Books: Descent into the Depths of the Earth

Descent into the Depths of the Earth
by Paul Kidd
Published 2000
Part 2 of the Justicar Trilogy

The previous book in this series, White Plume Mountain, had one of the most "gamey" plots I could imagine for a D&D module.  The dungeon is very obviously set up like a stereotypical RPG dungeon.  Some fantasy stories (or gaming modules) have flimsy explanations as to why such a large variety of creatures have an ecosystem in the villain's catacombs, but WPM actually makes these dungeon tropes part of the plot.  Upon entering the dungeon, our heroes are greeted with a message along the lines of, "Come explore this dungeon, fight its monsters, avoid its traps, and discover its treasures."  It's as if they were advertising a live action video game. 

At the end of the book they find out the reason for all this.  (Spoiler Alert)  The dungeon's owner needs souls for a ritual, but only the best of the best souls will do.  By using the dungeon's traps and monsters to weed out the not-quite-epic adventurers, the villain can make sure that only the strongest souls reach the heart of the dungeon.  It's a simple plot, and the author could easily have churned out a few generic heroes and just followed the module.  Instead, he created what are now two of my favorite characters, and gave them a decent plot leading them to the dungeon's entrance.  Considering the genre, I thought it was above and beyond the call of duty, and I ate it up with a spoon.

The second book of the trilogy, Descent into The Depths of the Earth, feels much less like a module.  Keep in mind that I haven't played any of these modules, so I have no idea how closely the books follow their plots.  The first half of the book - Actually, let me interrupt myself here.  Now that I've read five or six of these Greyhawk Classics, I've noticed a pattern.  Apparently it's boring to simply add lots of flavor text to a module and call it a novel.  So most of these books spend the first half introducing the characters and setting up their motivations for entering the Lair of Unspeakable Doom.  One thing I've noticed looking through my past reviews, is that I'm always surprised that the heroes don't reach the dungeon until the final third of the book.  I should know better by now.

So, as usual, the first half of this book is character development and plot.  The Justicar, Escalla, Polk, Cinders, and Enid get lost on their way to Hommlet, and end up pawns in fairy politics.  It turns out that Escalla's dubious boasts of royalty in the first book are actually true, and her parents try to force her into a kingdom-uniting arranged marriage.  When she tries to escape this fate, she finds herself falsely accused of murder.  The gang has to flee the fairy court and solve the crime while on the run.  The trail eventually leads them into the Underdark, and that's where the adventure really begins.  There's a lot of action as it gets closer to the climax, but it never reminds me of the way a D&D module is laid out.  I kept wondering what the actual module is like.

I like that there's actual character development in this book.  Escalla and Polk both mature a lot, and the Justicar actually shows a sense of humor now and then.  I haven't seen much of that in the Greyhawk books so far.  But then, most of the these books are one-offs with characters you never get to read about again.  I wish more Greyhawk books had been able to reuse and develop their characters.

You know how when the Justice League would fight a villain that Superman could easily beat, Superman would happen to be off on some deep space mission at the time?  Well, there's a bit of "Holding Back the Phlebotinum" with Enid the sphinx.  It's like the author didn't know what to do with her, so he kept finding excuses to leave her behind while the gang had adventures.  I hope she gets more screen time in the third book.

In Enid's place, the book adds two new party members.  Private Henry is a rookie soldier, who doesn't show a lot of personality in the book.  Hopefully he shines more in the next book, but so far he's practically an NPC.  Benelux is a sentient sword with a personality like C3-P0.  The sword even has a gold blade, which strengthens the 3P0 connection in my mind.  Henry was okay (if bland so far), but I'm not yet sold on Benelux.  Once again, the Justicar seems like the straight man for a party of comedians, and I'm not sure another comic relief character was the best addition.

