Horde Paladins and the End of the World Show

World of Warcraft is coming to an end. No really. Ignore the burgeoning conflict in the middle east or the crumbling edifice that once was our democratic system. The real drama is the utter and contemptuous destruction of SACRED LORE within World of Warcraft. You see, after the new expansion, the new Horde race will be able to create the formerly alliance-only class of paladin and the new Alliance race will be able to create the formerly horde-only class of shamen.

ZOMG!

I have never in the entire history of the game seen such concentrated wailing, screaming and gnashing of teeth and general grief that something as horrendous as this could be being brought into play. People are now constantly threatening to quit the game and worse. It is hilarious.

OK, lets take some of the 'facts' being quoted and see whether they stand up:

1. THERE IS NO MORE DIVERSITY IN THE GAME
Apparently, the only thing that seperated Alliance and Horde was the Paladin/Shaman thing. Hot races and geography and starting areas and lore and quests and quest hubs. No. Two classes. A subset of these whines have been the people who have realised that the game isn't actually that diverse *shock* Only about a year late on that one then...

2. THE LORE! THE SACRED LORE! THINK ABOUT THE LORE!
Yes, apparently this change is 'against Lore'. Lore, for those that don't know, is the word used for the established backstory of Warcraft, as established through the three Warcraft games and their expansions. It explains who, for example, Thrall is, where he came from and why he never moves from his throne in Orgrimmar. For an elite subset of folks, for whom Lore is everything, changes to Lore are devastating. It's heinous. How could it happen? What's even better is they think they have more of a connection to the lore than the developers at Blizzard or even the Chief Lore Monkey at Blizz. NEWSFLASH - they don't call them developers for nothing. The Lore is not held in a static holding pattern at the end of WC3. It moves, it develops and it changes. All ready, WoW has introduced new places, new legends, a massive joint effort on behalf of both sides in Silithus and at Naxxaramas. Things change, the lore changes.

Oh and there is nothing so hilrious as someone called 'IPWNNOOBS' crying about the fate of the blessed lore....

3. IT's IMBA!
Thats 'imbalanced' for those of us still capable of using real language. Yes, apparently the changes will make the horde/alliance imbalanced in pvp/pve and thus cause the demise of existing paladins/shaman (delete where applicable...). Now, historians of the Warcraft forums will know that two of the major threads that have been flying around for ages have been:

• Nerf Shaman because they are IMBA with their totems and shocks and self res
• Nerf Paladins because they are IMBA with their blessing and healing and bubbles

So now, each side is equal and still apparenly it is IMBA? /sigh

4. IT IS THE DEATH OF SHAMAN
I'm going to make a generalisation here - paladins have more pvp useability than shaman. I could be wrong, but the whining voices of 1000 posters couldn't be wrong, could they? The question being raised is - why would you put a shaman into a raid when you could have a paladin? Now, coming from a guild where we have a pretty laise faire attitude to class allocations this seems a little mad, but upon closer examination... We know that we have a problem sometimes with Shaman who think of themselves as Mages in Chainmail rather than Priests with Shocks. Getting some of our Shaman to heal is a nightmare - indeed on a recent raid two shaman were outhealed by a bandaging warlock! Paladins are more actively used as healers and therefore they are, apparently, less likely to suffer this culture shock. And they have blessings and blessings are far more useful than bloody totems!

However, to all the shaman who are bemoaning the demise of their raid place, my only reaction is ... cry me a river! As a feral druid I have HAD to change the way I play and the equipment I wear to become a raid healer. Why? Because thats the part of my hybrid class that the raid needs me to do the most. So what makes you think you are so special that your horridly mana inefficient burst dps is going to make a snot of difference to the raid? Adapt your class to the raiding mentality or be cast aside. I have a L60 Shaman and I would be hard pressed to justify her coming to MC because I could not see where I could be of assistance with anything like the utility that my druid does.

