A Gentleman and a Scholar The below post from the World of Warcraft forums sums up my thoughts on the Zombie Plague nicely. All people from the Morlock family should take heed of these wise words and well thought-out argument.
The Zombie Apocalypse Okay, I know this one's a touchy subject for a lot of people right now, but this is my blog and therefor my opinion. If you hate Blizzard and think this was their worst idea ever, you're wrong, plain and simple.
"Scott? What the hell are you babbling about?" you might ask.
... okay, that doesn't narrow it down much, as you usually ask that, and rightly so. But this particular instance, I'm rambling about the current event running in World of Warcraft - the Scourge Invasion.
Roll back the clock to whenever the heck Naxxramus was put into the game. During that patch, for about 2 weeks or so, they had a "Scourge Invasion," to commemorate the fact that the Scourge were back and bad as ever! ... only, they weren't. In a few lonely, out of the way corners of the world, there were these little glyph circles on the ground, and a handful of level-appropriate undead meandering around minding their own business. They weren't invading so much as poking their heads out to say "Hello, we're still here, and if you don't want to fight us, that's cool. No prob. Just go around us." It was, in a word, pathetic.
Wheel the clock forward to about a week ago. I hear whisperings of another Scourge Invasion to make the lead-in to Wrath of the Lich King something special. I remember the last one, and half roll my eyes. I see zombies meandering around, and think, "okay, cool, so they're at least ATTACKING the major cities rather than politely waiting outside of them." They were weak, shambled slowly, and died quickly. A few bursts of Holy Nova took out a whole pack of them.
However, I got hit by them once, and was infected with their plague. "Oh neat," I thought, "they can spread a zombie plague." Sure enough, if you died to this plague (which had a 6 minute timer before which you had to find a cure) you would turn into a zombie yourself, and could run around PVPing other players (even of your own faction) and spread the plague further!
As neat as this was, allow me to restate that zombies were weak, slow, and fragile. I lived for all of 2 seconds, and was killed by some random player 1-shotting me.
That was a few days ago.
What I had no clue of was Blizzard was slowly escalating things. I thought the constant message of "Servers will have rolling restarts" every day was to address continued stability problems... it's actually to tweak the stats on the zombies each and every day.
See, the plague is getting worse. Lasts night, for instance, the first chance I've had to play in a while. zombies had a lot of hit points, hit for a decent amount, and the plague - most importantly - had a 1 minute incubation (which gets reduced every time you get hit by a zombie). So, even if you can't kill someone through damage, you can usually hit them enough times to zero the clock on their plague and convert them over. I decided to try this out, and got myself infected in Booty Bay, and head north.
Ganking in Stranglethorn is a time-honored tradition. It's one I've admittedly rolled my eyes at in the past, but I figured, in the spirit of the holiday and all, I'd give it a whirl. Seriously: how often do you have the chance to maraud through an area with your own horde of zombie minions? I found very quickly that any HUMANOID NPC you killed came back as an equal-level zombie. Abilities given to you in your PC-zombie state gave you limited command over them; effectively, a "hey guys, follow me" for 20ish seconds, and a 10 second burst of speed "Get'm!" ability. Other than those, they were mindless, and would aggro just like normal mobs. So, you could herd them, but not truly control them.
I got some friends, and practiced in one of the Troll ruins. I wiped the entire place out with a sweeping tide of contagion. After everything there had gone from Troll to Scourge, I was ready. I cut across some wilderness, and hit the Ogres right outside of Grom'gol Base Camp. After "recruiting" a few friends to help out, we rushed our way into the base camp, and hit the guards at the gate.
I saw their levels compared to my level 35 zombies, and though, "This was a waste of time. This is going to be over quickly." I forgot entirely that the plague will run its course whether or not the target actually dies... and within a few hits had a fresh pair of zombies. These 4 ran into the next few NPC guards, and the domino effect was well under way. I had already won the camp.
