My Own Grandpa

After Action Report

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 11:12:42 GMT

A few notes on the recent gaming sessions, for those who might be interested but mostly for my records:

Character creation was a little bumpy, but not too bad considering none of us had looked in the books before. Judging by the role descriptions, I decided that the necessary things to have in a 2-person party were a defender and a striker. D waffled on her choices a bit, and then decided on an Eladrin Fighter. Fighters are generally easy, so I was down with that. We decided to make adelavanbrugge a Tiefling Warlock to fill the striker role.

The Fighter (Ella) is a high-Dex flail-wielding type, though weapon choice doesn't make a big difference at this point. Daesa the Warlock has a high Cha and Fey Pact, which seems to be working out as well as advertised.

I decided that the two already knew each other to make things easier, and live in a city on the outskirts of The Great Forest, full of Fey goodness. They have connections to the Eladrin community in the city, and were summoned by one of the elders to find a Ranger who was two days overdue returning from his 3-day patrol. They set off and immediately showed why this was usually a job for a Ranger. They wandered around in the woods (despite having a map of exactly where they should be going) and eventually I decided that if I wanted the story to progress I'd have to have pity on them. I had the Ranger's squirrel animal companion show up at the abandoned camp they'd found and pull a Lassie.

They followed the squirrel to a small stream which led into a valley. There they ran into their first encounter: a pack of 8 giant rats surrounding a gnawed corpse. I figured that it should be an even fight, and they're minions, so how hard can they be? There were accusations of cursed dice, an almost-TPK, and a bit of fudging to keep them alive, but they managed to pull through. Many rules were manhandled during this encounter as we learned how they worked. Still, they managed to survive and retreated back to the camp as they heard a "yip yip" coming from the end of the valley.

After spending a few healing surges getting back on their feet, they returned to the valley. The rat bodies and mysterious corpse were gone, and they saw evidence that it had been dragged further up the valley. They explored further and found a massive stone entryway set into the hillside at the end of the valley. An open doorway lurked in the shadows. They were not as stealthy as they'd hoped, and they heard a "yip yip" that almost sounded like a bird call from the bushes above the entrance. Two kobold skirmishers came out of the doorway and the fight was on.

Ella decided to make for the high ground at the side of the valley, while Daesa went straight in and started cursing the skirmishers. She used her Eyebite on one and it lost track of her, deciding to charge Ella instead. Trying to use standard group tactics, his partner followed, leaving the Warlock in the clear. At this point the hiding kobold slinger appeared on top of the entrance and started chucking rocks at her. The rest of the fight mostly turned into a ranged duel between Daesa and the slinger and a contest to keep the high ground for Ella and her two suitors.

The choice to climb the hill had initially seemed like uncharacteristic cowardice, but in the end it kept the two skirmishers from being able to flank Ella as they kept failing their climb checks to shift uphill into position. Ella took out one of the skirmishers, then fell as Daesa prevailed over the slinger. The Warlock made short work of the remaining slinger and they retreated to the camp once more to rest for the night after looting the bodies of the Ranger's pouch of gold and a shiny amulet.

This was the end of Friday's session, and I now saw a desperate need for healing. There was no time to take a Second Wind, and they just kept getting nibbled down to nothing. When they woke in the morning they found Findal, the Elven Cleric, who had been sent from the city to check on them. They filled him in on their progress, and he was concerned by their report of the mysterious corpse. The three companions returned to the valley to explore further.

After lighting torches , they entered the gloomy stone doorway, went down a short hallway, and came to a foyer with two pairs of columns and carvings on the walls. As they entered the room, Ella (who was in the lead), fell into a pit trap they had been unable to detect. She climbed out and, while they looked for more traps, they didn't see any. Based on the layout of the room, though, they had suspicions that there might be a second pit between the other two columns. With some experimentation, they managed to trigger it as well. Meanwhile someone who was not the highly trained Cleric realized that this was an ancient Elven tomb that had been forgotten for a millennium.

Moving on from the pit room, they came to a large square chamber with a mosaic floor and dry holy water basins in the corners. One corner of the room had collapsed into a large pile of dirt and rubble. Alerted by the noise of the traps, four giant rats and a dire rat were ready for the adventurers. With three people and one of them a healer, they made fairly short work of these rats. Ella got bitten by the dire rat, but assistance from Findal helped her fight off the disease it carried.

Continuing on from the collapsed room, they came to a final large room with six massive columns and a sealed door at the end. Ella managed to notice a kobold hiding behind one of the pillars and whispered a warning back to her friends before making her way into the room. Heading to her left, she ran into another kobold and scared him so much he fell down (botched on his readied attack).

