Pardon me while I choke on the dust of the vaccuuming... the kai-Imakhu's turbocharged, nuclear powered, molecular filtering vaccuum cleaner is All That, but a certain amount of care is required when emptying the bin. I think I inhaled half a cat.

(Not that I was engaging in spontaneous random cleaning, mind you. I just made a tremendous mess changing the lizard litter in Poco's cage.)

At lunch hour today, I checked Wizard's Wagon, the smaller game/comic shop in the mall which is currently in the process of packing up and moving out of the mall. I was looking for miniatures, and found a suitable one for Gengh at a cheap price: an ugly, wild, longhaired dude in a kilt with a crude spear. I also managed to snag a copy of Tome and Blood before anybody else (though I should have thought to call Mike to see if I should pick up one for him too).

I started painting Gengh in hopes that he'd be ready for Thursday's game, but my experiment with a different skin color failed and he's sort of a mustardy color. It may take a little extra time to fix that.

I have an angle on Livia now. Her "parents" actually found her on their doorstep as a near-newborn, but raised her as one of their own. Older Halflings in her village looked at her a little oddly, but she never knew why. As she prepared to set out on the 10-year walkabout type thing that Halflings do when they come of age, her father finally decided she should know. The news rattled her more than a little bit, and she's kind of been brooding about it ever since.

In the campaign, our current mission is to deliver a message to a certain green dragon who owes our employer a favor. Livia's going to freak when she sees the dragon -- it's going to really bother her in some subconscious way (besides the usual "oh crap it's a dragon" reaction that any sane person would have).

And it's really going to mess with her head when she starts turning into one. <cackle>

One of the prestige classes in Tome and Blood is the Dragon Disciple -- just the ticket for those sorcerers who think they have dragon blood. As they gain levels, they gradually manifest more and more physical characteristics of a half-dragon, until at 10 they reach "dragon apotheosis." Unfortunately, since Livia is currently a Small creature, she'll only grow to Medium size and will never have wings... but a human-sized Halfling with scales, fangs, and claws who can exhale corrosive gas is going to be unusual enough!

Is this dragon we've been sent to negotiate with actually Livia's biological mother? Maybe. (Though I could choose a different dragon type to manifest as, I probably won't just to leave that question up in the air.) If so, will either of them know? Maybe...

Now I'm looking forward to Livia stuff as much as Marabi stuff... whee! ;)

It would be easier to support my local gaming shop if their stuff was cheaper. They carry a ton of miniatures, too many to actually check out every one in a single visit without feeling guilty for taking up the roommates' time.

I didn't find a suitable miniature for Gengh. Most spear-wielding figures are either in fancy armor, or are nearly-naked women. Nothing that fit the image of a half-orc druid with a pike-length spear well enough to pay $7 for.

But I did find a decent figure for Marabi. Not quite what I envisioned, but you try finding miniatures with fans that aren't geisha. (Actually I did find one with a closed fan, but it was an ugly figure.) Some compromise between this and the dancer I had half painted (who has lots of veil stuff flying around, but is too scantily dressed for Marabi's tastes) would have been perfect. Alas, my sculpting talents are barely up to the challenge of making a simple cube...

My painting talents are not much better. Even in these crummy scans you can probably see that these two have no eyes. Not for lack of trying! Brushes, a nail, the end of a twist-tie with the paper stripped off, and the tip of an X-acto knife were all employed in the attempt to give them eyes. All in vain.

I'm not sure what makes it so difficult. It was relatively painless to give the Marabi figure toenails and fingernails, and I had little trouble with the lips. But even with the exaggerated theatrical makeup I was trying to do for Marabi, I just couldn't get it right. Both figures have had their noses painted, Livia wound up with eyes on her cheekbones and Marabi had a sort of KISS look going on for a moment.

I haven't decided for sure, but I'll probably spray them and use them eyeless and all. Or maybe I'll see if Steph wants to try tackling the eyes, since she has some actual artistic talent that works even in the world of no Flood Fill and Undo.

