Hey, role-playing games.
This blogging thing is popular, so I'll give it a try. The subject is: a D&D campaign!
An acquaintance started a Pathfinder campaign called Rise of the Runelords, and I'm playing a character in it.
I have no clue where to actually start with this, so I'll go to the very beginning. The game system is Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 (or "3.6" with the house rules; I can only say "Yay!" at the rogue having a Hit Die of d8) and I've been playing (around) with that particular ruleset for 3,5 years. After my first campaign of D&D for first-year-students, my fellow technology students introduced me to optimizing and munchkins. I never really learned that, because to me, role-playing wasn't about optimizing. Every wizard being a Sun Elf gets kind of boring after a while. I did push one character's Hide skill into the night (specifically, 80s) once, but that's about it. My favorite class is rogue and the like. Maybe it's because I think magic is annoying and omni- and over-powerful and that fighter-like people can just hit things. Rogues get to do other things. Despite the fact that I'm an artist of some sort, I think I'm remarkably uncreative, and so I can't think of any creative ways of hitting things or using omnipowerful magic. Disabling all kinds of weird traps, getting past locks without breaking them, stealing things and hiding in funny places is fun. That's just the game mechanics, though. I'm probably not a very good role-player IRL, but I try to improve, and I hope some day I'll manage to play a rogue with a decent Charisma score, too.
Factotum is an awesome class, too.
Playing D&D with the experienced technology students improved my grasp on the mechanics of the game so that while they still play too fast for me, I can now keep up when playing with other people, apparently. I also don't think D&D 3.5's Grapple rules are complex.
In a lot of the games I played with the technology students, it seemed like optimizing was outright required, which resulted in my characters being somewhat useless especially in battle. Outside of battle, they were usually useless because I'm very slow in social situations. It kind of sounds like I didn't have fun playing, but I did, at least most of the time. I don't really care if my characters aren't the best, as long as they contribute. My character may not have survived the Tomb of Horrors, but it was the last one alive and responsible for disabling a lot of traps.
Having said all this, I'm glad that we aren't expected to optimize in the Runelords campaign.
The first game session went well. The beginning was a little awkward (I think that's the right word), what with it being the first time to actually "see" the gameworld and the other players and characters, but I didn't really expect it not to be. My character is Jearis, a gray elf scout/rogue. The character bio there is in Finnish, sorry about that. Maybe I'll translate it at some point. Suffice to say that Jearis's parents got themselves and some of their family exiled from their home island Mordant Spire which is 200 miles away to the west of Varisia, the area where the campaign happens. I created a whole bunch of relatives for the character, and I'm eagerly waiting to see what happens to them. Two relatives (Tiraimi and Paleal) traveled with Jearis and two other PCs from Riddleport to Sandpoint, the exact location of where the campaign started. As of happenings this far, Paleal was injured in the first big fight of the campaign. Since our characters were smart and didn't get themselves into any bar fights, stuff started mostly happening after that first fight, since the townsfolk now view the party as heroes and everybody sort of knows them. At least Jearis is nicely stuck in the town or its vicinity because of the injured Paleal. Hung from a literal hook!
Things are definitely getting interesting and many goblins are expected to lose their lives.
And now for something different. I've been playing the fourth edition of D&D for a while now; the first game I played was right when the edition came out. I have a character that advanced from first level to 18th, and will continue advancing until it maxes out. The character classes seem too similar in 4.0 and I think things have been simplified a bit too much. Firecubes may be cute and practical, but I just don't have any trouble drawing a sphere on a square map either. Of course, I'm the artist, so that might have something to do with that. I don't think 4.0 is bad, but I prefer 3.5. Once my 4.0 character reaches level 30, I plan on not playing 4.0 unless some otherwise awesome campaign is going to pop up out of somewhere.
Speaking of battle maps, I want a program where I can draw a 3D battle map. I won't require it to project the thing into thin air or smoke, though; seeing it on the screen is just fine.
Well, this post was a big mess and I probably used too many semicolons. Apologies to anyone who read it. Maybe I'll get my thoughts better laid out in later posts. Is there something in particular anyone would like to hear?
