrunner dating game. I went back to my room and I watched an Invader Zim marathon until I had a 15 minute power nap at 3:45 P.M. At 4:00 P.M. Carsten, Jason, and Chad discussed Equinox development. What about the details? I can't tell you that! I went to the 8:00 P.M. The Adventures of the Guild. I got to see Felicia Day and it was a good Q&A panel. Jacques’ Dawn wore the best Codex cosplay costume I ever saw. After that I did a Zendikar-Zendikar-Worldwake booster draft and got ousted in the first round. It was not a very good draft set because it was too enchantment heavy with all the quests running around and strange rares. I don’t think I’ve ever last picked a foil rare before, but that is what I got in Selective Memory. Next I did an M11 booster draft and took second place with a Merfolk Sovereign draft deck. I got 4 booster packs for placing second, and pulled Day of Judgement, Redirect, Demon of Death’s Gate, and Time Reversal from my free packs! I wandered back to my hotel room at about 2:00 A.M.

August 8: After breakfast, I lazily lounged about playing video games, resting, andand catching some more Invader Zim. For lunch I went to BW3s and got some Chicken Tenders with Chad and Carsten. The service there was poor as the waiter treated us like we were an inconvenience to him. He poured from pitchers practically like he was throwing the liquid and it took asking twice to get ranch dipping sauce for our orders. I watched I watched Dawn x2, James, Jacques, and Jason play a game of ThunderStone from 5:00-7:00 P.M. We went to the Rathskeller for dinner. I had an awesome german dark beer, as well as sauerbraten which is beef roast that tastes sweet kind of like how my fiancee cooks her pork tenderloin. Expensive place but it had good service, food, and beer.

August 9: The trip back home, we watched Spirited Away in the minivan. A pretty good movie for an anime kid flick. Its kind of like an anime version of Wizard of Oz where the main character meets all sorts of strange characters, gets a quest, and has to defeat a witch.

Overall I had a blast. I’ve never got second place in a booster draft ever! I got to see old friends from Origins 2005 and meet for the first time a lot of the RedBrick team! I can't wait for the next RedBrick con!

Earthdawn Third Edition Development

I finished up the sample player character archetypes for the Cathay Player’s Guide and the Second to Eleventh Circle Gamemaster Characters based on the archetypes for the Cathay Gamemaster’s Guide. I revisited Burning Desires and redesigned the gamemaster characters for Third Edition as well. I am generally caught up with current Earthdawn projects for the most part.

Jason’s Earthdawn Campaign

We managed to finally reach the Tylon Mountain mine and negotiate with Longtooth Shortwit and Nuk to work with the four dwarf miners. One of the dwarf miners decided to return to Bartertown with us to hammer out a supply route with Darren.

We were met on the road by Celeste Bloodlore, a troll warrior (Katy) and Salasar, a t'skrang thief (Ted Favinger returns!) who had been sent by the Bloodlore trollmoot to find us and regain the tapestry of King Runvir.

We gave them back the tapestry and allowed their caravan to return to the Bloodlore trollmoot with the tapestry and convinced the two of them to join us in exchange for the Stone of Wisdom and its key knowledges for the Bloodlore trollmoot for their help with our three adventures. After that, we headed back to Bartertown and ended the session after introducing our old group and new members to each other.

In the next session, a thunderstorm led to a flash flood on the Servos River. As we approached the river, we saw a caravan being pulled under with three Namegivers clinging desperately to the tree it was tangled up in. Salasar swam across the river and boarded the caravan. Salasar used a rope to tie the man, woman, and remaining child together in the tree. The additional shifting weight caused the caravan to dislodge from the tree sweeping two children caught in the caravan up into the current with it. Salasar swam into the current after the caravan. Salasar attempted to get to the children in the caravan, but the strong current pulled him under as well. Salasar was nearly crushed to death by the caravan as a result and went unconscious.

K’terep handed the reins off to the dwarf miner so he could swim across to the people in the tree. K’terep swam across, climbed the tree, and glided one of the children back to safety. He attempted to swim back across, but the current swept him under. K’terep crashed into rocks but managed to get back to treading water. K’terep then swam to the nearest shore. There he found Salasar washed up on shore and woke him up.

Meanwhile, Celeste and Bella tried to calm the saved girl while Phist and Gareth tried to come up with a plan to save the man and woman still in the tree. They attempted to throw a rope with an attached dagger to form a bridge to balance across to them, but the tree was undermined and the man and woman fell into the river. The group argued about whether to stay and wait for the two t’skrang, but Nova decided to drive off with the caravan without waiting for them. Nova eventually got the caravan stuck in the jungle and they had to make camp. K’terep and Salasar backtracked to where the caravan was, swam back across, and found the caravan gone. They continued as long as they could and then made camp. On first watch, K’terep saw a fire in the distance, woke up Salasar, and had him investigate. Salasar snuck up on a caravan and returned to tell K’terep about it. Having found the caravan, we returned to the group. K’terep found Nova and was infuriated about being left behind, left for dead, and punched Nova in the face and told him to never leave a group member behind again.

The next day, we found lightning lizards in the middle of the road. They were not threatening, but they were in the direct path of the caravan. We had no choice but to try everything to get them out of the way from shooing to them, negotiating with them, singing to them, pushing them, and finally out right attacking them. We defeated three out of seven and the rest fled.

During the middle of the next night, ork scorchers ambushed us in a tactical strike. They barred and chained the caravan doors in order to keep those inside trapped within. They captured a sleeping K’terep with nets and ambushed Phist and a surprised Nova Born Burst. They knocked out Phist with overwhelming numbers as Nova was forced to surrender to an eventual five ork scorchers surrounding him after Phist fell.

Meanwhile, K’terep taunted his captors and they attempted to kick him and they failed, both falling down. K’terep drew his dagger and slashed at the nets, snapping the links and freeing himself. He then faced down three ork scorchers alone with nothing but a dagger and wearing no armor, killing one and wounding another. As the battle drew on, after nearly a minute of combat against three opponents, K’terep was killed. But he delayed three of the ork scorchers while Nova’s antics delayed the other five ork scorchers giving the group inside time to break down the doors, snap the chains, and mount an offense against the other ork scorchers who had doused the caravan in oil and were about the set the caravan on fire.

Just as an ork with a torch approached the caravan, Gareth and Celeste busted out of the caravan, with Gareth swinging his warhammer, Thwack, so hard and violently that it broke the ork’s nose, with the momentum carrying the ork scorcher into our campfire, and his warhammer was stuck in the ork’s face. Salasar snuck off and woke up Phist. The group focused on the five ork scorchers while the other two ork scorchers bound and secured K’terep. Salasar convinced them that he was K’terep and they chased after him towards the rest of the group. Seeing the whole armed group of adepts, they fled rather than face them. Salasar stole a Last Chance Salve from the ork scorcher leader and used it to revive K’terep. Interrogation led to us learning that they were sent by an ork called the Shorttusk clan. We decided to gather more information about them when we return to Bartertown.

M11

Just when I thought I had freed myself from Magic: The Gathering (I last spent $20.00 USD on Garruk vs. Liliana in November 2009). I bought my fiancée, Katy a Deckbuilder box for her birthday on June 29th for $20.00 USD since she is really into M:TG now. It looks like I am back to my spending ways on the new M11 set. What has got me so excited? Mostly the Planewalkers and their synergistic signature spells, many of which make some deckbuilding ideas come to light such as a Jace mill deck and a Liliana discard deck. The thing I really like is that the commons and uncommons in the set are so good that you can get a common/uncommon playset and then pick and choose from select rares and mythic rares to play with.

GenCon

It’s hard to believe this is a week away at this point. It’s even harder to believe I am going to be on a week of vacation from all work. Its been a while since my last vacation (February). I’m really looking forward to seeing everyone from Origins 2005 again and seeing everyone else for the first time. I hope to see you all there!

P.S.: Yeah I missed blogging last month. I did make it a whole year without missing an update though with a couple months with two entries. We didn’t play any of Jason’s campaign at all in June, and there was not a lot of video gaming to talk about.

Jason’s Earthdawn Campaign

The group was stuck in town waiting for the caravan to be repaired. K'terep climbed the tallest barn in town and jumped off of it twice, entertaining the villagers with his adept climbing and graceful gliding. K’terep then helped the farmers till the fields and tend the crops to repair the destruction wrought by the earth q'wrils on their farms as the rest of the group rested or meditated.

A little boy came screaming into the fields about Theran slavers as he sobbed. K'terep questioned the boy about what happened. He learned that a group of Theran slavers had boldly attacked a caravan only a few days out from Bartertown, capturing his parents. He fled to the village in order to warn us and get help for his parents. As daring adventurers, our group decided to help the boy get his parents back and even the dwarf miners decided to help us fight the Theran scum.

One of the dwarf miners stayed behind with the boy and we tracked the caravan from the village, finding the slaver's camp nearby. Nova decided to attempt to reason with the slavers and got himself caught in the net of one of the troll leaders for his efforts. "Tall blue elf from frozen north fetch good price at market!" So K'terep glided down from a hill and attacked the lead troll taunting him by saying, "I'd fetch a good price at your market but you'll never catch me. The only thing getting collected today is your head!" With help from Phist and Gareth, we took down the lead troll while our dwarf allies kept the human Therans busy. We soon broke ranks to attack the troll leading from the rear and after we defeated him the rest of the Theran's morale broke and they ran. We freed the people of the caravan as well as the last surviving caravan guard Fiona Nevaeh, a Winddancer played by my girlfriend Katy who was trapped in a cage and tried to escape during our combat by rolling the cage rather than kicking at the door. The group then returned to the village.

Katy’s character Fiona Neveah was introduced to the group as the last surviving caravan guard from the caravan ambushed by the Theran slavers. Nova attempted to drive the caravan in K’terep’s absence with bad results, and we nearly lost the caravan and the horses as Nova cracked the reins once and he caravan drove off. The caravan approached nearby where K’terep and Fiona were singing and dancing in the fields since as Taildancer and Winddancer they were getting along pretty well. K’terep and Fiona chased after the caravan to try and stop the runaway wagon. Nova threw a rope and net at K’terep presumably to ‘help him’ get onto the caravan, entangling him and dragging him behind the caravan spaghetti Western style. Fiona managed to grab the reins and stop the caravan giving them to Phist to hold onto while K’terep shook off the pain of being dragged by the caravan and the sudden pain as the caravan stopped and tossed him into the air freeing him from the net. K’terep returned to driving the caravan.

The group left for the Tylon Mountains after our interlude to save time ended up wasting a lot of time. Fiona scouted ahead for the caravan, but a zoak attacked her. She managed to last a couple of rounds, but by the time the caravan caught back up to where Bella could cast spells and K’terep could throw spears, a lucky strike by the zoak wounded Fiona, made her fall from a height of 7 yards/21 feet/Step 15/D20+D6 damage in EDC, and the horses trampled her to death. The zoak swooped down and scooped up her body to eat it as a meal. K’terep’s spear and Bella’s spirit dart missed the zoak and it got away. With no body, even K’terep’s Last Chance Salve was useless to help.

Currently Katy is making a new character and we have some other new players making new characters as well. Should be interesting next time.

Video Games

Command and Conquer 4: Tiberium Twilight was not a very good purchase. 3 training missions, and about 6 missions each for the GDI and NOD campaign arcs. So 12 real/15 total missions. And no Scrin missions/Where are the Scrin? I am not thrilled at all at the game’s length. There are Starcraft homebrew campaigns longer than this! The other problem is that without the resources and a base with base defenses (The Defensive MCV has base defenses, but if you switch to Offense or Support MCV they lose power and become inert), the game loses a lot of its fun factor. It becomes find the enemy MCV and overwhelm them before they overwhelm you and the game loses a lot of its strategy as a result. The worst problem though is that the game does not conclude the Tiberium saga in a satisfying way at all.

