My D&D 4th Edition Campaign Character: Let Me Show You Her!

Me?  Playing in an actual 4th edition D&D campaign?  Not D&D Encounters but full bore, proper campaign D&D 4th?

Yes.  Yes I am.

And when I am playing actually is taking me out of D&D Encounters.  Go figure.

But as always I come prepared.

What kind of prepared?  ALL THE PREPARED:

I have everything a player needs to rock out the D&D 4th.  A compartment box full of dice, minis, and counters!  My D&D Encounters Delver Reward Card!  A counter tray full of Dapper Devil counters plus a pencil sharpener, and some beads for "Bloodied" effects.  My deck of Fortune Cards I mostly got for free.  A quick reference card to various status ailments.  My character sheet from my short term D&D Insider subscription because I am cheap.  A brand spanking new notebook with Twilight Sparkle the magical unicorn on the cover because I am playing one of the Stewart children and as she is a 17 year old girl it seems something she would have.  Also My Little Pony annoys people and I find this completely hilarious.  And a miniature of course.

(Not shown is my box of Reaper Bones, my magnetic initiative tracker, more pencils, rulebook, dry erase and wet erase pens, and Dungeon Tiles.  You would think just being a player I wouldn't need to bring a pile of stuff.  But I am the most helpful player.  With a lot of toys I need to rationalize spending money one.  So there.)

We didn't really get anything done at the first game (ok only two of us showed up and I was horribly late and we had a turn 3 TPK in the first fight in the first dungeon.  Modules made for five PCs don't work well with two.) but it was a fair warmup.  Next session I will have a nice and organized plastic tub full of my prepainted minis which are organized (human sized obviously) to go with my Bones.

Yet I do like to do PC writeups and Aaron Stewart's cheerfully outgoing daughter Alexis has always needed one.  If you want to see him in his 3.0 version from back in the day go here:  http://wargamedork.blogspot.com/2008/01/blast-from-past.html .

But now let's take a look at Alexis in her D&D 4th edition (Essentials) incarnation:

Alexis Stewart with her father's old longsword.  (Miniature is a Reaper Bones figure painted poorly by me.  But I spent a good 3 hours on her so bugger off if you don't like it.  Still looks better than most prepaints.  Most.)

Alexis Stewart

Age:  17

Height:  5' 6"

Weight:  135 lbs.

Size:  Medium

Alignment:  Good

Race/Gender:  Human Female

Class:  Ranger (Essentials Hunter)

Level: 1

Str:  10

Con:  11

Dex:  20

Int:  10

Wis:  14

Cha:  8

Skills Trained:  Acrobatics, Athletics, Dungeoneering, Heal, Nature, Stealth

Defenses:  17 AC, 12 FORT, 17 REF, 13 WILL

HP:  23 (Bloodied 11, Surge Value 5, 6 Surges/Day)

Initiative:  5

Speed:  6

Passive Insight/Perception:  12/12

Basic Attacks:

Longsword, 5 to hit, 1d8 damage

Longbow, 9 to hit, 1d10+5 damage

Feats:  Bow Expertise, Distant Advantage, Master at Arms.

At Will Powers:  Aimed Shot, Clever Shot, Rapid Shot, Aspect of the Pack Wolf, Aspect of the Regal Lion.

Encounter Powers:  Disruptive Shot, Heroic Action.

Starting Equipment:  Adventurer's Kit, 90 Arrows, Longsword, Longbow, Leather Armor, Climber's Kit, Grappling Hook, Two extra Sunrods, 7 GP.  (70 lbs carried)

Character Background:  Alexis Stewart is the oldest of the two children of adventurers Aaron Stewart (Bard/Psionic Warrior), and Mindaria Stephens (Druid).  Born when her father was 19 and her mother 24, her birth largely ended her parents' active adventuring careers.   At least for a few years.  

  Her brother Eric (Druid) was born two years after her.  Until her brother was 10, they were mostly a relatively happy family unit.  Her mother tended to the Druidic needs of their hometown while their father continued to ply his trade as a Bard while sometimes using his psionic powers to assist in other ways.  \

  From time to time the children were left in the care of the Stewarts' other former adventuring friends while they took care of various things.  Otherwise their folks were mostly at home with their aunts and uncles being the rest of the Armageddon Hunters adventuring company.  They grew up with stories and tales of adventures and were themselves trained to follow in their footsteps, though hopefully just to defend themselves from former enemies of the family.

  Yet when Eric was 10 everything changed.  One morning Alexis woke up to discover their mother had left, leaving a letter to explain what injuries Aaron had suffered in their course of their final adventure could and should not happen again, but their old enemies needed to be fought and investigated.

  This seriously hurt Aaron though he tried his best not to show it, continuing to raise his children, sometimes even taking them on missions and travels that were thought to be safe.

  One day Mindaria returned, injured seriously, being followed by minions of their old foes as she had discovered their plots and disrupted them.  Giving his children a gem of teleportation, it threw both of them across the Multiverse.  They arrived on this campaign world together, but agreed to separate and explore any and all possible routes back to their homeworld.  

  And thus Alexis Stewart begins her adventure!

Personality:  Alexis is an.. odd duck.  A mixture of tomboy with some girlishness around boys she fancies, she has a tendency to open her mouth first, then start throwing punches as she inevitably causes some sort of fight to break out.  While she is a complete "Daddy's Girl" practically worshipping the ground her dad walks on, her thoughts about her mother are.. not very kind.  As far as Alexis is concerned her mother left her father and little brother and breaking their hearts was unforgivable.

