Ready Player One

I've just finished reading Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.
Wow, I really enjoyed this, it was just so much fun. It's set in the near future, but essentially takes place inside an MMO. The basic premise is that there is a massive fortune to be won if a player can solve a bunch of obscure puzzles, but what makes it really interesting is that the theme for all of this is 80's trivia but mostly focused on all those things I'm personally really interested in. Computer games, Science Fiction/Fantasy, D&D, computer programming.
A small sample of references in the book includes Blade Runner, Highlander, Ghost Busters, Star Wars, Star Trek, War Games, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Monty Python films, Zork, Defender, Pac Man, Adventure, D&D, Tomb of Horrors, Family Ties, Knight Rider, Max Headroom, very much Anime and so on. There is so much detail in the references to these subjects that it is one continual reminiscing session about all the things I enjoyed growing up, and still love today.
There were also some pretty cool technologies used by players to connect to the game, including haptic feedback suits, smell sense towers, full-immersive laser-in-the-eye goggles, full motion capture movement rigs and so on. I also really liked the flavour of the dystopian world that had been left behind too, as clearly people were giving up on the poverty of the real world and spending most of their time jacked in to this free online experience.
The only thing that jarred a little for me was a description of how many times the main character had seen each of the films, and spent time mastering the games, and read the comics etc. I figure if you go total up the amount of hours he needed to spend learning, watching, playing, listening, he would have had to have been a thousand years old. I mean, I've seen "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" at least 25 times, and played Elite on Amiga for months on end in all my spare time in the day, but all the stuff this guy has experienced added up in time was just plain impossible. Or perhaps I was just jealous. Hard to tell.

Eclipse Phase

Rich ran a game of Eclipse Phase for us the other night, and it was excellent. It really was a breath of frsh role playing. We weren't too concerned about the rules, and they seemed pretty mechanics light anyway, which was fine with us.
I played a swarmanoid, which is a collection of very small robotic components driven by my uploaded intelligence. I specialised in hacking, and enjoyed hacking the ship we were on to open and close airlocks to let my friends in and out of a ship under attack by a nano-cloud-virus-thing. Cool!

PaizoConOz Day 4

Day 4 started well. Had breakfast, stored bags, went to the Con. Then we spent the next 9 hours playing a two part Pathfinder session run by Seb, and thoroughly enjoyed it. During this time it became apparent that the Virgin Blue Fiasco was firmly in place, and trips home were looking unlikely.
We decided to turn up to the airport anyway, as we couldn't find out on phone or internet what the situation was, so hired a large taxi for the nine of us, and off we went. Well, it should have been that easy, but first we had to get the motel to get our bags, the taxi driver went the wrong way and then we got stuck going round the one way system, but finally made it to the motel to get the bags, however it would have been quicker to walk.
We piled all the bags into the taxi, and after some negotiation with the driver on the best way to go, eventually turned up to chaos of Brisbane Domestic. Bit of a nightmare, but it seemed our flight was going out on time. Could we be that lucky? Not entirely. Before we find outo about the flights, we realise we have an extra bag with us from the motel that no one will lay claim to. Oh Bugger. I had a brief conversation with manager that didn't go so well, and told him we'd call back after we checked in with a plan.
As Rich turns up to the counter to represent the group, he's told there are only four seats left. "You have got to be shitting me" was my response. Not cancelled, not delayed, no all or nothing, but a cutoff right down the middle of the group.
As gamers say "Never split the party."
We split the party. There was very kind agreement that those with work tomorrow (surprisingly few) should take the seats. And I have to thank those again that stayed behind. Rich, Al, Phil, and more - thanks very much.
As you may imagine, the stray bag was returned with those staying an extra night.
And now we can confirm the existence of the PaizoConOz Exit Curse, given last years trip to the airport was also a complete nightmare. Worryingly, the power of the curse seems to be getting exponentially worse every year, this year affecting thousands of people.

