Tuesday, November 24, 2009

So I'm a junkie, right?

And I've been clean now for six months, as I explained in my last post. But I'm really starting to jones for the stuff, you know? I keep thinking about it, and it's almost like I can taste it. But I'm good—I stay clean. I'm not going back.

Sure, maybe I visit my dealer's web site once every couple of days. At least it's not every day. And maybe I listen to my dealer's soundtrack while I'm working. So what?

Then today I get an email from my dealer. "Your account has been selected to receive 7 free days of game time. Come back! Come back!"

It's a good thing I'm on a tight deadline right now. But I have a feeling that once that deadline is past, I'm going to spend 7 days reminding myself of all the reasons why I don't like this particular drug...

Saturday, November 14, 2009

World of Warcrack

Just for kicks, I went and looked at my billing records for World of Warcraft. I played (or at least paid) from 12/25/04 through July of 2006, or about 19 months straight. Then I took three months off. Started again on 11/25/06, played for about 11 months, then took two months off. Started again on 12/31/07, played for 6 months, then took another two months off. Started again on 9/8/08 (right after my birthday), played for 8 months, and now it's been six months since I played.

Yeah, I'm jonesing. So what?

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Mrgrglglglgrl!

In the comments to my last post, Metz asked about seeing some of the stats for the WoW monsters I've been playing with. So, just for kicks, here are a handful of different murlocs, of the sort found around Lake Teronis in Ashenvale.

As D&D monsters go, these are intentionally dirt-simple. They have one or two powers, which often very closely mimic powers possessed by the monsters in WoW. They're designed to play fast and easy. I wish, in retrospect, I'd done something to make them interact better with each other, but hey . . . they're murlocs. :)

Have fun!

Saltspittle Muckdweller Level 7 Artillery
Medium natural humanoid, murloc XP 300
Initiative +7 Senses Perception +5
HP 61; Bloodied 30
AC 19; Fortitude 19; Reflex 20; Will 18
Speed 8, swim 8
m Spear (at-will; standard) • Weapon
+14 vs AC; 1d8 + 4 damage.
r Spear (at-will; standard) • Weapon
Ranged 10; +14 vs AC; 3d6 + 4 damage and the target is slowed (save ends).
Alignment Unaligned Languages Murloc
Str 16 (+6) Dex 19 (+7) Wis 14 (+5)
Con 13 (+4) Int 8 (+2) Cha 10 (+3)

Saltspittle Oracle Level 7 Artillery (Leader)
Medium natural humanoid, murloc XP 300
Initiative +6 Senses Perception +7
HP 61; Bloodied 30
AC 19; Fortitude 19; Reflex 19; Will 20
Speed 8, swim 8
m Staff (at-will; standard) • Weapon
+14 vs AC; 1d8 + 4 damage.
r Shock (at-will; standard) • Lightning
Ranged 10; +12 vs Reflex; 3d6 + 4 lightning damage.
R Healing Wave (recharge 6; standard) • Healing
Ranged 5; the target can spend a healing surge.
Alignment Unaligned Languages Murloc
Str 16 (+6) Dex 16 (+6) Wis 18 (+7)
Con 13 (+4) Int 8 (+2) Cha 13 (+4)

Saltspittle Puddlejumper Level 7 Skirmisher
Medium natural humanoid, murloc XP 300
Initiative +9 Senses Perception +5
HP 77; Bloodied 38
AC 21; Fortitude 19; Reflex 20; Will 18
Speed 8, swim 8
m Spear (at-will; standard) • Weapon
+12 vs AC; 2d6 + 4 damage.
Rushing Charge
When charging, the puddlejumper's speed is 10 and it deals +1d6 damage.
Alignment Unaligned Languages Murloc
Str 16 (+6) Dex 19 (+7) Wis 14 (+5)
Con 13 (+4) Int 8 (+2) Cha 10 (+3)

