Penny Arcade

True Martial Prowess

We grabbed the demo for Lord of the Rings: Conquest over the weekend, with no expectations because we haven’t been following it. I more or less could not endure the tutorial, choosing instead to learn my trade “On The Job,” which is dangerous for an archer but one gets used to it. Unfortunately, there was a bug in the demo that would not allow me to play their online game online - it suggested that my displayName was in use, something I didn’t find especially surprising, because it was my name. I decided that the hours of a Sunday afternoon would be better employed in the construction of a couch cushion fortress, and took my refuge there.

We pulled it down here at the office to try to get a read on it, which was difficult. We could log on, and it would log us in, but shortly thereafter we were logged out. Once we managed to enter the fantastical realm of Middle-Earth, we had a hard time getting the hang of its rhythm. Invisible rogues who can kill you instantly with some kind of WWE suplex take some getting used to. Also, you can fall from incredible heights without damage, but if any part of your body touches the water in a map it will end your fucking life.

I want to emphasize that the water in question was not especially fast flowing. It was a channel of clear, refreshing water, really more like a brook or stream. I should also emphasize that it was not despoiled in any way by toxins natural or arcane: it’s not like we were immediately downstream from Orthanc, the black tower of Isengard. We died in this way more or less at the moment we were beginning to understand things, driven back by two rampaging ents which were closing fast on our last refuge.

It’s a challenge to bind the varying threads of our experience into a suite of tools you can use to shape your purchasing decisions, but I’ll try.

Pro:

- You Can Ride Wargs (?)

I know that’s not much, I’ll keep working on it. I’m extremely hesitant to dismiss games in this genre out of hand, as their interlocking classes make them somewhat mercurial subjects. I made an early call on C&C Renegade that a deeper assessment showed to be some hasty bullshit. The systemic pedigree is no deal-maker, though: at every opportunity, Conquest tries to remind you that it’s from the same people who made Star Wars: Battlefront, which is nothing to be proud of. I understand that they sold well, but let us be honest with one another: these games were pierced tins of rotting meat, swollen with the byproducts of their putrefaction.

(CW)TB out.

in mordor, where the shadows are

D&D

I’ve had a lot of people ask me how my first D&D game as Dungeon Master went. Here’s a pic I snapped with my phone towards the end of the night. Actually since we went until 2:30 am, I guess I should say the morning.

Chocholate milk, popcorn, huge golden dragon tablecloth,candles,pewter dragon dice box…yeah I’d say it went pretty fucking good.

I decided that since this was everyone’s first time playing D&D I really wanted to go all out. I figured if we were going to this, we were going to do it right. So I made some strategic purchases to help set the mood. With some incense, candles and a few props I was able to transform my dinning room into space suitable for epic adventures involving dungeons and the dragons that may or may not lurk there.

As for the adventure itself, I took one of the stories from the DMG that comes with the starter kit as a sort of seed. I used it’s encounters and locations since this was my first time as a DM and I thought having that stuff written out would be helpful. I went in and added in all my own story hooks and NPC’s though. I think for our first game everyone did really well. I had a hard time getting into the roles of the various NPC’s but I think I’ll get better at that as time goes on. In general I think everyone was sort of learning who their character is and how they behave. Obviously learning the mechanics of combat was also a major focus for everyone.

I did my best to roll with everything they wanted to do. Just like the DMG had warned, despite all my planning they still wanted to know stuff I hadn’t thought about. I don’t want to go into too much detail because they all read this and I don’t want to spoil anything for them. I will say that I really loved the DM role and I’m super excited to continue the story. I’ve got some pretty cool stuff in store for them.

-Gabe out

An update

Lots of people want to know about the cards on the table. Those are power cards. They get printed up automatically when you create a character using the Character Builder tool over at the D&D site. It’s a really great tool for a lot of reasons. It handles a lot of the math for you as far as figuring out modifiers and skills. I think the best part though is the power cards that it makes. It generates a card for each of your at-will,encounter and daily powers. Not only that but the tool figures out all your modifiers and prints out the damage each of your powers does after taking into account all those variables. It’s really handy because everyone can have their cards out on the table and when you use an encounter power you just turn it over.

Also people have asked about the game tokens. We’re using those because we don’t have miniatures yet. They come with the D&D starter kit and are just little round tokens with monster pictures on them. I used the drawing of the party I did to make some custom tokens for each of the PC’s. Eventually we’ll probably pick up some mini’s but for right now the tokens work fine.

-Gabe out