The New Scales of War (Shane's Edition) and a random weather report.

Hi all,

Shane had his first Scales of War DMing session on Saturday, taking over Vek and bringing the new party (Fubar the Halfling Sorc and Kithen Ralph the Half Orc Ranger are the remnants of the original group) to the city of Overlook.

We had great fun in the city, exploring shops and giving epic chase to a child vandal who had just splashed paint onto the inn the adventurers were staying in. Ralph and Vek- who was playing Pantiless the Elf Avenger, scaled about 2524 buildings , leapt over 4421 obstacles before finally pinning him down with the help of the other members of the party.
Me, Fubar and Daigo (Kat) were chasing, intimidating, bluffing, and percepting the vandal from quite a distance away as we did not have the acrobatics and athletics skills of our two Special Olympians who were trying to outdo each other.

Do not worry guys! Everyone is a winner at the Special Olympics.

Shane was trying out new methods e.g. Players'/Mob Initiative cards to track the battle, post-it notes to confer penalties etc, and colored markings on the mobs to book-keep the various effects on them. All in all, I will have to say that most of it worked, so bravo to the new DM. The set up time was still rather lengthy, but the in-combat time was cut down significantly, especially with Shane rolling his results on his I-Phone instead of using traditional dice.

My gripe about Scales of War is still the lack of atmosphere in the non-town regions. Sometimes, I feel that the encounters are there solely to make up for the action element and encounter quota for the level.
There is this particular encounter we had at the monastery when we were 80 feet up in an indoor cavern of sorts, where we fought several Orcs and a few crossbowmen defending two single-file wooden bridges over a pit which we needed to cross to get further into the monastery.
Our previous encounter just before this occurred in a large lighted hall, where there were many staircases at the sides with Orcs swarming about but after we dispatched them, we discovered that they all led to nothing interesting.
Then boom, the dimly-lit "Cavern" of Single Filed Doom was next. A bit jarring for my taste. I do not see a link joining these particular encounters, just separate action scenes cut out from different movies and made to awkwardly fit.


And with all new parties, I made a new character to join in the fun. This time round, I am playing Sunny, Honey Bunny - the ridiculously charismatic female Halfling Paladin who was a former member of a popular Halfling girl-group (Drunken Tigress).
Her moods swings from being painfully cute with winks and pseudo-korean girl-band phrases (Geegeegeegeegee, Job yo?, OH Unnie~!) to being a pain in the opponents' asses, recklessly drawing AoOs so that she can charge into them with lethal momentum.
She is 3 feet 8 inches tall and about 81 pounds, and has a bright cherubic face with a sunny demeanour. Clad in sun-colored plate armor and brandishing a gleaming short sword of Charrrrging, she is a picture of um, stability.
Sunny is contemplating other deity choices besides Pelor, as the God of the Sun and Crops was her industrious parents' natural choice. Her personal shortlist now includes Corellon (Beauty) and Tiamat (Covetous, Wealth) as she is coming to terms with her own character and what she actually needs to fulfil her ambition.
Party-wise, she is slowly trying to find her feet and assume her role as the main tanker, and as her confidence grow, she will be an asset to the party, not to mention the intangibles - her "wholesome" good looks and sunny mood boosting morale for the hot-blooded males in her group.

As it was already fast approaching six in the morning, we stopped for the night after finishing the "Bridge" encounter and advanced to level 4 w/o the extra feat. Sunny swore she heard the other Orcs and what-else deeper in the monastery breathe a collective sigh of relief.

They will survive for another week.

"I got good news and bad news." - Vek

Hey all,

The Scales of War adventure that Vek was DMing for us has come to an unfortunate end. He cited lack of interest in being a DM and the added duties/commitment as the prime reasons for his decision.

Shane- the shaman (healer) in the original adventure, will take over DM duties in Chapter 2. The party will again be reformed to incorporate Kat, who will sacrifice War-War Lock to become our new healer. He is currently looking at a pacifist cleric build, but has yet to confirm his intentions.

I will be creating a new character too, as "Magicman" was politely declined by Shane due to his "hybrid is still a playtest" reasoning. As the DM, he has the final say so I might roll up a Paladin or a Barbarian instead. The new update to the Character Generator is set for tomorrow, and I will wait for that before making my decision. Divine Powers would have been in the database by then, and I can conveniently check if a new-age DPS paladin is viable.
My hand itches for a d12 or a 2d6 weapon wielding kind of character and these two classes fit the bill. Avenger can be an after-thought as well.

On to the good news.

The Monster Builder Beta has arrived in DDi! This gem of a building tool houses over 2500 monsters all ready for customization and cut/paste duties.

