How to Train your Dragon

Hello people,

Before reaching the weekend proper I dropped round to Rich's Friday night to try out his latest acquisition D&D Attack Wing. I'd seen a bit of blurb come up on the Wizkids site but hadn't paid too much attention other than wondering how different it would or wouldn't be to STAW.

In answer it's the same mechanic applied appropriately,  by which I mean that any necessary tweeks have been made. You still get a movement dial and an action but there are a number of necessary tweeks. 

- There are 3 flight levels and the ability to land with ground movement being a separate dial.
- Each dragon has a ranged Bite and Tail attack.
- Bumping doesn't loose you your action.
- Upgrades are primarily physical abilities, magic items and spells.
- Shields convert to Armour which isn't removed by damage but critical and breath attack damage ignores armour.

In the starter set you get one Red, Blue and Copper dragons. Reds are brawlers, Coppers agile tricksters and Blues mid level mages. 

We played through three games, the first being the tutorial and then a couple of 100 pointers, which is two beasties with various levels of upgrades. Rich's pair of Reds,  named and unnamed, didn't leave much spare and beasted my Copper and Blue souped up named pair first time out. Second time round with a better game plan they were the ones limping home.

After one evening's gaming my impression was solid if unspectacular with some nice, appropriate, twists on the mechanics that I know so well. 

What will be really interesting is when ground troops come into the mix. From the page count dedicated to them in the fair sized rule pamphlet their an integral part of the game rather than dragon feed on legs. It would also seem that scenario play will be just as integral.

Apprehension....up in smoke ;)

Geek me up Spotty!

No Dark Heresy last night due to vague plague amongst a couple of us. Rather missing my roleplay hit so have this instead, shamelessly ripped off from Rather Gamey.

Very, VERY glad it's Friday :)

This weekend I shall be sorting through mountain and hopefully getting in a bit of brush-time

I Am A: Neutral Good Human Fighter (5th Level)

Ability Scores:
Strength-17
Dexterity-17
Constitution-16
Intelligence-14
Wisdom-13
Charisma-15

Alignment:
Neutral Good A neutral good character does the best that a good person can do. He is devoted to helping others. He works with kings and magistrates but does not feel beholden to them. Neutral good is the best alignment you can be because it means doing what is good without bias for or against order. However, neutral good can be a dangerous alignment when it advances mediocrity by limiting the actions of the truly capable

Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Class:
Fighters can be many things, from soldiers to criminal enforcers. Some see adventure as a way to get rich, while others use their skills to protect the innocent. Fighters have the best all-around fighting capabilities of the PC classes, and they are trained to use all standard weapons and armor. A fighter's rigorous martial training grants him many bonus feats as he progresses, and high-level fighters have access to special melee maneuvers and exotic weapons not available to any other character.

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus

Paranoid??!!

Somewhat delayed with the report but most of the D&D group finally sat down for a session last Thursday. A decent enough session there was a little bit of rust to shed but after a reasonable break everyone was keen to get stuck in and do a pro job,.........a little too keen maybe.

In total we covered two rooms which isn't the highest tally for a full session but an old adversary struck....PARANOIA!

Even worse than a vengeful dice god this particularr malady is primarily self-inflicted by the party upon themselves, though a good / evil / devious GM can definitely help the incubation period along.

Checking for traps, mundane and magical, we, or at least those of us not in full plate, crept into our next room to be confronted by some furniture and a STATUE........ well that just couldn't possibly be right!

As a group we've had issues with STATUEs on a number of occasion. STATUEs that do things, bad things like glow, whip and attack you. Cue backs to the wall as we skirt around the room keeping as far from it as possible. No-one wants to be first to front up to said vaguely inanimate object but after people starting taking various resistance checks we "selected" the Paladin.

Being the clever chap that he is he opened negotiations with a lusty blow of his longsword. Eventually noticing the glowing glyphs "we" changed to making, and failing, an INT check followed by another lusty blow.

