A quick update

I normally try to keep my posts here strictly geek related.  It has been long enough since I posted last though that I thought a quick update was warranted before I (hopefully) begin posting regularly again.

So a lot has been going on in my personal life.  Most significantly, my wife and I have moved halfway across the country from the Windy City to the Valley of the Sun.  We moved because of my work, which has been pretty hectic since I arrived here.  Things have calmed down a bit now though, which is why I am going to try my hand at blogging again.

I am still gaming with the Lords of Tyr using the various amazing digital tools which are available nowadays.  Currently I am running Princes of the Apocalypse (Dungeons & Dragons 5e) and playing through Rise of the Runelords (Pathfinder).  I also recently ran Duty Unto Death (Dragon Age) for my old group when a few of them were in town visiting.

Over the next few weeks I plan to post about virtual table tops, my experience running the Dragon Age RPG, a couple of book and TV show reviews, and possibly a major model building project I am thinking of undertaking.

So if you have been waiting for my triumphant return, here I am!  If you have stumbled across this page by accident (more likely), then I hope you like what you see.

Sorry for not posting.

Things got pretty busy this weekend, so there will be no posts for Sunday or Monday. My daily posting schedule should resume on Tuesday morning.

Insert real post here...

It's been crazy here, with five hour commutes and Christmas on the horizon.  Nevertheless, some real posts are coming soon!

In the meantime, here is some season appropriate music to tide you over.

A walk on the wild side: My first impressions on the 4th Ed druid

And I'm back.  More importantly, I am back with a D&D Insider Subscription.  This allowed me to checkout the three level preview of the 4th Edition Druid.  What I saw was... interesting.

Before I begin, I have to say I have always been a fan of druids in D&D.  To me they were always the most interesting of the "second stringers".  It helped that they could fulfill a number of different roles.  If the cleric was down, they could act as a healer.  If you needed help on the front line, they could Wild Shape into a bear, or lord help you, a legendary ape!  Need someone to help the wizard with some combat spell-casting? No problem!

Druids in 4th Edition look like they are still going to be versatile, if a little schizophrenic.  They get Wild Shape as a class feature right at level one in this edition.  Wild shape allows the druid to assume their "Beast Form", and that is where the schizophrenia begins!

Druid powers are pretty evenly split between ones with the Beast Form keyword and ones without it.  While the druid is in beast form, they are pretty much limited to using powers with that keyword.  These powers tend to be focused on a single target, do decent damage, and have some form of secondary effect.  In many ways, these powers are more like second hand striker powers, than controller powers.

The downside it that while Wild Shape is a class feature, your beast form doesn't do much by default.  If you choose to focus on powers without the Beast Form keyword, you probably won't be using Wild Shape much. 

On the other hand, those other powers might be worth it.  The powers that the druid can use outside of their Beast Form are more in line with their controller role; in fact, they are currently the best controllers in the game! 

Like their arcane cousin, the wizard, druids have powers that affect a large number of creatures at once.  Unlike the wizard, almost every one of these powers has some secondary effect that aids them in battle field control.  Secondary effects that immobilize, slow, slide, or otherwise lock down their opponents and limit their options are common.  Frankly, I hope that the upcoming Arcane Power book introduces a lot more spells like this for the wizard!

I have to admit that I am still making up my mind on the 4th Edition druid.  Seeing more than three levels will help.  I can say that my interest has definitely been piqued!

My apologies for the lack of posting

I would like to apologize for the lack of posting.  Things have been hectic at work and at home.  Next thing I know the eleven days have passed!

At first I was truly concerned because the local cleric is only level nine, meaning that I was two days too late to have a Raise Dead cast on the blog.  Luckily, after consulting with him I found out he had taken a mail order course and converted to 4th Edition, meaning he now had a thirty day buffer in which to cast the Ritual!

He did make me provide the components, which really sucked.  You ever go to your local Bath and Body Works and ask for 500 GP worth of Mystic Salves?  Trust me, it will get you plenty of odd looks.

Apparently June will not be the month I break my posting record...

Hey there, this is just a quick post to let people know I am still alive and have not given up on this haven of geekdom.  I could make excuses like: "I broke my foot", "My wife just had surgery", and "Work has been nuts!".  However, I know from experience that none of that would fly with my readership (all three of you).

