Asshats

It seems to me that the internet, whilst being a thoroughly useful tool, gets abused by serious dickwads who think it’s their right to target people with bilious and vitriolic comments purely because they have a different opinion to them. I for one have had enough, you know who you are and to be frank I consider all of you to be a waste of sperm and oxygen thieves, the world would be a better place without all of you. Yarrgggh!

Just because there is no real way to police the idiots mentioned in the above paragraph doesn’t mean that we have freedom of speech, for instance, were this article calling for a fatwah or a crusade I could expect to be visited by some of the chaps in blue uniforms and called to account, should I threaten to blow something up it would be much the same. I have always been a big fan of the quote “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.” however, when someone devolves to personal attacks, purely because I say I don’t like something then the bets are off. they don’t get to do that and I will not feed the trolls, I will explain where they are mistaken and that will be my final comment on the matter.

I don’t like 4E, it is my opinion that it is turning into a squad level tactical game, the way things are going with it does not appeal to me in the slightest, I will not be using any of the cards, I will also not be running any more of it. For me the rot set in during a game of LFR I was running when the players told me that they didn’t have time for roleplaying they wanted to get to the encounter. Hey asshole! Yes you out there, the angry one with the red face, step away from the pc and go and do something more useful for the world, see if you can win a Darwin award.

There I said it, I don’t like 4E, does that make me a bad person? Does it mean I am consigned to gamer hell? Does it mean that WoTC storm-troopers will come and kick down my door and drag me away? What about me, will I break into homes where they’re playing 4E and kill everyone? Will I demonstrate outside games shops and call anyone playing 4E rude names? Nope, none of the above, I’ll continue on as I am, I’ll play something different and WoTC can no longer sell me every book they produce, I also cancelled my ddi subscription all told they have lost someone who spent a large amount of $ on their products, but hey that’s cool, because I know there are people out there who do like it and will continue playing it.

Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one talking about the elephant in the room or that spanky new set of clothes the Emperor is not wearing, but hey-ho it’s only zeroes and ones at the end of the day.

Now on to something I do like.

Pathfinder Adventure Paths

Just recently I have started running 2 games of Pathfinder, I decided to run their adventure path product – Rise of the Runelords this for me is an extremely well written and produced product, it’s filled with information, excellent scenarios and loads of colourful art, in it Goblins take on a whole new life and seem akin to some of the darker fairy tales. I have run the first part of this campaign  twice now for 2 seperate groups and it was fresh each time, the group dynamics were different, the party makeup was different and the town seemed to come alive for both groups. There have been some memorable moments too, from the Cleric of Cayden Cailean holding a goblin at bay with a rapier until the ranger loped in and sliced it in half to the bumbling sorcerer who tripped over his robes whilst trying to run away.

My players managed to bring their characters to life, they have places to stay, money problems, women problems and they are saving up for their next gadget/toy just like everyone else. The storyline is really good and I expect to have a lot of fun with the 2 groups, I’m well aware that the group is the key to roleplaying goodness, just like I’m well aware that the system does not really dictate the style of play, what I think the system does do is lend itself to a particular playing style and lead the game in a particular direction.

I won’t go into the Rise of the Runelords AP in too much detail, I know at least 2 of my players read this stuff I write, but the story really does build to an excellent end game, if you’re a GM and you haven’t seen this stuff, buy the pdfs and have a read they really are good.

And finally I’d like to welcome Banjo the Clown to the crew, unlike me Banjo likes 4E and NWoD, but then I guess there’s no accounting for taste. *wink*

Seriously Banjo runs a mean 4E game and I’m sure he does the same for the various World of Darkness games he runs too, sniff, not been invited to one of those, I understand he’s running Promethean at the moment and it’s all going to end in tears.

That’s enough from me today and remember if you’re an angry asshat, go and find someone else to pester!

Comments: 6 comments

Tags: #DnD, 4e, Captain Curmudgeon, Fantasy, Nerd Rage, Pathfinder, roleplaying

Say hello to the newest member of the Buccaneer’s Guild – Banjo the Clown. Because every pirate crew needs one. And without further ado, my first post:

The 7^th edition of Gamma World is now complete. Which is an odd thing to say, because the game in itself was advertised as complete. But this expansion really rounds things up. The things that felt like they were missing from the base game are finally here.