Okay. I can understand setting off a couple of fireworks before the appointed day. Some people just aren't patient. But every 30 seconds for two solid hours in broad daylight on June 24... WTF? More wacky antics from the neighbors across the street, who have still not quite figured out that they need to avoid blocking our driveway. At least the neighbors behind us waited until nightfall and only set off a few.

Best Buy did its "Preferred Customer" thing this weekend -- they prefer me 'cause they manage to take away some percentage of my income on a regular basis. Once again, the lure was too much to resist, and I bought music.

Apoptygma Berzerk is one of those groups I've always wondered about. I heard one of their songs once on a community radio station years ago, and nothing since then. Maybe it's one of those groups that sounds different on every album, maybe not... but Welcome to Earth has a sort of 80's Depeche Mode/Information Society sound to it, without being a clone band. Dancey, without quite being dance music, and a little pop-like without actually being pop. The lyrics aren't terribly deep or thought-provoking, but aren't lame either. I'm not doing backflips, but I kinda like it.

Boards of Canada is a group I know well from MP3s. Good electronic stuff. I bought a single, to take advantage of the game mechanics :) Two CDs were 10% off, three 15% off, four 20%, with no minimum price per CD. As it happens, In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country was worthwhile for more than just the discount.

Hooverphonic I also know well... I actually had about half of Blue Wonder Power Milk in MP3 format, and it's one of those albums I said I'd buy someday. Today was someday. Hooverphonic is in the same class as Portishead, Lamb and Morcheeba, all of which appeal to me but not at all to Steph.

Number four was not what it appeared to be. Opeth's album Blackwater Park sure looks on the outside like the epitome of slow, fog-shrouded, doom-laden gothereal. The back cover design even looks like a Lycia CD I have. Every song title supports that image: "The Leper Affinity", "Bleak", "Harvest", "The Drapery Falls", "Dirge for November", "The Funeral Portrait", "Patterns in the Ivy", "Blackwater Park."

Imagine my surprise when it turned out to have occasional raw-throat screaming vocal stuff like Fear Factory or Fetish 69... and yet it's really well done. Obviously the singer has talent, and does sing "normally" as well. What we have here is fog-shrouded, doom-laden heavy metal, only it doesn't give off that "metal" feel. It's very well crafted and well produced (actually, once or twice I was reminded of Tool). I need to listen to it some more to really figure it out though. Probably with headphones and no distractions.

And I did have distractions, in the form of Diablo II/Eastern Sun. My amazon is now level 53, and tackling Act IV in Nightmare mode. Same old story really; she does fine until she gets surrounded, poisoned, cursed, and hit with ranged stuff while fighting off a horde of melee critters. I keep thinking about starting a new character, because some of the loot for other classes is really nifty (mana blades for sorceresses, sacrificial daggers for necromancers, etc.). But the beginning of the game is just not that much fun, and I'd rather be playing D&D. Heh.

I have a couple of thoughts for making Livia a bit more alive. One of them would be practically unnoticeable during gameplay, while the other is a radical departure and potentially a big sacrifice of power later on... but if it makes the character more enjoyable it might be worth doing. It needs more pondering though.

Our third D&D campaign is underway. The late nights staying up reading rulebooks and searching the web and trying to figure out what kind of character I'll play is over... for now. :)

I am not playing Kordar after all. This is probably a good thing, as he seems to be cruel and brutish without any particular reason. (Although... that could just be a front, to intimidate people rather than having to actually fight them... hm. I could use that in Steph's campaign, if I really want to run another fighter type.)

But I started thinking, I don't want to play a certain way just to get advantages. That's how the spiked chain thing came about originally -- a reach weapon that can work up close too, and a whole prestige class dedicated to it. Not "oh cool, I've always liked chains and everything they stand for." And that's how Livia was created -- Halflings get some useful bonuses for Rogue type things, and I thought their illustrations in the PHB were a bit less annoying than the typical Hobbit.

