Blaugust

Go Team Blaugust

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Words of Encouragement

I woke up this morning to see the above tweet in my timeline… and it is absolutely true.  There are days I still think I am the least likely herald of regular posting.  Most of you only know me as the guy who posts every day, but in truth that only represents about half of my time blogging.  Before that I was the most flaky and least prolific blogger out there.  I would go through streaks of posting 10-20 posts in a given month…  to having months where I only have one post at all.  Between August 2012 and late April 2013 there was complete and total radio silence.  It was by will alone that I set myself down the journey of posting something, no matter how stupid it is… every single day.  Now several years later, there is part of me that still cannot fully comprehend the madness that I started, but I also have this strong drive to keep the ball from ever touching the ground.

While this might sound counter intuitive… for me at least regular posting is much easier than sporadic posting.  Namely because of the pressure that I would put on myself.  When I would go through a big lapse, I felt like I couldn’t just start writing again with a simple post.  Instead I would have to write the most epic post ever to make up for the fact that I had been gone so long.  I felt like I had to prove something to my readers, that I was somehow worthy of them leaving me in their RSS reader all this time.  As time passed, the guilt that I felt grew and the measure of that “epic comeback post” kept growing as well ultimately leading me to wait longer before posting it.  When I write something every day I am much more open with my readers.  I talk about what is going on in my world, and how it is effecting me.  I talk about what I am enjoying and what I am not enjoying, and the whole process ends up being much more fluid.  So when I agree that if I can do it, you can to… because quite frankly all of you are far more talented than I am.

I started the Blaugust thing selfishly as a way of getting more content from the bloggers I care about.  I never expect anyone to follow me in this “damned fool crusade”.  Instead from the first year I had people coming out of the woodwork and signing up for the challenge.  Even though I keep stats and assign awards…  every single person who attempts this is a hero to me.  They are actively doing something to keep pumping out more content into our community and that is huge.  I can keep doing what I do because there are people like you out there sharing the journey with me.  We are all in this together, and I know you can finish this month and get your name in the “winner” column.  I believe in all of you fine Blaugustians, and even though the month is coming to an end… I will still be here in September and October to support you all.  We are actively making this community we have stronger, and there is a certain magic in that.  Now go write some kick ass posts!

Waltz of Doom

Go Team Blaugust

 

Last night we were able to pull together the raid without any real issue and set our sights on clearing Alexander Normal.  It is amazing just how fast you can burn through all four wings when you have a team that works well together.  Even though I am essentially done gearing out my Warrior with Alexander items, I am always down for helping a full guild group knock it out.  It is extremely noticeable that our folks have been improving their gear because on turn one for example I think the bosses only actually made it up into the air twice.  Similarly we pushed the living liquid boss into the final phase before the second hands phase.  I know Kodra for example walked away with three pieces of gear that he had been building towards, and I think several others got pieces as well.  I was pretty slackerly this past week and these were actually my first Alexander runs.  I had every intention to work on getting the dragoon gear but this past week was just one where I was not in the mood to play any MMO at all.  Instead I largely played single player experiences…  or Diablo 3 AS a single player experience.  I did not even cap Esoterics and for that I am feeling a little sorry.  I could have easily had my chest piece this week, but I guess I will maybe wrap that up tonight.

Go Team Blaugust

After Alexander we put more attempts in on Ravana Extreme and I think we are getting to the point where we might be able to finish it up next week.  We have now seen the entire fight and survived through the various phases, we just need to put the dance together and repeat it all successfully.  The hard part is still the phase after the swords, which means we have to spread out so that only two people are in each corner.  We didn’t quite do this and as a result we lost a handful of people.  Luckily we had a healer limit break three available so we were able to essentially push the reset button and keep on trying.  That is not exactly the way we want to beat it the first time, but if we have to I will take it.  The fight is just so much more complicated than Bismarck Extreme was, and I am anxious to get it down and farmable so we can start clearing it and Bismarck in the same night.  I want pretty weapons dammit!  In all honesty I am pretty happy with my Esoterics axe for the time being, and my retainers are once again packed full of gear.  However I will never turn down unique weapon graphics.

#Blaugust Day 24: Mystara Monday: Basic Rules

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Today we take a look at where it all began, the first Dungeons & Dragons product I ever owned, Dungeons & Dragons Set 1: Basic Rules.

#Blaugust Day 24: Mystara Monday: Basic Rules
Adventure lies within

If you played Fourth Edition D&D you may recognize that art and cover design as being nearly identical to that of the Fourth Edition Starter Set. This was the third boxed set to be released as the Basic Rules. The first came out in 1977 and was intended to introduce players to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. The second, often referred to as the Moldvay rules was a heavy revision done by Tom Moldvay in 1981. I was in this revision that the Dungeons & Dragons rules split from Advanced D&D. What I have here is the third Basic Rules set, revised by Frank Mentzer in 1983.

In this box, I got a 64 page Players Manual, a 48 page Dungeon Masters Rulebook, and a set of polyhedral dice. Sadly, the dice were stolen along with all my others nearly 20 years ago. I've bought plenty of dice since then, but I still miss that very first set I ever owned. The books have almost the exact same cover layout as the box cover.

The art on that box, by the way, is by the famed Larry Elmore, and the Players Handbook is full of more. Jeff Easley contributed a fair bit as well, but Elmore's art is what I always think of when I think of these books, and of D&D in general. The Dungeon Masters Guide mostly has art by Jim Holloway which is a bit rougher. Elmore's adventurers look like high fantasy characters, almost superheroes even; Holloway's look more like rough and ready mountain men.