I stuck around making sure my zombies had enough direction to fully spread the plague and wipe everyone out, and then decided to head for greener pastures. Some friends wanted to kill Onyxia, so I asked to be included... only I couldn't get to Onyxia, because I had overrun the travel hub to Orgrimmar! Every time I tried to step foot in Grom'gol, I was beset by NPC and PC zombies alike! It was wild seeing something so persistent after all the "if you don't want to, you don't have to" style events. This was real. This was in my face. And best of all, it was player created. The undead hadn't overrun Grom'gol because Blizzard arbitrarily decided to invade that town for a short amount of time, it was overrun because I overran it!
Now, I can see a lot of people having a problem with this : major cities and quest hubs are being overrun. Quest givers, bankers, and auctioneers are getting killed. What's worse, is that they just add to the Scourge's numbers... I say suck it up. This event isn't going to last forever, so have some fun experiencing a REAL invasion.
Second Wave Old Guard hobbies is shutting down.
This saddens me greatly. Old Guard was the only real reliable local game shop around. They had tons of 40K stuff, as well as a lot of other miniature games like Warmachine and Flames of War. You could find all sorts of roleplaying books there, from GURPS to D&D to Paladium, and all sorts of obscure stuff you'd never think to look for. Their paints and modeling supplies were always well stocked, they carried primer and green epoxy putty. And if they didn't have any of that stuff, they'd order it for you. They even offered a 20% discount on Games Workshop stuff as an incentive to buy there, rather than at the official GW store. I was more than happy to oblige.
I think the thing that saddens me the most, though, is that I've been going there for my gaming needs since high school - that was where I got my first Battletech miniatures. I continued to go there for D&D books and the like, then Reaper miniatures when I got heavily into painting, and then 40K when I started playing that a year or two ago. I suppose I'll miss the memories.
One good thing did come from this though : Their 40% off fire-sale during which I procured (narrowly) their last Necron Battleforce. I gained 28 Warriors and 3 Destroyers in that box, and one extra Destroyer for a total of 4. Add those to the 30 Warriors I have painted, and the 2 extra I cobbled together from left-over sprues, and I'm standing 60 warriors strong, and 9 Destroyers strong.
I got them assembled and based pretty quickly - more quickly than I thought I would. I suppose when you buckle down and really press to get it done, it's not so bad. Once everything was all assembled, I did a little experiment. Instead of my usual priming black and painting codex grey, I primed grey and used the new black wash to put all my shadows in. It worked remarkably well. I noted a few problems with it, but nothing that's impossible to solve. I took a comparison picture with my phone's camera since the digital camera's on the fritz, but it didn't come out good at all. I'll be doing the rest like that, I think, due to the ease of use.
I also got my Heavy Destroyers 100% finished off.
Unfortunately, crappy camera phone is crappy. But you get the general idea. If I can get ahold of a better camera, I'll snap some better pictures.
Next up, 30 warriors and a TON of Destroyers... I might actually do the Destroyers first, since I don't think I'll have occasion to field more than 30 Warriors any time soon. I'm not sure when I want to paint my Monoliths, also. More later on that.
Not all conversions are serious I've seen a few really funny conversions lately, and I wanted to share them with you.
Also, I would TOTALLY field this Necron model with my regular army.
An End to Ghettohammer 40K? Well, okay, maybe an end isn't necessarily in sight, but it's certainly locatable on the GPS. Let's hope we can get to it sometime in my lifetime. Frankly, I'm a little irritated with myself and all my unfinished projects.
As stated a few posts ago, the remaining unpainted balance of my army is dwindling drastically. My Immortals and Flayed Ones need some finishing touches, and my entire squad of destroyers, sans one of each type, need to be painted. However, once I finish the destroyers, I'll be able to field a more-or-less fully painted army. That goal, in fact, is very well in sight. I'm very pumped at the prospect.
I got my Pariahs converted last night at Arica's. I've decided to clip off their crappy flimsy warscythe blades (that were destined to snap off anyway, because as we all know, pewter is SUPER STRONG *rolls eyes*) and replace them with various other polearm blades from the fantasy setting - two now feature glaives, converted from Chaos Warrior swords, and the rest feature various halberd and beaked axe heads. One, who will be their commander (not that Pariahs have commanders, per se, but I like adding a sense of heraldry, as you know) bears a Japanese-style footman's banner on his back. I apologize for the lack of pictures; I'll try to remedy that soon. With those conversions done, I'll be priming and painting them soon.
