Kobolds Ate My Baby at Brewfest

As you may recall I attended a small gaming convention called Brewfest which took place at a brewery on the Mississippi River on a lovely October day. The gaming was in full swing when we arrived and most people were enjoying either Pathfinder games or Warhammer. It was so cool!

Despite the name, Brewfest, seemed to mostly involve drinking brews like iced tea and soda. Mr. Geek and I did have some alcohol, but I also ended up mostly drinking my favorite version of tea, unsweetened with lots of lemon. For a small fee you could get a collector cup and drink all the non-alcoholic beverages that your gaming heart desired.

And what did our gaming consist of, you may ask. Well, we played Kobolds Ate my Baby! This is a very, very seriously light-hearted game. You play a kobold, which is a little furry beast in this game. You serve King Torg (ALL HAIL KING TORG!) and must venture out of your cave to do something related to gathering food, especially babies!

Yum! And see the baby wants to be eaten....

Kobolds do not understand human language, but as a skill can take "Speak Human" and gain the understanding of a whole SEVEN words. Your character has points in Brawn, Ego, Extraneous, and Refelxes, aka the BEER system. Very apt for the setting that day.


We had so many players that we had two GM's. Both did a really excellent job and made the game insanely fun. Our goal was to collect ingredients and then throw them into the volcano, but these ingredients included the dead body of King Torg because our side was allied to the Queen.

Queen Grot's Volcano Delight

• 1 volcano pepper
• 1 chicken alive or dead
• 1 zombie baby
• cheese
• the carcass of King Torg

To play the game you really have to be ready to be silly. You could be called upon to bark like a Kobold and upon death give a speech about your deceased Kobold. Player death is pretty common since you are basically a very stupid creature. Oh, we also at one point were put under a spell in which both sides of the table had to switch character sheets and play that character for a moment.

Somehow my stupid Kobold managed to survive most of the game and make it from our battlemap to the next table's where King Torg lived. Along the way I ran into a naked elf, ate a bunch of leather coats that were hanging up in a place I broke into and bored a hole with a spoon through a man's head... Finally, the Kobold Blehhh made it to King Torg, wrassled him (the game's term for grapple), but was tragically killed along with the King by one of his minions!

Whew. It was a real delight and we really enjoyed the company of the other gamers.

Cool Dice Containers

This past Saturday I spent a very fun afternoon at a brewery on the Mississippi river at Brewfest! I'll be posting a full re-cap a bit later.

For now I wanted to share with you some very cool ways that people were keeping their dice safe and cozy at our game table.








Kitteh is hungry 4 ur dice! Meow!



















Magic scroll container? Well, maybe, but it's also a mega tube o'dice for the gamer.










Naturally we had our Dragon Chow dice bags going. While we were gaming some random figures represented wild cats on the hexmat. The random figures included this little Ewok whose "cat" counterpart in-game I really, really wanted to kill.

You can see some wedding dice from my friend's wedding and the blue dice is from Gen Con. Actually, the Ewok could have represented my Kobold since you know in the game I was playing kobolds are ugly little dog creatures that eat people. Sounds like an ewok to me.

I'm Going to Brewfest

Those of you that play WoW recognize this scene.

It's Brewfest! My DK is getting drunk, riding rams, and giving me a wicked gaming hangover with the wavy screens of doom that you get when your character gets her drink on.

What if you could go to "Brewfest" ?!

Well, when I picked up my comic book pull list today I found a flier advertising just such an event. It's a regional gaming convention happening within driving distance of me!

Brewfest 2010 is in its 2nd year. My friendly local game shop guy recounted me with some tales of last year's event when I picked up my comic books. Apparently the location is lovely and they have a dumbwaiter that delivers beer and food to the second floor. It's a local brewery and it sounds awesome. I'm not sure with the gluten issues if I'll be able to sample the beer, but the games that are going on sound like fun! I am looking forward to a day or two of table-top RPG's and checking out the Warhammer Tournaments. I don't have enough figures yet to play myself, but I will at some point!

If you live in the area registration ends Oct.1.

Clash of the Gamers!

Invariably when I get together with other table-top gamers we end up discussing problems that have arisen during the course of our time gaming. Everyone loves to share the funny stories of what happened when PC Blank ran into a wall and tried to fight it or when PC Anonymous tried to talk to a monster instead of fighting it. If you've been gaming for a bit then you know what I'm talking about.

