Army of Darkness

I'm blah because work is being annoying. 'Fill out a bug using this template!' The template is blank. The bug tool won't let me save until I fill out fifty billion fields none of which I know the appropriate value for.

Yesterday, we played some D+D, which wasn't so blah, although we didn't get far because people were being extremely distractible and the GM kept having ot shuffle around between ten different pages for his monsters. Whoever said the 4e stat blocks were compact and easy to use? Totally smoking crack.

( game summary )

Waiting on the Council

After Shawn's game, I went over to Jurann's place to play more D+D. We spent most of the session shopping and training up.

( game summary )

Champions *is* shiny...

...maybe I just shouldn't play betas. v.v I guess there weren't that many changes between the end of the beta and release, so maybe it's more that I should give games time to work through initial problems.

So, why I don't hate it:
(a) You can turn off the horrible cell shading, and it looks like a normal (if somewhat old-school) 3d game. This also helps it run at an acceptable framerate on my laptop.
(b) The server instability is gone.
(c) They fixed the most glaringly obvious balance issues.
(d) I figured out what the hell I was doing as far as character creation goes. At least for a few specific powersets.

(d) is a big one -- my god, the game is min-maxxy. You get two 'super stats' and the bonus from a stat being 'super' is much MUCH larger than your equipment or talents or starting stats can compensate for. +40 by 13th level (when you pick the second one). The stats interact in weird ways with the powers -- most of them do nothing unless you have specific powers that key off them, others are extremely valuable for all characters, and you have little guidance as to which is which or to which your powers are going to need since you can't look at powers until you're eligible to buy them.

This does make the freedom to mix powersets often a horrible idea. You need to mix powersets that rely on the same stats. Or pick powers that don't rely on any stats, which admittedly is most of them.

But once you've got a decent character, the combat's fun. The missions are all obviously intended for solo but there are some hints that they at least *intend* to scale for groups -- enemies are supposed to go get friends more often when you're grouped, and there are some CoH-style instances that may or may not scale. There's also public quests, which no one ever bothers with as far as I can tell because they're out of the way and the one in the tutorial gives crap loot (who knows about the others?), and PvP with rewards. PvP is a bit like PvP in any game ever -- you really have no idea why some people are unkillable monsters and other people just suck. Random powerups scattered around the arena don't help with that! Also, so far I've only been able to fight in steel cage matches which are chaotic and kind of boring; I hope there's more to it than that if they expect people to actually do it.

But the game's decent enough that I'll actually buy it and play it for a while. It'd be nice if I could find my friends who're also playing it, assuming there are any, but it's kind of solo-encouraged, like WoW, so, eh.

EDIT: Just in case, I'm @terrycloth

Kijji's Journal, Entry 4

Rydia was the one responsible for driving me out of the village. She was the one who’d invited Thistle to stay the night after the little herethroy finally made it to the far side of the lake, as night was falling and it was getting even colder. She’d wanted to invite her to stay in her hut, but chickened out at the last second – Rydia was quite fond of herethroy, and spent a lot of time in their company, and people had already started to talk.

So she was *really really mad*, and since she was probably the best hedge-witch Starfall village had, that meant I was driven out with a trail of pepper and thorns. She was a lot of fun to fight! Most warriors either kill you or get killed by you in a few passes, but all her spells were pain and tangle and barriers, so we got to play fox and hound for a while before some of the warriors who’d kill me in a few passes woke up, and I ran off into the hills.

They didn’t give up, of course. I circled back around the next morning, spying on the village belly down at the top of a nearby cliff, and got to watch as they put together their adventuring team to hunt me down. Rydia was there, of course, and Tell-tail, who was terrified that someone would find out the secret that everyone knew – no one else routinely brought monsters into the village. Candyice from the herethroy village was there as muscle – still a kid, but apparently one of their warriors. She was the only one of the pack with the raw, oblivious excitement that prime adventurers usually have when they set out to hunt monsters. Raspberry was there too for some reason – she didn’t know why herself, which usually means she accidentally talked herself into it and then was too proud to back down. And the fifth member of the team was… the Bonstable. Sorry, I mean the local sleeth, Darreth, who sleeps in the yard with Tell-tail’s pets sometimes, and occasionally eats a few of the more boring ones that Tell-tail won’t miss. And is really a bonstable.

I know bonstables are masters of disguise and all, to people whose minds are squishy blind jellyfish, but to my mind’s eyes, they’re a weird little puzzlebox, very distinctive. He was shaped like a sleeth’s mind in the same way I was shaped like a fox, only instead of spikes, hinges and buckles.

Oh, and there was Tell-tail’s krango, and his blossomary, and a hunting hawk.