D&D 4th ed Session Report 4: The Alexis Letters (Starring Alexis Stewart and MY STUPID FACE.)

Another week, another report!

I had today off so other than a nice walk up to Dunkin Donuts (About a mile each way.) for a delicious iced coffee and their new boss ass Pretzel Rolls whilst listening to more of the amazing "We're Alive" audiodrama ( http://www.zombiepodcast.com/ ) I didn't have much to do so got this update out of the way!

We are now up to EIGHT players.  Five sessions ago (Six if you count Chargen session I probably could have skipped because I have a gaggle of PCs made.  And the mysterious Session Zero which mostly ended in two PCs being dead by the end of the second round of the first combat and thus retconned out..) there were but two players and a DM.  Now we have eight, though only seven present this week.  With D&D 4th this generally makes for slower games, especially as some folks get there later.

But that's ok.  It just makes for shorter session reports sometimes.  Especially when Alexis is running escort duty during the combat.

(We are almost at the point if we have any more regulars we ought to break up into TWO groups and have multi DM like the husband and wife team that runs D&D Encounters does.  Almost.)

And there we go.  My stupid face to be laughed at.  I didn't find a lot of commentary for this installment either really.  Given that it is 4e folks aren't always RP heavy in it.  And my character is mostly known for having a big annoying mouth.  (Totally unlike me, amirite?  :v  :|  :( )

But that is now six total times we have met up, and four total canon game sessions.  Which sort of breaks the usual "YAY NEW CAMPAIGN!  BOO GAME NO GO BEYOND TWO SESSION" nonsense which seems to be normal operating status of most RPG campaigns.

So we should be good for a couple months of adventuring I hope!

Mechwarrior Online Update Post: On the Highway to Suck

Yes.  It has been many moons since my last MWO update.  Mainly because these patches have continued to make the game boring, unfun, and generally about as boot through TV screen annoying as watching Fox News for more than 5 minutes at a time.

The same old SNIPER PINPOINT DOOM nonsense continues and this week the most contentious thing in a Third Person Mode with mild autoaim is nearly the end of the line.

It has been a good two months or so and thus I forget some of the specific changes.  So we will just go by screenshots and hope I remember the big points.

Also its been so bad hardly anyone in The Word of Lowtax even seems to play any more as like me they try and quit playing in disgust till the next patch.  If ever.

(Click for big pictures as usual.)

 I am not sure what this picture is for.  I forget.

 Then there was PROJECT PHOENIX, referring to a Fanpro era Battletech supplement bringing new looks to the old classic "Unseen" Battlemechs that Harmony Gold liked to sue over.  But Project Phoenix in this is a skeevy way to make money.

 They announced a mech a day.  Some look good others not so much.

 The Locust and Battlemaster look amazing.  The Shadow Hawk and Thunderbolt look kind of dumb.

 And how the program worked.  Kind of lame in that you needed to drop 20 a mech and to get a mech you needed to buy the weight class of the previous.  Many Word players went for the full package.  Given how miserable the game has been a MASSIVE amount asked for refunds and cancelled their order.  Good on them.  (I am too cheap to waste that much money on virtual goods.  And more and more players are doing so given how BADLY the developers are treating us.)

 And as always more new Hero Mechs.  This time heralding the Victor, an 85 ton assault with Jump Jet and arm mounted ballistic capabilities.  Because more jumping assault class mechs with super heavy pin point damage is EXACTLY what this game needed.  (That is sarcasm.  This is the opposite of what this game needs.)

 I think this is just me in pre GHOST HEAT days (more on that later) enjoying the glory of double AC 20 destruction in a Jagermech.  Sure long range sniping is generally the game winner, but a good player can sometimes do well.

 And then a bit later MC purchase for the regular Victors, with a later update letting you use C Bills.  (Which they have made harder now via cutting income.  Yes.)

 And one of the website attempts to explain the infamous GHOST HEAT.  What is this heat?  See in a terrible attempt to stop people from loading up on multiple weapons of the same type (which fails to fix the problems with long range high damage weapons mind you..) by shoving on extra heat.

You see in tabletop Battletech damage would spread out as you rolled for hit location while in MWO you fire nearly twice as fast and can generally aim for things.  Even with armor doubled from tabletop mechs tend to die in one or two salvoes.  Hence why an assault mech with jump jets and multiple PPC and Gauss weapons doesn't even care about GHOST HEAT.  They jump up, shoot, land down to cool.  Repeat.

(Also for a short time jumping was more like tabletop in that hitting things was a LOT harder.  People complained and they reverted to making the Highlander and Victor the only mechs for serious play.)

 This patch's update info from the website.  Artillery still sucks.   They also continue to try to fix the idiotic GHOST HEAT idea.

 New map time!  Terra Therma is basically Planet Mustafar from Star Wars Episode 3.

The map as seen as.. a map.

In mission shots.  Very lovely.

 Very lovely indeed.

The next patch added in this.  More attempts to balance weapons, and now 12 vs 12 mode which basically BREAKS THE GAME. 

 New Hero is the Goldenboy, bringing the Kintaro to us, a 55 ton mech.  Plus this time they had a nice charity mech called Sarah's Mech to help for cancer research.  I feel a bit bad about not donating to it but MWO kind of sucks and I would rather just give blood and stuff.

