I’ve added a new wiki to the Cult, in order to put some of my ideas up in a reasonably organized fashion, and because I’d like some help.  There are places for 4e mods, and other gaming stuff.  Right now I’m working on putting up my designs for the Bikini Warrior, and characters who use Eros as the source of their power.

All the characters in 4e work this way, with a source of power and a naming convention accross powers.  The sources in the PHB are the traditional ones: Arcane, Divine, and Martial.  Nature is goign to be introduced (probably in next year’s PHB), along with others as they bring back the Druid and Monk classes.  (This is stated pretty explicitly in the current PHB.

I’ve also been working on templates for powers and class features, etc.  I want to do one for items (I’ll need it for the Bikini Armor, and the Erosceror’s implements.)  Anyway, have a look, and feel free to create a login and futz about.

So, you can tell from this that I’m prepping for 4e on Fridays. We had a bit of a family council about date nights on Friday, and we wound up with a plan to game. If that doesn’t make us geeks, I don’t know what does.

I’ve played three sessions of 4e D&D at this point, and created a couple of characters (as well as helping Girl create a couple). I think it’s going to be fun, especially if we can get a decent handle on tactical combat. They tend to have a flow to them, but even when things look bad for a party, there is still hope they can win.

Character Creation

Character creation isn’t difficult — there is no dice rolling at all in character generation, ever. (Unless you want to roll stats, but it’s just easier not to, now). A lot about your character is determined earlier, and powers which had variables at combat time, now don’t. For instance, Power Attack, which was a major slowdown in my old campaign (partially due to the fact that the most common user of PA was 12), is now a flat -2 to hit, with a variable plus depending on one vs two handed weapons, and character level. In other words, something determined outside of combat.

The down side to this, though, is that a lot of the powers have special effects. I used to be able to look at the line that said “+2 Flaming Longsword” and know everything about my attack — the damage, the to hit, etc. Most powers don’t break down that easily — most of the At Will powers are simple but not all, and all the encounter and daily powers seem to have a tactical component above and beyond doing X damage.

Because of this, there’s a big push in the community for making power cards. Even the descriptions of the powers (with magic-esque keywords and flavor text) lend themselves to this idea. Some folks have done pretty cards which are incomplete (Tintagel — templates soon please), and some which are more functional, but complete. The latter set are in Magic Set Editor, and I’m going to work on printing out some sets tonight.

This is an issue, as I want to switch from the pre-generated characters in Shadowfell to player-made characters, especially if we keep running modules (which I’m leaning towards). I did the same thing (or similar) when 3.0 came out, and I learned a great deal about the game by doing so. Shadowfell seems better put together than the Game Day modules, both of which have serious party-killing flaws, IMNSHO.

The online tools, at DnD Insider are supposed to allow for character creation and power card generation, but they aren’t ready — and there’s no date announcement. Given WotC’s past history, I’m not going to hold my breath that it’s going to work. We were excited by 3e’s digital tools, as well, and they were less than stellar.

Larger, More Cinematic Combat

In my old campaign, before JB left, I had been ramping up the combats, making them larger and more strategic, and adding in a lot of minor monsters. That was fed partly because when Goddessdaughter plays with us, we used it as chance to teach her numbers, basic math, and patience. She’ll be six in August, and hopefully will be reading soon, as I’ve been telling her for years that she can play more games, if she can read. I suspect she’ll wow us as much as a particular seven year-old I’ve been reading about.

The other reason I added monsters was we had a character who was particularly effetive at, well, cleavage (partially through the use of an odder sourcebook, Chainmail Bikini (I mentioned we liked boobs here, right?)). So it behooved me to throw hordes of monsters her way, and let her heave her way through them. It was fun, and a spotlight moment for that character. The addition of minions in 4e has made this even more fun — sure we’re aware they are only 1 hit point monsters, but there’s something about making a single attack, and removing three or four (or more) miniatures from the board, that gives the party early momentum.

