Alert the media — two Borderlands sessions in one month! Surely the End is Nigh!
Continue reading “Big Wolf On Campus: Gaming Summary, September 26, 2004”
The Haunting of Hill College: Gaming Summary, September 12, 2004
Barbecues, weddings, and illness have kept us away from the Borderlands for some time, but no gamer can stay away forever! You may want to read the entry from July 19 before clicking the link below.
Continue reading “The Haunting of Hill College: Gaming Summary, September 12, 2004”
Who needs a Thief?
In the continuing story of the 3 Palidinos (and thieHHHHcleric.. and the monk) we revisit the dungeon “Back to the Adobo!” Placido continues his plummeting ways, we discover how many kobolds can dance on the head of a spear, and why you should always search piles of rubble.
Re-Enter the Paladinos: Gaming Summary, August 15, 2004
The Borderlands campaign didn't continue last night, because Wendy was off doing something. (Pennsic, was it? I don't quite recall…maybe if she'd ever mentioned it before, I'd remember.) So we played D&D. Specifically, we continued the Three Paladinos campaign from way back in May, except there was only one paladino this time: Placido (Paul), who was joined by Ogden the halfling thief…er, cleric (Doug), and Maelwyn the elvish monk (Brian, who created the character in defiance of the party's obvious need for a thief).
The party ventured back into the lower level of the dungeon the Paladinos had traversed before, and proved themselves against (in order) a zombie, an empty room, a pit trap, a goblin with a bow, a wolf, a succession of long, twisty corridors, and a dark mantle (bet you thought I wasn't listening when you told us about that last one, huh Josh?). The real danger, though, came from Brian's ineptitude at mapping, the party's ignorance regarding looms (and their uses in escaping from pits), and Doug's “Towlie” voice.
Meet Miss Hiss: Gaming Summary, July 18, 2004
Welcome back, true believers! It's been a long, long time since we've visited the Borderlands campaign, but that's what we did last night. If you want to read the last entry before proceeding, you'll need to go all the way back to May 24.
Continue reading “Meet Miss Hiss: Gaming Summary, July 18, 2004”
Sunday Night Crashin…
Hey All,
I really apologize about crashing last night. I hadn't realized quite how tired I was from all the moving and painting that went on this weekend. On the plus side I did manage to get home OK, and after going to bed and sleeping 9 hours, I managed to be only 1/2 an hour late to work. 🙂
Doug
Back in the Saddle Again
Back where a fiend is a fiend…
Yup, the splitter has apparently dried out, so I was back online last night, making up for lost time.
I actually ended up trashing the character (a Darkness power Scrapper named Dark Wednesday, whose backstory is that she's Wednesday Addams grown up as a vengeful vigilante) that got clobbered last time and re-starting as level 1 instead of paying off the experience debt. No, that's not the efficient way to do it, but I had been wanting to change the character's looks but hadn't bothered to restart because of the sunk costs. When I thought about it, though, pursuing a tedious mission (hunting 10 Circle of Thorns on the rooftops of King's Row) that would net half the usual experience seemed less fun than starting over and getting to fix the looks. One and a half fun hours later, I was back to level 5, and this time I know better than to pursue missions that will lead to King's Row before I'm level 6 or 7.
I also created YANC (yet another new character), this time an Energy Blaster: a very Maria-from-Metropolis-esque robot called Tin Lizzie. All I can say is, Wow, at low levels Blasters that do lots of knockback rock! Of course, the downside is if they keep missing and the baddie closes and stays close, it's time for a trip to the hospital. So remember, kids, always slot those Accuracy enhancements early! And let's be careful out there!
If anyone wants to join me, these new characters are on Champion. So the servers I'm usually are found on are Pinnacle (if Doug and/or Paul are around), Guardian (the Riverdale gang), Virtue (so far only Barbizon, and if I feel more like RPing), and now Champion (miscellaneous characters experimenting with power combinations).
Sentinels, Ho!: Sunday the 20th
Since Brian had a cold and couldn't show up, and Paul came late and left early because of moving hassles, we didn't get a lot done. Doug and Wendy made characters for a Silver-Age Sentinels d20 campaign, since I have a hankering to run some supers (at least in weeks when we don't have a quorum), and then beat up some thugs. As usual, Doug made a sickeningly crocked character with minimal effort (10 out of a possible 10 levels of Density Increase will do that, apparently): a first-level character with 78 hit points and 50 point armor. Wendy, more or less as usual, came up with a perfectly reasonable character (Psycho-Kitty, a psionic character with Mind Control, Telekinesis and Telepathy) and then proceeded to roll really crappily for the duration of the battle. Many cries of “I suck!” were heard.
Woe
I just finished a tough mission in an office building in CoH, left the building, and found myself in the middle of a firefight between a bunch of folks way higher in level. Before I could even run, I got toasted by one of the baddies, and now my character has an experience debt to work off… just as I was about to start on that, though, a freakish downpour knocked out my cable modem connection. The Comcast techs think that some water got in a splitter somewhere, but they can't send anyone out to look at it until Friday morning. It might start working again as it dries out, but until then no CoH for me…
Pool Party
In City of Heroes, sixth level is something of a milestone, since it's the first time that “Power Pools” become available. Initially you pick powers from your primary and secondary sets, which come from a list of those available for your class. Power Pools are available to all classes equally, and it's from these that you can eventually get such things as Flight and Teleport. You don't have to take any Power Pools, if you prefer to concentrate on getting the powers in your regular sets, but it allows extra flexibility.
RadStorm, MightyMidge, and Barbizon all hit 6th level recently, so got to choose from among the Power Pools. For RadStorm I chose Flight (which starts with the lowly Hover power–even slower than walking), and I'm really looking forward to true Flight. Even being able to hover up to the tops of buildings and look down on the city below is worth the price of admission. MightyMidge got Jumping, which will eventually let her leap tall buildings in a single bound. For now it just gives her a slight boost to her Jump, which I think will be useful, since it seems that the programmers actually bothered to give shorter characters smaller vertical leaps–or maybe I just stink at jumping, but it definitely seems like Midge has trouble clearing fences that the normal-sized characters just hop over. I suppose I could test that hypothesis by making a minimal size character… Finally, Barbizon took Fitness, which will eventually reduce the Endurance cost of all her powers; she's the only one of my characters that regularly runs out of End while fighting, due to the high Endurance cost of swinging that big old axe around.
I actually spent a fair amount of time last night on the Virtue server, just standing around talking in character, rather than going on missions. It was fun as a change of pace, but I don't think that I could do that for an entire night the way some of the rp-ers seemed to (or at least every time I wandered back to the central square it seemed like Cog Sprocket was still there, jawing away in character).
Tales of the Rambling Bumblers 