#Blaugust Day 24: Mystara Monday: Basic Rules
And that is what elves, halflings, and dwarves should look like

Based on my internet research, the rules differences between the previous version and this are pretty minor. The big change is in how the information is presented. The box says for ages 10 and up, and the books are very well suited for just that. The writing is aimed young without being pedantic or insulting. The set was also clearly designed as an introduction for someone with no prior experience.

Rather than starting out with rules to create characters and so forth, the Players Manual first explains what 'role playing' is and then runs the character through a simple, linear solo adventure. Throughout the adventure concepts are introduced as they come up, so constitution and hit points are explained when you fight your first monster, a goblin. Saving throws are introduced in a fight with a poisonous snake, and so on. By the time you reach the rules for new character creation, 48 pages in, you've played two solo adventures and should have a pretty good concept of how the game works.

The Dungeon Masters Guide is set up in a similar way, starting out with a pretty straightforward castle adventure to run for your group. I recall playing this adventure with my best friend at the time, with each of us running two characters and me serving as DM. Eventually I put together a more typical gaming group in high school where I DMd for a group of friends every day at lunch, but in the beginning it was just the two of us.

That first adventure was a great introduction, even if it did contain more than one of the classic PC killers (a carrion crawler, yellow mold, and harpies). It also connected to the solo adventure from the Players Handbook through the character of Bargle the Infamous, an evil magic user who served as the main villain in each. In the solo adventure, Bargle kills a beautiful female cleric named Aleena whom you have befriended and now the town (and you) want him to pay. Bargle is a fantastic, and well-loved (hated) villain who reappears in later supplements and adventures and makes a perfect Big Bad for an ongoing campaign. When this mini-adventure was reworked for 3rd edition and published in the final issue of Dungeon, it was even titled 'Kill Bargle.'

#Blaugust Day 24: Mystara Monday: Basic Rules
Seriously, Bargle is the worst

This box was what kindled my love of tabletop role-playing games, and nearly 30 years later I still treasure it. I had played a few computer RPGs prior to this, notable Might & Magic, so I had a decent idea how the dungeon crawl part was supposed to go. I actually found the character sheets for the two PCs I played in that first campaign with my friend, and I had even reused the names of two of the default Might & Magic PCs for them. But this box was what made me realize we could create our own adventures, and that they could involve more than just killing monsters. It was the beginning of something wonderful.

Next week I'm going to take a look at the first adventure released specifically for the Basic Rules (although for an earlier revision); Adventure Module B1: In Search of the Unknown. Let's see how many ways to kill a player we can find in this one!

Under the Wire

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Blaugust 2015, Day 24

Under the Wire

Made it!

Quick post today because it is Monday and my brain is all out of ideas. I managed to get my second seasonal wizard up to level 70 before season 3 ended last night at 5pm pacific time. In fact I had about 4 hours to spare. I’m not sure why I felt the need to do this at the last minute but it was not a bad way to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Diablo 3 is always my default game when I need to run away and hide. It is also great after a rough day at work. I can just shoot demons and get loot and turn my brain off until I’m ready to rejoin the world of the living. I am really looking forward to all the new stuff they will be adding to the game in the next patch. Hopefully I can level in season 4 with a bit more time to spare.

Here’s hoping I can also finish FFV for the four job fiesta before that ends too…


Under the Wire

#Blaugust Day 23: Sound and Fury

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The Hugo Awards were presented last night at WorldCon, and a lot of people were waiting to see how it would all shake out. If you haven't been following the whole Puppies mess, the short version is that a group of SF authors who have been previously nominated for Hugos but didn't win decided to run a nomination slate to try to get things they like on the ballot. They've tried this for a couple years without much success, but this year the combination of a racist, loudmouth author running a related slate and gaming's own 'organization' of reactionary misogynists getting involved did the trick. The Hugo nominations were gamed.

A lot of people freaked the hell out and declared the Hugos destroyed, or ruined, or what have you. Last night proved that wrong. A number of categories had no award, but that's happened before and will again, just possibly not in the same numbers. The big award (Best Novel) was awarded to a book that is by all reports amazing, and basically none of the slate nominees got a thing. The main result of this whole thing was to highlight just how few people bother to nominate for the Hugos and to sell a heck of a lot more supporting memberships to this year's convention than any previous (though the total number of people voting was apparently only about half the number of memberships; about 11,300 memberships were sold, and just short of 6,000 ballots were cast.)

#Blaugust Day 23: Sound and Fury


The part that really fascinates me comes from the voting and balloting statistics that are released each year once the awards have been handed out. Going through the nomination numbers, it looks like a little over 200 people voted a Puppies slate, and about 160 of those voted the racist asshole's version. 6,000 ballots were cast in the final vote, but only 200 or so people were able to game the nomination. Admittedly this year's vote total is skewed by people who specifically voted either in support or protest of this whole nonsense, so let's look at the 2014 totals. 3,587 total ballots were cast last year. So about 6% of last year's total vote. That's all it took.

And that's the lesson of all this. Angry assholes are really good at being loud, puffing themselves up, and making themselves look bigger than they are. The jerks on your game's forum or on Twitter or wherever? They're a minority making themselves look like the majority through volume (in both meanings of the word). They only win if we stand aside and let them.