October 2015 – Page 5

Mystara Monday: Module X3 – Curse of Xanathon

November 10, 2015October 26, 2015 by Thalen

It's time again for a look at a bit of D&D history. This week we've got another Expert level adventure, X3: Curse of Xanathon, by Douglas Niles. This adventure takes the party to another new area of the map, the Kingdom of Vestland, along the northern coast.

This scene will only occur if the PCs go the wrong way.
This is somewhat emblematic of the adventure as a whole.

The adventure takes place in the town of Rhoona, ruled by Duke Stephen (no, a different Duke Stephen). Rhoona is a decent sized town located on a fjord near the border with the dwarven nation of Rockhome. As such, there's a sizable dwarf population, many of whom have been employed by the Duke to construct a new palace. There is also a growing population of immigrants from the Ethengar Khanate.

The Ethengarians have brought their religion with them and have recently constructed a temple to their god, Cretia who is mysterious and strange and not at all evil at all, no really. This being early D&D, we need one church for each of the alignments. Cretia fills the Chaotic slot; in addition we have the Lawful Order of Forsetta and the best neutral church ever imagined, the Temple of the Spuming Nooga. The Spuming Nooga is worshiped by fishermen and sailors, takes the form of a giant spouting whale, and is the only one of these three that is neither evil nor an idiot.

As the adventure begins, the party are in a tavern (take a drink) in Rhoona and have learned that the Duke has recently been issuing strange decrees. First he declared that all taxes must be paid in beer, causing a beer shortage which has the dwarves in particular even crankier than normal. Then he declared that all horses must be ridden backwards while in town. A herald then announces the latest decree, that all dwarves are now banned from town. Any found within town after an hour has passed will be arrested, shaved, and stretched on a rack.

This gets the dwarves in the tavern in a bit of an uproar and one dwarven stonemason (who is wearing plate mail and carrying a battle axe because dwarves? I guess?) starts going on about how Draco Stormsailer, the captain of the guard, behind all of this. If the PCs approach him, he'll tell them there've been strange people hanging around the guard barracks and that someone should check it out. If they don't the high priest of Forsetta, who is hanging out disguised as a beggar, will whisper a cryptic clue as he passes. Apparently he has a good idea of what's going on, but can't take any action because he's lawful. And somehow that means he can't oppose an attempt to undermine his lawful ruler by dark magic, or something. I think Niles seriously misunderstands the definition of lawful here.

What's going on is that Draco is attempting to foment rebellion against the duke so that he can depose Duke Stephen and take his place. He's aided in this by Xanathon, the High Priest of Cretia, who has cursed the Duke with something similar to a feeblemind spell. Since Cretia aided him in inflicting the curse (as opposed to most cleric spells?) it can't just be removed in the normal fashion, an antidote is needed. Guess who has that? Also Xanathon is entirely invulnerable because Cretia stuck his soul in a diamond which is hidden in a shrine up in the mountains. Also, also, Xanathon is actually serving as an agent of the Khanate trying to weaken Rhoona so the Ethengarians can swoop in and conquer it.

The adventure, then, consists of five parts. First up, go to the barracks to try and find out what the hell's going on. The adventure basically assumes the players just start murdering their way through the guards to get to Draco, which seems a bit unheroic? Apparently directly opposing a villain is 'unlawful' but sending a bunch of dudes to kill all the towns guards is allowed? The adventure even makes it clear in the background that most of the guard, while loyal to Draco, have no idea what he's up to. Once they've reached Draco's room, the players find that he's not home, but he left an encrypted note on the table and a Helm of Reading Languages and Magic in a chest nearby.

Also, isn't it super cool to be evil like you and I both are?

While the adventurers were busy with that the Duke has outlawed fire, because it makes the sun jealous. With the evidence they now have, its presumed the players will go to the Temple of Cretia next to confront Xanathon. If they don't, the priest of Forsetta will get cryptic at them about it again. Fighting their way through a bunch of evil clerics, they will find Xanathon only to discover that he can't be harmed! He's super arrogant and riddles at them about it, as well as having a map on the wall with a big red mark where his super secret soul diamond is being kept. If the PCs are smart, they jump out the handy window and run like buggery. If they're not, he bludgeons them to death one by one with his mace and laughs.