An acquaintance started a Pathfinder campaign called Rise of the Runelords, and I'm playing a character in it.
I have no clue where to actually start with this, so I'll go to the very beginning. The game system is Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 (or "3.6" with the house rules; I can only say "Yay!" at the rogue having a Hit Die of d8) and I've been playing (around) with that particular ruleset for 3,5 years. After my first campaign of D&D for first-year-students, my fellow technology students introduced me to optimizing and munchkins. I never really learned that, because to me, role-playing wasn't about optimizing. Every wizard being a Sun Elf gets kind of boring after a while. I did push one character's Hide skill into the night (specifically, 80s) once, but that's about it. My favorite class is rogue and the like. Maybe it's because I think magic is annoying and omni- and over-powerful and that fighter-like people can just hit things. Rogues get to do other things. Despite the fact that I'm an artist of some sort, I think I'm remarkably uncreative, and so I can't think of any creative ways of hitting things or using omnipowerful magic. Disabling all kinds of weird traps, getting past locks without breaking them, stealing things and hiding in funny places is fun. That's just the game mechanics, though. I'm probably not a very good role-player IRL, but I try to improve, and I hope some day I'll manage to play a rogue with a decent Charisma score, too.
Factotum is an awesome class, too.
Playing D&D with the experienced technology students improved my grasp on the mechanics of the game so that while they still play too fast for me, I can now keep up when playing with other people, apparently. I also don't think D&D 3.5's Grapple rules are complex.
In a lot of the games I played with the technology students, it seemed like optimizing was outright required, which resulted in my characters being somewhat useless especially in battle. Outside of battle, they were usually useless because I'm very slow in social situations. It kind of sounds like I didn't have fun playing, but I did, at least most of the time. I don't really care if my characters aren't the best, as long as they contribute. My character may not have survived the Tomb of Horrors, but it was the last one alive and responsible for disabling a lot of traps.
Having said all this, I'm glad that we aren't expected to optimize in the Runelords campaign.
The first game session went well. The beginning was a little awkward (I think that's the right word), what with it being the first time to actually "see" the gameworld and the other players and characters, but I didn't really expect it not to be. My character is Jearis, a gray elf scout/rogue. The character bio there is in Finnish, sorry about that. Maybe I'll translate it at some point. Suffice to say that Jearis's parents got themselves and some of their family exiled from their home island Mordant Spire which is 200 miles away to the west of Varisia, the area where the campaign happens. I created a whole bunch of relatives for the character, and I'm eagerly waiting to see what happens to them. Two relatives (Tiraimi and Paleal) traveled with Jearis and two other PCs from Riddleport to Sandpoint, the exact location of where the campaign started. As of happenings this far, Paleal was injured in the first big fight of the campaign. Since our characters were smart and didn't get themselves into any bar fights, stuff started mostly happening after that first fight, since the townsfolk now view the party as heroes and everybody sort of knows them. At least Jearis is nicely stuck in the town or its vicinity because of the injured Paleal. Hung from a literal hook!
Things are definitely getting interesting and many goblins are expected to lose their lives.
And now for something different. I've been playing the fourth edition of D&D for a while now; the first game I played was right when the edition came out. I have a character that advanced from first level to 18th, and will continue advancing until it maxes out. The character classes seem too similar in 4.0 and I think things have been simplified a bit too much. Firecubes may be cute and practical, but I just don't have any trouble drawing a sphere on a square map either. Of course, I'm the artist, so that might have something to do with that. I don't think 4.0 is bad, but I prefer 3.5. Once my 4.0 character reaches level 30, I plan on not playing 4.0 unless some otherwise awesome campaign is going to pop up out of somewhere.
Speaking of battle maps, I want a program where I can draw a 3D battle map. I won't require it to project the thing into thin air or smoke, though; seeing it on the screen is just fine.
Well, this post was a big mess and I probably used too many semicolons. Apologies to anyone who read it. Maybe I'll get my thoughts better laid out in later posts. Is there something in particular anyone would like to hear?