D&D: Green Eggs and Hamh (Session 3)

The heroes awake after a peaceful night and soon make preparations to head out.  It was at this time that the barbarian finished cleaning off his gauntlets.  As he cleaned them they appeared to be simple, rusty, and well used gauntlets.  He was starting to consider how much he could get for selling them when they started to glow.  Then things got even stranger as they began to talk.  He learned that the gauntlets are home to a Ogre chief named Mrtok.  Mrtok was very happy to have been released from the box in the basement and said he had been stored there a very long time.  Mrtok was happy to join the adventure as long as there would be a little fighting along the way.

After welcoming Mrtok to the group, the heroes headed off to after the rider who left with the samples of their clothes.  They figured that he was heading to Rosedell and the shortest route there was through a city named Hamh.  But first they needed to make it out of the forest.

D&D: The Journey Begins (Session 2)

The heroes awake to find that they are no longer asleep on the forest floor.  It appears that someone found them in their unconscious state and moved them into beds.  They find themselves in a small cabin owned by a wizard named Brazamar.  It appears that during their sleep the wizard and his small group of apprentices took an interest in them.

The heroes learn that the same corruption that was spreading across the castle was also spreading into them.  Brazamar asks them for a sample of this dark corruption for study.  He asks for a sample of their clothes and/or blood and agrees to pay the heroes for it.  The paladin and the barbarian both agree to give away samples of their clothes but the group hesitates to give away samples of their blood.  Brazamar takes the samples to his apprentices and they begin work.

D&D: The Path To Greatness (Session 1)

The story begins with a simple poster placed across the region.  It reads "Greetings Heroes, Enter for a chance to change the world".  It continues that adventures should head to a town called Forge and enter into a completion of sort.  The contest is that the adventures will be broken up into random groups and will enter an unknown obstacle course and the winners will receive great fame and fortune.

The PCs all find this poster and immediate head to Forge. The town of Forge is packed with travelers and merchants. Everyone is hoping to enter the contest, some for glory and others are just in it for the gold.  The crowd gathers around a stage where a great wizard explains the rules.

All of the heroes are broken up into groups of 5.  They will have to complete all of the obstacles and defeat anything that gets in their way.  He reveals that the contest will take place in a floating castle high above the town.  He teams and created and the heroes line up to be teleported by the wizard to the castle.  Each team is also given 5 potions of slow falling to help them exit the castle.

D&D: Pre-Game Information

Greetings Adventures!  ... Errr I mean blog readers.  Got a little carried away there for a second.  Just wanted to start blogging about our adventures in D&D and I decided I would start with the basics.

Our game is set up using the D&D 4e rule standards.  But I liked some rules from the old 3.5 game so I tend to mix the rules up a lot.  Basically we try to follow the 4th edition as long as it makes sense for the story.  Sometimes I we do different things in different situations just to mix it up.  Or sometimes its just because it makes more sense in the story.  Some of the rules in 4e are just too watered down for my taste.

Right now the plan is to play one game a week at my place on Wednesdays.  This works fine as long as everyone is in town.  We have had less than 5 games so far so we are just getting into the story.  I am currently the DM for the group but we do have a backup DM who might start hosting some of the games once the story is developed more.

The current party setup looks like this:

The Barbarian(Striker): We have a big dumb Goliath Barbarian who likes to smash things.  For anything involving jumping, running, or smashing, he is the guy who does it.

The Rogue(Striker): We have a sneaking female Eldarian Rogue who handles scouting and sneak attacks.

The Paladin(Defender): We have a mighty half-elf Paladin with huge defense skills.  He is the one trying to block as many hits(with his body) as possible.

The Invoker(Controller): The controller of our group is a Deva Invoker.  Lots of radiant damage and many multiple target attacks.  Good for raining destruction across the battle field.

The Bard(Leader): We have a NPC Half-ling Bard that joins the party from time to time.  He is used when we have guests to the group or as a errand runner when the PCs are off doing battle.  He spends most of his time singing tales about the heroic feats the of the adventures.


The campaign is based on a world of piece where most races get along and crime isn't a huge problem.  There are also no wars or big events taking place when the story starts.  I did warn the group that zombies and other necrotic creatures would be very heavy in my campaign but that is about all of the information that we started with.  The story combines elements from the Farseer Trilogy, the Wheel of Time series, and the Necronomicon.

Well that about wraps up the basics of the story.  As I have time I will blog the story.  I am also hoping to add some behind the scenes type blogs for other DMs.

Review - Lord of the Rings Conquest

Been on a big gaming kick with my girlfriend lately.  We just finished another game on xbox.  We picked this one just based on that it has a co-op mode.  The reviews we found online didn't rate it too bad.  They just said its better with another player.  So we decided to give it a try...

Controls: Lame
Very laggy and overall lame.  They were different between characters and very different for heroes.  And when trying to interact with other objects it gets even worse.  When using a mounted crossbow there is no way to tell what is going on.  Best method for the whole game was button mashing cause it caused the most stuff to happen.

Story: Lame
What story?  Of you mean the thing they made up to have reasons for battles?  It bounced around in time and never made much sense.  What I don't understand is how it happened since it stole the story from the books/movies.  The "evil" path that was hyped a lot in the trailers was just wrong.  It was basically killing all of the other towns using the dark hordes.  Very boring and not really a story at all.

Graphics: Lame
I wasn't impressed by any of the combat or special effects.  Most of the time it was hard to tell what was going on or if you were doing damage.  Also the cut scenes were laughable.  Here is an example and the brackets are random picture from one of the three movies.  "The (orcs) were attacking a (castle) but the (heroes) must fight to stop (them).  (They) must do it before the front (gate) is overwhelmed and the (orcs) take over the (kingdom)."  Basically just imagine little parts of footage for each of the brackets and there you go.  They were cut straight from the movie(at low res).  It almost made sense sometimes in the good story but in the bad story it was just funny.  Specially when the narrator really gets talking about each of the heroes. It was just a bunch of 5 second head-shots of each hero.

Game Play: Lame
I just needed another section so that I could mention how lame the classes are in the game.  Already mentioned how each one had bad play control but that wasn't the worse.  They each had so many flaws in how you had to control them that you didn't want to pick any of them.  There was fighter, rogue, mage, and archer.  I stuck with mage and archer since their attacks made the most sense and were the easiest to actually hit with.  And the worst part about it is that when you switch from good to evil you get the same 4 classes to pick from!  With exactly the same attacks.  How lame!

Overall: 1/5 LAME!
I don't think I have any more to say.  We did play the whole way through both campaigns(good and evil).  I think we mainly did it cause it was like watching a bad movie.  It was a little funny and we had nothing else to do.  But I would not recommend this game to anyone.

Oh and the 90% of the time we died was when something stupid happened like an eagle flying came and throwing us off the castle.  Uggg!  Just thinking about it makes me mad!