Monster Manual 2!

I was lucky enough to receive a spankin' new review copy of the Monster Manual 2! I've not had the chance to actually exercise any of the new baddies in my campaign, but after reading through the book I am very excited to do just that.

The Good Stuff

There's a lot to like in the MM2. Some very iconic critters show back up: Rust Monsters, Genasi, Barghests, and the like... all exciting to see again. There is a large 14-page section on Metallic Dragons of varying difficulty levels (something for nearly every party level) and some truly excellent artwork. There's a whole host of new additions as well, I hope to review these new monsters as I get the chance to unleash them on my unwitting players.

Speaking of excellent artwork, they've got the Dimensional Marauder which I believe made a cameo appearance in the new Star Trek movie. I'm pretty sure they reused that artwork from before, but its still pretty striking. The Marauder makes use of a new snatch-and-grab style mechanic that can teleport the player and the Marauder itself around the map, giving close combat a bit more pizazz.

Located confusingly AFTER the glossary there is a single page that has racial traits for Monster Races intended to be NPCs, or if you're really brave, Player Characters. The options provided are Bullywug, Duergar, and Kenku. My mind immediately went to what havoc Vanir could wreck as a bullywug player character, but its probably wise to not give him any ideas.

The Bad Stuff

It seems that the nerf bat has struck, sadly. Petrification seems to still exist in its normal form, however many of the death effects appear to be AWOL. This was most noticable to me when reading the section on beholders... to me a beholder isn't a beholder if it can't kill you with a Ray of Death. Can the abilities of these new beholders still kill your players? Absolutely. They just do so in a more roundabout fashion.

It seems they are taking the opportunity to elaborate on sections previously created in the original Monster Manual... seeing some omissions from the Monster Manual make their return is encouraging, but part of me was wanting for a bit more originality.

Conclusion

The Monster Manual 2 appears to be a pretty solid addition on its surface, but the proof will be in the pudding as I drop some of these monsters in place in the campaign.

For a truly excellent in-depth look at the Monster Manual, head on over to the Critical Hits review. They even take an in-depth look at the contents of the Monster Manual 2 in two excellent articles. They're worth a read!

Behind the Screen: Questions about legendary item creation...

I had a good time writing last week's post on tailormade items, thanks for all of the great comments! As I was thinking about this topic further and reading through all of the insights provided on that thread, I started thinking about an underlying question.

Burning questions

At one point in the discussion, I asked whether or not it was important to have a rules set for generating weapons, armor, and items of that magnitude. Is the "outside the box" thinking that is required to create an item so suited to a player part of the creative fun that is being a DM?

So I'll turn this question over to you, gentle reader: if a set of rules existed for creating tailormade, high-power (or growing in power) magical items would you use them? Or would you still eschew these rules in favor of doing it by yourselves?

My thoughts

Honestly, it would have to be a VERY flexible rules set for me to consider using it. Often, I will see elements that I would want to have in my magical item but one little aspect of it isn't quite right... the descriptor isn't quite fitting, the drawbacks too severe (or not severe enough), the legend or lore that comes along with the item just doesn't fit with the setting or the intended character, and so on.

For me, magic item creation over a random treasure roll has to be an act of creative fun for me as a Dungeon Master. How about you?

Behind the Screen: The Legendary Chuck Item...

I had a Dungeon Master in college that would handcraft a special (usually awesomely powerful) magic item for each member of the adventuring party and sprinkle them throughout the campaign. Some we found, some we didn't (and found out about it later), but they all shared some common charactaristics.

These items would be exceedingly powerful. Some had a drawbacks, but in general they would be described as legendary, unique, or spectacular. We even took to calling them "Chuck Items" in the honor of our DM himself.

Usually these items were crafted outside the normal rules system for creating magic items. They would sometimes have complex combinations of effects or very specific rituals that had to be done to activate abilities. They often had significant lore surrounding them that would unveil itself as the campaign unfolded.

An example was a bow that SR's character came across named Harvester. It had numerous colored gems inlaid in it that could be activated to do different types of elemental damage. Each time you used the colored gems, the bow was drained and it had to be recharged by killing undead. If you activated all of the gems at once, it would do an immense amount of damage. Unbeknownst to her, Chuck later told me that each time she did this there was a chance that the bow would be destroyed but it did not happen during the course of our campaign.

(If anyone is interested in the D&D 3.0 stats for this item, I am told that SR retains a copy she might be willing to share!)

