2014 Year in Review

2014 was an interesting year.

• Taught in a distance educating school
• went on strike for 4 weeks and a bit,
• went to London and Paris with the family
• and played a lot of games (both digital and non-digital).

Overall a good year even with the loss of a months salary and stress caused by my work strike.  Now on to some more specific accounts on various gaming fronts.

D&D - 5th Edition Reboot part 1

As part of my vacation I visited my sister in Ottawa to see what our nation's capital had to offer.  A strange coincidence was that Wizard's Tower also happened to be in Ottawa (which I totally did not know despite having subscribed to their email mailing list for a few months).  I found a way to get myself there and to my surprise they had the D&D Next Player's Handbook available (it wasn't supposed to be until a week or so later) so I picked it up.  I spent a few evenings reading over the rules and the new character options and was quite impressed.  It was the first D&D book I had purchased since I think 2nd edition AD&D.

With the Player's Handbook in hand I proceeded to round up the group and decided to roll up new characters for a new adventure.  So far the party has a Tiefling Warlock and a Dragonborn Paladin and both players sort of half-rolled half-picked their background which I'll describe a little later.  One of my favourite features of the new handbook are the pre-built backgrounds which really helped my players generate a background for their characters.  That's one aspect of RPG games that we often overlook as a group and with a bunch of them already presented it's not hard to find one that you like and roll or pick the details from the tables provided.  Absolutely great in my opinion.

Now on to the two characters so far! (no names yet though)

D&D - Learning from Critjuice

I had the pleasure of driving myself to work on Monday so rather than listen to the radio stations I decided to do what I usually do when I drive by myself: catch up on the episodes of Critjuice that I missed!  Note: my work commute is about an hour both ways and I carpool on most days.

For those that don't know what Critjuice is, it's a podcast of a bunch of professional actors and comedians playing Dungeons and Dragons while drinking.  I don't remember why I started listening but in the two years I've been listening to them play (I think I'm one of their first listeners now that I think about it), I've always had a good laugh and they always make my drive home very entertaining.

The DM, David,  is great and from listening to him (and Chris Perkins' PAX games) I've become a much better DM myself I think.  While my games always had a lot of free flow in terms of rules (I regularly throw out rules or adapt them if it makes the current scene cooler) it lacked a lot of NPC involvement.  Since listening to Critjuice my NPCs have a lot more character now as I've attempted (with varying degrees of success) to give them voices and mannerisms different from my own.  It's really changed the feel of the games I play in my opinion.

Anyways, what I really wanted to write about today was the new Team Up mechanic that David introduced in the last few episodes.  To me it reminded me a lot of the Chrono-Trigger dual-tech abilities.  The visuals described by two heroes combining their techniques into a super powerful technique is just really cool.  This would  give players a reason to understand the other characters abilities and allow a lot more role playing during a combat encounter which is always great.  Too often my players just say "I'm going to swing my sword at him." or "I cast magic missile at the goblin.".  While there is nothing wrong with that, it can make for a boring game if that's all you do or say for every combat encounter.

While the net effect in Critjuice is just a damage modifier I can see it leading to all sorts of other in-game effects.  Imagine a ranger letting loose a flurry of arrows while his mage buddy imbues them with some sort of magical power like ice.  Upon impact, in addition to the damage of both attacks, the impact of the ice arrows might make an area of difficult terrain or encase the targets in ice for a round.  The possibilities are quite endless and I am excited to bring this mechanic into my own games of D&D in the future.

I wonder if any of the players in Critjuice will try a triple or quadruple team up move at some point in the future...

D&D - Dungeons and Princesses

So this past weekend was BCs Family Day long weekend.  As such I got to spend some time with my daughter when I normally would be at work.

My wife had gotten her some Capsule Books a few months back and she decided to introduce one of them to Penny.  Penny chose the Disney Princess one and her mother read her the story.  Each book had a bunch of thick cardboard cutouts of the princesses as well as cutouts of the princesses dancing with their princes.  Penny had a lot of fun moving them around on the included playmat and was having a good time.

But I noticed something about the cutouts as she played with them.