The Monster Builder is quick to fire up and easy to use for hassle-free encounter management.




Personally, I love the drag-and-paste feature in the program, where I get to shamelessly drag the firebreath power from a red dragon onto an unsuspecting domestic horse template. Firemare Kirin anyone?

Go check it out, aspiring DMs, and create your own flavor of madness today.



Ever felt like going back to DnD 3.5? Do you miss Weapon Finesse, splashing 1 level of something, the overly-complicated Grappling rules which felt like calculus, or the good ole' days when Intelligence didn't do squat to your AC and Charisma was the premier dump stat of the game?

I am Genie for your weeeeesh granted. (poof)

DDO (Dungeons and Dragons Online) Beta. The developers have decided that the game go F2P (Free to Play) game when it goes live on September 9th 2009. The Beta has almost forty good days left until it launches free next month. You can test if your rig can run the game smoothly, and if you enjoy their particular style of adapting DnD 3.5 to an MMO setting.

It is a good way for me to get a fix when the DnD "playing" pang hits my brain. The game runs smoothly, and I love the graphics when my character punches baddies into moosh, or decaptitates hapless minions with my super-aggressive Greataxe of Burrrnnnning.

DDO's graphics and gameplay is brilliant by F2P gaming standards, and can easily match some of the smaller existing MMOs in the market nowadays.

Don't just take my word for it, go try it out. What could go wrong? It is free to play anyway. You might just find your own personal gaming paradise online. (when taking a break from Mafia Wars of course.)

"People, please sit tight and hold on to your loved ones, we are about to dock in approximately three weeks to a month."

Hey all,

The month of August is nearing. There are many interesting dates to note during that period, like Singapore's National Day, Revenant/Divine Powers update on DDi Character Builder, my birthday (cough), and most important of all - The long awaited return to Caen for our Heroes of Maya.

As promised, from this week onwards until the start of the adventure proper, relevant background history of the immediate region will be published. I have also finalized official custom character powers/abilities for Guy, Fel, Trogdor, and Drefonis. This will be further touched on in its own home-brewed article down the road.

Watch out for all these and more!

For the past few days, the 9d20 site is going through a "growing pains" change. An additional sidebar has been placed on the right so that more information can be displayed efficiently without the need to scroll down all the way to the next lunar year.
With the expectation of new columns/previews/polls in the future, this change was necessary to prevent congestion and constipation of the various articles.

Do feedback comments to me regarding this, either in RL, sms, tweet, or shoutbox so that I know what the readers like/dislike. The different monitors and browsers used may also impact personal experience, so do let me know if my site is unknowingly providing grief to anyone.

On to something quite extra I read in the forums recently...

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The Stormwind Fallacy, aka the Roleplayer vs Rollplayer Fallacy Just because one optimizes his characters mechanically does not mean that they cannot also roleplay, and vice versa.
Corollary: Doing one in a game does not preclude, nor infringe upon, the ability to do the other in the same game. Many read 'optimizes his characters mechanically' to include more generally playing in an optimal way. Whether you do or not, Stormwind does not always hold. As we are discovering, you will sometimes reach moments where the choice indicated by roleplaying differs from the choice indicated by optimization, and you cannot choose both. Accordingly I would revise Stormwind as follows: Just because one optimizes his characters mechanically does not at all times mean that they cannot also roleplay, and vice versa.
Corollary: Doing one in a game does not preclude, nor at all times infringe upon, the ability to do the other in the same game.
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The entire thread can be read here. He just needed to write that the statement is not entirely true all the time and he saves like ten minutes of his life writing all these lawyer-aspirant stuff. Hey, maybe he does want to grow up to be a lawyer in real life.

DnD 4th Edition does make the roll-players want to optimize mechanically, as the game does away with the random stats generating of yesteryear and replace it with the default 22-point buy system.

The stat-mongers now have the ability to prepare a character from the get-go, and build it all the way to the upper levels, without needing to worry about "what if I cannot roll the charisma for the paladin that I wanted to make, and still score decent stats to meet the other pre-requisites?" or "whyyy did not have the luck to roll a half-decent rogue? I should have washed my hands before throwing the dice. I hope I get to play another game soon."
All these stuff are dealt away with the 22-point buy system and keeps them happy, but at a cost of lower numbers in the other "not-important" stats.

But think about it for a moment.

The role-players get a nice bite of the cake too. In the past, when they want to roleplay, they usually have to put a really high stat they rolled onto the roleplaying stat (aka Charisma) and the rest of their stats might be crap due to the luck of the other rolls.
Now with the 22-point buy system, no longer. They can have both role playing stats while maintaining decent stats, due to the ability to shape the characters themselves. These "balanced" characters are definitely playable and do not require much number-crunching. More people can thus enjoy 4th Ed in general, and get into the thick of the action immediately.