Saltspittle Warrior Level 7 Soldier
Medium natural humanoid, murloc XP 300

Initiative +8 Senses Perception +5
HP 77; Bloodied 38
AC 23; Fortitude 20; Reflex 19; Will 18
Speed 8, swim 8
m Sword (at-will; standard) • Weapon
+14 vs AC; 2d6 + 4 damage and the target is marked until the end of the warrior's next turn.
M Sunder Armor (recharge 4 5 6; standard)
+14 vs AC; 3d10 + 4 damage and the target takes a -2 penalty to AC (save ends).
M Shield Bash (at-will; opportunity) • Weapon
+14 vs AC; 1d8 + 4 damage and the target is dazed until the end of the warrior's next turn.
Alignment Unaligned Languages Murloc
Str 19 (+7) Dex 16 (+6) Wis 14 (+5)
Con 13 (+4) Int 8 (+2) Cha 10 (+3)

Sunday, November 8, 2009

I'm still off the WoW habit, but...

I let my World of Warcraft subscription lapse in May. This might be the longest I've gone without playing it since I started, come to think of it, which could explain the cravings.

In addition to the cravings for the actual computer game, which I keep denying because it turns out there's a lot about that experience I just don't enjoy, the cravings have been manifesting recently as desires to play D&D in the world of WoW. I think it's a cool world, and there's a part of me—a rather large part, it turns out—that would love to play a night elf warrior in a tabletop experience where I'm not button-mashing, where my actions make a difference in the world, where there's a DM to adjudicate my doing whatever I want to, and all those other things that make tabletop gaming superior, in my estimation, to computer gaming. In fact, there's a lot of it that feels like the best of both worlds: I can have the tabletop experience I enjoy while also playing the soundtracks to the game and making abundant use of visual aids and quest design from the computer game.

So I've spent some time with the D&D Monster Builder, statting up monsters from the game in D&D terms. I've spent a lot of time on WoW fan sites like thottbot and wowhead and wowwiki, culling information about the world and its inhabitants and "translating" it into D&D content, from quests to monsters to storylines.

When I was at GenCon, I bought a couple of WoW mini singles: a couple of nagas, a voidwalker, and a timberling who made an appearance in my Greenbrier campaign a couple of weeks ago, as a myconid sovereign. They were $1 each, so I felt that was a pretty good investment for monsters that would be Large in the game anyway. Doesn't help much for gnomes and night elves and other Medium critters, but they're pretty cool additions to my minis collection.

So then today I got an idea. Using the 3D models of WoW mobs available on wowhead, I took snapshots of a bunch of monsters, front and back, printed them on cardstock, and turned them into stand-up figures, much like the Cardboard Heroes of old. Look:


That's a bunch of murlocs on the left, some nagas on the right (I decided to make them Large after trying them both Large and Medium), and satyrs in the front.

More:


On the right, a demon and its cultists. Center, an abomination and three forsaken. Left, a worgen. And in the back are two orcs and two tauren.

Still more!


These are the woodsy folk: a couple of furbolgs (I decided to make them Medium after trying them Large) on the left, a bunch of night elves toward the right (with a son of Cenarius and a dryad at far right), Gnarl the ancient in the back, and two draenei and a human (Delgren the Purifier) behind the furbolgs.

I focused on creatures and characters to be found in Ashenvale, since that's where I've been putting most of my attention. It's aesthetically one of the most appealing zones to me, which almost makes up for its almost utter lack of good storylines. And Blackfathom Deeps is one of the only instances I've done, pathetically enough.

So then it occurred to me that the work I did might be useful to other people. Want to print the WoW minis I made? Visit this page and download the PDFs, and print them onto card stock. Want to make your own, visit the same page and download the photoshop files, delete (or hide) the layers showing the WoW monsters, and add your own images.

Caveats: I'm more or less happy with the Larges, but they don't stand up if you make the base too narrow. What I ended up doing was not cutting through the page margin at the top of the page, so I got a wider base on them.

I'm really not happy with the Huges. They take up a row of three squares, rather than a box of nine squares. And it's just possible that all the Huges I did ought to be Large anyway. Thoughts on making effective Huge monsters in this format would be welcome, but it's possible that a flat counter is just better. I suppose one could get all fancy and make an X-shaped figure with four views of the monster... oh, geez, now I'm going to have to try that.

Have fun!