Penny Arcade

With the title of the strip as explicit as possible - and this introductory sentence positioned for maximum emphasis - I feel as though we’ve done our duty.  You really should have completed it by now.  I have a mewling, perpetually starving human larvae in my charge, fed via a prosthetic nipple, and I managed to complete it; what’s your excuse?

The strip contains the tale of my ill-use at the hands of a party member, my literal robbery, which struck me as incredibly amusing - something that is only possible in the wooly world of premium expansions and branching narratives.  By the time I’d brought game events to their conclusion, the spine of the thing was visible to me.  Between a full playthrough and my previous research, I’ve played it almost twice now - enough to know what I don’t like.  That isn’t to say I don’t like it; I do.  Just not all of it.

I found it very strange that Elves and Dwarves - though Dwarves more so - had no accent of any kind.  I’m not a proponent of the Universally Scottish Dwarf, and I was happy that he was nowhere to be found, but there wasn’t a lot of texture to these races as a direct result of that.  People just sound like dudes, for the most part, and it’s not a good thing.  If the Elves of the Alienage - an ghetto, in essence - speak as their oppressors do, that doesn’t surprise me.  But the Dalish and the Dwarves of Orzammar are rendered tremendously common by their presentation.  The fiction is rich, but not sufficiently executed in-line.

The Collector’s Edition of The Witcher had occasional localization concerns, certainly, but it has a lot to teach every student of the form when it comes to a truly grey moral environment.  As a game where you play a single character doing battle via a rhythm-based combat scheme, there isn’t much in the way of systemic comparisons to be made - but wrenching decisions and delayed outcomes made for a world that felt considerably less proscribed.

They owe a debt to Lois McMaster Bujold, a big one, and (beware: dork stuff ahead) the existence of an Imperial Chantry makes me suspect they haven’t yet completed their harvest.  I’m glad that we’ve gotten to the point where we’re borrowing from her instead of Tolkien, I call this progress, but they need to do a better job of filing off the serials.  Warcraft and Starcraft both were born of a cannibal hunger for Games Workshop IP, but after more than a decade of canny embellishments (particularly in the rapid iteration venue of WoW) they’re both steady, assured settings with tremendous confidence and substantial headroom.

Dragon Age is in as good a position, or better, to create a place we can long to return to.  Do they know, themselves, what they’ve created?  Sometimes, the game makes me wonder.

(CW)TB out.

what did i base you on

I’ve got another post for all you DM’s out there but before I do that I have a minor PAX announcement. I’ve been getting a lot of mail about the ECA this morning. The Joystiq article is a good break down of what’s going on. I’m not exactly sure how I feel about it but in the meantime we’ve gone ahead and pulled the ECA promotion we were running as a part of PAX registration. If the story changes I’ll let you know.

So my D&D game last monday was one of the best we’ve ever had and I wanted to share some of it with you. Some of these ideas might be things you can use in your own game.

It started with a fight in a market. I tried using my Dwarven Forge stuff a little differently than I usually do. I stacked them up to make buildings and then used the Dungeon Tile roofs on top. I dropped a couple tea lights inside because I’m a nerd. I think the end result was a really convincing little town square. 

Next the party was summoned to compete in a tournament of Kord. This was a grand festival with jousting and arena fighting. I’ll go ahead and post some of my flavor text here in case you want to use it for your own game. This is what I read to the party as they arrived at the arena:

Stretching out before you is a wide open arena of green grass. Grandstands along the sides are full of cheering people waving brightly colored flags. A warm breeze washes over you bringing with it the fresh smell of summer. Tents dot the outskirts of the playing filed and you can see armored knights laughing and joking while squires lead horses between them.

A large bare chested man with a bright red beard approaches you. “Welcome to the Grand Tournament” he says in a deep voice. “Prove your might in battle today and you will win the the prize you seek.” He lifts a large ram’s horn from his belt and raises it to his lips. The horn splits the air “Let the games begin!” he yells as the crowd goes wild all around you.