I suppose, more than finishing my army as it stands, I'm excited about the prospect of gaming terrain. I found a VERY excellent tutorial on how to assemble a modular table, and I want to make one all my own of either Necron terrain (what I'm affectionately calling my "Shadowmoon Valley" board) or cityfight terrain. I'm inclined, however, to attempt to finish our existing modular city board, but I think it needs some work - in playing on it, we found that we put too much rubble on it, and it makes the board impossible to set models on. I'll most likely end up making it my Shadowmoon Valley terrain. I hope to use some Crackle paint to allow for the cracked landscape with the glowing green showing through. Hopefully, such a paint job will hold up to being a gaming surface. I'm also looking forward to the glowing green river of sludge, that I plan to do with epoxy and everything, as the tutorial instructs. The difficult part looks like it's going to be making the frames for the various pieces... but once that's conquered, they should all fit beautifully end-to-end, and making the terrain is just a formality at that point. Budget - and not skill or inspiration - is the limiter at this point.
And what's a great terrain board without features to put on it? Things are also looking relatively skyward in a terrain-feature department, as my skill and knowledge of how to build reliable and Necron-ish pieces of terrain is growing. I recently finished construction on my ruined stone circle - the Necron obelisk turned out EXACTLY the way I wanted it to. I was worried that the spray paint would get everywhere when I tried to gradate the black out into the stone, but it didn't, and gave me ample room to show the "assimilation" effect I was hoping to portray. This piece will make an excellent terrain feature, and possibly a great objective in games.
I'll really need to see how well the terrain board comes out before I start making sweeping judgement calls on what sort of other terrain or objectives I can make, but it's looking good so far. Once I get my car cleaned out, the SMV board will be highly transportable, also, so I can cart it around with me at will.
I'll keep you up to date on developments as I make stuff. I hope beyond hope that this doesn't turn into another one of those projects that gets shelved indefinitely.
The aftermath So, the Fight Club thing was pretty cool, actually.
People-wise, the event was a 10. The Fight Club is just full of great people, with great looking models and, as Arica phrases it, "good hobby." Apparently, in Games Workshop parlance, hobby is a noun for "all-around sportsmanship, modeling, painting, knowledge of the rules, and overall enthusiasm." I've begun to pick it up as well, for better or worse.
Game-wise, I have to rate it about a 7... and ONLY because my side lost on turn 1 due to a little hiccup in the rules. The goal was for the Eldar side to obliterate the Necron's pylon. Well, apparently the Eldar titans can deep strike, so on turn 1, it wasn't on the board yet. The Eldar played a "Hammer Blow" strategem that randomly targeted a single super-heavy on the board... and since our pylon was the only one... it took a pounding before a single shot was fired, and was wiped off the board. The rest of the game was a formality at that point.
It was fun, and I hate to be a spoilsport about it, but it just felt... cheap.
I got to display my models, though. After a marathon paint session, my new tally looks like this :
| Painted | Unpainted |
| HQ - 1 Nightbringer - 3 Necron Lords ELITES - 10 Immortals (mostly) - 10 Flayed Ones (mostly) TROOPS - 30 Warriors FAST ATTACK - 3 Wraiths - 8 Scarab Swarms - 1 Destroyer HEAVY SUPPORT - 1 Tomb Spyder - 1 Heavy Destroyer - 1 Monolith (mostly) OTHER - 1 Large Crater (for when my Monolith gets blown to hell) |
HQ - 1 Deciever ELITES - 5 Pariahs FAST ATTACK - 4 Destroyers HEAVY SUPPORT - 2 Heavy Destroyers - 2 Monoliths |
That's something I can live with. My army is so close to done, I can taste it... then, I'll be able to buy MORE models! But, at least if I buy more models, I'll only be one unit away from having my entire army painted again.