Classic Lolth

The drow feature heavily in this book, especially in the second half.  Having read most of the Drizzt books, I mostly knew what to expect from the species.  However, these Greyhawk drow don't seem to be quite the badasses I'm used to from Salvatore's Forgotten Realms novels.  One tiny thing that bugged me was the appearance of Lolth.  The book describes her using the older appearance, back when she was just a spider with a drow's head.  Maybe it's because I got into 4e's lore first, but I've always thought classic Lolth to be very goofy looking.  Heck, she even made an appearance in that "Stupid Monsters" page.  Picturing the scene as described in the book made me laugh at times that were supposed to be scary.  The later, drider-like version of Lolth is much cooler.  But this book came out well before that design; it's not like I expect the author to predict the future. 

Bottom line:  Great book, just as good as the one before it.  It's got a fairy-heavy plot that will probably turn some people off, but as a fairy-lover I was quite happy.  I'm already sad that there's only one more book with these characters. Coming up next: Queen of the Demonweb Pits.

Character: Danica Branford

This was to be my character in our aborted "GURPS" campaign.

Full Name: Danica Branford
Occupation: Inventor
Age: 23
Height: 5'6"
Weight:101

Advantages and Perks: 
Independent Income, Intuitive Mathematician, Mathematical Ability, Quick Gadgeteer, Signature Gear (Beam Pistol), Single-Minded, Versatile

Disadvantages and Quirks:
Absent-Mindedness, Clueless, Curious, Obsession (Harness the Power of Light), Long-Term Goal, Social Stigma (Second-Class Citizen: Woman), Squeamish, Workaholic

Background and Personality:
Danica is an scatterbrained inventor, who specializes in useless useful weapons.  Want a gun that only fires at night?  She can build it.  A bicycle that folds out into a sword?  She's on it.  A crossbow that fires pies?  Just give her an hour.  Sure, there's no point, except to prove that it can be done.  Once she has a project, she is completely focused on it, to the point she doesn't notice the world around her.  When not working, she's always thinking about her next project, again failing to notice the world around her.

Creating This Character:
We spent a session deciding what our GURPS campaign would be about and creating our characters.  To choose our campaign setting, each member of our group got to pick one of the system's hundreds of world books to use as inspiration.  As a result, our campaign was going to somehow involve the Napoleonic Wars, Steampunk, Martial Arts, and Dinosaur Hunting.  Interesting mix.  Since I was the one to suggest in Steampunk (actually Ted suggested it first, but when he changed his mind I made it mine), I wanted to make a character who reflected this choice. 

Rifts 2112: Animal Men Vs The Zombies

Game Date: 3/23/2013
Campaign: Rifts 2112, Session 6
System: Savage Worlds
DM: Rusty   

Characters:
Emma Snow (Star): Medic
Jim Bagg (Cliff): Military Reserves
Sgt. Malcolm Reynolds (Ted): Active Military
Terri Bolton (Matt): Mechanic

Previous Sessions:
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5

The Story So Far...
A few days ago, the world was suddenly bombarded by multiple natural disasters and a variety of alien invaders.  The evil Splynn have reshaped the Earth to mine precious minerals, while enslaving humans for labor.  Their rivals, the equally evil Xiticix, recruited our party of FEMA responders to investigate a Splynn operation in the newly-returned Atlantis.  Rather than return to the Xiticix, we went our own way instead.  In Nashville we allied with a clan of Dwarven marksmen from another dimension, and then we prevented a nuclear meltdown in Atlanta.

Today's Session:

After defeating last session's boss, we headed back to Nashville, rested, and reported back to the government.  We considered going to St. Louis deal with some rumored demons, but then we heard of a more pressing mission.  The US Secretary of Education was stranded somewhere in Washington State, and had sent out a distress call.  This made him the highest ranking government official currently confirmed alive.  We had a bit of discussion as to whether our government was strong enough to bother helping, but in the end it seemed like the best choice of missions.  We boarded Doug (our space ship) and headed straight there.

The transmissions had come from Mount Shasta in Washington.  As we neared the mountain, we saw that it was much shorter than it used to be, having erupted during the recent cataclysm.  We could see the top of a man-made tunnel sticking out of the mountain, and decided to park Doug there.  Once inside the tunnel, we found an elevator full of dead humans.  We took the elevator down.  We exited into a room where we got attacked by eight undead soldiers.  We took them out fast, mostly thanks to Emma's Repel powers.

