Best. Wife. Ever.

I got a great surprise for my birthday today. My wife gives me a gift in a five-foot long box.  I look at it wondering, what the heck did she get me?! Usually we get each other small stuff for birthdays. A book, a CD, a DVD, something like that. I pick up the box and that bad boy is heavy. Now I'm completely puzzled. I get it open and what do I find inside? A beautiful replica of Narsil!

I totally did not see that one coming. Now I have this terrible urge to run around the yard swinging it over my head screaming at the top of my lungs. Of course if I did, I'd no doubt do serious injury to myself and others. So I won't. But you know I want to!

All I can say is: Best. Wife. Ever.

I totally don't deserve her.

Saturday Anime: Sword Art Online

Title: Sword Art Online

Creators: Based on a light novel series written by Reki Kawahara and illustrated by abec.

Basic Premise: Nerve Gear is a new tech that allows MMO players to engage in a "full dive," experiencing a virtual world as if it were real in every way, and feeling as if they were just as present there as in the physical universe. On the release of the "Sword Art Online" fantasy MMO, thousands of players sign up and log in – only to find that they cannot log out again. If they die in game, their bodies will die in the real world as well (talk about permadeath). If anyone on the outside tries to disconnect them from the system, their bodies die as well. The only way to escape alive is to clear the game.

Intro:

Con on the Cob Report

Wherein I play in three excellent games, pick up some loot,

and learn a lesson about getting older.

The Summary

Con on the Cob was a great time, just as it was last year. I got to game with +Tim Shorts, +Rob Conley and +Daniel McEntee in person once again, and got to meet +Ken H face to face for the first time. And like last year, we all had a blast.

My Three Games

My three games each represented either a first for me, or else the making of a tradition.

*****

Friday Night: +Tim Shorts' Esoterrorists Game

(my first non-medieval-fantasy RPG)

This was the first non-medieval-fantasy RPG I ever played in. Yep, playing RPGs since 1981, and I've only played medieval fantasy (various editions and clones of D&D, some GURPS, some Fate/Fudge). And it was pretty cool. My character, Jules Bonnot (name chosen by Tim), works by day as the manager of the Erie Historical Society. By night, he and the other PCs are part of a team working for AEGIS, whose job is to investigate supernatural threats to the world. Tim's game was centered on the suspicious suicide of a young man near a creepy abandoned house. The course of our investigation led us to discover, among other things, a summoning circle, a small demon, a sigil keeping an ex-AEGIS agent locked up in a rest-home, and a cemetery that recently experienced a mass exodus of all the souls whose bodies are buried there. A fun game that I hope we'll continue on Monday nights.

*****

Saturday Afternoon: Roy Snyder's Dungeon Crawl Classics Tower Out of Time Game

(character death as tradition)

This one seems to have started a con tradition for me, since this was the second time in two years that my character was killed in the final minutes of the game (last year my PC Albus the Cleric died in the Blasphemous Brewery of Pilz). I played a potato-farmer-turned-warrior named Spud Clodhopper. The other PCs and I worked for the Bannockburn Forestry and Mining Company as security, and we were charged with getting rid of a tower that had recently and mysteriously appeared on land belonging to, and currently being forested by, the company. We even had badges from the company to show we meant business. Long story short, we got to the leader of the bad guys in the tower. Spud maimed one of the bad guys which drew the leader's attention and it was all over for the ex-potato-farmer in one round.

GM Roy Snyder drafted an honest-to-goodness death certificate for my character.

Spud did manage to hang around a bit as a ghost, even briefly inhabiting the body of a strange monkey-creature, then winding up with his soul grafted onto that of the host. So not only was he dead, but he was now a confused mix of human and simian souls.

*****

Saturday Evening: +Rob Conley's Swords and Wizardry Outpost on the Orclands Game

(my first chaotic character)

Another first for me as I had never played a chaotic character before. Yes, I know. How do you go a whole for 30+ years and not play a chaotic? Beats me. I've played a lot of neutral character who were morally ambiguous, but I never actually went the chaotic route. Even this time I tried to make my PC, Steiner, subtly chaotic. Not a village-burner or baby-killer, but just a guy whose ambition clearly outweighs his empathy. A guy willing to betray people around him to "get in good" with the people in power. Interestingly enough, this paradoxically led to a situation where he and the party's paladin (played by +Tim Shorts) actually had a common agenda, but for different reasons. At one point, a young man who had run off with the Bailiff's daughter and been caught was going to be hanged. Most of the party wanted to rescue him, since the punishment seemed unfair and excessive. The lawful paladin wanted to support the Bailiff in exercising his legal authority to hang the boy. My chaotic fighter wanted to support the Bailiff in order to score brownie points with the Bailiff in the hope of future advancement, and also because, as he said to the party "I just enjoy a good hanging."

