Tuesday, March 17, 2009

to crush the moon

Bizarrely the last book of the Queendom of Sol series reminds me a bit of the last book in the Lord of the Rings series. It also does remind me of the end of the Foundation series.

Lord of the Rings because at the end the remaining heroes go on a sort of quest across mountain ranges, through impossible weather, and survive against all odds; and Foundation because in a robot resides the key to the situation at hand (in this case the end of the human race).




Of course there are no elves or hobbits in Crushing the Moon (thank god!), and the robots are malevolent (they overrode the asimovian conditions), not benevolent like Daneel, but the whole ending had a sense of déjà vu, augmented by the fact that there are 2 endings, à la Lord of the Rings (who has like 46)

BUT the book reads very well and the story is very interesting: we are in the final stages of the war between house servants and the last humans, who live on the crushed moon and are back to being mortal.

Old king Bruno (about 3000 years old) is brought to the rescue by his son’s best friend (or to be more precise by the last remaining copy of the best firend of at least one of the copies of his son) in order to find a solution to the war and save what’s left of the human race.

We also learn why and how the earth was destroyed (Murdered Earth as it is called) and what happened of the colonies, all well written and based on possible science.

All in all a very good ending to a pretty good series:

8/10

Sunday, March 15, 2009

My first ever D&D game

So.

The 4th edition came out, and with it came a chance to buy all the 3.5 books for cheap! I was able to get the 4 main books for 20$, pretty good considering that when they came out years ago, each one of them was 45$.

My girlfriend has been out of the country for the last 2 weeks, plenty of time for me to read the books and learn to play. But since i'm lazy i didn't completely read 'em, just the essentials to have fun.

And in between phone calls at work, i started designing my first adventure. A cool little story with a plot and a twist.
Then all my friends pretty much said they wanted to play evil.

So the workload got a little bigger. Creating a new adventure and a bunch of monster races was fun though, so it didn't feel too much like work hehehe.

The night before, people came over and created their characters, a process than can take up to several hours, especially for a first player. I was very surprised at the amount of people that showed up for the game, since D&D is the ultimate geek step!

To sum up the characters, and their handler:
I was the DM, so no characters or NPCs here.

My first friend, a lawyer in real life and the one that read all the combat rules for me, created a centaur ranger, and created a skill (Read the Stars) that only he can use. Basically, once a night if he can see the stars, he roles a 1D6. On a 1, all the party has -1 on saving throws the next day, but a 6 gives them +1 on all!
He became the leader since he had more charisma.

Second friend, a telemarketing dude who enjoys sci-fi and fantasy, was playing a Half-Demon Warlock. He's really the head of the party, thinking about good courses of action.

Third friend, a guy who always wanted to play so he could be a ninja, made a Human Rogue with skills in acrobatics and intimidate more than lockpicking or anything. Driven by mischief, he enjoys putting the party in difficult spots and trying acrobatic jumps to show off.

Fourth friend, a firefighter and amazing hockey player, was a Half-Vampire Fighter. He was the fearless fighter, often in difficult spots but always pulling through.

Fifth friend, a sports apparel salesman, was playing an Elf Rogue. Archer and lockpicker, he enjoyed doing stuff that a DM does not foresee.

The adventure went as follows: The group had been front-liners for the army of a rampaging Orc War-Lord, pillaging the human lands for decades now. Growing tired of little games, he hand-picks our ''heroes'' to become his private strike team. Their mission: To infiltrate a Lord's mansion and steal the Horn of Fog possessed by the human. This will give the Orcs an advantage in taking castles, hiding from the archers in the fog. The Warlord equips the team with weapons and adventuring tools, and tells them they can take all the loot they want. A 50 gold piece bonus is waiting for them if they bring back the head of their enemies. Those who don't will face 10 whips.

The funnest part of the adventure was right at the beginning, a complet surprise to me, the DM.
The group had to get on a raft and travel down a river until they could find a proper place to land. I put a Balance check of 10 to not fall in the water when you get on the raft, and a Swim check of 10 in the water. I also had put a Squid in the river if someone would fall. I didn't think much of it, with the DC being only 10.