Learning from the Master

I have employed this same pattern in my campaigns. The process of creating an "outside the box" awesome item tailored to your players is alluring, but I have often found that if you don't temper it with a drawback or some sort of control mechanism it can heavily unbalance your game.

Since we're quickly approaching the end of the Keep on the Shadowfell module and the beginning of my original campaign content, I am thinking more about how/if I am going to execute this process for my new campaign.

A few words of encouragement: making a tailored magical item that suits a player character is a GREAT way to heavily involve them, especially if you give the item a rich background or legend to go along with it.

The player feels special and gets that moment of sheer excitement every time their awesome toy does what it is supposed to do. To me this is essential to a satisfying D&D experience, especially for new players.

A question to those that have come before

For those of you Dungeon Masters out there: have you tried something like this yourselves? Players, have you ever received a tailor-made item? If so, did it improve your gaming experience?

Finally, if you're reading this: thanks Chuck. They just don't make D&D moments like that anymore!!

Behind the Screen: Nearing the end!

First off, thanks to everyone that answered the Question of the Day that turned into the Question of the Week. I've been dealing with a heavily increased workload in real life since that posting has gone up, so we're going to exercise some of the great recommendations and get a solo campaign started up for her very soon.

The end of the module as we know it!

We're getting dangerously close to the end of Keep on the Shadowfell, and now's the time for me to start infusing some of my own details into the module to prepare my group for life outside the Keep. I've got about 10 sessions worth of material storyboarded, which is a new tool in my DM repertoire.

Essentially I've been writing out the campaign sessions in a bulleted list outlining the setting, the key players, and expected paths that the group could progress along. If the group goes "off script" I will just make some new bullets for the following session and adjust as needed.

I'm taking several notes of inspiration for this idea from the encounter structure from Keep on the Shadowfell. I really enjoy the two-page encounter style, and I'm also taking some inspiration from Phil the Chatty DM's one-page dungeon contest. Succinct representation of roleplaying ideas is a really important skill for busy dungeon masters like me!

Question of the Day: How to make a satisfying single-player campaign?

Recently, StupidRanger and I have found ourselves with a bit more free time on the weekends. Last weekend she asked me whether or not I could whip up a campaign for just the two of us.

This idea lodged itself sideways in my brain... it strikes me that it could be done but I was having trouble how to logistically scope encounters for a single player. With the intent of trying this out, I've put together a few questions that might lead me to some solutions:

1. What plots are best suited to a single player character?
2. How do you scope single player battle encounters in a fulfilling way?
3. In this type of game, is it better to provide NPCs or downscale encounters?
4. For those of you that have done this before, what was the most successful aspect of the game? What was the least?

Thanks for any help you can provide! Hopefully SR and I will be underway before long!

Arcane Power: State of the Bard Address

We were fortunate enough to receive a copy of the new Arcane Power sourcebook for review recently. I was particularly excited to get my hands on this, as I had recently rolled up a bard and wanted some new abilities to play with.

The new Prescient Bard build in the book sets the flavor for many of the new bardic abilities. These turn your bard into something of a short-term prophet, able to see the future and to mess with it a little to his advantage. There are a lot of really cool powers to choose from, but on occasion I feel they didn't try hard enough to engage the player's imagination and just relied on the combat mechanics. (This is one of my primary complaints with 4e in general, not just this book.) Take for instance the Horrifying Truth power, whose description reads "Your cruel pronouncement becomes truer with every strike." It deals damage, dazes the target, and stuns the target if it doesn't save. With that kind of description, I'm expecting a gypsy to hop out of my lute and rub the target's nose and say "THINNER!". Or maybe the ghost of a creepy Japanese girl to appear and proclaim the target not a pitcher, but a belly-itcher, causing him 4d8+CHA self-esteem damage.

They've added several bardic paragon paths in Arcane Power as well:

• Cunning Prevaricator - basically your bard is fantastic at lying and exaggerating. Somehow this translates into making him and all his allies invisible at strategically opportune times. (As an aside, "Lying Lights" sounds to me like the name of something I would have watched on Cinemax as a teenager when my parents had gone to bed.) Later powers let him misdirect the opponent's attacks back upon himself or other enemies, presumably so the bard can ask him "why do ya keep hitting yourself?"


• Euphonic Bow - The concept for this one is, in my opinion, one of the coolest things in the book. You're a bard, except your bow plays notes as you attack. The path description says something about the sound your arrows make as they hit their targets providing percussion for the song of battle, and all I can think of is Freddie Mercury singing, "out of the doorway, the bullets rip -- to the sound of the beat!" It's sort of like multiclassing your bard with an arcane archer, but without quite the range of abilities. Still neat.


