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Session 12, Part 2

By Shamus Posted Thursday Dec 21, 2006

Filed under: D&D Campaign 24 comments
Session 12, Part 1Previous Post
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The players hear the voice of Fiore. It is a very quiet (they can’t even tell if it is truly audible or simply in their minds) but it is also potent. It is a cold, feminine voice.

What or who is Fiore? Is “she” really the spirit of a mountain? The spirit of a people who were genocided long ago? A demigod who abides within a mountain? Some ancient ghost or spirit?

This was left for the players (and, by extension, the readers) to ponder.

The conversation with her went on for a while. The players worked out that yes, this really is the Fiore of old. Yes, she was imprisoned by the Dwarves. Yes, she created the curse. Yes, this box is a prison for her spirit which blocks all of her supernatural power. Her power only extends far enough to fill this room with grass (which she sort of can’t help, actually) and allow her to “speak” to anyone within a few feet of the box.

Finally, Fiore asks if they have come to free her. The players were just looking for answers, really. They are not sure what to do. Then one of them (Eomer or Skeeve) asks if the box could contain the spirit of Mordan.

Fiore thinks it can. The players never question this, which I would have if I were in their shoes. I’d expect an imprisoned being of incredible power to be willing to give me just about any story to get me to open the box.

They deliberate for a while, but the solution seems too perfect to really consider walking away. They agree to free Fiore.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Session 12, Part 2”

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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24 comments

 

Roll for Infinity

By Shamus Posted Thursday Dec 21, 2006

Filed under: Tabletop Games 24 comments
Who's your DM?Previous Post
Next PostSidequesting

d12.jpg
So it turns out the universe is a dodecahedron with 12 pentagonal faces? I knew there was a reason I’ve always loved the oft-overlooked 12-sided die.

The idea is that the universe “wraps”, so if you were to “exit” a face of the polyhedron you would enter the opposite face, but rotated 36o. Okay, that’s really hard to picture.

What I’ve read of the original article doesn’t explain what happens with gravity. I can’t picture it. (Keeping in mind that these “faces” are no more meaningful for the laws of physics than the boundaries on a map: They are there so people can keep track of space.) An object in the middle will exert gravitational force (miniscule) on itself, from twelve directions at once.

Bah. I keep trying to build some sort of mental model to play with but I can’t hack it.

Ah well. I’m just glad the universe isn’t a d4 or a d6.

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Who's your DM?Previous Post
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24 comments

 

Galactic Civilizations 2

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Dec 20, 2006

Filed under: Game Reviews 21 comments
Halo HeresyPrevious Post
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Galactic Civilizations 2, which I’ve written about before, is up for strategy game of the year over at Gamespot. (Based on member votes.) Man, it would be really great if GC2 won. The game is tremendous, fun, stable, cheap, free of DRM and copy-protection annoyances, and now has a couple of free bonus downloads available that add even more to the game. But, the game is turn-based, which makes it sort of niche. The kids want to play the latest Warcraft “Battle for three resources clickfest” remix, not granddad’s turn-based strategy game.

Gamespot makes no sense. They have console games and PC games lumped together. These are very different audiences, of very different sizes, and putting them together is odd. They have real-time strategy and turn-based strategy lumped together as well, which is also kind of odd.

What you end up with is a situation where what game wins depends far more on the demographics of the members than on the merits of the game itself.

But all of this is just preemptive sour grapes. I haven’t even played any of the other games in the running. I played enough RTS to last me a lifetime back when Starcraft ruled the Earth, and the newer games don’t give me a compelling reason to revisit the genre. GC2 has a disappointing 11% of the vote. There are five games in the running, which suggests that GC2 is kind of… not winning.

Dang kids.

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Halo HeresyPrevious Post
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21 comments

 

Problems: Resolution

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Dec 20, 2006

Filed under: Random 6 comments
PerspectivePrevious Post
Next PostHappy New Year!

As a follow up to the lamentations of the last few days…

Son: Feeling better! Nice to see the little guy bright-eyed again.

Bandwidth Issues: Fixed! A friend has nicely allowed me to put my images on his server. More on this once the move is complete. Everyone thank Pixy Misa.

Funeral: I don’t want to say too much here. This is one of those things that needs 500 words or none. My wife attended the funeral.