5. ITS AN EASY BALANCE TO THE GAME
And saving the silliest to the last - apparently it is a quick cop-out on balancing the sides. Let me see - I'm at work and we have a problem, and we have a quick, efficient easy solution that answers a number of other problems we have faced and cuts development time on future products down too. Do we take it? Hmmm.... well, the only reason not to would be if it was going to be a massive marketing looser.

And herein lies the real comedy of this all - EVERY SINGLE CHANGE MADE TO WORLD OF WARCRAFT IS MET WITH THE SAME REACTION - and therefore the WoW community has fallen into the trap of the boy that cried wolf. If you are going to leave en masse in a protest at the raping of the SACRED LORE then for Gods sake, do so now. NOW. Not later, N-O-W. Because Blizz have grown used to the willy waving and the sabre-rattling and they simply will not reverse their huge plans for you. Mr 14-year old computer user who will next year discover sex and never play their game again.

Change - learn to love it, or living in angsty horror for the rest of your days!

Neil

More advert madness

Another day, another hilarious advert, this time for Boots Soltan (I think) - a suntan lotion. The crux of their arguement is that 'if you realised that 50% of your childs exposure to UV rays was during the summer holidays, you would protect them too!' - accompanied, of course, by the sweating, tanned picture of some waif on a lilo.

Lets think about that for a second. 52 weeks in the year right? In Newcastle we are lucky if we get anything that could be reasonably called direct sunlight between October and March. Thats six months of the year. So 26 weeks of the year have gone already.

Right, of the other 26 weeks or 182 days we have Easter, Whit and Summer school holidays. A total of 9 weeks off school. For the remaining 17 weeks, the kids are indoors during the majority of the sunshine. 85 days of school, resulting in a max of 1 hour per day sunshine (at lunchtime) and 34 days of weekend, for the purposes of this experiment, say 6 hours each weekend day. Thats 289 scorching hours of sunshine.

During the two shorter holidays, again assuming that the cherubs get 7 days of blistering sun and spend 6 hours out, baking - we have another 126 hours of sun.

So outside the summer holidays, assuming a roasting year of sun and nothing else but sunbathing, the combined total for the year sans summer hols is 415 hours of sun.

During the summer holidays, we have six weeks and six hours of sun, a paltry 252 hours of solar illness.

Hmmm...I detect sums that aren't adding up... Maybe the sunshine stuff gets more intense during the summer, that must be it? Regardless I suggest that if for the rest of the year, during the times when the sun is in the sky, the kids are either under a cover of clouds or in a classroom it makes perfect sense that they should get the majority of their exposure to sunshine when the sun in clearly in the sky and they are outside!

Neil

The Wall

Sometimes, even the nicest things can throw up unexpected problems.

I have been recruited to play in a Mutants and Masterminds campaign. This makes me all sorts of happy. Firstly, because I get to play, secondly because it's M&M and thirdly because of the new experience side of it. It's has the potential to be quite an eye-opener after playing within the same group for umpteen years.

I have had the basic influences of the campaign explained to me by the GM, Ben. It's going to be a campaign similar to The Ultimates and The Authority, whilst not having the same power level of the latter. I'm imagining a rather Morrison-/Millar-esque tone to the entire thing. This is exactly what I wanted. Giddy, I am...giddy!

So, I now have the chance to create a character. As always, I create the stated up character alongside the more fluffy side of the character because I have always found that I gain some degree of synergy from the process. I have my spanking new copy of M&M2 (which is very nice) and I am indeed, ready to rumble.

Or am I?

I suddenly realised that this is it. On balance of probability this is the only character I am going to be able to play for a fair while. Being 'The Iron GM' is a wonderful thing, but as playing comes few and far between, you want to get it right. When we dabbled with Exalted, I got it all sorts of wrong. My idiot brawling giant was a great concept and a cracking character but the limitations that he had made him a very awkward vessel to explore the setting with. Total play time, maybe two sessions. I had an Arab teacher (Bard....) in a nice medieval D20 D&D game - that was much better but he was still a very cunning niche character that played great in his particular arena, but not magnificently elsewhere. Total play time, two sessions. I also had a warrior (of barbaric origins) in our rotating DM game of D20 D&D. That was much better in that he was a very basic character which roamed around within the setting. Total play time, four sessions I believe.