• Grave Caller - Apparently they have bardic assassins. Who knew? This one seemed a little out of place to me, since I guess I always imagined assassins as being quiet and not singing. Then again, I've watched enough anime in my day to know that a really talented assassin can use anything they want as a weapon, immense size and noise be damned. Either way, if you're looking to cause grief (possibly in the form of death) to one unlucky creature at a time, the deathmark ability and its associated powers are a good way to get there.


• Half-Elf Emissary - Ever have one of those people in your group that tried to max their Diplomacy skill and use it as often as possible? Well, now that person's empathy and oratory ability are deadly weapons. (For, ahem, "aggressive negotiations", I would assume.) This path gets automatic points against it for only being available to half-elves. Because everyone knows dwarves and half-orcs can never, ever be charismatic and likeable. This path's powers are based largely on him being such a galactically amazing social butterfly that the number of people he can see, friends and enemies alike, make his abilities stronger. I kind of want to bludgeon myself into unconsciousness when I think about this one too hard.


• Karmic Shaper - Sort of the "evolved" form of the Prescient Bard build, this path is all about squaring up karmic debts. Well, sort of. You "interpret" karma, so that means if your enemy does something bad to you, your powers make him pay for it. If one of your allies screws up, you interpret all the good times you've had together and replace his attack roll with one of your own. It's kind of like D&D My Name Is Earl, but backwards and with swords and a touch of godlike power to change fate.


• Life Singer - You're a bard who comes from this place where some bad stuff happened and evil spirits cursed you with bad weather. Now, in order to combat the evil spirit (which I thusly dub "El Niño"), you become a tree-hugging pacifist hippie. Your power is that of smugness, and atop your ivory tower of morality, you grant bonuses to all your allies only if they do not attack anything. This will almost certainly set a new standard for the paragon everyone regrets picking almost immediately due to everyone hating them forever. This paragon path may ruin long-standing friendships. I worry for the future of gaming now that this is out.

A few odd complaints aside, I would wholeheartedly recommend this book if you've got a bard. The only thing I'm really disappointed in is the lack of the 3.5 book Complete Arcane's Seeker of the Song prestige class. I had my fingers crossed, and was denied.

Next time, I'll review the Sorcerer class. Spicy!

D&D Test Drive

WotC has created a set of test drive tools for 4E, giving everyone an opportunity to try the new edition for free.  The Test Drive site includes Quick Start Rules, the Keep on the Shadowfell module and the Character Builder.

The Test Drive Basics

If you're new to 4E or to D&D in general, this set of tools was designed for you.  The Quick Start guide is designed to give you the rules you need to play the module, including some pre-gen characters.  Though since the Character Builder is included and will let you create characters level 1 to 3, you don't have to use the pre-gens.

As a player currently in the middle of the Keep, and I can say that the module is pretty entertaining.  Who doesn't love a dungeon that starts with goblins?

The Character Builder is pretty easy to use.  It may take a while to install, but in the end, for those who want to quickly put together a character, it walks you through all the steps.  It includes character options from the PHB, PHB2, Monster Manual, DMG, Forgotten Realms guides, as well as several other sources.  Based on your choices, it will fill out your character sheet and provide you with power cards to print for your character.

The Quick Start Rules documents contains 15 pages of rules and guidelines, followed by 12 pages of pre-generated characters.  The Quick Start rules provide a lot of good basics, including descriptions of what happens in combat.

Even if you have been playing 4E for awhile, I like the Quick Start guide as a small reference guide.  It's got a lot of pages from the PHB that come in handy, like the conditions and combat actions.

Behind the Screen: The Joys of New Experiences!

At long last I emerge from my programming cave to post again! Special thanks go out to Stupid Ranger for pulling some of my weight the past few weeks while I work through a particularly thorny set of work responsibilities!

Learning by Doing

As those of you that follow us regularly may remember, we are experiencing 4th edition via the excellent Keep on the Shadowfell module. This experience has been heightened by the addition of the PHB2, which we reviewed thoroughly last month. During this process, this module has provided a buffet of 4e goodness.

It is interesting to behold the group dynamics that take place when different aspects of the adventure present themselves. Two weeks ago, our group found a secret door that led them into an adjacent room with an illusory wall. The rogue in our group got his moment to shine as he found the secret door, checked it for traps and led the group through into that portion of the module. The player of said rogue had a giant grin on his face the whole time.