We have all been PC Blank or the friend PC Anonymous at sometime. Even seasoned gamers end up setting off mishaps.

When that problem stays in the game then it's just a funny story. When misadventures in a game are being caused by events away from the table or due to a clash of personalities that's when funny stories turn dark and transform into unpleasant moments that can linger and haunt a group or player.

Rather than spend this post talking about what to do with other players that are disrupting the game I want to talk about how to recognize when you are causing or contributing to the problem.

A good starting point, even if no problems have come up yet, is to consider your style of play and compare it to others. Remember this is a game we are talking about. There is no style of play that is superior to any other. What there is, however, is ways of looking at the game that may not mesh together. If your group is having fun then you have people with ways of playing that mesh together.

The style you play in may not be static either. Some people will not change how they play, but others will grow and change. I would like people to at least consider adapting their behavior according to the system being played in and according to who the DM is and how he or she runs the game.

How do you know if you are a part of the problem? This is trickier. If you feel like others are being unfair it may be even harder to recognize. It could be the only part you are playing is not effectively communicating. For example if Player A is picking on Player B during the game and your group is not dealing with it then you, Player C, are part of that issue. One way to handle it is to weigh out how to approach the DM and potentially the entire group with the issue. Do this when you are not gaming. Preferably, don't do it over e-mail because that leads to misunderstandings.

If your issue is that people are not playing the game the way you want/think/"know" that they should be playing it then you are potentially creating your own private Hell that could spill into the game experience. Your style probably does not mesh with these players and you may want to consider leaving the group or forming a new group with those players that you do work with.

I think the group I was playing with this weekend summed it up best, when our DM pointed out that the players should be having fun. She's right. It is the most basic component.

So a Demon and the Primate Have Dinner Together...

Do you think that looks bad? Well, this was the setting for the dinner party that my group found ourselves at as the hired entertainment. Last session the Bard and the Barbarian found the scheduled entertainer and dispatched with him once they found him in a large well-appointed suite surrounded by the corpses of children. Lovely.

We were hired by the elves and this group of shape-shifting bird soldiers to go in and kill the city's Primate. He was giving a dinner party and the only way we could sneak in was as the entertainers. This meant that our Barbarian (a group not found this far south except as slaves) had to be a slave. I slapped her in the face at one point when the guards got suspicious. She wasn't being slave-like enough.

The rectangles on the mat represent tables. Most of those figures were actually standing in for dinner guests, but as it turned out at least half of the guests came prepared to fight the Primate. My ranger enjoyed running around on the tables and shooting people once the real festivities began.

So what happened? Did a "demon" really show up to the dinner?

All will be revealed.

Let's Shame some Beholders

Beholders are a nasty species of monster that over the years have spawned new variants and given many a player a terrifying experience.

Unique to the universe of Dungeons and Dragons, Beholders have stuck in the imaginations of several generations of gamers and show up in some interesting places.

Walking through the doors at Gen Con and being faced with this monstrosity was certainly a fun experience. This Beholder is captured, frozen in time and can't do a thing to the throngs of gamers who pose in front of the trapped beast all day and all night. It's a great punishment!

I scoured the magical land of the internet for other interpretations of this creature and found many cool pieces of art. Here are just a few of the things I found.




CAKE:

Ever wonder what one of these tastes like that? No, me neither. However, the lucky 14 year old Josh the Jouster (sorry strange teenager, I had to) got this super treat for his birthday. That's some cool parents.

You can see more 3D cakes of different varieties at the blog Just Cake.

CROCHET :

This little guy was separated from the Hive Mother and who knows what will happen if he is raised in captivity. Maybe he'll grow up to replace the trapped Gen Con Beholder?

This creature was made by relientKitten.







STEAMPUNK:


Instead of multiple eye-stalks this metal beasty has
some nasty looking implements like clamp claws and what looks like a small spinning saw.

In the right game setting this could make an interesting monster.

To read more about it check out the original article on Boing Boing.





I think we can safely agree that Beholders would hate everything about their images being used in such creative ways. There are even more sculptures out there in other mediums and of course some great artwork as well. Probably my favorite use of a Beholder is in Futurama. If you watch the special features on Bender's Game you can hear the creators of the show talk about that a little more in-depth.

Complete Pathfinder Conversion

It's happened. I'm completely hooked and won over by the Pathfinder system. Yes, we've been playing our converted DnD to Pathfinder game for half a year now, but the Advanced Player's Guide that I picked up at Gen Con was the tipping point that sent me from admiration to adoration.