The room was defended by four kobold minions, a skirmisher, and a blue dragon wrympriest with a wand +2 (I like to have my baddies use their treasure when I can). This was a nice tough fight, and we learned a lot about cover and flanking. The party wisely stayed near the door at the beginning, and it was the first time that I was forced to remember that ranged attacks provoke attacks of opportunity. This changed the dynamics a lot. Eventualy I had the minions pull back and try to draw the PCs out to where they could be flanked, but only the Fighter (as she should) took the bait. The others made use of their mobility and healing to whittle away at the larger foes.

After Findal ran out of healing and only the skirmisher had been taken down, the big guns came out. Findal and Daesa came around behind the wyrmpriest and hit him with a double team of Avenging Flames and Curse of the Dark Dream, which reduced him to a mindless, flaming husk. They managed to clean up the minions and emerged victorious. This was the first fight that I really felt was balanced well. They claimed some treasure and Daesa appropriated the wyrmpriest's wand. They also identified the slinger's amulet as an Amulet of Health +1, which went to Ella.

The sealed door at the far side of the room was heavily carved with scenes of battle, and was surrounded by a crude shrine built by the kobolds. Findal studied it for a while and determined that there was some dark energy on the other side that the wyrmpriest was trying to access. He discovered a way that he could use his divine power to open the door when the others were ready (they were each only down 2 healing surges and al their daily powers). This was the end of the Saturday session.

As much as they smack of WoW, I really like the combat roles, both on the PC and monster side. It makes it easier to work as an effective team, at the expense of the flexibility and creativity I'm used to from previous editions. It also makes it easy to cook up an interesting group of bad guys, even at 1st level. D stayed focused much better this time than last time, and never missed a beat with all the math.

Impulse Buying

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 00:00:43 GMT

So this morning D inquired about playing D&D again (though she referred to it as "the game with the little clay people on the grid"). After some waffling, I ended up going to town to finally shell out for the 4th edition books. It's not the game I grew up on, but considering the amount of time I actually foresee having to play, a more streamlined, casual game is really more of what I need. I managed to con adelavanbrugge into playing with us, and I was impressed by how capable even 1st level characters are in this version. They still almost died in both their encounters, but that's just how it is at 1st level, especially when you only have two people in your party. We'll see how things progress from here.

"Quickie" Orc Minis

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 12:27:47 GMT

My goal was to not invest a lot of time and effort in the minis I got for gaming with the girl, but I couldn't stand to let them be ugly (well, uglier than orcs are by nature).

I am definitely a fan of the magic dip now. Hopefully it will do a good job protecting the paint.

More Gaming

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 12:39:54 GMT

I ran D through the entirety of "A Dark and Stormy Knight" last night, with great success.

I added a dwarven cleric to her roster, which filled out the classic fighter-thief-mage-cleric party. For a longer adventure I figured she needed to have some healing on tap. The dungeon was a little underpowered, since all her characters were 2nd level with good stats and fairly well optimized, but I didn't want to risk an accidental TPK on her first dungeon delve.

Things of note:

* "When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail" - The sorceror's only 1st level combat spell is Sleep, so it got thrown around liberally. Despite the fact that it often completely short-circuits entire combats, it's a very useful spell for gauging her moral sensibilities. After sleeping the two hobgoblins, she tied them up and interrogated them. She saw through their lie about having friends that would rescue them, then extracted a promise that they would leave the kingdom and never return before setting them free.

* Despite my worries about slaughtering her characters, the thought of them dying didn't seem to bother her too much. This is both good and bad.

* I don't know what it is, but after her very first battle during the previous session, she immediately wanted to play the goblins instead. I'm not going to give in on that point yet.

* I've been giving some suggestions for certain wise courses of action, but trying not to make all her decisions for her. It's hard for me. She did surprise me at one point by using Spider Climb to scale the shaft up through the ceiling to the top of the tor. It hadn't ever occurred to me.

* Last night I introduced the concepts of treasure and experience points. When she found cash during the adventure, her first instinct was to "give it to poor people". I see no reason to dissuade her from this.