"Does whatever a tiger can..."

Once the undead were re-dead, we explored the complex.  We found a lot of empty rooms, offices, restrooms, and so on.  In a laboratory, Mal was attacked by a half-man, half-tiger.  After we killed it, we saw several other empty cages, and evidence that there were more human/animal hybrids about.  Before we could ponder the situation for too long, however, another swarm of zombies started making their way towards us.  This was a much larger group; around two dozen.  It was a much tougher battle.

The zombies swarmed Terri early in the battle, paralyzing her before she could do any damage.  Jim took out several zombies with a grenade, but that still left plenty to cause us a lot of problems.  Emma continued to use her Repel power, but it mostly just slowed them down.  Jim and Mal both had issues with their plasma axes running out of power, and these zombies were resistant to ranged weapons.  Unable to defend herself, Terri took more damage late in the battle, causing her to permanently lose a point of agility.  Our Greek NPC was swarmed by zombies and horribly killed.

When things looked their bleakest, a shark-man arrived on the scene and started eating zombies.  He was accompanied by some dog-men and a tall human with a flamethrower.  We were wary of the newcomers, but "the enemy of my enemy" yada yada.  Soon our new friends had killed off all the zombies, and we all introduced ourselves.  The flamethrower guy turned out to be the Secretary of Education for whom we'd been searching.  The other animal people were lab experiments gone horribly right.  We all boarded Doug and went back to Nashville, where we received a hero's welcome.

Reminders:
Everyone but Mal advanced this session, so we need to make sure to update our character sheets.

Apocalypse World: In Which I Miss The Bus

Game Date: 3/16/2013
System: Apocalypse World
DM: Rusty   

Characters:
Marsh (Matt): Brainer
October (Star): Skinner
Uncle (Ted): Hardholder

The Session:
We didn't have enough players for our regular game, so we played a one-shot.  Like the name implies, Apocalypse World takes place on a post-apocalyptic Earth, where the survivors live Mad Max style.  There is also some sort of mysterious global force called the Psychic Maelstrom, which is a collective consciousness that people can tap into by opening their minds.

Ted's character, Uncle, was the overworked leader of Hatchet City, which really wasn't much of a city.  The magnitude of Uncle's political power was debatable, as some of the citizens seemed to have their own agendas and varying degrees of loyalty.  Uncle was having a bit of trouble with Ambergrease, a gang leader who had been causing trouble.  As the game began, some of Uncle's followers were requesting he find a way to defeat Ambergrease, lest he risk a rebellion.

My character, Marsh, was a creepy psychic of questionable gender.  I was in charge of several prisoners, one of whom had recently tried to assassinate Uncle. I used my psychic powers to interrogate the prisoners, but they did not know enough to help us.  It seemed that something had been controlling their minds.  Later we dissected one of the prisoners and found a strange parasite in his body.

While communing with the Psychic Maelstrom, Marsh received visions of a pale man called "Blind Blue", who we believe to be behind the psychic manipulations.  We also learned that Blind Blue intended to make October his queen, or possibly his slave.  When Marsh went to warn her, one of October's own bodyguards turned against us and attacked.  October managed to stun her opponent by taking her top off (one of her more interesting abilities), after which we subdued the guard pretty easily.

Soon the town was attacked by a Ambergrease's forces.  They used catapults to hurl flaming garbage over our walls, and prepared to drive a bus through our front gate.  While Uncle gave orders to his soldiers, Marsh came across some deserters attempting to smuggle our rocket launchers out of town.  Marsh managed to take their leader prisoner, grabbing a rocket launcher for good luck.  When the bus finally burst through the front gate, Marsh attempted to destroy it with the rocket launcher.  The missile missed by a mile, destroying part of Hatchet City's wall.  Also, Marsh's prisoner got away.