Instead of writing up a list of the things that are inside I thought I’d do an unboxing video instead. I did end up making a few mistakes (on which I’ll elaborate later) and the video quality is a bit grainy but bear with us as this is our first attempt.

It’s hard to review this game without reviewing Gamma World itself. Everything that this expansion adds, feels like it should have been part of the game all along. I imagine this was deliberate WotC strategy targeted at gamers who want to have ‘the entire thing’ without too many purchases. I know this because I am one of these completists (although the disease has not progressed lately and is being kept under check by my wife and student budget). Is this an ideal publishing model? No. I would have preferred that both of these expansions were part of a single boxset bunched up together with the main game and sold in a higher price range. Then later on, after the vocal internet community has expressed what it wants, a new expansion could be released that features these additions. Unfortunately, this publishing and design model is a bit too old. Companies like to preplan everything now; they know what source material is going to come out for a game a year before the game is even out. This, of course, has its ups and downs. But I digress…

I say I digress because Gamma World is still a great game. The only thing that irks me about it is that most players, when creating characters, focus on the quirky too much leaving the rest slightly one-dimensional. This closes off a lot of roleplaying options during game-time. I am guilty of this too. Just ask my Hawkoid-Arachnoid character, Piotr Parker.

The unboxing video says that there are six new origins. There are in fact eight of them. And whilst some feel a bit here and there, they are still great additions to the grand total. The unboxing video also says that there are no feats in Gamma World which is no longer true because it is one of the things that the expansion adds. Every origin gets a set of three feats which you get at levels four, seven and ten. The first question my wife asked was “Are there more levels now?” to which I had to sadly shake my head. This would have been amazing frankly. Finally, the video says that the adventure takes you to the moon, which is true. But there is also an entire chapter devoted to Moon Zone 9, an outer space location that provides rules and useful tips for running adventures outside of Gamma Terra. And let’s not forget the very important moon gear (no ancient moon junk table though).

What did I forget? The forty-five odd pages devoted to new monsters which fill out the higher level monster tier, missing in the base game and the first expansion. I am glad to report that monsters now go all the way up to level fourteen. Finally Piotr will be able to dine on his favorite meal – the space eel.

Banjo out.

Comments: 4 comments

Tags: #DnD, 4e, dungeons and dragons, gamma world, roleplaying, unboxing

WTF?

No seriously, WTF?

I get product extensions, I really do, obviously I get apoplectic over stupid ones like the release of the Dettol No-Touch Soap Dispenser. Do the morons in marketing not understand that the first thing you do after you touch a soap dispenser is wash your freaking hands?

Anyway, I digress, game affecting cards in D&D? For me these are symptomatic of the drift of 4th Ed D&D towards the Squad Level tactical game it reminds me of. I played encounters today and it was a fairly unimaginative scenario that I feel the writers could have done more with, but during this session we actually received the cards posted out to the organisers.

Reading the rules you now have a draw phase at the start of your turn and you can play your card accordingly during your turn, if anything is guaranteed to turn me cold it’s playing rules extensions and revisions during a game because you have a card for it, it’s ridiculous and it’s just NOT role playing.

What do they think they’re doing?

Of course this will mean that there are rares, uncommons and commons that people will simply have to own, which of course is good business for Hasbro, but playing cards to determine battle outcomes?

Really?

D&D as an RPG is dead to me, I’ll turn up and play with the guys at the Encounters sessions because it’s socialising, but I will not be spending any more money on 4th Ed, I will not be running any more games, I will not renew my ddi subscription, from here on in it’s Pathfinder all the way baby, well that’s when I’m not playing SLA Industries, or FATE or any one of a multitude of RPGs.

Oh yeah, while I’m here, did I mention there’s a new forum for SLA Industries?

Go there, check it out, it’s cool.

Comments: 13 comments

Tags: #DnD, 4e, Captain Curmudgeon, RPG

Wow it’s been a while since I got my writing groove on.

Anyroadup.

Why have I left 4E D&D to take what could in effect be construed as a retrograde step?

When 4E was released I was filled with enthusiasm, I bought all the books, no really, ALL the books. I loved it, it was clear concise, and meant you could kind of ignore the mechanics because they’d all been simplified, there was plenty of crunch and things were good. The simplification of the skills made sense to me, I could see it taking off, so much so I decided to run LFR.

This is when my perception started to drift downwards.

