Mini Mario on DSi

I downloaded the new Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Minis March Again! from the DSi Ware store a couple days back and have been playing the game.  I had not played, or even heard of, the similar titles that came before this one.  The game is basically a puzzle game, you have a bunch of wind up mini Mario’s that you need to get through the level, a room, before time runs out.  You need to open doors, collect coins, kill or avoid bad guys, and lots of other typical Mario type things.

The game is fun, and can be a bit challenging.  Once you reach the end of a level you need to defeat Donkey Kong by shooting mini Marios at him.  I am finding these to be the most difficult part, and I guess that’s why the reserve these for the boss challenge.    It would be a little bit better game if it made use of both screens for game play.  That is my only issue thus far.

You can build, share and download levels over WiFi Connect which is a pretty cool way to keep the game fresh.  I think the game is well worth the 800 points I paid for it, especially since I was able to just snag it while laying in bed one night.

Fargrim Salamene – D&D Character Concept

I spent some time this weekend playing with the DDI Character Builder just to see what types of PC’s I might want to play. Of the 1/2 dozen or so I made this is the one that I am most interested in. I really like the idea of focusing on push and pull, and enhancing the bull rush option with my feat. Pushing people into terrain, off of cliffs and against walls is his typical tactic. Once he has pushed one enemy off of a cliff he uses his flail and his Thorn Strike power to pull a fresh enemy in before pushing him off a cliff as well.

Character Summary

Fargrim Salamene, Level 1 | Dwarf, Warden

Build: Earth Warden

Guardian Might: Earthstrength

FINAL ABILITY SCORES

Str 18, Con 16, Dex 10, Int 10, Wis 13, Cha 8.

STARTING ABILITY SCORES

Str 18, Con 14, Dex 10, Int 10, Wis 11, Cha 8.

AC: 16 Fort: 15 Reflex: 10 Will: 12

HP: 33 Surges: 12 Surge Value: 8

TRAINED SKILLS

Nature +6, Intimidate +4, Endurance +9, Perception +8

UNTRAINED SKILLS

Acrobatics -1, Arcana, Bluff -1, Diplomacy -1, Dungeoneering +3, Heal +1, History, Insight +1, Religion, Stealth -1, Streetwise -1, Thievery -1, Athletics +3

FEATS

Level 1: Improved Bull Rush

POWERS

Warden at-will 1: Thorn Strike

Warden at-will 1: Weight of Earth

Warden daily 1: Form of the Fearsome Ram

Warden encounter 1: Thunder Ram Assault

ITEMS

Hide Armor, Adventurer’s Kit, Heavy flail

Background

For hundreds of centuries the Dwarves of Nalimutan pass protected and maintained the road through the Matang Mountains. Many decades of relative peace and prosperity brought a quiet calm to the dwarves, who began to spend more time quarrying and selling stone. Their ever vigilant eye waned, and the ancient enemy of the dwarves took the opportunity to strike.

Allied with a small group of Storm Giants, the Stone Giants who had mysteriously left the pass, returned in great numbers over running the unprepared dwarven clan. The dwarves suffered many casualties and were scattered into the surrounding valleys.

Fargrim was a young boy when the attack occurred, and fled from the giants at the demands of his father. Blindly the young dwarf ran down the mountain into the forests below, and finding a quite place to sit waited for his father to join him. While waiting, he was approached by a most unusual creature. Salamene, a forest Dryad, found young Fargrim in the forest, and thinking it odd to find a young dwarf here set about talking with him. Fargrim was quite taken aback by this odd mix of humanoid and plant, and they talked over the course of many days. Eventually, Fargrim decided to set out to find the remainder of his clan, but when he emerged from the forests edge and looked up to the mountain his heart sank. The pass that had stood open for so many hundreds of years was gone. The top of the mountain collapsed down upon the pass wiping all that Fargrim had ever known from the world. Salamene followed Fargrim from the forest, and when she arrived behind him looked up at the mountain. “Poor, poor Fargrim”, she said. Salamene had watched part of the battle over the past few days and knew the power that was unleashed upon Fargrim’s home. She quietly left Fargrim to his thoughts.