On the left you can see some of my recent acquisitions. Red Dragon Inn is not part of Pathfinder, but I included it here because I finally got a copy yesterday. My arch-nemesis Capt. Osmotic and I battled each other into a drunken stupour last night. So it was only in-game drinking... I did have a shot of vodka to celebrate though.

Below Red Dragon Inn you can see my recent Pathfinder buys. I bought the GM screen because Mr. Geek will be running game for me and I'm hoping to run something for a few friends in the future. I haven't GM'ed since Vampire.

Harrow deserves its own post. I will tell you right now that it's a very neat concept. Harrow is a divination deck to be used in campaigns. You can use it to tell fortunes that the GM can incorporate into the story or use it as a gambling deck during game time.

Finally, the Pathfinder Chronicles book focuses on the undead. I couldn't resist getting it. Paizo has some wonderful products coming out later this year and early next year, so stay tuned.

"I'm Here to Game"

Last Thursday I attended two seminars about women and gaming at Gen Con. The seminars at Gen Con were really one of the best aspects of being there. I don't often get to sit in with a group of people who know games and discuss issues inherent to the culture and,or process of gaming.

Girls Just Want to Get Their Game On

The panel for this seminar included women with a wide range of gaming experience. There was a panel member who works for Wizards of the Coast, a woman from Game Salute, All Games Considered, Married Gamers, and Geek's Dream Girl. They recorded the panel for Game Salute and handled the session as an open Q&A.

From this panel I learned that there's a trend for librarians to run RP's for kids. That's pretty exciting news for me. We heard stories ranging from playing Magic in the back of chemistry class to women feeling free to be ultra-violent in games to reduce stress in life. One interesting story came from a woman who played a female character back in the early days of D&D. During a session the DM brought out a male NPC who was from a culture that controlled women. From then on while this NPC was present her character was not allowed to look at him. Those are all the details I know, but wow, there is a lot to unpack with a story like that.

One last tidbit. I was excited to hear that the man sitting in front of me had written his dissertation on women, sexism and gaming.

Best Quote of the Seminar: "I'm here to Game".

Women in Gaming

I had to hurry to get to the next panel and was glad to see some friends had arrived as well. This panel again included women with a wide range of gaming experience. There was someone from Gaming Angels present, a PhD student, and several other professionals. My notes on this panel are a little patchier because we got there late enough that we had to sit in the back of a huge room and I couldn't always hear what was going on. (My hearing issue, not the fault of the staff).

This panel covered everything from gender issues in cross-play during LARPS to defining the hard core nature of those who play casual games.

Something that came up again and again was women being demanded to prove themselves both as competent gamers and even as women. Why do women have the burden of having to prove themselves to be as good or better at things? What makes men the default? These gender issues are not unique to games, but are prevalent in American culture.

Many women reported that Geek Culture was more accepting of people who are different than wider American culture. I was delighted to hear one panelist compare it to the Metal community. When I got into the metal scene I found the people to be the nicest people I had ever been around. Geek culture can be the same way.

This panel also discussed the phenomena of industries that look for gamers. One of the panelists had secured her position because of her experience with online gaming. The issues of management and technical skill that gaming takes can translate in the right industry to valuable skills as an employee.

Ultimately we seemed to agree that everyone had stereotypes that they needed to confront. I heard several women critiquing the appearance of other women and wondering how to relate to them. This is a hard issue. Hopefully, the internet and events like Gen Con are helping women connect with others. I argue that the internet is our greatest cultural potential for furthering true equality.

Conclusion

I hope panels like these happen again next year. It was eye-opening to hear from other people and get a variety of experiences and opinions discussed.

Gen Con Highlights Video

Here's some footage that I shot sort of documentary/news on the street style of Gen Con 2010. Mr. Geek is the camera person in most of the shots with me. Editing several hours of footage into ten minutes really does take some work! I'll be making some highlight videos of The Guild, Wil Wheaton, and The Ennies. There will also be some random clips that I put up that didn't make it into the mini-doc.

Enjoy!

The First of Many

Gen Con has been an eye-opening experience of complete awesomeness.

This coming week will feature write-ups on the various experiences I had at the Convention and what I learned. I want to share what came up in the seminars on Women in Gaming, the awesome round-table that I attended based on the book Things We Think About Games, the charm and hilarity of Wil Wheaton, and the witty banter of The Guild cast-members. There's so much.

