Thursday, July 5, 2012

Screw Ya'll, I'm on Vacation!

Margaritaville, Cancún, 2007 - Back when I still used death sticks.

I'm off to the Texas coast.  See ya'll week after next!  Yee-haw!

- Ark

PS - It's a metaphorical 'screw ya'll,' you know - in a nice way. ;)


Craig Morgan - Redneck Yacht Club

Knee Deep - Zac Brown Band

Zac Brown Band - Toes

Jimmy Buffett - Cheeseburger In Paradise

Jimmy Buffett - MargaritaVille

Kenny Chesney - Summertime

Kenny Chesney - No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems


Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Stars Without Number: A Whirlwind Tour of the Last Few Months


I've been horrible at updating readers on the progress of the intrepid crew of the Fat Tuesday.  I'll present a quick summation and bring you close to present time.  Hold your questions till the end of the lecture.

While exploring systems behind the 'Methan Veil', the PCs found a lost planet with medieval level technology named Normandie.  An apparently non-damaged, but not operating, Jump Gate was in orbit, which interested them quite a bit, but they decided to go scout the planet itself at first.

They quickly found a large land-war with six legged reptile horses and knights and shit going on, picked sides, and used their armed spacecraft, a grav tank, and a floating motorcycle to turn the tide and win the war. Well, actually, the Boy popped the enemy king with a sniper rifle from like two miles away and ended the war before it began, but the PCs had to have some fun now, didn't they?  It would have been a complete slaughter fest, but the enemy had teleport ninjas that crashed their spacecraft upside down in a forest full of pine, which promptly caught on fire from the heat of the engines.

Eventually they patched their ship back up and left, but not without the King granting the players each 50 acres of land, peasants to farm the land, and giving Captain Goodnight two squires, a handmaiden, and his youngest daughter's hand in marriage.  Surprisingly, Captain Goodnight got hitched to Princess Evangelyne, who only spoke archaic French, but was a wiz at heraldry, the abacus, and 13th century encryption techniques.

They also fought an 1/8th of a mile wide crazy AI, rescued ancient German engineers from a decaying Battleship, and caused the nuclear annihilation of a medieval city, but that is neither here nor there.

So, the PCs hopped back to Metha and traded their information on the Jump Gate, as well as a map to every jump gate in the known galaxy, and even an entire library of engineering documents on how to recreate much of the lost technological wonders of humanity, to the crazy alien Methans.  I'm still wondering about that, and the campaign ramifications are going to be horrendous.  I mean, um, wonderful.  For me.  The evil GM.

They traded all of that for enough money to replace their aged, broken Patrol Scout class vessel for a brand new Frigate level ship.  But they didn't want to get thr new ship from the Methans.  No sir.  They look upon the Methans (rightly so,) as the Tinker Gnomes of the galaxy - only crazier.

So, they went to the nearest human planet with a high-tech ship yard - the bustling planet of White Chapel.  For six months the crew has been putzing around the planet,  attending parties, throwing parties, getting throw in jail, clearing out the occasional genetics laboratory complex 500 miles underground full of 30 feet high, eight legged wolf mutants and horses without heads whose entire bodies are plasma cannons, etc.  Captain Goodnight's Princess wife has been behaving like a princess, draining him of as much wealth as possible on dresses and university mind implant training.  AR-50, the bio-infiltration robot threw a 30,000 credit rave, which caused so much damage that it took 270,000 credits worth of lawyer fees and city fines to get him out of jail.  And so on.

So there we are, with the crew about to get their big, bad new ship, and then the next thing happened.  I'll tell you about all the problems they had later. :)

- Ark

Monday, July 2, 2012

Jealous Much?


Yeah, I am.  Jealous, that is.

This is an after-pic from the 2012 NTRPGCon Charity Game in which The Boy got to participate.  I'm not sure of the exact source of this picture - I just stumbled across it on my hard drive.  I probably rudely harvested it from someone else.  Shame on me.

Anyway, from Right to Left: Jim Ward, THE BOY, Steve Winter, Nogrod the High Bidder, Jennell Jaquays, Frank Mentzer, Tim Kask, Sandy Petersen, and Mr. Uhhh I. Dunno Sorry.

- Ark

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Hobbit Doodles

The Boy and I have been listening to The Hobbit on audiobook this last week.  Audiobooks are nice since they keep my hands and eyes free - so I can doodle and take notes.  It's been probably thirty years since I read The Hobbit, and I am amazed about what I've forgotten.  I had no recollection of The Dungeon of the Necromancer, the Dwarves casting spells to hide their loot, or the Wood Elf tribes never having 'went to fairy' in their ancient past, thus not being as wise and magical as their high elf cousins.  Funny how that works.

Anyway, below are some horrific doodles and chicken-scratch notes.  Enjoy if you can.

- Ark








Saturday, June 30, 2012

Schrödinger’s Ferrit: Character Death and The Boy


The last three gaming sessions have been chock-full of character death. Kaye, on of our players, has been the recipient of most of the death, losing three characters in the last three game sessions.

