The Only Good Troll On The Internet

I saw WoW is going into extended maintenance tomorrow, and since they just put out the above trailer for Patch 4.1, "The Rise of the Zandalari", that means one thing.

"THE PATCH'LL COME OUT... TOMORROW!  BET YOUR BOTTOM DOLLAR..."

Still No Cake: But Lots of Memories

Portal 2's single-player campaign has been vanquished.  Questions have been answered.  Robots were destroyed (and one saved).  And plenty of science was had by all.

Before the nit-pickyness sets in I wanted to bask in the euphoric glow I got when I flung that last portal and solved the final test, so here's my favorite memories from playing Portal 2.

So long, Aperture Science... and thanks for all the memories.

You monsters.

D&D Monday

"Gelatinous Cube, party of two!"

My D&D group just hacked and slashed their way to level 5 Sunday afternoon.  The players themselves have really gelled as a group, but their characters in many senses are still establishing themselves.  Especially the "veteran" of the group, who has switched classes and races several times before settling on the goliath barbarian Lokag.

From the beginning, I have told the members of the group (most of whom are playing 4E for the first time) to not worry about retraining or remaking their character if they find themselves at a point where they aren't having fun anymore, or with a bad combination of abilities that haven't worked the way they wanted.  Out of the new players the warlock has changed the most, switching from a fey pact to a melee-based Essentials hexblade before switching back when the veteran decided he wanted to play a melee character too.

But now, after going an entire level without making a major change, the barbarian wants to switch to a controller.  A while ago I would have been thrilled, because this now gives the party one person in each party role, but I just hope it's the last time he wants to completely reformat his character.  I can't even figure out what loot to award him week to week!

Portal 2: A Primer

Because the PR engine is revving past the red line for Portal 2 right now, there's quite a few people who're still trying to figure out just what's up with the robots, weird ads and portal guns.  So, for the like... four of you who didn't play the first Portal, here's what I would suggest:

Play.  The.  First.  Portal.

There's really no other way to describe or explain the wave of emotions people experience when they hear the synthesized malice of GLaDOS' voice, the plork sound of a portal hitting a surface, or the knee-jerk reaction that comes from hearing someone even humming "I'm Still Alive".

(Seriously, my friend was humming it at the table once and I kicked him without thinking twice about it.  Jerk.)

So what's all the fuss about?  Why are people crying themselves to sleep with their Weighted Companion Cube plushies, only to wake up screaming in the middle of the night "THE CAKE IS A LIE!!"?

Retro Re-Imagined: Encyclopedia Brown

One of my favorite series of books growing up was Encyclopedia Brown, which followed a 10-year-old boy who remembered everything he'd ever read or learned.  His and his friend Sally solved crimes and mysteries around the town of Idaville, and occasionally Leroy (his real name) would help his father the police chief solve crimes at the dinner table.

Author Donald J. Sobol described Brown as having read so much, "whenever he did cartwheels it sounded like a whole library full of bookshelves were falling over in his head".  He was very methodical during his investigations, especially during the cases he worked for his father; he would always close his eyes when concentrating the hardest, then ask a single question that would help him crack the case.

Sobol relied on logical inconsistencies that required readers to pay very close attention.  This dates some of his earlier books, which assumed the reader knew the rules of etiquette or other now-archaic knowledge.  However, Sobol has continued to faithfully publish books in the series through 2010, and the years of inflation still haven't changed the boy detective's fee of 25 cents per case.

But what if Encyclopedia Brown were re-imagined from the ground up, a new creation of the digital information age?  Would he be intended for children, adults, or somewhere in between?  Would he even still be the "boy" detective?

Unfinished Business

So I didn't get my application to be WoW Insider's Enhancement Shaman columnist finished in time.  In the end, it may have been for the best; while being paid to write about gaming is awesome, a weekly column that would likely have required me to spend more time in WoW just as I'm getting to a point with my full-time job that I need to stay focused on it probably wouldn't have been the best in the world.

However, parts of the application did get finished, and I'm posting them here so they don't languish away on a forgotten corner of my hard drive.  If you play Enhancement Shaman, you'll probably get a decent kick out of it. If you don't... well, it'll all probably sound like gibberish.

But it's awesome gibberish.

Don't Fear the Reaper

In my new D&D group, there are a few members that haven't really played a lot of pen-and-paper RPGs before.  There's the Coworker, who is picking up polyhedral dice for the first time, and the Son, a 15-year-old who was taught to play by his Dad and is still experiencing all those first-time highs and lows that come with trusting dice to determine your character's fate.

Last session the Coworker was absent to rehearse with his band (indie rock group called Prom Date:  look 'em up, they're from Baton Rouge), so the players were a man down as they dug into the meat of the Red Box's dungeon.  The Son is playing a paladin, and because of that he's taking much more damage than the rest of the party; we made sure he knew that meant he was doing well, because that damage wasn't going to his much squishier, finger-waggling friends.

The last encounter of the day was against a bugbear brute with a magic greataxe and some goblin cronies that liked to sneak attack.  Since they were short the Coworker's rogue that left the paladin to soak up a lot of melee attacks, and soon he was on the ground and sucking negative hit points.  That same round the halfling shaman went down from a goblin's throwing dagger, which meant both of the characters capable of healing were now unconscious.

While the wizard and warlock took cover in a doorway and filled the room with freezing bursts and eldritch blasts, the unconscious players began making death saving throws.  The shaman was doing well, but the paladin was not:  before the rest of the party could get to him and get him back on his feet, he had failed two death saving throws and was staring down the barrel at a third.

The dice rolled, skipped off the edge of the map, and came to rest... on an 8.

The first thought on all our minds was:  now what?