Earthdawn Third Edition Development

We’ve added a fifth shard to Shards Collection Volume Two, which makes it consistent with the first volume in terms of the number of shards. The last shard is Flames of Avarice by Hank Woon, written and designed to go with Kathy Schad’s excellent brand new cover for the collection. Otherwise development continues on the Cathay Player and Gamemaster books with the new disciplines nearing completion leaving me to fill in the gamemaster characters based on the new disciplines to finish up the book’s content and then onward to layout and art.

Jason’s Earthdawn Campaign

We snuck in one session of Earthdawn this Sunday. After fleeing from the crakbills and gate hounds, we were lost. Phist used his navigation skill to figure out where we were and he gave us two routes to the Tylon Mountains, the long, safe way of doubling back to the road and the shorter, hard way or taking a shortcut through the woods. Being adventurers, we bravely chose the shorter route through a forest pathway. Nova was firmly against this but was overruled by the rest of the group.

As we traveled on the next day, a cockatrice attacked our lead horse, knocking it down, wrecking the caravan. The horses became a tangled heap of bodies struggling to free themselves from the ropes and each other. The group was all sent flying except oddly enough the dwarfs, with Phist flying off the caravan. After getting up, we attacked the single cockatrice until it was dead. K’terep used his creature lore skill to learn that the cockatrice’s feathers, blood, and tail barbs were all valuable. He had Phist gather the blood and feathers, but removed the tail barbs himself. The first removal went okay, but the second one did not, and K’terep ended up paralyzed and taking a nap for about eight hours while the group camped and tried assess the damage to the horses and the caravan. The dwarf miners told us the caravan would need a lot of repairs. During night watches, we noticed smoke in the distance, but thinking it was the ork scorchers who had already attacked us, we did not investigate.

In the morning, we could tell it was a permanent village rather than a bunch of tents. Most of the group left to scout it out except for Phist who remained with the caravan, horses, and miners. The village's scouts found Phist and interrogated him about why we were in the forest with a caravan. He told them that the rest of the group had left for the village to get help and the scouts ran for the village. We entered the village and Nova serenaded them with a song that was a plea for help as well. The village elder said he would fix our caravan but only if we agreed to help exterminate a mound of earth q’wrils eating the villager’s crops. We agreed to help and the villagers helped us bring the caravan to their village.

We set out the next day to eliminate the earth q’wril lair, a large mound of dirt. Phist decided to jump into the mound and try to squish them all while they were sleeping about midday. He managed to kill a few with this attempt, but the rest woke up and were swarming all over him. The rest of the group tried to pick off the ones swarming Phist’s body, but they just kept coming. Phist eventually had a simultaneous action with the earth q’wrils and was going to be unconscious from the damage, but used wood skin to stay awake but with a poor result (1+2 = 3!), he decided to drop prone and roll on the ground to squish some more. He managed to kill some more this way, but their beaks caused him additional damage, and they still managed to knock him out. Nova decided to burn the mound to get rid of it, and hopefully char the remaining earth q’wrils. We woke up Phist and fled the area. We got about an hour away when the obsidiman dropped unconscious in mid stride as his wood skin wore off. We made camp there. During the night, we were ambushed during Nova’s watch. Earth q’wrils burst from the ground and attacked Nova and then the rest of us while we slept. We fought most of the battle on the ground as the earth q’wrils writhed on top of us, preventing us from getting up. Only Nova was standing and attacking during the majoirty of this combat. Despite our disadvantageous position, we managed to fend the remaining earth q’wrils off. The next day the village’s scouts found us and got help so that we could carry Phist and get ourselves back to the village.

Video Games

I got a brand new copy of a Playstation game called Monster Ranchers Battle Card Episode II for $6.00 USD. It has graphics like a SNES game, but the music although way repetitive is still very good since it changes often and the tracks are cool and somewhat variant. Like when it starts getting critical they speed up the game music. The game’s story is that a friend of yours has been transported to another dimension called the Paradise of Monsters and the only way to get her back is to collect all 20 monster cards in the game. So you go to the MCA (DCI) and they give you a starter set of 3 monsters based on 20 questions and then you have to battle other players for their cards (ante). So you go to various places to fight against card breeders (monster breeders I get, but card breeders?) and participate in battle card tournaments to gain both monster and skill cards for your monsters. Each deck has 3 monsters, skill cards for the specific monsters such as attack, dodge, block, and special cards, any monster skill cards that can be used by any monster, breeder (player) only cards, and environment cards which work a lot like world enchantments in old school Magic: The Gathering where only one can affect the battlefield at a time with a total deck of 50 cards and 3 monster cards. The goal is to kill all 3 of your opponent’s monsters by taking them to 0 life or make them deck out their card pile. The game doesn’t use a mana system per se. Instead, you cycle cards for guts that you can then use for various actions. The more powerful the move, the more guts you need. If you are having problems getting cards, you can go to the saucer stone that allows you to place CDs into the Playstation and the game will give you one card per CD read. It also has quicksave before card battles for the most part except in tournaments. The game is simple, but a lot of fun to play. If you’ve ever enjoyed MTG or other card games, it is worth trying out.

Jason’s Earthdawn Campaign

After waking up the next day, we all went about finding trainers. Bella found a magician’s guild on the Silk Road that she joined for a reduced training fee. Gareth got trained by a grizzled old dwarf warrior he met at the Chipped Mug. K’terep went to the air docks of the Royal Throalic Navy and found a k’stulaami galley called the Graceful Lily captained by T’shela of the House of Spirit Wind who trained K’terep for free! As for Nova Born Burst, he went to the Throal Library and had a book scribed on the Songsmith Discipline. So he is in the process of training to Second Circle from a book. This is non-canonical in Earthdawn, but it is something that can be traced back to Jason’s first gamemastering of Earthdawn when Can N’ the Jaw trained as a Sky Raider from a book about 13 years ago. How does it work? Every talent requires 40 hours of study, much like a human learning Versatility talents. Once Nova completes study of all 3 talents at Second Circle he can go up to the next Circle, but it’ll take 120 hours (about three weeks). One of the problems that the Songsmith Discipline has is that there are not a lot of them around and usually only in areas primarily inhabited by elves. Both Nova and K’terep visited the library to learn about mining, mining equipment needs, and the location of the Bloodlore trollmoot.

After two weeks of training and meditating, we were approached by Phist “Bob” Rockhart played by Jarod Millar, a new player to Earthdawn accompanied by our old patron Darren. Jarod introduced himself as Bob in his first session, but changed his first name to Phist in his second session, declaring Bob a pseudonym or nickname he gave to group originally. His character is a Warrior who wants to also become an Elementalist later on with a deep-seated love of the land so much so that he learned mapmaking and navigation to guide him on his way while exploring the land of Barsaive. Darren wanted us to go with Phist to map out the corrupted Liferock near Lang. We told him we would accept his quest but we needed to buy some items first, items for a mining expedition. Darren’s merchant instincts took over as he quickly deduced what we were preparing for based on our questions and we soon found ourselves sequestered in a private back room at the Chipped Mug.

We told Darren all about the rockworms at the Tylon Mountains and showed him the gems from the rockworms. Nova also told him about Longtooth Shortwit and Nuk who agreed that there might be a rich vein of elemental earth nearby. Darren said he would fund the mining expedition, find some miners willing to work with a cave troll and ogre, but he would need 100% of the profits until his risk in the venture was returned and after that 55% of the profits. We would also need to escort the miners to the Tylon Mountain range, go to Lang with Phist to map the corrupted Liferock, deliver Darren’s goods to the Floating City of House V’strimon near Lake Ban, and deliver a message to Wivin, near Lake Pyros. We agreed to all of those terms and then sold our loot from Runvir’s Tomb to get some obsidiman-sized crystal ringlet for Phist and some healing aids. Darren arranged for us to meet with five dwarf miners who would work with Longtooth and Nuk to prospect the mine. We needed a bigger caravan, so we traded our old caravan and 200 silver pieces to upgrade it to one large enough for us and the five dwarfs and all the mining gear that we would need to haul.

We set out for the Tylon Mountains the next day. Ork scorchers surrounded us, prompting K’terep to stop the caravan. Nova bluffed that he might want to rethink his plan, prompting the ork scorcher leader to wonder if we were the same group of adventurers that were rumored to adventure with a cave troll and ogre ally. He dismissed the thought with a shake of his head and he and his men charged us on the backs of their riding horses. We revealed our new ally, as Phist chopped them down one after another as they charged him and fell from their mounts. K’terep leapt from the driver’s seat of the caravan, glided to the leader, and attacked him with wit and ch’tard until he went down. Bella managed to down many of them with her spells while slowly retreating as they climbed or leapt from their horses onto the carriage to attack her. Despite being outnumbered 5 to 12, we defeated six of them, three fled on horseback, and the other three surrendered. We left the three that surrendered a dagger, their food, their water, and the clothes on their backs and told them to return to Bartertown. /p>

That night, on our first watch, we awoke to a stampede of crakbill bearing down on us from the east. We defended ourselves and they responded with a paralytic stream of noxious orange gas, paralyzing Bella and Nova. After they ran right through the middle of our camp, a gate hound chased after the crakbills and was attacked by us after it started to drain our magic. We heard howls from the west, and the crakbill swarm returned through our camp, followed by two more gate hounds attempting to corral and corner the crakbills. We decided to flee rather than fight at that point, with K’terep untying the horses, and Phist and Gareth carrying the still paralyzed Nova back to the carriage. We took off, striking and killing a gate hound in our path as the horses trampled it to death. Frightened crakbills streaked pass spewing their poison at the caravan while the remaining gate hounds leapt into our carriage and attacked the dwarf miners, severely injuring one. We fought off the gate hounds and fled the crakbills before stopping to heal the injured dwarf miner by Nova using K’terep’s healing kit to bandage his bleeding wound. We pushed the caravan for half the night before settling on a new location, setting up watches, and sleeping until mid morning. We continued on our way towards the Tylon Mountains.

Video Games

I got Warcraft III’s Battlechest for PC. So far I am enjoying it, although not as much as Starcraft. There is a much greater emphasis on hero characters in this game, they tend to sway a battle largely in the favor of the one using them. They gain XP and can carry up to 6 items. This reminds me a bit of Panzer General or Command and Conquer where units slowly gain XP and gain veterancy. The story has been very interesting; with the main character of the human campaign Arthas as a Paladin Prince whose dedication to his quest and goals lead him farther down the road to darkness. I am enjoying the story of the first campaign so far. With one main disc and an expansion disc, the $23.00 USD I paid for it seems like it will be well worth it. I’d like to have started at the beginning with Warcraft or Warcraft II Battle Chests but they are rather expensive for old games ($50.00-$75.00 USD).

I also got Command and Conquer 4: Tiberium Twilight the week it came out for $40.00 USD. I’ve played through the first three tutorial style missions and it is certainly a lot different. The first thing that gets people mad is the need for a persistent internet connection. I’ve got AT&T/Yahoo DSL and have had 3 days without internet in 3 years of service, so its not much of a problem to me, but for many who may have either no internet or dial-up, it is a big problem. The other thing that might get people is the de-emphasis on resource management and really constructing your base. Your MCV is a mobile transformer that can dig in to build units and pack up and leave to new locations. Your primary goal is to control certain points on the map, reminding me of Star Wars: Battlefront with its CP system. The more Command Points you have the more units you can construct. More to come as I play through more.