PaizoConOz Day 3

Gah. 15 hours D&D straight. So very tired. Good day though.
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PaizoConOz Day 2

Two sessions today, both with my 5th level Inquisitor. Awesome, though
both tough. Hoping to use a new wand of web tomorrow. 3 sessions, 14
hours tomorrow. Cruisy night tonight, curry and wine, whisky now.
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Day 1. PaizoConOz

Day 1 PaizoConOz.
Cruised into Brisbane about 4.
Went for a curry, then into game at 7pm. All the games were low level
so grabbed a 1st level pregen and straight into it. Now off to the pub.
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Dragon Coast: light vs dark

Dragon Coast continued last night, and we started with a long discussion on mechanics of light (Pathfinder RPG rules). Some of the interactions between light and darkness spells aren't particularly well explained, but we came to an agreement on the topic before starting the session. Which was lucky, because the characters were affected by magical darkness for most of it. Well, not that lucky, as none of them actually used any significant light spells to counter it, so we didn't need our revised light/dark interaction mechanics.
Generally darkness spell effects are pretty weird, and even using the usual "it's just magic" explanation, it's hard to relate these to the real world. I think we agreed at one point that darkness spells used some sort of anti-photons to produce their effects. We shied away from the whole anti-photon hits a photon interaction discussion. In the end, it's just game mechanics, and doesn't matter.
Rule clarifications are:

• dark/light spell effects suppress any light/dark spells of lower levels in their area of effect
• dark/light spell effects and light/dark spell effects of the same level suppress eachother in their overlapping areas of effect, leaving any lower level and natural light or darkness spell effects in effect.
• dark/light spells can be used to counter or dispell light/dark spells of equal or lower level at time of casting.

Also

• standard ride checks apply when using a Phantom Steed (spell) except for "Control Mount in battle" as it wouldn't get spooked by battle, and "Fight with a combat-trained mount" as it isn't combat trained.

Also,  First Character Death. Thanks Taedor.

Dragon Coast campaign restarts

The Dragon Coast campaign I'm running restarted on Tuesday night. The session notes are up. We're still missing a character, but hopefully he'll start this week.
Naturally the first encounter was complex and difficult to manage, but we seemed to get through it smoothly enough, with the PCs kicking ass.

More campaign work

Tired now. I've spent all evening spending a load of gold pieces on equipment and magic items for the "bad guys" of my Dragon Coast campaign. The Magic Item Compendium is great. I've even written flavour text for the meeting of each "bad guy". We hope to start playing this in a few weeks, so I've still got a little time to sort out the first few sections of the adventure to be ready for play. It's getting there, I still need to sort out a few encounters, and place loot. Damn high level adventures are a lot of work. Next time I think I'll just buy one.

Recent Gaming

Wow. We just finished Call of Cthulhu, Horror on the Orient Express. The end was seriously hard, but as a group we ultimately triumphed. My character, an accountant (heh) was decapitated with about an hour of play left. Then I took over another character, who died even more horribly right at the end. Much enjoyed - thanks to Andrew! However, now I'll have to cancel the order of the t-shirt "I survived Horror on the Orient Express". I could just change it to "I died horribly in ....".
I'm also still working up the high level enemy NPCs for the Dragon Coast campaign which I hope to start in about 6 weeks time. I spent two hours tonight just allocating spells for them. Very Nasty.

Dragon Coast: Book VI

I'm still pushing through some details on the D&D adventure I'll soon run. It's been interesting using the new Pathfinder rules for generating NPCs. The new rulebook has a good section on this and the new skill rules make skills easy to assign. I'm trying to do as much pre-rendering of details and stats as I can to make the adventure run as smoothly as possible. It will already be hard to run as the characters are at levels 13-14, and you tend to get serious "level loading" delays as opponent NPCs put their own plans into action and react to events. Damn it's a lot of work though, not sure if I'll be bothered to go the full adventure creation route again.
Hopefully it will be fun. The game site is here.

