it actually won me a challenge though, there was a level where you had to knock down a bunch of bottles and I used it and got the star before the black hole killed me
it actually won me a challenge though, there was a level where you had to knock down a bunch of bottles and I used it and got the star before the black hole killed me
dammit
I just realized I never got to do a Tim Tam slam
guess I'll just have to try and find someplace locally that imports them
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HacksawJ. Duggan Esq.Wrestler at LawRegistered Userregular
edited September 2009
holy balls i'm tired
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RankenphilePassersby were amazedby the unusually large amounts of blood.Registered User, Moderatormod
edited September 2009
if anyone doesn't want their kotor key, I'll take it
also, as far as the D&D game went, here's a basic breakdown, as much as I can recall in my currently holyfuckexhausted state
so we set it up as players on two teams - the "good" guys consisted of a Dwarf Fighter in plate with a shield, a Dwarf Cleric, a Warforged paladin, a Gnome Rogue and a Eladrin Wizard. Very defensive heavy, with some striking, support and control mixed in.
The "bad" guys consisted of a Orc Swordmage, an Orc Barbarian, a Bugbear Invoker, a Hobgoblin Avenger and Callius' awesome Bullywig Cleric, Ayatoadlah Croakington. Very striker heavy, with some defender, support and control to round it out. All characters were level 8.
I made up all of the character sheets ahead of time, and Callius really worked his ass off to help out a lot. We cut up the power cards and affixed them to cardstock to make it easier to play and understand. I wrote up a two-sided basic rules sheet with a brief but thorough description of how to play, how combat works and descriptions of key elements of D&D, since this was the first time for a lot of the players. Since the fight was going to be one long encounter, I changed how the loot worked - each creature killed, with a few exceptions, allowed a roll on a loot table I made, custom for each creature. You could potentially get a new healing surge (up to your max), an action point, a potion that would refresh an encounter or daily power, even possibly a crystal skull that let you resurrect a player (but if they went back to 0 hp, they were dead immediately instead of unconcious).
Unfortunately, Geek and his wife Amy had to go right at the outset when Geek got sick from something he ate, but Arsenic and Laina were handy and have been part of my regular gaming team, so they were able to jump right in and take over, which was great because they could help the more inexperienced players fighure out how to play and what to do. Thanks, guys. You saved my ass.
They were set up in adjoined rooms, but a good distance apart. The dungeon is fucking huge, and a room that adjoins both of the rooms they were in had a constant spawn of level 1 beetles that were more of a nuissance than anything. I had seven models and changed the hp for standard fire beetles down to 12, so they were slightly tougher than a minion, but not hard to kill, just unlikely to have someone do an AOE spam to camp them and keep getting loot rolls. They had the worst loot chances, a 1-5 meant they exploded and did an area burst 1 low-damage fire attack on death, 6-13 did nothing, 14-17 gave a healing surge and 18-20 gave an action point, or something like that.
In the middle of the players, I put down a first big encounter - some blackscale bruisers, a blachscale magus, a poisonscale mystic and a giant fucking level 10 elite soldier crocodile. Let them fight their way through them to get to each other, was my idea. What I didn't count on was that holy fuck they were a hell of a lot tougher to kill than I intended, but lots of them had great big models and so were intimidating, and a great sort of intro to D&D.
The giant croc basically ran right up and chomped down on the swordmage and held him in his jaws - the swordmage had shit for athletics and acrobatics, so there wasn't much it could do to escape the grab, so every single fucking turn it did this nasty rending attack at like +16 or something that did some 3d8+6 damage, something like that. Basically it bloodied him on a constant basis, and the thing had some 200+ hp, so it wasn't going anywhere. Also, if the creature it had in its jaws was bloodied, it had an attack where it would swallow him whole. I hinted that bad shit would happen, so they did their fucking damndest to keep the swordmage alive while beating on the croc with everything they had for round after round, while the two casters kept launching crazy aoe poison spells to fuck up and daze the rest of the "bad guy" party. Also, I had just been given an incredible set of stainless steel dice (thank you so fucking much, guys, they're so amazing), and I was using the d20 all night, which seemed to roll hit after devastating hit, so that wasn't doing them any favors either.
While this was going on, WaM, who was playing the dwarf fighter, ran straight up and charged one of the blackscale bruisers, trapping him in the doorway. She was armored as all hell, so she was pretty safe, but it blocked off the main access to the other party, so while the one party dealt witht he rest of the lizard menace I brought in my next encounter to fuck with them - a bunch of baby T-rexes led by a big, lumbering adolescent Rex, coming in right behind the "good guy" party. Now with their primary tank tied up with a blackscale bruiser, the rest of the party did their best to take them out. I made the little guys fairly high armor but low hit points, and they were not particularly tough, but they were a major nuisance. The big t-rex, however, was a nasty fella, and could do quite a bit of damage. A successful bite knocked the target prone, and an attack against a prone target did a lot of damage and kept them from standing for a full round afterward - basically it grabbed them by the feet and slammed them against the floor as hard as it could.
