I’ve given this blog a rest. I’ve pretty much stopped playing World of Warcraft and I’m not really looking back. I play some Warhammer Online every so often. I’m not really happy with any video games recently. Maybe something better will come along.
Until then, I’ve started running a weekly D&D session. It seems to be all the rage in the nerd community to get back into D&D with the latest edition, as is evidenced by “The Podcasts”. I can’t argue with the prevailing logic that fun things are fun. Curse you logic!
I used to hate D&D. The third edition was quasi skill based without having any solid footing in a setting. I’m not a fantasy kind of guy. These issues, which are mine alone, turned D&D into a bitter experience that I avoided, or managed to tolerate in the company of excellent friends. I was always more attuned to the Robotech, Battletech, and Heavy Gear persuasions of RPGs. I skew big metal robot, I suppose.
And then D&D 4e came along and when I saw it, it said, “I’m totally a game, and you can kill enemies and take their stuff.” Something inside me just shrugged and said, “I can dig it.” The setting is a plane of squares. The game is downright devilish in it’s design, bridging the gap between a complex board game and seriously serious role playing with two page character backgrounds and people crying when their character dies. That’s some crazy bridge, I tell you. A bridge that I imagine many people spend their entire lives on. Never really wanting to go to either extreme.
In the image above, you can see that combat has commenced, enemies hiding out of sight, while our fearless Warlord, Mortiz, has rushed headlong into a trap. The faceless Warlock, Slayn, stands next to him, planning to hurt evil goblins. They managed to not die that night. But they aren’t out of the dungeon, yet.