Redwolf's Journal (continued)

Indeed. Though not bad in my view. We tackled Flame Leviathan and Razorscale for the weekly quest quickly enough. Instead of hitting the Lich King, missing a couple regulars or somesuch, we went to see the Ruby Sanctum. It looks pretty, but is sort of disappointing to me. The mini-bosses were tough, but went down in one-two attempts, which some casualties along the way. Halion himself cleaned our clock. I was sitting in the physical realm, so I missed where things went bad. We reshuffled and took and under-staffed, alt-heavy group into ICC from the beginning, leaving Kyn to hold the lockout on the Lich King. And... I saw myself losing aggro a lot to our DK alt-tank. That's a bit frustrating in and of itself. It's something I've seen before with them, and so I was looking more closely. I wondered if there were taunts involved in the rotation, but after comparing armory sheets, I think it comes from a simple higher damage output. According to the armor, almost 30% more at...

So... a busy, but pretty nice day taken off work to do family stuff. We met up at a mountain pass at about 10:15, and I was introduced to a bunch of people I'm sure I won't clearly remember. >.> There wasn't anything too formal, but some things were said, and ashes were poured in a little clearing. We adjourned as clouds were building up, but the weather was nice. With an evening dinner get-together planned, I decided to contribute with a couple pecan pies. So once I got back home, I got cooking pretty much right away and that was my afternoon. It rained pretty hard for a couple hours. Then I drove over to get there a little before 5:30. The rain had stopped, but things were nicely cooled off. Burgers and such were cooked up, dinner was had a bit after six, with everyone there. The pies were widely appreciated come dessert time, I got many compliments. It was after eight and starting to get dark when I said my fairwells and made my way back home. Pleasant enough, ...

So we're playing and things are going a little stutteringly here and there, with people finishing up characters and GM inexperience. But it's been entertaining. We've been running into issues with self-compelling, though... Some of the self-initiated compels really seem... weak to me. But I can't help but wonder if things would be going differently with a less scattered plot. Example 1: Spiritual toughs start showing up. Two group members veil from view. Two remain in sight to assess/talk. Talk doesn't last long as the native spirit-types are just pissy. Bear shifter charges! One veiled characters steps out to intercept and attack, quoting their 'Got your back!' aspect. Question arises whether this actually complicates things enough to qualify as a compel. In a lot of ways, it seems like just taking advantage of the situation, as the 'enemies' have already committed to attacking. Example 2: Bear is clubbed unconscious, fight gets more complic...

Work's been nuts the last couple days. Scrambling to get things done, then... stuck waiting for something to... scramble to get things done. Tiring and draining. Things have been rescheduled, so all my family stuff will get crammed into tomorrow. That works out better for me, saving me the trouble of making a decision.

But not that one. Heck, if Starcraft is one word, why would it be abbreviated that way anyhow? No, I mean Star Control 2 . I was introduced to the first one in the computer lab at high school - a "dueling" game with space craft of different sorts and a neat little campaign mode. I got quite good at the relatively balance Yehat ships. Then Star Control 2 came out and it was a valid sequel with more ships and such, but it also had a single player game. And what a game. The races were colorful and varied. There were mis-programmed probes sent by a curious race, a coulple religion-heavy races, merchants willing to barter artifacts and people for fuel, mysterious beings from alternate dimensions, and many more. The plot kept moving at a certain pace. Literally, the bad guys would start wiping other civilizations out by a certain in-game date if left unhindered. You get to slowly rebuild an alliance while discovering just what is really going on. In some places, you can broker ...

I came in on a discussion yesterday about magic. In part, it was about certain applications looking too technological for a fantasy setting, but it got me thinking well beyond that. My comments at the time: The good/bad of magic is that it's magic . By definition (or lack thereof) it can accomplish anything you can think of, unless there are some sort of hard limits in place. So the inventor spends his years learning aerodynamics and says to his mage pal 'I've had a contraption that lets a person fly like a bird!' The mage takes a few minutes with all his arcane knowledge and whips up a spell that... makes someone fly like a bird. The mage doesn't need to understand the technical points because magic itself is a shortcut/plot point/fiat that makes it possible. Unless, of course, the setting's magic has some other requirements, but it usually doesn't. I'd also add that the only way I see to keep magic from doing certain things or looking a certain wa...

One quick downing of Patchwerk for the weekly quest (and one person didn't have it, for shame!) and a little shuffling of raid lockouts put us back before Sindragosa. We wiped once (a warm-up!) before pulling it together and beating down the frost wyrm. I think I was the only one dead at the end. Heh. I'll take it. That left us to head on up and face the Lich King himself. It's... a complicated fight. We've seen phase one and the first transition. We need to actually survive through another transition as well as phase two and three, and deal with the different abilities therein. I think we have an understanding of necrotic plague management at this point, which is key to the beginning, but our timing is a bit off. The last few attempts, we actually cleared out the horrors (leaving me with the plague to dump off completely), but it was happening when the boss' health was at about 74%, which leave enough time for him to summon another horror before hitting the tr...