Also, as an added "fuck you", the dinosaurs would die and on the next round little undead dragonlings burst out of their bloody corpses - these guys were even lower armor and hp, but were another headache they didn't need. The big t-rex, if it died, would do the same, but come out as a much stronger sort of undead dragon. Meanwhile, the beetles were crawling all over the fucking place and all hell was breaking loose.
Unfortunately, we didn't get to get anywhere close to the end of the game, but we played until midnight, starting around 6 (after an hour of setup and trying to find a place to play). After the first round or two, once people started getting the hang of it and using the considerable downtime between turns to come up with their plan of attack, things went real smooth, or as smooth as can be expected, and it seemed like everyone was having a great time. Orikae had to take off for a while, so we had a kid that couldn't have been more than 13 or so play a round before he had to leave - he was sitting around admiring the dungeon model and I invited him to play, and he jumped at the chance. Right after he left, this other dude came in and was watching, and I invited him to come play, and it turned out to be Andrew Ryan from the forums, through sheer coincidence. He played a few rounds before Orikae returned, and we kept going until it was time to quit.
THe dungeon and setup itself kept drawing quite a lot of admirers, which made me proud, and Callius, Arsenic and Laina definitely deserve a lot of praise for their help in building the dungeon, especially Callius - he really pulled out all the fucking stops, especially through this last week, in making sure everything was prepared.
I only have a couple really poor photos, but I know cap and a few others got some of the event - I'd really like to see what else got taken - I know a few other random folks took a good number of photos, as well.
All in all, it was an incredible success, and I had a fucking blast - there's nothing more gratifying for a GM to see all of his hard work come to fruition and have all of his players have a really good time playing in a game that he designed, and I felt like that was the case across the board. Thanks again, guys, your patience and effort to learn really paid off and made all the work worth it, by far. Shame we couldn't have gotten further, I had some really great demons I was going to bring out soon and a whole bunch of other fun surprises.
Here's the few decent photos I did get, but I was so busy I couldn't really record much. If anyone else had some, please let me know.
Oh! And Natasha came up with the perfect way to do the blood splatters you see in a couple of the photos - they're just melted sealing wax. They're already the right color, they pool up great and are easy to make by just dripping it onto aluminum foil, and they look fucking fantastic.
and D&D photos:
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RankenphilePassersby were amazedby the unusually large amounts of blood.Registered User, Moderatormod
can't wait to get the walls painted and do the last highlight pass on the floor - the floors were drybrushed a couple times and then washed thoroughly in grimy thinned paint, which really killed their detail, especially on the "dirt" areas, but it really gave it a good filthy and old look that I'm happy with. Once I retouch the floor I can do the walls and then seal the shit out of it and put that project to bed. For now, though, I'm too fucking tired to even take it out of my damned car. It can wait.
Well that was a tiring weekend. I did not hang out with or attempt to hang out with forum dudes, but I did hang out with a couple guys I met a few years ago playing Guild Wars.
My dad won one of the laptops the Intel booth was giving away.
I am probably going to be playing LoTRO for the next month or so.
My friend took a bath last night after the concert and ended up sleeping in the tub till like 6.
Last night was the first time I'd heard Paul and Storm, goddamn they're funny.
Coulton was better last year.
School starts Tuesday and I am ill-prepared, will most likely sleep all day tomorrow.
WeaverWho are you?What do you want?Registered Userregular
edited September 2009
I didn't make it to a single panel or anything like that. I did spend about six or seven hours total in the expo hall because it was actually full of stuff I'm excited about this year instead of just one or two games.
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WeaverWho are you?What do you want?Registered Userregular
edited September 2009
oh yeah Tube totally punched Beavo and Munkus in the face.
PAX was great this year! Last year I was frustrated, but for whatever reason I generally felt like I was always doing something this year.
Also, I really did want to ask Tycho two questions today but after he sang for me (that was not (originally) my intention!) I thought it'd be best if I just sat back down.
Everyone was super chill and stuff, but I think I got sick over the weekend so now I just feel drained.
Good to be home and huzzah to another fine year of PAX. Special thanks to Neville for setting up the fancy dinner and Tonkka for helping to herd us all to his show - they were blasts.
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WeaverWho are you?What do you want?Registered Userregular
edited September 2009
Quethal is fun. As soon as he gets two drinks in him, his eyes turn into this giant billboard that screams "LADIES!"
So the nVidia button thing.