Fargrim searched this side of the mountain for any sign of his clan members, but if any had escaped this way he found none. Alone, Fargrim set out to build what he could on the forests edge. Unskilled in stone working, but not entirely untrained, Fargrim built a small cottage just inside the eaves of the forest. A month or more had passed since Fargrim looked up at his former home, and he had settled in as best he could. He had not seen Salamene since she left him on that day, but now heard her voice through his window, panic was in the voice. He cautiously opened the door, hefting a spear he had made from the branch of a fallen tree and a sharp stone that he carefully hewed to a perfect point. She appeared then before him, but not as he had seen her before. She was in the guise of a beautiful elf maiden, wearing the hide of some great beast across her breast. She carried a large sword, and approached him with great speed.

“You can avenge your family today Dwarf, a giant has come down from the mountains and is destroying the forest. It is my job to protect this forest, and the trees that live here. Help me to destroy this monster and free your conscious.” Fargrim was running before she even finished speaking, in the direction of a sound that he now understood to be that of a giant tearing down trees. As he ran Salamene seemed to vanish and reappear again and again moving with speed that he could not match. He burst quickly into a newly cleared area of the forest and saw Salamene fighting the Giant. She danced around the giant confusing it, slicing into his think flesh with her sword. Without thinking Fargrim charged into the battle, and with the giant distracted managed to impale the giant through the lower leg. A howl of anger and pain emanated from the unsuspecting giant, and as he turned to see what had happened, he lost his balance and fell with a mighty crash. Salamene smiled a fleeting smile, and jumped upon the fallen giants body. She stabbed deep, still moving quickly across the giants body. The sounds of the giants anguish filled the forest, and Fargrim’s ears. He climbed upon the giants chest and Salamene stopped next to him. She handed him her sword, and as he looked into the giants eyes, plunged the weapon deep into his heart.

Fargrim quietly turned and left the giant and Salamene behind, returning to his new home on the edge of the forest and the mountain. It was many years before Salamene returned to Fargrim. He had cultivated a small area of land just outside of the forest and grew many crops. Over the years Fargrim tended to the goats that grazed in the high mountains and on the forests edge. He explored the forest and the mountains, and learned to live from the earth. He met few others in this small area of land at the bottom of the mountain. Humans and elves mostly, but never any dwarves. When Salamene returned Fargrim was just entering his adulthood. Salamene came by regularly over the next 15 years, and slowly began teaching Fargrim what she knew about the forest, the earth, the mountains and the world. She taught him about the power in the earth, the trees and even the rams that he tends to. She taught him to use his strength to push and pull the enemies of the earth and throw them off balance.

After all of the years of training, after all of the years of unusual friendship Salamene visited Fargrim one last time. She explained that her task of finding a new guardian for this part of the world was complete. She was returning to her home, and to her kind, and to her family. Fargrim accepted that he would return to his clan if he could, and said a quick good bye. Salamene gave Fargrim a gift before she left. A flail fashioned from the materials of the land that Fargrim would now protect. She promised the weapon would be an extension of himself and all he learned, and it turns out it was.

Tabletop Gaming News – Update

Just a quick update on my post from last week.  I was very happy to fire up Google Reader this morning and see a post from TGN.  It appears that they got the site back up and running late last night, and gaming news is starting to flow again.  If you have even a passing interest in miniatures gaming you must be reading this blog to keep up with what is going on in the industry.

Welcome back Zac!

BGFW Gaming Tokens?

I have been looking at some game tokens for use in my D&D campaign that just started, and came across the Gaming Tokens on the Dark Platypus site. They have a number of tokens, mostly different monsters and what not. What really caught my attention was the +0/+1, +1/+1 etc counters. These might work quite well not for D&D but for Battleground Fantasy Warfare. I find it somewhat difficult to keep track of the various different effects, and these might be a pretty nice way to keep track. You could even use multiples of the same image tokens to mark objective points and the like.