In that same section, Stupid Ranger's character used Tenser's Floating Disk to bypass some terror runes that were carelessly strewn throughout that portion of the dungeon. I've not read all the errata surrounding the disk, but I decided to allow them to step over it to avoid the trap since it was an interesting use of that ritual. She was very pleased about this.

The group ran into their first encounter with a time-resetting trap that spewed skeletons, which was mildly annoying but they quickly dispatched their foes and pressed on into the dungeon without their coveted five minute rest to solve that encounter handily.

Finally, I got my moment of learning and enjoyment out of a negotiation style challenge with what could have potentially been a game-ending encounter with a fallen knight. I found this challenge mechanism incredibly fun to play and very engaging for the players as well, so I count this as a success.

Shared enjoyment for all!

So what's the point of listing these various encounters? Mostly, I want to illustrate the variety of good stuff to be had in Keep on the Shadowfell thus far and I also want to point out the "shining moments" of our last few sessions so you might incorporate some of the same aspects into your games.

Because I haven't played in groups with very many rogues, I was slightly surprised by the visceral joy to be had by the player of our rogue when he found that secret door. Stupid Ranger got her classic "I really showed you, DM!" smile going when she dreamt up riding that disk a short distance to avoid the terror runes. Even I got a moment of happiness to try a different style of encounter in that negotiation (and I think our group enjoyed it as well!)

So get out there and try some new things throughout the course of your normal campaign. If you're stuck in the same "find enemies/kill enemies/loot treasure" cycle it pays to break it once in awhile with a new experience.

Review of 4E Power Cards

For my birthday last month, Vanir and his wonderful wife, efreak, gave me a set of 4E Power Cards for my Wizard.  I had been using a some handmade cards for both my wizard and my bard, but writing out the power descriptions on note cards every level was a bit tedious.

The Cards

The set comes with 100 cards, including all the powers in the PHB plus a handful of blank cards to customize.  They are color-coordinated to match the book: Daily powers have a gray border, At-Wills are green, Encounters are red.  Utilities powers have a blue border with a checkbox indicating if it is a Daily, Encounter or At-Will power.

The flavor text is across the top, the keywords are just blow that, then all the details.  The class is listed on the very bottom of the card and on the back, so if you are running multiple characters, you can easily tell which powers belong to which characters.  The cards are easy to read and include all the details you need without having to flip through the book.  They are coated, so they have a pretty durable feeling to them.

My One Regret

The coating on the cards prevents pencil marks.  To really make these versatile, it helps to have your attack and damage stats already included on the power card so you don't have to figure them out every time.

To combat this deficiency, I grabbed my tape.  By adding a couple of strips of tape to the bottom of the card, I could add my stats in pencil.  I also added notes on bonuses that contributed to my numbers.  I made sure to leave a tab on each strip so I could remove the tape later if necessary. This is what my Flaming Sphere power card looks like:

You can see a close-up of my tape additions here.

Thanks to Martin from Gnome Stew, I have also confirmed that the power cards will fit in Magic-sized sleeves.  This can give an extra level of protection to your power cards, and you could use tape strips on the protector instead of the card itself.

Overall

I have found that I cannot stay sane during combat without my hand-made cards.  These new power cards are really nice and a great time-saver.  At about $10 per class, they are a reasonably-priced addition to your gaming bag for your PHB classes.

New Player's Handbook Heroes Minis

Martial Heroes 1
Originally uploaded by stupidranger

Dante & I received some of the new Player's Handbook Heroes minis this week. There are six total packs, and we got four to enjoy: Martial (1), Arcane (1), Divine & Primal.

What I Like

• Each pack has three minis, and one is a female; it's great to have some feminine representation in the new minis. And they are mostly dressed sensibly, which is a bonus.
  
• The Arcane set has a bard. It's been really hard tracking down a bard mini.
  
• Each mini has a unique power card, giving you a great opportunity to jazz up your character.
  

What I Don't Like

• The minis are obviously mass-produced; not all of the painting is clean and neat.
  
• While I appreciate they are trying for some variety, some of the race/class combinations don't really seem to fit: Dragonborn Rogue wasn't high on my list of character options... I like my rogues a little more unnoticeable.
  
• I realize there aren't a lot of Divine or Primal options, but seems to me like they could have put in a third class instead of have two Clerics or two Barbarians. They could have had an Avenger for the Divine pack and a Shaman or a Warden for the Primal pack, which would have eliminated the duplicates.
  