For a start, to sign up to GM public games for WoTC, free of charge mind, you had to know the secret ninja routes through their website, you had to be affiliated with a game store or speak to people in the know in Hasbro. Then there’s the fact that they have tried to shoehorn the RPG stuff into the MtG modules and it starts to get a bit dispiriting.

Alright, so I got past all that lot and started running modules, some groups were great and were prepared to roleplay it to the max, other groups (you know who you are) went in like a SWAT team and finally there was the last group, “Look we don’t have time to roleplay this, we need to kill everything and get the rewards.”

Yes I’m generalising, but that was the overall feeling I was getting, members of the final style of play would do things like demand the type of skill challenge, how many successes they needed and what skills they should be using. I don’t know about you but that really ground me down, I felt like I was an umpire in a Squad Level Tactical Game.

Finally, WoTC decided they were losing too much to piracy and decided to give a great big fuck you very much to all of us who were actually paying for their products, this came in the form of the online CB, the way they dealt with it and the way they announced it sent me into apoplexy, if a company is going to survive it has to look after the customers who pay and not screw them over because other asswipes don’t pay.

So that then, is why I will be stepping away from 4E, there are some really good groups out there and I am not knocking them, if they have fun then I applaud them and wish them to continue to do so. (/me looks at Whitt)

Why Pathfinder?

I have a lot of good memories of 3.5 D&D, I also feel the rules don’t point you at combat in the same manner and after my initial contact with http://www.paizo.com &  http://paizo.com/pathfinderSociety I find I am enthused over the product. Reading the rulebooks and the released adventure products, the style and tone in which they are written calls out to me.

Let’s also not forget I have a huge amount of D&D 3.5 material at home left over from the last time I played this game.

I’m currently preparing to run the Adventure Path “Rise of the Runelords” for one of the groups I play in at the moment and the write-ups have just the right amount of fluff and crunch to make me very happy, Sandpoint is a living breathing location in my mind and I’m sure the guys will have a lot of fun, I’ll also run it for the other groups if they want and if we can finally arrange a regular meet time/place.

Am I sorry I went to 4E?

No way, you have to try everything once, I get why people like it, I get why it works for them, it just doesn’t work for me, to all you 4E dudes out there, keep on rocking, the industry needs your support.

CaptCalamitous

Comments: 4 comments

Tags: 4e, Captain Curmudgeon, D&D, Pathfinder

For anyone who’s been playing with the two new web-services that the online version of WotC’s Character Builder uses, you may have tried remotely logging in, but wondered how the password needs to be encrypted?

Well I’ve cracked the way passwords are encrypted and have been able to login remotely and do simple actions such as, get a list of all my characters and export the XML for an old style DnD4e file.

Here’s a simple bit of C# showing how to encode a password.

public static byte[] SimpleEncrypt(string value, string key)
{
    byte[] buffer2;
    ICryptoTransform transform = GetSimpleAlgorithm(key).CreateEncryptor();
    using (MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream())
    {
        using (CryptoStream stream2 = new CryptoStream(stream, transform, CryptoStreamMode.Write))
        {
            byte[] bytes = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(value);
            stream2.Write(bytes, 0, bytes.Length);
            stream2.Flush();
            stream2.FlushFinalBlock();
            stream.Position = 0L;
            buffer2 = stream.ToArray();
        }
    }
    return buffer2;
}

private static SymmetricAlgorithm GetSimpleAlgorithm(string key)
{
    AesManaged aes = new AesManaged();
    byte[] source = new SHA256Managed().ComputeHash(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(key));
    return new AesManaged { Key = source, IV = source.Take<byte>((aes.BlockSize / 8)).ToArray<byte>() };
}

As you can see this takes the username and password as inputs, if you’ve built a nice client wrapper around the SOAP webservice, something that Visual Studio does for me, then logging in is as simple as calling the login method on either of the web services.

contentClient.Login(username, SimpleEncrypt(password, username));

If we then use the GetAvailableContent() method of the ContentVault service, we can return and enumerate a list of characters.

ContentInfo[] content = contentClient.GetAvailableContent(0);

for (int i = 0; i < content.Length; i++)
{
    XDocument doc = XDocument.Parse(content[i].CommittedContent.Details.ToString());
    var name = doc.Element("CharacterDetails").Element("Name").Value;
    Console.WriteLine("{0} : {1}", i, name);
}

Then using the GetData() method of the same service we can grab the DnD4e XML file.

