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DEFENSIVE PERIMETER: Catching Up To the Party

I apologize for the small handful of you who were actually interested in the story recaps of our little AD&D group. I fell down on my note taking and haven’t posted a summary. The party did manage to rout the kobolds who were attacking caravans and downed their leader, a magically mutated kobold warchief who had taken over this small clan. Once he had been defeated, the rest of the kobolds fled into the forests and have not been heard from since.

Here are the short form notes on the most recent two sessions. I’m afraid that the wisecracks and other levity that have been a hallmark of this series are missing, but it will get everyone caught up on the plot.

The party got sent up to a small frontier town north of Kelvin named Welwyn. There’s been a rash of thefts that the local populace has been unable to resolve, and they believe that the thief is utilizing the town’s well as an escape route. Our Heroes go down the well, and nearly die. (There was a snake in the well, but I think the well itself did more damage than the snake did.)

In between fighting the snake and trying not to drown, a secret door is discovered which leads into an underground tunnel. They followed the tunnel into a large cavern and fought a giant trapdoor spider. Then, they went down a tunnel which was laden with traps, found a secret door and fought four zombie dwarfs. Searching the room found a discarded piece of paper which was in code, but when unscrambled appeared to be a work order for the building of the portcullis and traps out in the hallway. The person who hired the dwarfs appears to have killed them and reanimated their corpses in lieu of paying them.

Venturing deeper in to the caves, the party encountered a dire badger, which they fought and killed, the thief sustaining some severe injury, but no deaths. They then ventured forth and found a man sitting at a campfire in a large cavern. Several small tunnels (too small for humans to venture through) led off, but there were no other exits. As soon as he became aware of the party, he snatched up a bow and attacked. The druid cast entangle, which greatly complicated the fight, as it hindered both friend and foe alike. The lone man used a set of pipes to call forth a swarm of rats, shapeshifted into a form that appeared to be half-human, half badger, nearly killed the duskblade, and finally shapeshifted again into a badger and disappeared down the small tunnels.

After healing and waiting for the entangle to expire, they searched the room and found various bits of treasure, some of which probably belongs to the townspeople. They also found several small harnesses, about hte size of the rats in the cave, and six potions of Reduce Size, Human.

Injured and out of spells, they have elected to camp for the night before deciding what to do next.

DEFENSIVE PERIMETER: The Caravan Raiders, part 1.

Well, since Our Heroes™ dispatched the evil cleric and saved the town of Threshold, it was time to do what all adventuring parties do when they succeed — bask in the glory, spend their valor-gotten spoils, and then look for a new job.

Gaming: The conclusion of The Burning Plague

Well, we had the second (and concluding) session of the introductory adventure in the new AD&D campaign. As a special treat, we had a visiting bedlamhouse sitting in, taking over the role of surrdave‘s cleric.

Campaign underway

Well, we actually got the new AD&D campaign underway last night. While we did ultimately have the traditional “meeting in the tavern”, I actually directed each of the characters there for reasons that fit their own agendas. Because we only have three players (plus me as DM), each player is currently controlling two characters.

Stardust Heroes Gaming Dinner

We had a wonderful weekend, all around. I went and got myself a massage at Massage Envy on Friday after work, which was wonderful and refreshing; I hadn’t actually been since June, as I had been saving my July appointment for after the move and then I promptly fell and hurt myself.

wheezinggirl and oneandonlymatt came over for dinner Friday, since they were unable to come to our housewarming. We had a lovely dinner of baked chicken spiced with a blend we picked up from Alpharetta Spice, a local concern run by a man and his wife right here in Alpharetta. Very nice folks, and they make some wonderful spice blends. I’m particular fond of their Garlepeno Salt. I believe the chicken that night was the Rusted Roof Border Blend. The meal was rounded out by a bacon and spinich pasta dish and a potato-and-sweet-potato medly, all courtesy of kitanzi, who had the audacity to tell me when we first started dating that she wasn’t much of a cook.

After dinner, we sat and talked for a good bit, before moving into the computer room to share some music with one another on the computer, starting with an old Firefly fan video set to Leonard Cohen’s “Halleljuah”, and then they directed me to Emerald Rose’s hysterical Never Split the Party, done in stop motion LegoMation, leading me to play them bardiclug‘s “Secrets”. My memory leaves me at this point, but we had a great time, and made plans to get together again soon.