 12 players.  Oh god.

 The problem with 12 on 12 is massive clusters of mechs with nearly zero reason to ever split up meaning mechs die even FASTER than they already do.

 The Golden Boy.  More like GOLDEN SHOWER OF WHO CARES FIX THIS GAME WANKERS.

 Just a fun little graphic bug.  Trees floating into my Atlas' cockpit.

 This week's massive almost improving the game patch.  Sadly 3rd Person Mode is all but ruining the game for many.  Aiming in 3rd person is bad, but it is helped by AUTOMATIC TARGET LOCK SNAPPING if you do something or other.  Oh, and you get a better field of view.  And this is the default setting.

(Are you starting to realize why many people are sick of this game and the company behind it?)

 The Kintaro.  Its not a bad little medium really.  There are issues with using it as it has a broken hitbox making it more fragile than it should be.

 A third of my C Bills to make a tolerable build.  It took 16 million total C Bills to have two Kintaros that run optimally for me and that isn't including the XL Engines and other equipment I had in storage.

(Everyone is shooting so pinpoint accurate now I don't even worry too much about XL Engine torso death stuff.)

Also note the double XP bonus you get for your first two matches in 24 hours with a chassis.  A way to get people to switch around mechs?

 Inside the Kintaro.

 I am not doing very well in them, but I sometimes have a good match..

And the 3rd person mode.  I don't like it but people are making it work.

So that is the last two months or so of Mechwarrior Online patches.  Nothing really fixed, sad attempts at balance that fail, obvious stunts to try to make people pay real money for fake things, and an ever decreasing player base.

See there is drama and stupidity on the forums, but also more changes the developers don't even TELL YOU ABOUT, outright lies, backtracking, confusion, and ignoring player concerns.

Hell, their forums have a vote on user generated topics for the dev team to talk about in a chat thing.  The way they set it up, they can basically ignore anything they want instead of just answering the most important questions.

Heck, people have asked about this system and had their posts moved or deleted for daring to even call the team on their nonsense.

This game had so much potential.  Yet.. they squander it every time.

Don't cry for Mechwarrior Online.  It is already gone.

D&D 4th ed Session Report 3: The Alexis Letters (Starring Alexis Stewart and New/Old People.)

Yes more people from my older game groups that these days play more with each other than me have rejoined us.  Maybe I just suck or something but have been diluted like that Homeopathy horsepucky that is dumb...

Anyhow new players and we did stuff.  They were finishing up their PCs while playing (SHAMEFUL) so we didn't get a ton done.  Also they get here later so we don't get as much time in sadly.  However we did some light boardgaming beforehand which is always good.  Especially on the weeks I miss boardgame night.

And another session recorded for posterity!
(And also easy blog content for now!)

D&D 4th ed Session Report 2: The Alexis Letters (Starring Alexis Stewart and CHEATING KOBOLDS.)

New game session equals new game comic!

Another session done.  I probably could have sent Alexis out of the corridor and she would have been safer but where is the fun in that?  GET STUCK IN LIKE A MAN.  (Or in this case an obnoxious teenaged girl who takes after father entirely too much.)

Our minotaur player will be here for one more session before he has to have some medical stuff done (GOOD LUCK DUDE!) but we might have two other players to pick up the slack until his return when they would probably be skedaddling for a while.

(Which would give more people for the game store owner to dislike as he has.. issues with customer service.  And he basically bought out this store to be his Magic the Gathering clubhouse and merely tolerates those of us who play other, better, cheaper games.  They have a lot of tables so I hope he doesn't suffer the fate a similar MAGIC ONLY store did recently.)

D&D 4th ed Session Report 1: The Alexis Letters (Starring Alexis Stewart and those other guys.)

I am finally in a normal RPG campaign so I can actually post HOBBY GAMES CONTENT to this blog instead of vaguely related things as I have been doing for most of the year.  (And will still be doing but whatever.)

So its back to report comics, done as if they were letters from Alexis Stewart to her younger brother Eric.
(Nobody will care but I ran a version of him as my final Changeling LARP game.  But in that universe Alex would be a Hunter, and her dad Aaron is a Vampire.)

I went out and played boardgames tonight (Battlestar Galactica.  Where I was the WORST CYLON TIGH EVER in that I barely did anything to cause trouble.  I played things too close to the chest.  I did however get 4 Trollkin Warriors glued up.  And am now out of both glue and glue accelerator.) so I didn't have a ton of time to make this super fancy and flowery with tons of captions and the like.  But the important stuff (to Alex's eyes anyhow) is covered.

(Considering I have come to the horrifying realization Alex is very similar in personality to Mabel Pines and Rainbow Dash actually helps me bring her character even fuller to life.  That and this version of the character's father was.. quite similar in many ways.  Alex is her father's daughter after all!)

Time to get to sleep so I can play this week's session tonight.  And probably finish up whatever errands I didn't do before BSG.  (Sure I got my shopping done but no gas means car no zoom.  Also want more hobby supplies.  Painting and building minis while gaming is a great way to accomplish two things at once and keep me semi quiet.)