Adventures in D&D 5e Part 3: Revenge of the Dice

The fun thing about D&D, I think, is that it can bring a group together for a fun night of adventuring in a way that video games really can't: namely face to face. The bad thing about D&D is that you have to play it with a group of people, and as everyone knows, people are assholes.

So in my group, there are a couple of types of people: the ones who really really know how to play and expect the game to be played that way, and the ones who are there for the halibut and don't really care so long as fun is had by all. Then there's the DM, who's been valiantly trying to run the game and just kind of wants his campaigns to not be put through the wringer every time he makes one up.

Let's start with that last group, eh? The DM. He's the one that sets everything up and tells the story. He more or less makes the world and the rules and things within. Our group's DM is a veteran DM, but not particularly with this system. He's worked more with systems where combat is not so large a part of the game, and so has had some interesting things for us to see and do within his world other than murdering things.

Story, PVE, and PVP in Star Wars: The Old Republic's newest expansion - Knights of the Fallen Empire.

"A man can have anything... If he's willing to sacrifice everything."

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At EA's press conference during E3 on Monday, BioWare Austin General Manager Jeff Hickman announced the release of the newest expansion for The Old Republic: Knights of the Fallen Empire. To quote the official page, "the story follows your player character as he/she becomes The Outlander, a veteran of the Great Galactic War. A third faction threatens the galaxy as we know it, and your choices will determine the fate of both the Sith Empire and Galactic Republic."

So far, it looks like that BioWare has SIXTEEN Chapters worth of story content planned for KotFE (With eleven named on the site so far.) But, some in the community asked "What about PVP and End Game PVE content? Where is that?" Well, as Mr. Hickman stated in an article on polygon.com; "I want to be really clear to our fans out there who are deep MMO fans. We're not forgetting about that part of the game either," said Hickman. "We just have a focus right now on the story. We're doing lots of stuff around flashpoints and operations and raid bosses and PvP and that stuff. But it's all about story this year." Of course, as is par for the course when it comes to BWA and SWTOR, they are damned if they do, and damned if they don't. The players who are in the game for the story are excited (And already asking about who the story will play out! :P) But, the PVP and Raiders have various feelings from concern to outright anger that BioWare would focus on story content instead of PVP or Raids. Now, I'm not saying they don't have a right to be concerned, but they are going as bit far with some of their arguments...

WARNING!!! Incoming story and potential personal views off the port bow!!!

Adventures in D&D 5e Part 2: D&D Harder

Alright! Part 2.

It's been a bit more than a week, but that only means that I've had twice (3x, actually) as much D&D since last time to write about! I have decided that I enjoy 5e. I like the warlock class, I like my character, and I like my game. For the most part. But we'll get into that later.

My first actual session started at 5PM. We then actually got around to playing at about 7PM. We are a very chatty group, I've found. Our first game was a tour through the wonders of Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark, complete with random Bandersnatch encounter. Pretty fun, all things considering. Here's how it went: we got off of our ship, a ship headed from distant lands to the Nine Kingdoms, and find that the coastline has been magically altered by a meteorite that has fallen slightly inland of where we landed, turning the coast into a poem. We head into the jungle, past a library with wards outside that would withstand nukes, to try and catch the baker (not the banker) who ran off into them. We then find the banker (not the baker) getting chased by a bandersnatch. We kill it fairly quickly. I think my favorite part of this was when our fighter got scared into the trees by a portly banker bursting out, but when the giant monster thing popped up, he jumped right in without so much as a whimper. Dice are fun.

Anyway, we then find that the baker (not the banker) has set up shop next to the crash site of the meteorite. He's selling baked goods. Our bard buys a muffin off him before I get a chance to buy any of the wedding cake (it turns out that this was a good thing later, as the snark likes the flavor of that particular muffin), and we get to venture into the hole behind his shop. Inside we find a glass sphere and a cute little creature (the snark) who happily follows our bard back out of the cave (chewing on her bag all the while). With the sphere in hand, we then head back to the library we saw earlier. Upon entering the library, the huge wards explode, dealing quite a bit of damage to a few of our party. The snark has now chewed through our bard's bag and bites the ball, breaking it and dispelling the enchantment on the area. We have a nice little chat with the magic librarian (who sends us on our next quest), get chased out of town (by superstitious townsfolk), and then end for the night.

Fun, fun! I think the only problem with this night was that some of us were not done with our characters in time for the game to start, and so held up the rest of the group getting ready. Whoops. Other than that, it went fairly smoothly and I (having missed the character creation meet), got to learn a lot about my companions.