They need that momentum because the regular monsters have lots more hit points than they used to. In the module I ran on Game Day, the final boss had 250 hit points (and powers out the wazoo). We didn’t have a chance to see if the party was going to survive (we ran out of time), but I didn’t have high hopes. Maybe I was running it wrong — and I was trying to follow the tactics and rules fairly exactly, as it was an RGPA module — but that monster was going to make mincemeat sandwiches out of the party.

Even the regular battles are like this, with the tide of battle flowing back and forth — and that’s how they are written in Shadowfell, with an attention to terrain, plans and tactics. Gone are the single room encounters which don’t attract the neighbor-monsters. Instead are the larger, several room encounters, with very mobile attack forces. I want to look at telling story as part of this, so that it’s not all just kill kill loot loot kill kill loot.

(As an aside, this is like good erotica: the sex has to feed the plot, and the plot can happen in the sex. It’s D&D so it’s going to have tactical combat, just like erotica is going to have sex scenes. You have to harness that for the plot, unlike, perhaps, some other game).

Overall, I’m excited by the new tools.

I took Friday off so I could spend some quality time with Girl Thursday night, and still sleep in on Friday. Oh, and so we could play some D&D. Grandma had the Goddessdaughter, so we could do some serious gaming for a while. And we had quite a doozy of a dungeon to go. I spent the better part of my week thinking about it and designing it, which is why there’s no Girl #6 done yet. I plan to post #5 today, once I get out from under the real work I’ve been avoiding.

The one long break I took from gaming was to watch The Day the Earth Stood Still. I saw it the first (and only time) when I was about 10, and the local library ( a tiny town library in the 2K+ pop town I grew up in) had a series of summer movies on Saturdays. They actually showed it as a film, flicking projector and all. I’m not sure many people even had VCRs back then. I think they were around, but I’m not sure.

In the movie, in case you haven’t seen it, Klaatu — an alien — and a robot named Gort come to Earth to deliver a message. Our first reaction to him is fear and aggression (he’s waving around a gun-like object which is not a weapon). He won’t deliver the message to just anyone, it has to be everyone at the same time. He gets predictably stonewalled and wrapped up in cold war politics, so he escapes the hospital where he was being treated. He steals an outfit, going by the name of the person whose clothes he stole (”Lt. Carpenter”), and takes up in a boarding house, where he befriends a woman and boy who show him what it means to be a human being.

Thus ultimately leads to him doing an end-run around governments, and — to show he’s serious — stopping the electricity everywhere on earth (except hospitals and planes, it’s noted), and thus the title of the piece. He almost makes it to his meeting with the scientists, but is killed in the process. Gort retrieves his body and revives him, and he warns us that we can fight ourselves as much as we want, but if we want to venture into space, we have to stop, or they’ll come here and destroy the whole planet. And then he leaves.

This was the first time I’d seen it as an adult, and the Christ imagery was pretty obvious, with the alien taking the name “Carpenter”, his death and resurrection, his message of warning and peace, and his final ascension into heaven. According to wikipedia, the movie represents the first real appearance of the flying saucer, the dome-headed robot, and the man in a silver space suit, as well as the oft-referenced line “Klaatu Barada Nikto”. It was interesting in a nostalgic way, and it is kind of amazing how naive Klaatu is. Today’s aliens, even when they aren’t here to destroy us, study and understand us much better before trying to meet us.

But then, The Day the Earth Stood Still is that kind of science fiction which introduces an archetypical alien culture in order to contrast it with us, and, thus, define what it means to be human. Or to make a large statement about something we do that is bad. The message of tDtESS is that war and aggression are bad traits, and we better stop or they will kill us. It’s an aggressive message, and I know just what the humans in that movie would have done: researched the aliens and built our own alien robot space force to take out their cops. Humans don’t take well to bullies, even when we are often bullies ourselves. And that layer is there, too.