I also have some pictures from the Fight Club. The first rule may be not to talk about it, but nobody said not to pull pictures off my camera phone.
The Paint-a-thon First, a little background, so those of you who care can get caught up with what I'm talking about here.
I'm part of a fan-club called the "40K Fight Club," which is a Warhammer 40K gaming community. We're not really so much a "Gaming League," or anything of the sort, as there's really little more than friendly competition between us. The 40KFC is more of a network of gamers who like to share their hobby with like-minded, mature people. Sadly, as I'm sure some of you have read me rant about on this very blog, the hobby tends to be permeated by people who have not yet required a razor as part of their daily grooming. The 40K Fight Club makes sure that the people we network with for games are old enough to be mature about their gaming, and helps us find games between other members, discuss tactics, numbers, strategy, painting, design, technique... all of the stuff that goes with the wonderful hobby that is Warhammer 40,000.
That said, here's the scoop: This friday is the first Legio Nonus (our Fight Club chapter) All-Nighter at the Novi Games Workshop store where Arica works. The plan is to host a Necrons vs Eldar Apocalypse game, so all members are encouraged to bring everything of those armies that they can muster.
The catch? Only painted models on the table... which means I'm going to be missing some.
Let's take a tally:
| Painted | Unpainted |
| HQ - 1 Nightbringer - 3 Necron Lords ELITES - 1 Immortal - 10 Flayed Ones (mostly) TROOPS - 25 Warriors FAST ATTACK - 3 Wraiths - 8 Scarab Swarms - 1 Destroyer HEAVY SUPPORT - 1 Tomb Spyder - 1 Heavy Destroyer - 1 Monolith (mostly) |
HQ - 1 Deciever ELITES - 9 Immortals - 5 Pariahs TROOPS - 5 Warriors FAST ATTACK - 4 Destroyers HEAVY SUPPORT - 3 Heavy Destroyers - 2 Monoliths OTHER - 1 Large Crater (for when my Monolith gets blown to hell) |
So, as you can see, I don't have a LOT to do, in comparison to what I've already got done. I don't plan on assembling / painting my Deceiver for this game, so I can rank him out right now. I've come to terms with the idea that I won't be fielding more than one of my Monoliths, because they simply take too much time to assemble and I want them painted WELL.
What this basically leaves me with is a problem with what to paint first, and how fast can I paint as much of the above list as possible before Friday? It doesn't seem like a lot, but you'd be surprised how slow of a painted I can be when I put my mind to it. I got into this hobby because I liked painting the figures... it's just a bonus to me to be able to play the game with them also, and look good doing it.
I think my priority list is : finish my 5 warriors so I can present 3 full squads, then finish my Immortals. I'm not terribly worried about the Pariahs - though they're REALLY nice against Eldar, they also have limited use, and I only have 5 of them anyway. After Immortals, I'd like my Destroyers finished. Destroyers, with regards to usefulness, should probably go before Immortals, since they're the bomb-diggity, but I think Immortals are cooler looking, and I want my command squad there in force. Last in consideration is my Heavy Destroyers, since they make decent tank-busters, but little else. One will more often take Destroyers for their higher volume of weaker shots, and spend their points on Monoliths for heavy support and utility.
I want to make an effort to get the crater painted, as past experience with my monolith tells me I'll need it... but it's far from vital. It's nice to be prepared though, and when the rules say, "remove the vehicle from play and replace it with a smoldering crater," it impresses people when you produce said-smoldering-crater, and place it on the board. It enhances one of the aspects of the game I've come to truly appreciate, and that is theatrics. One can only play Ghetto-hammer so long before they aspire to drive their game to the next level.
So, wish me luck on my paint-a-thon. I'll try to take a group photo if I can wrangle a camera to use Friday.
World of Revelations No, not the biblical book. Just epiphanies to go around.
First, Amber's been trucking away like a trooper and is almost to the Outlands! Congratulations, Amber! She had a bad day the other night, when nothing seemed to go right, and she was making all sorts of silly errors. Let me assure you again, Amber - we've all had those days. We were all new at one point, and utterly misunderstood our rolls in groups.
