Thanks, Bael! The changes sound pretty fun.

Could someone please explain the advantage of building your fortress down instead of horizontally?  I don't think there even was a Z axis in the last version of this game I played.

Like your inventory is represented as a room of sorts, and when you need something, you enter the room, where all of your stuff is laying around. You get it, and leave the room, and now you have it equipped or whatever.

Maybe he's thinking of a game where you can leave items in certain rooms outside of containers, like Oblivion or something similar? 

I ran Keep up to the first "boss" for some friends yesterday.  The folks who had played earlier versions of D&D loved the new rules, since combat went so much faster.  Our newbie player picked up things quickly and was doing just as well as the old-timers by the end of the session. I really enjoyed running it, too.  Combat was much more dynamic than previous editions.  PCs dropped below zero HPs several times, only to get back up again when the cleric tossed a heal their way.  It was nice seeing that magic-using PCs could throw a spell nearly every turn now, too.  Plus the on-line compendium made looking up rules ridiculously easy.

I still get some of the complaints about the new edition vs. older ones, but 4th is just a blast to play.  I really look forward to running it a few more times and finishing up Keep.

I caught that episode over the weekend.  The whole thing was hillarious.

Face.  Losing your face to a chimp is a cool supervillain origin story.  Losing your nuts to a chimp just makes for a bunch of awkward third dates.

but I haven't seen any info regarding pricing for their stuff yet.

I've heard it will be $15/month, with discounts for multi-month packages (same pricing scheme as most MMOs). However, at launch they will have special introductory pricing that will be available for a limited time. I'm assuming this could probably be as low as $10/month.

There's supposed to be some sort of guest-pass thing for people who just want to play in a particular game, too.  I'm not 100% sure on how it's going to be implemented, though. 

Are you still playing D&D with her?  If so, perhaps this can be smoothed over with electrum pieces?

wait.. none of us got invited either.

Somebody should write a song about having struggle to protect one's entitlement to attend festive social gatherings .

The bidding on eBay starts at 99 cents with a shipping cost of $500,000.

I would buy it, then demand she ship me the house.

Marmaduke would never pull this sort of shit.  

Rules Compendium is on-line:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/insider/compendium

Very neat article.  Thanks!

I love # 12 on the Kobold Victory Chart!  And I love that a Kobold Victory Chart exists!

How about the one cock pushup?

While inward singing?

[Oct. 31]

The wife and me (along with our 5 year old son) will be heading to NYC for the first time in November.   I'm running the NYC Marathon on the 2nd, but we are making a vacation of it and plan to be there Oct. 31 - Nov.4.  This will be both of our first time there and we need some help on how to get around the city and what to see while we are there.

Halloween in the City is lots of fun.  The parade and surrounding festivities are usually a good time, but it might be a bit too rough for a 5 year old.   It gets really crowded.

How about those Clone Wars cartoons that came out a while ago?  The traditionally animated ones, not the Clone War CGI thing that's coming out soon. 

I was surprised when I saw fighters classed as defenders when I have always seen them as attackers.

Something that took me a while to get while looking at the new PHB:

If you want to play a guy that runs around and beats on people with swords, you don't have to take the "fighter" class anymore.  You could pull it off with fighter, rogue, ranger, warlord and possibly even a cleric (I didn't really read clerics yet).  It's more about thinking about what sort of "gimicks" you want now.  If you want to be the guy that beats on people and takes a beating so his buddies don't have to, fighter is still probably for you.  If you want to be a leader that fights from the front while inspiring his comrades, warlord is the way to go.  If you just really, really want to stab people, go for rogue or ranger.

Some corrections to the core books can be found here:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/updates

Gargamel created Smurfette.  I thought this was common knowledge.  How the heck did you people pass your citizenship exam?

Gargamel could create sentient, artificial life forms.  I don't think the gravity of that dawned on me until just now.

I'm confident there will soon be approximately 1 bazillion supplements, both fan made and professional, that cover things like crafting, ballroom dancing, competitive eating and other skills not covered in the core books.  Why some of the die hards are so upset over this is just mind boggling. 

Well, I just fired Amazon.com and they certainly didn't care.

I'm sure they're hurting on the inside. 

As a player, I don't need the DM guide, do I?

I think you would be fine without it.

Everyone is so up on their conspiracy theories that they are making 4E *require* minis in order to increase the sales for their D&D minis line . . .

That's hillarious.  Only gamers would take a relatively open attempt at an upsell as a conspiracy.  I actually had a conversation with the guy that runs my local game store about this recently. 

If he and his minis should vanish I'd be using scraps of paper, coins, what have you, but I'd be using something

If I ever run this on the table-top, I'm going to have the most sad ass combo of boardgame pieces, offical D&D minis and Warhammer 40k figures anyone has ever seen! 