It was so incredibly refreshing to go somewhere and just truly belong. I met a nice mix of wise-crackers that I could, err... crack with and friendly, interesting people to talk to about gaming. Naturally, being gamers the two sets often overlapped. The INT stats were maxed out! That was great.

Sunday morning is our last stop at ICC. Yes, our last raid on ICC IRL. I will sorely miss it.

Once I am back home I can upload all the photos and edit videos for everyone to enjoy.

Finally, there's one thing I know for sure. Gen Con has been one of the best experiences of my life and I am hooked. A true believer who will now make this pilgrimage every year possible has been born.

The Beast and the Bestiary

Wow. I think this picture speaks for itself. We will never get this book back. She's activated some type of arcane spell craft. You can tell because her normally blue eyes have gone red.

Ok, crisis averted for now. She is resting with her treasure. Actually this is pretty dangerous. I've lived with many cats over the years and this is the first one who likes to eat paper. She's consumed some IT homework and recently I discovered that she's eaten some chunks out of my Power Girl figure. She's probably bored of her toys and needs a new one. Maybe one of my readers under a shrinking spell??

Who wants to volunteer!

Oh Gamers

I haven't run a T-shirt Tuesday in a bit and I missed this week, so ....

Here I am off to game te other night with my Dragon Chow bag, a new Wil Wheaton collab t-shirt from Jinx, and my Pathfinder book. Never mind that giant pink lamb in the background. You don't need to know! *snicker*

Our resident funny girl, the gorgeous Beth (in-game the manly cleric) debuted a new gaming tool that may well become essential gaming gear for everyone: The catch phrase board of pointing. Here's the experimental proto-type:


Oh believe me that thing came in so handy while the Barbarian and the Bard went to buy some ropes and chains from ye olde sex shoppe in the town we are stuck in. Yes, that was an RP exchange to remember...

Table-top Updates

Our Call of Cthulhu game has not had a session in quite some time. Ah, scheduling. The other game, our DnD turned Pathfinder game of the past two years, has had two sessions since I last posted about it and we are going to run again tomorrow.

The background on our game is that the original group (my Ranger and the Bard are the only two surviving original members) was hired to kill Orcs. Oh, but it's never as simple as that, is it? In the midst of our questing we, or if I want to be specific THE BARD, unleashed an ancient and not so delicious horror. Ever since then we have been used by various factions to try to fix this. Many terrible and some terribly hilarious things have happened including my Ranger accidentally being owned by the Lord of the Hunt when we traversed into an Other World. Still, she did what she thought was best in the situation and ended up having to make a pact with him to save her party from a fight that we could never win. My Ranger favours women more than men, but hey if it comes down to it maybe being owned by the Lord of the Hunt won't be so bad for her...*dirty*

Well, during our last two sessions we reached the Fell Lands and entered a keep in which all hell broke loose and we discovered that someone (*cough*magic-user*cough*) had been keeping secrets that lead to all manner of awesome events. Our entire party "died" temporarily and we found ourselves in a weird state of suspension in which we met a very powerful and ancient magic-user who presumably told us what was really going on. Of course my character gave up trusting anyone a long time ago. She is so battle-scarred that aside from being happy near any forest she just basically wants to kill until her time is up.

Suffice it to say there is a god on the loose who needs to be bound and the hearts we have been going after are integral to this.

After returning from our trip to the world of the not-quite dead we found ourselves resurrected about as far away from our target as possible within the known geography of the world. Yay! Oh yeah, and we had Resurrection sickness too...hehe. After some willow bark tea at an inn, some business in town, and then a visit from an Elf that was beautifully described by our DM we found ourselves for at least the second time causing an inn-keeper to flee and having to run the place. The Barbarian and the Cleric have been trying to learn instruments and work with the Bard. Meanwhile our Druid has a huge grizzly bear sitting in all his glory inside the inn demanding honey covered fish. Naturally, the whole evening was capped off by the appearance of a whole bunch of undead that were hard as hell to kill.

Oh boy I bet the Knights of Kahn will NEVER figure out where we are after that little scuffle. Yes, we also found out that there has been a wanted poster circulating for some time with our original party members on it.

Tomorrow when we game we just have to figure out how to sneak in and kill someone very important. Yeah, that should be easy.

Free RPG Day

Last Saturday was Free RPG day which my local shop Castle P graciously hosted. I noticed some new faces in the store when I went in, including several women, one of whom bought some Pathfinder merchandise. Wow, that makes me sound like a spy.

