Hello, my name is Dante and I have a problem.

Today I admit an uncomfortable truth: I have never read any of the Drizzt novels or pretty much any other Forgotten Realms related novelizations.

Before I hear the “door slamming”  sound of the rest of my readership leaving the premises, allow me to explain:

I have spent most of my D&D career learning at the feet of masters.  My original DM, Chuck, was exceedingly well versed in Salvatore-lore and all other manner of Forgotten Realms storylines.  He painted so many vivid and disturbing examples of Drow culture that it held me over for quite some time, and since my first real campaign was a continuation of his storyline I didn’t have to know much more than I already did.  My other campaigns have predominately revolved around non-Forgotten Realms themes and topics I haven’t had to revisit the setting, so my interest wasn’t focused there.

And now I’m screwed.

Well, maybe not screwed… but I do have a situation.  I have worked up a plot that involves the dark elves, and strategically timed it such that I had all holiday break to do some reading to prepare me to subject my characters to a proper representation of Drow society.  The trouble is that I didn’t do my homework and now I need some crib notes for how to whip up a Drow society and make it believable.  I’m going to crack open my 4e Forgotten Realms campaign guide and see what I can glean in a few sessions prior to this weekend, but I’m open to any suggestions on how to bone up fast.

Also, I would like to extend my apologies to everyone who has written in the Forgotten Realms universe.  I consider this one of the most grievous gaps in my D&D education, one that I fully intend to rectify.  Just not this week!  I fully expect to suffer the barbs of my fellow roleplaying bloggers on this one, so the comment thread should be fun!

Recently, we received a comment from a user of some concern to us here at Stupid Ranger. This user, known only as “Frank”, asks, “What The F*ck” is a bullywug?”.

Yes, I know, I was as shocked as you. Especially with the recent upswing in Bullywug Awareness throughout our culture, it is difficult to look on such ignorance. I don’t know whether to be sad or angry. Did this poor soul simply not have access to a proper education? Or is this simply a willful choice to disbelieve that anything so magnificent and deadly could exist?

Regardless, I feel that it is my duty to enlighten this poor soul, and to give the rest of us a refresher. Let us start with the basics.

Bullywugs were discovered in the year 1852 by a sociologist by the name of Eberhard Anheuser. While on a nature hike through the virgin woodlands of what would later be known as Belgium, he happened upon a tribe of what appeared to be frog-people sacrificing one of their own upon a large sacrificial altar. This was accomplished by rolling a large boulder over the sacrifice, which caused a veritable tidal wave of bullywug-humors to cascade all over everyone in a 10′ radius. (This, also, was the origin of the little known Abjuration classic, “Eberhard’s Protection From Humors, 10′ Radius”.) These humors, as it happened, turned out to be both incredibly delicious and addictive, a fact that Mr. Anheuser quickly capitalized on. In 1854, he mobilized a small army of men to build a factory and to hunt and breed bullywugs in captivity for the sole purpose of  the later harvesting and bottling of their tasty bodily fluids. This beverage was known to the locals as “Wugweiser”.

The bullywugs did not take this lying down, of course, and within the year had developed a strong (and amphibious) resistance. Under the leadership of one Frederick Wuglass, known both for his oratory skill and fantastic hairbeard, the bullwugs brought production of Wugweiser to a standstill. It was not long after that Mr. Anheuser began to act very strangely, retreating from friends and family, and spending most of his time sunning himself on a rock. When he eventually did return to the office, he ordered a complete shutdown and retooling of the plant to make a much more uninteresting beverage with a far more uninteresting brand name using fermented grain. The locals believe Mr. Anheuser was secretly kidnapped and replaced by one of the bullywugs, but that is complete nonsense. Everyone knows that bullwug magic is only for making rainbows and powering the Great Engine that fulfills dreams for the Make A Wish Foundation.

The bullywugs had hoped to recede back into obscurity after this incident, but unfortunately a man named Gary Gygax invented a game called Dungeons and Dragons and, using a book of forbidden knowledge he accidentally checked out from the Lake Geneva Public Library, included many of their secrets in the game. The last straw came when the D&D cartoon was released in the United States in 1983. Though largely unnoticed by the general public, it prominently featured brutal, racist caricatures of many key members of the Bullywug Parliament. Outraged and insulted for the last time, the bullywugs vowed blood-revenge on humanity. That is how hip-hop music came to be.