The first event was jousting. I did some research online and found a couple different home brew rules for jousting in 4e but none of them did exactly what I wanted. I ended up taking what liked from a few different places and then tweaking and adding my own ideas. For my game, jousting was intended to be a fun “mini game” style encounter to start the tournament. I created a six person tournament bracket with myself as the sixth player. Pitting the players against each other ended up being really fun. They were all competing for the title “Master of the Joust” and the permanent +2 to fort that the title granted.

I handed each player a sheet with the jousting rules on it. You can find my Jousting rules right here. My guys are level 15 but you could switch up some of the values to match your players.

We had to do some tweaking on the fly so that the Invoker could be competitive. I ended up letting her use Wisdom for hit and damage rolls. Our Rogue was doing really well but he kept throwing lances at squires so he lost all his battles. It was a fun encounter and the players had a good time knocking each other around a little bit before the main event.

So after the Joust I had them move to the arena. I wanted this fight to be really over the top. We’ve always thought of Kord as a real man’s man. He’s the kind of God who cracks open a brew-ski and watches the game. The theme was: THIS SUNDAY WE’RE TURNING KORD’S ARENA INTO A GIANT MUD PIT! So rather than just throw some random mobs at them I created WWE style intros and placed each mini on the field one at a time. Here’s what I read to them in my best monster truck rally announcer voice:

In life he was a Cyclops chieften from the far wilds. He was killed and raised by a powerful necromancer whom he immediatly ate. Now he rules the arena with the powers of the living and the dead! I give you: Argos

From the darkest forests of Mithras comes the next mighty slayer of men. No labyrinth on Krynn can hold the furry of this Minotaur. Behold: Cyrain

Coming all the way from the elemental plane and birthed by fire this Salamander warrior burns all in her path! prepare yourselves for: Lemuria

Orphaned at a young age and raised by owlbears the next gladiator has brought pain to the far reaches of Krynn. Mothers hide your children from: Ovidius

From Menzoberanzan comes a Drow sorecerer of sin, a magi of meloncally, a wizard of woe, all tremble before the awesome power of: Belar

Next I let them know that they could play to the crowd in order to get bonuses to damage. They were using minor actions to taunt enemies, perform crazy stunts and all kinds of fun stuff. At one point the Dragonborn Paladin was actually flying around the stadium giving high fives. I also let them know that critical failures and cowardly tactics would make the crowd turn against them. When this happened they got a penalty to damage and the crowd actually started throwing things like Alchemist Fire onto the field.

The result was a really light hearted encounter that was a ton of fun and a nice break from the more serious stuff we’d been doing. They ended up playing a bunch of stadium rock music on their laptops and actually killed the final monster to We Are the Champions while the Dragonborn shot fire into the sky. So Awesome.

I’d say my big lesson was that it’s okay to get cheesy sometimes and not take D&D so seriously. It was a nice change of pace for a night and something you might think about tossing into your game.

-Gabe out

Outside of a distaste for his methods (and a truly vile appellation), we weren’t very informative on the matter of the DSD.  This video, which captures the Double Shotgun Dude in his native environs, should suffice to explain the matter in its entirety.

We learned today that the way people are dealing with this kind of opponent is to use the Javelin Glitch, which is just fucking fantastic.

The Javelin Glitch (a resolution for which is underway) is truly the ultimate in bullshit, and given the kind of crap they accept in the game proper it’s got to be pretty bad if they’re trying to patch it out.  It is a mechanism by which a person can explode when you shoot them - not simply with a grenade, as the Martyrdom Deathstreak allows, but directing concussive force outward with the broad profile of an aerial bombardment.  Imagine a pinata that includes not candy, by damnation.  That’s the Glitch in a nutshell.

CAN’T WAIT TO PLAY TONIGHT

(CW)TB