Here's what Mr. Geek and I picked up:

There are two modules, one for Pathfinder and one for Cthulhu. The Heirs to Olympia is an introduction to the game with a very detailed game session included. Finally, D∞ is a gaming magazine that included a free zombie mini-game to cut-out and articles on various gaming issues. I like the hope embedded in the name of the magazine, but I can't imagine an actual D∞ die. Would it be anything like the Infinite Improbability Drive? I know one thing, you'd never be done with your roll...

Dragon Chow Dice Bags (Review)

Look what I got in the mail today!

Two incredibly well-made new dice bags from Dragon Chow Dice Bags.

I've used a lot of things to hold my dice sets. Up until recently I was using an embroidered bag that my mother sent me from a trip to Spain. I think she sent it to me to hold jewelry, but it was getting very crowded being used to hold dice.

The bag on the top is made with two kinds of reversible blue material. The one showing and the reason I chose it, is printed with a caffeine molecule.

The bag on the bottom is the periodic table of snacking! I love periodic tables of fun things. Yes, like elements, but also other things as well...


Something that I really appreciate about these bags
as compared to others is the very wide opening at the top. When in the heat of battle, sitting at a small table it's not always possible to have all your dice out and searching for them in the typical tiny bag that you can't see into mucks up the game pace. These bags are really made with the gamer's needs in mind. They will also stand up, so you can keep a large amount of dice on the table and at the ready without crowding out the gaming surface.
Finally, not only are these nice to look at and reversible (you can see the other fabric used in the picture above) these are also made very well. I know what good sewing looks like and these bags are not skimped on. They will hold up very well with time.

Call of Cthulhu

Last night I played some Call of Cthulhu with some of my regular gaming buddies.

It's a very different game than what I normally play. Set in 1927 rural Massachusetts, my character Teddy Jacobs was a drifter hired to do some photography for a big paper in Boston. I arrived after a night of driving to an inn where a reporter, psychiatrist, and parapsychologist were staying. Let me tell you, from the hungover reporter to the bickering between the two "psychs" ol' Teddy was ready to get back in his/her (in disguise and indeterminate) 1925 Dodge Roadster (wish it was a Packard Phaeton) and turn that camera equipment back around to Boston.

However, Teddy stayed and had some fun encounters with a very superstitious priest of some kind. Quickly taking the man's picture after being told by him that cameras could steal a piece of the soul...

I enjoyed it a lot. It's a game with a different pace and a heavy RP factor, where you must take notes and pay attention to clues. If you liked playing detective when you were a kid (GUILTY as charged) then you will enjoy this game. Your character has percentage based skills and when you try to do something you roll a percentage skill check. I like that, but it makes it a bit tense at times. The other different part is if you want to enjoy the game you really should try to tune out what the other character's are doing when you go solo. There is a lot of solo investigation that shows the true skill of your Gamekeeper (the DM in this system). Luckily, Evil Celt, our regular DM is a true god. He can have you talking to a little girl, an old man, and everything in between and make it believable.

So, at the end of the night what happened? Well Teddy got some of the photos taken around town developed and they were all very off. It was a bright, sunny day outside with a well-kempt town as the subject, but there was distortion wherever the camera picked up people. That priest that Teddy so mischievously disobeyed, photographed and ran from, came out with a horribly blurred face...

Next time we game Teddy will put on a suit and escort the reporter, Maureena to a club to meet one of the big whig bankers. Things may not go well. Meanwhile, on the edge of town, the true threat, the haunted, cursed or maybe just diseased (but don't we know better if the Cthulhu mythos is involved) Blackfield Farm waits.

Two Sets of Legs

(Game Recap from Yesterday)

Maelonia stood up on her horse, a bit off from the rest of the party. She peered down the expanse of dust and the fork in the road ahead of them. Behind the group loomed mountains including the chain known as the Lich Teeth. Ahead of them was over a week's journey to the Delving and the coming blackness of Longnight when the sun would cease to shine and the evil that was already stirred up would delight even further in dealing death to wary travelers.

Flecks of stone peppered Maelonia's leather armour and she idly brushed them off. Images from last night played out in her mind, but her spirit had grown mostly numb to the scenes of brutality she had witnessed. A burst of a bracing wind hit her and she sat back down on her horse. "Ehlonna Damn this wilderness". Only weeks before she had been climbing trees and scouting for the group, experiencing the first bit of happiness she had felt in almost two years of trudging and hacking and evil curses and pain.

