Turning over the Highlander Conundrum
~~~
Potential campaign blurb

In the end there could be only one, and that one was MacLeod. But part of the Prize was mortality, and nature abhors a vacumn. Now new immortals are rising and banding together for protection - in the modern world powerful organisations hunting for the secret of immortality are the greatest threat to your Quickening.

~~~
Mechanical notes

The immortality thing is actually a bonus for a campaign containing violence - damage slows an immortal down and massive damage renders them unconscious while they regenerate but it's written that you're never going to accidentally kill a PC.

The 'years of accumulated knowledge' is not a major issue in the above scenario because young immortals don't have centuries of experience, but is easily treated as a pool of plot-points which can be spent on
- 'Yeah, I know something about this / once beheaded someone who knew about this'
- or temporary bonuses to a skill/stat/roll.

These should recover in two ways
- slowly over time
- all at once and possibly increasing the pool during a Quickening

And the power level of the game can be set relatively easily by adjusting the cap and recharge rate.

There would have to be a duelling sub-system encouraging burning off points in anticipation of the Quickening or death, because it wouldn't be Highlander without an occasional epic sword fight with bad-guy immortals.

http://tvnz.co.nz/20-20-news/coming-up-20-having-larp-3047776/video

Apparently 20/20 did a segment on LARPing this week. It's about 13 minutes, and a really positive portrayal.

HT: adrexia via FaceBook

via roleplayingtips.com -

http://www.godeckyourself.com/ (beta)

From the same person who has been maintaining the RedBlade D&D character manager for years, a new project. Make custom CCG size cards in a variety of styles and download them as .pdfs for printing.

It's still pretty rough around the edges, but there's a lot of potential. I would have used this to generate the item handouts for NeverWinter had it been available (in fact I recreated some of them as a test deck).

The pdfs generated here could be combined with a service like scribd.com for wider distribution/webpage embedding.

Two and a half years
13 levels, + a few more lost to Raise Dead & the like
Finding the cure to a supernatural plague through to taking on the Yuan-ti Sorceress Lich Queen in her pocket dimension, killing her, then killing her again after her life force animated a colossal statue

One of the best campaigns I've ever concluded, it's been a ride to DM and I'm really grateful that I had some great players to share it with.

And another great thing is is that this one is completely reusable. In a few years time I look forward to running it again, modified and improved based on what I learnt this time.

I've not been getting much time to LJ recently. That was supposed to be Monday, but urgent work came in.

I've a backlog of rants and thoughts built up which I hope to get out eventually. Life is a bit of a struggle, but my reserves are slowly building up again.

Still no closer to figuring out what it is I should actually be doing with my life.

~~~
Went to Buckets of Dice last weekend - I'm happy to say that it actually felt like a Buckets. They've been missing that vibe the last few years - heck, I didn't even attend last year.

Saturday morning I played in a mis-characterised D&D game with a novice DM. Still with with a bunch of experienced gamers at the table we managed to get characters put together and get through most of the scenario.

Saturday afternoon I ran a small-scale Ace of Spades game where the PC minions of the Evil Reptilian Overlords (and their own meat-puppets) eventually rebelled (kind of) and warped to an unexplored part of the galaxy, there being absorbed into a energy-insect hive-mind along with a renegade Reptilian Overlord - their foreign concepts of free will eventually causing the hive to schism, spontaneously develop new queens and set off to colonise the galaxy.

Sunday morning I was pressed into Warboss Wilson's (Low Volume) Waaaaargh which I quite enjoyed, due in large part to the fact that with fewer players than the game was designed for there was a much quieter, thinkier and non-backstabby approach to the scenario. My Ork did eventually wind up with humie bits inside him after failing in an attempt to pre-emptively eliminate the Doc who was dangerously close to making a challenge for the leadership.

Sunday afternoon was short on players for Ace of Spades so instead mostly socialised, played Al-Hambra, played some cards. Joined the group outing to Foo San for dinner.

Hereditary Sword (aka Bloodline Sword)
These weapons are crafted so as to be attuned to the descendants of a certain individual or family, and to all others serve as no more than a masterwork sword. Exact abilities vary as with any other magical weapon (and not all Hereditary weapons are swords).

Some families are larger than others (and Hereditary weapons don't usually distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate family members), so some older Hereditary swords turn up in the history books more often than others. Some do have greater restrictions on their wielder - the oldest female child, or the heir designate for example.

Each Hereditary sword is a unique item, but because of their use in identifying members of a bloodline some forgeries attuned to other individuals or requiring an activation of some form have been forged over the years. These rarely have more than the minimum abilities required to propagate the disguise.

I'm not so much interested in the article, but in the fact that it's made mention in the mainstream media. Slow news day, gamer at the Herald or RPGs no longer niche?

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10579328

SEATTLE - Eight people face accusations they illegally posted the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons' newest handbook for download on the internet.

Neverwinter last night was mostly 'hang on to the locomotive while the GM narrates', but we've missed two sessions and I decided to do away with the trap-laden dungeon crawl. The Word of Protection (now in the PCs possession, where it more or less wants to be) has both more direct and more subtle methods anyway.

The PCs received their rewards for this arc, and the players will be happy shopping over the coming week. I've decided to let them have a significant power boost so they can start facing off with some big opponents over the last few months of the campaign.