Despite the setback, we still had more than enough soldiers to take out Ambergrease's army.  Uncle's leadership skills got a lot of time in the spotlight.  The battle came down to a one-on-one between Uncle and Ambergrease.  It ended with Uncle shooting Ambergrease in the face.  We had to stop the session there, but we know the true villain, Blind Blue, is still out there.  Perhaps someday we'll revisit this world.

Afterthoughts:
Neat session!  I really like the flavor of the world itself.  The character classes are quite interesting, and while most of them do have D&D counterparts, they still manage to be unique.  I really enjoyed playing my character.  He/she/it was delightfully weird, and it was fun playing a ambiguously gendered character (just like in real life).  I wonder what I could have done with it if I'd had more time to develop my character's personality.

I was very glad I didn't pick Ted's character, however.  Watching him manage his troops and deal with other leadership problems made me quickly realize it wasn't the class for me.  I could probably have had fun with Star's character, though.  I could see playing a Skinner in a future game.

Warning:  This game is not for kids.  This is easily the most adult gaming system I've played so far, and we barely even touched on the dirty stuff.  My character had seduction-related powers, Star's character could hypnotize people by stripping, and Ted's... well let's face it, "Hard Holder" just sounds like a double entendre.  There was also a fair amount of adult language in the play materials.  It takes a lot more than that to offend me, but I mention it here just in case it's a deal breaker for anyone else.

From what I saw, the adult aspects were not handled in a juvenile way.  This isn't a puerile sexual assault simulator like FATAL.  Apocalypse World strikes me as a mature setting that just happens to have some sexual elements written into the mechanics.  While I'm sure many players will turn it into something more childish, I don't believe that was the designers' intention.  But I've only had a couple of hours of exposure to this system, so I could be wrong.  Given that so many groups have at least one player who consistently "goes there" *cough* Greg *cough*, I do wonder how many groups are actually capable of running a game with seduction mechanics before the whole campaign descends into something salacious.  (Admittedly I'm showing my own inexperience here.  I haven't been in a lot of different gaming groups.)

Mechanically, it seems like a pretty easy system.  It just uses 2d6, and character creation was quick and easy.  From the impression I got, the game is more roleplay than rollplay, so the rules are kept light.  But all I've really seen so far are the character sheets, so I'm probably not the best one to ask. I'm a little wary of the damage system.  It doesn't look like you could take a lot of hits before you go down.  (I had the same complaints about Savage Worlds.)  I'd like to think that this promotes roleplay - being fragile means you try to talk your way out of fights.  And yet, post-apocalyptic worlds are not places where it's easy to avoid battle. 

I also question the system of leveling up.  Maybe I'm misunderstanding it, but you get an experience point every time you use one of your "highlighted" skills.  Every time you get five experience points, you get an extra feature.  Great, but I do wonder what keeps you from finding all sorts of risk-free excuses to make skill checks.  Kind of like the Elder Scrolls games, where you can level up by picking the same lock over and over.  I'm sure there's rules in place to prevent such exploits, I just didn't see them.

But regardless of one or two quibbles and confusions, I really did enjoy the session.  I will gladly play this again if it comes up again.

Books: White Plume Mountain

White Plume Mountain
by Paul Kidd
Published 1999
Part 1 of the Justicar Trilogy

When I started reading these D&D books, I wasn't expecting good writing.  I knew that these were basically just assignments that D&D's marketing department tossed out to different authors, in the hopes of cashing in on another form of D&D merchandise.  I've only been buying them because they're cheap now, and I've only been reading them to feed my appetite between game sessions.  Some of the books have been better than others, but none of them have really exceeded my expectations.

Until now.  This is the first D&D book I've actually looked forward to reading each day.  I'll find myself at work looking at the clock, waiting for my lunch break so I can read more.  I'm not saying this is quality literature, not in the classic sense or even in the modern/popular sense.  You're not going to set down a Dean Koontz novel to pick up this one.  But within the specific genre of gaming-based spin-off fiction, this is probably the best book I've read.  I would definitely put down a Drizzt novel to read this one.

