Warhammer (warning, long)

I like the new edition of Warhammer, it's a little crazy to explain up front because there are so many bits and gubbins, but once you get going it's pretty fun and not really that complicated.

As usual for a new system, we spent about two hours making characters. The guys ended up with a dwarven Thug, recently fired from the nearby mines, perhaps for his confusing variety of accents, a human Thief with no weapons training whatsoever, and a wood elf Wardancer: deadly in combat, deadlier on the dance floor.

Amazingly everybody also picked a name for their character right away! Possibly a record. You also get to pick a party card which helps define your group's identity and is used for tracking tension within the party and gives some unique abilities. On the move and full of amoral thugs, the party chose Swords for Hire.

The adventure started as the group went down to the lake for a spot o' fishin'. Instead they almost lost their lunches as they found a grotesquely obese man floating in the lake. Turning him over they realized he was a mutant who had swallowed another man. The swallowed man had somehow begun fighting his way out near the end -- his knife was sticking out of the mutant's belly, from the inside.

Recognizing the mutant as one of three creepy brothers who live in a shack out in the woods, the party decided the next step was to rob the victim's house. Unfortunately there were people around so the group instead went to the brothers' shack. Corey Hart (the Thief) snuck up for some reconnaissance but was detected by one of the brothers, a grotesquely mutated fellow similar to the man in the lake.

Belying his lack of ballistic skill, Corey fired a bow into the mutant's open mouth, which lodged through his cheek into the window sill, effectively pinning him in place for several seconds. An unlikely shot that had the effect of swinging the battle in the PC's favor right away, as the mutant had some fearsome powers none of which he was able to use in any way. Stoneteeth (the dwarf) and Leik (the wardancer - sp?) busted into the shack where they promptly disemboweled the two cultists. Then Corey took one of the brothers' nice longbow as a reward. For dessert, they burned down the shack.

Heading back to town they decided to check out the victim's hovel again for "clues." However they came across the sheriff and decided to start retroactively "filing the paperwork," telling the sheriff that they'd found a body down at the lake but eliding the part about killing the other two brothers. On the trip the sheriff noticed the longbow slung on Corey's back, resulting in a ludicrous (but successful) set of lies and the players asking themselves the question: "Why do we ALWAYS lie?"

After leading the apparently not-so-bright sheriff to the flaming shack and playing dumb once again, the party retired to a night of drinks at the local inn, easing some of the tensions of the day and readying for the next day's job... something about a late coach from Marienburg....

Aww you lucky ducks, have fun gaming this weekend! Wish I was there! Or in Japan with Denny! Or even Italy with Mike!

I started bootcamp again this week so I've been getting up every morning around 430am, getting to bootcamp for hardcore work out at 530am, then a full days work. I'm SO fucking exhausted, I basically spent my entire Friday off sleeping, or being in a state of near-sleep. It's a good tired because it's mostly physical and I'm already getting used to it, but I still haven't gotten my sleep schedule in line yet. So right now it's midnight and I'm suddenly half-wide awake/half-sleepy.

Saw your twat Eric about the game you guys almost made. I still don't know why that never happened (I think you said you can't really talk about it) but total bummer :(. I actually think about it every once in a while. I remember the videos of gameplay with your voiceovers that you had on some promotional site.

Speaking of quirky-games, check out this QuickLook for Darwinia+: Video Game Video. I've never played the PC version but I might pick this up because this looks really interesting and fun. I'm just a sucker for heavily stylized games with a unique art style (N+ being one of my favorites.)

Another random thing: I just recently have gotten into nuts! I never liked nuts growing up, but in like the last month or 2, I'm all about eating nuts. Pistachio's are my favorites. Sunflower seeds can eat a dick because I still can't figure out an elegant way to eat them. I just mash them in my mouth like an animal. Still don't like peanut butter though.

See (Some Of) You Guys Tomorrow!

Come by at noon or any time thereafter and we'll get this Warhammering done!

My carpal's acting up a bit, if only I had a fine breast mouse pad! Get me a creepy souvenir, Pumpkin!

Hentacle!!

Salutations from the land of my ancestors! I am currently stocking up on my supplies of hentacle pron, attending a figure/resin kit con, and visiting relatives.

There is nothing to boost one's self esteem than have everyone think you are retarded because you look like you should understand the language, but all you can do is smile like and idiot and nod your head.

Still, all that shame and self-loathing is washed away thanks to this.

Ah, wrist comfort! Suck it carpal tunnel!

Rude: That is cool that you set up the grouping of our twits, only one problem, your twits aren't showing up on there. Nor are any of Elzar or my twits directed "@PoundRock" appearing. Do we need to set one up and view through each of our respective accounts maybe?

I really have been interested in trying out Assassin's Creed 2. It looks like a lot of fun. I never had a chance to platy the first one. Maybe I'll pick-up a copy. Probably not for a few months though...

So looking forward to WFRP.

D>M>

hey Eric! I made an Action Team "list" on Twitter of all our accounts which you can follow in one go, so maybe you can make that list the feed on the left ----> instead of our individual feeds. Here it is:
http://twitter.com/poundrock/actionteam
Now sure if it works that way, but consolidates things and might make it easier.