So let me put out a couple of quick recommendations:

I just finished reading Confessions of a Part-Time Sorceress.  My wife bought it for me because she saw it was a "D&D" book and she was not dissuaded by the subtitle "A Girl's Guide to the D&D Game" that I was probably not the target audience for this book.

Nevertheless, I found it to be a quick and fun read.  The gaming sessions described within seemed more like actual game session than most books about gaming contain, accurately describing the distracting side-conversations, the frustration of a DM trying to keep a session from going off the rails, and how players with different play styles can rub each other the wrong way.  Yet it still conveyed the sense of fun gamers have when gaming.

(It did have a lot of pink though, so I may have to turn in my man card just for reading the whole thing).

Actually, my biggest recommendation concerning Confessions of a Part-Time Sorceress is that if you are a male gamer you have a wife, fiancee, or significant other: Buy this for her!  Seriously, it is not a bad book to introduce them to the hobby, either for future inclusion or at least tolerant smiles when you regale them with tales of your half-elf paladin.

My next recommendation is a new ABC Family TV show called The Middleman.  It is based off of an indy comic book series named The Middleman (Well, duh!).

Basically the premise is that comic book villainy is real and the Middle Man exists to take care of it and cover it up.  Sort of like crossing Doctor Who with X-Files, but in a fun, campy way rather than a gritty, serious way (that series would be called Torchwood).

Oh, by comic book villainy I mean scientists who come up with plans to conquer the earth using hyper-intelligent apes.  So it may not be a series for everyone.

If you are interested, you can watch the pilot in its entirety on the ABC Family's Website  If you like it, watch the series.  If you don't, I just wasted an hour of your life. 

(If you are on the fence, well it is probably a short term commitment since I imagine this will be canceled within one season.)

I will admit the TV series is a bit cheesy.  And that the special effects are more "old school" Doctor Who level than what most people are used to.  However, it also is fun.  And who doesn't like hyper-intelligent apes?

Its been awhile since I posted...

and I want to apologize.  My inattentiveness to my blogging responsibilities is due to three unrelated causes:

My unexplainable addiction to GTA IV.  I have never actually played any of the previous installments, but this one has really grabbed me.  The storyline is very interesting and the open ended gaming is fantastic.

It amazes me that you can watch (fake) TV or surf the (fake) Internet in this game.  Personally, I enjoy playing pool in the game.  Using Grand Theft Auto IV as a pool simulation game seem like a bit of a waste, but hey what can I say.

Luckily my wife is around to go on all the crazy shoot 'em  up missions, visit strip clubs, and run over hookers to get her money back after utilizing their services.

 

Another time-sucker has been the new Age of Conan Hyborean: Adventures MMORPG.  My wife was a long time City of Heroes player, but recently the game has lost some of its appeal to her.  So she made the jump to this new game, taking me along with her.

I can't say that I am sorry to make the switch.  The graphics are beautiful and the game play is quick.  It is obviously in the early stages as the interface can be a bit quirky, and you can run into problems like ending up in a different instance from the rest of your group pretty easily.

Of course, Conan is differentiating itself from Everquest, World of Warcraft, and the like by its Mature rating.  This basically means more spraying blood and the occasional naked breast in the game.  None of this matters to me, but by the same token none of it offends me either.  At least I no longer worry about my wife's foul mouth corrupting some twelve year-old kid when she is playing this game.

Perhaps the biggest reason I haven't posted as much recently is that my work schedule has changed to second shift for a couple of weeks.  Which has really thrown my available free time into chaos while I adjust. 

(On the plus side, the ability to sleep in has really helped me catch up on my sleep, even if I am getting to bed later than ever).

Well, enough excuses!  I promise to be back on track shortly, so expect more updates soon!

I’m back

After a bit of a false start, I am back. Thankfully, I don’t have any readers yet so I figure I am off the hook.

I have decided not to review “Wizards Presents: Races and Classes” to kick off the blog, at least not directly. Rather, I intend to start by talking more generally about my opinion on what has been revealed so far about D&D 4th Edition. I figure I will tackle this in broad topics like “The Feywild”, “Dragonborn”, or “D&D Insider” interspersed with postings about comics and videogames. Expect the first post on these topics soon. No, really, this time I swear!