Assuming the adventurers got a good look at the map while Xanathon was beating on them, they should now travel into the mountains to find the Shrine of Cretia. On the way out, they hear that the Duke has declared that meat is for horses now. There are a couple of paths once they get near the shrine; one leads to the chimera from the cover, the other to the shrine. The shrine is a short dungeon with fairly typical monsters; a bunch of various undead, some ogres, gargoyles, so on. At the end, guarded by a spectre, is the diamond. The players might think they need to destroy it, but no, they need to take it back to Xanathon. Once it's near him, he'll be vulnerable.

Now that they have the diamond, the adventurers can take out Xanathon, recover the antidote, kill Draco, and restore the Duke. He is, of course, grateful and rewards the PCs. How he plans to keep the peace since his entire guard force was brutally murdered is not detailed. Maybe he hires the dwarven army that are coming to burn the town after he apologizes to them.

As I already said, Curse of Xanathon is disappointing. There are the bones of a good adventure here, but the execution is just terribly ham-handed. The basic idea of an agent from another country trying to foment rebellion by cursing the ruler is good; there's a definite Grima Wormtongue vibe to that. Duke Stephen could be used as a patron for the adventurers in the future since he owes them big. I feel like there's a lot work needed to bring the adventure up to snuff though. Also, it needs more Spuming Nooga.

Worth Sticking Around For

October 26, 2015 by Tamrielo

A friend of mine got to a boss she couldn’t beat and quit playing the game. Another friend of mine had a single bad experience at a restaurant and hasn’t been back since. Another friend of mine, a highly competitive gamer, had a frustrating match in a game and stopped playing it entirely. Yet another friend saw an episode of a show that she’d been following for thirty episodes, hated the episode, and never went back.

I’ve done a lot of these things myself. It’s hard not to; why waste time on second chances? There are so many options out there — for everything — that it seems like there’s no reason to hang around if something frustrates or offends you. Flush it and move on, there’s always more where it came from. There are other games, other restaurants, other shows. It feels like a defense mechanism against the deluge of content to be ready and willing to shut down and give up on something at the first sign of trouble. We’ve all become highly sensitive to anything that provides a poor experience, so we can cut it out and move on, and not be bothered by it. We can “buy time” to experience other things by removing anything that fails us.

I’ve had the opportunity to go back and try a variety of things over the last year, that I’d otherwise abandoned or moved on from or what have you. Every time I do, one of my friends invariably goes “you’re playing THAT again? WHY?”

It’s a hard question to answer. The simple answer is that I’m looking for something fun to play, and a lot of this old stuff doesn’t cost me any money, or relatively little. More complicated is that I often don’t remember why I stopped playing them– I very rarely go back to games or books that I’ve finished and play them again, but I don’t finish all that many games, especially since I play a lot of MMOs, which defy completion.

The more complicated answer is that I like to stick with my entertainment. I like games in a series, not one-shot, disposable titles. I like something I can get invested in, and both express myself through and make a part of myself. I’ve had this discussion with Kodra, but I often find board games, even the very high quality ones, a little too shallow and a little too ephemeral to really get into. There’s little to no self-expression in them, and no sense of long-term importance. I’m not unraveling a story that will stick with me, nor am I exploring a world that will inspire me. The majority of the board game experiences I’ve had have taken one of two forms. In one case, a bunch of friends and I sit down at a game none of us have ever played, learn the rules, then play together. These are the better experiences, but they tend to take hours. An hour or two or more to learn the rules and set up the game, and another two to three to actually play. In another case, I and others are playing a game that one or more people absolutely love, and have a bunch of experience with and are really excited to play with other people. I have yet to have an experience with a game like this that isn’t miserable; the games are dominated by the players who already know everything about it and I’m basically filling a chair so that they can play.

These experiences have deeply informed how I introduce people to games that I like, and most of the time I don’t do it. I’d rather someone ask me about a game that I’m playing and love, at which point I can teach it to them, than try to push that game on someone. The only games I’ll openly suggest that I and others play are ones that I’m passingly familiar with, just barely enough to teach, and am still learning how to play. Even these are hit or miss.

