Joel’s Scattered Thoughts

More than you ever wanted to know about Knife Maintenance and Sharpening. I really should look into this - I know our knives are duller than they should be. (via BoingBoing)

Professions Discussion - lists good places to look for herbs in World of Warcraft.

My passion is awesome, your passion is lame I love reading Creating Passionate Users. There always seems to be something new to think about there.

In this case I was thinking something along these lines on my way into work. “Why do I spend my time playing games?” In my case, games are the closest thing I have to a passion. In a course I took on Leisure, the professor made the point that games (and many other leisure activities) don’t have external justification. You play because you want to play – there are no (direct) rewards for playing.

I’m not much of a proselytizer for my passions - if you don’t get it, I can’t help you get it. On the other hand, if you’re starting to get it, I can help you get started and help you past rough spots.

Jaimie and I did a battleground (Warsong Gulch) in World of Warcraft last night. Battlegrounds are player versus player areas where you take on the opposing faction in a battle. Warsong Gulch is a game of capture the flag – the first team to get the enemy’s flag back to their base three times wins.

Jaimie’s first two battlegrounds didn’t go so well – in the first one she accidentally exited out by running through the wrong door and in the second the Horde was overwhelmingly powerful. The one last night was very nicely balanced – the score was three to two. Jaimie enjoyed dishing out the damage. There’s just something a lot more satisfying about knowing that the character you’re blasting has a person controlling them rather than a computer. It likely we’ll do that again soon.

Present this week were:
* Cinner - dwarven rogue
* Riamara - loresong faen greenbond
* Ruke - human paladin
* Miru – human fighter

The party went into a room full of choker residences. The chokers proved to be no match for them and were wiped out rather quickly. Cinner pried a celestial skeleton off the wall and Ruke prayed for the creature that had died in this foul place. Riamara’s sorcerous blast largely cleared a room full of gricks. Cinner decided to make grick snacks for later consumption. They moved a pile of rocks in a rubble filled room, but all they got for their pains were sore backs and bruised fingers.

From there the party moved into what looked to be a former cellblock with a floor covered in purple slime. They found a grick in one of the cells. Miru stabbed at the grick but keeping her balance proved tricky and she missed. Cinner jammed the cell lock, sealing that grick in. More gricks moved out from the cells and came towards the party. Ruke swung at one of them, but slipped. Despite this setback, he still killed two gricks.

Miru easily skewered another of the worm-like creatures, while Cinner landed a solid blow on another. Riamara used her sorcerous blast to sear the two larger gricks at the opposite end of the room. The gricks failed to get any solid blows in, but Ruke exploded one in a splatter of worm guts, painting the walls, floor and ceiling with its entrails.

Miru killed the last of the small grick (except for the one still strapped in the cell). Cinner slid along the ground like a possessed hockey player, charged a large grick and it crumpled and died beneath his ferocious onslaught. Riamara cast lesser transfer wounds on Cinner. Ruke still couldn’t regain his footing and so slithered and slid over to the large grick.

Miru took out the last large grick, while Cinner shot at the small one trapped in the cell. The last grick died with an arrow through its …. head?

Here are my notes from my first campaign up to the point where I started writing blog entries. These are very fragmented.

She Loves Me Not

She Loves Me Not from DireKobold.com was the first adventure.

Retrieve darklit lily for Lord Emmery Yolance & his wife Quaria. Beat goblins of the Yellow Rover tribe, mudmen, and tarmen. Contact with the shadow plane, Justin got his sword from a cyrstal pillar that held the sword and a bald human with no facial features. They managed to talk their way past Glorp, the wizard’s ooze servitor.

Supporting Cast & NPCs
Emmery Yolace
Quaria Yolace
Glorp
Mysterious Magister

Highlights
Justin hacking his sword out of the pillar
Taking a goblin hostage, then killing him out of hand

Siege on Ebonring Keep

Siege on Ebonring Keep from Mystic Eye was the second adventure.

Supporting Cast & NPCs
Bean Silvertongue
Kainen the Shadowed
Irana
Nye-Fedoran
Liam
Consortium
Abrekin
Grugar the Heartrender
Warlord

Highlights
Learned to work as a group
Faith and Jaimie got a better idea of their characters
Strategy for taking back the keep
Searching for secret passages

Banewarrens
The third adventure was the Banewarrens from Malhavoc Press. I set it below Atarin (just south of De-Shamod). Players’ goal was to seal the Banewarrens and retrieve the sword of lies/truth. The Pactlords of the Quaan were the main opposition. House Vladaam didn’t play much of a role. They worked for the Inverted Pyramid and the Church of Lothian. There was a dramatic battle with Brother Heth’s supporters in the lobby of the Chapel of St. Thessina. The players sealed the Banewarrens and left the sword with both factions.