Jason’s Earthdawn Campaign

So we were on our way to Bartertown on our Tylon Mountain path when we hit a huge crater in the road and were almost thrown right off the cliff, but K’terep managed to stop the horses and save the caravan. Then two worms surrounded by a shell of solid rock attacked us. Nova stood his ground heroically before one rockworm attacking it and nearly died from many bite wounds while Bella pelted it with Spirit Darts at a safe distance. Gareth attacked the other one as K’terep recovered from a nasty fall off the horses as a result of his actions with a Booster Potion. The rockworm bit Gareth and used Wood Skin while K’terep attacked the rockworm. After a long battle we managed to defeat both rockworms, and their innards erupted, spewing viscera and gems. The gems intrigued K’terep and he made a Creature Lore Test learning that rockworms are fiercely territorial and their presence usually indicates a rich deposit of elemental earth and/or orichalcum. We managed to turn the caravan around and we returned to Longtooth’s lair. At Longtooth’s lair, we got Longtooth and Nuk (the ogre has a name apparently…) to come with us to the area of the rockworm fight by giving them some rockworm gems. We showed them the rockworm carcasses and K’terep told them what he had remembered about rockworms being near rich veins of True elements. We wondered what Longtooth and Nuk would need in order to create an elemental mine. They gave us a long list of items that they would need, and that they would need more cave troll and/or ogre manpower to do the job. We left them at the rockworm fight area and continued on our way towards Bartertown to both find out about the Bloodlore trollmoot and to now buy supplies to start our mining operation idea.

As we left the mountains and neared the Servos Jungle, one night while we camped and rested, Nova was attacked by a small monkey and it nearly bit his face off. Bella and K’terep woke up and helped Nova slay the bloodthirsty, crazy monkey. On Bella’s watch a small monkey played a game with her, throwing a piece of fruit at her, and Bella threw it back to the small monkey and they played like this for about fifteen minutes until Bella tired of the repetitious game. On K’terep’s watch, the small monkey ran away after it heard a loud roar and K’terep woke up the group, although only Nova believed him and went outside the carriage. Bella told K’terep that it was nothing to worry about thinking perhaps it was the friendly monkey from her watch and Gareth told him to stop interrupting his sleep. A large monkey dropped down from the treetops and attacked K’terep and Nova. The monkey roared at both of us and charged Nova, attempting to hit him and to grab him, connecting with its bite, the second time Nova had been bit by a monkey that night. Bella woke up and helped us defeat the large monkey while Gareth again slept soundly. And you wonder why he doesn’t usually get watches? I was surprised that it wasn’t an Ice Flyer, since they can live near the Servos Jungle and could play up the loud roar. In truth? A pangolus.

The next day, K’terep nearly ran over a traveler on the road, but Bella saw it and K’terep stopped the caravan in time. The traveler was disheveled, talking to his stick, his stone, and his string. Nova decided to befriend the traveler, and invited him to enter the carriage as part of his no gamemaster character left behind policy. The mad traveler spoke of his dead friend and the Horror that lived in his brain until he removed it with his string through his ear. The Horror-scarred madman is another staple of Jason’s games; there is almost a 100% chance of him showing up at some point. As we continued down the road, a rolling, floating mass of bones, weapons, and armor blocked our path, almost certainly drawn to us by our new “friend”. Nova, K’terep, and Gareth all attacked the horrific mass, with their attacks deflected and absorbed by the armor and shields in the swirling mass, but all were felled one by one, either knocked down or unconscious by the horrific attacks of the creature’s bones and blades. As the creature turned to attack Bella, our last woman standing, the madman grabbed the reigns and charged the ball of bones, trampling with the horses and hitting it with the carriage, but also hitting and knocking out Bella and Gareth as he went by them, but defeating the Horror construct. A little deus-ex-machina to balance out the fact that he attacked us with a Horror construct way out of the group’s league in the Bone Shambler. To be fair, EDC is a little harder to discern at what circle a creature should be used (Still 2000/4 = 500 Legend Points, a Fourth-Fifth Circle encounter at a minimum), but in ED3 this is a Seventh Circle (1 per 2 PC or Sixth Circle (group) encounter, not a First Circle (Group) encounter.

During the night, Gareth critically failed his watch with a Perception Test result of 1. So he watched the stars go by in the night sky, and was unaware that madman was in the front of the carriage and leading the horses by the reins into the Servos Jungle. In the morning we found ourselves completely lost. We discussed where to proceed, with the only options being trying go back or go forward through a small path and K’terep persuaded the group to go forward.

In a couple of days, we found an old, abandoned house, which we searched and found a small fortune in silver, gold, and gems, as well as four dilapidated beds in four rooms, which were nonetheless better than our bedrolls for a change.

The next night Nova was attacked by a giant spider during his watch, which we quickly dispatched after his screams woke us up.

In the morning madman was gone, and the foliage parted revealing well-traveled paths south of Bartertown. The remaining three days to Bartertown went by quickly with us staying at hostelries along the way and arriving at Bartertown’s gates on the third night. We paid for lodging at the Chipped Mug and next session we will have many goals; downtime, character advancement, new character introductions possibly, buy supplies for our potential mining operation, and a bit of learning at the Throal Library about the Bloodlore trollmoot and probably elemental earth mining as well.

In case you are wondering what happened to my old E-Dawn and 7 Sands Campaign files, you can find the RTFs over at this Google group.

E-Dawn Archive

Developing a human Thirteenth Circle Warrior

I thought it might be useful to give everyone a sneak peak into the methods that I use to create high-powered adepts.

Attributes

First off, humans have all 10s on stats, so no strengths or weaknesses. The core statistics for an effective Warrior are Dexterity, Strength, and Toughness. Perception is useful for certain talents such as Anticipate Blow, Thread Weaving, and pool picks like Tactics. Willpower is useful for talents like Temper Self and pool picks like Steel Thought. Charisma is useful for pool picks only. However, Versatility means the character can potentially take anything. Thus a balanced set of Attributes is optimal.

DEX: 16/7 (+6/ 9 PP) STR: 13/6 (+3/3 PP) TOU: 14/6 (+4/5 PP) PER: 13/6 (+3/3 PP) WIL: 13/6 (+3/3 PP) CHA: 12/5 (=+2/2 PP)

This gives us 25 PP, with a high Dexterity Step of 7, 3 Recovery Tests, and a slight weakness in Charisma, since it is only useful for pool or Versatility talents and not core. Now sometimes I’ll take the up to +3 Attribute Increase and then apply it to the stats as well. For example, a character meant to be a guard, might get +3 to Perception, or a bodyguard might get +3 to Toughness. A leader or major enemy may even get +3 to all his stats. As this is a generic character, these stats are fine.

Characteristics

Use the Characteristics Table to generate the characteristics from the base Attributes and apply Warrior abilities.

Initiative: 7 Physical Defense: 9 +1 Second Circle Increase +1 Eighth Circle Increase +1 Tenth Circle Increase +1 Twelfth Circle Increase = 13 Movement: 6 (Human Race) Knockdown: 6* 2N Durability [9/7] x 13 = 117/91 Death: 36+117 = 153 Unconsciousness: 28+91 = 119 Wound Threshold: 10 Recovery Tests: 3 Spell Defense: 7 +1 Eleventh Circle Increase +1 Thirteenth Circle Increase= 9 Mystic Armor: 1 Social Defense: 7 +1 Eleventh Circle Increase = 8 Karma: 1 Karma Ritual ^D 13 x 5 Human = 65/65 Karma Step: 4 +1 Thirteenth Circle Increase = 5

Comments: * Has the Wound Balance talent.

You’ll notice Durability in an orange color, that is to help me see the pool picks better once we get to talents. As for 2N, that indicates Second Circle—Novice Pool. Whereas 2 alone would just be Second Circle. This ties into talent selection below.

Talents

1I Acrobatic Strike 13+7D=20/ 2 Anticipate Blow ^D 13+6P=19/ 1 Avoid Blow ^D 13+7D=20/ 5J Cobra Strike ^D 13+7D=20/ 7 Crushing Blow ^D 13+6S=19/ 2N Durability [9/7] 13/ 9 Earth Skin^D 13+6T=19/ 1 Karma Ritual ^D 13/ 6 Life Check ^D 13+6T=19/ 1 Melee Weapons ^D 14+7D=21/ 10 Resist Pain ^D 13/ 8 Second Attack ^D 13+7D=20/ 1V Sprint ^V 13/ 9W Steel Thought 13+6W=19/ 13 Stone Skin^D 13+6T=19/ 5 Temper Self ^D 13+6W=19/ 4 Thread Weaving (War Weaving) ^D 13+6P=19/ 1 Unarmed Combat ^D 14+7D = 21/ 12 Unmount ^D 13+6S=19/ Versatility 1/ 13M Vital Strike 13+6P=19/ 11 Vitality ^D 13+6T = 19/ 1 Wood Skin ^D 13+6T=19/ 3 Wound Balance ^D 13+6S=19

Comments:^D Discipline talent/Requires Karma

Abbreviations D=DEX, S=STR, T=TOU, P=PER, W=WIL, C=CHA

So the talent in red is the First Circle Initiate Pool Pick. The talent in orange is the Second Circle Novice Pool Pick. If I had picked the Third and Fourth Circle Pool Picks they would also be in orange. The talent in green is the Fifth Circle Journeyman Pool Pick. The talent in blue is the Ninth Circle Warden Pool Pick. The talent in purple is the Thirteenth Circle Master Pool Pick. The colored talents allow me to know at a glance that this character still has yet to pick 2 Novice talents, 3 Journeyman talents, and 3 Warden talents. Both Versatility and Sprint are in gold. This indicates they are Versatility and any talents linked to it and are in the same color, important to see how many Versatility ranks you have used. A typical human Thirteenth Circle Warrior will have 7 Versatility ranks. I like to keep the Versatility ranks at about the Half-Magic Step for the most part (Circle /2, rounded up). If I had 7 Versatility ranks most of the Versatility picks would have Rank 7. In this case though, with only 1 Versatility talent slot, I’ve kept it at the same Rank as the rest of the talents. This same principle applies to skills generally where the skill Rank is around the Half-Magic Step. 2 talents usually have a higher rank. I like to add an extra talent Rank if the character has a talent knack in the talent to further emphasize their specialization in it. After this step, I convert them into the proper format and remove edit tags like 1I or 13 and color them in my edit color.

Skills

Skills have a minimum of 14 ranks as usual, but usually has more the higher the Circle of the character. This follows the same process as talents above, though is nowhere near as involved. Generally 2 Knowledge Skills, 2 Language Skill, an Artisan Skill, and 2 General Skills at 2 ranks each makes it simple to use all 14 and minimizes the space used for layout. On of the problems with a generic Thirteenth Circle Warrior is that there is no background to point to what skills he should know in terms of knowledge and general skills. Generally it is best to pick talents as skills that were not available to the Warrior as pool talents, or skipped over pool talents as skills. A good example of this is Riposte, which isn’t in the Warrior talent pools, and is a great choice at low Circles. Now though, Avoid Blow is well ahead of Riposte in step and number of uses making Riposte a poor choice. As a human it would be better to use Versatility to learn it as well so it could be used multiple times per round. Talents as skill such as Heartening Laugh or Tactics are good for a High-Circle gamemaster character, who will more than likely be a leader of many lower Circle adepts or nonadept mundane characters. Skills like Fishing, Hunting, or Wilderness Survival that make the Warrior more self-reliant and increase survival in bad circumstances are also good choices. Good knowledge skills are those that help him know his foes better such as Creature Lore or Horror Lore.

