Followers

Yay, I have a follower! Thanks Dave!

I'm not sure how long it's been around, but there's a nifty little gadget that showed up on a blog I follow that shows people who follow your blog and lets other people easily add themselves as a follower if they want to.

So, what does this do for you? Well, other than giving me an ego boost, it adds the blogs you follow to your Blogger Dashboard so you can see when there's a new post up. There's an article here that goes into a bit more detail.

More Traveller

I finally got my hands on the 760 Patrons and the Mercenary books for Traveller. I haven't gotten to read much of either yet, but I've browsed through them enough to give my initial impressions.

Mercenary is very much what you would expect if you ever read the original Mercenary book for Traveller. It's all about expanded rules for running mercenaries, from character generation, to equipment, to combat rules everything has been given new options. Toss in a system for generating mercenary tickets (otherwise known as jobs), and we have the classic Mercenary book updated for MGT. It looks promising.

760 Patrons on the other hand, is not at all what you would expect if you ever read the original 76 Patrons supplement. A patron encounter has a specific meaning in Traveller terms. A meaning that is clearly defined in the MGT core rules as follows:

Each patron encounter lists:

• The patron’s name and role.
• The skills and resources required to complete the mission
• The suggested reward for the mission
• The mission as described to the characters
• What’s really going on. Several possible variants will be presented – either pick or roll for which is the real situation.

760 Patrons lists the patron's role and that's pretty much it. There are no missions here, merely charts of NPC motivations that could be used to inspire a mission or flesh out an NPC. If they were insistent on stealing a name from an older supplement, it would have been more accurate to call this one 760 Characters after the old 1001 Characters that simply gave you line after line of randomly generated character stats, even though there's no stats here.

To be fair, I can see this being a very useful supplement. It's a great way to bring to life an otherwise random NPC. It's just not what I was wanting or expecting based on the title and marketing. I would still love to see another book of true patron encounters at some point. In the meantime, I still have the FFE reprint of 76 Patrons.

Podcast Goodness

I'm using my new iPhone a lot. Not as a phone though. Instead, I'm using it far more often as an iPod and a pocket computer. My most common activities are checking email and listening to podcasts.

I've found myself with about eight hours each week behind the wheel taking my wife to work, so listening to podcasts has helped me to keep my sanity when she's not in the car.

I started with some World of Warcraft podcasts, with my favorite being The Instance. These guys seem to know what they're doing while still acknowledging the existence of casual players, and it's an entertaining listen, although it's fallen off the top of my list since I entered the post 70 blues.

After listening to some WoW podcasts, I decided to branch out into some podcasts for my other hobbies. Specifically, I started checking out some D&D/D20 podcasts and some Warhammer podcasts. My favorites right now are Radio Free Hommlet for D&D and 40k Radio for Warhammer 40K. I'm also interested in RFH's sister Star Wars Saga Edition podcast Order 66, and the Warhammer Fantasy Podcast Podhammer, but I've only listened to one episode of each of those so far.

I'm also going to add 40k Warcasting to my list. They do complete army book breakdowns, and their recent Eldar breakdown was impressive, even if it did miss a few points I've gotten from other sources. Also, one of the guys appears to be a retailer, which adds some extra insight into an area I have some interest in. Unfortunately, their posting is a bit more sporadic than the other podcasts I've mentioned.

An honorable mention goes to the Penny Arcade/PvP/WotC D&D play sessions featuring Tycho and Gabe from Penny Arcade and Scott Kurtz from PvP running through portions of Keep on the Shadowfell. A couple of guys from WotC serve as DMs (the first session has Chris Perkins, and James Wyatt takes over for the second session). Tycho and Kurtz are veteran RPGers, and Gabe is a longtime video game geek, but new to RPGs. All three of them are new to 4th edition, so the dynamics are interesting. Listening to them play really made me want to play myself. You can tell they were having a blast despite having some of the crappiest luck with the dice ever in the second session. You can currently find them here, but the WotC site still pretty much sucks, so who knows how long that link will work. There are eight episodes and the guys added a couple of pieces of artwork to each episode featuring memorable quotes or scenes from the episode.

More Eldar

I got in the rest of what I need to make the first 1000 points of my eldar army... or so I thought. It turns out that storm guardians come 8 to a box instead of 10 to a box like I thought they did. Oops.