And this trope of using aliens as archetypes or two-dimensional characters to reflect our humanity is still being used today, it’s a powerful part of the science fiction landscape. It’s been used to talk about racism, gender politics, marriage politics, and to explore the human condition. Doctor Who used this technique over and over again. The favorite Doctor Who alien is one who has denied their emotions to become more logical and powerful.

The Daleks are the supreme example of that, and they are back in this weeks Doctor Who, the second of a two-part episode. This time the last four Daleks are faced with a choice: they are too weak to take over Depression era New York (much less the world), so they have to adapt. That’s one of the themes of the Daleks: forced and chosen evolution. This time, though, the leader of the Daleks decided that they are missing something, and it’s quite logical. If they were really supreme, then they would have won and survived. Instead they didn’t, but humans did, over and over again. Therefore, the humans must have some trait which will make them more able to survive.

They blend with a human, and a Dalek with human emotions is born. He is very smart and ambitious, but recognizes that continuing in the path they followed was wrong. He convinces the Doctor to aid them, and make a new, better, Dalek which would have emotions and be better galactic citizens. And the Doctor helps. Of course, the other three remaining Daleks turn on him, and pervert their plans.

The Doctor is able to stop them, of course, and all but one of the Daleks dies. Then we get that same face-off we keep seeing, over and over in the new series: the Doctor as the last of his race faces off against the last of one of his enemies. When Eccleston’s Doctor first sees the Daleks, he rails against them, furious for their part in the Time War, and for the first time we really see a vengeful Doctor who is out to kill. Tennant’s Doctor has the same choice, but tries to reason with the Dalek (which never works) and it escapes for later. Because, as they say, “The Daleks always Survive”.

This season is shaping up really well, and I like the relationship between Martha and the Doctor which is both less romantic and more so. We get to see the loss of a companion’s affect on the Doctor for more than a few minutes. (I still recall the sadness of Tom Baker’s Doctor when he ejected Romana’s parts of the TARDIS.) According to IMDB, John Barrowman will reprise his role of Capt. Jack Harkness later on the show, and there is already an implication that there’s another time lord out there. And since the Doctor has been conveniently wrong about the survival of such baddies as the Daleks (and to some extent the Cybermen), I (and countless other whovians) patiently await the arrival of another time lord.

All the while knowing, of course, that if there is only one time lord other than the Doctor, it has to be his enemy, The Master. (It’d be nice, even logical with Canon if it were Romana, but it won’t be.)

There are two other bits of TV-related goodness, which is odd from me, I know. I got a copy of the pilot for Blood Ties, a Lifetime drama based oround Holly Lisle’s series of the same name. It’s modern detective/vampires stuff. They did a better job of the pilot than Dresden Files did, following the book a bit more closely, but then the main character Vicky Nelson (played by the same woman who played the hottie arty lesbian in Better Than Chocolate) isn’t as hip to the supernatural as Harry.

Harry is my other news, where I listened to their most recent podcast. The guy who does it is an old friend of Jim Butcher’s (used to play in his D&D campaign, to bring things full circle), and is writing the Dresden Files RPG (which I hope to own and play). I’ve yet to hear him say one bad thing about the show, or really, any of his guests. And there are bad things to say. The most recent podcast covers the show “Storm Front” which is loosely based on the novel, and was the original pilot. It’s pretty horrible, Girl and I call it “The episode which shall not be named” aka “The Bob-less episode”. I’ve written about it before.

Yet they do not mention its horribleness at all, merely discussing it in terms of the uncut version which the guest had seen (and not many else have), and not really going for it’s badness — which in my mind hints at what makes the other episodes, especially the final 3 really good. The good news is that it’s beating out Battlestar Galactica for ratings, and we’re pretty certain that BG will be renewed. Doctor Who has been renewed for 2 more seasons (or Tennant has been signed for that many), and Heroes was renewed months ago. For once, shows I like are doing well. How odd is that?