Hey, throw in two sessions of the infamous Shadowrun game and I've had 10 weeks playing in five years. What am I complaining about?!

So the mission is to make a relatively generic character who isn't designed into a corner. Something that can run with the campaign.

At this point I thought, hey - why not access your encyclopedic knowledge of the comic genre and see what you can come up with?

Guess what I came up against? THE WALL

Too much knowledge is a bad thing folks. Every power in the book is a 'oh, I could do that with this and then...oh no, what about this. Oh and that!'

Maybe it's not a wall. Maybe I'm a kid locked in a sweetshop desperately trying to find the key and the great sweets without stumbling outside grasping onto a bag of parma violets.

More later. This isn't as easy as I thought.

Neil

A Sign of the Apocalypse

http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/sayuncle/trailer/

Finally, madness has come full circle. Yes folks, a comedy film about a man who has a natural affinity with children being victimised as a paedophile. What next?

Neil

BREAKING NEWS: RolePLAYING on the cards?

I received an email last night from a friend asking to be part of a new Mutants and Masterminds campaign that he is starting. Me, actually playing, in a superhero game? For the first time since 1988?

I'm giddy with excitement!

Neil

Addiction Overload

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5034756.stm
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=274459
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf9kX6ujz9w

Three things in two days is going to provoke a reaction from me. This is one topic that strikes close to home and really (REALLY) annoys me.

As a society, we are obsessed with obsession. Our pursual of normalisation with culture has created a monster that condemns those who are somehow different and the weapon of choice is the accusation of obsession and addiction. And what a wonderful weapon it is as well because it latches onto two phenomena.

The first is social norms. It is very easy to accuse someone of addiction if they do something out of the ordinary. Something strange. Dare I say geeky. Secondly, it is an unbeatable arguement because any attempt to defend yourself is met with the panacea of 'denial'. Echoes of middle age ducking stool interrogations methinks?

Online gaming is a major target for the obsession obsessed at the moment and naturally it is something that has effected me. I play World of Warcraft a lot. Usually a couple of hours every night (when I am in the house). And yes, I have been accused of being addicted to it. Which, I have to say, is a load of bollocks.

The truth of the matter is that it is a past-time that I enjoy, that helps me relax and that allows me to stay in contact with my friends from the comfort of my own living room. I have a family and the responsibilities that come with that, so I cannot be out roleplaying and card playing and pubbing three or four nights a week anymore. However, I see no reason not to socialise with my mates. The internet (as a medium of communication) allows that. I can sit, watch the TV, play WoW, talk to my wife - all at the same time. Thats decent time management in my book.

However, one of the real bugbears of my interaction with this subject is the issue of stopping and letting people down. Note in the (actually very funny) advert, the woman expects the man to stop playing as soon as she approaches him with the offer of sex? The expectation I and many of my friends have met, is that playing Warcraft is like reading a book or drawing a picture. Something that you can drop instantly and pick up again.

Really, it isn't. In virtually all activities you are working as part of a group and have an essential part of that group. In our game, I am a healer and my job is to keep people's characters alive. If I walk away in the middle of an encounter for a quick shag, those characters WILL 'die' and that means that everyone I am playing with will be inconvenienced. In fact, if I go AWOL in the wrong place I can create a situation where the entire event will have to stop. Now, no doubt some of you are reading this and thinking - so what? It's only a game?.

Next time you are say, playing a game of football, take the goalkeeper away from the game. What would the reaction be? Would he be able to say 'sorry lads, it's just a game...wife wanted a shag ASAP!'. Imagine a horse race where the jockey you backed pulled up and got off his horse for three minutes to check out a nice patch of greenery?

Just not going to happen is it?

Time is another factor that enters into these calls of obsession quite a lot. The length of time played in one 'sitting'. Now, lets consider how long some other activities take? Like golf? A proper game of tennis? A long hike up a mountain? Going to see Pirates of the Caribeean II? A night out on the beers with the lads?