Leaving the advanced negotiations to the specialist I crept through a side-door and spied the back of a random goon, many of whom we have dispatched previously. Executing a text-book back-stab I was fully expectant of another notch on my short-sword.......erm no!

So all our initial uber-stealth had been well wasted and the sounds of battle drew the local Necromancer and a couple of his pets! going for the super-move I fluffed ensnared myself at El Necro's feet and was Ghoul-Touched into rancid paralysis. I went and made the tea whilst others carried the load.

After a heavy flow of hit points we had and extended mass healing session squeezed into a corridor with  a rotational shift of guards and reminded ourselves that we're 7th level now and so as we're substantially tougher, so our opponents shall be.

After a few more spot, arcane knowledge and detect magic checks we worked out the marble pagoda shifted about........to reveal a set of spiral stairs descending into PITCH BLACK!!!!

Oh dear......... :)

One Shot Wonder?

Bit more D&D last night and another all-action as we were presented with three sub-levels to explore. Rolling a D3 we ended up taking the stairs down to the sub, sub basement and soon got stuck in.

Sneaking immensely poorly I alerted a particularly large Ettin who suddenly came over all aggressive. Stuck at the front with the warrior types bundling up behind me I decided on the ostentatious move of sliding through his legs, hamstringing him on the way, and rolling off to the right.

I've tried such moves before to mixed results.......

So, much to my initial pleasure I managed a run of big dice, including a natural 20 for the hamstring strike, at a massive -8. I was less  impressed that as I rolled back up on to my delicately follicled tootsies I came face to ermm......face with a Gelatinous Cube!

But then Charlie, the Elven Exocet, shot the Ettin to death giving me some retreat room whilst the warriors got on with spooning through El Gello.

The Ettin's corpse fell back into the large pit behind him waking the Enormous Carrion Crawler that was dozing within it.But then Charlie, the Elven Exocet, shot the Enormous Carrion Crawler  to death!!

Moving on we quickly discovered that we were in the very bowels of the Gobbo warren filled mainly with carrion and rubbish. Rubbish attracts rats and most of us had fun running a book as the Paladin was heroically swamped by a horde of them. with only two goodly aligned members in the party the rats were heavily backed!

Growing bored by his slow progress the Teifling Warlock pumped in a shot form his Wand of Fireball, gaining the kill-steal and roasting off the Paladin's cloak as well as most of his facial hair. All bets void! :)

Moving on to what turned out to be the final room of the evening we found a slightly mouldy library along with an number of extra planar constructs of the type that we've met previously (cue dramatic jingle) including a particularly savage beastie.

Sighing with relative boredom Charlie shouldered his way through us, following previous "keep up lads" commentary, and preceded to throw repeated 1s all over the place! The sheer shock of this was somewhat contagious especially for the Paladin and suddenly the rest of us actually had to unsheathe weapons and try to remember which end to wave about. All this whilst we could physically see the big lad's regeneration kicking in........

With two crossbow chaps on a balcony I tried another ostentatious leap up and off a bookcase.....tried. Bouncing off the wall and hitting the floor he then shot me. Ooooppss......

Thankfully EE snapped out of it and with a concerted show of firepower, bow, spell and clerical we mopped up and saw to our various wounds.

Maybe there's a First Aid manual in amongst this lot :)

Bows don't kill people....Arrows do!!

A bit more D&D Thursday night and it was an all action session with plenty of high quality biscuit action to boot.

Previously we had done a bit of research / book work and that having secured the Mage's College. Well I hadn't, I'd tried stirring up a local workers revolt, following failed payment negotiations with said mages, only to find out that the workers were more than happy with their T&C's. BAH!

Working a few things out we placed the ANCIENT TALISMAN over the local map to identify three locations of ANCIENT POWER which we'd need to go and extensively re-model.

One of said sites just happened to be the island next door so after a quick ferry ride we stood outside and old tumble-down tower.

