Long Trail Blackbeary Wheat

Although this is available year round, the Long Trail Blackbeary Wheat is really a summer beer.  I find the entire Long Trail line to be on the dry side - which is fine for me because I favor crisp dry beers - and this brew is no exception being very dry even with the blackberry flavoring.

When you pour it out, there is not much head, and whatever is there does not last long. It is very pale in color, so there is not much to look upon.  Given it is summer, most often I drink this right out of the bottle.  There is some blackberry aroma which is pleasant.  The is no doubt this is a wheat beer, that comes through quite clearly.  The blackberry taste is not overpowering, but is does have a seltzer like after taste in the finish which some people might not like.  Clean & fizzy, a thirst quencher and somewhat of a palate cleaner.  I like it in the summer as the first beer on a very hot day, or an in between beer when changing from one style to another.

This is not an award winner, but if you like a fruit beer that has only a touch of the berry flavor and is very dry, you might enjoy these.

Cheers.

Players must worry about failure

Christian over at Destination Unknown prompted this post.  He writes an interesting blog over there, I recommend you check it out.

He asks, what is the point of combat.  He talks about his transition of opinion regarding combat and how his monsters & NPCs will now do everything in their power to kill the PCs.  In a broader view, I maintain that players must worry about failure in the adventure or the adventure is no longer fun.  If the tension created by the possibility of failure is gone, where is the excitement?

Failure is not limited to combat, and the consequences of failure are not limited to death.  I maintain that players fear other types of failures more than death.  The loss of prestige, the loss of treasured magic items, capture, or the loss of face by a notable villain usually generate more emotion than simple death.

Al over at Beyond The Black Gate says that character deaths are fun, and one of the notable differences between new and old school FRPGs is whether characters are disposable or not.  He makes a interesting point about this difference.  I see that both can be fun, and have had fun both ways.  However, the game I want to play regularly does not involve disposable characters.  Even when 1st Edition was our primary game vehicle, we didn't favor disposable characters.

So the dichotomy is this - I want to the players to fear for the safety & success of their characters yet I don't want a revolving door of new characters.  I want to the players to be attached to their characters, but not so much they will not take risks.  The game is only really fun when the tension of failure is palpable, when death, loss or embarrassing failure is perceived to be a real possibility.  The players only achieve satisfaction if they feel they overcame the challenges and were not saved by the DM every time they were about to fail.

When characters are low level, every encounter should be difficult.  They are at the bottom of the food chain and consequently they need to behave accordingly.  As they progress, logic dictates that more and more encounters should not be a challenge to them.  If as first level characters they are attacked by a raiding party of Orcs, it should be a tremendous challenge to survive let alone defeat them.  Once they attain higher levels that same raiding party should be a cake walk - the characters hardly breaking a sweat as they deal with the Orcs.  At higher levels the characters should be seeking more difficult challenges as motivated by their character goals.

As Christian points out, the verisimilitude is broken if the players understand there is a pattern or formula that allows the characters to easily defeat the opponents in every encounter.  It needs to be more random, and encounters need to be plausible.  As he says, why would 5 goblins attack 5 equipped adventurers?  Unless they were out of their mind rabid, they wouldn't.  So that is part of the challenge, creating plausible encounters where the 'monsters' believe they will succeed in their attack on the characters and can do everything in their power to do so.  Anything less is unsatisfying to the players.  Victory is hollow if there was no real threat.

The real challenge for the DM is to create those balanced encounters - balanced in the way the characters feel like it is plausible for the world in which they are playing, and threatening enough to make them fear for the characters they have come to love.

The dice never lie.

Picking up where I left off four years ago

We had our first session switching places, me as the player and our alternate DM behind the screen.  Hard to believe it was four years ago I last played this character.  I spent plenty of time updating and refreshing my memory on my character sheet.  I read old adventure logs.  I reacquainted myself with my character back story and motivation.  I even wrote a little color update on what my character was doing since the last adventure and what upcoming decisions troubled him.  Interesting when you are determining how best to handle introspection when your character has a 6 intelligence.