However, most turn their noses at such builds as they are not "optimized". However, it is not entirely true. There are several "balanced" stats character-builds that start to shine at 11th and beyond; which shows that with a bit of patience + the right group, you eventually get to have as much fun as Mr "Level 1 20 Strength Barbarian."

ELAMUSA. My recent Goliath ranger ("Staff" Diskount) in Shell's game might have to be shelved for a more well-balanced party setup. He does really well in the DPS department, and roleplaying him and his pet lizard was a serious blast. But Diskount + a melee pet is sometimes rather extra with the other 4 melee characters in the party.

Shell does put effort into maintaining an arcane presence in his world and my new character would fit into that mold, although he is a little bit unorthodox.

This versatile character maintains a close-combat feel while being able to shoot spells from far (20 squares). He can work just behind the spear fighter and the paladin, or go toe to toe once in a while when the time is right. He does not do mad damage like Diskount, but he fills the arcane void in the party, does decent damage, and will improve as time passes by.

He is an Eladrin, who lives to perfect the magic missile and swordmagery. His name? "Magicman". His origins? Found on his character sheet and in DDi.

"Lay on Arms and other oddities." - Freak show advertisement found on a tree near Pelor's Way.

Hey all,

After a couple of weeks of turmoil and upheaval, our group's DnD sessions are shakily back on track. On another good note, we accidentally found a superior spot to host our gaming sessions.

The winner? The corridor behind my house.

It has great lights and smoother airflow, and the players do not need to rush like dogs on wheels whenever Mother Nature cries buckets. Fond memories of the dark, yellow-lighted playground will always be there as it provided us numerous sessions and degenerating myopia all-year long.

Last Saturday, Shell's new adventure was revived (after the departure of our cleric) at the corridor. I gleefully rolled up and played "Staff" Diskount-- a Goliath ranger (multiclassed avenger) hailing from the Koopong tribe in the northern mountains. A lumbering tribesman by birth, he does not believe in dexterity, quick feet or the traditional ranger ways. Stealth and blinding speed is not his forte. Diskount instead relies on good'ole anticipation, wisely knowing when to get in and out of the kitchen so to speak.
(But he has been badly burnt a few times, triggering recurring visions of his home-land.)

Diskount has a faithful Komodo dragon sidekick named Ba'Ze (twentypercent). This small, brown but immensely tough lizard loves watching Diskount do mad combat tricks with his magical blunt pole of serpent-ness. Sometimes, as his master bludgeons the enemies into pulp, he would join in the fray with his razor-sharp claws and teeth. Ba'Ze has an insatiable appetite, and he jolly well knows when another hot meal is on the way. Together, this odd duo roam the lands in search of adventure.

The thing about our party is that we are basically an all-melee orgy-bash. Yes, all 6 of us. (Ba'Ze included) That makes for rather interesting fights if tactics don't go our way. The party must quickly learn to adapt to the future encounters that Shell had planned for us.

Luckily, one of our party members is a wasted slot paladin. Not any ordinary plated I-can’t-do-decent-damage-din. But an uber one, in the mold of a certain ang-mo kung-fu master.

How uber, you ask?

"Really uber," I say.

How really uber, you ask?

"He is so uber that... he don't just lay on hands. That is like so wimpy," I say.

"He freakin' lay on arms. Whole slabs of them. Honest."

Talk about a teammate that lay it all on the line for his friends and team-mates. This is something else, folks. The real deal we are talking about here is...

(drum roll)

Presenting Justice the Mad-ladin -- with his Boisterous Strikes to liven the party mood, Shielding Smiths to help "craft" AC for the boys, and a touch of "My plate armor is still brand-new as I have not been hit yet" bravado.

Good for you, Justice. Good for you.

Disclaimer: This dude pictured here is NOT Justice the Mad-ladin as this dude obviously has magical stuff on him. Our Justice? He does not need them. Our Justice scoffs on stats, and spits on the graves of the prepared. Hooha!

p/s: Shane-- His cleric is still alive and kicking in David's Type 1 adventure. Here's wishing him more unblemished sessions! Do us proud!

p/p/s: Fie the DM-- I am still working on several aspects of Chapter 2: Blight of the Chained Demon. Watch this space for new updates soon!

Summer Madness, Lollipops, Bagels, Phoenixes, Tapered Dogs (and Change)...

Hey all,

These few weeks have been great. I am happily involved in three ongoing DnD adventures, namely Shell's world of ELAMUSA, Vek's Scales of War (SoW) Official 4E Campaign, and Lex's Chapter 1 (of 74 maybe) which is about to end in a couple of months' time. (2 sessions completed so far.)

