8 posts tagged “dorange”
Had a great day off from from work yesterday, lighting up Independence Day with Anthony, Matt, Anica and some pandas. (I'm still pretty clueless why they refer to themselves as pandas, since Anthony or Matt haven't enlightened me yet. Unless it's one of those secret society things?)
We kicked the good times off with Anthony and Matt inviting L and I to see Transformers with them. (I was originally planning on holding off and seeing it with my brother when he got back from Wisconsin, but I figured I might as well as go while the going was good.) I wasn't expecting a whole lot from a movie based on a two-decade-old toy franchise, but it was surprisingly well-done. (Quite a bit better than TMNT, for sure.) Even with all the blatant product placement (I choose you, Mountain Dew bot!) and frickin' awesome special effects, that managed to squeeze in a workable plot.
Following the movie, we nabbed dinner out and then adjourned back to our place for various geeky activities. Anthony and I tested out the limitations of Pokemon Battle Revolution on the Wii (and I must admit that it is far better for multiplayer than it's weak single player mode). L also showed off TEH OVERLORD. We wrapped the whole holiday off by watching and roasting the late Dungeons and Dragons animated series. (We all pretty much agreed that Uni is the most annoying cartoon character ever.)
On a different note, my birthday's coming into view next week and I'll tell you all what I'd like to see for it: more blogging from my neighbors. What's up with the lame ghost town that Vox has become? Are you all too busy having fun without me to stop and blog about it once in awhile? I feel awfully self-conscious shouting into the tubes of the Internets all by my lonesome. So please start sharing those fun summer stories and anecdotes that I know you've all been holding back on!
Although we celebrated two years of dOrange back in April, the origins of our little gaming group actually go further back. As much as I'm ashamed to admit it, the earliest history of our group can be traced to a New Year's Eve Party back on December 31st, 2004 where Jeremy, Sarah, Leslie and I played our first tabletop RPG adventure. The shameful part of the story is that the adventure was none other than the Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Game.
Consider the cheesy text on the back of the box:
Enter the world of adventure!
There's something moving behind that door...
Perhaps it's a vicious ogre waiting to tear you limb from limb.
Or a horde of zombies thirsting for blood.
Or maybe a terrifying dragon ready to engulf
you in a maelstrom of fire.Problem?
Nope. Not for you.
You're a hero--a powerful wizard, a strong fighter, or a sneaky rogue.
You can handle whatever comes
at you in this introduction to the greatest fantasy
game of all time.
I'm surprised we weren't turned off by this blatant dumbing down of a rich roleplaying game, but somehow we persevered. (Since when zombies thirst for blood? Isn't that a vampire thing?) Even when the very first adventure had us saving a lame-o unicorn from a bunch of goblins, we still wanted to know if we could kill the unicorn for extra XP. (Instead, all we were told was that, Alabern the unicorn, "can touch wounded characters with its horn.")
We've come a long way since then. It's a Paragon night tonight and I'm itching to get back into it after Squibblequick smote Anthony's computer last week, forcing us to delay the session. And then we're kicking of Matt's newest "evils" campaign, Anathema, on Saturday, granting us a double dose of gaming. Who knows? Maybe we will finally get to kill a unicorn this time!
In dOrange, we're nearing the end of my third homebrew tabletop roleplaying campaign and it's gotten me to thinking about what sorts of things I've learned throughout the process. Looking back over the course of two years, I've definitely level-busted as a game master (and to a lesser degree as a player, since I've had less opportunity for that).
Certainly, there's a lot of things I've learned that I could riff on, but if I had to pick only a single concept, it would be this:
It's a bit of a simplification, but I do believe that a game's success depends hugely on how good or bad communication is between players and the game master (as well as the quality of communication amongst players).
A big part of this is communicating the expectations of everyone who participates in the game (whether player or GM). If one player wanted a game with lots of crunchy, complicated combats but they end up with a game of political intrigue and conversation, it's up to that player to be honest with the rest of the group about their unsatisfied expectations. Otherwise, how else are the rest of the players and the game master supposed to know? (Ruling out things like telepathy, as per the spell.)
Communication also dovetails nicely into one of my game mastering pet peeves: honestly communicating the ability to commit to any particular campaign. Unless a player says otherwise, I believe most good game masters will assume everyone is as committed to a campaign as they are. They probably will spend a great deal of time and creative effort trying to find ways to excite and engage each player (at least insofar as they understand each player's expectations). Therefore, they are at least a little put out when it turns out that all this work for a player is for naught because either:
- the player ignores the efforts of the GM on their behalf, or
- doesn't show up at all (with little or no advance notice to the GM).
I've waxed on long enough for now, but this is certainly a topic worth revisiting. With all the gaming seriousness done, how about a little gaming silliness? A D&D Fan Film finalist awaits!
I have many names. I am the Prince of Perversion, the Pontiff of Paraphilia, the Lord of Lechery, the Sultan of Sodomy, the Kangaroo King. I am... SQUIBBLEQUICK!
--Squibblequick
On Sunday, April 15th, we celebrated two gaming-goodness-filled years of dOrange with myself, L, Anthony, Erin, Anna, Nate and Colleen.