Saturday, Alice came over to bring us some shelving unites from Ikea she no longer needed, and then we went and met up with hilfy to see Stardust. What a fabulous movie. I’m a huge fan of Neil Gaiman already, of course, so I was prepared to like it, but it managed to exceed my expectations. Robert DeNiro absolutely steals every scene he is in, the chorus of ghostly princes is delightful, and every single thing about the movie makes me happy. There are some changes from the original novel to the movie, which is inevitable (Gaiman has some interesting things to say bout that process), but it has been so long since I last read the novel that I didn’t notice them overly, and in fact even managed to be surprised by some things in the film that, in retrospect, I knew were going to happen. Positively five stars; go see this film in the theatre.

Unfortunately, my back had been bothering me all week and wasn’t getting much better, so we opted to skip the Atlanta housefilk that evening. I hope everyone had a good time — we missed being there. I managed to finally find a solution for what was causing my pain by putting one of the memory foam pillows kitanzi got a while back and put it under my back. I expect that once we get the new bed broken in it won’t be a problem, and meanwhile I’ve found a way to sleep comfortably and not wake up in excruciating pain, so that’s a win.

Sunday was a quiet day. I spent a good deal of it playing World of Warcraft, but over dinner we finally got around to watching the finale of Heroes. Yes, we’d actually managed to not watch it all this time, and even more impressively we’d managed to avoid all spoilers. I won’t include any here, in case someone else has been living under an even bigger rock than us, but….wow. What a great ending for a great season. Interestingly, I read a fanfic back around the first of the year which ultimately predicted what would happen with Peter…I wonder if the author of that fic was as chuffed as I was? (If anyone feels like helping me out on this, point me to your own reaction to the finale, so I can go back and read it.)

Tonight is gaming night. We’re about to start a brand new AD&D campaign from level 1, with what’s left of our current group. bedlamhouse‘s cruel and heartless desertion moving away marks a huge change in the dynamic of the group, but we’re determined to carry on. I realized recently that I’d been playing with this group, through various iterations, for eight years, which is pretty much the longest I’ve ever been with a single group of people gaming. There was the group I started with (1983-1987), the East Carolina Gaming Club (1986-1990), Jim and Steve in Athens (1990-1993), asynaka1 and his friends (1993-1998), Craig & Co (1994-1997), and then a gap until I joined up with Bill and Don. (Yes, several of those dates overlap. I’m polygamerous. I’m not even trying to figure out all the various places I dropped into and out of hejira2006‘s Doctor Who and Star Trek RPG campaigns.)

The people at the table change, but the game is forever. And so it goes.

Tonight’s game: Star Munchkin

Since one of the normal AD&D group was away this week, and because we’re about to start a new campaign, we ended up playing Space Munchkin this week. I won, looking for trouble against a level 1 Janibot and there really wasn’t much anyone could do about it.

Best moment of the night: making three consecutive runaway rolls to escape the Space Vampire, his clone, and the wandering Great Cthulhu. Yeep!

Best exchange.

Dave: I go looking for trouble against the Space Amazons. I’m beating her by five.
Me: (plays card) Sadly, there are no more Space Amazons. She’s the last of her race. You’re now losing by 5.
Dave: (plays card) But she’s misunderstood. That gives her -5.
Me: So you’re tied. She wins ties.
Dave: (examining hand) (deadpan) Oh well.
(break as everyone else falls out laughing)
Dave: So, what’s the bad stuff
Me: (still laughing) You get sodomized by the Space Amazon. You get sodomized by the Last of the Misunderstood Space Amazons!

I love a game where “Last of the Misunderstood Space Amazons” has a useful context.

Gaming Night: Out of Context Theatre

From last night’s AD&D session:

“The journey of a thousand mohels begins with a single snip.” –me

(Context is enormous and will very likely kill us all….)

Sex Advice from a Dungeons and Dragons Player

Joel Johnson gives some frank and compelling advice on sex with an unusual perspective

My lover and I enjoy role-play, but I’ve gotten tired of the same cliché scenarios like student/teacher and boss/secretary. Any recommendations for new roles that might help spice it up

I don’t know what system you’re playing, but “student/teacher” and “boss/secretary” do not sound like choices that would inspire one to role-playing greatness. Consider a classic like “cleric of the watcher from the depths/virgin” or “half-orc paladin/gelatinous cube.” And remember, silken rope may be more expensive, but it’s nearly half the weight in encumbrance.