Dragon Coast: Book VI

My D&D campaign adventure is coming along. I've been filling the geography with nasties from Pathfinder Bestiary, Monster Manuals I-IV, and other tomes like Fiend Folio and Libris Mortis. It is set in the Forgotten Realms, specifically Cormyr as far as the characters know, but of course can lead them anywhere. I've just set up a campaign page at Obsidian Portal, so when the adventure starts, it can be tracked there.
Hopefully I can keep the players' disbelief suspended during the game, enough anyway to enjoy some hack, slash, burn, loot, and pillage action. The adventure is all newly created, so it's been a big challenge so far, and will continue to be until the PCs either finish, or die trying.
Andrew is still running us through Horror on the Orient Express, and we probably have 4 or more sessions left, sounds like. Last session was particularly gruesome. I can't even tell you. Nightmares.

CERN geeks play D&D

Of course they do. Some interesting tid-bits in this interview with a CERN geek.

D&D campaign progress

Ive been working on my D&D adventure recently as Andrew will finish running Call of Cthulhu soon so I need to be ready to start probably in February, it looks like. I've finished plotting all the levels, rooms etc and have written basic flavour text for all of them. I've just started working on mechanics and details for traps and required skill checks etc. I've recently received my copy of the Pathfinder Bestiary too, so I can start filling the place with wildlife as well. That's always fun. Then I need to add the treasure and magic items etc. Some of the later stuff can wait until the adventure is underway of course. Hopefully the players will find it fun. Mostly that means a decent challenge and believable. Hopefully.

The Introduction.

And, lo, today marketh the day that Cian Roberts was introduced to the world of Dungeons and Dragons. Having seen me go off once a week to play this mysterious game, and even host many sessions downstairs in the Den, Cian accepted his first rulebook to read and character sheet to fill out with due reverence and excitement.
I have started him off with the Basic D&D set, the one published in 1983, in fact an original copy that I myself used more that twenty years ago, now complete with badly coloured pictures of female clerics and large snakes sitting atop piles of gold. Yes, of course I kept it, what? You don't just throw out stuff like that.
The Basic rules from this era were written with kids in mind, and as Cian will be 8 in a couple of weeks, I'm sure he'll be on top of the game mechanics in no time. Also, with his already formidable imagination, I'm sure this game will grab him and not let go. The only problem will be in encouraging his friends to play. I'll have to start off as DM of course, but it is my sworn duty as Nerd Father.

GenCon Day 3

Two more back to back sessions, a nice Viet dinner, a rush to the airport, aaaaaand, Home.

GenCon Day 2

Wow. Full on day. Session 9-1, then 2-4, then into a special Pathfnder futures session with Jason, then back to the game, which had to run late, a rushed dinner, then played from 7-11.
Lots of good laughs in the games. It's a different experience playing these official society games, but well worth the effort.
OK. Tired now.

GenCon Day 1

Great day. We played two four-hour sessions of Pathfinder D&D and it was fairly intense. Intense in a good way though - really enjoyed it. We're now in a bar chatting with the lead designer of the game, Jason Bulmahn which is really cool. Its interesting to hear the history behind some of the rules and issues of game balance etc.
Eating and drinking lots. Bit hungover this morning...

GenCon Day 0

Arrived in Brisbane late after work and hit the Pathfinder Intro session hosted by the lead designer Jason Bulmahn. Good laugh actually - the guy has a good sense of humour. GenCon is gonna be great - looking forward to the sessions tomorrow. Now in a tapas bar getting wasted.

Anauroch

Been studying up on Anauroch for a D&D campaign. Plenty of good stuff, from the usual orcs, gnolls and lizardmen to phaerimm, and Shadowvar.
I can't actually give anything away, because the players might read this.
So all you get is the random picture linkfest.
Also, I have major campaign writer's block.
Help!