Creature Lore ^K 7+6P = 13/Heartening Laugh 7+5C = 12/ Horror Lore ^K 7+6P = 13/ R/W Language 2+6P = 8—(1 Dwarf/Throalic, 2 Human)/ Rune Carving ^A 7+5C= 12/ Speak Language 2+6P = 8—(1 Dwarf/Throalic, 2 Human)/ Tactics 7+6P = 13/Wilderness Survival 7+6P = 13

Comments: ^A Artisan skill/^K Knowledge skill

Abbreviations D=DEX, S=STR, T=TOU, P=PER, W=WIL, C=CHA

Spells selected are typically a number of First Circle spells equal to Perception Step and at least one spell per Circle of the magician. So a barebones magician with a Perception Step of 7 will have 7 First Circle spells, and 1 spell at Second, Third. Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, etc. This is skipped on a character like this, although technically, this character could use Versatility to acquire Spellcasting/Thread Weaving/Spell Matrix/Read/Write Magic to gain spells. This may benefit the character slightly, like being able to cast Flameweapon on his weapon for more damage or Iron Hands to increase his melee weapon damage as effect only spells independent of Willpower, but attack spells are generally worthless since he can do much more damage in melee unless the character sinks even more LP into Willforce. A huge LP sink really with little benefit. Most gishs aren’t making it to Thirteenth Circle anyway. Skipped.

Equipment gets added in next as Armor/Weapons/Thread Items/Equipment. Generally the amount of forging allowed is equal to the Half-Magic Step/2 rounded down. So Third Circle is where Forged +1 starts, Fifth Circle Forged +2, etc. As a Thirteenth Circle character, any weapon or armor he has is going to maximum forged at a minimum, but are usually going to be thread items. A rule I am trying to get myself to follow is Half-Magic Step/2 rounded up for the Thread Rank of thread items. So Rank 2 for Fourth Circle characters, Rank 3 for Fifth Circle characters, Rank 4 for Seventh Circle characters etc. So why is it rounded down for armor/weapons and rounded up for thread items ranks? The weapons and armor are generally useful without any forging, whereas a thread item tends to not be useful at Rank 0, so you need higher Ranks more than Forge levels. As for the number of thread items, typically it’s one at Fourth/Fifth Circle, two at Sixth/Seventh Circle, three at Eighth/Ninth Circle, etc. with the maximum always being the Thread Weaving talent Rank. Of late, I have been doing this step simultaneously while doing characteristics because initiative/armor is obviously affected, blood magic causing items change Death/Unconsciousness, any thread defense items change the numbers as well. I sometimes leave the rest of the equipment that does not affect characteristics until later, especially if I have yet to identify what kind of weapon layout I want to use for a character. The best thread armor you can get with the lowest Initiative Penalty possible is usually your goal if you have selected Air Dance, otherwise the best thread armor you can get is the goal. A Thirteenth Circle Warrior will more than likely have an Espagra-Scale Cloak if they don’t care about Initiative Penalties, and a Cloaksense Brooch to give them a chance to avoid being surprised. A good weapon for a Thirteenth Circle Warrior is either a thread one-hand weapon with a good thread shield or a big thread two-handed weapon. Most of the Warriors IMB have always opted for the two-hand approach once Second Attack becomes available. Of course to have the Strength Minimum to wield it, I’d have to go back to Attributes and add +3 to Strength, since most good two-handed weapons have a STR MIN of 15 or 16. If the pool talent Second Weapon is selected, two one-handed thread swords becomes an option. If Missile Weapons is selected, a thread bow and forged arrows is an option. Throwing Weapons generally make a poor choice for thread weapons unless there are special circumstances such as either a Weaponbond effect allowing for the weapon to return or weapons that return when used such as a Spike Bomb. A generic character is unlikely to have such items. Otherwise there are max forged throwing weapons present for that pool pick. Thread Items are usually those that increase defenses such as Protective Brooch or those that increase attack and damage such as War Gauntlets. The usual equipment includes Forge Tools, since they are needed for use with Half-Magic for repairing armor and weapons for Warriors (Craft Armor/Craft Weapon skills). They’ll usually have Booster Potions and Healing Potions equal to their base Recovery Tests (3 each) and if this is a leader character a Last Chance Salve. A human character will typically need a lantern to deal with situations of darkness.

Armor

Thread Crystal Plate (Rank 4; 7 +4F (Rank 1 Max Forge) =Phys 11; 7+4F (Rank 1 Max Forge) = Myst 11 (11+1 = 12); 5-2R =Init –3 (7-3 = 4); 1R PhysDef +1 (13+1 = 14)), Thread Body Shield (Rank 4; 5+3F (Rank 1 Max Forge) =Phys 8 (11 +8 = 19); 2-2R =Init 0; 1R PhysDef +1 (14+1 = 15); Deflect 4/0; Shatter 21), Espagra-Scale Cloak (Phys 3 (19+3 = 22); Myst 1 (12+1 = 13), Init 0/1 (4-1 =3) The Heavy Armor Template used on both the armor and the shield.

Abbreviations F=Forge R=Thread Rank.

Weapons

Thread Broadsword (Rank 4; Damage: 5+3F (Rank 1 Max Forge) +3R+6S = 17), Dagger (Forged +1; Damage: 2+1F +7S = 10; Range 10-20 yards/5-10 hexes)

Abbreviations S=STR F=Forge R=Thread Rank.

Thread Items

Protective Brooch (Rank 4; +2 SocDef (8+2 =10); +1 SpellDef (9+1=10); Resist Taunt +1 Rank Bonus (Resist Taunt* 1R+6W= 7)), War Gauntlets (Rank 4; +2 bonus to close combat Attack and Damage Tests)

Total Threads 5: Thread Plate, Thread Body Shield, Thread Broadsword, Protective Brooch, War Gauntlets out of 13 total possible from War Weaving.

Equipment

Adventurer’s Kit, 3 Booster Potions, Cloaksense Brooch, Forge Tools, 3 Healing Potions, Last Chance Salve, Light Quartz Lantern, Trail Rations (1 week), Traveler’s Garb

Loot is typically equal to the First-Fourth Circle LP cost of talents/10. So 100/10 = 10 silver for a First Circle character. A Thirteenth Circle character would then be 37700/10 = 3,770 silver or 377 gold, since the weight of approximately 4000 coins/50 is 80 lbs., more than most characters can carry. (It is nearly the equivalent of the entire Strength capacity of a character with Strength 11.) You’ll also note that most windlings also use gold because of their low carry and many have thread buoyant containers to help with that.

Putting it all together:

Attributes

DEX: 16/7 STR: 13/6 TOU: 14/6 PER: 13/6 WIL: 13/6 CHA: 12/5

Characteristics

Initiative: 3 Physical Armor: 22 Mystic Armor: 13 Physical Defense: 15 Spell Defense: 10 Social Defense: 10 Death: 153 Unconsciousness: 119 Wound Threshold: 10 Recovery Tests: 3 Knockdown: 6* Movement: 6 Karma: 65/65 Karma Step: 5

Comments: * Has the Wound Balance talent.

Warrior Talents

Acrobatic Strike (13): 20/ Anticipate Blow ^D (13): 19/Avoid Blow ^D (13): 20/ Cobra Strike ^D (13): 20/ Crushing Blow ^D (13): 19/ Durability [9/7] (13): 13/ Earth Skin^D (13): 19/Karma Ritual ^D (13): 13/Life Check ^D (13): 19/ Melee Weapons ^D (14): 21/Resist Pain ^D (13): 13/ Resist Taunt* (1): 7/ Second Attack ^D (13): 20/ Sprint ^V (13): 13/ Steel Thought (13): 19/ Stone Skin^D (13): 19/ Temper Self ^D (13): 19/ Thread Weaving (War Weaving) ^D (13): 19/ Unarmed Combat ^D (14): 21/ Unmount ^D (13): 19/ Versatility (1): 1/ Vital Strike (13): 19/ Vitality ^D (13): 19/ Wood Skin ^D (13): 19/ Wound Balance ^D (13): 19

Comments:^D Discipline talent/Requires Karma/* Modified by +1 Rank Bonus from Protective Brooch

Skills

Creature Lore ^K (7): 13/Heartening Laugh (7): 12/ Horror Lore ^K (7): 13/ Read/Write Language (2): 8—(Dwarf/Throalic, Human)/ Rune Carving ^A (7): 12/ Speak Language (2): 8—(Dwarf/Throalic, Human)/ Tactics (7): 13/Wilderness Survival (7): 13

Comments: ^A Artisan skill/^K Knowledge skill

Armor

Thread Crystal Plate (Rank 4; Phys 11; Myst 11; Init 3; PhysDef +1), Thread Body Shield (Rank 4; Phys 8; Deflect 4/0; Shatter 21; PhysDef +1)

Weapons

Thread Broadsword (Rank 4; Damage 17), Dagger (Forged +1; Damage 10; Range 10–20 yards/5–10 hexes)

Thread Items

Protective Brooch (Rank 4; SocDef +2; SpellDef +1; Resist Taunt +1 Rank Bonus), War Gauntlets (Rank 4; +2 bonus to close combat Attack and Damage Tests)

Equipment

Adventurer’s Kit, 3 x Booster Potions, Cloaksense Brooch, Forge Tools, 3 x Healing Potions, Last Chance Salve, Light Quartz Lantern, Trail Rations (1 week), Traveler’s Garb

Loot

377 gold pieces

Legend Award

Thirteenth Circle (1 per 2 PC)

Notes

Has the human Versatility racial ability. Has used the Versatility talent to learn the Sprint talent.

Warrior Abilities

Second Circle: +1 Physical Defense/ Fourth Circle: Karma on Strength–only Tests/ Fifth Circle: Battle Rites/ Sixth Circle: Karma on Dexterity–only Tests/ Seventh Circle: Karma on close combat Damage Tests/ Eighth Circle: +1 Physical Defense/ Ninth Circle: Battlefield Awareness; Karma on Recovery Tests/ Tenth Circle: +1 Physical Defense/ Eleventh Circle: +1 Social and Spell Defense/ Twelfth Circle: +1 Physical Defense/ Thirteenth Circle: +1 Karma Step; Resurrect Self; +1 Spell Defense

That is generally how it is all done. As you can see the characteristics and talents steps takes most of the time on adepts.

Earthdawn Third Edition Development

I went over the Cathay stats for both the Cathay books and the Cathay Shards. I added the Cathay Dragon information that was left out of the Gamemaster’s Core to the Dragons chapter and looked over the Cathay Dragon stats. The only thing left for me to do is stats that are dependent on new races and/or Disciplines from the Cathay’s Players Guide. There is still a lot of work to do though once the fifteen Disciplines are developed for Third Edition. I went over Hank’s other project, an adventure for Barsaive, and have filled in the Cast of Characters. I am currently working on Nations of Barsaive Volumes Two-Four and checking for any changes necessary to make from the finalized Namegivers of Barsaive. As you may have guessed, development slowed down a bit over December and January due to the holiday season, so there is less to talk about here.

Jason’s Earthdawn Campaign

SPOILER ALERT: This section contains spoilers to Shards Collection: Volume One; Runvir’s Tomb. You’ve been warned!

We continued to explore the Tomb of King Runvir, fighting hordes of troll cadaver men and looting, and lost the ogre and another troll crystal raider in the process. We lucked out and found the Oracle Fountain in our exploration, which the trolls informed us could heal our wounded and resurrect our dead, and that we could ask one question of the oracle per year. We managed to revive our two dead troll crystal raider and ogre allies, and the rest of us healed up. One of the crystal raiders remained unconscious and we left him at the Oracle Fountain. Thoris Rockthrower asked the Oracle if he would find the crown of King Runvir. The Oracle replied, “Yes you will wear the crown before you die.” We asked about where the crown of King Runvir was located. The Oracle responded, “It is in within the throne room of King Runvir within his tomb.” Our troll allies became excited, having found the Oracle Fountain and could practically feel the crown within their grasp. We asked about three questions for Bella, about a way for life to continue after death in a way such that the spirit and memories could go on living. The Oracle explained, “For one’s life memories to be retained, one must transfer the current spirit to a new living body. After death the spirit must be bound to a new living host.” To translate, Bella could be able to find a way to cheat death by moving her spirit to a new living host after death. Of course, to prepare such a living host would probably require wiping the memory of a current living host or creating a new living host, such as through the Alter Life or Create Life spells, and a way for her spirit to be able to possess this host after her death. Hmmm. But with this information, Bella is one step closer to her goal anyway.

