New Year’s Resolution
by beak on Dec.28, 2011, under Uncategorized
Apparently you are more likely to keep your resolutions for the New Year, if they are not negative ones. Saying that I will stop doing this or that means your are less likely to keep doing them then I will start or do more of this. I, however, seem to be in the opposite of this as I quit smoking and attempted to write more this year. Well, I don’t smoke anymore and have written LESS than I did last year.
So this year I will not write less then I did last year. Maybe everyday, not with good content, but everyday.
Pirates!
by beak on May.23, 2011, under Uncategorized
After reading several Pathfinder adventure paths and the Tomb of Horrors I was doing a little bit of thinking about Multiple Book Adventures. Tomb of horrors is set up to take place over several levels and many weeks of playtime. The Pathfinder adventure paths are meant to take place over even longer periods of time and many books, but with a better overall plot that spans many adventures and encounters that all lead to a epic finish for the story. And this got me thinking, everyone but the players in the stories are always the quest givers or the bad guys. What if the players encountered a rival band of adventurers that were higher level than they were and started a rivalry with them?
A similar sized party that had their own adventures and interacted with the party. They could be NPC’s or even an off night party where the players have alternate character that they play with for every 3 other adventures. They wouldn’t have to work against each other but still the original characters would feel underpowered and playing catch up with the opposing team. And then hit them with the whammy. One night the opposing party goes up against an insurmountable foe and they LOSE. The Big Bad Evil Guy wins, and kills them all. The original party sees the results of this in a Natural disaster of some sort, an Eclipse, Earthquake, or all of the Religious icons in the area start bleeding. The original party has to deal with the after affects and come up with a solution, and defeat the evil that killed their chief rivals.
The main problem I could see with this is the players losing interest in the beginning if they feel like they aren’t the main characters. Or they may take the rivalry to extremes and work more for the goal of killing the opposing team instead of being competitors. Obviously they may think that the other party is the one to blame and they focus on that.
Tomb of horror!
by beak on Sep.03, 2010, under Wizards
After reading the new release of The Tomb of Horrors, I feel dissapointed. I never got to play the original and after reading the updated version, I feel like I won’t be able to get that experience during play. The only mistake Wizards made is labeling this as a Tomb of Horrors. It really only feels like a random dungeon and they stuck the name on it. I could just write this off as a mislabeled bad adventure pack, but it’s actually pretty decent if you just change the names to something generic and it’s a random demi-lich instead of Acererack.
The traps and puzzles are creative and challenging, but not as player killing as the original. The made a dungeon made for killing players who munched and was made to instill fear in players who felt invincible. But you try and remake that for players who want to have a fun time and some concessions had to be made. Although several of the trap have been set up for people who played or know about The Tomb, and plays off of their paranoia.
So overall I would play or run the Tomb as something else. Maybe as the God Machine or maybe Ascension of the Lich. And that’s really the only change to be made, maybe keep the iconic traps in the run and scare your players a little bit. But as is this should be perfectly solvable and still fun. Unless your players just enjoy fights with 30 minions, no story, and no thinking.
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Product.aspx?x=dnd/products/dndacc/253850000
Wizards : January
by beak on Jan.20, 2010, under Wizards
Wizards of the Coast has got the right stuff as far as gamers are concerned. They control the reigns to Pen and Paper’s Iconic game Dungeons and Dragons. I was filled with excitement when they announce a 4th edition to be released, and hoped that it would help with balance issues. Often in old 3 and 3.5 games I found I could either go with a good character idea, or a good character pulled from the internet. Sadly they seemed to have missed the mark because when I play 4th edition, I feel like they just balance the game to the combat side of things and and made that the focus. The saving grace of 4th edition is an almost modular approach to the game making it extremely easy to implement changes. Anything new really had to be added to the game by means of new spells for casters and new prestige classes or just new base classes for the melee side of things. Now you just add or substitute whatever you need into the classes or start with a new base class. They could completely win me over by going through the 3.5 Players and checking to see if they could implement a Utility Power or Ritual from each of the non-combat spells. Anyway they got some new stuff coming out here in January to start the new year off.
Heroscape DnD Master Set.
I enjoy Heroscape. It’s a quick version of 40k or a Tactics video game. With Mini’s. That you can use for DnD night later. You could probably even set up a large regular Heroscape set for an Epic BBEG Fight. Going to grab this up. List Price 29.99, Dwarven Forge set 119.99 for a start. Worth it.
Underdark
I’ve always been a fan of writing my own stuff, and getting the setting right has always been tough. Back in High School we used to run “Us” campaign with Us as the main characters. Already knowing the place we were helped us know what we were supposed to do and where we were supposed to go. This is creating that familiarity with the setting that the characters can get to know. If you are not going there I would not recommend the book, but If you are looking for a new place to go, Underdark has plenty of room for evil monsters lurking in the dark, or buried treasures of old.
Player’s Handbook : Dragonborn
More stuff to flesh out your Dragonborn hero. Its not bad so much, but if you have a long term character planned as a Dragonborn, I would look into it. If you are looking to choose ANY OTHER RACE. I would not bother. I would only see about a compendium of all PH: Races for all of the collected Backgrounds, Origins, and Paragon Paths. But not really interested in them separately.
Coming up…
Players Handbook 3. If they make a similar amount of additions that they made in Player’s Handbook 2, I would be pretty pumped. It sounds like hybrid characters are the big announcement, along with other stuff based on other additions from Martial Prowess 2 (Electric Bugaloo), coming soon as well.
Hello world!
by beak on Jan.13, 2010, under Uncategorized
MidWestD20 is a new blog that focuses on Gaming and Geek related things with a focus on the Area of Sioux Falls, SD. First step is a Blog with Forums, and then a Looking for Group function to find a gaming group, an events calendar, and The extent of information available in Sioux Falls for gamers is limited to the cork boards in the back of the gaming shops and fliers in the windows, and that is limiting the amount of players, groups, and what games you are playing.
Wouldn’t it be great to get an idea of what your players or new DM are like before Inviting them into your home. MidWestD20 is looking to Increase the number of players and groups that just work together well. After all its no good having a gaming group full of people who want to play different kind of games from each other player, and want different things within each game. Or are you looking for someone to expand your group by adding something that you don’t have, Grab someone with a knack for creating stories and deep characters but lacks the number crunching for your power gaming group?
Wouldn’t it be nice to just go to a website with the local gaming events? Nearby Conventions, regular gaming events, and Special events that take place around the Sioux Falls Area listed in a single place instead of heading down to the physical locations and check the fliers in the windows.
We are geeks, there is a better way.