Supporting Cast & NPCs
Inverted Pyramid
Church of Lothian
House Vladaam
Pactlords of the Quaan
Sister Mara von Witten
Navanna Vladaam
Jevicca Norr
Brother Heth
Trolgir

Highlights
Trust your gut
Don’t bluff the magister!

Winding Way

After the Banewarrens, they went to the Bitter Peaks and fought undead (Dungeon # 117, The Winding Way).

Supporting Cast & NPCs
Nightwalker
Marik Draven

Highlights
Trial - Hall of 10,000 Blades
Saved Marik Draven by infusing him with positive energy

Region J
From there they went to the Roof of the World (Mount Arathamis from Mystic Secrets) and retrieved a council staff (Harrith) from Region J of the WLD. They got their butts whipped by Nuala Farsight, a loresong magister. Tyrus was released, though they don’t know that.

Supporting Cast & NPCs
Nuala Farsight
Tyrus

Highlights
Ran like rabbits from Tyrus
Hit and run and run tactics with Rasts

**edit Alas, Justin’s sword was destroyed.  I was gunning for the sword as it tuned out to be grossly overpowered.   A sword that boosts strength by 2-12 (?) one every 4th hit is just too much.  A couple hundred magmin kept attacking until finally the sword melted into an irretrieveable puddle, NEVER EVER TO BE RECOVERED.
Staff of the Greenbond
They met with Carlene, who persuaded them to trade the location of a Staff of the Greenbond and a Spryte figurine for the Council Staff. On their way to the twoer they ran into a mosslord and some shambling mounds, which they defeated with ease. They went to Phaern Nightflyer’s tower, found it collapsed, and searched the ruins for the staff and figurine. They are to deliver the Council Staff to Maedi Sparkborn. On their way back, they ran into troll hunters and wiped them out. They then contiued and faced hags and cyclopses. One hag kept making saves left and right and got away. The cyclopses went nuts on their last round and did over 150 points of damage to Justin, turning him into a fine pink mist. Tyrus showed up and offered to raise Justin in exchange for three tasks. Their first was to retreive a dragon amulet from a group of chorrim (Throne of Iuz).

Supporting Cast & NPCs
Maedi Sparkborn
Carlene

Throne of Iuz
From Dungeon 118, used Chorrim instead of Orcs. The PCs found the chorrim where Tyrus had said they would be. They encounterd a foot patrol and wiped all of them except one out with no trouble at all. An air patrol came after them and suffered the same fate. The spryte magic user snuck into the camp and poisoned the main force.

A mighty chorrim warmain clad in crystal armor and a patrol was headed their way. The archer and the magic user were to be tied down by mooks while the tank would be fighting a higher level tank whose abilities matched or slightly surpassed his own.

The PCs saw this group heading out towards them. Then, for the first time ever, the magic user started using her buff abilities left and right. Suddenly the tank had another 45 hitpoints and +8 to his already considerable armor class. The archer suddenly had amazing climb and tumble skills so she set up for shooting from a tree 20 feet above the ground. The magic user can fly, so she hovered well above the tank.

The chrroim are deadly infantry and okay archers. They don’t use much magic. The leader missed his automatic critical on the tank, but the mooks managed to pepper the archer and the magic user with arrows. Thanks to the tank’s boosted AC and some bad rolls, the leader missed the tank a lot. The magic user kept barbecuing the mooks with area effect spells. The archer did some decent damage. The PCs each used one healing spell during the battle and that was about it.

The PCs rested up and then headed back to the serpent mound where the remaining chorrim were packing up. The spryte cast slow on the chorrim. The warmain kicked in the door to the solidest building around, revealing some shadow trolls at work. The chorrim moved to intercept the PCs - though it was pretty hopeless. The shadow trolls inside the building tossed up an elderitch wall to defend themselves. The shadow trolls conjured up three electric hydras. The warmain went through the hydras like cordwood. The trolls tries some other spells that were pretty ineffective, then dimension doored out when the warmain started to force his way in. Three made it, one didn’t.

