Several of the DMs out there have posted their top 10 favorite D&D monsters (check out RPGBloggers to read them all).  Here’s my list, but slightly twisted.  As a player, here are my top 10 I-Never-Want-to-See Monsters:

As previously mentioned, we have a new D&D group here in colorful Colorado. We have been into our current adventure for two sessions now, and an exceedingly rare circumstance has occurred within our gaming group: the girls outnumber the guys!

A Fortunate Circumstance, to be sure!

I have been Dungeon Mastering for many years now and never had more than two girls in our group at a given time, so this experience is a little new for me.

I have some hard data at my disposal that proves there are many more female gamers in our midst than we originally thought. Stupid Ranger and e from Geek’s Dream Girl are currently writing a book on the topic, so I’ve gotten the chance to read excerpts from real female gamers telling their tales of geeky adventure. There seems to be a lot of correlation between groups of male players and groups of female players as far as group dynamics go.

The more things change, the more they stay the same…

I have noted a few interesting points about our specific group of players. Please keep in mind, this is not sweeping generalities based down gender lines, just what I can see from my seat behind the screen.

The lone male player in our group is the more tactical fighter type (well, rogue to be exact) that revels in the crunch of battle and vanquishing the foes. The ladies in the group (including the lovely Stupid Ranger) seem to focus much more on the flavor aspects of their abilities… what the flourish of blades looks like, how precisely the flaming sphere immolates its targets, and so on.

I have also seen similar divisions when the roleplaying aspects of our campaign take priority. Our guy distills things down into facts and specifics, the ladies seem to enjoy engaging me in in-character dialogue, or enjoy interacting with one another in-character.

This is one of my favorite aspects of our campaign thus far, because we have both sides of the coin represented in our group dynamics. You mix in Stupid Ranger’s natural propensity to overdocument the details of the sessions and nobody ever forgets what the current goal for the party is!

There’s even plenty of room for a proto-Vanir!

Normally, our irreverent “off-the-wall” quotient was filled skillfully by our good buddy Vanir. This was one of the aspects of our gaming group that I was very afraid would be lacking… however imagine my surprise when one of the ladies in the group wondered aloud about the sexuality of her tiefling warlord, and decided there and then that she would be a lesbian tiefling warlord with very small boobs and very large horns.

To make matters even better, members of our group immediately chimed in with “oh yeah, that’s a great idea and that’ll work with our backstory” and off they went into figuring out the wheres and what-for’s of how their characters knew each other in the past. (Possibly in a biblical sense, but I’m sure that will come out in future sessions!)

For the record: I am unsure if anyone can ever fill the giant roleplaying shoes left by Vanir at our gaming table. I’m just saying options seem to be presenting themselves from unlikely sources!

A quick moral

I’m going to go on record and call for Dungeon Masters everywhere not to discount or devalue the presence of female gamers at your gaming table. I have heard some very poor tales in the past of women being undervalued or downright denied access to roleplaying games.

In fact, our very own college group had a “no girlfriends” policy until Stupid Ranger showed up.

This myopic thinking and exclusion can only damage your game and the larger roleplaying society, not to mention your ability to meet women and procreate. That’s all I’ve got for now!

Playing WoW last night, I happened to notice my friend Brian’s shaman had some cool fist weapons on. When I inspected his character, I recieved a completely awesome surprise.

I regret only that I am too high level to use these now. However, this does not mean that I won’t go back to Outlands just to get them. Time to save vs. vanity!

The last time I spoke to you all, it was on the eve of the beginning of our new foray into the new version of D&D. This meant new beginnings of almost everything: we were going to start a new campaign with a new group of people, utilizing a dungeon module for the first time.

What is going well

Honestly, just about everything with 4e. The module we’re using, Keep on the Shadowfell, is just about everything I could need for this first foray. The encounters are designed to be very episodic in nature and our characters seem to follow the prescribed “hints” to get them going into the further areas of the module without much coaxing.

This easy acquisition time by the group has allowed me some time to design my own hooks for further in the campaign right into the pre-existing setting. I can tell this is going to make the rest of my campaign organically grow out of the module which should be a very good experience for my players.

In addition, the non-player characters that the module provides offer just enough description and tone in the provided snippets of dialogue that it was very easy to “get into their skin” and make them very real, three-dimensional characters.

I wonder if it’d be bad form to hug Bruce Cordell or Mike Mearls should I run into them at GenCon this year…

What isn’t going well

It seems to be a lot of “real-world” interference. Our group originally consisted of myself, Stupid Ranger, a coworker of mine and his wife. We got characters rolled during our first session and got underway, everything was going swimmingly. We realized quickly that the module was a little… difficult on the encounter front with only three player characters, so we were very happy when my coworker’s wife had an interested friend willing to join us.

The only downside was that a fair portion of the second session was helping her roll her character and get acclaimated to D&D again, since she hadn’t played 4e yet either. Add into the mix a small herd of three young children, and distractions mounted pretty quickly for our second session despite best efforts to placate the children with movies and video games.