All that preparation and I still felt my roll playing was sluggish.  I guess it takes a little bit to get back in the swing of things.  Probably has to do with my being heavily invested in this character, and wanting to do it just right.  The group has big expectations of him too.  I am definitely over thinking it, and need to let is just flow more.

Session after session as a DM I handle NPCs with little or no problem, taking their shallow descriptions and making them seem plausible and differentiated from other NPCs.  All this with little or no preparation.  I also usually have no trouble role playing characters in a one shot scenario.  Yes, I am definitely trying too hard to be in my character.  Next session I will let it be more spontaneous.

The DM did a good job, and it was a good session overall my sluggish role playing not withstanding.  We faced a number of seriously leveled up Owl Bears and were able to tactically pull together well and dispatch them even though we had not used these characters together in a long time.  Funny, though, how we just take this D&D iconic monster weirdness in stride. 

My character recently added the Keen ability to his hand-and-a-half sword (bastard sword by the book in D&D).  Wouldn't you know that I didn't role a single critical threat all night, even though statistically I should have at least gotten one threat.  Disappointing when you have a new toy and you don't get to see it in action.  I did roll four consecutive 13s on a 20 sided though just to make things weird.

Although we really like playing 3.5 with our house rules, the characters are 9th level and we are seeing the beginning signs of unpleasant complication.  Tracking spell durations, and all the attack/defense math with all the spells and special abilities.  I'm still looking for ways to simplify the tracking/math without changing the feel too much.  I have an attack matrix for my cleric that allows me to more quickly calculation his attack & damage bonuses depending on which spells have been cast.  I still find that too slow.  I have been thinking that some quick reference spell cards might be better - make a template with the stats in same place on each one, and then just add up the numbers of the cards in your hand when your turn comes.  More thinking is in order.

There is also some conflict in the party - between the characters, not the players.  One of the party members was duped into working for some bad guys, and my cleric of Torm is on the fence whether this party member is a traitor (in which case my cleric will give him a quick painful death), or a true friend that just needs to redeem himself.  My player knows the truth, but my character does not.  I'm trying to make the play interesting without making it unfun for the other player.  It certainly makes the Elf fighter/rogue a little nervous with the half-orc cleric of Torm glaring at him on a regular basis.  We'll see how it goes. 

Anyway, it is fun to be back on the front side of the screen making the world to right again.

The dice never lie.

Time to switch sides of the DM screen

In our gaming group we have a main regular game, and here and there we run alternates when we do not have a quorum for the main game.  So for the past four years I have been in the main game DM seat.  I enjoy both sides of the screen, but it has been quite a while since I was consistently on the other side and I am quite looking forward to being back among the adventuring masses.

I like to think being a DM improves my playing, and being a player improves my DMing.  Though we are 'playing' the same game, and doing it all together, it is quite a different experience behind the screen.  On the DM side I don't seek to win, but rather to put on a interesting, challenging and entertaining experience.  There is a new thread on ENWorld where the OP as an aside raises again the (g)notion the DM loses when the players win.  Balderdash!  I did not post in response because everything I wanted to say sounded like thread crapping and the OP is welcome to his opinion.

Now back on the player side, I am released - I can strive to win.  Of course, I will do it within the confines of the character I have created and have consideration for my fellow players.  Instead of focusing of all the game elements, I will focus on what my character wants.  Instead of creating multiple paths for the players to follow, my character will select a path.  Instead of wondering what the players will do to my carefully crafted adventure, my character will be doing unspeakable things to the DM's carefully crafted adventure.  Instead of calculating XP, I will be planning character responses to things I imagine the DM will throw at us.  Yes, my character will kill things and take their stuff.  Oh, and given he is a good cleric, he will save various and sundry good leaning beings and tithe heavily to the church.

All the while my characters fame and wealth grows, a small but growing itch will start again to get back on the other side of the screen.  Hopefully for quite a while that itch can be soothed by running the alternate adventure nights, because I have much killing and taking to catch up on.

The dice never lie.