The PCs then started down the tunnel in the serpent mound’s mouth. There was faen magic and memorials to ancient faen heroes in the tunnel. The PCs came to a large open area where they heard someone saying that they need to get it finished quickly. They spotted a giant toad and attacked. The warmain charged in and killed the human working on the throne. Two stone columns came to life and attacked. The toad slurped him up with its tongue and proceeded to chew on him. A boar charged out of the shadows and took the unfettered to negative hitpoints twice - the only thing that saved her was a defensive roll. After the warmain beat on the toad for a while with his fists and the magic user flung many sorcerous blasts, the toad tried to hop into the water, only to be zapped by a blast from the magic user’s rod of electricity and lightning. The columns only lasted another couple rounds before being turned into rubble.

On to the Shadowstaff!

Shadowstaff
The PCs’ next task for Tyrus was to retreive a Shadowstaff from a shadow dragon near Ebonring Keep. They started out by being ambushed by an avernac (from Poisoncraft) that they drove away. Then they returned the council staff to Maedi Sparkborn and went on a shopping trip in De Shamod. That ended the session.

The PCs made it to the borders of the Floating Forest where they encountered a human being chased by darkfire trolls. The PCs beat the trolls easily. The human turned out to be Liam. He told the party that the Ebonring dragged the Keep and the surrounding area into shadow, twisting the creatures around it into shadow beings. The party was reluctant to believe that the Ebonring was to blame.

Jaimie went to scout the keep and got jumped by dread wraiths who drained her down to 0 Constitution in the first blow. Her rune of cheating death kept her alive in a coma. Justin ran out and picked her up. He couldn’t outrun the wraiths so he turned and founght. It was a tough battle but they won. That left them pretty hard hit but thanks to a couple of potions of restoration and some heightened restoration spells, they were back in decent shape. (end of session)

I hadn’t put my notes for my Ruins of Intrigue Campaing up, so here’s the story up to where I started writing blog entries.

The players arrived in Serathis (1st day of Sixthmonth) and were accosted by Jared who offered to show them around the city. They turned him down and took lodgings in the Slumbering Serpent. They were greeted there by Gaelean Lorekiss, the innkeeper.

After a fight with some thugs in a side street (NPCs from The Giant’s Map web adventure) in the Slums of Serathis, the PCs were called in to meet Kaelys. She told them that the marble hand of a statue had been stolen from her. One of the thieves died in her traps. The thief was dressed in rags and had a tattoo of a rock held between two stylized hands on his right palm. Kaelys offered a significant reward for the return of the hand or the entire statue.

The PCs went deeper into the slums and met Faela. They were impressed by her work among the unfortunate and plan to set up a training center there. She suggested they check out the Stone Keeper ravers.

Second Session (2nd day of Sixthmonth) The players hired Rin-Goras to head up thier project. They also interviewd a nervous sibbecai, Tosh, and a shady human, Gunter, for the job. Rin-Goras is doing the job over 10 weeks, at 1,200 gp/week. This is payable every week in advance on Waterday. He will train any in the neighborhood who care to work as part of the project.

The PCs wandered around a bit, visited the Black Pyramid, saw Stomper pass then went to fight the ravers. They ran into Night Stalkers lurking around. Justin found a parchment in an old library. There was a pretty fair fight and the PCs returned to their headquarters to rest for a day tended by Faela. They woke up ready to go on the 4th day of Sixthmonth

Third Session
The PCs went back to the Stonekeepers hall. Jaimie and Faith were hypnotized by an allip’s murmur for a number of rounds during which Justin and the allip flailed at each other ineffectually. Jaimie beat the crap out of a chest and found a gem, a blink dog statuette, and a stick. The stick radiated some strong magic. They went back to rest. Faith and Justin went to the tower of boundless knowledge and met Sa-Arren who told them that the Black Pyramid is deadly. Faith dazzled the faen who was taking the registration for explorers, Gelias. She left the stick with him to identify. Justin is studying the parchment they found.

Fourth Session
The party fishished off the ravers and the nutty memelith and gave Kaelys the statue. Then they did some research in the Giants’ Hold and discovered that the statue was of a celestial. The party ran from a five-headed hydra and fought a small group of bandits. Then they went looking for bandits and got their butts kicked so they ran away.