Let me give you an example from my own n00b background :
• When I was leveling my priest, I thought that FADE (which drops a certain amount of aggro in combat) would work like limited stealth. I was popping it while trying to skirt past monsters, and getting upset that Fade wasn't working when they attacked me.
• While leveling my mage (the first time, not my new blood elf) I was in a dungeon with a group. This was in the days before paladins in the horde, so there was no "AOE Tanking." Warriors had to deal with large groups with crappy single-target aggro, and this was a level 40 dungeon, so our warrior tank didn't even have all the tricks up his sleeve that he could have. Anyway, I had gotten it into my head that mages were "the AOE class" and that's how we did damage - single-target frostbolts were an inefficient use of my ability. I was afraid the group would be mad at me if I didn't AOE every pull... so I did. A lot. And pulled a TON of aggro, and kept dying every other pull, until the warrior FINALLY yelled at me and I stopped.
• My first warrior was spec'd Protection for leveling because I thought I'd die less. I didn't realize that's also why fights took FOREVER, and I got bored with the character and deleted him.
And those are just the things I can think of while typing this.
You aren't the first. You won't be the last. Hell, there are people I've grouped with in my 70s that still make these sorts of mistakes. It's a game, and nobody's going to hunt you down and kill you over it. Buck up, kiddo. We still love you, and we still want to play with you.
Also, THIS little gem popped up over my messenger the other day. I thought I'd share Amber's "coming of age" story as it unfolded:
Now, with regards to me...
I've recently joined a new guild! I'm a proud initiate of <The Syndicate> with Spradlin. "Spradlin?" you say. "But, I thought you HATED priests and never wanted to play one ever again!"
Well, that's sort of true. See, here's how it went: I got Spradlin up to the point he was at when I left him. He had roughly +1100 healing, which is alright for say, introductory raiding. He could get into a beginning level Karahzan guild maybe, and wouldn't have too much difficulty in the level 70 dungeons. Heroics were a little out of his reach, but he could MAYBE pull off the easiest of them with a few sweaty-palm moments.
So, being the player I was, I said, "Hey, how do I up my game here? How can I improve my gear so I can get into heroics and such?" Well, the I got two answers; The first was, "Make the Primal Mooncloth set and the Whitemend Set - that'll get you started." The second answer was, "Run Karazhan a lot."
Well, to answer the last one first, this was about the time <Vendetta>, the guild I was in at the time, fell apart. Karahzan wasn't going well for us, we were losing members to guilds that WERE making progress, and then our guild leader got his account hacked. It was the straw that broke the camel's back, and <Vendetta> was done for. So, unfortunately, that avenue was cut off from me. My spirit was a little broken at that point as well, so finding another guild just wasn't what I was looking for.
In the mean time, I was looking at the requirements for the Primal Mooncloth set and the Whitemend set. Let's see here... Countless pieces of primal mooncloth (on a 4-day cooldown for 2 pieces)... meaning that if I make all my mooncloth myself, I'll have my stuff done by next CHRISTMAS. Tons of Primal Life, Primal Water, and the Whitemend set requires tons of Primal MIGHTS, and each takes a Primal NETHER (that were soulbound at the time, rememer) making each one of those worth a little over 1000g each. The amount of either a) farming, or b) gold and auction-house luck required to gather the materials for even one of those items (of the 5 in the full set) was too much to bare on my priest. I refused to spend my money on not only the items I needed to collect, but also constant respeccing so I could farm as Shadow and continue healing as Holy. Even with decent gear, my damage was sub-standard to other classes, and farming was painfully slow and monotonous.
No, thank you.
So I retired Spradlin. The prospect of trying to move him up in the world, and what it would take to do that, was far too much for me. Combine that with the fact that I was burnt out on being everyone's healer-on-demand, and you've got a 1-2-3 recipe for hating priests.