And that, Frank, is what the f*ck a bullywug is.

Hope you are all having a wonderful holiday season.  The SR crew briefly reunited for some Christmas cheer this week, then went about the business of enjoying family at the holiday.

Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas (or a great Friday if you don’t celebrate Christmas).  Happy New Year to everyone!

Last week at work, I was intrigued by a new card game we got in stock.  Ren Faire, by Atlas Games, captures that fun, quirky feeling of heading to a renaissance faire with your friends.

The Details

It’s a 2-4 player game, where you and your friends, as you’re wandering around the Ren Faire, start to feel out of place in your T-shirts and cut-offs, so you decide to buy costumes, one piece at a time.  In order to earn money for your costume purchases, you engage in performances with or against your friends.

The Performance cards are fun and entertaining.  There are physical challenges, such as arm wrestling or staring contests.  There are creative challenges, such as drawing something renaissance-y or whistling a tune.  It’s a fun combination of entertaining performances, and successful performances win you one or more coins.

With your new-found wealth, you can purchase costume cards that have one or more costume elements on them.  These cards are really the reason I wanted the game; the costume cards are clear plastic (see the promo pic here) so you can stack your cards and see your costume as it all comes together.

Dante vs Stupid Ranger

Dante & I gave Ren Faire a try.  We modified the rules a bit; instead of attempting to fill all six icons on our player cards, we decided to go for four.  Game play went pretty quick for us, and we finished in about a half an hour.  The Performances were fun, even with only two of us, but we both felt that the game as a whole would have been more fun with more players.

General Comments

There is definitely a high level of absurd and quirky fun; this is not a serious game!  The recommended age is 13 years or older, and I would agree with this; between the Performance challenges and the strategies involved in building your costume, this age frame seems appropriate.  And I recommend playing with more than two players; it’s playable with two, but it would be more entertaining with more.  If you’re looking for a fun, light-hearted game, I would recommend Ren Faire.

Let’s face it; some days, the dice are against you.  And nothing you can do can change your bad dice luck.  So what do you do?

The Fate Points

I’ve had a couple of DMs use the Fate Points.  The incarnations I’ve played allowed players to re-roll their bad rolls, or re-roll the DM’s good roll.  Fate Points give you that extra safety net for the bad dice moments.  For DMs running casual sorts of games, this is a nice option to give players a little more control over the dice.

The Player-Requested Option

Dante, as our DM, is a pretty easy-going DM.  And he’s been a pretty good guy during those battles when we have bad dice nights.  Like all groups, we’ve had nights where players have had REALLY bad dice nights, and Dante has given in to our fate requests.  Here are a couple of examples:

Double Rolls. When Tali the Barbarian went almost any entire night without rolling a hit, she asked if she could roll two d20s and take the best roll.  Low and behold, when given this fateful option, she managed to roll a crit.  It was a one-time Fate roll, but it made the night a little more fun for Tali.

Self-Roll. Akta the Warlord was running out of hit points rapidly, and she was having a difficult time trying to kill her attacker.  She’d used her second wind, all other healing options were exhausted, and no one was close enough to help her.  She asked Dante if she could roll her attacker’s attack roll.  That way, she could control her fate a bit.  Fortuitously, she missed herself.  Again, this was a one-time Fate roll, but it gave her control of her fate.

It’s tough to be a player invested in your character and watch that character die.  While these may not be rules you find in any source book, Fate rules give a player control over their character’s fate.  And even that little bit of control can make everything a little easier to accept even bad dice nights.

It’s time once again!  Jonathan from The Core Mechanic is going forward with Open Game Table Volume 2.  I had the honor to assist with editing Volume 1, and let me tell you, it’s a great book; if you don’t already have a copy, you should get one!

Peer Reviewer: If you’re interested in applying as a peer reviewer, you can submit your information here.  The peer reviewers are responsible for reading entries and assisting with the final decision making process.  Deadline for applications is Dec 31st.

Blog Post Nominations: Nominations for blog posts can be submitted here; nominations close Jan 15th.  The application form can accept 5 URLs, but there isn’t a limit to the number of forms you can submit.

If you’re looking for more information on Open Game Table Volume 2, you can follow on twitter or become a fan on Facebook.

Let me end the suspense I’m sure you are are undoubtedly feeling upon beginning to read this review. The game is amazing, just like every other Bioware game ever released. One could piss and moan that this is the same old Bioware formula they’ve used since Knights of the Old Republic, which is kind of like complaining about always being served your favorite meal every night that you never get tired of.