The story stars a brooding ranger called "The Justicar".  His personality is very similar to Batman - He's very focused on his mission, he cares little for luxury, and he has almost no sense of humor.  He has a shaven head, and looks a little like Vin Diesel on the book cover.  He wields an enchanted black-bladed sword, and wears a sentient telepathic fire-breathing hellhound pelt named Cinders.  Again like Batman, the Justicar is less of a party joiner and more of a one-man army.  I'm not really into the whole "brooding anti-hero" archetype, but a lot of D&D players love that sort of character.  Despite my own aversions, I think the Justicar is every bit as interesting as Drizzt, and I do wish this series had experienced the success of Salvatore's novels.

Eventually the Justicar teams up with Escalla, a shapeshifting fairy with an excess of personality.  She constantly cracks anachronistic jokes, many of which almost break the fourth wall.  She acts a lot like Lidda in The Savage Caves, but Escalla is written so much better.  Some readers might find her annoying, especially when her lack of seriousness puts lives in danger.  That kind of character can be risky to write, as you don't want to risk having a Jar Jar on your hands.  I never thought she crossed that line, but maybe I'm a little biased, since I've always wanted to play a pixie.  As an extreme introvert, I don't know if I'd have the energy to pull it off.  I have played similar characters in NeverWinter Nights, though.

The Justicar and Escalla mix together about as well as you would think, making it feel like a cop buddy-film.  "He's an obsessed loner.  She's a perky pixie.  They fight crime!"   They remind me of Spike and Chester from Loony Tunes.  Also along for the ride is Polk, an annoying NPC who provides more comic relief.  I found Polk to be a completely unneccessary addition to the story, since we already have plenty of humor with Escalla and the fire-obsessed Cinders.  By surrounding the one serious character with all these jesters, the Justicar becomes the embodiment of the "Only Sane Man" trope.  It's like having Wolverine team up with Snarf, Orko, and Scrappy Doo.  But as much as I disapproved of Polk's presence, he didn't drag things down too much.

And really, the humor was one of the things I liked most about the book.  There were some groaners (there'a "pixie stick" pun that made my eyes roll), but there were also a lot of great moments that hung a lampshade on D&D's most prominent tropes.  There were jokes about the standard adventuring gear, particularly the ten-foot pole.  It made fun of outfits adventurers (especially female characters) wear.  There was even a subtle joke about staying "in character".  Granted, I'd heard a lot of these jokes before (Escalla makes a "Did I say three wishes?" joke ripped straight from the Far Side), but it was still a lot of fun reading them in a novel.

And of course, Escalla makes fun of the Justicar's name.  I wish I knew how Justicar was meant to be pronounced.  It could be just-uh-car, or jus-tiss-er, or even just-aye-sir.  The character named himself, and he makes it clear that he meant the name to mean "one who delivers justice."  Therefore I'm inclined to go with justice-er, even though justicer is already a real (differently spelled) word.  There's a Justicar in Mass Effect 2, where it's pronounced just-a-car.  The fact that he insists on being called "THE Justicar" (because it's a self-imposed title) only makes it more cumbersome.  I'll admit that does add to his Batman-esque cool factor, but it also makes some of the sentences a bit cumbersome to read.  Eventually they do start calling him "Jus" for short, which makes things a bit easier.

So, let's talk party balance.  The Justicar, Cinders, and Escalla make a neat trio.  It's the kind of party you wouldn't see much in a real D&D game due to balance issues.  All the characters fill multiple combat roles, so it's the kind of party that pretty much breaks the overly-structured Fourth Edition.  If this is the kind of party we typically saw in older editions, it really makes me want to try them out sometime.  Would Cinders even be considered a party member (played by a separate player) or just equipment?  I'm guessing the latter, since there are sentient swords and the like in D&D.  But he's a developed-enough character that I think it would be neat to play something like him in a game.  A character who can't walk, is worn by another PC, but can still help out the party through skill checks and his breath weapon.  Sure, he won't be the next great action hero, but it would still make for some interesting sessions. 

