Pathfinder – Welcome to Hell Monologue

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My group playing Rise of the Runelords didn’t fall apart, but we did go on permanent hiatus from that campaign due to life, kids, etc.  So of course I decided to start my own campaign.  Early on it featured a monologue explaining to the characters why they suddenly found themselves in Hell.  I enjoyed writing and reading it, so I’ll share it here.  The voice was a tired, frumpy British judge.  Think one of the legal farces from Monty Python or Discworld. For any real lore sticklers, I’m playing fast and loose, so don’t get your neckbeards in a bunch. The court of the ninety sixth office, twenty seventh circuit, first division, second domain is now in session, presided by myself, Vice Deputy Lieutenant Magistrate Bristlethwaite, Non-Provisional and Plenary. The case before the court concern the shamash devil Xulmazan, commonly known as Genevieve, defendant, and <HERO NAMES>, plaintiffs. In the interest of expedient remediation and processing, this hearing will adjudicated multiple related cases as part of one judgement. First, the case against Xulmazan: On 26 Calistri, 4706 Absalom Reckoning, in the calendar of the plaintiffs, Xulmazan is accused of the following crimes: Dereliction of Responsibility, 1 count, Release of Duly Continue Reading →

Kingdom Death: Monster – Unarmored Survivor Head Build

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Long time no write.  Anyhow, I backed the reprint of KD:M and have been slowly building out models.  Most of the monster and armor sets are fairly straight forward to build.  You can check out www.vibrantlantern.com or build.kindgomdeath.com to get visual instructions for most things.  Generally the builds are not hard, but rather tedious given the scale and detail.  Damn those Phoenix hands, though. As I worked on the unarmored survivors, I ran into some trouble with what I will call the “Anime Curly Head Woman”.  I could not find a good guide online, so as I built the two heads I decided to take some pictures.  Hopefully this helps someone out there.I’m not sure why the light level looks so low, I took these directly under a lamp. There are seven total pieces in the head.  One face, one hair mane, and then five curls that you glue into the head and mane.  Here is how I did it. Below is the head sprue.  I circled the mane, labeled A.  The face is already trimmed, sorry, but it will be fairly obvious which one it is as it has a two-level fit to the mane.  I’ve labeled the curls Continue Reading →

Pathfinder Narrative – The Shadow Clock

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Back from the Mill The sounds of the mill had stopped, aside from the creaking of the great water wheels below.  On the top floor of the now corpse-ridden building the party stood over a dead elf and his deceased henchmen.  Raoul walked over to the bleeding corpse, laying his hand on Oggrash as he passed to relieve the orc from his rage-induced fatigue.  After pulling off the twisted spiral flesh mask the dead elf wore, the paladin was able to see the face of the man who had been hell-bent on the party’s death. “I think this guy might have been important around here.  I think his name might be Ironbriar?  Justice Ironbriar sounds familiar…” Patrick’s eyes widened a bit as he heard Raoul speak.   The sorcerer stepped close enough to verify that the dead elf was in fact one of the Justices of Magnimar.  While Patrick considered what the killing of a Justice might entail for his future Oggrash walked into the office in the back of the room. Inside the walls were covered with the tanned and stretched faces of numerous people, thirteen once Ogg finished counting.  Just the skin of the faces, each in a particularly Continue Reading →

The Rolling Dance

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I wrote this while bored.  Enjoy, or not. Rolling! Rolling-Dance! Ah we can roll if we want to , we can roll those krabs behind Cause your krabs don’t fight and if they don’t fight Well they’re no krabs of mine I say, we can roll where we want to, to place where fights are gud And we can act like we come from out of wormholes Leave the k-space far behind And we can roll We can roll if we want to , we can roll those krabs behind Cause your krabs don’t fight and if they don’t fight Well they’re no krabs of mine I say, we can roll where we want to, to place where fights are gud And we can act like we come from out of wormholes Leave the k-space far behind And we can roll Rollers! Ah we can roll when we want to, the hole is dead and there’s no reds And we can fit real dank from our drones to our tank And surprise ’em with the victory cry I say we can pew if want to if we don’t nobody will And you can act real rude and totally removed And Continue Reading →

Communities

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My brain has surfaced from the depths of family life. At least long enough for me to compose thoughts into words and sentences! I’ve been dabbling in phone games a lot for the past two years because I love having hopes shattered by bad freemium models. But in that time I’ve played two games that ran into the concept of community in interesting ways. Game the first is Tap Titans 2. This is a clicker or incremental game. You “fight” titans, and can unlock heroes and artifcats that either improve your performance or automatically attack on your behalf. It is a perfect skinner box of the prestige-based clicker loop. The first game was an entire single player affair. Even the tournaments are really just single player races against the clock to see if you can hit an arbitrary stage cap. The second game is also single player, except the devs added Clans. You join a clan, and can contribute to Clan Quest fights. These run for a limited time and each player gets one “free” 30 second attack every hour. Killing the CQ Boss increases your CLan’s “Clan Ship” bonus. The clan ship fires a large hit into your personal Continue Reading →