It’s a big part of why I play minis games, and why I’m generally very selective about the minis games I play. The game pieces I use have stories, each one the result of one or many games, and these stories start to inform how the mini looks and feels. It’s a personal touch, and I feel like each addition to the collection is another potential set of stories. I run a lot of tabletop games, but I haven’t played in one in years; minis fill the kind of personalized game experience for me that someone’s character does in a tabletop game.

It’s also why I actively seek out entertainment media that I can stick with. I’ve found it’s hard to have an experience that’s deeply changing or otherwise significant without some amount of friction and investment. I’ve worked on intuiting the difference between something that’s interesting but difficult and something that’s simply unappealing; usually if it’s the former, it speaks more to something about myself than something about whatever I’m watching. I’m really interested in entertainment that forces me to self-evaluate.

Case in point: Tales of Zestiria. In a lot of ways, it’s a fairly dark game, but it’s presented in a very upbeat, very cheerful way. I can feel myself reacting with annoyance– at the overly-chipper characters and what feels like a mood that doesn’t take things seriously. It would have been easy for me to check out already, citing tonal issues and childishness as reasons. The argument for quitting is easy, even as I write this it jumps to my lips. Instead, I’ve kept playing.

I have a hard time explaining why, just like I have a hard time answering “why” when someone asks me why I’ve jumped back into some old game that we quit in disgust. I think that’s what I find compelling, and ultimately rewarding. Tales of Zestiria has started speaking directly to my cynicism. X-Wing has proven shockingly deeper than my initial play (and dismissal) of it, years ago, and I’m fascinated to explore it more. Guild Wars 2 is a game that, years on, I finally understand, and it’s a very different kind of MMO than others out there. Each of those games have forced me to look at myself rather than the game to really appreciate them, and I have similar experiences with various shows.

It’s something I’m continuing to work on, to fight that urge to drop something at the first bad experience and keep on exploring. I’ve very rarely been disappointed, when I manage to shed my defensiveness and ego and let myself enjoy things for what they are, it’s just hard to do. I’ve gotten good at a lot of games that I never would have thought I’d enjoy, and found a few favorite shows that I would otherwise have never looked twice at.

I just wish I had some way of sharing that experience with other people, but like pushing a new game that you’ve come to love on someone that’s never tried it, it’s too easy to just dominate the experience and make it unfun for them.

Slight Progress

October 26, 2015 by Belghast

Titan Improves

This weekend once again was mostly a Destiny weekend for me, as I worked on both my Titan and my Hunter trying to slowly inch up their gear. On the Titan I hit a bit of a milestone, and finally pushed forward to get my light level… aka item level to 295. The funny thing about this is it seems to be a significant number, because I have noticed that a lot of things simply feel easier now. I spent a good bit of the weekend running the level 36 strikes, but as per Cortical’s suggestion I tried a few 20 strikes. The strange thing about them is… in some ways they seemed more difficult. At the very least the level 20 strikes seem to throw more cheap mobs at you, and I guess if you have really good AOE damage you can shred through them. Ironically I died far more often in the 20s than I normally do in the 36s so I think I am going to return to doing the slightly “harder” ones. I would rather have harder bosses and easier trash I guess. It also seems like once I hit 295 I started getting slightly better drops. I still have yet to see a single item over level 300, so I am not sure at all how I am going to bridge that gap.

I guess Nightfall would be the next big jump forward for me, but I have to say I am slightly gunshy. Heroic was maddening at times, and I am guessing there are lots of mobs in Nightfall that will straight up one shot you. It feels like to do those really well you need to know the placement of the mobs and predict every sniper or big gunner type mob to take them out quickly before they whittle down the party. The other side effect that I am really not digging is the way that the community seems to love to glitch out content rather than complete it. Most of the times I have been on the Restorative Mind map… something happens and the other two players disappear on me… only to end up with me getting teleported to the final boss room moments later. So there has to be some sort of shortcut that I am just not understanding, or some glitch somewhere that lets them bypass the gates. I guess I get the reason why Destiny “Sherpas” are a thing.