LOOT!

Here's what I picked up at the con:

Lesson Learned

I'm not a college-aged kid with college-age stamina anymore. I'm 46. And trying to squeeze in three 4-hour game sessions (one Friday night and two Saturday) between two 4-hour drives (one Friday evening and one Sunday morning) while getting 5 hours of sleep per night two nights in a row is not feasible for me. This hypothesis started forming in my mind last year, and I confirmed it this year. I get to my fatigue threshold faster than I used to, and I end up enjoying things less than I would like – and less than they deserve – just from exhaustion.  Don't get me wrong. It was all still a lot of fun. But when you're struggling to stay awake, it ends up being less fun than it could have been otherwise. I definitely plan to go back again next year, but I'm going to limit my gaming to Saturday, two sessions only, and make sure I get a full eight hours of sleep each night.

Delving Deeper House Rules in Progress

I'm really falling in love with Delving Deeper. As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm planning use if for the next campaign I run after Ephemera (and heck, I might even try to convince the guys to switch over to it while we're still playing in Ephemera).

+Adam Muszkiewicz has been writing a really interesting set of posts at Dispatches from Kickassistan as part of a "Delving Deeper Week." You can read his posts

here (from day 1)
here (from day 2)
here (from day 3)
and here (from day 4)

His fourth-day post discusses house-ruling Delving Deeper. At the end he asks what kinds of house rules people have been writing for their own games. Since I'm already working on my house-rule sheet for DD, I thought I'd go ahead and post what I have so far here (still a work in progress):

The use of Target 20 for Combat and Saves

was inspired by their use in Delta's house rules

at Delta's D&D Hotspot.

Saturday Anime: Claymore

Title: Claymore

Creators: anime directed by Hiroyuki Tanaka, based on the manga written and illustrated by Norihiro Yagi

Basic Premise: in a land plagued by yoma – humanoid monsters that eat people – a clandestine organization breeds human-yoma hybrids who alone are able to kill pure yoma. These female sword-bearing warriors are able to tap into demonic energy that allows them to defeat the monsters. People call these women either "Claymores" (after their weapons) or "Silver-Eyed Witches" (after their unusual eyes and powers). The Claymores must struggle keep their demonic energy in check – while they need to draw on it to defeat the Yoma, over-use causes them to transform into the very creatures they were bred to kill.

Intro and Closing:

Other Notes: The violence in this one does get pretty bloody, and there are more than a few sexually suggestive scenes, so I'd say this one is not for the kids.

My Favorite Maps

Over at Gothridge Manor, +Tim Shorts asked folks to show him their best map.  I honestly can't claim to have any particular talent at drawing maps -- in fact, I think I'm rather weak at it -- so the best I can conjure up are some cobbled together maps that I made using Microsoft Picture It! or by using Hexographer in combination with Picture It! Most of these are maps I've drawn up as I've been thinking about what to run after the Ephemera campaign winds up.

Galewind Island: A possible setting to run in the future. 

The surrounding sea allows for almost limitless expansion.

Krule World: Another possible setting to run in the future. 

The eponymous city making it just a bit less serious in tone.

Ravens Port: An urban/megadungeon combo. 

The map is a woodcut of "Genoa" from Hartmann Schedel's 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle. 

I edited it (adding and removing features and adding labels) with Picture It!

Fairbrook and Evirons: from my now completed West Kingdom PbB campaign.

Mostly this one has nostalgia value, as it marked the my return to GMing after about two decades.

Saturday Anime: Death Note

Title: Death Note

Creators: anime directed by Tetsurō Araki and based on the manga written by Tsugumi Ohba and illustrated by Takeshi Obata.

Premise: Late high school/early college student Light Yagami discovers a Shinigami's (Grim Reaper's) notebook on the ground. It turns out when you write someone's name in the book, the person dies. What would you do if such a notebook fell into your hands? C'mon, you know you'd use it...

Closing Music:

The song is "Alumina" by the Japanese band Nightmare