Robust!

Robust is an adjective, right? Yeah, I think so. Someone should make it a verb, like robustivity. The act of making something robust. Robust is a good word, I like to wield it like a bright blade of silver as much as possible in my goofier writing and conversations.

I've finally started watching Lost again, I'm just now finishing up the eighteenth episode of season one. I honestly don't give two shits about any of these characters. Sayid and Locke are alright, but other than that I find the survivors boring. I like the island, it is my favorite character. Screw everything else. I find myself really torn at the moment. Do I really want to watch six seasons of hour after hour of Hurley being fat and Jack being the good guy, and Sawyer being so mean and "badass" that it borders on laughable? Or do I just want to read the Wikipedia articles and learn everything I want to know in an afternoon? Watching it does offer the joy of hanging out with Jeremy, and that is pretty cool. So I guess for now I will refrain from the easy route. I'm actually watching a Locke background episode at the moment, they did a fairly good job of making the actor look like he is younger than he is in real life.

I've been talking more and more with Shawn and his friend and it seems like we're on our way to gaming. We're working under the assumption that we'll play some of the published DnD adventures and possibly switch to some Dark Sun stuff once that all comes out. I'll be interested to see how this all works out, I've never used a webcam or videochat or anything like that before. If the whole webcam thing doesn't work out, we should be able to find alternate means. There are a few programs I found last night and this morning that allow for a group to link up via some servers and kind of run a campaign. The main thing I'm concerned about is us all having something to represent a map and where we are on it. All the slides and pushes and whatnot in 4th Edition make maps and miniatures pretty mandatory to play the game. If we can get a couple hours of play time in at least once a month, I think it will be swell. I don't think the three of us will have the stamina for a ten hours sit down session, but finishing adventures and whatnot shouldn't be too big of a problem if we get into a regular schedule. Seeing as how it is just the three of us, it shouldn't be too big of a problem to contact each other and set up an impromptu session when we all happen to be bored at the same time, though that will very likely be a rare occurrence. Regardless of the details, I am pretty psyched to play some shit with Herr Kloha. His friend is a cool individual as well, and I can only assume that his wife is as well, and she might play too.

The question becomes, what should I play? I like complicated classes, and no class in 4th Edition is terribly complicated. Strikers have additional damage mechanics, Defenders have ways to get close to enemies and keep them there, Controllers have ways of managing multiple enemies at once and either taking them out or debuffing them, and Leaders have a lot of ways to buff folks. I find myself partial to Strikers and Defenders though. I've been toying with a variety of stuff in my character builder and haven't really come up with anything I dig. I mean, I'd love to play that Thri-kreen monk, but I have no data for thri-kreen, or Dark Sun. There is a thri-kreen fighter in the Dark Sun Encounters stuff, maybe I can kind of deconstruct him and figure out their abilities...

Edit After The Fact: Wow, that was actually pretty easy. With the character builder as a reference point, it took like ten minutes.

The eighth scenario is complete, fully complete, not just done-ish with a few minor details left to do, and hopefully we'll be able to complete the mandatory portions of it in a one day session. If not, the extra stuff can be tossed in with another later scenario. This excess stuff that can be put aside is going to sort of be Spineplate's background scenario, if they choose to look into it. Spineplate is going to randomly be MIA for the scenario, I've already rolled the Stealth vs. Perception checks necessary for him to sneak away in the night without anyone noticing. The mission is pretty straightforward and pretty combat focused, and I'm hoping that those individuals that find combat boring will enjoy the more skill and investigation focused Spineplate bits and pieces. I'm trying to strike a balance in the scenarios because the group seems pretty divided in what they enjoy. John seems to enjoy fights, and little else. Other individuals have said that fights bore them. Fred seems like he prefers fights, but he gets into the whole map making thing and can come up with some solid plans, even though he professes to not want to be leader of the group. I think Eric and Jeremy like a mix, but I could be wrong. I should actually write these things down somewhere so I can keep track of everyone's likes and dislikes...

Anyway, the ninth scenario is done too.

Yeah, I'm that good. The first chunk of the campaign kind of had the appearance of haphazardness where the group kind of went wherever and did whatever they happened across. This was because I was kind of trying to figure out what they wanted to do. When we eventually settled on joining a rebellion, I had them meander their way down to where the rebellion was happening. This gave me time to plot out the scenarios, I was also able to seed a few things in the previous scenarios that will come back into play in the end game. The campaign is done in my head and it is crazy straightforward. Go here, do this, return, go there, do something else. Etc. Because the players opted to join a rebellion, and not start their own, their part to play is usually small and sort of off to the side of the big names like Cenn and Nakamander. If they had said, "We want to start a rebellion." we'd have had a lot more planning missions that kind of resembled The Heist and Of Course That Wasn't The End Of It, and they would be the big names associated with shit.

Man, I am literally giddy with delight that we have reached this point in the campaign. I'm not happy for it to be almost over. Heh, with our schedule of gaming we probably won't be there until like 2011. I'm excited and giddy because this is where the big deal stuff starts happening. Events in the world around the player's are conspiring to move the rebellion into its final stages, things that happened in the past are about to become very important to the current affairs of the group. Everything is coming together, and because I've been thinking about this stuff for a long time, the scenarios are going to come out a lot faster than they have been. Its only going to be our schedules conflicting that slow us down. Because of my upcoming possible schedule change, that could be a very real and difficult impediment though. If I can get a buffer of one or two scenarios that are ready to go, we can kind of get into the practice of gaming once a month and not necessarily have to stop completely when we finish one scenario, if we still have the energy to keep going that is.

Also, I've never fucking finished a campaign and the fact that we're at the eighth scenario and I can barely contain my excitement over getting to the conclusion is a great sign of my dedication to the campaign. Sixteen years of gaming and this will be the first campaign I finally completed. Amusing.

As is pretty common for me, I'm starting to think about the next campaign and what it might be. Honestly, I would really like to run a sandbox. I don't know that the players are motivated enough to be interested in seeing what is around that next corner, and I don't know if they have the kind of gamer sense that tells you "Hey, we're out of our league. We need to head back the way we've come."

In my previous open ended scenarios, there has been some..." What the fuck are we supposed to be doing?" sentiment, so I don't know if sandbox is the right way to go. Also, a sandbox is hard. Eric thinks the way I make scenarios is hard and time consuming, I guess he thinks you can just make it up as you go along in a sandbox, which is stupid. There has to be a lot there to entice the players. You have to be able to give them a lot of options, and have ways for them to know what they can do and what would be a waste of time. You also have to have a way to say "Hey, get the fuck out of there, this is a fight you can't handle. This is a higher level area." That is one of the aspects I like about a "true" sandbox, in a "real" world, not every threat is going to be properly balanced against the strength of the players. The trick would be letting the players know they're outclassed without saying it directly and pulling them out of the sandbox. They might run into bigger stuff in such a sandbox, and they might die, or they might get through it by the skin of their teeth, and they might like the sensation of taking on something that was truly tough and not balanced against their power level. I'd certainly find it cool if I were in their shoes.

I could go on, but this is long enough. Crimany.

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