Ramblings Near the End of the Year

I have a couple of things that I want to talk about.

The first being that Conklederp and I just moved from the abode that we have resided in for the past three plus years and life's been kind of hectic, hence the lack of post by me this last Monday and Dr. Potts chiming in for MIDI Week Singles on Wednesday.  One thing we've discovered though is that 1) companies can be asshats when you say that you want to cancel a service you've previously held for three years.  Say, for instance, you want to transfer services from one residence to a new once, everyone is as helpful as Satan with an handful of sinners, but say that you want to cancel your phone line because you won't need it anymore and all of a sudden you'll be put on hold and disconnected after 10 minutes of said hold (two separate times) like you've contracted the plague from the Montagues or some such rot.  UTTER ROT, and I know my plagues, so it is in fact, a thing.  So we will have interweb services again in 10 days, which, luckily enough will be after we come back from a trip down to the seasonless SoCal (where we will have access to the rest of the global-sphere, so we got that going for us, which is nice).

Next, I purchased my first Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition product and beware, some of you might be shocked and offended (Delaños).  It was the Starter Set that Amazon is currently hawking for a measly price right now.  Gabe over at Penny Arcade talked a bit about it and I have a few friends that have been wanting to get into D&D for a while and I was a bit leary about starting in on 4th Edition, but now that 5th Edition is out and getting, from what my limited ears have heard, pretty good reviews, I thought I would spring for this boxed set to see if Salty Liver and her husband WhoBear were still interested after the short four part quest.  If all goes well, and suspect that it will, the DM and Players guide will soon be on the horizon.  And maybe the monster manual too, but I just might modify the 4th Edition MM for 5th Edition rules, which shouldn't be too hard and honestly, I would find it to be a hoot and-a-half.

The Starter Set is pretty basic as far as D&D packaging goes.  The box includes a whittled down players/rules guide, a DM and story guide, five pre-generated character sheets as well as a blank one for copying and a set of six dice (standard d4, d6, d8, d10, d12 and d20).  One thing brought up in the rules that I really loved was the emphasis that ". . .the rules are a tool to help you have a good time.  The rules aren't in charge. . .If you decide that a rule works a certain way in one session, make sure it works that way the next time it comes into play."  I don't know why, but I found this very refreshing.  I know there are people who are stickler for rules, that they will find a specific rule in the Player's Guide and refuse the game to be played in any other way; not that I have personally played with these people, but I know they're out there.  Not being bound 100% to the rules is nice.

This lead me to another minor epiphany of sorts.  I like being the storyteller in these types of games and I will be the first to admit that I am not the best DM out there; to date SidMesh and PlacerMan are who I tend to look up to.  When playing games like Mansions of Madness, I like playing as The Keeper (equivalent to the DM) and I love playing as the DM.  I like all of the research needed before starting a campaign and being in charge of the story, which is something that goes contrary to my general approach to the rest of the world.  I'm sure someone out there can diagnose this as something-or-other.  There's probably a word for it in Latin.

So that is where I am going to leave you for the weekend.  I'll try to have something up on Monday before hoping on that literal aeroplane but I should also warn you that posts for the next week might be a bit spotty.

Oh, and if you don't know yet, Steam's Winter Sale is happening to lighten the load, as if your wallet/purse hasn't been feeling already.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Instrumental