State of the Sky · 2:04am Mar 7th, 2019
Partly cloudy!
Oh, wait, but what about me, you're asking?
Well, on the Pony front, some of you will be glad to hear that the next installment of Cadance of Cloudsdale is in final revision. I hope to have it out by the first of next month (and no, not a sly suggestion that this is just an April Fool's joke). Yeah, yeah, I know, y'all thought it was dead just because it took me a friggin' long time. I hope to post "Mi Amore Influenza" by April 1, which is incidentally the calendar date it occurs on in canon.
Other than that? Enh. Bit of a rut. The lament of every middle-aged dude who's worked hard for stability at the expense of adventure. My reading backlog is getting long again, even for stories that I really honestly do care about, so I apologize for slacking off on the really good stuff I'm undoubtedly missing (looking at you, The Adventuring Type, even though you torture me by talking about delicious olives that I do not myself have).
On the other hand, seminal Dungeons and Dragons Twitchstream/Podcast Critical Role (my third major nerddom after Ponies and Fraggle Rock) is on track to do in a less than a week what Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Veronica Mars couldn't manage in a month, with their bid for an animated series of their campaign, so it's an excellent time to be an old-school three-decades D&D nerd. I feel like the grand old game has undergone something of a renaissance lately, and nothing could make me happier.*
*Well except maybe finding a spare twenty-five thousand bucks in my couch cushions to nab the last "meet the cast" slot while it still exists. Seriously, who has that kind of cheddar to throw around?
Nice to hear from you again, can't wait!
That story title. :D I'm looking forward to it!
My daughter was telling me about the Critical Roll fundraising. Sounded really dramatic. You kids and your television roleplaying. Why in my day, we melted our own lead for our figurines. And we liked it!
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While you colored your dice and calculated a THAC0!
Alicorn Ailments, 101.
5024355 Or worse, when the game system only had three levels. Then we got Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.
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Brr. THAC0. The very acronym brings chills.
I still want the Illusionist back as its own class.
Oh hell yeah dude, Critical Role is awesome. I should really get back to catching up on the second campaign, I'm way behind.
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I played one of those back in high school. Good times.
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I don't like the new crew quite as much as the original party, but they're growing on me. Party cohesion was improved when a new PC was introduced several months in for spoilery reasons.
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Nah, for me, it was the AD&D psionics rules that override anything else. I have ever seen any other pieces of rules that absolute arse-backwardly-idiodic.
For those unfamiliar (lucky you), it was basically a skill check, but it was as follows: "roll under your skill, but a natural 1 is a fumble, a natural 20is an unusual even, and a critical success is exactly your skill check."
There was a reason I ditched AD&D as soon as 3.0 came out.
Then again, AD&D was a distant forth in terms of roleplaying games I played, coming after HeroQuest, Rolemaster and Warhammer FRPG.
Also, I'm not the only one that remembers Fraggle Rock! (I'd blither more, but I have to go!)
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Psionics were so, so broken.
Also, pity the poor baatard who wanted to play a bard in 1e. Thankfully that was normalized in 2e and remains so.
>My reading backlog is getting long again, even for stories that I really honestly do care about, so I apologize for slacking off on the really good stuff I'm undoubtedly missing (looking at you, The Adventuring Type, even though you torture me by talking about delicious olives that I do not myself have).
Just gonna leave this little scrap here.
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Tease. Or troll. Not sure which.
Oh boy
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Somewhere, I still have a Spelljammer Monstrous Compendium for 2e signed by most of the TSR designers of the time. I won it in an online contest on GEnie (this was in 1990 or thereabouts).
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Holy shit envy. Giff are my big hippo babies and I will play one at the slightest provocation.
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Except I didn't, because it was an HBO exclusive at the time, and my folks were against premium channels. So I stumbled onto it as an adult instead!
I am hype for Influenza.
And I preread it, so you know it's good. :D
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Now watch me screw it all up in post.