This is part one of a trilogy, and I'll be starting on the second book ("Descent Into The Depths Of The Earth") soon.  If the rest of the books are even half as good as this one, I'm sure I'll enjoy them.

Rifts 2112: Let's Just Cool Down A Minute

Game Date: 2/16/2013
Campaign: Rifts 2112, Session 5
System: Savage Worlds
DM: Rusty   

Characters:
Emma Snow (Star): Medic
Jim Bagg (Cliff): Military Reserves
Sgt. Malcolm Reynolds (Ted): Active Military
Terri Bolton (Matt): Mechanic

Previous Sessions:
Session 1 Session 2 Session 3 Session 4

The Story So Far...
A few days ago, the world was suddenly bombarded by multiple natural disasters and a variety of alien invaders.  The evil Splynn have reshaped the Earth to mine precious minerals, while enslaving humans for labor.  Their rivals, the equally evil Xiticix, recruited our party of FEMA responders to investigate a Splynn operation in the newly-returned Atlantis.  Rather than return to the Xiticix, we went our own way instead.  In Nashville we allied with a clan of Dwarven marksmen from another dimension, and now we plan to check out the damage in our hometown of Atlanta.

Todays Session:

"I'm sorry, Dave, but life is meaningless."

The session began with us taking our Xiticix spacecraft to Atlanta.  Doug, the ship's interactive holographic interface, was feeling a bit depressed about how his life had turned out.  But he did his job and we reached our destination.  In Atlanta, we met with the local authorities and were given our choice of quests.  They wanted more scouting done in Atlantis, there was a nuclear reactor about to go critical in Atlanta, there were more apes to fight on the Georgia border, and of course we eventually want to check out those demons in St. Louis...  yeah, we've got a big to-do list.

Eager to show off her repair skills, Terri voted for the nuclear plant, and nobody objected.  Doug took us to the plant, where we saw hundreds of zombies walking around the grounds.  Doug set us down on a roof, where we climbed down a ladder and entered one of the buildings.  We had to fight four zombies on our way in, but we made it okay.  Emma showed off her magical powers for the first time, which surprised us but we had bigger fish to fry.

We explored the building until we found the data we needed.  We learned that a reactor core was overheating, because all the water was gone.  We found some survivors, but they had absorbed so much radiation that they didn't believe they'd live much longer.  They explained the source of the problem - one of the outer walls had been torn down by a giant monster, so it was going to be a much bigger fix than simply filling the core back up with water.

We decided we would try to smother the core rod with a few tons of concrete, allowing it to melt down into the Earth.  We asked Doug to fly around and find us some cement trucks and carry them back.  In the meantime, we killed off some zombies around the open side of the building.  By the time Doug returned, we had a mostly clear shot to drive the cement trucks to the core.  Or we did, until the Zombie Lord showed up.  He tossed out a wall of zombies between us and the cement trucks.  We (mostly Mal) attacked him until he vanished, then continued with our plan.  And then, a giant Balor-like creature appeared.

At this point, Emma and Jim were back on the ship while Terri and Mal carried out the plan.  Mal soloed the monster while Terri worked on getting the concrete poured over the core rod.  Even with their protective suits on, we had to make vigor rolls every round due to the increased radiation in the area.  Mal heroically hacked at the monster until Terri finished with the concrete.  On her way back to the ship, Terri took a shot at the creature (her one contribution to the actual battle), which brought the monster down.  As Doug's hatch opened, Emma fired off a magic bolt, finishing the creature off for good.

"Private Joke."

It was a major victory. (*salute* "Major Victory.")  Having dealt the monster its corporal punishment (*salute* "Corporal Punishment") we boarded the ship and took off.  Doug and Emma both used their skills to disperse any radiation they could, but Terri and Mal are still a bit weak.  Hopefully we'll have time to rest and heal completely before we do anything else too dangerous.  At least that's the general idea.  (*salute* "General Idea.")