Not really short passages of time are they?

However, they are all socially acceptable because the Obsession Obsessed cannot rally against anything socially accaptable like sport, outdoor pursuits, cinema or face-to-face social interaction*. ANYTHING involving technology is fair game though. Open house for the OOs to vent their spleen.

Don't misunderstand my ranting - I know that there are many people who are truly addicted to gaming. Those people that take time off work to game, that pull sickies to game, that care more about the game than their families, those that spend inordinate amounts of money they cannot afford on gaming and those that game for so long that it makes them ill. They all need help.

However there are some of us that have a happy balance between our gaming hobby and our private lives and our work lives. Sure, sometimes things need a little tweaking - more often between work and private, than private and hobby. But please don't just knee-jerk and associate everyone who games with obsessive buffoons who cannot differentiate life from pixels

Neil

* I stand constantly amazed how, when it suits, going out on the piss is bona fide social interaction encouraged by society - whilst at other times it is virtually criminalised, akin to an attack by marauding hordes!

How NOT to have a WOW Holiday

I rarely get free holiday time. Much of my work occurs during the summer and as such my holiday time is split into occassional days. This means that I rarely get to holiday with my family. Sad, I know, but you have to live with it. So the last two days I took off were a chance to just loaf around the house and do nothing.

Catch that euphimism for playing Warcraft?

So on Tuesday morning I waved my wife off to work and happily logged on, ready for a days adventuring in Azeroth. Sadly, no-one else had decided that this particular Tuesday was a good day to join me. I could have logged in on Gorthaal and done ... something, but essentially he's my Raid character and he was parked at Dustwallow ready for the assault on Onyxia. I could have farmed with Gortessa, but everywhere I want to farm I have to compete with bots which annoys me no-end. So I logged onto Kylea in the hope of pushing my PvP Rank to the exalted heights of .... 3!

Kylea is an interesting experiment - I have decided that I should try PvP, if only to see what I have been missing. I have been missing a lot apparently, because I have been loving it. Very interesting situations and interesting group interactions. Most of the time, now that I have the hang of things, we win 3-0. We lost once on Tuesday because the raid leader instructed our flag carrier (who had the flag in our flagroom, we were at 2-2 and the Alliance had our flag somewhere) to hide, so they could hunt down our flag. Well, you can guess what happened?! However, the problem is that well, the Alliance don't like losing to they don't instantly sign up again, which we do, naturally. So you have to wait and wait and wait. Of course, I can't do anything else because Kylea is a nasty little L39 twink and if she levels she becomes dogfood in the 40-49 BGs. So ..... I levelled my fishing.

Oh the adventure of it all.

And then I was summoned to the ritual humiliation that is Sports Day. Youngest child, Emma, was participating for Yew house. Now this isn't your normal 100m, egg race, sack race style sports day. These are modern grouo-competitive sports like bean bag throwing and other nicities. Lots of happy parents watching their cherubs run around like loons. Lots of kids (including Emma, bless) running the relay and waving as she passed by. In the end, Yew came second and Elm won. Hurrah! Free icepops all round.

Home again and Onyxia got pwned, first time, by 33 people.....which personally, I thought was pretty impressive. It's obviously going to be a while before everyone gets their T2 Helms etc but it is definitely now on the raiding schedule.

So anyway, Wednesday comes and of course, it's maintainence so I do some writing and pottering and then log on again and find...exactly the same thing. The bots come on as soon as the server starts so farming is a nonsense. I cut some leather with Gorth to send to Dave to pass the time as I watch a DVD and then it's off to Sports Day part 2

Eldest daughter, Lara, is not an athlete in any description of the word although she has aspirations as a gymnast or a footballer. Neither, I believe, will come to fruition. Its actually quite hard as a parent to see a child motoring towards that inevitable time when her peers will tell her, bluntly, that she is too big and uncoordinated and no, she can't be on their team - but she can help them with their homework. I was there once and I know how hurtful it can be, especially for one so innocent and trusting as Lara. Anyway, sports day was more advanced with hurdles and relays and such. Elm, Laras house, came second. Hurrah! Free icepops all round.

