Roles without rolls

On Wednesday night, I managed to get in 3 hours+ of an impromptu session of D&D. We went back to the Peninsula of Plenty, my Romanesque campaign. 

Nace is the city below the swords

Since this campaign died out over a year ago, let's have a recap. The party is in the city of Nace after turning in a couple of raiders that ambushed them. One of the raiders was shipped north for a hanging, while the second surviving raider, Ortaire was thrown in chains for a mock triumph before being sold into slavery. 

There are many groups lurking in the background. The main threat are 3 witches of the Coven of Ash. Click the link for their story and character stats. They are deeply conservative and support the Empire. The Empire is human-centric with all demi-humans being cast as evil-doers. These witches support the Empire in all ways, including slavery. They are magic users who tend to strike from the shadows and they've annihilated the upper echelons of the town's leadership. No one wants to tangle with them. Additionally, they have charmed three of the town guards to be on the look out for the Party if they try to free Ortaire. 

Ortaire has four compatriots, other raiders that are skulking around town. The players are only aware of them because the witches took a pot shot at them. The raiders plan on rescuing or killing Ortaire to make sure he doesn't blow them in. They have been presented an third choice as he will be auctioned as a slave and if that happens, no one will listen to him. They are hanging out in the square to see which of these three thing will happen. 

There is a Senator hanging out in town, his name is Vitus. He is profoundly troubled by slavery. The witches have engineered this situation so that they can kill him if he acts. He tried to reach out the party but failed. 

In Vitus's backpocket are 3 elves. They are doing recon for their Crown. They have a side goal of disrupting anything that looks untoward. They have focused on taking a shot at rescuing Ortaire. 

The party has an ace-in-the-hole, a letter from the Emperor granting them 4,000 lbs of silver. This was intended for them to purchase a boat, but they didn't do that. The letter is being waved around at any and all Imperial trouble the party encountered. The player have realized that letter is a problem in a couple of ways and mean to be rid of it. They also want to rescue Ortaire but know that this will trigger another round with the witches. They just don't buy the slavery thing. 

So, we are "now", at the being of this session. Click here for information and stats on the Party. 

The party came up with something wild. They marched into the square where the planned Mock Triumph was to be held and announced that it was illegal. Only the Emperor can declare a Triumph. Being true, the townies bought it. They also announced their intention to take Ortaire by purchasing him and now it's time to drink on it. This would be fine punishment for the raider, menial work and all that. To hype this up, they met with the town's exchequer and turned in the letter for 4,000 lbs of silver and proceeded to lubricate the disappointed townies with free beer. 

Fighting the witches
would be unfun

Vitus's slaves managed to get close to the PC with the elves and they all realized this is all a rouse to annoy the witches. By the witches' reckoning, the Party is being virtuous by hosting a bash to celebrate slavery. Buying a slave to get vengeance is excellent in their mind. On the off chance the party is planning a trick, the coven has charmed some guards ready to kill them all at the first sign of turnabout. Vitus decides to sell the Party's scheme with a bit of acting. He publicly withdrew his private invitation to the party to visit his home. He is pretending to be an angry abolitionist. This throws the witches off of him as he is not doing anything but "losing" and sulking. The Party was confused by this as in the past year, they forgot that detail. 

Everything went off without a hitch. The Party purchased Ortaire, yucked it up a bit with the celebrating citizens then left town in pursuit of the four raiders. Outside of town, they were trailed by the 3 charmed guards and the elven party. The raiders only have a vague idea of where they are going, a farmstead east of town. They don't know how far east. There ended up being a couple of encounters between the guards, the elven party and the Player's Party. The guard returned home after seeing the party go off in pursuit of the elves. They reported that the Party are clearly heroes of the Empire, which might not be entirely true. The party is now off to join the elves, catch and grill the raiders and quietly offer Ortaire his freedom for his help. 

As a surprise, there were zero combat type rolls this session.  