He lost a 1st level half-orc fighter in the Labyrinth Lord game by charging into a pack of ten orcs. His 7th level bio-espionage robot was crushed by falling debris in Stars Without Numbers. Then a failsafe installed by his creators, the alien Methans, kicked in, creating a micro-black hole which wiped out a city block. Then in Spelljammer, his mil-wiz-black-ops spellsword maic-user fighter hybrid thing was gunned down by a squad of mind-flayer controlled, arquebus wielding, hippopotamus headed Giff.

Kaye lost three characters in eight days. Interestingly, he bounced back quickly and remained rather chipper.

In the same time frame, The Boy lost one character. He did not remain chipper.

I've been running a group of players through B1: In Search of the Unknown at the FLGS. It's a continuation of the Labyrinth Lord game I was running last year. The Boy was playing his favorite character - Ferrit the halfling thief.

So, Ferrit and the crew were running from the band of orcs who had sliced up Kaye's half-orc into tiny little pieces. Since you don't have to outrun the bear, you just have to outrun your friends, I asked about the characters' encumbrance. The rest of the characters were carrying little-to-nothing, as they had been newly created. But come to find out, Ferrit was laden with about three donkey's worth of stuff.

Ferrit was the last in line during the mad dash to the entrance of the dungeon. The orcs threw their clubs, hitting the halfling in the back. He kept on running, but they would be on him unless he loosened his load.

So, he began to toss stuff aside. The heaviest thing he had was his huge mass of coins - which he refused to part with. But he began throwing everything else.

The party suggested - strongly - that he get rid of his cash. He refused; instead letting go of his Morlock spears.

"How many Morlock spears do you have?" I asked.

"Nineteen," he said.

So, now the angry orcs were armed with spears. They rained death down on Ferrit, knocking him down into negative territory and bleeding out. The rest of the party raced on, got out of the dungeon, spiked the front door, and ran back to the fort.

I decided that it was not the time, quite yet, to tell The Boy that if he would have dumped the gold out behind him, the orcs would have stopped to pick it up.

My son was angry. Very angry. Ferrit the Halfling was his favorite character ever, and he was not taking it well.

I talked to him about it on the drive home, but you know, there is nothing to beneficial to say in these circumstances. When we got home, he broke down emotionally. He wanted Ferrit back.

"Ferrit wasn't dead when we last saw him. He was still bleeding. He could have survived. The orcs could have patched him up."

"I'm sorry," I shook my head, "The orcs were interested in the rest of the party."

"I know - I'll roll up a new character and call him Ferrit!" he said.

Now that is completely against my own style of playing. A character in the ground is a character in the ground. But he is not me, so there was little I could say. I nodded, "Sure."

"But," his faced dropped, "It's not the same Ferrit."

I scrunched up my lips and thought for a second.

"You know what?" I looked at The Boy. "As a DM in this case, I am primarily interested in mechanics."

He looked at me like I was speaking Orcish.

"The numbers. The numbers that make up this character sheet here. This numbers here died today. This character sheet is finished. That is the mechanics of it. The numbers died."

He looked at me blankly.

"Whatever Ferrit is - the spirit - the idea of Ferrit - he still lives on in your heart."

"I don't want him just in my heart."

I smiled. "Like I said, I am primarily interested in the mechanics here. The character sheet died. If you want to make a new character and call it Ferrit, then that is okay. If you want to make up a story about how Ferrit somehow survived the dungeon and crawled back to the fort - that is okay too. Remember, he doesn't have the same stats. He was 4th level and is now 1st level. He lost everything. He would have gone through something horrible that reduced his physical abilities and changed his very being."

The boy smiled.

"And remember, if he dies again, and he dies in front of people, this type of story really doesn't work. He went below ten hit points while no one was watching, so he's like Schrödinger’s cat. Ferrit's quantum state was uncertain."

He smiled again. He got the reference. He’s an eleven year old addicted to the Science Channel. "I think I can live with that," The Boy said.

So - Ferrit will be back. He's a lot weaker than he used to be. His body is covered in scars. He doesn't even remember how to be a thief anymore. He just knows how to be a fighter, since The Boy shose a new class for him. But, Ferrit is back.

And hey, I get to retain my Kind, Compassionate Dad Card and my Asshole DM Card - at the same time.  Talk about quantum states.

- Ark

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Dungeonspiration: The Garden Monster


Sometimes the backyard garden spawns monstrosities fit only for inspiring a game of Dungeons and Dragons.  Pictured here is a freakish carrot we pulled out of the ground today.

Do me a favor.  Please post a caption to the image above.  It needs a good caption.  Thanks. :)

(Hirst walls by me, mini painted by The Boy, carrot by the grace of God.)

- Ark

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Glacia Facia


I'm still working on the Glacia Cover, slowly but surely.  Here is here face so far.  Not bad looking for a half-yeti barbarian ice queen.

In Crazy-Ass Tim's 2e Spelljammer game, I came up with the idea that Glacia's helf-yeti tribe abhors the undead.  To combat undeadness, the members of the tribe eat anything they kill - thus ending the problem before it begins.  This usually means that Glacia is normally coated in blood and guts, very full, and looked upon by everyone in a 50 mile radius with disgust and revulsion.

Glacia's travelling companions, wanting to impress the military leadership of an outpost, tricked Glacia into taking a bath - the first bath of her life.  She was not amused - swearing fiery vengeance upon everyone who was armed with a bar of soap during the violent coup de scrub.

- Ark