Going a bit Skyrim we ignored it and scouted around for the hidden goblin burrows and decided that we'd much rather take that route in. Flush with over confidence following a brief scuffle at the entrance we continued to go all Skyrim scouting about as much as possible before actually doing anything revealing a fair sized cavern system in the process.

Top left is the main chamber with the Gobbo Lord and his bodygaurd being entertained by a Bard strangling a bag of carts, possibly literally. The resultant screeching gave us plenty of cover to go for the flank whilst the Palaldin and Elven Ranger of Ultimate Bow Death (plus wolf) stood ready.

As such we quickly found ourselves heavily outnumbered with a side dormitory of snoring greenskins to contend with and plenty of passageways leading to who knew where. Those of us on the side mission decided to go for the sneakily killing them in their beds approach. Even the Dwarven Cleric was convinced as Goblins are evil aren't they?

Admittedly we hadn't stopped to converse with any of them at any point but with the green skin and piggy red eyes we couldn't possibly be wrong.

Possibly it was his struggle with the moral compass that caused the Dwarf to crash to the floor waking the Goblins whilst we all tried to look friendly and innocent.......at least until the Warlock unleashed a round from his Staff of Fireball!

Much to our chagrin said barbecuing caused zero greenskin deaths at which point a general melee ensued cavern wide. The Ranger lined up the Gobbo Lord with a double double-loaded shot just to watch them splinter an inch from his nose. Oh dear, being kept honest on this one then are we?

Bull Rush-ed to max the Paladin shouted loudly to attract attention (he must have some serious faith in his god....or the drugs!) of most of the Lord's Samurai bodygaurd who acted as the well oiled machine that they soon proved to be and we were soon in a proper scrap bereft of our normal formations and battle-schemes.

Fighting as two groups we did our best to re-group. Ranger-boy quickly plugged the Goblin Mage before he caused too much grief but the star of the show was the stunted god-botherer who could utilise his hurting anyone not googly-aligned miracles. This was a new thing as many of the party are a darker shade of neutral...ahem!

Taking on the Lord and a couple of his best boyz el Paladino was confident in his full plate / Bull Rush  combo until it became clear that these were no ordinary goblins. Their samurai skills and weaponry soon had him checking and re-checking both his character sheet and the rule-book for any edge available.

"I can lay on hands!" "I can cast miracles? Which ones!!" and so on. As a learning curve it was steep but incredibly instructive. Unfortunately for one not quite instructive enough. Dumb Paladin Down, we got a Dumb Paladin Down!!

Meanwhile, unable to take down the Elven Uzi, he manged to take down the Gobbo Lord with one critically hitting set of double arrows doing 104 points of damage!!, the DM took revenge on Wolfie his faithful companion. Not sure which loss was more mourned ;)

A bit of Cleric-ing later everyone was back on their feet / paws and we cleared up a touch as the session timed out. Somewhat bloodied and bruised we need to regroup and push on, though next time maybe a little less blase!

The Dungeons and Dragon Ride

Continuing a theme, this is Jon. Jon has been running the D&D campaign for those of us who do and is another founder member of Enfield Gamers and all of it's previous incarnations.

Well known around the club for his horrendous dice and excellently painted figures Undead Jon is also rather keen on all things hailing from the afterlife. Jon is also well known for his immaculately prepared rosters / ganglists / character sheets and the amount of work that he's put into the D&D.

Thursday night saw the latest instalment of D&D and Jon had prepared another stormer as we headed back into combat. Visiting a mage college on the isle of Isleholme we found it in "lockdown" for reasons initially unknown.

Effecting entry / breaking in the place was eerily silent until we finally made contact with an immensely jittery mage. Calming him down it became that their menagerie had broken loose and stood between us and the Arch-Mage's quarters. Well why wouldn't it?
Said menagerie consisted of an Owlbear and a Roper. The Roper caused some issues, dropping Rob's Dwarven Cleric to strength zero, thus collapsing to the floor a la newborn, and gave most of us a stern fight. The Owlbear lined up against Charlie's Ranger and Ian's Warlock.