Overall

The Arcane set is currently high on my list since it has the Female Eladrin Wizard. Now I can use that for Eaerenel instead of the Male Human Wizard mini I've been using. And even though the Bard is a male, I'm probably going to use that Half-Elf mini, which will be significantly better than the Dwarf Fighter I've been using. I'm very happy to have minis that mostly represent my characters.

Adding Some Color to the Tavern

It's a classic staple of D&D adventuring.  The Tavern.  Whether it's just a stopping place for the night or a stepping stone in your quest to save (or destroy) the world, it's one of the first places you look for once you get back to town.  The second, of course, being the merchant, 'cuz saving the world doesn't always pay well unless you sell your fallen opponents' stuff.

The tavern is a great place for the roleplayers to interact with the other people in the environment; there's always someone at the tavern willing to chat with a group of adventurers.  Sometimes, he's very obviously giving you information to begin/continue your quest.  But sometimes, he's just local color.

For those of you looking to interject a little bit of color to your taverns, whether they are home-brew breweries or established drinking establishments, Alric over at The RPG Athenaeum posted a great list of 100 subjects that might be overheard in a tavern.  This is a great list, and it's a handy DM resource to keep the tavern environment light and entertaining, especially for your roleplayers.

If you're looking for a new tavern-based ways to begin your adventure, Nicholas over at DungeonMastering.com shared a few ideas.  After all, the tavern is the best place to start a campaign.  There are some good ideas here that give you an alternative to the general "you're sitting at the bar... introduce yourselves" kind of tavern-based start.

If you're looking for more ideas, there are a couple of fun articles published in the Open Game Table that have some fun ideas to add flair to your tavern.

Google & Campaign Communication

Our current gaming group has been meeting about every other week.  To maintain communication with our group members, we're using a handful of Google products.

Scheduling with a Google Calendar -- We have a calendar for our group on which we mark the next scheduled session.  It's working fairly well for us.

Email Communication with a Google Group -- We created a Google Group and included everyone's email, so with one quick address, everyone is included in the email communications.

Campaign Notes with a Google Site -- Thanks to a post from a fellow blogger a few months back, I discovered how easy and how useful Google Sites can be when keeping track of campaign information.  We have a page with the group calendar, as well as a page set up with a list of PCs and NPCs (perfect for keeping track of that one guy whose name you can't remember).  One of the best features of our site is our Files & Journals page, where we keep in-character journals (many are linked Google Docs), our session notes file that everyone can update, and a party fund file where we keep track of the loot we've accumulated.

With a smallish group (five of us total), it isn't usually too hard to keep everyone informed, but these tools have certainly made it easy.

Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire

Dante & I watched the premier of Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire last Thursday.  I had high hopes for this show based on the commercials and the preview from ComedyCentral.com.  And my expectations were more than met.

ONLY VERY MINOR SPOILERS TO FOLLOW!

The opening is classic: we are introduced to the group in... a tavern!  Kröd needs to get the keys to the dungeon to rescue his mentor, General Arcadius.  And the adventure begins.  The good guys strive to overthrown the bad guys.  The bad guys randomly kill people that get in their way.  And periodically, Kröd's sword is enveloped in flames.

There were moments while watching this that reminded me so vividly of fond memories of old campaigns.  The crazy plots to break someone out of prison.  The random NPCs who help out along the way.  The occasional (usually accidental) shooting of a party member with a light crossbow.  The overwhelming revelation that your party will have to save the world as foretold by the prophecy.

But if I could make one change... I would change the character of Aneka a little bit.  In my opinion, she's a little too much.  I feel that she's a bit too in touch with her sensual side.  I think it's great to have an female character who isn't a damsel in distress, but her habit of having relations every man she encounters is a little too much.  I'm sure there are some out there who will disagree with me, but if you take a look back at what I said, you'll see I started with "in my opinion." :)

So far, it's a very entertaining adventure, and I will be watching again next week.  Because the best part of an adventure is continuing it next week.

The Great PDF Screw-up...

This week WotC announced that it has decided to suspend sales of their PDF offerings. It has taken me a few days to formulate my thoughts on this matter, so here we go. Honestly, it's this post from Critical Hits that finally got me off my duff to write this down.

Before I diverge from common opinion...

I agree with the common consensus. Shutting down PDF sales from external sources isn't a cool thing to do with almost no notice. What you're seeing likely indicates the beginning of WotC providing official PDFs via their site, which I suppose is their perogative.

I'll get the obvious stuff out of the way: a DRM protected solution is not the right path. Taking away choice from the consumer is bad. Leaving the consumer without an option to legally purchase something that they know is available doesn't really lead to additional sales in my mind.