As ready as we could get, we entered the throne room of King Runvir. K’terep was surprised, as he expected to find an animated cadaver man of King Runvir. Instead, we found a giant crystalline jellyfish with many tentacles. It announced that its Name was Skarvik “the Strangler” and that he was happy to have new playthings after so long without one. We engaged the Horror in melee with Bella backing us up with ranged spells. After a solid hit by Gareth with his warhammer, shattering some of the crystalline structure of his body, the Horror lashed out at him with his tentacles. Gareth sustained one attack knocking him flat on his back unconscious, and the second attack smashed him into the floor, leaving him dead. Thoris Rockthrower then attacked with a shield charge, causing more cracks in Skarvik’s body to form. An angered Skarvik attacked with his two tentacles, burrowing them into Thoris’ chest and gut, and when removed left two wounds gushing blood. He fell to the floor in agony and crawled away from the battle. His men screamed at the Horror in rage, and then attacked Skarvik. One of the troll crystal raider’s troll swords managed to pierce the Horror’s body through the crack left by Thoris’ attack, killing Skarvik. We attempted to revive Gareth, but the last chance salve failed to save him. We followed the trail of blood left by Thoris to the tomb of King Runvir. He had opened the tomb and grabbed the crown. Slumped with his back on a wall, he lay dead with the crown on his head. His men wanted to try and bring him back to life, but K’terep told them that it was pointless; he would just die again from blood loss since his body was in such poor shape. Longtooth grabbed the crown and placed it onto his head. The troll crystal raiders protested saying that as a cave troll he was unfit to wear the crown of a great ancient king of Ustrect. Ogre and Nova convinced him to trade with the troll crystal raiders for the crown. He then proceeded to haggle with them, eventually trading for all their silver and the loot they got from the tomb. Satisfied, he let them have the crown. Meanwhile while they haggled and bickered over the crown, K’terep and Bella looted King Runvir’s tomb for a pearl necklace and some gold jewelry. K’terep wanted to get the tapestry of King Runvir with the pearl necklace on it as proof we are King Runvir’s Tomb and had the Ogre smash the glass casing. K’terep promised he’d return it to the trolls after he was paid for his mission by their employer. Satisfied the trolls let him take the tapestry. Our troll allies made a makeshift map/scroll case and we placed the tapestry inside.

We grabbed our dead and headed for the Oracle Fountain to grab our unconscious troll ally and leave King Runvir’s Tomb. We found it hard to carry a dead troll, a dead dwarf, and the large tapestry through the tomb, so we looted and then buried Gareth in a casket. Nova carved, “Here lies Gareth, dwarf Warrior and friend of Nova Born Burst.” At the entrance, Nova, Bella, and K’terep were in the front when the shadow of a figure appeared in the doorway. Our troll, ogre, and cave troll allies had been following us the whole time with us leading the way throughout the tomb, and the trolls were even slower yet since they had been carrying their dead leader Thoris and their unconscious troll brother. The dwarf told us his name was Thygold Doriksin, and that he worked for our employer Jorgin Torvin. He asked us if we needed any help carrying the loot from the tomb, especially the proof of the Oracle Fountain. We told him that we did not need any help with the loot from the tomb since we had very little of it (I had the tapestry and the pearl, Nova some silver, and Bella had some jewelry but the rest of it was in the hands of the cave troll). We stepped out into the daylight of the morning dawn and saw that the dwarf had five human henchmen and had his own caravan that he had used to follow us here. Thygold asked what had happened to Gareth and we told him he was dead. Noticing we were down a Namegiver, he dropped his pretense of friendliness and ordered us to give us all the treasure we got from the tomb and the Oracle Fountain thinking he had the upper hand with a two to one advantage in terms of manpower. We told him that the Oracle Fountain was far too big to carry and that if he wanted it he would have to go into the tomb and get it. Perhaps with his five men he could carry it where we could not? He entered the entrance of the tomb and ordered his men to loot anything of value. As soon as they entered the entrance of the tomb, the troll crystal raiders attacked them, angered by them attempting to loot the tomb. The ogre and cave troll attacked them as well, since they were not us. It was a slaughter, all but one of Thygold’s men died with him. At the end of the battle, Gareth returned carrying a golden bowl. He claimed that Mynbruje had raised him from the dead and that this golden bowl was the proof of the Oracle Fountain. Mynbruje had raised Gareth from the dead to insure that his questors would rediscover the Oracle Fountain and also as thanks for freeing the tormented spirit of his long dead questor Dorthial and freeing the tomb of the influence of the Horror Skarvik. K’terep declared him a ghost, a spirit sent by an angry passion for trespassing into the Oracle Fountain and attacking the questor’s spirit, and he ran out the cave entrance and readied the horses to harnesses on the caravan. Gareth tracked him down and eventually calmed him down. Meanwhile, Nova was grilling the surviving human accomplice, interrogating him for every scrap of information he had. The ruffian eventually revealed that Jorgin Torvin planned to double-cross us by making it appear that we had stolen something of value from the Brocher’s Brood and make us an enemy of them. We thanked him properly, by giving him to our troll crystal raider allies as a newot. K’terep, “You will make a fine crystal raider someday.” Thug, “What? No!” We gave our troll crystal raider allies our old caravan and took Thygold’s caravan. We noticed a break in the wheel axle on the front, and our troll crystal raider allies made their new newot fix it. Crystal Raider, “It’s never early enough to start breaking in a new newot!”

After resting the night, we went our separate ways, one caravan returning to the Twilight Peaks to the Bloodlore trollmoot, and us heading towards Kratas. We planned on how to double-cross a powerful wizard before he did it to us and yet still fulfill Nova’s blood promise. We decided to bring the caravan into town with the ogre and cave troll inside, using tapestries to hide the inside from view. They would hold onto the golden bowl while we entered the Drunken Dragon Inn and then lure the wizard to the caravan so that he could see the golden bowl before we ambushed him to save Nova. The trip back to Kratas was relatively peaceful otherwise.

We returned to Kratas and the four of us entered the Drunken Dragon Inn. Jorgin asked us what happened to Thygold and his men. We told him that the Bloodlore trollmoot attacked us and killed Thygold and his men. We barely escaped with our lives and the proof. We told him that the proof of the Oracle Fountain was too big and heavy to carry into the Drunken Dragon Inn and that he would have to go to our carriage in the stables to see it. The wizard asked what security was there. Nova told him, “None, you mean the stables are not a secure area?” Jorgin, “ What you fools left it unguarded!” Jorgin rushed out of the inn and ran to the stables with us following him. Jorgin opened the back door to the carriage and found the golden bowl, proof of the Oracle Fountain’s existence. Nova declared that he had fulfilled his part of the blood promise and demanded that Jorgin do the same with our reward. Jorgin declared that Nova had fulfilled it and began reaching into a belt pouch full of silver to give us our reward when our ogre and cave troll allies rushed out of the carriage and ambushed him. Surprised, he was no match for all of us attacking him, and he fell to a particularly gruesome downward chop from the cave troll’s cave axe. We grabbed the wizard’s body, threw it into the carriage, and left Kratas in the dead of the night.

We looted the wizard, and Bella went over his notes finding out a lot about the pearl or should I start calling it the Stone of Wisdom? The Stone of Wisdom is a magic necklace that infuses its wearer with greater wisdom and allowed King Runvir to rule Ustrect wisely. K’terep decided to return the Stone and all of the wizard’s notes about it as well to the Bloodlores since the bearer of the Crown of Ustrect should also have the stone to rule Ustrect wisely. We decided where to go next, with K’terep wanting to return the items to the Bloodlores of the Twilight Peaks, but not knowing where they live in a large mountain range, he told the group that we should return to Throal where we could perhaps learn the location of the Bloodlore trollmoot in the Twilight Peaks using the Great Library. We dumped Jorgin’s body off a cliff in the Tylon Mountains along the Tylon Mountain path, and left the Ogre and Longtooth at Longtooth’s lair since there was no way they could be allowed into Bartertown and Throal. As we made our way through the Tylon Mountain path, an espagra attacked us; angry about the cloaks we wore of its fallen comrades. K’terep halted the horses while the others attacked the espagra, eventually kicking it off the top of the carriage and it falling to its death off the clifface. The next day griffins attacked our horses. K’terep managed to stop the horses, and we used spells and spears to wound them, with K’terep wounding the last one with a gliding stab from his ch’tard blade. Wounded they fled, finding the horses to be too well protected by us to be a viable meal. This is a standard encounter in Jason’s games. If you have horses, invariably griffins will eventually attack them. 100% encounter chance.

Alright so we are no heroes. Antiheroes maybe?

END SPOILERS

Video Games

I’ve been playing a lot of Persona 3: FES of late. The game is quite interesting in one aspect; that is you have one year to complete the game. The opening character’s contract giving him access to the ability to use and switch multiple persona for one year really does remind me of a blood oath in Earthdawn that grants him power but at an eventually cost. Another game that used time in it and was very good was Valkyrie Profile on Playstation. The game was divided into many chapters that had time periods in them while Lenneth was in Midgard, each corresponding to a phase of the war in Asgard. During the chapters periods were used to explore towns, dungeons, and recruit dead characters as Einherjar. The goal was to recruit the Einherjar, train them in dungeons, and then send them to Odin to win the war for the Aesir over the Vanir. The end of the game was Ragnarok, the mythical end of the world in Norse mythology. So the whole game was a countdown doomsday clock to the end of the days. Persona 3: FES is set up similarly with time periods during the day, night, and late night which can be used to improve social links or stats or visit Tartarus, with time inevitably moving forward to an end scenario. I kind of want to lose the game by running out of time just to see what happens. It really increases the tension of the game by adding the element of time to the equation. Unlike other RPGs, your time to grind and level up your group is not unlimited, as your characters will become tired and sick and unable to adventure into Tartarus while the bad status persists and you’ll have to rest up a day or so to explore the dungeon again. During the day, you are grinding in a different way to increase your social links, which strengthen your persona of a particular tarot arcana. You feel like you cannot waste your days, you need to use your time periods wisely. I got bored of the social link grinding and encounter grinding so ended up playing some different games.

