Oregon - USC Madness

So this weekend is a big game. Oregon - USC, the alma maters of 4 out of our 7 adventurers (and the other three don't really count). 5 pm.

My parents will be out of town, but they have a large television and a nice barbecue and air conditioning and good seating arrangements and all that jazz, so they've offered me use of the ol' place for purposes of watching the game. Can you guys join me?

I'm steeling myself for a couple of things. 1) USC is going to be psycho mad since they lost to a garbage team last week. 2) Oregon's quarterbacks SUCK. We have like 5 of them. None of them are good.

So I have a feeling it may be like years past (the several before last year). Oregon comes out strong in the first quarter, but doesn't really dominate. They get a TD, maybe a FG too, but don't really pull away like you think they should. The second quarter, they make some more good plays, but USC starts to get back in it, and it winds up being a 3 point game at halftime, and Oregon fans can feel things start to slip. In the third quarter, the four horseman of the apocalypse show up and ride down every Oregon player who is any good. USC promptly scores 4 TD's and puts the game away early in the fourth quarter.

Then again, USC did lose to Oregon St...hmmmm.

Of course I think we CAN win - I'm just taking the pessimistic approach for superstitious reasons. Don't tempt the football gods. Go Ducks!

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Adventure Recap 2 - Jungle Fever

So, I've been kicking it with the same dudes from the Grey Griffin Dungeon Hop (yeah, you don't know what happened to that dragon, do you? Let's just say I had to get "medieval" on it) for the past few weeks, and suddenly one thing led to another and some out-of-luck townsmen started to run their mouths about how "someone's been kidnapped." We found out the dude's name and the path he took, and set off into the jungle to let people know that level two or not, we mean business.

More after the jump...

In a bit of fortune, we were sent to save a kidnapped brother named "Marion" (only a brother would name their boy Marion) who had been dragged into the jungle for no good reason. We no sooner took eight steps into the wilderness when a giant monster made of leaves sprouted in our path and decided to make life difficult. Making things even worse, we HAD been chilling with a raging Barbarian named Malakalak, but he went AWOL right before the jungle cruise leaving us bereft of someone to intimidate the wolf if it got out of line. Needless to say, I put my own brand of Buck Unit Sauce on the Tree Monster, earning a free +10 damage that I still haven't used, and clearing the way to .. BEHOLD! a Jungle Temple Of Some Sort! Who knew?

Apparently Ponce De Leon had traveled this way before, because we stepped into a clearing and saw a shining font of glowing water, which healed all our wounds, refreshed our spells, and gave us all a bit of a contact high... sure enough, we also found Malak doing laps in the water like a black Milorad Cavic. After he popped out and gave us the runaround about how "we needed him to save the day" and all this business, we came face to face with the guardians of the Jungle Temple (Of Some Sort) who had murder on "they minds." Two serpents, one giant thing standing on a bloody temple, two men in robes, and one captured prisoner.. could it be our boy Marion?? could we stare down the forces of evil and emerge victorious??

Obviously, since my Boltness was in full effect, we could and we did. Malakkarious immediately begin making his presence felt with a massive rage, and Taran Tha Rangah took out his sword (which he phallicly named Rage) and went to work on the serpent dudes. Being a man of insight and action, I took the hooded dudes and showed them what's what (Knee-Juahz, all of them), and our caster-types made their presence felt with a magic missle fireworks display.

Things DID get a little shady when our Sorcerer took it straight in the dome from the temple guardian, but only a few moments of unconsciousness ensued before our beast-master arrived on the scene. We're still struggling to keep the wolf in check, but even the wolf put his teeth on some enemies just to prove our righteous intent.

Anyway, coast cleared, and to be honest, I'm not sure what became of the prisoner. Still, the stairs that led deep into the temple beckoned, and I'm about to make somebody pay for what they did to our Sorcerer... (you know how Lord Beezy likes to holler at 'em!)


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Adventure recaps?

Who goin' get me one? SAMUEL!!!!!!!

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Friday

So there is a USC football game this Thursday at 6. I'm not sure what that does to our game but it might mess it up a bit. I think it would work fine for Angela and I to play on Friday though if we wanted to try that instead. How does that work for others?

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Fun Times with Bad Ideas

Unbelievable. Just...I don't even have the words for this. Picture after the jump.

Here's the link to the site if you're interested: http://www.partyusa.com/titanic.htm




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we doin this?!

Is it going down on Thursday night, or are we all going to think up excuses again?

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Our Beloved Paladin

Saw this quote:

Usain Bolt returns to Jamaica a hero. How beloved is he? "Barbara Blake Hannah, a special consultant to the Ministry of Information, Culture and Sports, said: 'Sports is one thing that holds Jamaica together. I heard that on the day of Bolt's 100 metres, no one here was killed. Even murder took a holiday for him.'" Swell.

