DW - Across the Plains of Hell

Lasts night Dungeon World was pretty sweet. It having been months since we last played, we started in the midst of the endgame for one of the fronts. Hamshire was now overrun by a voracious swarm goblins. The cast included both old and new characters. From previous sessions, Gregor the Fighter and Piotr the Cleric of Torbath; new to the scene, Ssor the warforged Fighter, Regulus the Paladin of Torbath, and Dagolear the elf Wizard. After two disparate goblin swarm encounters, the new folks managed to handily undo the binding of Azathoth that the old guard had previously spent so many resources putting in place. The doorway to hell was opened. Regulus, after burning his sword hand to a stump trying to close the portal, opted for a noble sacrifice and stepped into the burning void. Everyone else followed him through. Thereafter saw a Perilous Journey undertaken across the plains of hell, searching for Cadeus, the man who had originally sacrificed himself to close Azathoth's portal, and been bound in hell in the bargain. Ssor set a brutal pace, his warforged-ness having no pity on his fleshy companions. Piotr maintained his connection to Torbath even in the depths of hell, and provided temporarily sanctified ground in which his companions could rest. Their travels were briefly interrupted when the devil lord Blix confronted the group, trying to figure out how and why a group of heroes had found their way into the nether realm. He was convinced to leave by Regulus, but only barely. Finally making their way to where Cadeus had been bound, on a platform above a lake of fire, they woke him from within his broken binding circle. Cadeus outlined how they could sacrifice an item of great power to both close the now open portal and return the group to the mortal plane. Piotr, having rescued the Shield of Torbath from the goblin swarm, briefly conferred with Torbath to assess whether its sacrifice would do the job. Torbath answered in the affirmative but also returned a warning not to trust the man before them. Regulus quickly grabbed the shield of Torbath and slammed it into Cadeus, who was thrown aside in a blast of holy light and revealed to be the devil lord Blix. Commanded by the word of law, the devil lord was forced to retreat. As he disappeared the crumpled form of Cadeus was revealed within the broken circle. The woke the old priest and enacted the ritual, Gregor and Ssor holding off the devil swarm that Blix brought down on them for ruining his deception. There was a tense moment when Ssor was almost carried off by the devils, but in the end our heroes sacrificed the artifact, closed the portal to hell, and found themselves back home. Unfortunately Blix and five other devils followed them through, escaping them and scattering out into the world. Shortly thereafter they took stock of their surroundings and realized that they were back home, but some three years in the past.

Triweekly

Gaming, since moving to Saturdays, has pretty much averaged out to about once every 3 weeks. We did Apocalypse world a whole bunch. Then switched over to Monster Hearts for two sessions. Monster Hearts had one bad and one good session. The bad was the first, where we were trying to figure out the game, not really grokking at first what the game was trying to do, trying to force it to be a murder mystery instead of high school drama. The second session focused on a high school costume dance, and had a lot more interesting player v. player conflict. In the end a couple of flubbed rolls resulted in a teacher, who had dressed as a Ghostbuster for the dance, ending up with a functioning proton pack and trying to bust the ghost character. Lots of fun in that second session. But pretty much everyone in our group is in agreement that Monster Hearts isn't the game we want to be playing on a regular basis.

Next I ran two modules worth of Dungeon Crawl Classics. Sailors on the Starless Sea for the 0-level character funnel, and Doom of the Savage Kings for the follow-up level 1 adventure. It went pretty well but while everyone seemed to have fun, it's not the game most folks in the group are interested in playing regularly.

Next up I was going to run Apocalypse World, partly so that Ben could have some time as a player instead of MC. That may have fallen through with most folks being out of town for the weekend. Looking like Tony, Charles, and I might get together for Dungeon World tonight in the interim.

Want more gaming.

Baby Steps

Gonna try to get back into the rhythm of this thing.

The kids turned three last Tuesday. Crazy. We were scheduled for their 3-year wellness exam at the doctor today. So Owen spiked a fever last night with his tonsils and lymph nodes swollen up to the size of grapes. That resulted in me getting about 4 hours of sleep, going in to work around 4:30am and taking a couple hours off later in the day so Carrie could go to work awhile. We kept the appointment with the doctor, Owen getting checked out and going on antibiotics, and Paige getting her wellness exam. She got a flu shot too, which went amazingly well. She only started to protest as the nurse was finishing up and didn't cry at all. I thank the Daniel Tiger episode about going to the doctor and getting shots for that. Carrie got a shot too and was forced to make a brave face for the kids' sake.