I beat down Star Wars Starfighter on Playstation 2 in about eight hours over a weekend. I think I was spoiled by the Star Wars: Battlefront space battles (Forget about trying to fly spaceships in ground battles, the crash rate is unbelievable due to realistic gravity rules in Battlefront and you are firing down at enemies, and thus pointing your nose down to the ground…), because this game did not even come close to the action or play control for space battles in Battlefront. The first problem I have is that the game’s graphics are not very good. The cutscenes were terrible with people that barely had faces. The in-game graphics were not so bad, but I am forced to compare it to the excellent Colony Wars trilogy on Playstation, and the game is not even close in terms of graphical capability or the pixel rate which allowed for really fast gameplay. I even prefer Colony Wars 3: Red Sun’s cutscenes, which although mediocre in general, they at least had an impact due to things actually occurring in the cutscenes that were interesting, and the faces were still better than on them than in this game, a Playstation 2 game. The second problem is the play control. I absolutely hate how overly sensitive the controls are and to add insult to injury, the game really punishes you for slamming hard into objects with death. So rather than a fast paced game with thrusters full blast, the way a shooter should be, you are constantly holding down the brake button to keep yourself slow to prevent yourself from crashing. The basic way to maneuver in this game is insane, its called accelerate, turn, break, turn, accelerate or accelerate break turn accelerate break turn. You’ll cruise to victory since most of the enemies just cannot handle this; even the last boss has trouble. The third problem is that the game’s missions have a lot of defensive missions where you have to guard something or keep a weak vehicle alive. The fourth problem is that there are three ships in the game and you cannot select between them, you cannot change their weapon layout, you cannot customize at all. Honestly even a terrible game like Defender for Playstation 2, at least allowed you different ships and weapons, this has been a part of these type of shooters since Super Wing Commander and have been a part of shooters since Gradius and Darius. The fifth problem I have is that the game’s main story has 14 missions, and they are all based around Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. There are more missions, but you need to master the first 14 missions in order to unlock them. Mostly, “mastering” them means you need to keep all defensive targets alive or beat XYZ objective within a time limit. I hate time limit missions, and I don’t like defending targets, so I am not unlocking these bonus missions. Overall, it was a mediocre shooter for $4.00 USD that I can’t recommend getting.

I then played Red Faction until I completed it this week. This is a Playstation 2 FPS game that I both like and dislike. There is a lot to like about this game. The first thing that is important to me is the ability to blow up the environment through the game’s geo mod engine. This allows you to be impatient. Why look for a key to a door when you can blow up a hole next to the door and make your own door? This also allows the game to have a lot of special areas to find and explore, even as a linear game there is often two different ways to explore an area, an easy way and a hard way. Every weapon seems to have a secondary weapon ability. The pistol has a silencer on/off feature, the shotgun can fire two or one shots, the assault rifle can fire semi-auto or single shot, the machine gun has auto and semi-auto, the flamethrower can spout gouts of flame or you can throw the gas canister as a firebomb, the rocket launchers have dumb fire and heat seeking modes, the sniper weapons have an aim feature, the railgun can use X-rays to shoot through walls, and the submachine gun has two different fire modes. The game has some futuristic weapons like the railgun and the fusion rocket launcher (a nuclear explosive rocket). There are a ton of vehicles to use including a driller, tank, vtol fighter, submarine, and a Halo-esque jeep with drive or machine gun features and part of a memorable rail shooter sequence with an ally miner driving. The game also has a quicksave feature. The game’s difficulty follows a steep but manageable curve for the most part. You can drag dead bodies around like Hitman in order to hide them during stealth missions. The game is also very long for such an early FPS for Playstation 2 despite being very linear. There is also a lot to dislike about the game. There is a torturously long load screen, which happens between areas, and when booting up after dying, a common problem of THQ/Volition games like Summoner. The aiming system is terrible. You press up for a zoom and crosshairs to look around. The sniper weapons have better aim with their zoom features. The autoaim targets whatever foe is closest to you. This makes it hard to justify the use of anything but the fastest rate of fire weapons except in special circumstances, like when normal fire will not get the job done such as against vehicles. The platforming in this game is bad, as you have a lot of ladder climbing sequences which forces you to press the analog up or down while facing a ladder. You’ll often fall off the ladder as a result and you’ll take falling damage for it, another thing I don’t like especially since the jumping is iffy too. The stealth sections are no fun at all. All you get is the pistol with the silencer and it seems like one mistake and you are DEAD. Then again I don’t like stealth missions so YMMV. The last section of the game really cranks the difficulty level way up with your enemies using railguns to one shot you to death, and there is a dearth of health and armor drops in the last area. I took on the last boss with 52% health and 38% armor and keep in mind that I had quicksave to work with (The last boss had about 3 forms as well…). The plot is basic about miners on Mars who revolt against the evil Ultor Corporation that is mistreating them and the characters are wooden (but it is an FPS so not too important). The graphics are okay. Volition has always had a problem with faces so they are the deformed usual of their games. The game music is barely there, the voice acting is terrible, but the sound effects are good. Overall it is worth the $4.00 USD I paid for it. I had a lot of fun blowing stuff up in this game. A flawed but fun game. At least it didn’t crash all the time on me like Aidyn’s Chronicles the N64 and Summoner on the Playstation. I’ve also got Red Faction 2 for $4.00 USD, but I am probably going to go back to Persona 3: FES for a while. I’m ready to grind some more, although if I get bored again I might start Red Faction 2 or Devil May Cry which I also got for $4.00 USD.

One of the major evolutions of role-playing games that DnD4e has brought is the shorthand statblock. That is an easy to read, rules heavy statblock that allows a dungeonmaster to use a monster without flipping to any rules except for determining the encounter XP budget which determines the number of monsters and how much experience points they are worth. Then you have longhand statblocks such as those in Earthdawn and DnD3.x . These are statblocks built and modeled after the same way characters are created and are generally rules light requiring a gamemaster to look up the information for particular talents, spells, powers, feats, skills, etc. I personally have a preference for the longhand statblocks, as in the long run they are more versatile, as many of the shorthand statblocks tend to only be good at one thing—combat. I’d feel a little cheated if I opened up a sourcebook that claimed to have Garlthik One-Eye’s statistics but merely gave his combat abilities. However, a combat-centric, rules-heavy statblock could be preferable from an adventure standpoint, as long as the character or monster is only geared toward a combat encounter. In fact, it may be even be possible to create a shorthand statblock for a social encounter (i.e. an interaction with a gamemaster character). The best example of a gamemaster character that is geared toward both combat and social combat is the Human Veteran Guard on p.89 of the Gamemaster’s Companion. Rather than the statblock presented there you could instead have this for a combat encounter:

Human Veteran Guard

D: 7 S: 6 T: 6 P: 6 W: 6 C: 7

Initiative: 5 Phys: 6 Myst: 2

PhysDef: 9 SpellDef:: 7SocDef: 9

DR: 36 UR: 28 WT: 10

Melee Weapons Attack (Standard Action): 10 vs. target’s PhysDef; Average result: Hit; Excellent result: Armor-Defeating Hit; Damage: Battle-Axe 13

Activate Lucky Charm (Standard Action; 1 Strain): 6 vs. Activation Difficulty Number 6; Average Result: +1 PhysDef and SpellDef for test result in rounds.

Disarm (Standard Action; 1 Strain): Requires battle-axe; 9 vs. target’s PhysDef; Good result required vs. PhysDef for two-handed weapons; the veteran guard makes a battle-axe Damage Test; The weapon flies a number of feet away from the disarmed character equal to the Damage Test result.

Parry (Free Action; 1 Strain): Requires battle-axe for deflection bonuses; An unarmed veteran guard can make a Parry Test against a melee weapon attack, but requires a Good result to succeed; Triggered by an opponent getting a close combat Attack Test result of 9 (10 with lucky charm activated) or better vs. the veteran guard; Can only be used once per round; Cannot be used if Blindsided or Surprised by the opponent’s attack; 10 with +5 deflection bonus from Battle-Axe vs. Attack Test result; Average result: The attack is deflected; Riposte cannot be used against the same triggering attack.

Riposte (Free Action; 2 Strain): Requires battle-axe; Triggered by an opponent getting a melee weapons Attack Test result of 9 (10 with lucky charm activated) or better vs. the veteran guard; Can only be used once per round; Cannot be used if Blindsided or Surprised by the opponent’s attack; 10 vs. Attack Test result; Average result: The attack is deflected; Good result: The veteran guard counters and makes a battle-axe Damage Test vs. the attacker; Extraordinary result: The counter attack is an Armor-Defeating Hit; Parry cannot be used against the same triggering attack.

Wound Balance (Free Action): Triggered by Wound; Knockdown Test 7 vs. Knockdown Difficulty (Damage Received –WT +3).

Languages: Dwarf/Throalic, Human (speak only)

Loot: 25 silver pieces, lucky charm worth 2d6 x 20 silver pieces

Equipment: ringmail, battle-axe

Legend Award: First Circle

Abbreviations Key: D: Dexterity Step S: Strength Step T: Toughness Step P: Perception Step W: Willpower Step C: Charisma Step DR: Death Rating UR: Unconscious Rating WT: Wound Threshold

Notes: Knockdown removed, normally = Strength Step. Recovery Tests removed, the veteran guard has no powers or equipment that could use or trigger them. Lucky Charm automatically magical.

Or for a social encounter:

Human Veteran Guard

C: 7 SocDef: 9

Gamemaster Character Initial Attitude: Unfriendly

Detect Deceit (Free Action): Triggered when a player lies to the veteran guard; 6 vs. player's SpellDef; Average result: The veteran guard’s is 14 against the player for test result days. In addition, the veteran guard’s Attitude worsens by one degree.

Detect Weapon (Standard Action; 1 Strain): 8 vs. Concealed Weapon’s Detect Difficulty Number. Average Result: The veteran guard cannot be Surprised by an Attack made by that weapon. In addition, the veteran guard’s Attitude worsens by one degree toward the player with the concealed weapon.

Sense of Honor: A veteran guard’s Attitude improves by two degrees if a player proves that their employer has dishonorable or evil intentions and will often refuse to continue to defend him, letting the players pass.

Languages: Dwarf/Throalic, Human (speak only)

Encounter Goal: The players must gain access to the veteran guard’s employer through roleplaying and/or social talents and skills use. If the veteran guard’s Attitude becomes Friendly or better, he will let the players pass.

Success: First Circle Legend Award for succeeding the Encounter Goal.

Failure: The players fail to meet the veteran guard’s employer. A veteran guard whose attitude drops to Enemy will hold a grudge against the player who angered him and will actively seek him out in the battlefield if ordered to fight the players by his employer. He will go out of his way to antagonize and inconvenience the players as much as possible throughout the rest of the adventure.

Obviously, you could also combine them to create a gamemaster character for both situations as well, by adding the powers of the social encounter to the combat encounter gamemaster character. Technically though this is also longer space-wise than the longhand version, albeit easier to pick up and use for gamemasters. However, we have lost a bit here, from knowledge and artisan skills to equipment to some cool commentary and quotes.

A question I have here is whether or not the RedBrick community would rather see this type of shorthand used in some adventure statblocks. As I have already stated, I’d prefer full statblocks for sourcebook/setting gamemaster characters, but I can see the use of a shorthand rules-heavy approach for gamemaster characters meant to be used once over the course of an adventure module. Even within an adventure though, the main cast of characters should be in longhand, such as the core of the Cross of Ardanyan in Ardanyan’s Revenge, as they are intended for long-term use over the course of a campaign.

Earthdawn Third Edition Development

I finished up both the sample First Circle archetypes and the Second to Eleventh Circle gamemaster characters for the 15 Disciplines in Namegivers of Barsaive. With the Namegivers of Barsaive Disciplines completed for Third Edition, I then went on a gap-filling tear converting the old Namegivers Disciplines to the new Third Edition Disciplines where I skipped them over previously. Yegor Grodno and the Abanos crew have been converted for Westhrall’s Passage for Shards Collection: Volume Two and the stats are completed. I converted all the Boatmen in Nations of Barsaive: Volume Two; Serpent River so all the stats are done for it as well. I’ve even somehow finished up all the Kratas Shards stats. The three Shards still need a lot of work and editing, but they are slowly getting there. Of course, with the three Shards totaling over 180 pages, at some point we are going to have to stop calling them Shards and start calling them Kratas Adventures. As for the rest of the team, after finishing up the Namegivers of Barsaive Disciplines they’ve moved on to redesigning the fifteen new Cathay Disciplines into Third Edition shape. Of the new Disciplines, I’d say the Monk will most appreciate the shift to Third Edition redesign. The way it was set for Earthdawn Classic had several different schools of Monk talent techniques and it really was pushing the limits of the old EDC Discipline design. The Monk talent techniques can now be placed in the talent pools allowing for Monk’s to choose from a single school of techniques or take a smattering of them. I did a quick review of the Cathay Shard and made a few stat modifications. We probably need a few more Cathay Shards to make a whole Cathay Adventure book, which I think is a necessity for release with the new Cathay setting. As for myself, I am now having a look over the current Cathay statistics for the sourcebook and then I will get back into Hank’s new adventure. I can’t really do a lot more in Cathay until the Disciplines are redesigned anyway.