Wow, Usain Bolt really IS a paladin. Awesome.

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Scheduling Snafus

Well, good news and bad news. Bad news first?

The Bad News: I’m a bonehead. Okay, I know what you’re saying (“That’s not news!”), and maybe I’m being a little harsh on myself because this just happened last week, but here it is anyway. I don’t think we can do Thursday this week. We got a coupon for free Angels tickets and Thursday was the only day we could use them. I didn’t even think of our D&D thing until this morning. So we can’t do Thursday.

I vote that we do Wednesday this week. OJ gets done with his practice at 8, and even though it’s kind of a crappy night for people since Thursday is still an “actual workday” rather than a “fake workday” like Friday, we only have one encounter that we have to handle before our adventure is over. So this week’s session should be a little shorter than normal, as far as I can tell. Tuesday works for us as well, in case anyone was wondering. Or we could do Saturday night after the USC game and after the birthday party we’re going to, but that would have to be about 9 or 9:30, and I don’t know what TC’s availability is that day.

I’m really sorry about the inconvenience, but seeing as playoff tickets are a pain in the butt to get a hold of (and expensive at that), this may be the last Angels game we go to this year, so we’re not really interested in ditching the tickets.

The Good News: I am most likely (like 95%) not going to be playing softball on Thursday nights for a couple months. This means we can probably have Thursday night as our regular night and get started as soon as OJ can make the party. This should work better for most people, so that’s a good thing.

I hate having to change the schedule so last minute, but we can do a different day this week if everyone else can. The other option is that you guys go without us, and as much as that would suck, it’s not the end of the world if that’s what you wanted to do.


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Schedule for OJ in the next two months

Well, as some of you may now its now that wondeful time that's called the fall season where I manage to stretch myself over 7 days of sitting at numerous pool decks over OC. That being said I figured I'd post my times so that when we decide to figure out what normal day we play then I can hopefully be there. Without much further ado here it is...(mind you this does not include games, or tournaments where I know I will run late or won't be able to make it.)

Monday
-End at Beckman HS @ 8:00pm

Tuesday
-End at Servite HS @ 8:30pm

Wednesday
-End at Tustin HS @ 8:00pm

Thursday
-End at Beckman/Foothill 8:00/8:30 (League Nights for Servite last game at 6:00)

Friday
-End at Tustin HS @ 8:00pm (Mind you after next friday I basically have tournaments every single weekend.)

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Adventure Recap - Day 1

Well, it’s not the ideal situation, but I think I could get used to these guys. Despite our struggles with the kobolds in the mine, I decided to give this little band a try. There are some business reasons (a chance to kill more orcs) and some personal reasons (did I mention this druid…), and overall, it just seems like a group that can get things done. There are some quirks, but it’s not a bad lot for all that.

Our travels took us to some podunk village called Greywhistle or Gargamel or some such thing. Apparently the village has been plagued by raiding parties from the nearby mountains. “I’ll bet it was orcs,” I thought as we learned the particulars. The chance to slay those dumb beasts was enough for me, but the promise of a pile of cash doesn’t hurt either. Bolt claimed that the reward money wasn’t important and feigned interest in punishing these evildoers for their crimes against the town, but as I understand it, his “rock” business is struggling and he could use the gold. Seems he’s been sniffing into his profits.

So we soon found ourselves in the corridors of a mountain fortress. This one didn’t hold quite as many surprises as the last one did, thanks mainly to our rogue, Amaryllis, who is quite adept at finding and disabling any traps that might be waiting for us. It is certainly not thanks to our gnome, whose main contribution was letting us know that the fortress walls were indeed made of stone. It's odd that he was able to stay so silent during our last adventure. Also, Bolt’s knowledge of nobility and royalty brought us the invaluable information that the doors were, in fact, made of wood.

We quickly dispatched some kobolds and goblins, one of which was searching for some sort of document. One of them shouted something about being a monkey, so I put an arrow in his eye to let him know that I didn't appreciate him insulting monkeys like that. We also managed to take down an orc, which I didn’t even get a chance to hit. But hey, a dead orc’s a good orc, as I always say. Bolt proved himself quite useful as he slew foe after foe.

We met with some stronger resistance, especially from a harpy who managed to enchant me for a time. The experience wasn’t at all unpleasant, until she whacked me in the ribs with her bone club. The group managed to dispatch the harpy and moved on to its toughest challenge.

We knew something was up the minute we entered the room. We saw four coffins (three intact) and a dead orc lying on an altar with a red crystal glowing behind it. “Hey guys, there are coffins and an altar in here!” Moonglum shouted helpfully. After finding a few nice items from the broken coffin, we examined the altar and the crystal. “Rock PRETTY” declared Malak with a sense of wonderment. Then all hell broke loose.