Between 3 friends and I we collected about 19 buttons. We were the ones on the skybridge with the giant cardboard signs.
Saturday afternoon a guy tells us that they set up a table with laptops where you could plug your button+contact information on the spreadsheet that was set up, so we helped them advertise for a while.
We started with the signs at like 11 in the morning and left for dinner at 5, one of my friends won a 5.1 surround sound headset, I won a sweatshirt.
Also the nVidia guy interviewed me and gave me a T-Shirt.
Posts
and no it wasn't me
I need more information than this.
no it'll be better because I'll be there
I think I'll be there...
I won a medal on Friday though, that was kind of neat.
thought he was just a dude speaking a foreign language
everyone all looking around uncomfortably, "does he even know what this is?"
I may go to PAX in... 3 or 4 years. Plan for that, fallout.
kpop appreciation station i also like to tweet some
made a black hole that killed everything
it actually won me a challenge though, there was a level where you had to knock down a bunch of bottles and I used it and got the star before the black hole killed me
and i only insist on BrikWars because I have a ton of Lego bricks just lying around, not being used.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/index.html?curid=21188542
it's being developed by game arts, who developed smash bros. brawl, and some ex team ninja guys
it was fun enough
That
Rules
I just realized I never got to do a Tim Tam slam
guess I'll just have to try and find someplace locally that imports them
also, as far as the D&D game went, here's a basic breakdown, as much as I can recall in my currently holyfuckexhausted state
The "bad" guys consisted of a Orc Swordmage, an Orc Barbarian, a Bugbear Invoker, a Hobgoblin Avenger and Callius' awesome Bullywig Cleric, Ayatoadlah Croakington. Very striker heavy, with some defender, support and control to round it out. All characters were level 8.
I made up all of the character sheets ahead of time, and Callius really worked his ass off to help out a lot. We cut up the power cards and affixed them to cardstock to make it easier to play and understand. I wrote up a two-sided basic rules sheet with a brief but thorough description of how to play, how combat works and descriptions of key elements of D&D, since this was the first time for a lot of the players. Since the fight was going to be one long encounter, I changed how the loot worked - each creature killed, with a few exceptions, allowed a roll on a loot table I made, custom for each creature. You could potentially get a new healing surge (up to your max), an action point, a potion that would refresh an encounter or daily power, even possibly a crystal skull that let you resurrect a player (but if they went back to 0 hp, they were dead immediately instead of unconcious).
Unfortunately, Geek and his wife Amy had to go right at the outset when Geek got sick from something he ate, but Arsenic and Laina were handy and have been part of my regular gaming team, so they were able to jump right in and take over, which was great because they could help the more inexperienced players fighure out how to play and what to do. Thanks, guys. You saved my ass.
They were set up in adjoined rooms, but a good distance apart. The dungeon is fucking huge, and a room that adjoins both of the rooms they were in had a constant spawn of level 1 beetles that were more of a nuissance than anything. I had seven models and changed the hp for standard fire beetles down to 12, so they were slightly tougher than a minion, but not hard to kill, just unlikely to have someone do an AOE spam to camp them and keep getting loot rolls. They had the worst loot chances, a 1-5 meant they exploded and did an area burst 1 low-damage fire attack on death, 6-13 did nothing, 14-17 gave a healing surge and 18-20 gave an action point, or something like that.
In the middle of the players, I put down a first big encounter - some blackscale bruisers, a blachscale magus, a poisonscale mystic and a giant fucking level 10 elite soldier crocodile. Let them fight their way through them to get to each other, was my idea. What I didn't count on was that holy fuck they were a hell of a lot tougher to kill than I intended, but lots of them had great big models and so were intimidating, and a great sort of intro to D&D.
The giant croc basically ran right up and chomped down on the swordmage and held him in his jaws - the swordmage had shit for athletics and acrobatics, so there wasn't much it could do to escape the grab, so every single fucking turn it did this nasty rending attack at like +16 or something that did some 3d8+6 damage, something like that. Basically it bloodied him on a constant basis, and the thing had some 200+ hp, so it wasn't going anywhere. Also, if the creature it had in its jaws was bloodied, it had an attack where it would swallow him whole. I hinted that bad shit would happen, so they did their fucking damndest to keep the swordmage alive while beating on the croc with everything they had for round after round, while the two casters kept launching crazy aoe poison spells to fuck up and daze the rest of the "bad guy" party. Also, I had just been given an incredible set of stainless steel dice (thank you so fucking much, guys, they're so amazing), and I was using the d20 all night, which seemed to roll hit after devastating hit, so that wasn't doing them any favors either.
