The Dunwich Horrors

I'm a football fan, and well, it's now football time. I like college ball all right, but for me, it's more of an excuse for social gathering than keeping up with all the conferences and teams. Pro ball on the other is what I do follow. There's a group of ten of us who participate in a fantasy football league every year, looking back now, we've had the same group since 2003.

It's fun, especially now that all of the stats are kept up with through the computer, and makes for some great rivalries and competition throughout the season. Frankly, I'm not the most proficient of a coach. I've made the playoffs a few times, but I've never received any kind of payout. We recently held our live draft online, the pic above is me gearing up for it.

It was a thirteen round draft, and we were allowed to have up to two "keepers" from the previous season. These keepers would take your first and second round picks respectively. I kept a couple of players from last year, namely because they're good players, but also because I just like the idea of doing it in the first place. When the dust cleared after the draft, my picks, and my new team roster looked like this, here's the Dunwich Horrors:

round 1: LaDainian Tomlinson - running back, keeper
round 2: Braylon Edwards - wide receiver, keeper
round 3: Reggie Wayne - wide receiver
round 4: Donovan McNabb - quarterback
round 5: Michael Turner - backup running back
round 6: Selvin Young - backup running back
round 7: Santonio Holmes - wide receiver
round 8: New England Patriots - defensive team
round 9: Heath Miller - tight end
round 10: Mason Crosby - kicker
round 11: Matt Hasselbeck - backup quarterback
round 12: Benjamin Watson - backup tight end
round 13: Buffalo Bills - backup defensive team

That's a wrap for now, here's to a good season!

Despayr!

In the finale of Cormyr, the Tearing of the Weave, our as of yet unnamed adventuring company stumbled upon the lair of a Shadow Dragon named Despayr. Parlay was not an option, and the fray began. The battle was fairly swift, but admittedly, the psychology rules weren't entirely enforced. It was still a fun battle, and nice to close the first of three chapters in the Weave saga.


A newcomer to the fight, a mysterious Moon Elf with the skills both of a locksmith and the blade skills of an assassin joined the party after being liberated by them.


Yodin, the Human Druid, wild-shaped into a huge bear and attempted to use its weight to ground the dragon for most of the fight.


Alor Frus, Gnome Evoker, stood back and hurled both lightning bolt and fireball. His trusty familiar tactfully stayed as far from the dragon as possible.


Rhystell, the Elven wielder of the Mountain-Killing sword squares off face-to-face with Despayr.






Meti Kumawati, the Human Cleric hailing from Mulhorand, braved the maw of daggers and flash of fangs on the frontlines.


Newcomer Thorvall Nonamé stayed close to the shadows, but lent his bow and blades to the fight.

The Thing Homage

Thanks go to Andy for pointing this one out to me. Mucho credit goes to the creators Simon Gesrel and Xavier Ehretsmann, well done. The film speaks for itself, it's a remake / revision of an all-time classic film, in conjunction with an all-time classic toy. Good story, good visuals, great stop-motion, excellent lighting, and even the music was catchy. Saying I'm impressed with this doesn't even come close.

The Club

Definitely fun, definitely a rental. I picked up the Club recently and have had a blast with it, here's the low down. It's a shooter, which is no surprise since most of the mentionable 360 games out there are, but it throws all pretense of story and plot out the bullet-riddled window. Okay, there's a bit of a story, but not much. You're recruited by a powerful and rich organization who run tournaments all over the world where you run around and shoot bad guys. Unlike Halo 3, or Bioshock, you're not playing this for the storyline however, just some of the aforementioned "running around shooting bad guys". Also, unlike the two previous mentions, there's nothing sci-fi about this one; it's the modern day, real world.



You start with six player characters and unlock two more during play. They offer a lot of separation in terms of style, but I haven't noticed too much difference in terms of gameplay, except maybe faster characters die quicker. You've got some pretty standard PC's: the burly Russian, the tough cop, the insane-killer guy, the American, and the Asian. There's also a couple of departures, such as the African warlord and the Canadian extreme sports junkie.



The game is broken up into eight tournaments, each one taking place in a unique location. The visuals and art of these locations make for some great gaming terrain, and for the skilled modeler, would make good tabletop terrain as well. You fight across locales such as a rusting and abandoned cruise ship, a derelict mental asylum, and even a current eastern European war zone. Each tourney is broken up into six stages, and does well to break up the monotony from just runnin' and gunnin'. There are timed stages, survival stages, run the gauntlet stages, etc. You're doing more than just shootin' though, since it's a tournament it's all about the score, and throughout each stage there are plate metal markers hidden around, either up in the rafters, behind windows, or wherever. Shoot these for extra points and multipliers.



Multipliers are where the game's unique mechanic really kicks in. The more carnage you dish out, the higher the multiplier gets exponentially making your score sky rocket. If there's a lull in the action however (ie, you're not shooting enough of the enemy) your multiplier disappears. Shooting objects like the plate metal markers will keep your multiplier alive. Creativity in dispatching your foes also gives you more or less points. A single head shot at long range will yield more points than a full-auto burst at point blank, for example. The game definitely rewards speed and frenetic gameplay.