What’s next!

All of these hurdles are either past us or manageable, so I have to say that things are going well at this point! We’re looking forward to our next session in two weeks, and I need to extend a big THANK YOU to those of you that recommended that I read the module through and get comfortable with it. That has really helped my comfort level as we’ve moved into this new experience. Our readers are the greatest!

The more I play WoW, the more I wonder what kind of character I’m actually playing. You start out playing the game fresh-faced and ready to fight the Scourge, but what you wind up doing is clearing some scorpids out that are threatening travellers. Boring, but innocuous enough. Then, as the game progresses a bit, you’ll get some quests where some quilboars are bothering people in the Crossroads, and you need to go thin their numbers. Now we’re talking about killing sentient humanoid creatures. Dirty work, for sure, but it’s saving the lives of the citizens of the Horde, right? Well, as they say, “War is Hell”. You do what you have to.

Just Following Orders

I don’t know whether it’s just me, or if I’m noticing it more now, but it feels like the further I get in the game, the more morally questionable the things I have to do for quest become. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, I seem to remember there being a big controversy brewing about a quest involving torture about the time I bought the WotLK expansion. But I do find myself getting the occasional quest where my gut reaction is “you know, I really want the XP, but I’m not crazy about what’s going on here”.

There’s a quest where you have to steal Wolvar pups and give them to the Kalu’ak walrus people. The walrus dudes want you to do this because they want to raise these pups to be peaceful. I found myself wishing there was a quest for the Wolvar tribe so I could go steal their pups back and maybe kill all the walrus guys in the process (skinning them, of course, and making them into quivers).

This issue is, of course, much more complicated than it initially seems. Yes, the walrus dudes think it’d be great to raise all the wolvar pups in the way they think is right and if they do it enough then everybody gets along, right? Except they’re stealing babies (ok, well, technically I guess it’s me). A quest that goes with that one also has me murder their parents (because they stole stuff from the walruses). And all that murderin’ and stealin’ aside, they’re still trying to erase the entire Wolvar culture. Sure, I can understand them wanting to get rid of it seeing as they get “chewed on” by “powerful Wolvar jaws” occasionally, but the point is, do they really get to make that call? Well, as history shows us now and then, whoever is stronger frequently does make that call. But is it moral?

Consequences

I am not, of course, worried that America’s youth is going to turn to torture and genocide. At least, not because of WoW. (American Idol, maybe.) My interest in the topic is purely for roleplaying purposes (on both sides of the table). As a player, I’ve got to figure out what to do with myself when presented with that situation. In a game like WoW, the consequences (good or bad) frequently take the form of Reputation. I must say I’m happy they sometimes make your actions affect one faction positively and another negatively. While it makes it hard to do everything in the game (at least on one character), I think it makes a vaguely realistic stab as to how your actions affect the opinions of those you interact with.

In D&D, of course, how your character is perceived is up to the capricious whim of real people. I see the most effect from this between players. Especially if there’s a Dudley Do-Right in the group, a character stealing a bunch of kids (even with the best of intentions) may find himself at swordpoint if another player disagrees. DM’s can set morally questionable situations up in advance to stir up some roleplaying — but be aware of the above effect of doing so on your players. You want to make things fun, try not to make the powderkeg too large.

Look Both Ways Before You Justify

The largest question in my mind about all this is, “how would my character deal with all this?”. People do some crazy things under duress, and under the influence of powerful leadership. There’s enough cognitive dissonance floating around in an entire world torn apart by war to rationalize goddamn near anything. So while I, as a pasty white Perl coder with a doughy middle and big screen TV, think these things are questionably moral — my shaman might feel differently. Before you draw a line in the sand with your character about something, take a few seconds to consider how they might see it. And keep an eye on the paladin when you tell the party what you’ve decided in case you need to duck.

For those of you out there joining us from the UK, I have a short announcement for you.  Our friends over at 6d6 Fireball are having a little get-together.  The UK Bloggers & Readers Meet-Up will be held Feb 28.  Enjoy! 🙂

Friday afternoon, I went to Genghiscon XXX.  It was a good experience, and I plan to go back next year.

I’d been waiting for some time for Flower to be released, and yesterday I finally got to download it. I will admit that my masculine side looked funny at me when it found out and possibly wrote nasty friends-only posts about me on its livejournal for doing so, but the rest of me was looking at the screenshots and going holy crap this game is gorgeous. It is, too. Every blade of grass is rendered individually, and since this game is about you being the wind, they all move accordingly when you blow on them.