As I expected, the storm guardians only come with one each of the two special weapons. Fortunately the weapons are identical except for the positioning of the ammo "globule" that the eldar weapons use. Given this similarity it's rather difficult to tell the two apart from any distance, and if anyone gives me a hard time about not being 100% WYSIWYG I think I will be quite justified in smacking them upside the head with a metal dreadnaught (which I have, and may take with me to games solely for this purpose). Mind you, if GW still sold bitz I'd go ahead and buy the extra 3 flamers that I'll need to make things completely WYSIWYG, but since they don't I'm not going to spend the $90 it would cost me in order to buy three extra boxes of storm guardians just to get the flamers.

Despite my miscalculation with the Storm Guardians, I still have plenty to keep me busy. Three vehicles, and over 20 infantry models, plus conversion work on my autarchs.

Those autarchs are my two HQ choices in my full 2500 point list, although I probably won't be using both of them until I get up to 1850 or 2000 points. They are identically equipped (in my fluff for the army they are brothers), and the plan right now is to model one using a slightly modified dire avenger exarch, and the other using a conversion of the Yriel model, swapping his weapons out for a dire avenger's shuriken cannon. The only tricky bit on the Yriel conversion should be the right arm, and it shouldn't be too hard, although it will probably end up needing a little green stuff work to fill in the gaps.

The only problem I've seen with my original plan for using Yriel is that his banners have an Iyanden symbol sculpted into them. I didn't notice this when I was looking at the blister in the store because the sculpted portions face towards the back when they're in the package. I'm not looking forward to filing them off, and am thinking about using green stuff to cover them up instead. This shouldn't be a big deal in the end, but it will probably result in my doing my exarch based autarch first, instead of my Yriel based one as I'd originally planned.

As for the fire dragon squad I was working on, it's finished except for the application of some static grass to the bases and the protective clear coats. I'll try to post some pics once they're completely done. I'm pretty pleased with the results and am looking forward to painting some guardians in a similar scheme.

Pyramid of Shadows

While the title of Keep on the Shadowfell was meant to recall memories of the old Keep on the Borderlands module, Pyramid of Shadows actually has more in common with that old module in terms of content. Both KotB and PoS (what an unfortunate acronym) feature sets of vastly different monsters somehow living in close proximity to each other. This formula is a bit of a trope in many older D&D modules. The only real difference between PoS and those older modules is that the writer at least comes up with a more plausible explanation as to why these creatures are living near each other, and how they manage to survive without killing each other off.

One problem with the explanation that the writer comes up with is that it essentially locks the players in the dungeon for the entire adventure. From Level 7 to 10 they will find themselves stuck in the same small area with no opportunities for interaction with the outside world. This is both a strength and a weakness. The strength is that this adventure has to be one of the most portable adventures I've ever seen in regards to the ability to drop it into just about any D&D world with little or no adaptation necessary. The weakness is that if you're dropping it into an existing campaign you're basically putting that campaign on hold for the duration of the adventure since the characters will have no way to interact with the world outside. Not to mention that the the group is entirely on their own.

Death could become a serious issue as the party has no reason to own a Raise Dead ritual prior to starting the adventure. They can find one during the adventure, but it's not guaranteed, and there are only enough components available to perform it once.

Aside from the premise, which I feel was stronger in Thunderspire Labyrinth, this module shares many of the same strengths and weaknesses with its predecessor, if in slightly different proportions. The included battle mat again feels like an afterthought with 90% of the battles occurring in areas not on the mat. The difference is that the locations included are a bit more generic, so you're more likely to be able to reuse the mat in other adventures.

Like with the last module, there's a problem with the paintings meant to represent some of the locations. The difference here is that the problem is much worse. One is described in the text as "brightly lit" but the painting is so dark that it's unclear at first what's being depicted, especially since once you figure out what it's supposed to be showing you realize that it leaves out key tactical terrain features. Another is fairly accurate in showing the three main opponents in the room, the problem being that two of those three are supposed to begin the encounter hidden! Most of the others are also inaccurate in some way, or just plain useless for giving the players a decent image of the setting.

Really, unless you're going to make sure the illustration is useful and accurate, don't even bother. There's certainly room for inaccurate flavor artwork in fantasy roleplaying products, but use them as filler art, not as play aids!

More new monsters are introduced, and this is a strength of the module, but not as big a one as in Thunderspire. Mainly because I found the monsters there more interesting overall than the ones introduced here. Out of all my comments on the module this one is the most subjective, and others may find these entries fascinating and highly useful.

One thing that all three modules in this series are excellent at is serving as a source for sample encounters. While I might have issues with the overall premise, each individual encounter seems well constructed with unique challenges to be overcome.

Overall I feel this is the weakest of the "Heroic Trilogy" of modules. It comes down to the fact that the strength of this module is that it's a classic dungeon crawl, and the weakness of this module is that it's a classic dungeon crawl.