The orc decided that he wasn’t really dead and got up to start pounding people. If there’s one thing I hate worse than live orcs, it’s undead orcs. Skeletons started popping up left and right on top of the three remaining coffins. I finally got a chance to show what I could do with Rage as I bashed those decalcified undead minions with unequaled aplomb. Malak used his brute strength to smash the coffins. Lotheryn managed to keep us going as we took hit after hit from that mysterious crystal. The gnome, who, despite his new title as Captain Obvious, is actually quite adept at the arcane arts, took enough damage to send him into the fetal position, but Lotheryn healed him up enough to keep going. Ieuan played some beautiful music to give us confidence, and finally Bolt was able to smash the crystal (which he pocketed, of course).

Throughout our adventuring, we found some pretty nice stuff. I got a nice enhancement for Rage, and Amaryllis got a nice cloak, as well as some tools to help her with her pilfering. We found some health potions, some Nike Air Max boots, which Bolt is putting to good use, and some additions to our armor. It was a valuable experience, and I think it made us all stronger. When we encountered the minotaur who seems to be one of the major players in this whole fiasco, we sent him to his death with relative ease.

It was clear that the minotaur wasn’t the brains behind the operation, so our job isn’t quite done yet. But after such a run of victories, I’m confident we can handle anything that comes our way. I’ll bet even a dragon couldn’t stop us now.


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Rules Clarification...

So one thing that kind of gnawed at me the whole time was the movement in combat thing. I don't think we can move twice our speed in a round AND take another action. The way the rules are worded make this confusing, but here's my rationale.

For those of you who have the player's handbook (v. 3.5 - Bethany I gave you the 3.0 version, but it should say the same thing, just on a different page number maybe), here's the ruling and where the confusion may lie. On p. 147 of the handbook, it says that "generally you can move your speed in a round and still do something...if you use both of your actions in a round to move your speed, you can move double your speed." That seems pretty clear that we are limited to moving only one times our speed if we want to do something else.

The confusion lies in the next chapter. On p. 163 of the handbook, it says that "characters generally don't walk during combat - they hustle or run." On the previous page it showed that hustling = double your speed. So there's the confusion - it sounds like one chapter said you get to move during your turn, and the next chapter said that you hustle during combat so you would move double your speed every time you take a movement. But I think that's the wrong conclusion.

I think what it MEANT was that if you hustle during combat, which is generally what you do, you can move double your speed in one round. In fact, that's what Table 9-3 seems to indicate. Your speed for one round when you hustle is double your normal speed. But the key is that it is for a FULL ROUND. Not a round where you take some other standard action, like attacking. So if you hustle for half a round and spend the other half a round doing something else, you get to move your standard speed, which is half your hustle speed. I know that's confusing, but it makes sense if you think about it.

Besides, it just seems a bit unfair that we can move pretty much wherever we want whenever we want. Applying this rule would make movement a bit more meaningful since we won't always be able to get our guys exactly where we want them (meaning either more attacks of opportunity for TC or less desirable attack positions for us). I say we implement this movement thing the next time we play.

One other point that I'll make, but I'll try not to belabor it. I know I did this for me and Julia, but I'm not sure anyone else did. Everyone knows what their base speed is - that's the speed we have written down. But that speed gets reduced if you have a certain amount of gear (that's why we wrote down light, medium, and heavy loads). So depending on how much crap you have in your backpack, you may not be able to move your entire speed. It could get pretty involved if we try to add and subtract weight every time we pick up or use an item, so I don't think we want to do that necessarily. I think it would be easy enough for people to take an inventory of what they have right now, find out what size load you're carrying, and see if that affects your speed (and your armor check penalty, actually). Don't worry about most stuff you pick up in battle, unless it's clearly consequential (like if Lord Bolt wanted to pick up Ieuan if she was unconscious and move her to safety). We'll refigure it after battle is over for all the miscellaneous crud we get.


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Our DM...

TC is the man.

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Adventure Recap - Day 0 (the pre-quest)

(I intend this to be first in a line of post-adventure posts so that we have a record, however meager and biased, of our adventures that at which we can look back and giggle.)

With Moonglum on the sidelines due to an acute case of being weak, the six of us (Lord Bolt, Taran, Malak, Lotheryn, Iuean, and "Angela") started out on a grey, mournful day in the remote, uncivilized town of ... heck, I don't know, Grant's Pass? It wasn't a very remarkable town. In fact, it was kind of dingy... but crawling with women! Malak's kind of town, as he unsuccessfully tried to convey non-verbally (Malak requires an unskilled "show emotion other than rage check" to use body language -- he rolled a 2) to the group. Anyway, the weather wasn't the only thing that was depressing... all the women seemed depressed, and didn't want to talk to a fly brother (or his crew). We wasted no time in learning more...

after the jump, more on our first adventure.