Owlbear = Ranger fodder

Over the next few minutes we all noticed just how effective the Elven Ranger had become with his flaming bow. Standing still he kicks out two double-arrowed bow shots. One round of decent dice kicked out 75 damage and definitely clipped the Owl's, well.....everything!

The Roper almost gave us a good whipping.....before Ranger-time!

As mentioned the Roper tied several of us up, fairly literally, (ho ho ho) for a few rounds and was proving quite the handful. This was until Ranger boy came around the corner and unleashed his Hail of Doom Arrows. The guy suddenly seems to have become the deadly love-child of Legolas and Hank (for those in the know)!!

The Assassin de-cloaked

Moving on we had to do investigative stuff, i.e stuff that we couldn't shoot to death, like read and think. This proved more challenging until trouble came and found us in the slinky shape of an Assassin-ette.

Appearing from nowhere she headshot one mage type before disappearing before our various eyes. Locating our Arch-Mage we combined confusion with him attempting to locate her via Detect Evil and a little bit of scrying. Proving unable to do so she once again de-cloaked and shot our Arch-Mage dead in the head with a natural 20. Dog food in a cloak!

As we left it......mild chaos!

To top things off our first met guide proved turncoat summoning a ghost and ghasts before legging it along with Assasin-ella. Time also stormed out on us whilst we contemplated various risky pursuits.

A cliff-hanger then, just like any good series :)

Bossing It

Hmmm another week between posts and Tharg knows how long since anything new has appeared on the WIP page, probably time to use it or loose it really :/ Just been busy with Life really, ....oh and the odd hour or two of skyrim :)

Last week saw a decent amount of gaming, another highly enjoyable evening of Warhammer Invasion though Stewart may disagree as I don't believe he managed a single win all night. I did at least TRY to feel vaguely guilty and am fairly sure I was less of a c0ck this time.

D&D on Thursday was a bit of a talky one and then some inter-party squabbling. This was mainly because, following on from last session's kill-steal banter, I decided to pocket the Paladin's magical ring, that summons his mighty other-planar steed Salsa-Queena, whilst he was sleeping.

When he found ou he was the only one that wasn't amused and my "Where's your horsey gone" song, in terrible Irish brogue, probably didn't help matters. This caused a number of minor recriminations and stamped feet. All sorted out in the end but guaranteed that we didn't get to the next combat so an early finish rather than get stuck halfway through.

Both sessions involved zero figures and I think its just that my attentions are elsewhere at the moment. No bad thing to have a break every now and then. Last night I did however manage to finish off the Orc Warlord and BSB on boars to a suitable for sale standard. Rather enjoyed painting these, especially the check on the banner and the ginger BSB boar :)

Technically at least 8 PPs due but i'll take 5 give the quick and easy intentions.

In an effort to clear the project the other 30 boy block is next up followed by the Boar Boyz which will definitely break the back of it. Manual 360 below.......

Pieces of Eight

D&D Thursday night and Aaron got to flex most of his piratical muscles as we took to the river last night. What we later discovered was has inability to either swim or sail! Apparently its more about skills with a cutlass and the grog bottle.

Having brought home our recently  acquired column of refugees / life-contracted employees / indentured slaves we blagged some expenses form the Laird and then boarded our lift the south, The Salty Seaman.......ahem!

Settling in with the Seaman's three man crew our thoughts turned to.....well not so much mutiny more just outright theft. This was when the sailing credentials of our resident salty seadog came under s withering appraisal. So much so that we barely noticed the gale that suddenly blew up the river or the other sailing barge that suddenly veered across from the other bank and straight into our starboard side.

Picking ourselves up off of the deck we stood by to repel our demonic borders finding ourselves bereft of our regular formations, magical buffs and structure. It was a proper old scrap and as such probably one of most enjoyable and edgy dust-ups that we've had a for a while.