Pathfinder Narrative – The Seven’s Sawmill

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On the Road Garus was preparing to leave Sandpoint and begin the ride to Magnimar.  He’d decided to wait a day after Raoul, Vinder and Oggrash left.  Partly this was to spend some time in wild spaces around Sandpoint rooting out any remnants of the ghouls from Aldern Foxglove, but mostly it was to get away from the overly optimistic paladin and the dour half-orc.  They were good companions in a fight, but a bit tedious around town.  Garus was not overly fond of most creatures that walked on two legs.  The implications of Foxglove Manor pointed toward a longer journey with a group, so a day off was a welcome opportunity for the druid to find the patience to deal with people once he got to Magnimar.   After a day spent roaming the nearby farmlands and dealing with the occasional stray ghoul, Garus spent the night in the Tickwood, east of Sandpoint.  The druid had returned to the outskirts of Sandpoint and was saddling his horse in preparation to head south-west on the Lost Coast Road when a large, slightly green tinged man in a dusty traveling coat rounded the corner of stable and made for Garus himself.  Garus Continue Reading →

Pathfinder Narrative

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Note:  I’ve been playing a Pathfinder game for a few months and decided to start writing up the play sessions.  This is my first attempt.   Putting the Dead to Rest A weary band of adventurers rode in to the gates of Sandpoint as the lowering sun lit the sky with fire.  The red light highlighted the dried blood and sunken eyes of the party.  Foxglove Manor and the caverns below had presented an ordeal not only of steel and spell fire, but also of the mind.   A barbarous orc, a dusty jacketed man, a druid, his bonded gorilla, and a rogue bristling with tiny hilts retreated to their lodgings at the Rusty Dragon to rest.  A paladin strode off to his rooms at the Savah’s armory.  Guards went to alert the sheriff that the bedraggled Heroes of Sandpoint were back, all alive, but looking worse for the wear they had endured. The paladin arrived first in the Dragon’s dining room some time after sunset.  Sherriff Hemlock was already there, anxiously waiting for the others to rise from rest or prayers.  Not long after the paladin settle in to wait with Hemlock the rest of the band made their way Continue Reading →

Eve Gone Wild, Freemium Style

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​CCP announced the biggest of all bombshells in MMOs today:  Eve is going free-to-play.  Well, not really, but kind of.  Go read the dev blog if you haven’t.  The short version is you can now start a new account or stop paying for a current account and retain access to your character’s racial ships up to cruisers and many “basic” skills, up to 5m skillpoints.  This is pretty freaking huge. As a player that recently passed 100m skillpoints, and who has unsubbed a few times on the way to getting there, being able to not go silent is a boon.  If you get busy with life, need to save a few bucks for a few months, or just want to scale back?  You can, and still derp in your T1 ships and stay in touch with people.  This is great for older players. For prospective players, you can train up through that hump of starter stuff and get your feet wet in Eve at your pace.  For those that care for the long game, the hook will be bitten and the subs will follow.  I honestly see no negatives here.  Adding bodies, even if they end up not paying or Continue Reading →

Making a Book: The Empyrean Chronicles

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Making a book is a process of craftsmanship.  I’m not writing about the content, but the physical act of taking paper, boards, cloth and glue and turning those parts into an object that an observer would call a book.  It is also a very old tradition.  While printed books are about 500 years old, actual books and binding techniques have existed for at least 2000 years or more.  From clay tablets to bound wooden slats to scrolls to vellum to parchment to paper, with exposed or cased bindings, using thread, leather, or more exotic posts, books have been around for a long time.  I’ve been learning this craft off and on for the last few years.  Today is a short history of one book being created.  This is how I turned “The Empyrean Chronicles” from a data file to a casebound edition.  I’ll go through the process first.  At the end I’ll include information about equipment and supplies. In a Nutshell Making a book, in brief, consists of:  Find some content, then format and print the content.  Once printed, in the case of a sewn book, take the printed leaves (spreads of pages to be folded) and fold them into Continue Reading →

Blog Banter 77 – Hey guys, Eve is Dying! Again!

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Blog Banter 77 – The Malaise   Is there a malaise affecting Eve currently? Blogs and podcasts are going dark and space just feels that little bit emptier. One suggestion is that there may be a general problem with the vets, especially those pre-Incarna and older, leaving and being replaced by newer players who are not as invested in the game. The colonists versus immigrants? Is this a problem? Are there others? Or is everything just fine and it’s just another bout of summer “ZOMG EVE IZ DYING!” Another “Is Eve dying?” debate. Yeah, in some ways Eve is dying.  It is an old game.  Ancient, really, when you look at online games.  Player count in unambiguously down.  New player retention is poor, and it always has been.  But I think simply looking at those metrics ignores some aspects of Eve. Mechanically, Eve is in the best place it has been since I started playing about five and a half years ago.  It isn’t perfect.  No MMO is perfect.  But the devs continue to refine, improve and update all aspects of the game.  This work appears to be ongoing with little sign of stopping in the near future.  Structures are Continue Reading →