Anyway, after Malak failed to make any progress by intimidating anyone, finally Ieuan the Bard figured out the source of the women's trouble... all the men went to a mine and never came back. A few awkward conversations later, we found out that a group of racially oppressed goblins ("kobolds") had taken over the silver mine (or so they assumed) and had also, somehow, poisoned the well water. Despite the protests of Lord Bolt and Malak (who both had better things to do than solve someone else's problems), and despite the annoying insistence of Taran the Ranger that Lord Bolt was supposed to care about the problems assailing the village, the whole group went down to the mine.

At the mine, things went from bad to worse. First of all, we couldn't figure out who was supposed to hold the torch. Or whether we should even use a torch and not a hooded lantern. Then we couldn't decide who should stand in the back of the group, and even though we had our best people on the case (Angela and Taran), we kept sniffing down hallways to no avail. We were assaulted by various traps and crappy enemies, pausing just long enough in each room to contract a disease before finally dealing roughly 10 times the damage we needed to just to kill the Kobolds we stumbled across. Malak was probably the star of the show, missing rarely and getting hit even less. Lotheryn struggled with her pet, but healed Ay-Ven at a particularly critical moment, and generally made herself useful. Taran mostly shook his head in the back of the group and wondered how he got here, and Lord Bolt charged to the front heroically (showing some of that Paladin can-do) and missed... and missed... and missed. Occasionally he died. It was very embarassing.

The encounter reached its climax in a long room with shelves, where after dealing with a cloud of baking powder exploding and getting in our face, we killed a bunch of kobolds, then a bunch of rats, and then carelessly freed a Dire Weasel who proceeded to wreak havoc on our sense of self-worth by relentlessly resisting our efforts to just step on it and be done with it. The danger didn't cease with the cessation of the Weasel, though, as Lord Bolt's predatory nature got the best of him at last... he ate diseased oats and fell gravely ill, causing his constitution to briefly drop into negative numbers. Fortunately, though, Angela looted like it was going out of style, and brought back a metric ton of gems, which we promptly "slanged" to the local community.

Oh, we didn't bring back their men. Nor did we find out what was wrong with their well water. But eventually a cleric did heal Lord Bolt's diseases.


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Some notes on our first adventure

So I think everyone had fun; I certainly did. Going through the rules was a little tedious for everyone, I think. I'm sure there are more rules to learn. Thoughts:

1. I think we got kind of bogged down in the rules (at the end it seemed like an endless series of dice rolls) so that we forgot that this is a simulation of a story. From what I've read in the DM Handbook, we want to try to steer away from that kind of thinking. I think we did well at this at first when we were talking to townsfolk and going to the mine. I mean, who didn't have fun when Malak got kicked out of the bar and Lord Bolt had to bluff that we didn't know him?

2. Related to that, we have to remember that we can do anything within reason and our DM will let us know if that's possible. Examples in retrospect: Lotheryn could have thrown the torch at a grain sack or a barrel and used that to damage the kobold since we had such a hard time hitting them with weapons. Malak could have pushed over the shelves to try to crush one underneath. Ieuan could have tried to bluff the kobolds into thinking we wanted to be friends. Lord Bolt could have eaten some rotten grain...wait, he did that. Never mind. Obviously I didn't think of these things either, but I figure it will definitely be more fun if we try to think outside the box rather than always "I better go hit this dude with my sword." I suppose hitting a dude with your sword will probably be the best option most of the time, I'm just saying it doesn't hurt to think of different ways to get the job done.

3. We have to ask TC a couple things. Certainly about Lotheryn's wolf companion and probably about Moonglum's familiar, when he gets it. I don't remember any other specific questions I had, but either post them here or try to remember them for Monday if you have any.

Don't get me wrong, I had a really good time, and I think a lot of those things were weird because it being the first time we've played. I'm thinking Monday will be a real hootenanny.



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Plan for Monday

For Monday:

Meet over at our place at 2 pm and we'll get right into it. For food,

Julia and I: We will have salad, fruit, chips, and drinks (mostly left over from tonight). We also have paper plates, forks, etc.

Brian and Angela: Bring some meat and a sidedish.

John and Bethany: Bring your brats and some dessert.

OJ: Beer. Although you might want to talk to Brian and Angela about it, since they might be able to get some cheap beer and maybe you can pay them back or something.

We will have the seven of us, plus TC and maybe his friend. And I was going to ask my parents to join us since they're helping us out by watching the kids the whole time. So that's 11 people, fyi. It should be fun! Call around or post here in the comments whether or not that will work for everyone.



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