I wanted to do something exotic... and of the exotic weapons listed in the PHB and Sword & Fist, it was the War Fan that really made me take notice. It really is an exotic weapon, as opposed to an awkward or extra-powerful weapon, or a bizarre and probably impossible weapon.

One of my favorite SCA memories -- the same evening in which I personally consumed 7 bottles of Asti, if I remember right (and chances are I don't), a kabuki actor gave a command performance for the household of Baroness Morgan Morcheartaigh. It was a dance with sword and fan, and he actually had a big steel tessen like the one in Crouching Tiger. Probably the coolest performance of any kind I ever witnessed in the SCA, and that includes a ton of singing, belly dancing, drumming, wind and string instruments, and oh yeah acting too. ;)

No premade class or prestige class exists in D&D to make the most of a war fan... and so I am making one. Of course, now that I have learned a little about the weapon, I'll probably want to revise it somewhat. More emphasis on subdual attacks and maybe on defense, and less emphasis on the sharp edge. Maybe something about throwing shuriken behind the cover of a fan. I think I got the whole distraction thing down pat though.

Marabi is my character for Jeff's campaign, and as you might guess, she uses a war fan and will be training as a Fan Dancer as soon as she qualifies. Do I have some kind of strange thing for playing female characters? Well, kinda (and so does Piro), but I think it's more of a flexibility than an obsession. I did leave it to a die roll after all.

One game session, not all that long because we spent time rolling them up, and already I like Marabi more than the other two. Livia I don't really understand, though I want to work it out sometime because I know I would enjoy the campaign more. She's cold in some way, and I don't know what makes her tick. Gengh was a spur-of-the-moment character, on the comical side, and has spent more time unconscious than not so far. But Marabi is going to be cool. I even want to find a fan to use as a prop... but you will not catch me dancing or even talking in a high voice. I'm quite relieved that she doesn't flirt.

I was inspired to write up some history for Marabi as a sort of framework, and began an in-character journal as well.

And now that I've done that, and the cold is fading, maybe I can get normal amounts of sleep once again. :)

(The pun in this entry's title courtesy of Jeff the Mad. And I know I need to update dave.mooville.net. Sometime.)

The cold goes on. Actually I feel a good deal better today, but then I haven't done anything more strenuous today than play Diablo and fire up the iced-tea machine. (Perversely enough, waiting until after Steph shelved it because it had been dormantly taking up counter space for 6 months.)

Saturday night's D&D session was fun, and resulted in some big new stuff for us. Too bad Russ and Cwiss missed that session. Considering all the bad things that could have happened, we were quite lucky -- Collin was diseased and Kabor had to shuffle a point of his highest stat to his lowest, but most of us made out like bandits.

My character Livia made a good step toward her goal, gaining accuracy, damage and the ability to fire an extra time per round. It feels good to be able to drop a kobold sorcerer with Mage Armor who's behind 9/10 cover... I had some help from a couple magic missiles and a celestial badger that was summoned behind him, but I did hit him twice myself. ;)

I hit the spreadsheets, to work out whether it'd be useful to try to qualify for the Ninja of the Crescent Moon class... and it's not. I could qualify for it easier than anything else in Sword & Fist, but I'm better off just staying a rogue. Oriental Adventures is slated for October, and Song and Silence in December -- one or both of these may have something interesting for Livia.

I had some fun writing up the half-lillend race, but ultimately it's too much of a pain. Flying PCs make trouble for the DM, and trying to balance armor issues is prickly. It's simpler to just use the established rules for Aasimar, take non-functioning wings as a physical trait, and let the character deal with the fact that regular armor doesn't fit and townspeople stare at him.

I don't have any particular urge to play that Ixeli character in Jeff's campaign so I haven't pursued the mechanics for that very far. I'll probably play Kordar (the Earth Genasi chain fighter) in his campaign, but there are other possibilities... nearly endless ones.

This is one of the cool things about this system -- feats and multiclassing allow for all kinds of flexibility. What it boils down to is the fact that there are more options than any one character can take. It's a rigid structure, but not one in which all fighters are basically the same except for choice of weapon, or where all spellcasters of a class know the same spells.