In amongst it all a bit of a kills competition developed  a la Legolas and Gimli. Originally between the unholy sworded Pirate and the holy sworded Paladin as the prime beef of the party. Mr Paladin bereft of his normal pack of buff spells, his 'roid rage, was struggling a bit while Captain Cutlass was having an easier time relying on his abilities as a purer warrior.

What wasn't expected was my Halfling Rogue getting in on the act but swinging amongst the rigging the broken nature of the combat allowed for plentiful backstab opportunities. A few decent dice later it was a run for the line between the Pirate and the Rogue with the Paladin having a bit of a lower lip wobble amongst allegations of kill steals. All good banter.

With the tide turned against the Rutter-Kin it was their winged herald that had been causing us most concern tying up the attentions of the Dwarven Priest and Elven Ranger. Hard pressed the herald dipped into his sack magic and pulled out Mirror Image which caught us flat footed at a critical juncture.

Much like Jon's Jedi Rob then checked his list of miracles and pulled out Dispel Magic which after a quick reference to the rulebook did the job. I couldn't resist highlighting the parallel as the Ranger belt fed arrows into the understandably piqued herald who suddenly found himself reeling and Rob with the chance of a major kill-steal. The roll came up a point short, despite Rob's search for every bonus possible only for the Elf to finish the job he started.

With both sloops rapidly taking on water we quickly boarded our opponent's vessel, looted it's hold and walked the water to the bank courtesy of the Cleric.

Final scores on the doors; Pirate 3, Rogue 3, Paladin 1/2 :)

It's a SIZE thing!!

 So, Thursday night's roleplay saw our return to Jon's D&D campaign and the welcome return of Aaron to the group. Having previously preferred just to play Star Wars Mr T hooped across the genre divide to add a Pirate, Warrior sub-class to the group.

That means that both GM's have six players to contend with which I'm aware is considered pretty BIG by most players. With introductions, recap and re-introduction we spent most of the session talking (debating / arguing) various courses of action to take in view of the scene laid before us.

This scene involved the laying to waste of a small highland town, with whose burgers we had lodged 30,000 gold in the form of a solid gold idol's head. The intent was to "invest" (acquire / enslave) said town BUT, strangely, after the marauder's attack it was not to be found!

Cue great debate as to our purpose, motivation and proposed actions. With six of us we cover a wide range of options boasting as we do a Human Paladin, Teifling Warlock, Dwarven Cleric, Elven Ranger (plus wolf), Halfing Rogue and now a Human Pirate. There's very little eventuality that we can't have a go at. Problem is we all want to have a got at them in our own way!

Eventually we did STUFF. Myself, Rogue, and the Ranger went out and tracked the Vampire led marauder band to a rock amphitheatre where thei tracks disappeared (planal transportation spell). The Cleric spoke to the dead for clues and the Warlock researched various magical glyphs. The Paladin healed people and touseled hair while the Pirate dug graves,.......it's a plunder thing apparently.

Stopping relatively early, at a convenient point, Aaron was slightly put out that he hadn't got to hit anyone. This was often the case with Star Wars, lots of planing the action often go in the way of the action!

Meanwhile I spent a bit more time on Skyrim last night, this time with my Steel Clad Orc Brute rather than my more delicate Khajit Rogue. Running through a relatively well known Vampiric hold I actively had a go at sneaking about and taking a number of pot-shots from the shadows realising that he was somewhat deficient in this respect and the practice would improve him significantly.

That's right, a hulking beast of a hack and smash specialist, in the making, sneaking around in full plate! He did rather well at it and then had the superior cleave and clear ability to back it up as required. The head Vamp chap died SO much easier this time, though not before applying a certain little kiss on the cheek.

A couple of hours later I was sufficiently impressed to cough up for a particularly keen magical Orc Bow to go with the Greatsword of Frost and the Orc Sword of Stamina eating / Mace of Shock combo that I'd tried out dual wielding (not as easy as I'd hoped). With good Heavy Armour and reasonable block, I learn!, he's quite the fearsome prospect in most situations and running a reasonable favourite.