* I got the new plastic orcs so that we'd have some minis to play with that I wouldn't get so worked up about her banging together. Unfortunately, they turned out really nice and now I still don't want her to mess them up. Ah well. (I would post pictures, but all the cameras went to war with adelavanbrugge)

Getting Back Into Old Habits

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 00:53:08 GMT

My main gripe about gaming with a 6 year old is that she likes to play with the minis a bit more than makes me comfortable. The "tink tink" of lovingly painted metal banging together sets my teeth on edge (though, to be fair, she was being pretty gentle). To rectify this, I decided to paint up some new minis just for our games. I've been scouting out some nice Reaper minis for the PCs, but for my own instant gratification I picked up a box of GW LOTR orcs at the gaming store today. 24 nice Perry-sculpted minis for $20 is a darn good deal in my book. I like them better, stylistically, than the Warhammer orks anyway, so I call it a win all around.

Part of me wants to paint them a meticulously as I have in the past, but the whole point is to not be too invested in them. Instead, I'm going to spray prime them, block in the colors, and magic dip them. I've never used the technique before, but all evidence points to it working well.

The orcs come as two identical sprues of 12 individuals, half with spears and half with hand weapons. I'm planning to paint them as four separate 6-man units, primarily distinguished by clothing color (or, knowing me, pattern) and heraldry. There are enogh shields for everybody to have one, so I'll get to play with lots of different shapes. I'll probably just do fields of stripes or semys or something, since some of the shields are really wacky shapes and wouldn't lend themselves to fancy charge layouts. The only real question is whether I should make each unit the same weapon type or split them up half-and-half.

Geek Parenting Win

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 00:30:13 GMT

I've had a very productive day so far, despite being a war widow(er) for the next week. Laundry is almost completely caught up, dishes likewise, the living room has been picked up and vacuumed, and the new TV computer has been installed and is running fine.

I have also fulfilled the dream of many a geek parent: I had a satisfying D&D session with one of my children.

I'm going to give a fairly detailed rundown of the session so I'll have something to refer back to for the next time. I've tried gaming with her before, but it's been a good long while. Her math skills were never in much question, but her attention span is greatly improved. Also, she's been watching a lot of Naruto recently, so the concept of mindless violence is more appealing to her. :)

I didn't want to slog through character creation with her, so I cooked up a simple trio of characters. To shortcut having to figure out character motivations and whatnot, I decided to make her a pair of twins (prince and princess of a small mountain kingdom), along with their elven advisor. I'm using the Pathfinder 3.5e variant rules, though I'm necessarily playing a tad fast-and-loose to keep things moving. The characters are as follows:

Princess Ashleigh Faren (LG Ftr 2 - 18 STR, 8 INT) The goodie-two-shoes of the pair, groomed by her parents to take over the kingdom. Straight up sword and shield in-your-face type of fighter. Not the sharpest sword in the armory, but has a good head on her shoulders.

Prince Lucas Faren (CG Rog 2 - 18 INT, 15 DEX) The rebel. Doesn't like following the rules, and prefers hanging around with the "common people". Pretty standard skill set.

Elwyn the Green (NG Sor 3 - 19 DEX, 18 CHA) The voice of reason. His job is to keep an eye on the kids, and therefore when I need to give her a nudge in the right direction it's in his voice. Water elemental bloodline, mainly non-lethal spells (though he still packs a sword and bow).

We began with the three being summoned into the royal audience chamber. The traders that had been sent down the main road out of the mountains are a week overdue. The few soldiers available to the kingdom are busy patrolling the borders against bandits or otherwise doing defensive jobs. This seems like a good test of the heirs' skills, as well as a chance for Lucas to learn to take some responsibility. They are sent with Elwyn to figure out what happened.

They set off down the road, with Lucas scouting the road ahead (her first suggestion:" Let's split up!" I helped her tone that down to something a bit more tactically sensible). He spots a group of five goblins, two wagons , four tied up traders, three live horses and one being roasted. He sneaks back to the others and they move in. They blow the surprise when they come back, but Ashleigh wins initiative. She advances, then gets pounded on by some lucky goblins. I was worried that the girl would be disheartened by two max damage hits right out of the gate, but she kept on going. A sleep spell, flanking sneak attack, and critical beheading charge later, they were victorious and had two prisoners to take back home.

Under interrogation (while we ate dinner), the goblins convinced Elwyn that there were hundreds of them up in the mountains (good Bluff check). The king decided to call on the nearby dwarven kingdom for aid. To give a little kick-start to the treaty they'd been ignoring for the last ten years, he sent the group with a coffer of silver bars as a gift to the dwarven king.