One thing I did notice was the propensity, even at that young age, for the little buggers to cheat in any way, shape or form. I wonder whether the headmasters much vaunted School Code has anything in it about cheating? Hmmm....

WoW was dull again in the evening. The majority of the guild were in Zul Gurub and once again I had precious little to do. I was tired, I put some shelves up. I ate. Zzzzzz.

So, two days holiday and nothing really achieved? The lesson here? Be more bloody productive with what precious time you have available to you - and avoid sports days!

Hypocrisy

Getting away from hobbies for a moment, I need to vent my spleen on one of the aspects of modern life which I believe is strangling our civilisation - moral hypocrisy. Every day I am bombarded via the media and, by osmosis, the opinions of my friends and colleagues with a barrage of seemingly contradictory messages. It drives me mental. Here are a couple of my favourites of the moment:

The Great Food and Bodyshape Debacle.

Being fat is bad. Really bad. Being fat encourages heart attacks, asthma, diabetes and a number of other diseases and illnesses that costs the NHS £X billion pounds a year. Thats an unacceptable burden that the tax payer should not have to pay and is singularly the fault of the fat bastard.

Being thin is bad. Poor Keira Knightley (known universally as a stick insect) is so thin she MUST have anorexia. She really needs to pork up a little because she is a role model for hundreds of young girls.

What? The 100s of young girls that you have just scared senseless about the dire consequences of eating too much, now must eat enough to make them 'the perfect weight'? OK, everything in moderation - no-one is allowed to be fat and no-one is allowed to be thin. Well, expect female media stars like Brittney Spears who is vilified in the popular press for succumbing to the bodily ravages of having one child soon after another and has put on a few pounds. ZOMG! She's fat! She has let herself go! She must slim down NOW!

And then we have the food debacle that goes along with it! I have been following the case of William Guntrip, a kid who has been punished at school for selling his classmates sweets when they have been removed from school canteen. Fair enough, the school probably sees this as wrong but the reactions in the ever entertaining 'Metro' newspaper have been nothing short of hilarious. "[Guntrip] ...is little better that selling alcohol/drugs to addicts in rehabilitation"

The Jamie Oliver revolution continues apace with chubby kids being forced to run fat laps during games and the proposal that kids should be weighed and graded on their fitness as part of their school assessment.

Of course, this would all be great if we all ate the correct foods and this message is pummelled into us ad infinitum at the moment by either Findus or Birds Eye with the most annoying, patronising adverts I have ever witnessed. If you haven't seen them, they have found an actor that looks as near to Ray Mears as you can get without being accused of genetic modification and had him investigate the dodgy practices of the fishing industry. This includes the shocking revelations that cod which isn't frozen goes off quickly, farmed salmon has a colourant added to food to make it shocking pink like fresh salmon due to the lack of prawns in their diet and that fish fingers sometimes have preservatives in them. What makes the adverts so annoying is the way that the actor manages to look as if these revelations are as serious as say, discovering a sight of mass genocide or having your grandmother impaled on a spike before you. The utter disappointment he puts into his voice when he reveals 'I thought they were joking?' regarding fish flesh colour charts is Oscar nomination stuff. What the crafty fucker does so well is divert attention from the clever words in the advert - Findus never claim to not use stale cod in their meals, they just say it is frozen (not when, which is the issue). They say they use fresh salmon in their dishes, but they never mention that the colourant is only used sometimes and that by flying pacific salmon across the world, your nice steaks have not only contributed to over--fishing but the air freight emissions have blasted another chunk out of the ozone layer!

I remember a time when it was considered the height of political incorrectness to accuse a woman of being fat and to do such was to be enforcing a gender stereotype onto them. Nowadays, being fat is the last taboo. Unlike being black or gay or disabled it is something that you change and has a palpable cost to society - similarly, being too thin.