After taking some time off to go play Alliance and having a lot of fun on my Druid, I finally came back to playing Horde after <Bloodline> fell apart. I used the fresh start as a chance to play with Carl and Mac again, and level up classes I'd never played before - Mage and Warrior, namely. Ironhyde was okay. I'll admit I had some fun with him, but ultimately, he and I remain in a love-hate relationship, and I refuse to talk to him if he's not farming Primal Waters for me. Bethual I had FAR more fun with, having come back to the Mage class after all this time. My very first WoW character was a mage of the same name - I still have him on Eonar, in fact. But, this was back in the days that mages sucked (Evocate was a talent, and Arcane Explosion required 5 talent points to make instant, among many other things) so I shelved him and leveled Rivanna, my Warlock. So, now that mages do not, in fact, suck, I gave the class another try, and had a blast with it.
So, now I've got 2 level 70s in mediocre gear - one of which I don't even particularly like - and two 66s, neither of which I can bring myself to be enthused about for longer than a week. I wanted to run heroics, and Karahzan, and advance... but the game had reached a point where, unless you have the gear already, you can't get into those places. Nobody's running Kara for the GEAR anymore, they just trample through it for badges to get bigger, better gear. I was dismayed that there would be no progression for me.
Then I realized something - I had 2 level 70s to do my farming (one of which can do anything but water elementals in 2-shots) and I had a priest that I missed terribly.
So, the triumphant return of Spradlin occurred, and I started looking into getting my PMC and Whitemend. It really wasn't that hard, once I had someone who could run around 2-shotting stuff, and who had close to 4000g in his pocket to lend to the effort. Not long after, I had my gear, and I had leveled up my tailoring AND enchanting skills to maximum level of 375. With that kind of bankroll, it went relatively smooth. I was at +1500 healing, which is MORE than acceptable for Karazhan, and capable for all but the hardest heroics. I took a nice long look at my gear, and decided it was time to close the gear gap by applying to a guild that's raiding at my level.
I talked to <The Syndicate>, and though they liked me, they said my gear was still shy of where they were at in the game, and they wouldn't be able to gear me up sufficiently to catch up. I would need far closer to +2000 healing bonus to join them. I said okay, and I understand.
The bar was set - 2K or bust. And bust I did, but only my ass for about a week straight.
The first thing I did was re-gem ALL of my gear. I was hardly hurting for mana regeneration, so a lot of my hybrid +healing/spirit and +healing/intellect gems went away to make room for pure +healing gems. Then, I bit the bullet, and did the one thing I hated most... I PVPed.
Why? Why would I do something I hate so much? Well... because with a little time chewing on the proverbial bullet, I could upgrade my 2-hand staff with +227 healing on it, to a ONE HAND mace with somewhere in the range of +443, and still have room for an offhand with another +62ish on it. Thanks, Blizzard, for making me PVP to get PVE gear. I spec'd Discipline, and it was bearable - try 2-shotting a guy who has a small handful of resilience, a damage shield, pain suppression, and uninterruptible heals. I might not kill you, but my team will, while you're slamming your head against the wall trying in vain to kill me.
So, I got my PVP weapon / offhand, enchanted it, and took the total again - +1941. MUCH BETTER.
I whispered the guild leader of <The Syndicate> and asked, "A week or so ago, you asked me to get closer to 2000 +healing and re-apply. How's +1941?"
He replied, "wow... that's.... that's some dedication!"
15 minutes later, I was invited to the guild.
So, go me! I feel good that a) I'm able to progress, even if it is pretty late in the game, with the new expansion looming around the corner, and b) that I get to play my favorite character again, and c) that I have a community to be in once again. I love <XRaided> but it gets really lonely sometimes.
And WOW I just realized how long this post is. I'll cut this one off here. Thanks for reading, if you actually finished this.
Back into the breach WoW is an odd thing for me - it ebbs and flows like the proverbial tides. I'll go weeks without playing it, contemplating whether I should just shut down my account, and then I'll play it for an hour, rediscover why I love the game, and then I'm sucked back into it as my primary form of entertainment for another handful of weeks. For better or worse, I seem to be on one of my heavy-WoW iterations currently.