I guess I didn't avoid catching the cold that's been going around after all. My throat started really bothering me Wednesday night, in which I got maybe 3-4 hours of low-quality sleep, and it has been getting progressively worse. I would have stayed home from work yesterday if not for a scheduled meeting on the "gandalf" FE, and a D&D session after work. I probably should have, and I did today.

Lots of D&D thoughts going on. We have two campaigns already in progress, Jeff's starts Tuesday and Steph may start one next month. There are so many possibilities in character creation and development that I've been having fun just figuring out what to play in the new one(s).

In the Saturday campaign, I have Livia, female halfling mostly-rogue (a level each of sorc and fighter to enhance her abilities... I'm working toward a sort of sniper/sharpshooter character). She's not a very fun character personality-wise, but the campaign has been mostly enjoyable.

In the Thursday game, I have Gengh, male half-orc druid, and his wolf friend Dog. Gengh (whose name no one can spell) is the master of getting himself gakked at every encounter. Whereas Livia tends to almost never get hit, he has finished his two sessions so far at -2 and -8 HP respectively. He's a bit overzealous in combat... a level 1 druid with a dagger, no armor, and 2 hit points left should probably not charge right into the thick of things, particularly when he's the only healer (or spellcaster of any kind) in the party. But that's just the way he is. ;)

In the upcoming Tuesday game, and in the potential Friday night Steph-run campaign, I have three possibile oddball characters:

• Kordar, a male earth genasi fighter, eventually going for the Master of Chains prestige class. He needs a heavy metal soundtrack. ;)
  
  Actually, from what I've seen online genasi characters are not that rare... they're right there in the Forgotten Realms rulebook (for those who shell out the big bucks).



• Seleles (yes it's a palindrome), a female half-lillend monk.
  
  My books are at the office, but offhand, here's what I would propose for half-lillendi:
  
  • Medium size, base movement 30
  • Cannot be evil
  • +2 dex, +2 cha, -2 con
  • Native outsider, +1 ECL (standard experience penalty for planetouched)
  • No extra magical/psionic abilities
  • +2 to initiate a grappling check (but not to oppose being grappled)
  • No tail, but one or more features: scaly humanoid lower body, feathery hair, slightly metallic copper-gold skin color, sharp facial features.
  • Wings are weaker than true lillend wings, good only for short hops. Flight rate is 30'. Take 1 HP subdual damage if flying as a double-movement, and 1 HP subdual damage for beginning a round in midair. Wings cause -4 to Tumbling checks, +2 to Balance checks. -1 AC when flying or when wings are outstretched for any other reason.
  • Wings interfere with standard armor, but leather and hide can be easily customized and any other type can be custom-ordered (subject to availability, price and DM's whim). Every 1 armor check penalty reduces flight speed by 5'. Flight is impossible in heavy armor.

  [Gah! I'm looking at the Monster Manual right now and I see I have a lot of fixes to make here. Perhaps I'll get both these races in a finished state and post them somewhere.]




• Inexik, an Ixeli ranger straight outta DragonRealms.
  
  
  • Vykathi are insectoid creatures, usually bound telepathically to a particular Queen. A few -- the Ixeli -- are born with a defect that blocks telepathy and so are exiled from the hive to fend for themselves. They can hide their insectoid nature from a casual observer beneath loose, hooded clothing... as long as they're careful not to betray themselves with the wrong kind of movement, or their raspy whispering voices.
  • Medium size, 30' base speed
  • Any alignment
  • +2 dex, -2 cha, -2 stamina
  • +1 ECL (experience penalty)
  • Darkvision 60 ft, extra susceptibity to dazzling/blinding
  • +3 natural armor, extra +1 against piercing attacks, but cannot wear armor
  • Takes 1 extra HP of damage from cold spells/effects
  • -2 to counter Bluff, but +2 to bluff any non-vykathi (gullible, but no facial expressions to read)
  • All Ixeli are neuter, thus immune to seduction
  • Cannot use telepathic effects; resistance/immunity to telepathy (as determined by the DM)
  • Arms have retractable blades (small, 1D6, 19/20x2); extending or retracting is a free action. Hand cannot hold items while blades are extended, and can wield only small weapons. Unarmed attacks (with claws retracted) do half the damage of a standard unarmed attack.