Swimmin

We’ve started swim classes with the kids. We’re three sessions in and have had them in the water about five times total since around the time we started. It’s been pretty fun, but I can see why all we’ve really done so far is get them used to being in the water. Owen takes a lot longer to warm up to the idea, pretty much every time.  Paige less so, but despite seeming to take to being in the water faster she’s more obstinate about what she’s unwilling to do, swim wise. For now we’re trying to make it to class every Monday, with occasional trips to their Friday night free swim.

Find It

Carrie lost her phone this weekend. Probably left it at Pic Quik. We’re pretty sure someone walked off with it. Once she figured it was missing I popped open the Find iPhone app on my phone and took a look. It dropped a pin somewhere out Del Rey. Definitely not our house. My first thought is maybe the gps is just way off, so I hit the Play Sound button on the Find app. No noise nearby, but the app reports that her phone’s gps just shut off. I hit the next button in the list, Lost Mode, which locks the phone down so it can only be used to call whatever number you give it. Shortly after that her phone turned off. I ended up taking a drive out to where the pin dropped, but couldn’t really remember much beyond which corner it was, so I knocked on some doors and got about what I expected, nothing. Next I called Verizon and they blacklisted the phone’s serial number. Lastly, I hit the last option on the Find app, which is Erase Data. If the phone connects to a network again it’ll get a signal to erase all data on the phone. It’s doubtful that whoever has it could get anything from it since nothing aside from Facebook and Blogger has a stored password and neither of those appears to have been messed with. This could have been a much bigger pain in the ass, but we’ve got insurance and should have her phone replaced today or tomorrow. She uses it for work a lot, but mine just sits in a locker all day, I just forwarded her number to mine and let her have for the past few days. Anyway, location app, get one for your phone, or turn it on. Well worth it.

Comics Now!

I've been perusing comics of late. The Marvel Now! titles, specifically. Haven't done the single issue thing in a while and it was kind of jarring at first. How the hell does anyone keep track of what's going on in these comics reading them one at a time? Turns out the secret is you read stuff you like, not just everything you can get your hands on. So 5 months or so into Marvel Now! here are the titles that I'm digging, and a short bit about why I like em.

Avengers - big world problems are cool but mostly the New Universe throwback that's popped up. I like that bit better than anything that's being done with the actual Avengers characters.

Superior Spider-Man - watching Doc Octopus try to be a hero, because he knows he can do it better.

Hawkeye - feels kind of like a Daredevil reboot, but the street-level hero, everyman bit is written really well and the characterization is great.

Captain America - crazy alien weirdness and removing Cap's baggage to get a better look at the person he is and how he came to be that way.

Thor - a compelling story spanning three ages of the thunder god has a lot of potential. Not sure they are living up to the potential, or where they'll go after the Godkiller, but I'm digging this story. And the art.

Fantastic Four - yet another 'back to their roots' but a fun ride nevertheless. I'm on board more for the wild science tales than the characters, but I'm still on board.

All New X-Men/Uncanny X-Men - both written by Bendis, so it's no real surprise they're like two sides of the same coin. The coherence of voice is probably one the most attractive things about the pair. Also, very X-Men-y with enough humor to offset the heaviness of the constant moral quandaries.

Wolverine & The X-Men - I want to like this one more. I'm mostly digging it, but not as much as some of the others. Feels like they're not spending enough time at school, which feels like what the book is supposed to be about. But I did come into it late, so...

Others I'm enjoying to a lesser degree, or haven't seen enough of to decide: Journey Into Mystery, Guardians of the Galaxy, Savage Wolverine, Secret Avengers.

Oh, and also there's Age of Ultron, which feels like a What If? book more than anything else. It's fun, though.

On Nerd Parenting

http://www.penny-arcade.com/2013/01/02/totally-of-the-mearas

The comic that goes with that post is pretty funny. But the overall statement on parenthood, especially of my future dealing with our children, point to some aspects of said dealings being depressing. For me anyway, if not Carrie. Or maybe both of us in slightly different ways. At least Owen shows a measurable appreciation for anything blasting out from the television. For better or worse. Earlier today he told me, "I want to watch Star Wars, real quick," when I told him it was nap time.

In other fatherly nerd news, I moved the board games out of the spare bedroom/office yesterday, and into the garage. This act is fomenting in my nerd hindbrain possibilities of hosting some kind of gameliness out there. Maybe. I'll have to think on the logistics of it a bit more.