They headed up the wide dwarf-made road, flanked on either side with sheer walls carved with figures of ancient kings. Hidden ten feet up behind one of these carvings was a goblin tunnel, from which they were pelted with rocks. Courage failed a bit as Ashleigh and Elwyn used their high initiatives to start running, leaving Lucas and the mule with the silver behind (though Elwyn tossed a sleep spell up into the tunnel with good results). Goblins began leaping out and tangling with Lucas, though the sorcerer kept them well controlled with repeated sleep spells. Ashleigh returned to the fight at the end, and the final tally was 3 dead, 2 prisoners, and one snoozing up in the tunnel.

They took the two prisoners with them and made it to the dwarven gate. They were challenged by the door guard and told their story. When asked to give their names, D was itching to come up with a lie ("I want to make a Bluff check!"), but couldn't come up with a compelling lie or reason to tell one. In the end honesty was the best policy, and the heirs were granted an audience with the king. The gift was well received, and they were told the source of the goblins. The dwarves had been successfully driving orcs out of their lower halls, which in turn drove goblins out of the mountains and into the Faren valley. In keeping with the old treaty (now shiny and new like bars of silver), the king sent them back with a dozen dwarven warriors to help patrol the mountains and deal with the goblin incursions. This is where we ended our story for the night.

Honestly, I've had far less satisfying games with adults. I am well pleased.

Gaming Miniature: Mon Calamari Jedi

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 01:30:09 GMT

Okay, I think I've gotten this out of my system for a while. I need to quit using spray primer; it's making the surface all fuzzy.

Gaming Miniature: Mon Calamari Jedi

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 23:01:15 GMT

I don't think I'm going to make a habit of this, but I forgot how much fun these things are to tinker with. :) Apparently one of the other people in the game is playing a Mon Calamari Jedi. I don't know if they already have an appropriate mini, but I wasn't able to find one with a casual google, so I'm going to guess no. At any rate, it seemed like a pretty easy conversion to do.

I started with another leftover Eureka pirate. This time I took a picture before I started tearing it apart. I don't think I'll ever have use for someone with a cutlass and a barrel. I cut off the arms and nose as before and also the tail of the bandanna. The hardes tpart was trying to figure out what to do for the arms. I ended up using a left arm from the Imperial Guards bit box. It already had a handle that was intended for the side of a flamethrower, so I didn't have to alter it much aside from cutting off the giant pauldron. The rest of the lightsaber is made from the antenna of a communications backpack from the same set. I experimented with making one out of the hand-with-shovel I cut off the last pirate, but it was very flimsy. The plastic antenna is much sturdier. It's pinned to the hand with a quilting pin, and the arm to the body with pewter.

The right arm was more difficult. Almost all of the right arms I have lying around are holding guns. I tried one that had a laser pistol, but seeing a Jedi with a gun just seemed wrong. I ended up using an Eldar arm that was holding some weird heavy weapon. I cut it down to just the arm and stuck it on with a plastic pin.

I used green stuff to get the arms to match up, and alter the clothes and head. I also attached a pouch to the back of the belt.

Gaming Miniature: Duros Soldier (painted)

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 01:08:17 GMT

I'm not 100% happy with the paint job, but for a quickie it's not bad. I used some Adikolor paints that I picked up a couple years back but have never really used much. They take a little getting used to.

Gaming Miniature: Duros Soldier

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 20:22:29 GMT

I'm getting a chance to get back to my roots: the other kind of miniatures. I'm going to start playing in a game again for the first time in years, so I'm pretty excited. It's a Star Wars game and there's already a Jedi in the party (big surprise), so I made myself a Duros noble/soldier with a big blaster rifle. The only Star Wars minis I have are an ancient West End set of movie characters, some generic sci-fi humans, and some old lumpy sculpts I made a few years back. Not surprisingly, none of them were Duros, let alone ones with big guns.

Back in 2005 I bought a whole mess of pirates from Eureka. I painted about half of them, but ran out of steam before I finished the rest. I decided to take one of them and use it as the basis for what I needed. I cut off his arms (holding a shovel, of all things), cutlass scabbard, and nose. I replaced the arms with some leftovers from a box of plastic Warhammer 40K Imperial Guardsmen, and also added some gear on his belt from the same source. The arms are drilled and pinned at the shoulders with some cut-down bits of spare pewter. The left wrist is drilled and pinned with a piece of a quilting pin.

The original legs had cut off pants and bare feet, so I cut a toe off each foot and sculpted knee pads and boot bits out of green stuff. I also transfered the whole thing to a GW round plastic base and filled in the gaps at the shoulders with more putty. The rifle scope is made from the barrel of a heavy laser pistol from the IG bits. So far, I'm very happy with how it turned out. Hopefully I have some paint left that hasn't dried up out in the garage.