Well, our Centaur leader gets on the raft just fine, along with the Warlock. The Fighter on the other hand, slips on the wet wood that makes the raft, and falls in the water! The Squid grabbed him right away, and started squeezing.

Seeing the fighter didn't come back up, the Rogue decides to throw his rope in the water for the fighter. No time to take off the Grappling Hook. A Dex check makes the throw perfect, and the Fighter was able to grab the rope. A strenght check from the Rogue and the Centaur who was helping him had them pull the Fighter back on the raft, along with the squid. Everybody misses their shot at the squid, except the Elven Rogue who hits the monster right in the head, almost killing him.

Memorable moment: The human rogue is tired of holding the rope. He tries to intimidate the elven rogue next to him into holding the rogue. The check fails. The human simply lets go of the rope, losing it in the process! Good laughs there. '' Take the rope! No. Allright, too bad! ''

The Centaur decides to use his natural weapon (Hoof, 1D4) to attack the squid. He misses critically, falls back down heavily on the raft. Balance check for everyone. Everyone falls in the water!

The Fighter decides to bite the squid's tentacle, who releases its grip after squeezing 1 HP out of him. He swims back to the surface. A ink cloud in the water signals to the party that the monster has fled. The Centaur came close to drowning, but after a short while everybody was back on board.

They finally found a good spot to land. The human rogue felt he had to redeem himself in the eyes of the elf, and attemps to front-flip out of the raft and on dry land. He fails miserably, landing right on his ass, while everyone started laughing. He tried to intimidate everyone into silence, wich didn't work.
After that, they started to follow a trail in the forest. Unknown to them, that was actually a trail for wolves! The Rogue was walking in the back, and was able to hear a pair of the animals before they were caught flat-footed. A failed check to handle the animals had one of the wolves jump at his neck, almost killing him in one blow!
Rogues went to the woods, trying to get ranged sneak attacks, while the fighter started doing his thing.
Memorable moments: the human was caught behind the centaur and could not get a clear shot. He decides to attemp to jump on the centaur's back, and then leap to the wolves. He miserably fails his jump check, jumps too low, and hits the horse ass hard! Good laughs there too.

The wolves had 2 of the villains almost dead, and so the party decided to take 24 hours and have the centaur heal them. The Fighter went exploring by himself. While he was gone, the human robbed the warlock, who had collected wolf teeth. He took the teeth and threw them in the woods, and ran to where he heard some noise. Turns out the fighter had found an old shack, where a zombie was sleeping. The fighter single-handedly killed the zombie, and the stench of the rotten corpse had the human take a fortitude check. Yup, failed again!
Memorable moment: the human is vomiting because of the stench, while the Fighter cuts the head off the monster. The head rolls to the human's feet, only to have him throw up again. Haha!

After that, the group re-joined. After an hour's walk, they arrived at a village in a clearing. The village looked abandoned. While the party was deciding about how to loot all the houses, the human left by himself and entered a house. Pitch-black, he wasn't able to see a giant spider, but laid his hand on it, revealing the insect as big as a cat!

The other players were actually contemplating burning him alive in the house, but instead chose to explore another house. 2 spiders as big as men attacked them, almost killing the centaur and the fighter with their poison. The centaur was still able to kill both of them however.

The human had run out of the house, and the warlock lit a torch and burned the first house with a bunch of spiders in them. The centaur then proceeded to burn all the houses in the village.

Memorable moment: the fighter is almost dead. The centaur rushes in the house to save him, trying to push the spider away, only to be himself poisoned hehe.

All in all, everyone had tons of fun, can't wait for the rest of the adventure!

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Weird

In my quest to find D&D material to prepare for my first ever real game, and i stumbled upon this weird piece of fiction.

First thinking it was a humourous comic, i quickly realised it was a serious piece, put together by our nice little christian friends.

Enjoy!

http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.asp