Fifth Session
Sam and Michelle joined the group. They met the group while being attacked by spine hounds. They sold three spine hound pups to Kerlon’a. Bolstered by their new friends, they decided to take on the bandits again. They beat the bandits, chasing off the leader, Harold and two of the bandits. In the headquarters they found a letter signed with a Bloody Hook and letter refering to the Shadow. Justin and Sam explored and found a tunnel beneath the headquarters. They went north and found a storeroom with tunnels branching off northwest and northeast.

We continued through Aerie of the Crow God.

The party finished exploring the tower. The rooks didn’t prove to be much of a challenge. The ochre jelly managed to surprise them “I told you there was something suspicious about that large puddle!” After retrieving Lord Pendour’s body, they continued to hunt for the missing key.

The party was very careful in making their way across the chasm – Kayla had a rope tied to her waist, so when the centipede rushed her off the bridge, she only has a short fall before being pulled back. The zombies were a breeze. The shrine to Malotoch disturbed them and so they destroyed it. The biggest challenge in fighting the dire rats was making through the tight passageways. Even with Hornhauer’s help the dire rats didn’t stand a chance. The party retrieved the key and debated about doing some more exploring or just returning the key.

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I’m actually quite disappointed in this module. So far the encounters have been almost completely unchallenging, especially in proportion to the rewards the party has been collecting. This is a party of 3 players, all at 6th level, so I would have expected some significant challenges by now. Ah well, I can always come up with nastiness on my own….

Present this week were:
* Riamara - loresong faen greenbond
* Ruke - human paladin
* Miru – human fighter

The party proceeded down the darkened hallways and found the last of the wardstaves. The door to the room it was in was trapped, so their lack of a rogue this week hurt. However they managed to return the wardstaff to the celestials and rest up. The loot from their last battle was identified, however two of the items were tainted with evil and thus of no use to the party. After some discussion, the party decided to head north through the Halls of Flesh.

Kelara, the celestial leader, gave each party member a scroll to burn should they escape. Upon being burned, the scrolls will carry the garrison’s pleas to the gods and hopefully remind them to send more guardians. She then lead them through the door to the Halls of Flesh…

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The server we usually use had switched to the development version of OpenRPG, so we couldn’t use it. This led to a bit of a last-minute scramble as I tried to notify to players of the change of server.

The party had wanted to go east, but I asked them to go north instead. I really didn’t want to run the labyrinth on OpenRPG – just too complicated. I may move Region C in place of Region F and give them the choice between C and I. We’ll see.

Present this week were:
* Cinner - dwarven rogue
* Riamara - loresong faen greenbond
* Ruke - human paladin
* Kevgretor – dwarven cleric
* Miru – human fighter

Cinner followed a rat to a room that held a giant spider.  He immediately shot at it and the party killed it without too much trouble.  Kevgretor’s comment was “I hope that was not a lawful good spider waiting to help us with our quest.”

A few rooms later, they spotted a goblin.  Cinner wanted to beat it senseless and intimate information out of it, but Ruke managed to hold a civilized conversation with it.  The goblin warned of Seraxes and shadows guarding a staff.

When they found the shadows, Cinner’s first blow passed through harmlessly.  One shadow managed to hit him and drain some strength.  Kevgretor’s faith blasted the weaker shadows, while Riamara’s attempt at channeling the green was not as successful.  Ruke managed to destroy one of the shadows.

Cinner nicked one of the shadows, then as it turned to flee, Ruke completely destroyed it. Seraxes snarled at Kevgretor’s holy symbol but refuses to back down.  Ruke managed to land a solid blow on Seraxes.

Cinner scratched Seraxes, then Seraxes backed down and held up his hands. “Stop. You are worthy. I propose a deal.” Kevgretor reponded, “Speak quickly foul creature, or I will let Cinner eat you.”  Seraxes said, “I wish to leave this area, but the doors block my path. If you open the doors to the south, I will leave peacefully.”  The party was reluctant to let him go, so once his reinforcements moved in Seraxes attacked again, landing a solid blow on Kevgretor.  Ruke’s smite evil struck a solid blow on Seraxes.  Just then the door burst open and Miru charged in.  She landed a solid blow on Seraxes and killed him.

The reinforcements didn’t prove to be much of a challenge.  The party split briefly at this point – Kevgretor and Ruke examined an intersection that held a throne with a corpse on it.  Meanwhile Cinner and Miru found a room with what appeared to be an invisible table.

Neuros Technology

I’ll have to look into this. I’ve been thinking about buying a DVT for some time, but haven’t been too happy with the looks the the closed systems. I refuse to pay for DRM.