Outlaw Shizzle - The Story so far (episodes 4-6 recap)

Been a bit behind with the story of Outlaw Shizzle.  Lots of stuff going so what I present here is just a quick recap of what occured in the last 3 episodes.

Episode 4 - The Fall of the Fox
The group manages to fight their way through the Fox's undead minions and his magical traps and eventually confront the Fox in his lair.  A vicious fight ensues with the elite undead guards of the Fox and the Fox himself.  The adventurers use every technique in their arsenal and manage to bring the Fox down.
Looting his lair, they learn that the Rage's family has been sending food stuffs and other supplies to the denizens of the Northern Reaches, a mountain chain east and north of Babel Gilga.  In return, necromantic reagents are being smuggled into the city.

Outlaw Shizzle - Episode 3 - How they found the Fox

Alright, so it's been a while since I wrote about Outlaw Shizzle mostly because it's been a while since we all got together.  To give an idea of our group, we're all old gamers around our 30s (maybe not as old as some gamers and definately not as young as some) so we've got obligations outside of gaming.  Being a teacher, I tend to have a bunch of stuff to mark or plan (and this planning isn't about what monster or insane dungeon to throw at the party) so some weekends just don't work for me.  Others in the group have out of town jobs or kids or work late or whatever.

We're all still gamers at heart so we try to get together as often as our schedule permits to game out.  If we can't get together, well there's a lot of online games we play (lately the group has been playing a lot of League of Legends).  Speaking of League of Legends (or LoL as it's come to be known as), I've been playing the game since it got out of beta off and on and I am amazed at how popular it has become as well as the plethora of champions available (I remember when Udyr, the first non-beta champion, came out). Currently I've been playing as a jungler with Xin Zhao or Jarvan IV mostly because of their way awesome Warring Kingdoms skins.

Anyways on to a recap of Outlaw Shizzle Episode 3 - How they found the Fox.

Outlaw Shizzle - Episode 2 - How they got the Silver

This week's adventure was interesting considering the last adventure kind of ended on a sour note with the Fox getting the better of the group.  It was the first time I think I ended a session where the PCs thought they had the victory but it turned out it was what the villain wanted.

When last we left Outlaw Shizzle they had finished burning down The Red Herron in the southern district of Babel Gilga.  However, from the ashes of the burning tavern the group saw the dead patrons rising up from the inferno as zombies with the Fox taunting them in the background.

Now the group had not only the Fox to deal with, but a newly arisen army of the dead....

Outlaw Shizzle - Episode 1 - How they met Anvil

In my last post about Outlaw Shizzle I remade some of the characters to fit the new playtest package.  However, after consulting with some of the players we went with a slightly different route for some of them.  The following characters are different from what I posted earlier in the Outlaw Shizzle retcon post.

Grudge Jr.

• Race:  Hill Dwarf
• Class:  Cleric - Lifegiver
• Background:  Bounty Hunter
• Specialty:  Hedge Magician

Angel Ripper the Third

• Race:  Wood Elf
• Class:  Monk of the Phoenix
• Background:  Thug
• Specialty: Two-weapon fighter

Pretty Boy Ray

• Race:  Halfling Lightfoot
• Class:  Rogue - Scout
• Background:  Artisan - Blacksmith
• Specialty:  Expert

Similar to what I decided but Grudge is now a full on healer (the players were joking he's like Dog the Bounty Hunter now, trying to make people turn good) and Angel Ripper is a better thug (kind of reminds of the Tattooed Men from the Legend of the Five Rings setting).  We also changed the Masons to be more of an underhand of the government of Babel Gilga so the Masons are now an organized crime group that works for the government.
Unfortunately for the Masons, and by extension Outlaw Shizzle, the Syndicate is trying to gain a foothold in Babel Gilga and threatens the prosperous relationship the Masons have with the city-state's government.

Outlaw Shizzle Retcon time

Just as I started my new D&D next campaign, Wizards of the Coast goes and releases a new playtest package (https://www.wizards.com/DnD/DnDNext.aspx) which is great and all but changes some of the classes a bit and actually removes some too.  Soooo I'm going to go and retcon some of the characters to fit the new playtest materials.