I do however realise that picking either locks or a pocket is likely to end up with any number of breaks, locks, pockets......arms!

Tangenting to another part of my, eventual, point SIZE is such an issue with the hobby and not only just scale. BIG games become BIGGER with small figures and similar budgets. There does seem to be more of  a trend for skirmish over the more recent years but even skirmish games go BIG when played with action men. Bigger still seems to be perceived as better.

Thought: isn't it more a question of PROPORTION???

A Geek's gaming room is his Castle

And in some cases possibly quite literally!

So, as shown, I am now fully set-up at home in the main way that matters. I've also had the nice chap around from Virgin Media to install my cable TV and Broadband. As such normal service is all set to be resumed, whatever that might be!

Top two shots are of the spare / hobby storage / secondary gaming room with my work-bench set-up. I've been prepping up the next few projects for March, all listed in the sidebar, and will let you know how they go.

The remaining shots are of the main gaming area in the lounge's dogleg with the bookcase stuffed full of rules, supplements and comics. The little shelf is for dice, tapes, markers etc.

The gaming shot is from Wednesday night playtesting a Rugby game that Rich is developing. The final D&D session followed on Thursday eve so its time for the Star Wars RPG campaign to dust itself off. I've been slowly hording a number of wicked adventure threads to inflict upon my players :)

I've got errands to run tomorrow AM before settling down to some hobby love. I've been adding a fair few Zombie blogs to my reading list and as such SOMEHOW ordered Red Dead Zombie-Apocalypse from Amazon. Hmmmmm...

Sunday I'm off to the Overlord wargames show in Abingdon with Rich to help him put on whichever game hes decided on taking between now and then!

"Normal Service" resumed :)

Them's the RULES!!

Another good gaming week for the shed.

Tuesday night was D&D, following a number of missed Thursdays, for THE RITUAL followed by a hard fight against a variety of end of scene beasties and bad guys. There are a few loose ends to tie up but i'm fairly sure that the locals can sleep a little easier in thier beds...... at least for a while!

As far as the rules are concerned we're fairly old hands now. We know the sequences, what checks are required when and how to do / attempt certain things.
We're all used to our individual tasks and roles, something of a well oiled machine! It's only really during the tight combats and harder tasks that we have to pull out the special abilities and "tricks".

That happened on Tuesday with Charlie scanning the back of the rulebook whilst the rest of us metaphorically shoved Mr C's Paladinic "tank" towards the teeth of the Green Dragon we had unleashed.

"You can do X" says Charlie. "Oh...good!" says Mr C. Mr C did X. It helped greatly. Scratch one Green Dragon. The post battle heal and loot SOP was then engaged :)

On Thursday shaun and Rich came round for a run through Operation Squad a set of Italian written WWII squad skirmish rules being sold through Warlord Games.

Plugs over, once I got my head around the activation system I discovered that I really liked them. Basically you take turns to nominate one of your boys and state what they're going to do. Your opponent CAN respond by nominating a reaction activation. You CAN then nominate a reaction to his reaction.

Either side can nominate a maximum of three actions in this manner. Once all nominations are in you roll an intiative order and get on with resolving them.

It might sound confusing but in my first game I picked it up fine, even appreciating how it gives an otherwise straight forward set of rules a much greater depth whilst retaining fluidity.

I'm not getting into a diatribe about rules but wish to make another point. I grew up within gaming via GW and thier rulesets. Within that culture there has always been an idea of "veteran gamers", another can of worms that I don't wish to unleash. This seems to be defined merely by time and money invested.

To be honest I now find GW rulesets too basic, prescriptive and limiting to figure within my regular gaming. Like many I limit myself to a couple of GW's Specialist offerings.

So, to me at least, another and potentially better definition of a veteran gamer is one that is able to appreciate and deal with more open and intuitive rulesets to produce a better game. One measure we often use is wether proper tactics properly applied produce a realistic result.

Another thing for me is that to play with better, less prescriptive, rules you need to be a better, less prescriptive, gamer able to use rather than abuse the latitude offered all in the name of FUN for all.