And here's where I get angry letters from the public.

All that stuff aside, I don't care. I was scarcely aware that legal copies of the WotC books even existed, and to be quite frank I'm not about to pay anyone for the pleasure of a digital copy of a book that I already own. I've never looked for them to buy because I haven't ever wanted them.

I MUCH prefer to use actual physical books in my campaigns. If I only need one or two things from a book I tend to "wing it" anyway and make up what I need along the way. The only downside is having to haul the books around, but these days I can make it by with just the core rulebooks in tow.

Now I appreciate why others love having the digital copies. I might even use them if they were provided in some fashion for free with purchase of my physical rulebooks. I might be willing to pay a small amount if I got some other benefit from paying... like with a DDI subscription as Dave suggests.

I also agree with him on this point: free is definitely better and would repair this PR catastrophe. This also makes it pretty official: A LOT has gone wrong with the 4e rollout.

I await your flamethrowers!

Goodbye, Dave Arneson.

Our hobby had two kings and now they are both at rest: sadly, word reaches us tonight that Professor Dave Arneson has passed away.

Dave Arneson was the quiet force behind this hobby that we love so much and we are sad to hear of his passing. What amazed me about Dave was how approachable he was, in recent years sitting dutifully at his booth selling the newest incarnation of Blackmoor. As I mentioned yesterday, it was one of the highlights of my nerd-life to meet him each of the last two years at GenCon. He was always talkative and friendly, willing to trade a story or two about his many gaming experiences.

You will be sorely missed, Professor Arneson. I hope that all of the love and respect that was poured out onto the Internet eased your pain in your final hours. Our hobby will not be the same without you!

Thank you to Dave's family for providing information on these developments over the past few days, our thoughts and prayers remain with you during this difficult time.

Funeral plans are being arranged, and letters and cards can still be sent to:
Dave Arneson
1043 Grand Avenue
Box #257
St. Paul, MN
55105

Score one for positive energy! Dave Arneson is still with us!

Thanks once again to the RPGnet forums and RPG Blog II, we receive some positive news regarding Dave Arneson's health:

From the Arneson family:
As of this writing, Dave is still with us. We have moved him into a facility where we can focus on keeping him comfortable. We have been and will continue to watch the forums and blogs and are passing along everyone's thoughts and prayers. Right now our focus is on getting Dave into the best possible position to maintain his comfort and his dignity. We will update the community as we can. We want to thank everyone for your thoughts and prayers and ask that you continue to send Dave your support in whatever form that means to you.

An address has been established to receive messages to Dave.

Dave Arneson
1043 Grand Avenue
Box #257
St. Paul, MN
55105


I had the good fortune to meet Mr. Arneson two years ago at GenCon quite by accident. I had wandered into Crazy Igor's booth to ask about the providence of my OD&D books and Mrs. Igor pointed Dave out to me. He was kind enough to sign my books and chat with SR and I about this very website. It was an honor to meet a gaming legend like him.

He, along with Gary Gygax, created this playground for us all to play in and I highly recommend taking a few minutes to let Dave know how his contributions have positively affected your life.

Dave, glad you're still with us and thanks for everything! You've given us a hobby that has brought us many friends over the years and there's no way to thank you enough for that!

Urgent News - Dave Arneson hospitalized

According to this forum and RPG Blog II, Professor Dave Arneson's cancer has unexpectedly worsened this week and he is now hospitalized.

David's cancer has unexpectedly worsened just this week, to the point that he is in the hospital. He is heavily sedated and not doing well. He is not expected to live for more than a couple days, if that long.

Dave's family is asking for peace and quiet in this difficult time and that no attempts for further contact be made, nor any gifts sent at this time. As you can see the prognosis is not good, however our thoughts and prayers go out to Mr. Arneson and his loved ones.

If ever there was a time to fire off some good thoughts, it is now!

Difficulty as an Artform is Dead

You know the problem with the kids these days? They don't know what difficult is! Back when I was a kid playing videogames, and some of you were probably teenagers playing videogames, probably some of you were even 20-somethings playing videogames (what the hell was wrong with you back then?), good god is this sentence long enough for you yet? Anyway, back when I was a kid playing videogames, we had games that were insanely difficult yet somehow still incredibly fun. Some of the best examples are games like Ghosts'n'Goblins, Battletoads, Contra, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Ninja Gaiden, Metroid, and of course one of my all-time favorites...Mega Man!