4th Edition Campaign Kickoff – Recap

At long last I finally DM’d my first game of 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons on Thursday evening. We played from about 6:30 – 9:30 and managed to make it through a rather lengthy introduction to the setting and campaign, a player introduction, a bit of travel AND one combat encounter. I received some really amazing comments after the game and think all the players really had fun. We are currently a group of 4 players with a 5th in the wings for next session.

The campaign is set in the kingdom of Treayal. Treayal is a peaceful land with less than peaceful neighbors. Orcs, goblins, tieflings, and hobgoblins attack from the east, engaging in a war that has lasted almost 20 years. Much of the land has been spared the horrors of war and the people have gone on with their daily lives, but recent happenings on the western border may signal an end to the long standing peace. King Phillip is stretched thin, and recruits our heroes to investigate the troubles in the west.

The players accepted the request of the king and set out on their quest. The journey across Treayal is a long one, but the roads are well kept and safe. The journey was not without trouble though, on the morning of the 9th day the players coach stopped at the sounds of a young girls screams. On the heels of her screams was a guttural growl from the family cemetery of the farm the girl had run from. Three creatures covered in blood and dirt moved toward the girl and the party. The party did not see the the four other creatures hiding in the trees. The farmers had a small table alongside the road where they often sell fresh vegetables to travelers. The party made good use of the table by pushing it over for some cover. I had an idea in mind to have a fairly lengthy combat for the first game. I went with 9 level 2 minions, and level 6 monster. The battle proved challenging to the party (the encounter builder showed it as hard), but not insurmountable. The party was facing a Stench Ghoul, which turns out to be quite a challenging monster to hit. His aura 2 stench ability basically negates the combat advantage bonus and that made it difficult for some PC’s to hit his 23 AC. In retrospect this was a little mean, but I didn’t fully understand the ramifications. I will say this, once we got into the flow of things we were moving through the combat quite quickly. We didn’t have many moves in combat, but the Ghoul did immobilize and daze a few characters.

The characters were able to defeat the ghouls in the end, and save most of the family of the little girl (her eldest brother was killed). The father of the family, somewhat in a daze, let the PC’s know that attacks by the ghouls have happened before, but it is usually just a single creature. They are also very infrequent. They must have been driven out of their lair north of the farm en masse. The ghouls come from the ruins of a small village, destroyed by fire many years past.

I have skill challenges, more roleplaying opportunities and of course more combats on deck for the upcoming sessions. All of us are new to 4e, so we will be progressing together. You can find out more about the campaign and the History of Treayal on our campaign site.

TableTop Gaming News – News

TableTop Gaming News is one of my favorite sources of game industry information. While trying to catch up on news in Google Reader this morning I received a number of 500 Internal Server errors. I went by the home page and was saddened to read that Zac won’t be publishing the site anymore. He did a really great job of keeping me up to date with what was going on in the word of table top miniatures gaming, and the site will definitely be missed. He is offering the site up for sale, perhaps someone will step in an buy it. I wish Zac good luck with future plans.

TGN for sale

It appears that the server that TGN currently resides on is suffering from a rather heavy load. This load isn’t due to the traffic on TGN which is normal for the month and my ISP appears to be uninterested in helping to solve the problem. Sadly I don’t have the tools or access to the tools that would allow me to solve the issue and despite my efforts over the last day or so I have been unable to rectify the issue.

The only solutions to this are to upgrade to a more expensive hosting package (which I am not willing to do) or move to a new ISP. Sadly I’m not really interested in doing that either.

Over the last year I have had less and less time to devote to the site and it has begun to require more of my time not only to keep it running and up-to-date but also in terms of the news gathering and posting.

It has long been a dream of mine to make the site profitable enough to support me and over the last four years despite the strides the site has made in terms of reach and traffic this hasn’t really been the case. I am of the opinion that given enough time and resources this site could in fact generate a fairly good income but sadly I just don’t have the time to pursue any additional revenue streams for the site.