Afterthoughts/Reminders:
I had some great die rolls this week, which is highly unusual for me.  On one turn my d6 exploded four consecutive times.  Today might be the only time in my RPG career that I bring down a Balor with a modern rifle.  There is no game next week, due to something called "Sportsfest".  (What is this "sports" word, anyway?)  Unless something comes up, the next game will be on March 2.

Rifts 2112: From Atlantis to Atlanta

Game Date: 2/9/2013
Campaign: Rifts 2112, Session 4
System: Savage Worlds
DM: Rusty   

Characters:
Emma Snow (Star): Medic
Jim Bagg (Cliff): Military Reserves
Sgt. Malcolm Reynolds (Ted): Active Military
Terri Bolton (Matt): Mechanic

Previous Sessions:
Session 1 Session 2 Session 3

The Story So Far...
One night in late 2012, the world was suddenly plagued by a plethora of natural disasters.  Our FEMA team was dispatched to help where we could.  We soon discovered that the world was being invaded by several species of evil aliens.  These creatures have abducted a large number of humans.  We have also befriended yet another species of aliens, insectoids who have been rescuing the stragglers not captured by their enemies.  These friendly bug-people showed us what may have caused of the devastation:  Apparently the evil invaders have been shifting landmasses to create a new continent for themselves.

Todays Session:
At the end of our last session, we all got healed, rested, restocked, and advanced.  Mal received some cybernetic implants, and our insectoid benefactor assigned us a mission. We were to take a spaceship to a new landmass that had appeared in the Caribbean.  It wasn't exactly clear what we were supposed to do once we got there, but we didn't sweat the details.

"Express elevator to Hell, going down!"

The ship was run by an AI interface.  The main screen showed a human head named Doug, who carried out our commands and answered our questions.  We gave him the order to take off, and our ship dropped straight down towards the Earth below.  Shortly before we reached the ocean, the ship leveled off and proceeded straight towards our destination.

Half an hour later, we arrived at the new landmass, which Doug informed us was the lost city of Atlantis.  There island was covered in jungles, and Doug detected several concentrations of life forms.  We sought out one of the smaller concentrations, and landed our craft in the woods.  As quietly as possible, we peeked out from the trees, and saw four armored gorillas ordering around a bunch of human slaves.  Most of the humans were wearing typical modern clothing, but a few of them were in togas.  The slaves were loading rocks and crystals into wagons.

Still smarting from our last battle, Mal was antsy to kick some gorilla butt.  He tiptoed up behind one gorilla and slit its throat.  While trying to drag the body back to the treeline, he failed a stealth check and alerted the rest of the gorillas.  It wasn't a difficult battle, though, and soon the other three apes were dead.  The human slaves scattered in all directions, but four of them (including one toga-wearer) came with us.  We knew more apes were approaching, so we gathered up a crystal and an ape's translator, and led our rescued humans back to our ship.

On the flight back towards the insectoid ship, we learned more about Doug, our craft, and those we had rescued.  Doug scanned our crystal and told us that it was basically a large diamond.  The aliens had come here to mine precious minerals, and were causing worldwide cataclysms to bring the crystals they needed closer to the surface.  The toga-clad slave identified himself as Cyrus, a "True Atlantean".  According to him, Atlantis had vanished thousands of years ago when it was teleported to another dimension, and the aliens transported it back for mining purposes.

Cyrus told us that the evil aliens we'd encountered so far were servants of a greater race called the Splynn.  We had yet to see a Splynn, but his description of them sounds like D&D beholders.  They are few in number, but very powerful.  Our insectoid rescuers were called the Xiticix.  The Xiticix and the Splynn were rival traders, and neither one was to be trusted.  So much for going back to the mothership. 

Doug told us that he used to be a live human being, until a building fell on him during the cataclysm.  The Xiticix put his mind in the ship because it needed a neural interface that could communicate with humans.  We explored our craft a bit, and found a couple of empty rooms and the engines.  We did not find any bathrooms, so we have to make sure we always go before we take off.  Otherwise we'll have to boldly go where no man has gone before.  ...Sorry.