Back in July of 2008 I was practically floored by the announcement that Capcom was putting out a new Mega Man game, most importantly that they were calling it Mega Man 9 and it was going to use the same graphics as the original NES games. I was really excited by the prospect of a new retro-Mega Man game that would perfectly recreate the feelings I had when I was younger but with totally new content. The game was released in September 2008 as a download for the Wii, X-Box 360, and the PS3 and has since gotten numerous excellent reviews and been nominated for several awards including 'Best WiiWare Game' and 'Best Platforming Game'. I think all of that is complete, and utter, bull shit.

Admittedly I did not play Mega Man 9 for very long, the first level alone was enough to make me want to kill babies. I read some reviews that praised its retro look and claimed it was every bit as difficult as the original games, these are damned lies. The game may be "as difficult" as the old games, but it's not the right kind of difficulty. I'm sure some of you are thinking it, and believe me I cringed at the very hint of it, that I have simply gotten rusty and that this game was punishing me like a pimply freshman in gym class. Nay, I say to you, that is not the case.

My wife, angelic messenger that she is, has purchased for me a great number of gaming fineries in our time together. Possibly the best of which was the port of Mega Man X (the first one for the Super Nintendo) for the PSP, titled Maverick Hunter X, which is almost an exact recreation of the SNES game. Let me tell you, I may have been able to play the guitar or the recorder in middle school at some point but those skills might as well be gone to some cave in north korea, however when I found myself at the helm of the blue bomber on the PSP, the muscle-memory had only been sharpened with age like the razor sharp edge of an sharp executioner's sharp axe. Possibly even as much so as a picture of said witty executioner printed from a Sharp printer, covered in vicious razor blades!

Suffice to say, my skills had not dulled, so something had to be wrong with the game. What I ended up pondering was the difference between a game that's artfully difficult and a game that is simply painfully difficult. An excellent example of artful difficulty is the classic disappearing block timing puzzles that appeared predominately in the first two Mega Man games. When you entered the room you were initially shocked by seemingly random blocks appearing and disappearing in mid-air with some super sweet sound effects accompanying them, but after a few moments you began to notice the pattern of jumping that the blocks were spelling out to you. As you progressed, you no doubt fell a couple of times, but you knew the secret to the puzzle and with a little bit of time and determination you could get passed it relatively easily.

In contrast, an example of painful difficulty is when something is just plain hard and there is no real secret to figuring it out. You can spend five minutes trying it or three hours and it's still just as hard. Mega Man 9 is pretty much infected with this kind of difficulty, right from the very beginning you can see a certain lack of polish that the other games had is missing from this one. I even played the game a couple of times, spread out over a few months each time, to see if my opinion changed and it hasn't so far. I'll probably go back and try to play it again, this time trying really hard to not suck and die a thousand times over.

I actually feel that many of the classic NES games I listed above dance precariously close to the edge between these two types of difficulty. Contra, BattleToads, TMNT, and Ghosts'n'Goblins in particular are all exceedingly hard and can pretty quickly become less fun than they are painful. Ninja Gaiden, Metroid, and Mega Man all top my list as well balanced games that provide challenge while still remaining quite fun. Then again, I could just be a pansy...

Excerpts from Insanity: Day Two...

Tonight was the finale of our all-bard D&D session. We were graced by many hilarious events, which included a drop-in by Dave The Game from Critical Hits. Skype is a wonderful thing, and I really appreciated Dave stopping in!

Below you will find a continuation of my tweet-stream from yesterday. WARNING: OFFENSIVE CONTENT BELOW.

Golden Harvest Music Festival: The Saga Continues

OK, we have started D&D Round 2 of our game. They wake up, eat "bacon and funnel cake" and are now fighting a flaming hippy. Yes, really.

The other hippies have now lit on fire. Our two bards have vowed to never play this festival again.

The burning hippies now smell like burning hair and feet.

Still fighting burning hippies, which have now been reduced to burning skeletons.

The hippy knapsacks hold three small bags of acrid looking weed, 120 gp, some cloaks, and a picture of someone who looks like @DaveTheGame.

@geeksdreamgirl is beating @stupidranger in the "Most Enemies Killed" contest. They're arguing about this now, just like Goliaths should.

This is the only time in history where calling your wife a Goliath isn't going to result in multiple spiral fractures of your skeleton.

"That's a pretty lame talent. My talent is kicking ass." --@geeksdreamgirl

The original talent was @stupidranger 's belching.

We are now taking a campaign break in order to have Spring Funfetti Cake. Mmm... cake. The girls are calling it "+5 cakefetti of funness"

@geeksdreamgirl is graphically explaining to me a penis cake pan that a friend of hers had. Seasonal penis cakes, at that.