They’re calling the setting “dark fantasy”, which is mostly like regular fantasy, except people are complete and utter assholes to each other just like they can be in real life. Expect to have to deal with situations involving one or more of the following: slavery, racism, rape, social castes, homosexuality, cooking, prostitution, pet care, death, and poor personal hygiene. Demons and darkspawn ain’t got nothing on the horrors that all the humans, dwarves, and elves seem to enjoy perennially inflicting on each other. (In fact, all the demon archetypes are based on sins, which probably makes it our fault for them, too.) As a result of this new, darker, tone, choices in this game tend to be a bit murkier than in past games. Before, you’d pick the “good guy” choice or the “bad guy” choice. A lot of times now there is no choice that makes everybody happy except Team Evil, and you have to steal from Peter to pay Paul. Somebody gets the shaft, to one degree or another, even if you’re playing a good guy. So, while you will almost certainly love this game dearly, be advised you may want to save up money for a few sessions with a good therapist when it’s all over.

Well, presumably. I have not yet completed the game yet, though I am 40 hours into it already and I never want it to end. Ever. But of the parts I have played, please allow me to list a few of the things I liked (and *gasp* disliked).

Let’s start with the tips o’ the hat.

• TACTICS
  The new Tactics system for your computer-controlled allies is a step up from before, when they would mostly just act stupid and you did all the work. However, it does mean you will probably die if you don’t do this right. You need a good healer in this game, and you need a big brawny warrior-type to keep all the nasty ogres and darkspawn from squishing the mages between their toes. Finding good combinations of tactics is an integral part of this game, so if you’re dying repeatedly, look here first.
• WRITING
  Though you may find some scenarios familiar, the writing in this game has a way of making you look just a little differently at common fantasy stuff. The Elves are either second-class citizens or they’re like you’re used to except they’re always on the run because they’re persecuted like second-class citizens. Dwarves dress like you’re used to, but they’ve clearly been reading way too much Machiavelli and you could try to cut the politics with a knife (but someone would discredit the knife in the eyes of the people first, so nobody would ever pick it up in the first place). And let’s not forget the casteless dwarves, who it’s legal to murder and rape because they’re not real people because they’re not noble. Never thought that kind of stuff about dwarves before. (Not sure I wanted to!)  But it sure as hell breaks the jolly, ale-suckin’ Gimli clones we’ve all become used to over the years. Even so, it’s never stale, and it never seems just like they just changed things to get your attention like “HEY KIDS if you liked elves then you’re gonna love ELVES XTREME: SYLVAN BRONTOSAUROIDS!!!!!!“ This stuff is really well done. And with the absolutely mind-crushingly huge amount of stuff to read in the Codex as you gather information in the game, you’ll be glad they used a large font size because you won’t want to stop anytime soon.

There are a few things about Dragon Age: Origins I’m *gasp* not crazy about too.

• VISIBLE SPELL EFFECTS DURING CONVERSATION
  Is it really necessary to keep glowy spell effects going during conversations? I play a mage, which means I basically light people on fire all day long, which usually includes my party members since I’m playing normal mode where they don’t die when I do that.  The end result of this is that I frequently having myself in pleasant  conversation with all my immolated friends. And if the gatling gun of moral quandaries wasn’t going to put me in therapy, this will.
• WTF DRY HUMPING
  It’s no secret that there’s sex scenes. But when they’re doing it, they strip down only to their underwear. I can understand why this might be done in our weird puritanical society that doesn’t mind a firehose of blood spraying out of a nun’s decapitated corpse but freaks out over seeing a pixellated nipple. What I cannot understand is why said underwear consists of large strips of what appears to be burlap. It is approximately as sexy as a Golden Girls marathon. What’s worse, is that the regular everyday outfits worn by some characters show more and look less like some sort of abstinence-cultist diaper. I guess the good news is there won’t be any storylines about accidentally knocking Leliana up. But I guess my point is that Mass Effect’s nude scenes showed us that this whole business can be done tastefully, without getting too graphic, and with the basic premise intact that your characters are not dry humping. The game is not called Amish Age: Bundlings.

Okay, that’s all the bad stuff I can think of, except for maybe that I don’t like how forehead crinkling facial expressions look on Leliana’s face. In short: run – do not walk - and get yourself a copy of this game. But be ready not to sleep. There’s no time for that! There’s darkspawn to kill, stories to discover, and burlap-clad nubiles to seduce.