The forest was behind them though. As was the palisade of the cultists and even the stout fortification of the Travelers. Ah, yes the travelers. And again her mind went back to the night before when she tried to sleep inside the walled outpost and instead heard the screams of goblins and the footsteps of giants. Her instinct, always to climb she had gotten up on the roof and shot bolt after bolt into the darkness trying to kill the giants or the goblins or maybe just that moment in time. In the end, almost everything died. Even the four bystanders that got hit by a chain lightning spell. Down in the courtyard below the fierce Barbarian plowed down goblins with a wild gleam in her eye and when it was over the party reassembled like always to bicker, compare wounds and heal. Although this time the druid's bear got a bit more healing than intended and spent the night making eyes and moping longingly for the boisterous male Cleric.

"What a hell, what a living hell" She spat, returning to the present and that damn fork in the road.

Just then the Druid began to cast a spell and change form into a kestrel. Maelonia watched for lack of anything else to do, no curious bent to her mind. Half-way through the transformation she saw the druid's legs drop off his body. He fell in shock, changing back to human form and lay speechless bleeding out on the ground. Somehow she stifled the horror inside and let the disinterest sink in instead. Too many had died too violently for this to even matter.

The cleric hurried off his horse and over to the druid. He began to pray fervently and by some miracle legs began to sprout out of the druid's twitching form. How horrible. It was all so unnatural and loathsome. To make matters worse before they could ride off the bear and the "scholar" began to bicker over the other pair of legs. The now dead ones that had fallen into the dust and were covered with clotted blood and dirt.

The Delving could not come soon enough.

Super RPG News

I haven't had a lot of chances to play any superhero RPG's. I did get to do a mini-game in the defunct Marvel system and it was fun. (We still need to finish that game!)

Well, I am excited to find out that Green Ronin Publishing has a DC based superhero RPG coming out in August!

Their site tells us that:

"The DC ADVENTURES game will consist of four books, each done in full color and
beautifully illustrated by top comic artists. The line launches in August with the DC
ADVENTURES Hero's Handbook. Following it will be Heroes & Villains, Volume 1 in the
fall. Then 2011 will see the release of Heroes & Villains, Volume 2 and DC
ADVENTURES: Universe."

The new game will be based on the Mutants and Masterminds system and feature cover art by ALEX ROSS! Stay tuned to the Green Ronin website and Mutants and Masterminds site!

Thanks to my local game shop, Castle Perilous, I should be in the loop of information!

T-Shirt Tuesday

Since I played "D&D" this past weekend I thought I'd keep the momentum going with an RPG inspired t-shirt for this Tuesday's edition.

Now, I'm sure people don't want to see me every week in a different T-shirt (although Cthulhu knows I own enough to keep this going awhile) so, I issue you web denizens a proclamation.

"Henceforth and herewith I do so declare that anyone who sendeth forth a photograph in which said individual is wearing a T-shirt that this blogger does deem acceptable to the masses will be featured on T-SHIRT TUESDAY!"

Okay, so above is my D20 shirt. I really debated buying this but decided I liked the humour enough to go ahead and exploit the double meaning. This shirt proved popular with the other ladies I game with, so that's cool.

Once I start going to all the conventions I have lined up I will try to persuade people with cool shirts to let me feature them on the blog. I'll catch my kind in their natural habitats!

If you'd like to submit something e-mail chronicgeeker@gmail.com.

Crit Spell Failures Haunt our Group

After seven and a half hours of game time we ended up with a just finished fight in a forest in which my ranger had the pleasure of shooting bolts through a wall of fire turning them into flaming, melty projectiles of horror for our enemies. Ah, she does love life in the forest.

The salad bar was delicious! We had slivered almonds, artichoke hearts that were drenched in olive oil, romaine and spinach, several kinds of pepper, homemade salad dressing, organic salad dressing, every manner of veggie...

Of course we also had rounds and rounds of coffee which lead to our cleric basically being wired and hilarious. Her character (a male identical twin) started the game session as a woman (accident) and was dying to be back in "his" original form, which happened by the end of the game.

Our task just becomes more treacherous as we go deeper into the story. Will we ever find the four hearts and destroy them? Oh, and to make matters worse a crit spell failure led to our secret mission and secret thoughts being broadcast loudly to an entire town of formerly friendly allies.

The pink sparkle dice were on fire tonight! One natural 20 and a 19. Not bad. No crit fails for me this time. It's a first in awhile.