My original plan was to play Kordar in Jeff's game and something more exotic in Steph's. But after adjustments based on actually looking at the books, and changes or vetos by the DMs, I might put it down to a die roll again. I know Steph is willing to let us play practically anything but will suffer the consequences, and I don't want to push that too far. And (just as Steph protested yesterday during heated and excited discussions on the subject), what I want is an exotic and unique character, not an unbalanced, twinked, munchkinized one that causes trouble for the DM.

I don't know where to start the SimuCon wrap-up. I feel like I've been gone for a week or two, abducted by aliens or something. Heh.

As I've said before, SimuCon is a strange experience when you're not a player and not quite a GM. This time, the three of us got a hotel room, which makes a big difference. But we still slept in, avoided most seminars, and on Saturday even took the Metrolink downtown to eat at Babalu's, our favorite Carribean place. Which is unfortunately out of business, so we settled for The Majestic instead. The saganaki and gyros were pretty good, but somebody tell Jeff it's wrong to order fettucine Alfredo at a Greek place.

Thursday evening was Reception Night, wherein I won a round of the Settlers tournament before bugging out to run errands with Steph... inf act I even won the roll-off to see who goes first, and the one game of Ro'ater Mountain I played. I should have gone to the casino that night.

Friday was the Hero's Journey seminar... which proved that we can still be surprised, but that our design ideas seem to be on the right track. The keynote speech (and presentation of the new website and HTML FE) went well, after which I grabbed my drum and joined in with the singing and piano playing late into the night. For those songs in which any kind of drum is appropriate at all, it worked well. I'm happy with it, and if I had spare cash (ha!) would be looking seriously at the larger size just to try it out.

Saturday was the train ride, some movie watching, and the costume dinner... though it sure seems like a lot more. I must be forgetting something. I didn't drink that much, I'm just not into excess.

Sunday morning we had to get up early to cover the Simutronics merchandise table as well as check out of the hotel. We had been scheduled for 10 AM to noon, but wound up covering 9:30 to 2 instead... but I won't complain, since the company picked up the tab for our room.

By all accounts the hotel loved us and wants us back again -- partially because they made an obscene fortune off us at the bar, and partially because we're just such wonderful fun people.

I would have to admit to having fun this year. Crazy as things get, and as completely wiped-out brain-dead tired as I was Sunday afternoon... it was fun.

I'd have pictures, but I don't. Of the 19 or 20 photos I shot, on a fresh set of batteries, 17 actually got saved in memory (the rest must have gotten zarked by the camera running out of juice as it tried to save). Most of those consisted of the back of someone's head, half a table, and nothing but darkness beyond that. Half the rest were fuzzy and indistinct. Steph didn't like the photos of her in costume. That leaves me with a shot of Rottcloar trying to hide behind a napkin, the back of the guy with the bright orange pimp costume, and a dark and fuzzy shot of the guy in the mime costume. Hopefully I'll get myself a better camera before next SimuCon. My requirements are that it's not from Wal-Mart, has some kind of zoom feature, and can fill its built-in memory before its batteries die.

So instead, here's a picture of my sister's kitten Pyewacket. This is an actual kitten, not a toy or a cartoon. Ain't she cute? ;)

SimuCon starts tommorow. Some people arrived as early as yesterday. Cubicles are being cleaned, the new website is being spit-polished, movies are being watched...

Heh. Steph and I went to see Shrek last night after work, and it was a blast. If I had kids, I wouldn't hesistate long to take them, but really it's a comedy for adults.