Earthdawn Gaming

SPOILER ALERT: This section contains spoilers to Shards Collection: Volume One; Runvir’s Tomb. You’ve been warned.

K’terep and company left Kratas to find the caravan and the ogre. We did not expect to also find Longtooth Shortwit. He made a claim to the ogre and Nova as newots due to the deal K’terep made with him and set himself up in the caravan like he owned the place. We convinced Longtooth to aid us on our adventure to King Runvir’s Tomb by telling him he could have the crown of King Runvir. After a few weeks of adventure, a group of trolls led by Thoris Rockthrower demanded we become his newots. Nova told him that we could not become his newots since we were already newots to Longtooth Shortwit and it would be a conflict of interest for us. He then asked for his help in claiming the crown of King Runvir from Runvir’s Tomb. Thoris and his band decided to join us in our quest, probably to gain the crown for himself. When we reached Runvir’s Tomb, we left the horses and caravan outside. We entered a waiting area and had a hard time opening the front stone gate, as one of Thoris’ men fell into a pit trap with some spikes and was severely injured. We went into Ustrect’s wilderness, chopped down a large tree and formed a makeshift battering ram and used our allies’ combined troll and ogre strength to bash down the front gate. We took an elevator to the first basement level with the help of Longtooth working the pulley and began to explore the area. We encountered a demiwraith and defeated it. Noticing the defeated foe was once a questor of Mynbruje, K’terep refused to grab any loot in the room. We then plundered four troll crypts for paintings, but disturbed the dead, and four troll cadaver men attacked us. They flew into a rage, killing one of Thoris’ men and knocking out another one. We ended with about half the kaer explored.

END SPOILERS

Video games

I went to the Bahamut and defeated Final Fantasy XII. Overall, it was a fun, if forgettable game. The characters are one dimensional and bland and do not develop beyond their professions of princess, knight, sky pirate, first mate, rogue, and Penelo does not even have even that much development to determine what she is about. The story is a bland one about two empires coming almost to war over a territory in between them and is a mostly political tale with some small religious elements. Neither the characters nor story stack up to the epic characters and tale that Final Fantasy Tactics wove. Worse, if you were going to tell a story about Ivalice’s past, why didn’t you dive into the story of St. Ajora hinted at in FFT? Rather than making an original story based upon the established lore and history of Ivalice, we get a bland carbon copy of a story we’ve already seen before with an Empire and a group of rebels at war. Disappointing especially after playing the epic that was Final Fantasy X and its less epic extended epilogue to it in Final Fantasy X-2.

I also beat Dead to Rights. This was a fun twitch game with a lot of button mashing minigames. The only times you needed strategy was against the final bosses. Pinnacle was a problem since he has to miss you enough by you bobbing and weaving in front of him like you are Mohammad Ali for him to become winded, and then you have to use the disarm button (o) to choke him from behind. Fahook was an absolute nightmare. He kept drinking his elixir of healing and regenerating his health. To defeat him you have to use the manual aim feature (R2), which you have not used all game since you have automatic aim (R1), to shoot the bottle as he is trying to drink it. He can use the bottle three times, and if you don’t get the bottle quick enough, he returns to full health, even if you manage to shoot it later in the sequence. He practically has 4 full health bars. You might be lucky and have health and armor, and there is a health pack and armor in the boss fight, but it is still an absolute bear of a fight, much tougher than the final boss, whom I defeated in one try. I managed to beat it with 7 hours on the game clock, and it only cost me $4.00 USD. It was worth that price for a fun third person shooter.

I picked up Romancing Saga for Playstation 2 for $12.00 USD in late November. This is a remake of the first of the three Romancing Saga Super Famicom games that were never ported over to the USA. This was not a port of the SNES game. Squareenix remastered the game into 3D, translated it into English, and the music on this game is phenomenal. I was absolutely stunned, as the opening sequence is a mariachi song sung in Japanese. It was a tour de force of music that I have not heard since the opening title to Suikoden III. (The best part of that game unfortunately.) The title screen music was just as epic. The adventure and battle music is good as always, and even the town music is decent. Better yet, it uses the old Saga system of HP needing to be 0 before LP is lost, and Unconscious HP 0 party members who are attacked take LP damage. Each character can take classes that direct their overall development and you can further develop them through skills, spells, and proficiencies. And of course, 8 journeys that entwine into one. Overall, this game is everything that Unlimited Saga should have been thus far.

But then I got distracted from Romancing Saga by Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliances for Playstation 2. Baldur’s Gate is essentially what would happen if Diablo and DnD 3.x had a baby. Besides the DnD connection, it is virtually identical to many of the overhead three-quarters view action-adventure hack and slash games I’ve played over the years from Diablo to Record of Lodoss War on Dreamcast to The Bard’s Tale on Playstation 2. But just because it is a clone does not mean it is not fun, sometimes all you want to do is hack and slash. The game has some problems though, one of which is balance. You can simply save up your level up points to grab the best spells as the sorceress. I grabbed Meteor Swarm at Level 9 (Caster Level 5 for a Level 9 spell). This made the game a lot easier, as it can even be used indoors (The walls occasionally block a meteor or two). For some reason I was able to wear plate armor as the Sorceress too, mitigated somewhat by its high weight. One problem I ran into as the Sorceress was an encumbrance wall with her low Strength. I was a caster who was equipped with two Rings of Strength +5 and an Amulet of Strength +5, for a Strength of 29 just to have 290 carry/lift to be able to carry all my weapons and armor as well as 20 Potions of Extra Heal/Rejuvenation. With Meteor Swarm, a Strength of 29, and an impressive mithral masterwork morning star of disruption +3 or wounding masterwork scimitar +3, my character was better at melee combat than ranged combat at the end of the game. It just does not seem like I should have been building my character this way, but if this is the norm for the game, it really makes the dwarf Fighter the preferred class to play here. What I really miss are the noncombat spells. Like you can jump but there is no Fly spell. It feels a lot like DnD4e simplified combat in that way. I miss the Goldbox games like ADnD: Pools of Radiance and the old 3DO Doom clones like ADnD: Slayer and ADnD: Deathkeep where you still had utility spells and had to figure out how to use them. This is compounded with a lack of variety. You have an underneath the city sewer/temple level with rats, slimes, thieves, and undead, an ice mountain/cave level with ogres, gnolls, frost giants, and winter wolves, a dwarf mine level with drow and spiders to kill (where were the driders?), a swamp level killing undead and lizardmen, and an end tower. It would not be so bad, but a lot of this I have done before. The first six levels of AdnD: Eye of the Beholder were about a war below ground between the drow and the dwarfs for example. (and more importantly had driders!) And then there is the game length problem. I beat the game in 11 hours. If you added in the other two characters as replays, I suppose you’d get 30 hours or so. It is a short game, but I did only pay $4.00 USD for it. Overall, this game is worth picking up if you like Diablo and DnD and just feel like mindlessly hacking monsters for a few hours.

P.S. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

I spent most of the last week of October and the first week of November working on converting stats to the new stat template to assist in layout. The second week of November I started perusing a new RedBrick adventure by Hank Woon in early development. I was surprised to find that it was a Barsaive setting adventure rather than a Cathay setting adventure. I did not get a lot of time to work on it, as the production schedule has changed a bit. With Nations of Barsaive: Volume I; Throal shifting in the production schedule to coming out before Namegivers of Barsaive, I will not have a chance to convert characters like Merrox, which rely on the Disciplines in Namegivers of Barsaive for Nations of Barsaive: Volume I; Throal. Speaking of Namegivers of Barsaive, the project is really heating up as the team attempts to get it done by the end of the year. I have been working on both the First Circle archetypes and the Second to Eleventh Circle gamemaster characters for the last two weeks. I think these Second to Eleventh Circle gamemaster characters already look better than the last batch for the Gamemaster’s Companion, and I thought those were the best at that time. Obviously, there are a lot of other projects that are reliant on the Disciplines from Namegivers of Barsaive being completed. Just about everything outside of Cathay needs them complete, from Nations of Barsaive: Volume II; The Serpent River to Shards Collection: Volume Two to the Kratas Shards. It would be impossible for Nations of Barsaive: Volume II; The Serpent River to be released without it, considering how many gamemaster characters use the Boatman Discipline in that book.

As predicted, my Earthdawn gaming cooled off for three weeks as Jason absorbed the contents of Kratas: A City of Thieves, but we returned to gaming on November 15th and 22nd. So far, we have stolen a caravan from some ork mercenaries who for their own reasons were on their way to Kratas and had stolen the caravan from someone else no less. The reason we double-crossed them is that they threatened to take Artanis, our gamemaster character apprentice dwarf Weaponsmith hostage and ransom him back to his master Darren (Of Journey to Lang patron fame). Since our mission required getting him and a message he carries to Kratas, we certainly could not achieve that goal by letting him be dwarfnapped. We have proceeded to almost destroy the caravan over the course of two sessions. First, Nova Born Burst broke into a chest built into the caravan, somehow surviving two traps on two locks in the process. He got the contents, and then carved his name onto the chest, vandalizing the caravan. Second, when K’terep and Nova went to get food for the horses in the Servos with our Wilderness Survival skills, we got separated and Nova ran into a brithan, which bit him and wounded him, and he did not submit to the brithan. When K’terep went looking for him, he found the Brithan and a badly beaten Nova fighting. K’terep intervened, which saved Nova. When Nova slew the unconscious brithan with a sword thrust to the gut, an angered K’terep refused to aid him in carrying the brithan back to caravan. Nova created a skiff by making a raft of branches and tying it with vines, and used it to get the Brithan back to the caravan. At the caravan, he skinned the brithan’s hide and began making brithan steaks. The smell of brithan steaks drew the attention of an ogre, which Nova befriended by giving him the brithan’s hide and the brithan steaks. So now there is an ogre living inside the caravan. And the inside of the caravan smells like an ogre wrapped in a brithan’s hide as a cloak. This slowed us down considerably, allowing the six ork mercenaries we had double-crossed to catch up. Unfortunately for them, we had an ogre. Four of them died, the other two fled. People tend to flee when facing five adepts and an ogre though. They would not let us in Daiche, since we have an ogre, and we were forced to add an extra week to our trip by going through a dangerous Tylon Mountain passage.