For reference here's the original cast as rolled with the previous playtest package

• The Rage - Stout Halfling Cleric Guardian Noble
• Grudge Jr. - Hill Dwarf Warlock Bounty Hunter Healer
• Slater Jr. - Human Fighter Thief Acolyte
• Angel Ripper the Third - Wood Elf Sorcerer Thug Necromancer
• Pretty Boy Ray - Halfling Lightfoot Rogue Blacksmith Jack of all Trades
• Anvil - Human Wizard Knight Lurker

Thankfully the races haven't been changed to much so there's not much to do there.  With the new classes, backgrounds and specialties I think I will change the cast to the following

Outlaw Shizzle - The Pilot Episode

This past Sunday saw the reboot of my D&D campaign with my old play group.  To recap, I had my players roll their race, class, background and specialty all randomly and they were given a random wrestler name from one of the many wrestler name apps out there.

Here's what Outlaw Shizzle ended up being.

• The Rage - Stout Halfling Cleric Guardian Noble
• Grudge Jr. - Hill Dwarf Warlock Bounty Hunter Healer
• Slater Jr. - Human Fighter Thief Acolyte
• Angel Ripper the Third - Wood Elf Sorcerer Thug Necromancer
• Pretty Boy Ray - Halfling Lightfoot Rogue Blacksmith Jack of all Trades
• Anvil - Human Wizard Knight Lurker (was originally a High Elf but I had a cooler looking human wizard model so I changed him to a Human)

How the party came together was quite interesting.  I used the strategy of having one player connect their character with the player to their left or right and then go around the table (I think it's from one of the 4th edition Dungeon Master Guides) and this is what we came up with:

• The Rage is a cleric of war who comes from a prominant noble family in the city the campaign is based out of (name of the city is Babel Gilga).  He knows Grudge Jr. because Grudge happens to be his family's groundskeeper/personal security (sort of like Higgins from Magnum, P.I.).
• Grudge knows Angel Ripper as one of his underground contacts for finding bounties or getting new contracts.  Grudge may or may not know about Angel Ripper's ties to the Masons (one of the two major organized crime groups in the region) mostly because I forgot to ask the two players to clarify that part of their relationship.
• Angel Ripper knows Slater Jr. because they are both in the Masons.  Angel's thug-like attitude allowed him to get into the criminal organization and the two are often deployed together.  Slater as muscle while Angel Ripper as the diplomat (whopping 18 charisma)
• Slater Jr. is a trained thief for the Masons who has also become a devoted follower of the Church of War.  He knows The Rage because they are part of the same religious group and Slater is studying as an acolyte under The Rage and will smite the foes of his church.

The players for Pretty Boy Ray and Anvil weren't around so we just made up a story for them that would fit well.

• Pretty Boy Ray runs a blacksmith for the Masons which is sometimes used as a safe house, hideout or even to launder money.  Being a rogue it made sense for this character to have ties to the Masons.
• Anvil is a vigilante in the lawless parts of southern Babel Gilga keeping the peace as best as he can.  The group will meet up with him later as they continue to adventure in Babel Gilga.

Running an organized crime adventure group is kind of out of the norm as most adventurer groups operate on the other side of the law.  However, I envisioned the Masons not so much as evil organized crime but more of a keeping the status quo type of organized crime.  They maintain order in their parts and as long as the regular authorities keep out of their way, the Masons will keep their activities under the radar.  Of course this will change when the Syndicate (the other major crime group in the area) wants to change the balance of power in their favour.

I'll post a little more about the setting in a future post so some of these names, places and organizations make more sense.

Anyways on to their first adventure in which they are introduced to one of the Syndicate's capos.

Tournaments, MTG Cubing & D&D Next

Orctoberfest 2012 came and went and seemed to be a success again.  Had the biggest turnout this year, surprisingly I think Orctoberfest had more people show up than the annual Remembrance Day tournament that has been going on in the area for the last 15 years.  I suppose advertising helps? 

Hopefully the turnout for next year's Orktoberfest will be just as big.  I'm expecting so as next year will be a 40k year for the event and 40k should be more popular with more 6th edition books coming out between now and next October.  More details in the new year.

