Just like a comic book villain, you thought it was dead, but it was just hidden biding it's time away in a corner until it was powerful enough to attack again: the anti-Wendy (and friends) blog!

 
Records of Lost's Campaign

Starting late (as usual) and missing around half of the party, it wasn't going to be an ordinary session.

To begin with, we're army conscripts. However, for army conscripts, the best front-liner we have is a monk and he wasn't available. The highest strength of the party, aside from the monk (Str 15 I think), is actually 13.

Not that it matters because the party has no real melee combatants. There's the ranger but he specializes in ranged combat. Fool was the cleric and a good thing too because he was the only person in the party who needed healing. A newbie player was playing a wizard, and the two 1st-level spells he memorized was ray of enfeeblement and, uh, ray of enfeeblement (which is a good spell in itself but not generally useful when facing hordes and armies). I was playtesting the Warmage from Miniatures Handbook which is actually quite cheesy in the first few levels.

Of course the actual scenario was to hunt down orcs. And before the session was over, we faced twenty of them (the first batch was four, the second batch sixteen... all without resting, mind you). And while ranged attacks might work in plains, we were in a heavily forested area, which meant pretty much everyone had cover (works both ways), but also meant that we only got to shoot them when they were pretty close (point blank shot range). Oh yeah, the pure combatant kept on rolling 1's, plus we had a newbie wizard. The odds seemed against us.

But as Lost said, a few lucky rolls and extra caution on everybody's part made us win the game. Of course the game was in the typical Manticor fashion, which means uncoordinated and sometimes solo missions (I usually took up the latter, since I'm the only one either too stupid or too brave to take on four is to one and even six is to one odds). Did I mention we were all first level?

Warcraft RPG

Perhaps what scared me is the commitment to get the books. First, it's part of Sword and Sorcery's line. While White Wolf does have gorgeous black and white art, it's just that-- black and white. Second is that since it's a popular title that's not their own, there's a licensing fee, which is represented in the extra few dollars the books cost (rather than $29.95, they're somewhere around $34.95 or so). Third is the fact that it's a whole new campaign setting that you really need all the books, and there's a lot of them. I mean sure, the campaign setting is playable in itself the same way the Player's Handbook is playable in itself: all your opponents will be NPCs. And whereas the PHB had a comprehensive list of spells for the spellcasters, well, this one has few (you need to get the book which actually has all the spells and magic). The book for the monsters is separate and I think there's a few other books you'll need to run a well-rounded campaign.
posted by Charles at 11:18 PM

 
shhh...

calm down people... don't get too worked up... take some deep breaths... there you go... deep breaths...

i'm out of here before shingetter uses that oversized can opener on me!

yikes! (evade! shin mach special!)

how many draggs do you have in final fantasy 0? 2 of them? care to add one more?
posted by frost at 3:54 PM

 
To Shingetter:
Please don't take offense at this but I already know your reasons for changing the schedule (that much was obvious) and while I approve of that, changing it at this point in time (one week before the event, several weeks after announcing the target date) isn't. (If I wanted to kick you in the face, I would have done it publicly, in the ML, etc. But this is a private blog after all, isn't it?)

Anyway, good luck with the rest of your projects.
posted by Charles at 9:28 AM

 
alas, wraith-boy, It seems that I won't be coming home for Christmas. My brother and sister will be going here though.
posted by Melchior at 9:34 AM

 
To Shingetter:

I think the problem in changing it suddenly without consultation is that it's on short notice (especially six days before at that). Also, I think you should have consulted with your GMs first because they're the ones having the games and they might have conflict with the schedule (especially with their erratic hours, and I'm just not talking about Lost). Even if it is open games, you might end up with all CCGs and board games and no RPGs without GMs.
posted by Charles at 7:33 AM