Hunter Viable

The progress I am happiest with however this weekend is that of the hunter. It seems like it was only a week or so ago that I was 285 on the Titan, and I have now reached that point on the hunter as well. I am still largely focused on Nightstalker, but I did pick up the Bladedancer helmet this week. I also picked up a chest engram and pulled a Crest of Alpha Lupi which works pretty well. I am also really really loving my Zarinaea-D Auto Rifle, that I got the first week Armsday orders were available to me. I’ve had a couple of these now but the one my hunter uses seems to be the best so far. I am running a combination of Partial Refunds, Rodeo, and High Calibur rounds on it… and it is a beast at taking down mobs in general. I also really really like the LD Watchdog sights on it. I’ve heard the Suros legendary auto rifle is the one to get,but so far I have had little to no luck pulling that one. I did manage to get a Villainy pulse rifle from Future War Cult faction package, but I have yet to really put it through the paces.

At some point this week I guess I am going to work on my Warlock. At this point I am only level 8 on him, and I don’t have a cheaty item that will zoom me to 25 this time. The early game is really somewhat bland… and while I have weapons for 20ish in my vault… I don’t have much stocked away to make the low levels go smoother. The only negative about boosting the hunter is that I had made essentially no progress on my classes, and had to basically start leveling from 25 on… with nothing much to rely on other than the basic super and basic grenade. At least on my Warlock I have a fair number of the abilities ready to go, and that at least should make things good more smoothly. I have this overwhelming desire to have one of each at high levels, and since I went Solar sword on the Titan, and Void sword on the Hunter… I guess that means I am going to go Arc sword on the Warlock and throw sonic booms. Largely I just like the idea of eventually being able to swap swords between them based on the need. I wish there was such a thing as a Legendary kiosk like there is the Exotic one… because man… there are certain Legendary weapons I wish I could have on every character.

Week In Gaming 10/25/2015

October 25, 2015 by Belghast

The Sickly Bel

This week was an odd one in that I managed to catch some flu-like chest crud. I felt pretty awful most of last weekend, and then struggled to exist Monday and ended up coming home halfway through Tuesday. I chained Wednesday as well, and found myself in that place where I wanted to play something… but anything seemed to require too much concentration. This was after all the week I had early access to Star Wars Fallen Empire, and I did exactly none of the content. I poked my head in a few times to attempt to play my Sith Sorcerer and failed miserably at it. I have a few comments to make about my experiences, but the majority of my gaming time was spent playing Destiny. Apparently that game is largely muscle memory, and I can play it without having to think too much about it.

SWTOR: Fallen Empire

As I said in the intro, this week was the early launch of Fallen Empire the massively game changing expansion for Star Wars the Old Republic… and I barely touched it. I did pop in enough to get sorted out how some of the new systems work. Namely the way companions now exist as being independent of the abilities they use. This means if you no longer have to deal with companions you cannot stand just because they fill the role you want. As a result I swapped to using Andronikos Revel on my Sorcerer, because he loves it when I shock the shit out of NPCs that are not giving me my way. Similarly I would probably never run with a companion that is not Vette on my Sith Warrior, or always run with Kira Carsen on my Jedi Guardian. There is seriously nothing cooler than running around with Kira and feeling like a Jedi strike force, and having her also be a healer… just icing on the cake. As you can tell this is a super important change for me, and I am damned happy to see it go in.

Other than that the other big change for me is the fact that the NPCs are actually labelled as to what type of quest they give you. For example in the above image you can clearly see that this NPC is going to give you the Belsavis planetary quest. This makes it easy to ignore things like the non-soloable heroic quests or flashpoint quests you are not quite ready for… to keep them from cluttering your logs. The other big thing that I noticed was the way that the level scaling works. It seems like when you land on a planet you are scaled to the maximum level for that area, somewhat like Final Fantasy XIV scales dungeons. This means you can overlevel content… but just barely making it a bit easier if you wait for awhile to do a quest rather than doing it when it is on level. However there is never a point where content ever becomes useless to you, which means you can easily go back and farm early content if you are struggling a bit to progress forward. The loss of 12x class experience however means that pretty much to stay current you are always going to have to do your class quests as well as the main planetary story arc. In any case I think the expansion content is going to be enjoyable… if I ever actually play it.