Happy gaming to all :)

End of the Year Show

No jazz-hands I promise but as this IS the last post of the year a number of cliches/ traditions will have to observed.

One of the least obvious is my continuing penchant for all weather barbequeing to mark the last roleplay session of 2010.

The session itself was a bit of a blinder. Near the conclusion of our ongoing quest we negotiated the second and third challenge room, of four, before being able to move onto the BIG SHOWDOWN.


We ended up having to use BRAINS rather than brawn, which was all very shocking to those involved.

The first was a room of evil mirrors so we hid under cloaks and didn't look at them. The second was a big room full of poisoned blood and two whipping statues, obviously, which demanded much from my skills of dexterity and stealth.

We prevailed, eventually, with myself retaining a total of 7 from my 47 hit points and that was after the delivery of an emergency Healing Potion and the use of my second wind. I may have to paint on a few scars!
I've also finished the Chin boys with a combination of free-hand (NOT a speciality of mine) and transfered details. I've also put a tatt meaning "Ox" on the fat lad's leg which coincidentally covers an errant mould line!

12 more PPs taking me to 272 for the year against a target 0f 240. Particuarly pleased to have sorted out my copy of Space-Hulk and to have kept the RPG side of things going strong.

Same again for next year I think, see you then :)

It's a funny old game :)

Just a quick one as last night's D&D session was something of a classic that had the vast majority of us in absolute stitches!

The sketch on the left is for a half-face tatoo, of my design, that I put onto our, currently, Lawful Good Paladin. The two stars are positions for symbols of the chaotic evil / misunderstood god Bahamat :)

Said tattooing took place, unsurprisingly, whilst MrC's chap was bloodied, bleeding and sparko on the floor.

The night started with us picking up from where we'd left off and bursting through a door to catch three Gnolls by surprise.

Thier attention was occupied by four of thier pet hyenas baiting a wounded Dire Boar. Having "dealt" with the Gnolls and thier pets MrC decided that said Boar would make a "cool" mount.

Myself and Charlie lept upon the idea egging MrC ever onwards, through barely controlled mirth whilst Rob sniggered uncontrolably into his shoulder.

Despite the DM's tone and general demeanour a barrage of "Animal Friendship" tests followed. By this time we'd encouraged MrC into it's sty and convinced him that all he had to do was "show it who's boss". Law of the jungle and all that!

Thus Mr C found his Paladin bloodied, bleeding and sparko on the floor and I couldn't resist.

Following from this hilarity we knocked off a high priest and the Good characters panelled a Daemon, which was the main point of the adventure.

The other was to have FUN. We did :)

A Show of Arms

It's turning into a particuarly good gaming week.

Last night was a bit more D&D and after resting up we began our assualt on THE WELL OF DEAMONS (eeek!) by, eventually, beating up Ghasts, Wall-Crawlers and a few Gnolls.

Despite having just pinged up to 5th level we took a while to work ou the kinks before eventually hitting our well oiled groove. Part of that is down to how many "buffs" Rob's Dwarven Cleric can kick out.

"Bull Strength"-ing MrC's Paladin is akin to giving him a huge steroid shot. He seems to be getting into the rage side quite. It all probably means that this way a huge beastie comes!
We shall see.

Tuesday night was open gaming down at the club and the chance to try out FUBAR, a free set of rules that in thier entirety cover two sides of A4.

Going for a bit of WWII Pacific action, Shaun and I attempted to defend our attol from those horrible USMC types, commanded by Rich and Charlie.

In short we failed and at that rather horribly. It WAS mainly down to a mismatch of forces and a misunderstanding about bunkers, honest, but it was a good nights gaming and the rules work simply but well but still dispensing with I Go You Go. Result!

Meanwhile TFI Friday rules as I'm off to Twickers tomorrow for the Rugby and then Reading on Sunday for Warfare, which will be only my second show of the year.

Really looking for both. Pies and inspiration all round then!

All good :)