On most evenings I usually have to choose between painting and posting news and it has been about a year since I was able to dedicate anything more than a few hours a day to the site.

Sadly I have decided to put the site up for sale. Anyone interested in purchasing the site should email me zac at tabletopgamingnews.com. Information regarding the site, traffic and revenue levels can be provided to any serious bidders.

I will be winding down the site and removing pages right away. The TGN Talk message board will stay open for the time being.

Review: Goodman Games Level Up

I received issue number one in the mail yesterday and quickly opened it up and read it.  I am going to go into some detail in a bit, but I wanted to make mention of a few overview points.  First, the magazine shipped in a white envelope.  This is nice as it keeps the cover in nice shape and keeps the magazine from becoming to bent.  The magazine has a glossy full color cover (front and back), and has 56 black and white pages inside.  The majority of the magazine is content.  There are about four full pages of advertisements along with a number of smaller 1/4 or 1/2 page ads.  The ads are not obtrusive in anyway and even just leafing quickly through the magazine you will get the feeling that it is about the content.  One of the nicest things about this magazine is the decision to offer an electronic copy for everyone who purchases the paper magazine.  The magazine includes a code that allows you to download the e-version from RPGNow.

So what is inside this magazine?  The table of contents shows 5 columns and 9 feature articles.  The column from the editor lays out what we can expect from the features in this and future issues.  Each magazine will include a couple of adventures, including the “A Picture Tells 1,000 Words” feature where they write a 1,000 word adventure from a single picture.  There is also a beastiary brought to us by Blackdirge, based on the 4e monster book that Goodman has published.  This is combined with other articles useful for both players and DM’s.  Ok, lets look at each of the April 2009 articles.

Wizards Corner: This issue starts out with a brief column about not splitting up an adventuring party, and the negative effects that can happen if you do.  It is OK for what it is.

Roads to Adventure:  The main adventure this month features a journey to a cave crawling with dinos..I mean behemoths, a few ogres and a Hill Giant.  The adventure is for 7th level characters and would actually make a nice diversion.  The adventure has 7 adventure areas and makes great use of the monsters in this months beastiary.

PC Pearls: Focus here is on three paragon paths that allow players to specialize in a particular weapon type. I particularly like the Arbalester.  They even include rules for an Arbalest which makes the whole PP worthwhile.

Blackdrige’s Beastiary:  This is  great article presenting seven brand new dinosaur monsters.  Four of them are listed as behemoths and the other three are listed as lizardwolfs  These run the gambit from 3rd to 24th level.  Each entry has a full set of stats, a nice description as well as an associated picture.  I think that this is one of the sections I will most look forward to with each issue.

Deities of Aereth:  This section is only really useful if you game in Aereth which is the setting that all of th Goodman Dungeon Crawl Classics is set in.  The article itself though is very complete.  The article covers all of the needed background information and great detail on the followers of the god.  Vestments, relics, symbols and temples are all covered in detail.They also include a Divinity Feat, a special magic item and a paragon path devoted to the god.

Azagar’s Advice or Adventurers:  This section introduces new feats specific to using a particular weapon.  They cover axes, flails, hammers and maces in this issue.  The article provides a single feat for each tier and each weapon.  The flail options look particularly fun.

GM Gems:  This issue introduces some new fiendish foes for DM’s to torment their players.  This section is focused on some new templates to create creatures with a demonic slant to them.  The Demon Knight option is quite nice, reminding me a bit of something out of Warhammer.

Power Skins:  This is an interesting section, they have taken the first level fighter powers and re-written them to be a bit more violent.  For example, they have replaced Cleave with Hewing Strike.  Interesting idea, although I don’t think I would make much use of these.

1,000 Words: This is such a great little section.  One picture, 1,000 words and a nice short encounter.  This one has a party working through both skill challenges and a potential combat.  he skill challenge sets the battle grid for the combat part of the encounter. I found the skill challenge part a bit difficult to understand on the first few readings, but I think it is a pretty good idea once you get what they are meaning.