I’ve been dating someone really great for a few months, but he’s never referred to me as his girlfriend. How do I take it to another Level?

While the obvious answer is “Accomplish a story task in the boyfriend track for XP equal or greater to your next level threshold,” I get the feeling you might be hinting that you want to descend into the fetid labyrinth that festers beneath his ancient wizard’s tower. In that case the stairs are in quadrant M23, behind the Throne of the Kobold Hetman.

Read the rest here.

Our last best hope to finally see the darn thing…

It’s been a quiet weekend, so far.

Friday, we spent the evening after work with wheezinggirl and her husband M. After meeting up at their house, we went into downtown Roswell for dinner at Sugo, a remarkably good Greek/Italian restaurant. I had the Loose Lasagna (“I prefer my lasagna to be a bit of a hussy, quite honestly.”), and kitanzi had one of the specials, a delightful halibut and scallops dish with a perfect sauce. After dinner, we retired to their house for a game of Munchkin. The final score was 10-9-8-7, won by me on a wonderfully munchkined play (Looking for trouble, played Kali, then played Typographical Error to make her level 1. There was an exchange of cards in an attempt to stop me, but I had enough cards in hand to counter them.) A good close game like that is much more fun than a blowout, so I was glad it was so close. 🙂

The rest of the weekend has been spent largely undertaking the project of finally watching Babylon 5. It may come as a shock to many folks who haven’t heard the story of my long and troubled history with this show, but I’ve not actually seen the large majority of it. That’s not to say I haven’t tried.

See, when B5 first came out, I sat down to watch it, because it was SF on television, and there wasn’t that much SF on television in those days, aside from Star Trek. Generally, anything that had a science fiction theme was going to get watched by us, regardless. And, I have to admit, I didn’t care for it. I hated it. And after four or five episodes, I stopped watching it.

Two years later, all anyone can talk about is Babylon 5! “Oh, you’re not watching it?” people would say in amazed horror. “Nah,” I said. I tried to watch it when it first came on, but I really didn’t care for it.” “But, it got better! Really!” After enough of these conversations, often with people whose taste I trusted, I agreed to give it another try. And they were right, it *had* gotten much better. The new commander was much more interesting, the characters felt much more deep and interesting, and the plot was engaging. Unfortunately, it being the middle of season 3, I had no idea what was going on.

But, I figured that sooner or later, they’d show it again, and when they did, I’d watch it and see what all the fuss was about. in 1998, TNT announced they were going start showing the series from the beginning. And I settled in to watch it. Two weeks later, my apartment building burned to the ground.

Ever since then, I always managed to miss when it would restart. filker0 tried to alert me of one rotation starting up a few years ago, but it was right at the time that my relationship with deidrecorwin was disintegrating, and it wasn’t on at a convenient time for me to see it unless I missed all the traffic on my evening commute, so I didn’t get to see more than a handful of episodes at that time.

So, recently, I have borrowed Season 1 DVD from a friend of mine, and this weekend kitanzi and I have settled into watch it, in order. We’ve gotten through the first two disk (eight episodes), and I’m pleased to say that I’m genuinely enjoying it. I still think Sinclair is made of wood, and the scenes which are supposed to be emotional often seem to ring a little false, but I know that it gets better, and honestly, I’m having much more fun enjoying the good bits than snarking at the bad bits. I do honestly think that I’ve changed a bit as a consumer since I saw these before — I’m much less picky about my entertainment, and am much more willing to overlook absurdities in order to enjoy the shows.

I don’t intend to keep an episode-by-episode reaction to the thing, because I really don’t want to put that much work into it. But I do intend to keep watching it until I’m done with it, and then I’ll finally understand all the in-jokes and the songs, and stop feeling like I’ve missed out on something exceptional that everyone else knows about but me.

Today’s timewaster: 3-D Tetris

Seen over at John Scalzi’s By The Way, Tetris in 3-D:

http://www.3dtris.de/ (Requires Flash)

This could eat my day if I let it. Good grief. I still remember hejira2006‘s description of the original Tetris: “It’s the most boring game I’ve ever played for hours and hours and hours.”

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