All-Saints Wake

I don’t have a lot to talk about when it comes to Final Fantasy XIV this week, but I did poke my head back in for a few hours. This week was the release of the All-Saints Wake event that serves as Halloween for the game. As we talked about last night, holidays in Final Fantasy XIV are largely the tale of incompetent villains and in this case it is a repeat appearance of the Impresario the mastermind behind the Continental Circus. Over the years we have learned that this is really a group of voidsent that are trying to cause mayhem each year, and we the player finds new ways to thwart them. As cute as the story line is… the reason why you do holidays in games is to get stuff. This year we get the purple outfit that my character is showing off above, a new Pumpkin Butler minion, and for the first time this year an actual mount. We get to ride around Eorzea on a flying broom… that actually does fly if you have unlocked flight in a given zone. The thing I love about Final Fantasy XIV holiday events is that they are adorable, provide awesome rewards… and end up taking only a few minutes to complete rather than being a grindy mess that brings out the worst in players. If you are subbed you should definitely check it out, because while the quest is more enjoyable if you have done the previous years… it is still fairly easy to follow without that ancestral knowledge.

Devilian

I have some issues with this game, but since I am now in alpha/beta/whatever phase it is and the NDA has dropped I thought I would talk a bit about it this morning. My number one issue is the gender locked classes and the fact that they have very specific styles to them. The Berserker is a guts clone, the Shadow Hunter is a bare chested Bishi-elven alucard like character, the Evoker is spilling out of her dress, and the Cannoneer is a Loli. Out of those options… there is exactly one I can stomach playing as, which is the Berserker. The thing is…. all of these design decisions unfortunately have nothing to do with Trion Worlds which is the company bringing the game to non-Korean markets. As fraught as the classes are… the game is actually rather enjoyable once you get past its slightly odd control scheme. By all looks it is a Diablo clone, but it controls vastly different… and honestly reminds me a bit more of the way skill shots in League of Legends feel. You use your mouse for character facing and then use your number keys to fire off abilities. You can bind an attack to your left mouse button, and I am probably going to do that with my basic attack to make it feel more Diablo-like. What I have seen of the combat is kinda interesting, and the dungeons are really enjoyable. I am just struggling to get past the art direction decisions, because honestly… they make me really sad. This could be a really great game, if it didn’t have gender locked classes and the art design did not seem to be from a thirteen year olds “tee hee hee boobs” mindset. It will be interesting to see if I am still piddling with it by the time the next beta comes around or if I have decided that the game is simply “not for me”.

Destiny

Week In Gaming 10/25/2015 — Magical glow of an Exotic Engram… only to be dashed moments later when you find out its a damned helmet.

This week has been almost entirely devoted to Destiny. As I said before this was the game that I could play without having to apply much thought to it. A good chunk of the week was spent working on my Hunter who is now I believe 270ish light level, and all of the way through the TKK content. I cheated a bit and jump started the character to level 25 using the item I got from purchasing the Taken King. I have to say if they want to sell something on the cash shop… I would absolutely buy a second one of these. Going from 25 to 40 was not that bad, but I am just not looking forward to taking my Warlock from 1-25 to get there. This week has also been the resurgence of my appreciation of Auto Rifles. I completely the third Gunsmith faction quest and it ended up giving me an exotic rifle called the Fabian Strategy. This thing is just a blast to use and I love the way it sounds and feels as I rip through mobs. This has also caused me to dust off the auto rifles I had in my vault and I found a few others that I really like, one of which my hunter is currently using.

The other key activity for this week has been running level 36 strikes in an effort to get exotic engrams with three of coins. I found out today that I could be just doing level 20s, but honestly I kinda enjoy the slight effort the 36s provide. They go so much quicker than the heroics, but don’t feel like I am simply steamrolling them in quite the way that the level 20s do. Essentially my pattern has been to run strikes using coins until I get an exotic, then take a break for a bit and do something else. I am also attempting to keep both characters up to date on bounties each day, and my regular farming runs on the dreadnought manage to pay off big time… as I had more than enough Hadium Flakes to get my Hunter his sword almost immediately. The big chore is still trying to increase my light levels, and the most 290 grind is extremely slow. That said it still feels enjoyable because I am seeing a ton of drops in the process. Even though half of the things are going to turn out to be something I cannot use… it still feels good to see drops. Its like the game is giving me hope… even though moments later it is just going to dash them once again when I find out the exotic is another damned helmet.