Whispering Forest, part one: The Recruits

If you read last week's post, you might be wondering how D&D went this week. The real test would be to ask my friends that had to deal with my first attempt at DMing, but from the sounds of things, it went all right!

So far, I've successfully thrown in obvious Welcome to Night Vale references -- one of them being the theme of the first overall adventure (The Whispering Forest) -- and have plans to reference other things as well. It's fun learning to think on your feet when you're making things up as you go along with the input of crazy people.

Speaking of crazy, it has been brought to my attention that I didn't mention ALL OF THE THINGS of gray importance about Steev's character. Not only is he a minotaur named Dave, but he's a minotaur BARD named Dave... and he really loves killing Fey creatures.

It's beyond awesome having someone who actually plays music playing a bard character, because at one point, Steev was playing and singing "Lolth, I lift your name on high". Lolth is his character's goddess, who loves killing elves.

On top of that, we've got a Gnoll fighter (Gnoll are 7' tall and eat flesh), an Elf assassin with a mysterious secret, and a Warforged Swordmage (Warforged are sort of like constructs with a personality) just looking at them all like they're crazy.

I didn't even go the old route of having them all be friends. I just had them all recruited, so... maybe they'll go player-vs-player, and I'll get to moderate the Ultimate Showdown of D&D Destiny. :P

Anyway, less nerdy stuff is coming soon... Maybe.

I have become Death, destroyer of worlds

Greetings, adventurers! Welcome to another post of the Keeping The Bar Low blog.

Hopefully the folks over at Geekly Inc won't mind me blatantly ripping off the intro of their Drunks and Dragons podcast (which is awesome, as far as I'm concerned. You should really give it a listen), but it felt right! Yes, folks, it is finally happening... I'm about to become a Dungeon Master!

(Source)

I've got the start of a set-up going, for my first night behind the Dungeon Master screen: borrowing Steev's DM screen, and I've got a notebook with Super Secret stuff, as well as less Super Secret reference material (level goals, treasure parcel recommendations, etc). It's truly time to step in to a new level of geek... and that's coming from someone who listens to podcasts about Doctor Who and D&D, and writes a blog about an obscure comic book character from the 80s.

Monday night is going to be "kick-off" for my campaign, which is going to have all kinds of fun references for my players to figure out. Sounds like we'll be playing two days in a row, since Tony is leaving the state later this month. My hours after work until Monday are going to be spent working on new ideas, and prepping myself to be completely thrown off if my friends go completely off-the-rails on my story -- which would not be surprising, since most DMs seem to have that happen.

Still, if all else fails, this could happen....

(Source)

What will happen? Will I be an utter failure as a DM? Will the players follow the storyline? Will DAVE THE MINOTAUR start a bandcamp page? Find out next time on KEEPING THE BAR LOW!

F***ing HORSES**T!

Here it is, almost two weeks after I posted last, and some of you are probably thinking I've fallen into a bottomless chasm. Well, maybe some of you thought that. Maybe some of you didn't wonder at all, and lastly, maybe some of you have been following me on Twitter, where I've still been active. Last night, I even (sort of) live-tweeted my first and only watching of Ghost Rider 2.

If you haven't seen Ghost Rider 2, I suggest you keep it that way. Even Tony, who expected to enjoy it, thought about giving up 2/3 of the way into it. When he found out that it was from "the guys who made Crank", all he could say was "Oh, god dammit". And, really, "oh, god dammit" and "fucking HORSESHIT" are the only terms that I can use to accurately describe the levels of fail that the movie reached.

Also, there's a (lame) excuse why I haven't been blogging: LOTS AND LOTS OF WORK. I had an eight day work week, then two days off, and now I'm on day four of a seven-day work week. Swing shift has a lot more work and a lot less podcast-listening than graveyard, but still... so much happier. So, starting probably tomorrow with a collection of my tweets and thoughts about Ghost Rider 2, I'm going to try and blog more. Wish me luck!

Long-time friends are kind of awesome. Even if they're very different from you, the fact that they have stuck around that long means that they probably think pretty similarly, at times.

The last couple nights, I've been working with Tony at the Hoquiam branch of Murphy's. Only for a few minutes while we go through the shift change stuff, but it's still fun. On Friday, I showed up a few hours early, because I had a horrible cough and wanted some cough drops. I told him the premise for my "Uh, Domino's..." post the other day, and his reaction was the same as mine was in the post. He even went a little creepy with it and pretended to rub his hand on something before pretending to lick said hand. Considering that's exactly one of the things I suggested, it made me laugh (which, of course, sent me into a coughing fit).

AND its his damn fault that I've been sick. I was fine until I got a ride home from him on Thursday, and then the next day, I had this cough and some sinus issues. It's mostly gone, but he finally realized it was probably his fault -- earlier that day, he'd had someone sick in his car. Now that Tony's getting it too, he's accepting the blame... fucker.

Anyway, I'm going to go back to listening to TANcast. And then getting ready for that work shit. Different Murphy's location again -- not my local store, and not "my" store. Argh.