Definitely agree. With the way they made the jumping into puzzle solving it reminded me of Prince of Persia. Even the combat is very simplistic and rudamentary like that. And as we all know, we have to thank Karateka for that on Apple.

I'm just leeching off my roomies Playstation 2. so don't think i'll be getting Mass effect 2 anytime soon =-(

Assassin's Creed 2 is totally awesome. Yeah, I didn't even finish the first one because it was kinda lame and repetitive, but AC2 is awesome till the end. There's some bonus content that just came out for it, but it doesn't really add anything to the main story so I'd prolly skip it.

Mass Effect 2 is still super sweet. There's tons of great asshole moments (and some genuinely funny parts) so you'll like it Petersen.

PS two too

Assassins creed2:
My game time log is around 13 hours and have only played through 35% of Assassins creed 2! Hardly even scratched the surface. Considering it only took 60 hours to level a paladin to level 50 back when wow first came out. Awesome game. Assassins creed 1 wasn't as much fun. Everything got really repetitive, but they really ironed out the concept in 2.

COD4
Call of duty 4 (old game) but still fun. About halfway through on that one. This one isn't very long at all and went through it in a couple of hours.

Madden 10
not that great. Why do football games always suck?

Rat Catchers and Grave Robbers

I hope there's a rat catcher in the group! Then we get to use the cool unique subsystem for the Small But Vicious Dog! Sadly there is no Grave Robber career in either the core set or the Adventurer's Toolkit. If your character chooses to pursue a side career as a Ressurrectionist on the side, however, who am I to say aught?

I may be deluding myself, but I think it's pretty unlikely that Aeryk would sabotage any flavor of WFRP... although I will point out that if YOU ruin the game you are in effect getting a "twofer," it would totally destroy both of us.

Hope we have a good time! I think the system will be fun... personally, I like that's it doesn't use a combat grid. That's the main thing about 4e that I don't like. I've always felt that using grids/minis makes the combats less "real" in my head. (Note "real" in quotes, I don't really think that the characters are all actually alive and shit, I won't freak out about Blackleaf if she dies... but DON'T TEST ME ON THIS.)

Anyway, I've done most of my homework on this... probably won't have time to get through the Magic and Priest sourcebooks by then so we might have to lean on Aeryk's extensive knowledge of the Old World to carry us through that stuff.

Re Mass Effect 2: I'm glad it's so good! I'm actually having a lot of fun playing through ME1 again. It feels fresh because I'm doing two things that I have NEVER done in a CRPG before:
1. Skipping sll the bullshit side quests
2. Being a complete asshole. (ie when the blue chick started taking an interest in me, I totally shut her down, to the point of telling her NEVER to look into my past or look at my files EVER again)

Rat Catcher

eLzar, I had totally forgotten about Buttercups. Fucking Ac0sta was evil with those. For some reason I could never get mine to work. Probably a good thing...

Looking forward to some WFRP this weekend. Hopefully we have at least one Rat Catcher or Grave Robber. Then eLzar can proceed to sabotage the game in righteous retribution for all those years of jr0n's irrational habit of derailing any WFRP game before the train even left the station.

Why is it that any time my family is in town, I seem to be slow for a few days recovering from the copious amounts of alcohol consumed. Uggg...

D>M>

Just stop you're playthru of Mass Effect 1 Jon and get the sequel, it's SO good! Don't burn yourself out on that old noise!

That's awesome you're gonna cook some gnarly meal. Me and the lady friend try big crazy meals every weekend and its totally fun. Last night was this epic Indian meal and this morning I made biscuits from scratch! Cookings fun. Making wontons and then wonton soup is totally not as hard as you'd think (and pretty yummy.)

Jon: In ME2 you can watch strippers like the first one and its just this weird "lean forward" option and like you can tip. But the akward part is the other 2 people in your team are just standing there in the background waiting... hahahah, it looks so sleazy!

Hi mike!

Confirmation!

With Dr. Motorbyke's assent, we are officially on for "Rat Catcher Saturday!" (A single tear rolls down Ja-El's cheek at the thought of role-playing....)

We should dig up another fun multi-player game to play when the dice rolling is done... maybe I could borrow Runewars from Matt? Aeryk, any new hotness? (Edit: Maybe some Battlestar Galactica? 4 Cylons FTW!)

I'm going to make some french onion soup today that I am 95% sure will be completely bad-ass. I saw it on America's Test Kitchen and it involves like four hours of effort and a process called "triple de-glazing."

Funny Funny Dr. Jones!

Glad to hear I'm not the only one still playing that game...so....good! Which one are you running? So, Elrock, thanks for the WOW invite, and sorry I couldn't act on it right away. Do I need to purchase a particular version of the game first or should we resolve that on WarHammer Sunday?

Greetings to All the rest of the Action Team as well on this fine Friday, when I can't believe I'm still sitting at my desk working instead of, well, sitting at my desk working... at home. Hope all is good with you all.