~~~
This afternoon was the SAGA board games afternoon, which was well attended. I played one game of Ticket to Ride, one of Hunters & Gatherers and two of Pandemic (1 overrun by the black plague, 1 win). I was so engrossed in the games I forgot to take any photos despite deliberately taking my camera along.

This has left me a little peopled out.

~~~
Finally located a photo of myself from the SteamPunk party in March, yay Jen.

( snip )

I've managed to join a D&D4e game on Tuesdays. Dillo (I'm-a Dillo!) is a halfling fighter who wields a flail and whose default tactic whenever the game gets bogged down is to charge into the middle of things and start mixing it up rather than wait for the other PCs to eventually come to a consensus.

I think he'll be fun to play.

~~~
A last-minute lack of players led to NeverWinter being cancelled for the second week in a row, so instead we played Pandemic. I liked it - it requires very tight strategic teamwork on the part of the players to stand a chance against a fairly vicious outbreak mechanic. The randomisation of the initial setup and which character (therefore useful special ability) isn't in play for any given game provide good elements of replayability. The chance to clean up a virus entirely can buy you some valuable time, but can equally waste time which could have been better spent getting into position to share cards and find the next cure. The temptation to eradicate cost us the first game, but managing to do so took a lot of pressure off in the second.

Wednesday - had a really good evening being social at Creative Space. Didn't actually get much project work done and what I did was mostly a do-over of Sunday - but it clicked this time!

Thursday - A session long battle against the BBG which gave everyone at the table some nervous moments - including me as the party managed to drop his immunity to mental effects and Feeblemind him - leaving him reactively and defensively casting only his Divine spells until they did enough damage that Contingency kicked in and whisked him away.

That will definitely act as a delayer to the Cult's plans and has gained the PCs a valuable catch-up on the timeline. Meanwhile they continue this day of the adventure down a large amount of their spell power. Eeeexcellent....

Nearly lost a PC - until I realised I'd cocked something up in an earlier session and she should have had more HP to start with. The encounter could have been a TPK had I opened with a bigger spell, so I think I played it about right.

~~~
This morning has mostly been eaten catching up with Emma's Are we there yet? thread over on Public Address, but I have taken some time to revisit my power tracking / comparison with PowerShop spreadsheet for the past 12 months (ie pre solar).

It turns out that on my current Meridian Night & Day plan my average cost per unit is lower than anything offered at Powershop such that most months even had I bought most of my units early at the best price I've seen from PS I was still better off with Meridian by ~$20/month . That including the fixed charge and before the prompt-payment discount (so add a bit more).

Of course competition is relatively tight in the Christchurch residential power market, so I'm not surprised if we get some of the best prices in the country. I will be very interested to see how the numbers change over the next 12 months now that I'm theoretically using less of the cheaper night rate. It'll also give a chance to show how often PS deals like the $50 free power of March turn up, which could be a balancing factor.

Hot Water
I may have been compulsively checking the temperatures at frequent intervals to see what's going on. I hope that running the electric pump which moves the water to/from the solar collector is a lot more efficient than heating the water directly by element because otherwise all I've done is moved a lot of night-rate energy usage to day-rate.

I de-legalised the system yesterday - legally required there's a hot/cold mixer near the tank which is supposed to make sure that the water reaching the tap isn't more than 50something degC. But on a low-pressure system like I have here a significant amount of the pressure at-the-tap (or shower head!) comes from adding in cold at that point to bring the temperature down. So the effective water pressure suddenly started sucking.

Easily resolved by adjusting the mixer to let more hot through :)

~~~
NeverWinter
The party managed to trigger the whole complex into one big fight and made it through pretty much unscathed. I was very disappointed (but the players were happy). It didn't help that all the biggest spells I threw at them were countered by the Heroes Feast they'd eaten the previous session. I agree with a previous acquaintance that large-scale blanket immunities are as broken as Save-or-Die spells, and I think there will be some houseruling of spells going on before the next D&D campaign I run.

~~~
Work-related angst
I have multiple substantial projects on the go but I've been dealing (or rather, not) with a fair amount of angst over the fact that nothing I'm doing is really directed at bringing in paying work. It's not that I don't think I could bring value to - well, pretty much anything - or that I don't believe in what the web can do for a business, it's that I don't believe I have any more right to try and sell (effectively) random strangers of this value that the religious proselytisers that turn up on my doorstep every so often.

It's the exact same reason I lurk in online forums rather than posting - I don't believe that my opinion is any less valid or weaker than anyone else's but it's my opinion and I have absolutely no interest in trying to convince anyone else of its validity or the wrongness of theirs (on the rare occasion I actually think someone is 'wrong' rather than holding a valid alternative viewpoint).

Draft of an article I've written for the next Out of Character about designing the one-off I ran this year, posted for feedback.
( skip if you're not interested in scenario design )

What I ought to do is line up a video to dub and then go and do the dishes or somesuch. Right after I make a pointless post :)

~~~
An emotional afternoon yesterday didn't leave me in top for for gaming, and the session suffered. It was however a lesson in just how potent highish (11th) level casters can be against an army of mooks - who would have thought a large air elemental can hoover up and spit out 42 medium creatures a round? The opposing orc horde didn't get within 20' of the fortifications supported by the PCs, although some of that was due to me forgetting stuff. I also should have had a better idea of the visibility (or lack thereof) and used that - the fact it was night was sort of handwaved.