My monitor is, indeed, bloopy. I went back to the old one for the time being... from a nice sharp clear 19" to a muddy 14" that can't display 1024x768 is quite a step down. After SimuCon I will look for the warranty info and see if I can't get it fixed.

Meanwhile, the smaller monitor is fine for Diablo II. With the Eastern Sun mod, my Amazon is level 41 and has just reached the last quest of Act Two on Nightmare mode. I spent a lot of time hunting in City of the Damned and River of Flame in Normal mode for the loot, or I'd have progressed further.

I find I'm not gambling on items, but spending everything on gems. I have a fuscina (an uber trident) with 6 perfect gems, Elven chainmail with 2 perfect gems, ethereal boots with one, and a Spirit Crown with two... giving me a total of +4 to all skills, as well as lots of mana/life leeching, resistances, speed, and other benefits. I prefer this method to gambling for uniques and rares, because you get a real sense of building out of it. There are tradeoffs though; no sooner did I bite the bullet and plant the gems in the fuscina, than I finally found a socketed yari (much better damage potential, cooler looking, and if I'm not mistaken, more reach). Ah well, there is no shortage of loot to be had, it's just a matter of putting in the time to gather it all. ;)

Oddly enough, I'm not as excited about the expansion anymore... not for this character anyway. I'm finding Eastern Sun is fun enough I don't want to give it up. However, I'll be getting the expansion for the ability to play the Druid and Assassin. :)

I colored my hair. Red. A bit unevenly, but that's okay... the result is much better than the last time I tried doing something to my head. I like the average color, though it's a little wilder than expected on the left and a little tamer than expected on the right. A gradient, as the Kai-Imakhu says. ;)

My monitor has gone... bloopy.

Everything in the middle of the screen is stretch taller than normal. Everything at the top and the bottom is squashed shorter than normal. It's bloopy. The simple act of scrolling through a text file or web page becomes a little trippy, and playing Diablo is vertiginous. (If that wasn't a word before, it is now.) If I were designing web pages right now, they would be both blocky and bloopy.

The catch is that it doesn't do this in a text mode (while booting or with a maximized command prompt), only in graphical modes (all the rest of the time). That suggested trying a few things... so I changed resolutions, color depths, refresh rates, drivers, swapped out the video card and tried it all again, all to no avail. The next step is to hook up the old 14" monitor and see if it's bloopy too, which I expect it won't be. And to try hooking the bloopy monitor up to Steph's computer to see if it's still bloopy, which I expect it will be. And then to drag it to CompUSA and say "hey, my monitor's all bloopy."

Doesn't it figure, my car breaks down and I let it sit around for months, but my monitor goes bad and I want it fixed now.

On the spur of the moment I joined in the Thursday night D&D campaign that Mike is running. Meet Gengh, Half-Orc druid... left for dead by his newly found comrades until the next session. ;)

The party spans the darker but less chaotic regions of the alignment sphere, and includes a Gnome fighter who one of us may strangle (played to hilarious effect by Melissa) and a rogue pretending to be a cleric (brought to us by Bubba).

A kobold sorcerer-queen and her clan beat the tar out of us, because the Gnome wouldn't return some figurines he filched. When you're first level, a couple of Magic Missiles and a crossbow bolt hurt. We would have all made it out on our feet, but the queen dropped me with a final Ray of Frost right about the time her reinforcements arrived and the party decided to make a run for it. My wolf, originally unnamed but now called Graar, tore up one last kobold and vowed to come back to rescue (or at least avenge) me.

Rather than rolling up a new character I'm going to stick with this, though I'm probably losing out on some potential experience. More interesting this way, I think... and Mike is considering letting the wolf gain experience for the rescue. Between that and the way the story could turn out, I'll be more inclined to think of the wolf as a partner rather than as disposable cannon fodder.

(I had briefly considered choosing an octopus as my starting companion... carried around in a large tank. Now that would have been an interesting rescue.)

It's by no means certain though... after all, kobolds generally use their prisoners as food, according to the Monster Manual. I hope Gengh is too tough and stringy for that. ;)