As a bonus, 60-90 minutes were spend discussing the Star Wars campaign I am running. 

Ooo... Shiney.

I'm stuck in mainatence mode right now, I'm cleaning up the basement and getting ready for my spring Model series while trying to figure out where my campaigns are going. I have to decide if we are doing Star Wars or D&D tonight. Since the players are the same, I guess it doesn't matter. 

It's a good thing it doesn't matter because I had to take a spin to Hobby Lobby for a model and Home Depot for a shower head. One of those was more important than the other, but both where wiped from my mind when I found this excellent R2-D2 ceramic figure my grandmother made for me. 

It stands about 9 inches tall and has a fitting to hold a light. At some point the single flasher bulb was replaced with Christmas tree lights. It lit my bedroom from 1978 to about 1998. I am really sure my grandmother had no idea what R2-D2 was at the time. It's dated 1978 and bears my grandmother's initials, TV.

Putting it away was an odd but glorious moment in my life. My girlfriend at the time said, "Ooo. Save that, the kids will like it." That was about 2 years before I proposed. I didn't even notice. From about 2002 til now the kids did like it. But now they are Star Wars'd out and it has been returned to me. 

It really never left. 

The Tek - Stats for January 2021

The Stats for January 2021. I never did post my whole year summary. Maybe this week. 

AD&D Character Sheet For Use with Unearthed Arcana: 4
Compass Rose Inn Minisetting: 0
Kobold's Folly: 1
Swashbuckler Character Class for D&D and AD&D: 0
These Old Games Presents: The Hex Pack: 7
Zero to Hero: Uncommon Commoners: 4

It's time to re-do, update and add to my DriveThruRPG offerings. 

Webstats were up a good bit. 

Google Analytics Pageviews - 1521 vs. 1,241 or 22%. 
Google Analytics Sessions - 910
Pageviews per Session - 1.67

My Amazon links are a conundrum. Virtually all funds from Amazon came in the last quarter of 2020, probably owing a loin's share to a single reader of this site. There does seem to be a correspondence between high quality posts with clicks and funds from Amazon. I do not receive a click by click rundown of commissions made, but I can see an incredible amount of clicks preceding those commissions. 

DriveThruRPG links are still the clear winner, out performing Amazon ads by a 4 to 1 margin. 

1001st Post (or not) - The Countdown Is On

Edit - It turns out I goofed. This is not the 1001st post, its actually 950 something. I have 43 draft posts for upcoming reviews I planned for this year. Sorry about that. Carry on...

I have couple of projects coming up. As promised before, this spring I will be doing a series on the Bandai Star Wars Models. These are 1/144 scale models, except for the Falcon which seems to 1/350. I almost have everything I need, I want to get a few more TIE Fighters and X-Wings. 

The list so far is: 

Y-Wing, 
4 A-Wings, 
2 First Order TIEs, 
2 Classic TIEs, 
2 New Style X-Wings, 
2 Falcons, 

2 AT-STs, and
2 Snowspeeders. 

I'm going to be real honest, Amazon's prices are not the best at first look. They fluctuate so some days they are a steal and others they are a rip off. If Amazon isn't working for you, try out Hobby Lobby or The Big Bad Toy Store. They are super consistent with pricing and shipping, but I go with Amazon for the random price drops.

Spring is 47 days away and summer is 91 days long. That puts me on a schedule of one or more models a week. I figure in fall I can do a series on painting models. 

In the meantime, what am I doing with those 47 days until spring? I am getting seeds ready to plant. I'm doing a garden this year. I hope to do some gaming garden side as I really enjoyed my outside posts last year. I figure the garden will be a suitable place to play some D&D. All I need is some chairs and a small table and we'll be set. 

Now I have one more mystery picture to share. 

What are they? 1440 3 mm rhinestones. What on earth could I do with those? You'll see. 