The first problem we had was our front wheel axle broke, nearly sending us off the cliff face, possibly from the added strain of the ogre’s weight. To fix it we needed a large, straight tree. So K’terep, Gareth (the name of Kevin’s character, a dwarf Warrior), and Bella went to get the only tree in sight. Since Gareth has a battle-axe, he was part of the team to cut down the tree. Since K’terep as a t’skrang can fight even when carrying a tree with his tail, he was part of the team. Bella came with us, since she was getting so aggravated by the ogre and Nova, she might have started spirit darting them had she stayed. We encountered mounds and towers of mulch, which after seeing a greater termite husk on the ground, K’terep remembered what they are with his Creature Lore skill, and told Gareth and Bella about them. We managed to get to the top of the mountain and Gareth cut down the tree while K’terep and Bella watched his back with his spears and her astral spears respectively. After Gareth cut down the tree, he grabbed the front, and K’terep grabbed the back. With Bella in front, we began our mad dash down the mountain. Rather than targeting the insects themselves, Bella’s strategy was to attack the tunnel openings, a strategy that was rewarded by collapsing some of the tunnels, delaying some of the greater termites movement out of them. One of the greater termites grabbed Gareth’s leg, and he kicked it off and punted it. Several greater termites attacked K’terep, one was slapped away by his tail, the other impaled and skewered by his ch’tard blade. Things were going well, until a greater termite sprayed acid directly in Gareth’s face, and he dropped to the ground screaming. K’terep poured a water skin on his face, which may have helped him break out of his seizure. K’terep and Gareth grabbed the tree again and started running down the mountain. An acid spray struck Bella and she dropped, but was back up quickly, removing her robe since it was covered with the acid. K’terep was stuck by the acid, but was unfazed. Near the caravan, the ogre was covered by over twenty of the termites. In one hand was his club, in the other was a cooked greater termite that the ogre ate like it was a lobster by sucking out the marrow of the termite. After discarding the husk he brought out a large sack and started grabbing, stomping, and clubbing every greater termite he could find and stuffing it into the large sack. With the ogre gaining the attention of the greater termites we got the tree back to the caravan, which Artanis then used to make a replacement axle.

Our next problem was a cave troll who pushed boulders onto the path and demanded that we give him money or trade to undo the barricade. As you probably guessed, the ogre and the cave troll haggled over useless objects for hours. Gareth asked the cave troll for his name and he told us it was Longtooth Shortwit. Longtooth finally was satisfied after we gave him a light crossbow and a crystal ringlet for a shovel and a pickaxe. (That is one expensive pickaxe and shovel!) With the shovel and pickaxe we could remove the barricade, but Longtooth just lifted up the rocks and returned them to the top of the cliff laughing the whole time. During his night watch, Longtooth grabbed K’terep and took him to his lair. K’terep fought him the whole way, but struggling against a cave troll’s strength was difficult, so he tried stabbing him, and managed to do it once. The envy of all pack rats, the mountain cave was filled with all manner of useless and useful items. Longtooth demanded that K’terep trade with him. K’terep refused. Longtooth asked for the ogre and Nova for a painting, a mountain map, and a summoning ball. K’terep, having no use for either, agreed, realizing that it was his only way out of being t’skrangnapped. The map, having been written by Longtooth said simply in broken Throalic, “U R here”, with an X. The summoning ball is some sort of flare that the cave troll recognizes when it is thrown into a fire. The painting is apparently worth some silver. After returning to camp, K’terep continued his watch and woke up Gareth. The next day, we made it out of the mountains and stopped at a small hostel outside of Kratas. After some hard negotiating, we managed to stable our horses, find single rooms for ourselves, and arrange for guards on the caravan, with the ogre and Nova sleeping inside the caravan. One of the guards did not make it through the night, and it seems someone or some group now thinks that the caravan is hauling valuables. Perhaps the two surviving ork mercenaries have some friends? The hostel owner told us to move on at daybreak, as losing a guard really made him angry. K’terep told Bella about what had happened to him the other night, and she reacted with sardonic laughter as if amused to see what might happen when a cave troll tries to take on an ogre. The next day, we decided to leave the ogre with the caravan about a half days away from Kratas. Considering that they would not let us into Daiche with the ogre, we expected similar treatment if we took him to Kratas. We entered Kratas and found the Drunken Dragon Inn where Artanis concluded his business with his contract and we got 150 silver pieces each for succeeding at our courier mission. Artanis then left town as fast as possible. This ended the interlude mission in between Journey to Lang and Runvir’s Tomb.

WARNING. Possible Shards Collection: Volume One spoilers ahead.

We spent the next day meditating, and during the evening we met Jorgin Torvin and Nova made a blood promise to get the Oracle Fountain for him from Runvir’s Tomb to gain his trust. We got a 150 silver piece advance on the adventure and in the morning we shopped for supplies and paid about 200% on most items and received about 25% of items worth on selling. Overall, K’terep earned 300 silver in two days, and ended up losing 100 silver in a day, even after selling Longtooth’s painting for 40 silver. At this rate, he won’t be able to afford training to Second Circle with it costing 200 silver pieces. As we were leaving Kratas eight thugs jumped us. They attempted to grapple us off our riding horses and knock us unconscious. Being adepts, we eventually managed to defeat them, especially since K’terep and Gareth have unarmed combat as Discipline talents leaving the thugs grapple tactics to only work on Nova and Bella. And grappling a Nethermancer with spirit grip is NOT recommended. K’terep captured one of them and interrogated him until he revealed that the Brocher’s Brood had sent them, then K’terep released him. Rather than wisely fleeing, instead he threatened the group, and Gareth swung his warhammer and crushed his skull. This angered K’terep, who did not like letting a prisoner go for him to be summarily executed. Gareth shrugged and simply said, “He threatened us.” Though his point may be valid, it still offended K’terep’s sense of honor. We ended the session as we left the gates of Kratas and we’ll find out next time whether the ogre or caravan is still where we left them. Knowing Jason’s sense of irony and humor, I would not be surprised if the caravan is gone, but the ogre is still there. We’ll see next time.

END Possible Spoilers.

As for video games, in Starcraft it took all my RTS skills, but I managed to finally defeat the ridiculously tough Zerg missions, even Mission 8. Mission 8 was insane, as the UED used coordinated Zerg and Terran forces with precision to constantly attack you. They were able to combine units like Medics and Ultralisks to make powerful groups that are able to maintain health and continue attacking. I defeated the two armies on the first island, only to lose one of my new bases to constant attacks from the east. I built a new base further south and it got nuked and destroyed. I had to use overlords to transport troops to the east island, quickly create a new base, and make a nydus canal to get in hydralisks reinforcements ASAP before the enemies could overrun my fledgling base, just to get a foothold to attack them on the eastern island. And after hours of combat and many retries, I finally won. In comparison, Mission 9 and Mission 10 were easy and fun. It seemed like Missions 3-8 put me through some of the most intense RTS combat I have ever been in outside of the madness that was the original Ogre Battle on Super Nintendo and Ogre Battle 64 on the Nintendo 64 trying to coordinate ten different units while being constantly attacked by enemies. Starcraft is highly recommended by me for RTS fans. I had a blast, and it was well worth the $20.00 USD that I spent on it.

Final Fantasy XII was fun for a while, but then I tried the special dungeon at Giruvegan again and got really frustrated. The problems are multiple. They have taken away the automap for the dungeon. Each room is a circle with a number of paths leading either up or down and the only distinguishing features are the enemies, any zodiac barriers, lock mechanisms, and any waystones present in the room. So what you have is something that looks like an X-Y-Z dungeon that has barriers that you must unlock. Worse you have a time limit that begins the moment you press a lock mechanism to unlocked. With tons of enemies you end up trying to flee from enemies getting attacked in every room while trying to get through the zodiac barrier. And no save points. So confusing layout, tons of encounters, time limits, and no saves. After wandering around for three hours and barely getting anywhere, I left the special dungeon, saved the game, and I have not yet returned to it. When I pick it up again I’ll be going to the Bahamut in the main storyline. I could always map the dungeon by hand, perhaps on a hex map since I need circles and more of a 3D effect than graph paper can provide, but FFXII is not worth it. Games worth graph paper mapping? The Advanced Dungeons and Dragons: Pools of Radiance saga for one. And this is no Gold Box game.

Around Halloween, I started playing Persona 3 on Playstation 2. It is a J-RPG that is very different from the first two English games on Playstation. For one thing, I miss the ability to contact and negotiate with monsters. That was half the fun really. Instead, it has been replaced by a social link system where forming bonds with the people you meet during the day strengthens your own bond with certain tarot arcana and makes your persona summons of that arcana stronger. Rather than a linear dungeon and explore town sequence followed by a new dungeon, Persona 3 has your main character exploring a single tower called Tartarus which has certain terminal stations where you can leave the dungeon, presumably to save, with various blocks of 16 floors. There are occasional events that happen on the full moon which happen in the real world outside Tartarus, and are the games only other min-dungeons. I miss Persona 2: Eternal Punishment’s quicksave, as this game uses the save point method, where you can register your data on the dorm’s log, much like Persona: Revelations with the Augusta trees. Another gripe is that only the main character can Persona change now, meaning you have to live with the basic persona on the other characters. The plot is that you are a persona user at a high school and you join a secretive school club called SEES, which is actually a group of persona users dedicated to fighting during the Dark Hour, the 25th hour of the day unknown to most people where the shadows pour out into the world from Tartarus. During the day you go to high school, interacting with your classmates and other school clubs to form social links as well as answer pop quizzes in class. During the afternoon you are free to explore the town, but eventually must choose how to spend the afternoon hours with either a social link or other activity. At the evening you can choose to explore Tartarus or hang out at the mall till dark. On days you are free from school activities you can sometimes hang out with friends or play online with Maya. The game uses a cell-shaded anime style that fits well. The music is very J-pop, the strange blend of Japanese and American singing with pop music. It fits the game and some of it is very catchy, like the battle music. My only complaint is the songs are too short and tend to loop a lot. You control your main character in battle and a tactics system controls your other team members. So far I am about a month and a half into the game’s calendar and it is very good despite my complaints. The game has it all, good characters and story, decent battle system, good graphics and music, and a creepy theme and mood.

I purchased Unlimited Saga for Playstation 2 for $4.00 USD early in November. I want my money back. The problem is the game system. In older Saga games like Saga Frontier, your HP must deplete to 0 before you take LP damage, same with monsters. HP was kind of like your Unconsciousness rating, and LP or Life Points was kind of like your Death Rating. So you might have 300 HP, but only 10 LP. Take 300 and you are out cold, and lose the last 10 and you are dead. It was complicated, but it made logical sense. Another cool thing was gear that reduced your LP but was powerful, kind of like blood magic. That is not the case in Unlimited Saga, as your LP will sometimes take damage when you have full HP and you sometimes take no LP damage when you have 0 HP. Since battle is the core of this game, it really makes things difficult, since you cannot predict how much damage you need to give monsters to drain their LP and have no idea if you are going to die because of losing your entire LP in an attack. It makes combat seem like random chance rather than something you can control. When you quest, you move your icon around the map like a chess piece, really old-school RPG style. Opening up treasure chests in the game is a six-step process. Detect Lock/Trap, Disarm Trap, Lock Picking, Magic Lock, Fortunetelling to change the contents, open. These actions open a reel, which has success, failure, and critical failure on the reel, which simulates a dice roll mechanic. You can even destroy a chest by punching it in the face, but this also may destroy the contents or trigger traps on the chest. This is like opening a chest in Earthdawn. That is not so bad, but since the game’s sidequests use a turn-based map mechanic, wasting X turns opening a chest might actually cause you to lose a sidequest by running out of turns. When you encounter a monster, they sometimes always attack, but if they do not, you can use the Diplomacy skill to make them leave, but of course you may fail and get attacked anyway. The biggest problem is that the monster encounter rate seems cranked up to the maximum, a real problem when you have to take a lot of turns to open treasure chests, and have limited LP, compounded by the dodgy effect of your HP on LP damage. The game's music and sound effects are really good, and are the game's high points really. I played this game for fifteen hours, ten of them saved, five of them lost to total party kills. I decided to give up due to frustration after the last TPK. The sad thing is that the game had a potential for greatness, it does feel a lot like old-school DnD, but the screwed up battle system makes it tough to understand and unplayable really. It feels like a broken game that was not playtested properly before release.

And on a final note, consistency is a virtue. Six months and six blogs by me. I have been trying to hold myself to a standard of one blog a month and doing it for half a year is not bad by any account.

P.S. Happy Thanksgiving! I meant to get this out last night, but as you can see by the blog’s length, I needed more time to write it all down.