While this was going on, WaM, who was playing the dwarf fighter, ran straight up and charged one of the blackscale bruisers, trapping him in the doorway. She was armored as all hell, so she was pretty safe, but it blocked off the main access to the other party, so while the one party dealt witht he rest of the lizard menace I brought in my next encounter to fuck with them - a bunch of baby T-rexes led by a big, lumbering adolescent Rex, coming in right behind the "good guy" party. Now with their primary tank tied up with a blackscale bruiser, the rest of the party did their best to take them out. I made the little guys fairly high armor but low hit points, and they were not particularly tough, but they were a major nuisance. The big t-rex, however, was a nasty fella, and could do quite a bit of damage. A successful bite knocked the target prone, and an attack against a prone target did a lot of damage and kept them from standing for a full round afterward - basically it grabbed them by the feet and slammed them against the floor as hard as it could.
Also, as an added "fuck you", the dinosaurs would die and on the next round little undead dragonlings burst out of their bloody corpses - these guys were even lower armor and hp, but were another headache they didn't need. The big t-rex, if it died, would do the same, but come out as a much stronger sort of undead dragon. Meanwhile, the beetles were crawling all over the fucking place and all hell was breaking loose.
Unfortunately, we didn't get to get anywhere close to the end of the game, but we played until midnight, starting around 6 (after an hour of setup and trying to find a place to play). After the first round or two, once people started getting the hang of it and using the considerable downtime between turns to come up with their plan of attack, things went real smooth, or as smooth as can be expected, and it seemed like everyone was having a great time. Orikae had to take off for a while, so we had a kid that couldn't have been more than 13 or so play a round before he had to leave - he was sitting around admiring the dungeon model and I invited him to play, and he jumped at the chance. Right after he left, this other dude came in and was watching, and I invited him to come play, and it turned out to be Andrew Ryan from the forums, through sheer coincidence. He played a few rounds before Orikae returned, and we kept going until it was time to quit.
THe dungeon and setup itself kept drawing quite a lot of admirers, which made me proud, and Callius, Arsenic and Laina definitely deserve a lot of praise for their help in building the dungeon, especially Callius - he really pulled out all the fucking stops, especially through this last week, in making sure everything was prepared.
I only have a couple really poor photos, but I know cap and a few others got some of the event - I'd really like to see what else got taken - I know a few other random folks took a good number of photos, as well.
All in all, it was an incredible success, and I had a fucking blast - there's nothing more gratifying for a GM to see all of his hard work come to fruition and have all of his players have a really good time playing in a game that he designed, and I felt like that was the case across the board. Thanks again, guys, your patience and effort to learn really paid off and made all the work worth it, by far. Shame we couldn't have gotten further, I had some really great demons I was going to bring out soon and a whole bunch of other fun surprises.
Here's the few decent photos I did get, but I was so busy I couldn't really record much. If anyone else had some, please let me know.
Oh! And Natasha came up with the perfect way to do the blood splatters you see in a couple of the photos - they're just melted sealing wax. They're already the right color, they pool up great and are easy to make by just dripping it onto aluminum foil, and they look fucking fantastic.
and D&D photos:
you ever get your shit sorted out? You starting at digipen tuesday?
(also if people are giving away kotor keys I'll take one pls)
My dad won one of the laptops the Intel booth was giving away.
I am probably going to be playing LoTRO for the next month or so.
My friend took a bath last night after the concert and ended up sleeping in the tub till like 6.
Last night was the first time I'd heard Paul and Storm, goddamn they're funny.
Coulton was better last year.
School starts Tuesday and I am ill-prepared, will most likely sleep all day tomorrow.
but it was great getting to see a chunk of you
You are coming to East Coast PAX right Dave? Swim if you have to.
Is East Coast really going to happen?
Because if it is, the wife and I will be present.
It's been announced.
There have been meetings.
Khoo came to Boston.
Registration is open.
http://www.paxsite.com/paxeast/
gonna be radical
Also, I really did want to ask Tycho two questions today but after he sang for me (that was not (originally) my intention!) I thought it'd be best if I just sat back down.
Aces.
What does he have against beavers?
thinking of making it into a split PAX/college scouting trip
Everyone was super chill and stuff, but I think I got sick over the weekend so now I just feel drained.
Good to be home and huzzah to another fine year of PAX. Special thanks to Neville for setting up the fancy dinner and Tonkka for helping to herd us all to his show - they were blasts.
Between 3 friends and I we collected about 19 buttons. We were the ones on the skybridge with the giant cardboard signs.
Saturday afternoon a guy tells us that they set up a table with laptops where you could plug your button+contact information on the spreadsheet that was set up, so we helped them advertise for a while.
We started with the signs at like 11 in the morning and left for dinner at 5, one of my friends won a 5.1 surround sound headset, I won a sweatshirt.
Also the nVidia guy interviewed me and gave me a T-Shirt.
now if I could just stop dreaming of wook's beard noise