We started by hitting our "Waffle Haus" (a la Dead Like Me) at Shari's for appetizers. The main course was Kyoto Japanese Steakhouse, where Tony the Tiger cooked us a delicious dinner, dubbed Colleen with the new nickname "Miss Caldwell", and threw shrimp at Anna's eye.
Following the dinner escapade, Anthony brought his homemade dOrange dessert back to our place, where we hung out watching YouTube clips and reading old gaming quotes. Colleen and Nate managed to make their escapes before Anthony dropped us into his ambitious dOrange All Stars session, featuring characters from our older campaigns. The cast included:
- from Moreau: Mithran (me), Aurelia (L) and Marcus (Anthony)
- from Lathe: Remy (Erin) and Wu Jiao (L)
- from Shackled: Thea (Erin)
- from Treasure Hunters: Ilka (Anna)
All in all, this two year celebration really was a critical hit! I'm sorry we couldn't have the whole awesome group present, but there's always next year, right? Whether you were present or not, many kudos to all of you that have made dOrange the shiny, crazy delicious gaming group that it is. Raise your d20s and join me in bringing forth another year of fantastic gaming goodness!
I'd like to take an Attack of Opportunity to talk about one of the most frickin' awesome dOrange campaigns that I am not GMing, namely Anthony's Paragon. We just got back into the thick of it last Friday after a few months of hiatus and boy, am I stoked.
You see, Paragon has a lot going for it. Not only is it extremely crunchy with high-level monster PCs and super-customizable house rules for action points and magic points, but it also is full of creamy character development and a rich plot that we're only beginning to unravel. Coupled with the fact that this all takes place in a completely home-grown fantasy world that rivals (if not surpasses) most published campaign settings, you can probably start to see why I'm so impressed with this campaign. (Particularly because it's the first Anthony has ever run for our group!)
Of course, all of this planning and campaign design of awesomeness would be wasted if I didn't have a PC I cared about, but in this campaign, I get two rich and complex characters to play with for the price of one. Celeres Altimar, the marshal / legendary leader gryphon crown prince turned bronze dragon, is an incredibly exciting character to play, both in and out of combat. I'm starting to realize I need to make him a little less long-winded and a little more a dragon of action, but I can't think of many other faults. His cohort, Taliana Starke, the human evoker / cleric / mystic theurge, has worked out to be a good foil and it's been a riot to be able to sling spells with magic points. I'm looking forward to her next level (which is unfortunately a while off), so she can make use of the Displacer Form spell (since, aside from gryphon and dragon, displacer beast would have been my next choice for a monster PC).
Thus, I'm definitely looking forward to this Friday and the next as we continue the Paragon goodness. Many, many kudos to Anthony for designing and running such an epic campaign, for not only do I love playing in it, but I also love the break it gives me from GMing my campaigns. (Also, kudos to Diana for the striking commissioned artwork that graces the top of this post.) Thanks to Paragon, the DC for campaigns has definitely been raised for dOrange.
This probably isn't going to make much sense to those who aren't a part of our Star*Drive parody campaign, but for those of you that are, here are those hilarious quotes from Drew's session parodying the Neutral Zone. I thought about parring the list down to just my favorites, but that was pretty much most of the ones I wrote down. So, I leave it to you, the interested quote reader, to skim through and find your own favorites.
- COMPUTER: I raise two hours of life support.
- FARRY: They've cured the common cold...
- KASHKEN: And the common religion apparently?
- FARRY: I raise three back massages!
- KASHKEN: ...and I raise two axe hits to the head!
- FANG HOLOGRAM: I don't even see why I need to be here. There's already enough interpersonal conflict in this group!
- KASHKEN: I raise 10,000 bacon almonds.
- JULIA: And I raise two painless surgeries.
- THREE: Are your surgeries normally painful?
- JULIA: They can be...
- THREE: I raise two hours with the anti-grav off!
- THREE: You should start betting crewmembers...
- CRICKET: I raise three redshirts of your choice.
- FARRY: I'll raise a personal counseling session with yours truly.
- KASHKEN: I'm tempted to raise a painless death or clubbing, your choice.
- JULIA: I'll overlook it if you do well on your test.
- GARRETH: At least I can build lovebots and don't have to rely on cadavers.
- COMPUTER: SPDs: sexually programmed diseases.
- FARRY: Aren't we supposed to use diplomacy and peace and...
- CRICKET: Pfft!
- COMPUTER: Shall I ready the munitions diplomacy?
- CRICKET: Let's go boldly where no one wants us!
- FARRY: Captain, I sense...
- THREE: ...feelings of inadequacy?
- COMPUTER: I do not assess Tinkers & Tramps as an artful publication.
- ENSIGN IMA GONNADIESOON: I really feel like this is my day to join you on the away team, Captain.
- CRICKET: Although you're our pilot, that makes sense!
- THREE: Just set it on stun, he's used to it.
- CRICKET: There's a stun setting?
- DREW (GM): And a ship decloaks off the port bow... AND IT'S KEG-SHAPED!
- COMPUTER: Warning, chartreuse alert! Taco drive offline.