But what about other things with palpable costs to society? What about tobacco? What about alcohol (and I mean ALL alcohol, including Sherry!)? What about extreme sports? Hell, what about all sport? What about outward bounds exploits that force brave men and women to risk their lives because you were not competent enough to complete what you set out to do? What about David Walliams risking his life swimming the Channel?

All of these things, in theory, could cause the NHS to spend money on things that are avoidable by the performers....they should ALL be banned. We should live in a society where our every action has to be judged to minimalise risk of injury or illness lest we drain our scant resources. No? Then why pick on fat and thin people?

Why pick on William Guntrip for showing a little initiative to buck the system and stand up for the kids who want to eat sweets like their parents did in their school days. What Guntrip does at that age is frowned upon - trust me, in a few years time it will be called an Enterprise Unit at University and will get the lad a great degree. The entire thing is riddled with... hypocrisy.

The Two Johns: Reid and Prescott

We hate politicians. Whatever colour of rosette lies on their shirt we hate them. Why? Because they are the fractured gods of modern society. Flawed deities placed above us all, yet easily accessible. Trapped between the truth and the media, the modern politician is typified by the question-dodging cabinet minister being pursued by Jeremy Paxman to show one chink of vulnerability, yet knowing that one chink will be torn open to reveal a human and thus end their careers in the gods.

Except for Reid and Prescott.

Reid is termed as Blairs Enforcer - why? Because he tells a modicum of the truth. Reid's admission that his department was a shambles and needed twatting into shame from top to bottom was an amazing piece of politics. His unveiled threats to be sacking a number of high ranking civil servants was welcomed. His suggestion that we, the public, should look after our own neighbourhoods a little instead of waiting for someone to do it for us was too much for everyone involved.

I mean, God help us if we cannot look after ourselves! If we cannot forge communities and relationships with other human beings without the way it is done being prescribed in an Act fo Parliament. To suggest this was, apparently, condoning vigilantes. No, it was condemning people who sit, do nothing and whine that no-one helps them. The paladin against all evil, the Bobby on the Beat, does not police on his own - the community creates an atmosphere where wrong-doings are seen as unacceptable. And yes, that means that you sometimes might have to cross paths with a young kid who is doing something wrong - but talk to them, suggest an alternative action. Hell, have a laugh with them about it - it works you know?!

Alternatively, you might consider toning down your expectations of young people. In a society where gatherings of more than two kids seems to signify a riot in the making and the sight of a ball being kicked is the equivalent of the drawing of swords on a battlefield, it gives them little option but to be seen as toerags.

Of course, these are the kids that are out of the house, searching for somewhere to play or hang-out in our prescribed suburban jungle. Not like the fat ones, who are indoors playing on their computers. Naturally the fat ones should be outside (so they can be chased and told to go indoors) and the thinner ones should be indoors (where they can be accused of being sedintary and told to get out and play)

Sigh

And finally John Prescott. My god, what exactly has this man done to deserve this level of abuse? I'll tell you what he has done.... he's *shock* had an affair. Now, with the majority of marriages ending in divorce I'm going to bet that a fair few of the people who are lambasting him have ducked onto the other side during their partnerships.

But lets be fair, theres more than that! He did it on government property! He broke rules!

Lets be honest - a fat man in his late 50s with a face like a sack of spanners and the sex appeal of a pound of tripe managed, for sometime, to get his leg over with a younger, attractive woman....at the office. He didn't show her civil defence secrets, he didn't turn up to meet the survivors of a bomb attack smelling of vadge - he just got some sex.

In some circles, the man would be hailed as a hero!

But no, because then he was seen playing crochet with his staff. OH THE FUCKING NOES! I don't know what was worse - that he was the defacto 'PM in da House' at the time and should clearly have been bombing someone - or that the game he played was not Bar Billiards or Darts like a true Northern lad.

And now he spent a weekend at the ranch of a man he knew but whose business dealings had nothing to do with his department.

So, to sum it up, comedy fat guy gets shag, bunks off work early once and has weekend at ranch.