Gameplay itself is fast, fun, and surprisingly tense. Plus, it's very easy to pick up, and you'll be racking up double-digit multipliers in no time. I'm not that great of a shooter player, but I became pretty competent with the Club early on. I say it's a rental because you can beat most of the game in just a few hours. If you're looking into tackling all of the online and ranked matches, sure, buy it. If you just want a fun, casual shooter to play on the weekend with your friends, rent it. You can also pick up achievements very easily, tournaments don't even require you to finish in a certain place to get the ding, just finish them, dead last if you have to. You can pick up twenty achievements (320 points worth) in just a couple of hours.



Some of the game felt half-finished. There's no 'jump' feature for instance, and the environments (while rendered beautifully) weren't all that interactive. The guns are real, but you don't get the level of detail or description you would in say a Rainbow Six game. They pretty much all do the same thing, some hold more bullets, some fire faster, but there's little difference mechanically with them. This game, obviously, is not for kids. Kids shouldn't even be in the same room while it's being played. I said it was a rental (unless you want to be king of the online hill), but I picked it up at an amazing 78% off, brand new, from Amazon. This must have been a sale or something, because I see that's no longer the case, heh.

Exo-Suit Goes Live

Here's a nifty little news tidbit. Obviously the functioning and load-bearing exo-suit is cool, but more so is the how the controller operates it by electrical surface signals on the body itself. Apparently it's very good at carrying around all the bird seed you could ever need. I also like the 'white plastic and blue light' kind of look too...

The Mountain-Killing Sword

So there's a joke going around the DnD table, and it's with Brian's character. He plays a Moon Elf fighter, which isn't exactly unheard of, but he's pushing a 20 strength, so easily he's the biggest dang Moon Elf to walk around with a two-handed sword in the Realms. We use Lego figs at the table for marching order, combat, etc. It's a tad better than metal or plastic figs when it comes to customizing exactly what you want your character to look like. It's a lot harder though when it comes to fighting minions, NPC's, or big critters.

His character's sword, however, is made larger every game. At his debut, he was armed with a simple Lego sword, as time went by though, it got bigger and bigger. It reached its ceiling about a month ago here, of course any bigger would just be silly, haha. Well, I thought I'd push it and just see how far it could actually go. According to our battle mat, which has a grid of squares, each equivalent to a five foot space, as pictured here, the sword is now a whopping twenty-five feet long. It truly is a mountain-killing sword. Eat your hearts out both Cloud and Sephiroth.


A colossal meeple has emerged from its lair to assail our adventurer.


The Mountain-Killing sword easily slices the mammoth meeple from head to toe.


The gory aftermath.

Now, a twenty-five foot sword does seem silly, and on this Lego fig, it looks funny. But is it so outrageous? Well, yeah, it still is. But is it crazy to think along these lines? I think not, for that I leave you with the following:

The Shab-al-Hari Roach

We broke out a rather unique, and thoroughly enjoyable, role playing game this week called, as the title may suggest, the Shab-al-Hiri Roach. Yes, it's quite the mouthful. With all of the pending "mainstream" gaming I foresee my group's near future (40k, 4e DnD, etc.) it's nice to also play some of the more obscure "independent" games out there as well. I'm not going to say "go to their website and read about it", but I'm also not going to just copy their summary of the game (which is more succinct than I could do), here's the gist:

The setting is Pemberton University in 1919, and the role of the players is that of various faculty and staff of the college. Everyone has their own particular specialty, whether it is as a professor or a janitor. The game takes place around a series of events during the fall semester such as the wine-and-cheese social, homecoming football, and the like. The players verbally, and oft-times, physically duel with one another in order to gain prestige in the college. The one with the most prestige at the end of the game wins.

Now, the kicker. An ancient Sumerian God, in the form of a cockroach, bent on destruction and chaos has invaded the campus with its brood. It possesses people and bends their will to conduct its bidding, all the while hiding away snugly in their nasal cavity. Extreme drunkenness is the only way to thwart it. It is fairly easy to become possessed, but very difficult to be rid of it. While possessed, your powers and abilities in-game are enhanced supernaturally, although you absolutely cannot win the game in the end if you are still acting as host. Character creation is straight-forward and easy, and the use of 'special event' cards help add interesting flair and plot twists. Players take turns narrating their own 'scene' in which their character tries to win over prestige, other players join in the scene by either helping or hindering the process. The focus of the game is creative storytelling and role playing, the rules themselves are extremely light to help facilitate this. I highly recommend this extremely fun game. It's an incredible value at only twenty bucks.

What follows is a transcript (of sorts) compiled by Chris, who ran the game, read on...