Work: I can see the finish line on this project. Assuming I don’t do anything stupid, (like, write buggy software) I should have a nice, quiet holiday.

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

PerspectivePrevious Post
Next PostHappy New Year!

6 comments

 

Perspective, Realigned

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Dec 19, 2006

Filed under: Links 11 comments
History of the InternetPrevious Post
Next PostHat Tip

Thanks to everyone who left so many comments on the post earlier today. The big thing that I’ve learned is that bandwidth is much, much cheaper elsewhere. I use HostingMatters, who I chose because they have a good reputation for uptime and customer service. These were my main concerns after leaving ANHosting, who were lacking in both.

Tirgaya linked to Dreamhost, who offers 2TB(!!!!) of transfer a month, for a fraction of what I’m paying at HM. Hang on, let me get the calculator…

Poke. poke. poke.

Okay…

Hosting Matters = $0.52 per gigabyte.
DreamHost = $0.004 per gigabyte. (No, that isn’t a typo, it is really four thenths of a cent per gig.)

I’m speechless. The price difference is ridiculous. If these numbers are for real, then I could easily run this site for eight bucks a month. Without the #@%#@ ads. Without killing my comics with JPG abuse. This… this can’t be right.

Let me run the numbers again…

Okay. The numbers are for real. Really strange. This sounds too good to be true. What the heck? They have a $50 signup fee, so I don’t want to do anything rash, but this looks like it would solve all of my problems if it actually works.

I’m not going to do anything just yet, but it looks like I have lots of options. One way or another, I think I can get back to the days of careless and rampant bandwidth comsumption.

Thanks for the advice, and the numerous offers for help, the offers for spare bandwidth, the encouragement, and everything else.

LATER: Okay, maybe Dreamhost is a bad idea. Still, somewhere between 52 cents and .4 cents there ought to be someone half-decent.

STILL LATER: I get it. The $0.004 per gig is allowed, because what they DON’T tell you on the features page is that you are also limited by CPU minutes per day. It looks like the 2TB limit is a sham, since apparently you’ll hit the CPU limit WAAAY before you get anywhere near the bandwidth limit.

Sneaks.

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

History of the InternetPrevious Post
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11 comments

 

Session 12, Part 1

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Dec 19, 2006

Filed under: D&D Campaign 14 comments
Session 11, Part 2Previous Post
Next PostSession 12, Part 2

Here we are at a pivotal session in the campaign. We played for five hours, and the notes I have cover less than a paragraph. Sigh. I REALLY wish I had the audio of these sessions.

For a refresher, I strongly suggest you read Part III of the Book of Norvus. The history in that book is a big part of this session.

The party awakens in the Mages archives. They spend some time going through the library, and find some books of use. They learn the location of the shaft dug by the dwarves who imprisoned Fiore. They decide this is an interesting find. The site is less than a day from here. It is finally decided that they will go there in search of clues.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Session 12, Part 1”

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Session 11, Part 2Previous Post
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14 comments

 

Perspective

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Dec 19, 2006

Filed under: Random 22 comments
This is ChristmasPrevious Post
Next PostProblems: Resolution

In June 2006 this site burned through 2.4GB of bandwidth.

On Friday, December 8, this site burned through 4.6GB. I’m pretty much doing in a day what I used to do in a month, bandwidth-wise. This is still peanuts compared to a lot of big sites, but this is way more traffic than I planned on using for my little hobby site.

Now I see why people sell coffee mugs and t-shirts and whatnot when their site starts doing well. You need to do that to pay the bills. I’m still not at all interested in asking for money. I don’t want to start running a store. I refuse to accept donations. I refuse to cover this site in ads. I also don’t want to stop making the comic just yet. Can’t bandwidth just be… I don’t know… free or something?

I entertained the idea of putting the strips on Flickr and letting THEM figure out how to pay for all that bandwidth, but I’ll bet my ripped images – while still legal fair use – probably violate the Flicker TOS.

I’m still working on this. All I want to do is make something funny and give it away for free. It annoys me that cold, hard reality keeps intruding on this idea and ruining my fun with boring details like paying for things.

 

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

This is ChristmasPrevious Post
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22 comments

 
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