Between groups of mad sawn-off rifle, I mean staff-wielding shooter dudes, a level 8 Ogre trying desperately to tell us something (he died too fast for us to hear him properly. I do vaguely remember him going "FtF??!1"), and a mandatory cut-scene involving us involuntarily spending a night with a female witch/hag/pelican/whatever in a swamp, I can safely say I had been through quite a bit these days.

Then, there are my characters. In Vek's, I am Unn'Sah - the brash bandana-wearing 6ft 5in Swordmage feminist wielding a modified tennis racket(widely referred to as a longsword in DnD terms). In Shell's ELAMUSA world, I am Evening D'Odds-the quiet but deadly (random) Sorceress who blew her "top" off while dreaming away at the inn.
There is also the tormented Lang's Zai or Lz- the famous bard (in several small pubs at least) in Lex's immense world of three days North and a days South. Couple days West might be an option to uncover a loose floorboard. East is out of bounds due to family issues.

Oh, I have been spending way too much time on the DDi Character Generator, which is strangely addictive even though it is just exactly what it said it was - a character generator. I guess I have always been a builder in a way, be it cards or games. Thinking of and experimenting with builds is interesting; once in a blue moon when it works devilishly well, it is all worth the time wasted, uh spent I mean.
The DDi Character Generator makes it easier for me to throw an idea together, as it contains an updated-monthly DnD database that saves me the time of needing to flip through several books or check random handouts to recall an obscure feat/item/power. I am anxiously waiting for the first Tuesday of next month, where the Revenant race and the newer hybrid classes will be added into the mix.

This experience decided something for me. It confirmed my intention to get my own DDi subscription, even though I already "technically" have a small part in PT's account. I plan to share the account with Shane and Vek, at 5 Usd a month for a year.
Now that I think about it, it is rather cheap for that amount of cash. What can we buy with 5 Usd nowadays anyway?

3 copies of 8 Days? 5 cups of SweetTalk Bubble Tea? Three-quarter of a pack of unbranded cigarettes? The plastic ear of Christian's amazing Elmo toy?

The online deal is made sweeter with confirmation of more snippets of PHB3 coming out in the coming months, hopefully Monk-related (I am a monk fanatic). For fans who prefer gory poison-on-flesh striker action; a whole DDi Exclusive character class- The Assassin is scheduled to arrive in a few weeks.

Tennis have been great as of late. I bought a new Yonex racket, and yes they do make Yonex tennis rackets. I have been experimenting with new strokes and several new concepts I read/saw about on the 'net. I can feel myself wanting to play more. I feel like a student, all over again. I felt alive, hungry.
Through all this, I realized something.
It is not about the fact that I easily get hungry. I learnt that change is sometimes needed to challenge oneself, to do better and not rest on one's laurels. This is the attitude I want to put in all my students as well, for both their studies and sports. Heck, we re-specialize feats, skills, powers and what-not in 4E too. For the growth of the character, to make him/her stronger.

We are only worthy to witness his shoes.

Roger Federer. The greatest of all-time. He changed himself after suffering crushing losses at Wimbledon'08 and the Australian Open this year. He was rumored to have bawled his eyes out. But since then, during the clay court season, he played more aggressive and went back to utilizing his trusty slice more often (which he mentioned was not a "natural" part of his game). Yes, he might not think that it is a natural part of his game, but the slice does win him points and wreck the tempo of the opponent on the other side.
That itself is worth forcing the stroke into his repertoire. I should add that he is not too shabby in the execution of the stroke.

*Imagine Tiffany cutlery, slicing thin layers of fine cheese, with a classical tune playing softly at the back.*

Now, the Federer Express has a career Slam in his ever-thickening resume, and is heading for a record-breaking 15th Grand Slam title. The No.1 spot is there for the taking, exactly one year after he relinquished it to a Spanish guy who could play some tennis.

A modern phoenix, no ? And an inspiring tale to share, yes.

Lastly and I am going rather out of topic here, my computer now has Foxit PDF Editor, which will allow me to make customized DnD "excerpts" with the exact layout and fonts. Monster and power templates can also be easily home-brewed; and did I mention this? They will look like the real thing in the books. Spoofs and parodies? Sign me up, babeeee!



p/s (11:35PM) - Oh no! Evening D'Odds, my Sorc in Shell's adventure seems to be in limbo due to player shortage.

p/p/s(1:20AM) - Hmm, now that I experimented more, some of the embedded information in the original text seems hard to edit, and the doggone fonts screws up when I try to type in certain letters. Oh well, at least I tried, back to MS Word for me until I install the rest of the Foxit suite in the future.