The hill giants soaked up a few fireballs, but the orc general being dropped to his death from 200' in the air pretty much ended things.

So D&D unstructured mass combats - it's not necessarily how many casters you have on your side (the orcs had a number of 5th level clerics), but who can cast the biggest spells soonest which makes the advantage. A more disciplined force might have pulled back and waited for the short-duration spells to expire before renewing the assault.

~~~
Racky update - front lump is also a 'benign' tumour.

I've spent some hours the past couple of days building a draft site for my uncle's helicopter tour business. I quite like the way it's come out actually, - maybe I'm starting to get my head around some of this "design" thing.

~~~
Had a nice lunch and catchup with morag_windstar today, which had the unintended side effect of sending me into a two-hour digestive nap after I got home.

~~~
WTF?! moment this evening - J K Rowling memorabilia on the Antiques Roadshow.

~~~
CoolIris's latest version comes with support for viewing files on your own computer. It's very slow to load them so it won't become my offline browser of choice, but it did lead me to go 'wow!' when I fired up the full screen slideshow. I forget just how good a picture/photo can look at max display on a good monitor with no distractions.

I need to minimise the IM sidebar and do that more often - I checked with Picasa and IrfanView which of course both respond much faster and it's not just something with CoolIris.

~~~
The latest Abracadabra column at rpg.net has some interesting discussion about the possible side-effects of magic mixed in with a table for critical spell failures.

The co-creator of D&D, who passed away a couple of days ago :(

http://www.koboldquarterly.com/k/article460.php

see also

http://www.koboldquarterly.com/k/article440.php

Apropos of everything, instead of making 3+ separate posts
( day off, BumpTop )
( cat )
( neverwinter )
( SOEs )

With the runny nose and the sneezing and the congested lungs (at least the chesty cough seems to have passed) and the interrupted sleep and the furry brain.

Today is going to be a day of not doing very much, and naps, and finding little reasons to be out in the sunshine and fresh air. I think it might be a good day to do some video capture.

~~~
There have been 3 sessions of Neverwinter this year and they have all been good, which pleases me. Despite one-shotting a PC in the first session (those wyverns - nasty sting in the tail) which was resolved in a drama encouraging manner (heh heh heh....)

I'm willing to be be a little more railroady this year, to avoid slowdowns like were faced last year, but the players have taken the bit between their teeth and are forging ahead along the most obvious path. This lead to all 5 PCs + animal companion being teleported into a 10x10 cell buck naked at the beginning of last nights session.

Monks really come into their own when the PCs lose all their gear. Druids too (wildshaping into a form small & flexible enough to get out through the grill, invisible thanks to the sorceress). And wimpy little shadows are suddenly a real threat again when the party has no magic weapons or spell components and the cleric doesn't have his holy symbol for Turning (mass Cure Moderate Wounds was pretty effective though).

The party did eventually get their gear back, and have picked up an NPC. Found the portal room and instructions (untested) to teleport back to the surface, but not the artifact they are looking for. A Sepia Snake Sigil concealed in the inventory of a wizard's storeroom got the druid and cost the cleric 8 spell slots (split either side of a rest period) before it was dispelled (did I mention that all spells cost an extra slot to cast in this place?)

We also discovered that a Wand of Cure Moderate Wounds is of no use against the cursed wounds inflicted by a clay golem, because there's no way a 5th level caster (wand creator) could make the DC 26 caster level check).

I'm having fun, and I think the players are as well :D

Kobold Keep ran well again on Thursday - another 10 minutes and they would have taken out the villain. Only because I was incredibly generous with staying alive in -ve HP rules though :D It was a fun game with four good players.

I've not in the slightest regretted allowing an exploit which basically means the party can recover to full strength after each encounter. It wouldn't work for a campaign, but for a one off it's fine - keeps the game moving and allows the mage/cleric far more flexibility with spell use - very important to keep new players of either involved.

~~~
I've remembered that I have an Armexis Journal outstanding - but it won't be today.

~~~
TY to the candy fairy :D All the edibles were rapidly consumed.

~~~
My back has been playing up all week :( Partially it's the cold, partially I think I've cocked up my seating arrangements either in the car or at the computer. Whatever the reason, yeah, pain.

~~~
Another nap is going to be in order.

I did a bunch of stuff yesterday that I can barely remember. All of it was meant to be vaguely productive in one way or another.

I can remember that there seemed to be a good turnout to the SAGA one-offs once we'd all split off into groups, but it seemed a bit light during the initial talking. I think some more people turned up later.

Ran my Kobold Keep scenario with two experienced and two novice players, and it went well. If we'd had another half-hour I think they would have finished it.