Ed and I have been having quite a bit of fun with my Paladin and his Mage - we've teamed up for what I call the "You hold'm, I'll hit'm" technique. Essentially, my Paladin gathers a ton of monsters from a small area (10-15 suits us fine), pisses them all off with his magic, and then hides behind his shield while Ed's Mage rains down brimstone on them all. The only problem at that point is looting all the dead bodies. It's actually gotten to the point where we can't quest without one another, like an addiction. He simply has lost the ability to control monsters, and can't handle pulling them only one at a time, and I can't handle taking 5 minutes to kill a group of 3 monsters. It's become tedious for us both now that we've gotten a good solid glimpse of how it can be with a little teamwork and no small amount of molten pain.
I've also started in on my own Mage, but unlike Ed, I'm focusing on the Frost abilities rather than the Fire. Fire focuses heavily on destroying things before they ever reach you through extreme damage output. Frost, on the other hand, requires more finesse, but guarantees survivability through permission; that is to say, I dictate when and where my enemy moves by freezing him in place for the short duration we call "the rest of his life." The Frostbite ability is key to this, and while a very random 15% chance to freeze seems spartan, when you look at the sheer volume of chilling effects it has to select its 15% rate from, it becomes more than frequent enough to warrant the expenditure.
I've actually destroyed guys before they have had the chance to move their feet. All things considered, I'll trade the ability to kill a guy in 5 seconds instead of 3 for the ability to survive damned near anything. As Cheryl, my friend and ex-guild leader used to say, "You do zero damage when you're dead."
Currently, my mage, (Bethual, blood elf mage, Arygos) is level 21, and already I'm wowed by the power of Frost. When I get Shatter, I'll be unstoppable.
If anyone has opinions on the Icy Veins talent, please let me know. Mackenzie (a long-time frost-zealot herself) said it's worth having at 70, but can be skipped as a fill-in point later in lieu of more potent talents. If anyone else has knowledge of this, please tell me if you agree or disagree.
Rest Well, Gary Gygax Gary Gygax, the creator of Dungeons and Dragons, and grandfather of all tabletop gaming ... and really roleplaying and tabletop gaming in general, died yesterday at the age of 69.
You can read the full story about his unfortunate passing here.
It's a strange thing, really... I never really payed much attention to Gary Gygax while he was alive. Honestly, of all the games I've played, D&D was the clunkiest and least entertaining system of all of them. A game's rules must work WITH the system to make a complete story-telling experience, and AD&D 2nd Edition never seemed to quite do that, in my opinion. Hence, when the name Gary Gygax came up, I would usually roll my eyes.
After his death yesterday though, I think it really sunk in that Gary was so much more than just "that guy who wrote D&D." Gary gave birth to the entire role-playing genre. Everything from D&D, to 7th Sea (which we played last night, more on that in a moment) to Aberrant... even other fantasy games like Warhammer, and all the way up to video games like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest... all owe in, in some way, their entire existence to Mr. Gygax. I think I know how my father felt when John Lennon died, and most likely felt again when George Harrison followed him Home. It's a bit of an alien feeling to me, too, considering I think this is the first time I've given Mr. Gygax more than a second thought.
Coincidentally, we had our 7th Sea game scheduled for last night at Rob and Vicki's. In honor of Mr. Gygax, and the wonderful things he caused in our lives, we had 1D6 rounds of silence (a round is 6 seconds). We took a moment once everyone was gathered, and shared Cheetos and Mountain Dew, and went around the circle telling about our first role-playing game, and our first experience with D&D. We touched on the fact, also, that were it not for role-playing games, none of us would know one another. In some way, shape, or form, all of us knew almost everyone else in that group through gaming.
So, here's to you, Mr. Gary Gygax. Thank you for giving us the means to tell such wonderful stories of action, adventure, romance, danger, and good triumphing over evil. Thank you for allowing us all to be heroes... if only on pizza-sauce stained paper and a handful of odd shaped dice.
I made a desktop picture in memory of Gary, also. You can download it here.