DataWithVersion data = contentClient.GetData(
    new ContentVault.ContentIdentifier { ContentID = content[0].CommittedContent.Identifier.ContentID },
    null
    );

RawContentBlob blob = data.Data as RawContentBlob;

String charFile = new UTF8Encoding().GetString(blob.RawData, 0, blob.RawData.Length);

File.WriteAllBytes("d:\\temp.dnd4e", blob.RawData);

There you go just a brief window into some of the things the ContentVault service can do.

No word from WotC on whether or not we’re allowed to do this though. I did ask, but never got a response.

One last note, if you’re doing this in Visual Studio then make sure the bindings for the web services have allowCookies set to true, then the login will be remembered for the subsequent calls to the service.

If you’re consuming the SOAP in some other not Microsoft way, then obviously you’ll need to do the same thing, save the cookie from the login response and send it on with any following requests.

Comments: 19 comments

Tags: #DnD, 4e, D&D, DDI, Programming

I’ve just discovered a really cool combat tracker. I’ve very fond of iPlay4e, and use it for all my characters and players PCs.

Now today I found inCombat (http://laughterforever.com/inCombat/) a fine combat tracker that incorporates characters from iPlay4e nicely. As well as the ability to add monsters from the compendium or monster builder.

It just works to be frank, and it runs in a browser, as well as off-line through Adobe AIR.

Nothing bad to be said about it so far, can’t wait to start using it in anger.

Comments: Leave a comment

Tags: #DnD, 4e, Resource

And the results are in. Our guest judge, Greg Bilsland, has chosen a winner.

(This also came in in level 13, 18, 23 and 28 varieties with suitable increases)

Here’s what Greg had to say about the winner:

There aren’t a lot of low-level items that let you escape death like this, so I like that this item gives you a way to do it, but at a cost. It also is well balanced, because even though the power is unlikely to come up very often, the property still gives it a benefit that any undead-slaying hero can appreciate.

Putting the item at level 3, 8, etc. is exactly where I would place it. I’d probably keep the range on the ongoing necrotic damage static rather than allowing it to increase. I like that the designer included some story. I’d like to see the story text as a separate section (like in Adventurer’s Vault 2) so the flavor text can give me a description of the item.

Overall, a good job, though. The designer has an eye for balancing mechanics, usability, and creativity.

So congratulations go to Granger44! Who had this to say:

Hey, thanks!   As a side note, I just had a daughter born at the end of last month myself, so I’ll claim her as my inspiration to which I added the evil twist.

Steve’s necklace of death deserves a mention as Greg it as the most creative item:

I liked the necklace actually being a garotte. Shows thinking outside of the box. The item would need a little adjustment on the property’s damage output and on the automatic death in the daily power. Also, bringing down the level would be good so more players would have access to it.

Congratulations to the overall winner, and thanks to all those that took part. And finally thanks to Greg for being our guest judge. For more from Greg check out his new shiny blog, http://gregbilsland.wordpress.com/.

Comments: 1 comment

Tags: #DnD, 4e

Thanks to everyone who entered the PH3 competition. Entries are now closed. All entries have been packaged up and are ready to be sent to Greg Bilsland. Now you’ll just have to wait.

Comments: Leave a comment

Tags: #DnD, 4e

You’ve got until 23.59 GMT today to enter the PH3 competition.

http://buccaneersguild.com/players-handbook-3-giveaway-2/

Judged by our guest judge, WotC’s Greg Bilsland.

Comments: Leave a comment

Tags: #DnD, 4e

There’s only one more week left to enter the Players Handbook 3 contest!

All you need to do is design a magical item to complete the Magical Minds series. The best item as chosen by our celebrity judge, WotC’s Greg Bilsland (@gregbilsland), will win a copy of the Players Handbook 3 upon release!

So to complete my daughters list of items, the last item name, along with my her brief notes is as follows:

Necklace of Death (Notes: You put it on and you die)

Rules

1. Stick to Dungeons & Dragons 4e
2. Stay true to the item name, include necklaces and death somewhere.
3. Don’t stay true to my daughter’s notes, make it balanced!
4. Only one entry per person, although feel free to replace a previous entry if you suddenly come up with a better idea.
5. Email entries to blog@buccaneersguild.com.
6. Tell other people about the competition, post on Twitter or Facebook for example.
7. Closing date is March 9th 2010.
8. The winning entry will be announced before March 15th.

Good luck!

Comments: 3 comments

Tags: #DnD, 4e