Jacks Ultrashort Reviews: This section contains seven short reviews.  Four of the reviews are for Goodman Games products which is a bit silly, but the reviews get the point across.  Almost everything reviewed gets 5 stars which is also a bit silly.  I think this is my least favorite section of the magazine.

d20 questions: Nope not a reversion to an older version of D&D, this is just 20 questions asked of a gamer.  It is a nice interview.

4e Toolkit:  A simple set of lists to help you create more 4e like names for custom monsters.  About all there is to say about that.

Dear Archmage Abby:  This is the obligatory letters section.  Meh.

So there it is.  I have tried to give an overview of the content, and I sincerely hope it interests you enough to pick up a copy.  The magazine is well produced, and I am looking forward to the next issue.  Here’s hoping the sales are strong enough to keep this magazine going for a long time to come.

Mystery of the Borderlands 4e Campaign

Image via Wikipedia

Thinks have finally come together, and it looks like my 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons game will be kicking off in about 13 days on May 13th.  I can just barely remember “playing” Dungeons & Dragons with my brother and a few friends (Tony & Jerry Dunham if I recall correctly) when I was a kid.  We didn’t really play correctly, but I doubt we cared.  We used to go sit in the University of South Dakota student union and play.  Good times.

I stopped playing D&D until about 5 years ago when I got interested in playing some 3 and later 3.5 edition games.  I actually DM’d my first D&D RPG for 3.5 about 2 years ago.  It went fairly well but we only had one session which kind of sucked.  In all honesty, I really didn’t like the 3.x versions much.  They were a bit to fiddly for me, and you really needed to be an expert to keep things running right (or so I felt).

Enter D&D 4th edition, and some massive changes to the way the game is played.  When I first started hearing about the details of the changes I had a feeling I would like the game, and I can say that my feelings were quite correct.  From a game standpoint, I think this is going to be a load of fun to play.  The roleplaying aspect should be quite interesting as well with new Skill Challenges being used along side combat and just plain old fashioned roleplaying.

We have 5 (possibly 6) 2nd level characters almost ready to dive into the game.  I have been working on a wiki site using Google Sites to use as a home base for the game.  If you are interested in following Dara, Pax, Elizur, Olias and the others on their quest you can check in with the wiki or this blog.

D&D 4e for Free

Cover via Amazon

Way to go Wizards!!!


Wizards of the Coast has posted up PDF files containing both the quick start rules and the Keep on the Shadowfell introductory adventure.  Wizards is calling this the D&D Test Drive and I think it is an amazing way for players to get a feel for the game.  In addition to the two PDF files, Wizards is reminding everyone that the Character Builder is available for free to create characters of levels 1 – 3.

I should also mention that the Character Builder was just updated to include the Arcane Powers supplement.  Really like working with Character Builder, and it seems that Wizards is taking the product serious as the updates are coming each month (last Tuesday) on schedule.

ARGGHHH! Reading is bad for my health

Image by Laenulfean via Flickr

Well not really,but…

I have been hard at work on adventures for a 4e D&D campaign and it has been going really well.  I have been quite immersed in the setting I am creating and it has been a lot of fun.  This morning I just happen along a few posts relating to Savage Worlds and Warhammer Fantasy and my focus has gone all wonky.

Warhammer is really my favorite fantasy setting for RPG’s.  It is the first game I played with any real zeal and it is  the game I have the fondest memories playing.  It is one of those games I really want to be playing.  So this morning I start thinking about how I could port the 4e game over to WFRP.

Then I start reading about some Savage Worlds fantasy settings, like Hellfrost.  I am really not that familiar with the game, only playing once at this years OwlCon.  I really like the idea of the game,  especially the use of miniatures.

I suppose I will keep the 4e game working for now.  Everyone already has characters made, and I am actually very excited about the game.  Still, I am hopeful that I will get to play some WFRP or Savage Worlds  soon.