The only unfortunate thing about this year's Orctoberfest was that I didn't get any pictures.  We were in the middle of packing for a move which never occurred and I totally forgot to pack my camera or ask to borrow my dad's digital SLR.  Oh well, next year for sure I will have pictures.

Kinda bummed I missed out on this year's Remembrance Day Challenge but house hunting was more important.  The owners of Great White did mention they were going to be putting on a Warhammer Fantasy tournament in the spring so maybe I'll try to attend that one.  Just need a fantasy army.

As for other wargaming, not much has occurred.  I picked up the Dark Vengeance box.  Mostly for the rulebook but I did manage to trade the Chaos half for more Dark Angels.  The models in hindsight, while good looking and well detailed, were unnecessary as I have a complete army already.  It's been a few months since I got them and I've only put together two Tactical Squads and one Deathwing squad.  Still have the two Ravenwing squadrons and a Deathwing squad on sprue plus the commander and librarian and special edition chaplain.  Tempted to sell the non-Deathwing stuff I have as I read there are rumors of a Deathwing box being released with the new Dark Angels codex and I hardly ever play with anything other than a full Deathwing army nowadays.

So what have I been doing to keep my gaming self satisfied?  Got around to building an MTG cube with a bunch of MTG cards I had lying around plus some generous donations from my brother-in-law.  I had heard about the format before but never played.  After some reading about cubing, it sounded like fun so I put one together and played with some of my old high school friends.  Turns out they enjoyed the cube and wouldn't mind cubing again.

I wasn't happy with the original cube though so I scoured channelfireball.com for some cheap cards to make some of the themes and archetypes stand out a bit more.  Most of my friends haven't played MTG in years so aren't familiar with many of the newer mechanics or synergies so my cube is a pseudo-noob friendly cube.  Mostly basic mechanics and strategies with a few intermediate-advanced strategies and the cards I bought should make those strategies more obvious.  Just gotta wait a few days for the cards to arrive and then I can update my cube!

This brings up an amusing anecdote from the first run through of my cube.  I was mentioning that there was a lot of red burn being passed around in the first pack and after the draft had finished, one of my friends who had never played before beat me quite handily with a pure red burn deck.  He ended up picking every high damage burn spell and just burned me out both games.  Maybe I had too many burn spells but at least that is a noob friendly strategy.  Hoping to see what other strategies show up as we cube over the holiday season.

In addition to the construction of my MTG cube, I had my same high school friends make up D&D characters so we could play test D&D Next.  We ended up doing random race, class, background and specialty and a random wrestler name.  So the group (they decided would be called Outlaw Shizzle to honour the last group we had) is as follows:

• The Rage - Stout Halfling Cleric Guardian Noble
• Grudge Jr. - Hill Dwarf Warlock Bounty Hunter Healer
• Slater Jr. - Human Fighter Thief Acolyte
• Angel Ripper the Third - Wood Elf Sorcerer Thug Necromancer
• Pretty Boy Ray - Halfling Lightfoot Rogue Blacksmith Jack of all Trades (we were all disappointed that this guy turned out very archetypal)
• Anvil - High Elf Wizard Knight Lurker

You'll have to sign up for the play test to find out what all those terms mean but needless to say, the group makeup is quite interesting.  I think I will have them flesh out their backgrounds when we meet up next so we can have some idea of how this bizarre crew got together in the first place.  I think I will run the campaign like a serial action TV series similar to shows like The A-Team, MacGuyver and similar.  Less planning and no need for an overall story arc (though given my style of story telling I will probably put some recurring themes which will eventually fit into an overall story arc)

Looking forward to a nice holiday season of gaming with my friends.

The Adventures of Outlaw Shizzle - Episode 2 "Conspiracy Uncovered"

Got together with my friends again for another night of D&D (see first episode here).

Prior to starting I showed them some figures I planned on ordering to properly represent their characters. I never realized just how diverse Reaper Miniatures is with regard to the types of models they produce. Anyways, I picked up the following models to represent the following characters

• For Jack Crusher, I picked out Bledsoe the Evil Cleric. I figured he would make an appropriate Invoker of the Raven Queen. I might try and replace the skull on the staff with a bird.
  