I finished my first run through of Dragon Age: Origins this weekend.  And I loved it so much I started it again!

My Thoughts

I shared some preliminary thoughts on my game experience after my first weekend of game play, and most of those impressions were accurate through to the end.  My Dalish Rogue Elf was a lot of fun to play; I specialized as a Duelist, which gave me some great, front-line melee attack options.  The graphics throughout the entire game were beautiful, especially the ending sequence.  The story line did have some predictable moments, but there were still some crazy, unpredictable moments.

Advice Without Spoilers

For those of you embarking on your own DOA adventure, I offer this advice, free of spoilers.  Talk to your companions, especially while at camp.  They will periodically give you quests to complete.  If you earn a high enough influence score with a companion, s/he will gain stat bonuses.  If you’re so inclined, you can work your way up to a romantic relationship with some of them; there are even achievements for romantic relationships for the achievement-seekers out there.

Stock up on health potions, lyrium potions, and healing kits.  I recommend maxing out your (or one of your companion’s) Herbalism skill, which allows you to make your own potions.  I found that on occasion, I had bought up all available health potions in a region and couldn’t find any more; being able to craft your own will make things much easier.  Buy recipes when you can find them, even if you don’t have your skill high enough yet; you may not be able to find that recipe again.  Stock up on basic potion-crafting supplies when you can buy them.

Later this week, I’ll share thoughts on my specific game play, which will include some spoilers, but for now, here’s what I think: If you haven’t played Dragon Age: Origins, go now.  Play.  Play through to the end.  And then, play it all over again!

Over the past weekend, our D&D group got together to play.  Since several of our group members are parents and Busy People, it is usually a few weeks between each of our gaming sessions.  This usually causes a series of distractions that sometimes make our games hard to wrangle.  Here’s some tips to help overcome this problem in your own games:

• Give the kids something to do.  The parents in our group usually default to a DVD, video game, or books to keep the kiddies out of our hair while we play.  Or, if you’re cool like Phil, The Chatty DM you can just invite your kids to play D&D with you when they’re old enough.
• Let side conversations happen.  Not only are they fun, but when you game with friends there is a certain social element that must be exhausted before gaming can occur.
• If you do want to get somewhere with your game, simply just inform your players that something important is about to happen and they need to curtail their conversations and focus for the next few minutes.  It worked for us last session!
• Tweak your game so it is slightly more irreverent (and therefore interesting).  Make that roving band of thieves and bandits into rednecks.  They serve the same purpose, you get the ability to use names like Jethro, Jim-Bob, and Ray Roy, and the group pays a little more attention when a captured bandit spits tobacco in a player character’s eye.

It is perfectly normal to have the occasional session where the group is distracted and focused on getting back in touch with one another.  If you let things unfold, you’ll be rewarded with more focused sessions in the future and you’ll deepen the friendships and connections that make gaming such an attractive hobby.

I lost myself in the black hole of Dragon Age: Origins yesterday.  And while I’m feeding my Castle addiction tonight, I’m sharing my initial impressions before diving back in.

Character Generation

I opted for the Dalish Elf Rogue.  Then I went through the personalization options.  I have to admit, I was a little overwhelmed with all the personalization options.  Eye color, eye distance, eye shape, hair color, hair style, eye brow shape, eye brow color, etc, etc.  But I eventually managed to find a combination of all elements that looked okay to me, and then I was off.

Spoiler-Free Game Conversation

I promise not to ruin it for anyone, so this will be completely spoiler-free.  The game play is exceptional.  While some of the twists were a bit predictable, there were still moments where I sat flabbergasted at the turn of events.  So far, it’s been fun, it’s graphically beautiful, it’s entrancing, and I can’t wait to see what happens next.

There were a few little things that took me a bit to adjust to.  First, I was surprised that there wasn’t an option to adjust to amount of blood/gore.  It’s not overwhelming, but I was surprised that there wasn’t an option for it.

Second, it took me a bit to become accustomed to the camera angle.  I think part of this was because I’d been playing Fable 2, and I expected a certain level of camera control.  There really isn’t camera control available beyond the thumb stick control.  I adapted quickly, and it hasn’t been an issue for my experience.

I’m heading back in to the game now.  If you haven’t started playing it yourself, I recommend you get moving.