  As to her brother?  While completely devoted to him she has also made it her life's mission to make him utterly miserable and outdo him in every way.  Though while she is loud and bombastic he is quiet, sullen, and sarcastic.  She fights from a distance as a supremely skilled archer while he gets stuck in close, spinning his quarterstaff like it is an extension of his being.  In her mind he is her personal punching bag except when other people try to mess with him.  Then she jumps into the fray and wreaks havoc.

  Causing destruction and fights is FUN.

  Basically Alexis (or Alex as her friends call her, sometimes to her dismay when she wants to feel like a girl) is well meaning but she is loud, obnoxious, and tends to start fights when she thinks there needs to be one. She wears her heart on her sleeve.

  And now she has joined up with a small adventuring team to deal with stolen items and missing persons, which may have escalated to murder.

  Time to take out her 17th birthday gift.  Her bow the "Skullf*&ker 500" and do some good.

  And hopefully find a way home AND make her brother look bad in the process by doing it first!

Quotes:

"Yeah?  Well?  YOUR THE JERKFACE!!"

"GET EM!"

"ITS NOT MY FAULT YOU SUCK!"

"This is the part where if I had boy parts I would tell you to suck them!"

"Follow me and shut up.  My dad taught me how to look out for Orkie up in the trees."

Roleplaying Notes:   Have you ever seen that new cartoon show Gravity Falls?  Well Mabel Dipper is seriously a friendlier kid version of Alexis.  Its SCARY.  Add in a little love for action and adventure plus a glee at making her brother miserable and Mabel could practically be her mental twin!

(If you haven't go watch the show.  Its amazing.)

Connecticon 2013 Wrap Up Part 3: Sunday, at Cons Not So Funday :(

And on the second to last day of the month I finish up my Connecticon 2013 report in comic format.

Some years I never finished it but this year in spite of my very busy work schedule (mostly self inflicted because as the Wu say, cash rules everything around me.  Also taxes.) it IS finished.  All three days complete.

So let's get to it, and as before if anyone in these pictures wants to contact me for original pictures, just to say hello, or to ask me to remove a picture feel free to correspond!

Also not only have I done this 3 part nearly 30 page coverage project, but I have painted up a character for a D&D campaign and already completed Shadowrun Returns on the PC.

Much to do in spite of having no life.  Go figure. :/

Connecticon 2013 Wrap Up Part 2: Saturday!

Here is part 2 covering the big day of the convention, Saturday!  Unlike a lot of folks I spent most of this day in two major events covering nearly twelve hours of the day.  And I didn't get down to the convention floor till around 1 PM.  So no rave (that's ok I am in my 30s and it.. really isn't a place for me), and many other events were obviously blocked out as I did these two things.

Cannot say I regret it at all.

To keep this reasonably sized, many pictures are not shown, mostly from the Call of Cthulhu game.  I do have them on the ol HD though.

Connecticon 2013 Wrap Up Part 1: Friday!

Yes I have been busy keeping me from blogging.  Also its been hot.  And work schedules.  Except this little bit of blog fodder is another reason!  Connecticon 2013.  It will be a two or three post comic thingie so let's get this party started!

See you next time for Saturday!

A Quick Example of Game Ports

Ah game ports.  In the 80s and 90s games were often taken from one platform to the other.  Usually the Arcades to home systems.  Thanks to copyrights and legal thingies some arcade titles are now legally lost to us as they were meant to be played.

If we are lucky we may be able to play the odd fan remake or port back in the day.

Yet.. in many cases these ports were but a shadow of the original ( Pac Man on the Atari 2600 anyone? ) however they really are the only legit way one could play it outside of owning a huge and expensive arcade machine.

A fine example of this would be the arcade version of Robocop.  The arcade game was a great looking and playing 2 button and 1 joystick platformer.  The home ports and translations in many cases (especially the 8 bit computers) were almost an entirely different game!  Yet the Amiga/Atari ST and PC DOS/Tandy ports were a direct port.  Yet..

Well..

Let me show you.

Here is the arcade game.  Controls great, looks great, sounds great.  (In MAME emulation.)

 Here is the Amiga version.  You need to use the keyboard to jump or a VERY awkward joystick motion.  Its the version I own sadly.  It runs slow in the UK where it was made (Ocean was to the UK what Bandai was to Japan and LJN/Acclaim was to the US.  A games maker who mostly just made licensed titles, usually not good ones.) and has a giant interface around the screen.  Dreadful!

 Now the EGA/Tandy DOS port.  In some ways it at least looks better than the Amiga though it controls MUCH worse and the non Tandy sound is AWFUL as PC beeps are wont to be.

As an example this is a free fan remake of the 8 bit computer versions (I may go back later once I get my Tandy Color Computer 3 to play the Robocop on it and show you all what it looks like.) which was the same basic game as the arcade but with a LOT of changes.  This was a couple of guys in 2004 who made this.

If you ever get a chance to try the original, Robocop is quite fun.  But the home ports, the only "legitimate" way most of us could play the game make it both unfun, ugly, and awful.

Sadly given the disdain electronic gaming is given means titles like this one are unlikely to ever allow fans to play it as they remembered, stuck with inferior home ports.

Now there ARE good ports if not translations of arcade classics that take advantage of the platform they are on.  In some cases I consider them BETTER than the arcade!

Maybe I will show some of these another time eh?