Strange activities and tragedy marked Pemberton Universities fall semester this past year, with much of the focus on four professors. Dr. Appleby-Jenkins Baker-Smithfield, Phd. Head of the Poetry department and staff liaison of the drama club (played by Mik) William Patrenus "Stonewall" Jackson, Dr. of Anthropology and Pemberton Panther Cat #1 booster (played by Andy) Watson Stubblefield, Esq.- Director of the Philosophy department.(played by Chris)

The semester began on a grim note, after the mysterious death-suicide of Dr. Jenkins. Before classes began, the school held a Convocation ceremony for the incoming class of 1923. Professor Jackson gave the keynote speech, lamenting the loss of Dr. Jenkins and his important research into Mesopotamian Fauna. Dr. Jackson then showed tablets brought back from the middle east by Dr. Jenkins on his last expedition, suggesting that the hieroglyphics on the tablets showed evidence of early Mesopotamians playing American-style football, and indicated that he planned to write an article connecting early Mesopotamian culture and the popular American pastime. During the speech, he was heckled repeatedly by Dr. Baker-Smithfield, sitting in the front row of the audience. There was also an awkward moment when Dr. Stubblefield, stepping forward to the microphone, suggested that, had he been in ancient Mesopotamian, playing football with Dr. Jackson, he would have "hit you so hard it would have knocked you out, then I would have stood over you, beat you to a pulp, ripped off your head and spat in it." Soon afterward, outside the hall, a conversation sprung up at the Drama Club sign-up booth. Dr. Baker-Smithfield and Regina Sutton (who, it might be noted, never left his side the entire semester), were working the booth. Dr. Jackson, flanked by Quarterback Bantam Whaley, approached and discussed with Dr. Baker-Smithfield the quaintness of his scheduling all the semester plays during football games. Dr. Stubblefield soon arrived, deep in discussion with Professor L. Scott Collins over whether Lenin had corrupted Marx's communist theories. Later, in the entry room of the hall, Dr. Stubblefield openly challenged Dr. Jackson's Mesopotamian Football theory, leading to a debate which included, Dr. Stubblefield, Jackson, Baker-Smithfield, Reverend Talley, Regina Sutton and several others.

At the next event, the Founder's Day Wine and Cheese Social, things changed for the worse. The event started on a sour note, with Dr. Stubblefield becoming heavily intoxicated. Dr. Jackson attempted to remove Dr. Stubblefield from the room, and Dr. Baker-Smithfield successfully distracted the crowd to draw attention away from the inebriated Dr. Stubblefield. Dr. Baker-Smithfield and Regina Sutton entertained the crowd with an impromptu reenactment of Shakespeare's MacBeth, with Dr. Baker-Smithfield using a half-melted broken piece of a ice sculpture and a prop for a skull. Their performance was interrupted with a loud crash, as a large grandfather clock fell over and crushed Professor L. Scott Collins and another person. Dr. Stubblefield, who had drunkingly stumbled back into the hall in search for some more cheese (and was standing right behind the clock when it mysteriously fell over), pushed the clock off of the two professors, but it was too late- both were dead. The party goers had only a moment to morn, however, as Dr. Baker-Smithfield, during the distraction, grabbed, Gordon Bampus, the Chair of the Board of Trustees. Dr. Baker-Smithfield doused the startled Mr. Bampus and a nearby curtain with brandy and lit both on fire with a candelabra. Everyone ran from the room as the building began to burn.

The next event was the Pemberton Follies. Dr. Jackson, flanked by the ever-present Bantam Waley, began the follies on a humorous note, making several biting comments about the drama department and, specifically implying that men who join may be not be heterosexual. Dr. Baker-Smithfield defended his profession, but not successfully. Angered by the professor's words, Dr. Baker-Smithfield decided to try to poison Bantam Waley, but his plan was foiled when Dr. Stubblefield, who was gorging himself on the nearby buffet, attempted to grab the laced drink from Waley. The distraction was enough for the quarterback to move on without consuming the beverage. The Follies ended with Dr. Stubblefield putting on a skit with two other students. The Dr. and the students took the stage in Mesopotamian garb and wearing shoulder pads and helmets. Dr. Stubblefield throw a pass to one of the students, then took a three point stance and began puking up the food he had gorged on earlier.

The final event of the evening was the homecoming football game. Dr. Stubblefield had found Professor Emeritus John Acton Gerard and was trying to convince the retired professor to join him in betting the hell out of Chancellor Furguson. His plans were interrupted by Dr. Jackson, who came out of the football team locker room, walking gingerly but with a big smile on his face, and Dr. Baker-Smithfield, who was entertaining Ms. Sutton under the bleachers. They convinced Gerard that Dr. Stubblefields plans were foolish and should not be undertaken. Dr. Jackson gave a rousing pre-game speech, apologizing for his role in the Founder's Day Social debacle, and revving the crowd into a frenzy by suggesting sexual improprieties among the other time. Dr. Stubblefield planned to light the bleachers on fire, detracting from Dr. Jackson's speech, but has he moved to do so, the crowd in the bleachers rushed the field in celebration and he was knocked to the ground.