Western Game Shoot Out

We couldn't get a quorum for our regular D&D game, so instead my son ran a one shot (pun intended) western using Sidewinder Recoiled with a few mods.  The outing was based on the movie, "The Quick and the Dead".  We rolled up characters (being a d20 game it always takes longer than we expect - so many fun choices) and off we went.  We had no idea in advance what the adventure was, so our characters were not optimized for the adventure.

Like any good western there was a bar room brawl, gun fights in the street, and the big shoot out finale which included a bad guy getting shot dead and falling off the roof.  Two of the characters entered the gun fight contest, because, what the heck, it was the adventure.  Surprisingly, my character, the River City Kid, made it all the way to the final round to go up against the mayor (who looked strangely like Gene Hackman).  The mayor changes the rules 15 minutes before the duel (which would indicate certain death for the Kid), and my character decides not to follow his rules any more and all hell breaks loose.  Fortunately for the Kid, the other characters come to his aid, risking their lives for cinematic glory.  A number of memorable moments by all characters, many of the perfect western classic type lines.  In the final scene the dead mayor's Peacemaker is slammed on the bar by the Kid who says to the saloon keeper, "I believe you have my two thousand dollars."  Great fun overall.

I don't hesitate to recommend Sidewinder Recoiled as a fine d20 western implementation.  It is really easy to run if you already know d20, and has some nice elements to make it western specific.

The only thing we didn't do was head them off at the pass.  Maybe next time.  The dice never lie.

Laphroaig quarter cask

Low on single malt Scotch Whisky stock in my cabinet, I dutifully headed out to the local state liquor establishment to select a bottle to replenish the inventory.  All the usual suspects are there (Glen this and that) but I want something more unique and less typical.  I spy a bottle labeled quarter cask which piques my interest.  I read the fine print, which raises the eyebrows more than once, and then proceed to the checkout.  A bottle of this golden elixir is now mine.

Laphroaig quarter cask is allegedly a throw back to a few centuries ago.  This local whisky might have been transported via mule over cattle paths to avoid paying duties.  (Check out the link above from the distiller, it is quite interesting)  Oh, and according to Wikipedia it is pronounced lə-FROYG.

Before you open the bottle, you learn it is an Islay malt, 48% abv, with a golden amber color.  Pop the cork and you are greeted with a most unusual nose.  It certainly is peaty, but a muted soft peat, and perhaps a hint of the sea in the smell and then smoke.  There is something else in the smell that I have been struggling to identify, almost an aromatic rubber like smell but not quite rubber.  Looking for inspiration, I went to some reviews and one called it band aids.  That is exactly it, there is a smell that is like a freshly opened metal box of band aids!  You might think this is an unpleasant mix, but it is not.


Due to the high alcohol content, I decided to add some water.  Normally, I take my Scotch neat.  It was very smooth.  There were tastes of sweet peat, smoke, a hint of citrus and some other tastes hovering just out of my reach.  Alas, I think I added too much water.  Even considering that it had a very long finish.  


This is a very nice Scotch, one that will take more of my time to explore.  I will take the next glass neat, and report on the findings.  Even with my over watered faux pas, it was quite pleasant.  I recommend you try it if for nothing more than the singular experience.

Home Brew Spell - Lesser Swap Places

It is fun to add new spells to the game that add an interesting twist, rather than spells that just do damage with a different description.  Here is a spell with endless possibilities which can be used on or off the battlefield.  It is in 3.5E format, but it would not be hard to change it to fit your game template.

Lesser Swap Places
Conjuration (Teleportation)

Level: Wiz/Sor 2
Components: V, S

Casting Time: 1 standard action

Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)

Targets: You and one ally in range, or any two allies in range; see textDuration: Instantaneous

Saving Throw: Will negates (harmless)
Spell Resistance: Yes

You instantly swap positions between your current position and that of a designated willing ally in range. Alternatively, you can swap the positions of any two willing allies in range. This power affects creatures of Medium or smaller size. You can bring along objects that you can normally carry, but not other creatures.