Curious Toys - U. B. Funkeys

My basement flooded and I am still sorting things into piles that go, items ok and piles that could be saved. I have a lot of odd things down here. 

In the pile ok items I found a set of figures that go to a game called U. B. Funkeys. This was product I worked on back in 2006-2010 while at Mattel. Mattel acquired Radica and Funkeys was one of the product that came over to the Mattel side of things. 

It was a very ambitious and creative computer game. The player received a Hub and a Disc with a couple of characters. Each physical character was placed in the Hub and that character appears within the game. Think Skylander... in mid-2000s Skylanders. 

My kids got a chance to play with these things, sometimes before they came out in stores. The games were interesting and varied. The music was either whimsical or madding depending on your outlook. Of course, the central plot revolved around taking your child to the store to buy a new figure to unlock more areas. 

The individual characters had online posters and downloadables for kids. You could, on paper, design your own Funkey. It was kind of cool. 

Well, now it's 2021 and their time is over... or is it? I see people are still producing reviews and posting information online about them. It's a curiosity from the oughts to be sure, but I have fond memories of it. 

Check out the video below from Media Mementos to learn more about this oddity. 

As I rescue or throw away more things in my basement, I'll post about some of the oddities that I find. 

Terminal Cone of Negative Energy - What I Thought Instead of What I Should Have Done

Yesterday I posted about creating a map with a download of the HPS Cartography Kit. I love Nate's artwork. Well, that didn't work for a variety of reasons that seem to limited to the six inches of space between my ears. 

Ooo... that looks nice! 
I meant the interface and the tiles, not my map.

The HPS Cartography Kit is meant for Hex Kit, not Inkwell Idea's Worldographer. I wasn't going to let that stop me, I could just edit... 400+, 500+, 600+ images so that they fit in Worldographer. Then I started messing around with Inkscape, not to edit pictures but to freehand a map. 

Yeah. No. 

So, back to DriveThruRPG for a copy of Hex Kit. It made the most sense. If I'm going to review HPS Cartography Kit in the near future, I should have the actual software which it was designed for, which means I need Hex Kit. Which has the side benefit is one more review I can do. 

If you had a lot of patience, you could totally free hand a map with just tiles. Or you could edit one type of tile for a completely different type of software. The problem is I'm adjusting my insulin levels since a near disaster the middle of 2020 and I am now made of frantic energy and not a drop of patience. 

Did I mention it's week 4 of 2021 and I'm on Week 8 of reviews? It's the drugs, I swear. 

Speaking of problems that I have, I have my own product called "Hex Pack", I am really glad I researched that name not at all and luckily missed naming it "Hex Kit" like I've been calling it in my head since it first popped into my mind. I launched my Hex Pack back in April of 2020, so you can see how some of these things can collide. 

Anyway, maximum effort! More speed! 

I usually drop little hints about what I intend to review, but I usually don't offer links to products I haven't used, read, reviewed, etc. because I don't know how they will turn out. The links to DriveThru and Inkwell Ideas are a pretty good hint as to what I think of these products already. 

I do have one other hint, I had the worst time trying to figure out how to launch Hex Kit in Linux. So I reached out to the author and they gave me the answer in a couple of minutes or hours. Frantic energy, no difference between minutes... hours to me right now. Anyway, it's easy. 

Oh, what the heck?

All you need to do is open Hex Kit. It's right there! 

Yeah, Linux Terminal foo is required. The actual command is: 

or ./Hex\ Kit

Hmm... when was the last time I used a front slash anywhere? Don't know, but I can already see it's going to become a habitual thing. 

I wanted to review Hex Kit first then HPS Cartography Kit second, but software has a learning curve that no amount of drugs will fix. I really want to do these now, but it may take until March 2021. 

I did want to share the output of just a few minutes/hours of tinkering got me. 

And of course, that also leads to the heavy handed hint that great products come from authors who have excellent customer service and responsiveness to the most random and frantic questions.