Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Kingmaker: It's Trolltown, there's nothing you can do.

Tom's Kingmaker campaign continues to rock. The past two sessions have seen me falling into a pit trying to save some stupid dog that of course immediately tried to eat me, that we ended up saving anyway, busting up a witch cult, and last week beating the tar out of some trolls. Jeff's been blasting suckers full of arrows and poor Lori gets cleanup duty as the party cleric while Joe fireballs pretty much everything we see. Now we've just rolled back to town to brag about these trolls we slaughtered only to find the place busted up. The suspense is killing me! Are we being attacked? Is my reformed-witch-cultist sweety alright? If the townsfolk are dead, who will hire me as the butler?!

I also spent some time painting up a mini for my character but I neglected to take any photos before I took it over there. Maybe Tom or Lori can snap a pic or two for me. Now I gotta get back to moving. Urgh.

Monday, August 9, 2010

Kingmaker and the All-Star Backup Squad

Last night was my first game with Skeleri's crew, chewin' hexes in Paizo's Kingmaker adventure path. We killed an evil tree and got jumped by some crazy mind-warping elf woman and a speedy fey jerkwad. They've got a pretty slick thing going there, mapping out the hexes while trying to build up and maintain a settlement. Sunday can't get here soon enough.

Whenever I've been out of a game for a while and I need to brush up a bit on the rules my usual method is to just roll up a bunch of characters. In crunch-heavy systems like Pathfinder rolling up a character generally involves a lot of "what's this do, how does this system work" kind of page-flipping, so it serves as a good refresher. Here's a couple of the goons I came up with, which I lovingly refer to as the All-Star Backup Squad (having characters rolled up also helps if you think you're likely to die often and horribly).

Julian Carlton, human axeman, butler at large

Julian carries out the varied traditional occupation of his family: planting axes in goblin faces, and serving drinks to the Lord and Lady of the manor. He hails from Rostland, having fled to the wild untamed settlement after a mysterious fire claimed the home and lives of his previous employers. Julian hopes to find a home here where he can ply his manservant skills in his downtime. He favors axes, fire, and servitude.








Jackjaw Slopshover, half-orc monk, country boy

Ah Jackjaw. Jackjaw is your basic backwoods mutant hillbilly. He enjoys wrasslin' all of the world's creatures. He once wrassled a magic tree and made hisself a mighty beatin' stick with it's sundered limbs. He's really only a monk in that the monk class is the only one that really captures "half-naked man who likes to punch everything" to my liking. My the gods have mercy when this snaggle-toothed freak gains Abundant Step and starts teleporting into people's homes in the middle of the night.

Hamilton Fish, gnome barbarian, the Werewolf of Woodsedge

Hamilton Fish, savage gnome, was run out of Galt after numerous violent encounters with the locals. He gained the nickname "Werewolf of Woodsedge" due to his penchant for biting and chewing his opponents' limbs. Currently he's just kinda wandering around looking for a fight and a hearty meal, the two being the same in Hamilton's eyes.









Stonesaw, dwarf barbarian

I think the picture should tell you everything you need to know about Stonesaw.










 I ended up running with Julian Carlton, the axemanservant, Sadly I couldn't roll above a 5 for the life of me so he really didn't make much of an impression. So it goes.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

New D&D Red Box

I just noticed this today, so pardon me if this is old news. Looks like Wizards of the Coast is putting out a basic starter box for D&D 4th Edition in the style of the old "Red Box" edition. In fact it looks to be an exact copy of the box, with some changes to the wording.



The Wizard's product listing
A video unboxing

I have to say I'm a bit confused by the packaging. It's just so out of line from the standard 4th Ed-style. My cynical side tells me "it's a trap" meant to lure in the old school crowd, away from the books they bought 20 years ago or the free PDF clones and back to the paying flock. Even that is a bit of a stretch, as it seems to me that if you remember the original Red Box fondly, there's a good chance you aren't interested in the new stuff, and if you're interested in the new stuff there's a good chance you won't care about the nostalgia factor of the old Red Box cover. Still, I think it's pretty snazzy to see the basic intro box set make a comeback.

UPDATE:
Skeleri mentioned a Gamma World boxed set on the horizon as well earlier today.

Wizard's Product Page

The rumor mill I've seen on this one indicates that mutations (which are much like Powers from D&D) will come from Magic-like booster packs. I sort of wondered when such a thing would happen, and was honestly surprised when the D&D Power cards weren't released as such. I'll probably check it out, but I guess I'm not getting my hopes too high on this one. Nonetheless, it's interesting to see how Wizards is trying to evolve their market.