Now they're trying to find @DaveTheGame in this crowd. Why must they latch on to this useless bit of flavor? Now I have to roleplay Dave.

I have cast @DaveTheGame as the hippy's drug dealer, and the girls just said "we should tell him his weed is giving people flaming boners."

Also, in case anyone is curious: @DaveTheGame is apparently the hunkiest man in the RPG Blogosphere.

Now we're discussing the other men in the RPG Blogosphere. Apparently its good to be Yax.

"We got tingly britches looking @DaveTheGame " -@geeksdreamgirl

@DaveTheGame just joined us via Skype

Referring to the food vendor: "Were you all over his bacon?" @stupidranger: "No, I was just in it for the funnel."

"Is this bacon funnel cake vegetarian?" -@DaveTheGame

Now they are discussing the new information provided by @DaveTheGame. I think they're going to try to Diplomacy some other NPC into bed.

They've decided to name their group "The Horny Bitches".

They want you all to know that their bards play horns. And they are bitches.

@stupidranger : "We're going to share a teabag."

Oh good, now they're re-enacting the iocaine powder scene of Princess Bride over their cups of tea.

Cassini is almost dead, so hopefully we'll return to our scheduled session soon.

They've sweet-talked their way on stage with their nemesis's big show tonight. Little do they know its going to be crazy. Mwhahaha.

"I love my horn, but I don't spoon it at night." That one was a joint effort between both @stupidranger and @geeksdreamgirl.

They're grilling Jekk's wife, who tells them a sordid tale about some elders that commissioned him for the show and didn't show up to watch.

Now they're finally connecting some of the plot dots, I love it when a plan comes together!

Now they're proposing offering him a lesbian threesome in order to lure Jekk into a position where they can steal his magic lute.

My mistake, it would be a foursome because they aim to include Jekk's wife. Fantastic.

Oh good, now they're coming up with a more reasonable plan. That's good.

Jekk just unleashed a void full of demons, to cleanse and punish the chaotic crowd as he was instructed to do.

Now @geeksdreamgirl is aiming to destroy the magical lute that is holding the rift open.

One of the roadies is throwing in to help them fight the Big Bads

They're having a discussion about Bobo the Invisible One-Eyed Bear and how @geekdreamgirl 's character should love him during the battle.

Woooo! @stupidranger just critted him in his face!

They have won the day and destroyed the evil bard/galeb duhr in disguise!

And they destroyed the lute, sucking all of the bad demons back to the plane from whence they came!

*cue victory music and roll credits*

Excerpts from Insanity...

We began our short "for fun" campaign tonight, and e from Geek's Dream Girl and Stupid Ranger did not disappoint. Since we don't have a Twitter appliance installed yet, I would like to share some of the excerpts from our first night of adventure.

The Background

We have Toccata and Fugue, twin Goliath sisters. They are bards, play trumpets, and have multiclassed themselves as silly as possible at 5th level. They are ultra-competitive, which only adds to the relative insanity.

The campaign takes place at a remote Woodstock-like music festival, where a major act is headlining and the throngs of people that have shown up are drunk and in a party mood.

The following excerpts are from my Twitter, in chronological order for readability's sake.

The Tweets

WARNING: Some content may be inappropriate. You have been warned.

"OK, we've got two Goliath Bards that were orphans raised by dwarves. One can summon a spirit bear with one eye named Bobo. What next?"

"We're both big, so we need big... implements." -e

"And I keep my holy symbol of Moradin between my tits." -e

"The dwarves, they may not have the length but they certainly have the girth." -e

"Dwarven girls can handle the girth, but just can't stand the length" -e

"Do I hear screams of excitement, or ...... excitement? -stupidranger

And now we're discussing breast augmentation creams and now they would work in D&D.

"Barf is more potent than beer because it has stomach acid." -e

Now I'm being asked the average penis length for a half-elf. Anyone know?

Now we're fighting some ghouls. They're mocking the ghoul's bandana.

Thank God, this session is over for the night. Time to replenish material and rest my weary psyche.

A Cautionary Tale? Hardly!

As you can see, we had some fun. Despite all of the roleplay time, the two of them made it a fair way through my prepared content so I feel like it was a rousing success! As you can see, not much effort was made to constrain their desire to roleplay and be as crazy, and we still managed to progress the plot.

I think it was a pretty good attempt at a campaign in the style I discussed yesterday, I highly recommend you give this type of not-too-serious campaigning a try!