- COMPUTER: Welcome back, musketeers. Your eyeliner is adjacent.
- CRICKET: My what's open?
- FARRY: Do we fix the computer by banging on it?
- THREE: Percussive maintenance?
- THREE: Is this the Omega Omicron Zone? No wait, that's an erogenous zone.
- THREE: Captain, pull yourself together. It's just a frowny face from a drunk computer that doesn't resemble a human expression.
- JULIA: No one dies, right?
- CRICKET: I can't in good faith promise that.
- COMPUTER: Attention, Ensign Rickey is currently pleasuring himself to photographs of Doctor Julia Tusher.
- JULIA: Let's go see if there are innocents we can murder in cold blood.
- CRICKET: Doctor! We would never do such a thing...
- THREE: Roll it! (meaning a bluff check)
- KASHKEN: Permission to engage in Dorito-related activities, sir?
- CRICKET: Granted!
- KASHKEN: Did you intoxicate and rape our ship's computer?
- CRICKET: Our ship can self-destruct, can yours?
Who else in Star*Drive can't wait for Nate's session? I know I can't!
In this case, I'm talking about musical main themes, liberated from other works. Ghostwalk's is thanks to Neon Dragon (author/illustrator of the awesome DragonArt, which is my drawing bible) who shared Suicide Mission (by Wild Whirled Music). Apparently, the piece is from an Eragon trailer, so, like "porchmonkeys" in Clerks II, I'm reclaiming this brilliant theme for my Ghostwalk campaign. (Thanks for the inspiration, Ernie!)
Good themes for campaigns always inspire me to imagine what sort of video clips would be set to the music, if the campaign was instead an episodic television show. Listening to Suicide Mission on repeat today generated the following images in my mind (which may or may not be of interest to those of you playing Ghostwalk). (Some juicy spoilers here, if you wade through my geeky bullets.)
- The title sequence opens with Ghostwalk written in a gothic font, pale blue against a pure black background. The text slowly fades out as the first clip fades in.
- We are shown the PCs waking up on stone slabs (a la the introductory session) looking about themselves in confusion and ignorance.
- As the music builds (the rhythmic drums), we are treated to more clips from that introductory session as the PCs acquire their artifacts (the Articles of Inequity) and fight their captor, Tristram the insane fallen Paladin.
- After the music builds to full (the female voices), each PC is shown in turn pulling off some kick ass combat stunt, along with their character name and player name near the bottom of the screen in the same pale blue gothic font. For instance, we see Selyf shooting a female monk right in the chest with her arbalest. These clips are pulled from the entire campaign, so we might also see Alacross (sp?) blasting demons with magic missiles out of his nye.
- Once all the PCs (primary cast) have been introduced, we're treated to a variety of action clips showcasing a variety of the campaign. In one, a male tiefling is raises his hand and calls down hellfire on the PCs. In another, a pair of angelic beings guard some sort of gate, swords burning with blue flames.
- Near the climax, we zoom out from PCs to see gigantic draconic silhouette descending upon the city of Manifest. A blast of ghostly blue flame spirals out towards the camera as the music concludes and everything fades to black.
Hasn't been a lot to vox about lately. (Can I use vox as a verb? I would suppose so, since google's become an action word. I'll have to remember it next time I need a verb in MadLibs.)
Speaking of MadLibs, I substituted in running Lamassu's weekly teen library program last Friday and entertained the rambunctious little group with the ever-popular word game. I'll admit I was a little bit surprised to find out how emo and death-obsessed this group of Omega teens are. It seemed like every other word they gave me was either "blood", "corpses", "death" or the like. (I wanted to tell them to just get a LiveJournal, but I was afraid most of them probably already had several.)
After escaping work on Friday, we had our weekly dOrange game night with the third session of my new pseudo-homebrew Dungeons & Dragons campaign, Ghostwalk. The session went better than last week (it seemed as though Ernie had taken AnnaPants's place at falling asleep) and we all enjoyed ourselves. (We even took a quick break from the game to discuss whether video games and other visual media are destroying the imaginations and creativity of young people.)
I lazed about on Saturday while L was at work. Lazed about here means:
- washed laundry
- took Bilbo for a walk
- started reading His Majesty's Dragon
- finally beat Emperor Anglar in Star Fox Command
So, to debauch, L and I cruised over to hang out with Ernie and AnnaPants to drink some beer and started season two of Babylon 5. (Many kudos to the Pants for sharing her strange new beers.)
On Sunday, L and I got up early and joined her mother and brother (and his family) in going to scope out Art in the Park. Sadly, we were disappointed by the distressing repetition of booths featuring either:
- visual art
- pottery
- or jewelry
Following this, L and I went home and relaxed by watching more B5. We pretty much chilled for the rest of the evening, though she finally showed me some Red vs Blue after dinner. (Boom chicka wow wow.)
And now it's Monday morning and soon I'll have to head into work to face two (maybe three) days of no library catalog. I'm already dreading having to explain over and over again that "no, I can't look that up" and "no, I can't place that hold for you". But that's a vox for another time.
What about everyone else? How went the weekend?