Yep, I got my Darnassus faction last night. I’m now a human cat-rider with an epic mount. I borrowed 75G from the uber-powerful and sexy Earthcaller, my SexyWife’s level 70 feral druid. That used to feel like some incredible amount of money, but since I just had 477G lying around, accruing in my pockets as I played, I feel like I can pay her back pretty quickly, now that I’m not fighting in newbie areas. I did make about 5 gold doing it, though, and maybe 500xp:) The 18,000 faction points was unheard of in just a few hours. That was awesome.

So I got my mount and realized I was exhausted. Yesterday wasn’t physically all that great. I finally went home due to my back pain, and took a bath. I fell asleep in the bath, it was so relaxing and warm. And on these 71 degree days that’s an odd thing to say. JB cooked a truly awesome ham, and I made some truly mediocre au gratin potatoes, and went up to play WoW. That was my night, and why I don’t normally like to play WoW, especially in retrospect.

But I know my character and can help out in the instance this weekend. I won’t have time to play until then, so last night was the night to do it.

Tonight I’m fulfilling a promise to Girl, who has been good and not masturbated for several days. I’m not sure how that’s affecting her, but I have my hopes for a couple of different outcomes. She’s doing an interview for school this morning, I hope she’s just distracted enough to be relaxed, but I doubt it. Tonight is the big night, and I think I’ve got a good list of things I want to do. If I have some mental time later today, I’ll probably put together some ritual to put around it.

I think sometimes that we suffer from a lack of ritual — it can add purpose and intent to a space, and that mental state works on us in ways that can be very empowering, or even just focusing. You may think this is some mystical hoo-joo, but it’s not. Think of this, of the successful meetings you’ve been in. I bet at the beginning of the better meetings, someone stood up and said “We are here today to….” It is a ritual, setting the start of the group activity, and focusing it to the purpose gathered.

Since we’re very smart creatures, those rituals can be almost anything we can imagine ourselves to be. And that, I think, is part of the power of that kind of ritual.

I also need to play for the uber-D&D session tomorrow (and maybe Saturday). I’ve got some good ideas, but I need to organize them a bit, and make some notes. I know that as I have talked in front of people, I’ve gone from fully written speeches, to note cards, to just simple outlines. Nowadays I just have three or four words on a piece of paper, and that’s good enough. D&D is getting that way, but it has lots of details that need to be recorded (in terms of monster stats, for example). A fluctuation of 5-10% isn’t going to change the outcome greatly, but more than that really could.

If you think about it, the fighter class gets 5% better at basic attacks every level, gaining a +1 to every d20 attack roll every level, then every other level is a new feat which is a bigger percentage (if chosen well). So a 10% increase in difficulty keeps things within one level, but more moves it further away, and thus a lot harder.

Also today, I need to get some coding done, but I have to admit it’s really third or fourth on my list. I’d like to finish girl part 6 (part 5 will be posted on Saturday), and get it to my Girl for proofreading. Just to be mean, since she can’t masturbate. I’d have done it yesterday, but I hurt too much to write.

I just want to say that, here at Cult of the Turtle, testaceousness is in. We like it. We like it loads. If you don’t like it, well Cult of The turtle is as testaceous as blogs go, so you probably won’t like us either. Anyway, an update on my life follows after the cut.
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This week has been pretty good for me. Part 2 of Girl will be proofed today; part 3 is in first draft, but complete. Part 4 is started. Finishing that will give me a two week lead time, I’d like to get parts 4 and 5 done this week. Girl is getting started on her new school schedule, and while I know she’ll always give me time if I really need it, I want to get a bit ahead so that if she has a week from Hell we still have proofed copy ready to go.

This feels like a pretty good pace, 2k words/week. I think Body Double (which had a more structured plot/style) was about 3k/week, and that was a bit much — but a good part of that was trying to fit in my plot elements. I’m less concerned about forcing the plot to fit in a certain number of parts with Girl #16180. I almost see it as more of a science fiction comic than as a novella told in chapters.
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