Got my books this weekend.  After a brief look through, I like that:

1) Books were very well put together.  Nice layout, rules are where they should be, good artwork.
2) Dragonborn are a nifty new "core" race.  I can see lots of people wanting to play one.
3) Warlord class is a pretty cool addition as well.  They're what bards should've been all this time.
4) DM's Guide is particularly well done.  This probably isn't the right term, but the whole thing just seems more "practical" than previous editions of the book.
5) It just looks fun.  The combat rules seem great and I can't way to give them a try.

Things I'm not so fond of:

1) I don't like the tieflings on an aesthetic level.  The rules are fine, but they just don't look right to me.  It's like they're a cross between the draenei from WOW, the villan from Legend and a bad Star Trek race.  I could've sworn they looked cooler in earlier editions (or maybe in Planescape:Torment?).
2) There is a bit too much of an emphisis on using a map and miniatures (and in particular, the offical D&D minis) for my tastes.  It seems like they're lots of "move 'x' squares" powers that would be pretty useless, or at least hard to describe, if you weren't using a map. This doesn't strike me as a particularly big issue.  In fact, a lot of the charm of this version comes from the new style combat.  It's just not what I'm used to.

I liked the DS version, too.  My favorite part was beating up an orc, making him live in a shack, and forcing him to water my plants.  In retrospect, I guess I should've felt bad about this, but he really seemed to enjoy it when I used the horse-brush on him.

There's a little jedi inside all of us.  Yours wants his lightsaber.

Getting it to him could be uncomfortable.

I introduced a large cup of coffee to a stack of contracts this morning.  The two hit it off really well and are now practically inseparable.

I told a judge that she didn't have the power to do something.

To pee standing up?

This afternoon I realized I didn't know any Belgians.   This made me horribly depressed for about thirty seconds.

We've got at least one forumer from the Netherlands.  Is that close enough to make you feel better for thirty seconds?

When I was desperately searching my brain for memories of Belgians I might know, said forumer actually popped up as a false-positive.

This afternoon I realized I didn't know any Belgians.   This made me horribly depressed for about thirty seconds.

Thanks for the impressions, YK, IB and hent.  Now I'm really looking forward to picking up the books this Friday. 

I wanna play I wanna play I wanna playyyyyyyy!

Me too.   And since I can't move to Dallas, I'll try to run an online game for forumites once that component is working.     

You bring up a valid point.  With OO and GG completely dead I can run for president again as long as the video tape with dwarf in the superman costume never surfaces.

Lord Mortis vs. the Dwarves of Krypton is #3 in my Netflix queue!

Anyone else remember that time that thing got tried?  And it was horrible?  Man, that was great.

I'm pretty familiar with all the basics now, but the list of changes is just too many to even recount. Pretty much every aspect of the game has undergone an overhaul. If you have any specific questions, let me know.

Once you've had a chance to run it, I'd be really interested in knowing how you feel about the new "minion" rules (assuming they're actually in there).

Wait, is there an episode after the one with the "the leak"?  I thought that was the season finale.  Oops.

Yeah.  One more episode after that one.

So any theories on the dad?  Is he a demon?  Is HE the son of Satan making Sam the grandson?  Or was part of his deal with the devil to sell Sam's soul to grant him immortality?  Lots of fun ways they can take the storyline.

I really like the way they handled the whole mystery of who Sam's dad is.  Satan being his pop makes perfect sense and there are clues pointing that way in several earlier episodes.  Then they throw in that curveball at the end with mom digging up her husband, throwing the whole thing into doubt.  Awesome.

Now that I think about it, the baseball scene earlier in the ep even foreshadows that a "curveball" is coming.  That's better writing than I expect in a monster-of-the-week show!

I've had this card for a few years. 

I never went in for any of their discounted items through the Sony Store, so I'm not sure how that works.

I usually end up with enough "Sony Points" to get a few Blockbuster gift certificates each year for free.  I use these to buy video games, since the video game selection in the Sony Store is usually pretty poor.

It has a very addictive quality in that each day in the game is pretty short so you get that "one more day" syndrome where you just keep on playing and before you know it a couple of hours have passed.

Yeah, this game ate up my entire Sunday.   They really nailed the pacing on this one.  

I think some of the characters are a little too cutesy, even when compared to the Game Cube FF:CC.  Other than that, it's terrific.

motodd and Tals, I'll add y'all this weekend, just saw those posts. I played some last night with "Joe". Who dat?! And I think I saw Miles on last night, but I don't have you on my list yet. Unless there is another person in the world named Miles out there playing Mario Kart......nahhhhh.

That was me.  Fun stuff.   

I added you last night too, Tals. 

Why do people say ATM Machine?  

The ones in my neighborhood growing up were all called "MAC Machines," for Money Access Center.  That makes more sense.  I am going to a central location to access my money via a machine.  

An automatic teller machine is neither automatic nor tells.  Discuss.

Rockstar did too good a job with recreating the City.  I keep getting killed in front of the building where I work in real life.  It was amusing the first time, but has since become horribly depressing.