• For Andre Zodiac, I picked Thorgram, Dwarf Warlord. This was more because I needed a general to lead my future dwarf army and Thorgram looked really cool.
• For Sergeant Enforcer, I picked Goldar the Barbarian. Not really a ranger looking character but the way Enforcer is played, the barbarian model makes more sense. Plus he's one of the only goliath looking models I've seen.
• For Cardiac Bison I am using Audt, Reptus Sergeant. I might replace the sword as it looks silly in my opinion.
• And finally for Mr. Hunter I picked Balthon, Overlords Cleric. Thought he would make a great Cleric of the Raven Queen. Might try to replace the skull with a bird though.

Hopefully they get here soon. Looking forward to having more character appropriate models. Anyways on to their second adventure.

Stomach flu sucks & Mantic Games armies

D&D adventure this weekend was cancelled due to me (the DM) catching my daughter Penny's stomach flu (which I probably gave her because I work at a school and who knows what crazy things the students have).

Oh well. Got around to making a new figure for our Goliath ranger, Sergeant Enforcer, and did some shopping around on the Reaper Miniatures website for some random hero figures for a future dwarf army I am planning. I need an army for next year's Orctoberfest as I sold off my old Bretonnians (I kept the newer models) and thus don't have a 2500 point army anymore.

What sucks is that I can't get to 2500 points with my Bretonnian army without shelling out an obscene amount of money. Even if I go all cavalry I need to buy some 2 or 3 boxes of knights which will run over $100 but then I have no archer or men-at-arms support and everything else is taken up by characters. To get the proper support I'd need to shell out another $100 just for some 200 points of archers and/or men-at-arms.

Enter Mantic Games. My god are those models cheap, good looking and so plentiful! One of their dwarf box sets which retails for around $100 is around 1500 points in GWs books. Then add some characters and runes and you've got close to 2000. A few more cheap box sets and it's easily 2500 for less than $150 or so. It also helps that I've got 3 28mm scale catapults that I can use for grudge throwers to help round out the army.

To help finance this new army I did have to sell some other things first though. Out went my AoBR Deathwing, my Deathwing Land Raider and some tactical squads I didn't use anymore (thankfully I made profit on those so I can replace the Deathwing stuff if I wanted to later). Once those make it to their destinations I'll place an order for a new Dwarf army. May not be GW but whatever, I can still play casually and at independant tournaments.

The Adventures of Outlaw Shizzle - Episode 1 "The Great Escape"

Haven't had any time at all to play any kind of wargame and I'm so dissappointed I missed the Remembrance Day Challenge. But that's life I suppose.

Instead of being too down that I can't get my gaming fix, I decided to start up a Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition campaign with my old playgroup. We haven't played an RPG in a long while and 4th edition D&D seemed like a great place to start. The ruleset is quite straight forward and there's a lot of variety to keep everyone happy. Not to mention we were all itching to play some kind of RPG again.

One of the things we always hated was character creation as it took a while if no one knew what they wanted to be exactly. So we decided to assign a role to everyone (each player took on the role of striker, controller, leader or defender) then roll for random classes in each role and then finally random races. We ended up with some interesting combinations and shortened character creation time considerably (no looking through each book to figure out what to be).

• The defender of the party is a dragonborn warden named Cardiac Bison
• The striker of the party is a goliath ranger named Sergeant Enforcer
• The controller of the party is a human invoker of the Raven Queen named Jack Crusher
• The party has two leaders (we had a fifth player who rolled his role randomly), one half-elf cleric of the Raven Queen named Mr. Hunter and one dwarf bard named Andre Zodiac.

We were all fans of the WWE at some point and one of the players had a wrestler name app on their iphone and named everyone in the party (and the party name too) using it, so the names of the characters are kind of strange (the app did speed up the character creation as well)

The party was balanced and the players got to play characters they haven't played before. Not surprisingly being veteran gamers my players all did their best to min/max their characters to be the best they could be.

Anyways what follows is a recap of our first adventure.