I'd hate to see what would have happened to him if he had oh, collapsed the economy, engineered an illegal war and occupation of another sovereign state, manipulated an election or ten, had dozens of people held without trial for being foriegn. You know, THE REAL PROBLEMS CAUSED BY GOVERNMENTS!!!

Gah!

And don't get me started on Sepp Blatter. Thats another entire column!

Neil

DRAMA!!1!

Ah, never a day goes past without some drama occuring within World of Warcraft. Yesterdays was the guildkicking of a rather annoying new member. Oh the sheer human tragedy of it all.

This guy was, to be fair, a pillock. He didn't sound young on comms, probably in his early 30s. He just couldn't understand what was going on around him. Every so often he would go postal on comms, getting VERY irate. He would harass officers in /w. He would /w people spreading sedition about the guild. (oh God! I used the word 'sedition' - how sad.)

Most of all though, he refused to take any instruction in raids and thus died very quickly and caused numerous problems. Bad play we can abide. Bad play that is repeatedly pointed out and the advice ignored or worse, blatantly disregarded...well, thats just not acceptable.

What people in the guild maybe don't realise is that we have pondered over the decision to kick this guy for WEEKS. We absolutely HATE kicking people from the guid. In some way it infers that we have failed in our mission to be the broad-church welcoming guild. We have only done it a scant handful of times.

And the reprecussions will no doubt start soon. Which is the silly part. It's a microcosm of our take-all, give-nothing society. The whining players who are not officers will complain that the officers have in some way abused their power. And yet, in the next breath,they will complain that the same officers have not organised their game for them in terms of raiding. Cake, Eating it. etc.

Oh the drama!1!!. How can something so silly be taken so seriously.

On a brighter note, Kylea the Mage won her first WSG this weekend. I was so proud.

Neil

P&P Returns....at last.

Three months between games was always going to be a tough task for a campaign and especially when the set-up for the next session (zombies!) had been spoiled to the players and hyped them up a little.

Well, to cut a long story short it worked in the most chaos filled freeform sort of way.

I had a number of problems going into the session other than the obvious 3 month gap. The first was zombies and combat. There were 10,000 people on that ship and most of them were transformed into nanite-controlled zombies. Thats a lot of people to fight. In the end, the Zombies were just mooks and then real villain of the piece was the Plasma Warp that the ship was falling into. Oh the tension. Still, the zombies had to be fought and they were, in a very cinematic, running-combat way. NPC survivors were eaten and heroes were grappled only to shoot their way free.

The second problem was that of the rather ship-bound Zeb character. He naturally functions better when he is plugged into the Khanjar, but that means that he is always looking for a high-tech way to get out of a problem. A bit like a runner in a Cyberpunk game. However, the tactics used by the crew and their need to transmit and analyse information within the chaos made him rather active, which worked well.

The third thing was that the rather ridiculous plot would ruin it for the players. This was blatantly a double homage episode to films like Posiedon and The Towering Inferno, as well as Event Horizon and any number of '...of the Dead' films. However, it also had the machinations of an insane pirate lord, a massive complicated double-cross and a random (yet dramatically useful) cosmic event all slammed together with cliche after cliche.

Bless my players! They picked up that particular ball and ran with it as fast as they could. The session started slowly with the players testing theories and then landing on the ship. From then on in, the game entered a searching mode until a sublime scene where Zeb told the 'away team' the fate of the crew, according to the Captains Log, whilst they were standing in a room of dead bodies.... and then *wham* it was Aliens speed from there till the end. And the twist at the end left a great cliffhanger for the next session.

The Ideas Factory questioned in his blog whether the use of cliches and genre stereotypes added or detracted from the session as I planned it. I don't think it did, especially considering the nature of the timing of the session. We needed a good session, a great laugh and something that moved the campaign on to the next series of adventures after the introductory sorties. I think this did it.

Next time, the final face off with One Eyed Elijah ... and an explanation of the intricate plotting that caused the ship to be filled with Zombie Gas...honest!

Neil