For the first couple levels, I was happy as a clam — a clam set free riding a warm breeze in the spring! I’d seen this sort of gameplay before. It wasn’t rocket science. You activate things by running over them, they activate, and something happens (usually involving some sort of land-rejuvenation like dead grass turning green). It’s not a real complex puzzle game at all. But you don’t play Flower because you want challenging gameplay. You play Flower because you want to go WHEEEEEE I CAN FLY WHEEE GRASS ON A SUNNY DAY WHEEEEEEEE. I’m recall thinking that the first couple levels of this game are the cure for Seasonal Affective Disorder, and that I would play this game every time I get stressed out. It was like being four years old again, and running through a field full of rolling hills and dandelions. It felt great.

After that, things changed.

The nighttime level started off much as the daytime ones, except the grass that the wind touched glowed, and would power these little lightposts everywhere. It was quiet, and pretty, and tranquil. Kind of like a dream, which was not a big surprise since I’d heard the developer referred to each level as a “dream”. What the bastards forgot to tell us is that they also included nightmares.

After clearing part of the level and lighting something up, all of a sudden the soothing music darkens noticeably and the camera pans over to a dark place on the horizon. Something cracks and pops, and small dark red lights hang menacingly from powerlines I can’t see. Oh, and darkness started creeping over the ground, seemingly led by some malevolent force. And that’s where I have to go next. No problem, I think, I’d find some flowers and light that shit right up. But as I go deeper into the darkness, there’s no flowers. Matter of fact, I can barely see where I’m going aside from those red lights. And it’s getting narrower. And those lights look like they’re watching me. And I’m going so fast, I can’t stop, everything’s in the way. Is it reaching for me? I’m going to trip and something’s going to get me! My pulse quickens and my breath is gone. I almost want to cry a little.

Then, as quickly as it started, it’s over. I’d cleared the level somehow. The previous levels had some goal, like revitalizing a tree or activating a bunch of windmills, and you got a nice little set of cutscenes at the end where you could just watch and relax. This dumped me out to the stage selection menu, sitting on the couch trying to catch my breath, wondering what the hell had just happened.

Then it hit me. This was completely intentional, and brilliant. The reason I was so scared is they managed to activate my inner 4 year old, and keep me in that mindset for awhile, and then throw in exactly what scares the crap out of him. And when I’d have a nightmare as a kid, it almost always was me doing something fun, and then something changes subtly, and then I’m running for my life from something, and I don’t know what it is but it’s scary, and things are going way too fast for me to process and I’d want to cry and then suddenly I’m awake and everything is OK again but I don’t know how I got here or if any of this is real and I’m still scared out of my mind. (I briefly considered phoning my parents to see if they’d let me sleep in their bed that night, but I think Efreak might have objected.)

Imagine if you could harness that kind of fear in your campaign. While I struggle to think of ways to do it as effectively in D&D as it’s done in Flower, the idea of something dark, malevolent, and most importantly nameless seems like a very good place to start. If you plop an enemy down and the players sort of know its stats and you announce all its abilities (with stats) as they happen, it breaks the spell. Now, granted, you can’t really get around that in D&D — when they take damage, you have to tell the players what happened to them in a way that they can record on their character sheet. But that doesn’t mean you have to say “the wight uses its Drain Level ability on the farmer”. You could, instead, talk about the NPC farmer suddenly being grabbed by a clawed hand from the shadows, his face suddenly growing gaunter and paler. Make sure to mention his attempts to cry for aid instead producing a dry rattle. You don’t have to tell the PC’s everything all the time!

…….OK, I admit it. I wrote that last part about D&D because I wanted to distract everyone from the fact that a game about flowers scared the hell out of me. It’s not the first time flowers have scared me so. There was also that time when I was 3 that my older brother told me there was a new kind of killer bee that looked just like floating dandelion seeds……

On Saturday, still floating on our gaming high from Friday night, Dante & I made the 45 minute trip to Englewood to visit a gaming shop. I had heard good things about Bonnie Brae Hobby Shop through the Gamer Girls surveys, and needing a FLGS, I decided I would at least decide if it was worth the long-ish drive.

Due in part to the fact that someone has cast Greater Recession on the economy, and also because debt is my wife’s favored enemy, my lovely wife Efreak and I are attempting to watch our finances. Accordingly, she concocted for us a budget, and we discussed ways we can pay off the remainder of our debts. After some furious financial critical strikes, I am pleased to say that the only things we have left to pay off are our house, and half of my student loan. I’ve been paying on the damned thing for 9 years, let nobody tell you state schools are cheap!!!! (Of course, changing one’s major twice will do that to you….)

One thing I was rather surprised about was how I was unintentionally saving money. If you’d looked at how I was spending money a year ago, you would see me mostly blowing money on 1> going to the movies, 2> videogames, and 3> electronics. It was not unusual for me to crack $100-150 a month on entertainment. Last month’s numbers revealed something surprising: I’d only spent $15 total – solely on my WoW subscription.

I’d had friends tell me before I started playing that this might happen, but I didn’t believe it. But it just goes to show: if you’re grinding, you’re not spending money!

Now I just have to make sure I remember to leave the house now and then…..