Much more inconspicuous.

No longer wanting to go back to the Xiticix ship, we had Doug scan for a safe spot to land.  We wanted to find a city somewhere far enough from disasters that we could set up a relatively-safe base.  Not metagaming at all, we finally settled on Nashville, Tennessee.  We wanted to go to the Capitol Building, but didn't want the people there to shoot us upon seeing us climb out of a spaceship.  So we landed in Centennial Park instead. 

There were a lot of people in the park, but they didn't try to kill us.  Some jeeps took us to the Capitol, where we were debriefed by military and FEMA personnel.  We told them everything that had happened to us, and they filled us in on what we didn't know.  The city of McMinnville had committed mass suicide, thinking this was the rapture.  The explosion in Atlanta had been caused by one of several mis-launched Soviet nukes, but there were survivors.

We also learned that 17 different alien races had been seen in the Southeast alone,  including some demon-like creatures in St. Louis.  The humans here had allied with a race of four-foot tall Dwarves.  We spoke to the Dwarven leader, Mortigan of Clan McTartan.  He told us that a "blue hole" had opened in his world, and they had walked through it.  The Dwarves were handy with old-style firearms, so Mal introduced them to modern guns.  Hopefully their shooting skills will prove useful to us in the future.

We are planning to head for Atlanta next, to learn more of the situation there.

Rifts 2112: A Gorilla Riding A Dinosaur. Your Argument Is Invalid.

Game Date: 1/12/2013
Campaign: Rifts 2112, Session 3
System: Savage Worlds
DM: Rusty   

Characters:
Emma Snow (Star): Medic
Jim Bagg (Cliff): Military Reserves
Sgt. Malcolm Reynolds (Ted): Active Military
Terri Bolton (Matt): Mechanic

Previous Sessions:
Session 1 Session 2

The Story So Far...
Apparently the Mayans were right.  One night in late 2012, the world just suddenly starts to fall apart.  The entire planet is simultaneously plagued with earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, tidal waves, super storms, dogs and cats living together...  it's a real mess.  Our characters work for FEMA, and our team has been dispatched from Atlanta to see what's happening in Charleston.

After making our way through a lot of devastation, we learned that Charleston was underwater, and that people were disappearing all over.  In the tiny town of Branchville, we found out the source of the disappearances.  Otherworldly creatures invaded the town, and captured half the citizens.  We fought the aliens until they finally left, though we suffered some injuries in the process.  We recovered some of the aliens' weapons, but we soon discovered that Emma was missing.

Today's Session:
After the big battle, we limped back to our encampment, looking for our medic to fix up our injuries.  But the encampment was wiped out, and Emma was gone.  While we pondered where to start searching for her, we saw some movement in the woods.  From the trees came a gorilla... riding a dinosaur.  He was accompanied by three robot dogs. 

It was a battle we could not win on our own.  Most of our attacks bounced harmlessly off our opponents, and each of us sustained multiple injuries.  Terri was hit by a rocket launcher, and Mal got chewed up by the dinosaur.  When it looked like we were goners, Emma showed up with a new friend.  Our medic was wearing a collar, which was chained to an insectoid alien wearing power armor.  Our bug-like ally managed to turn the battle around, and we finally defeated our enemies.

After the battle, Emma patched up most of our wounds and filled us in.  The insectoid was of a different faction than the other aliens, and he had apparently captured Emma to save her from the evil ones.  With a decent Persuade check, Emma convinced the insectoid that she had useful skills he would need, and that he should help her save her friends.  The bug was unable to speak our language, but he seemed to understand us when we spoke.

The insectoid gave the rest of us some gold collars.  It took some convincing to get us to wear them, but we finally relented.  Collars in place, he teleported us to a large complex.  He led us through some tunnels, where we saw more of his kind, finally taking us to a room with other humans.  These people were from Greece, and only a few of them spoke English.  They told us that the bugs had rescued them from the apocalypse.  They didn't know about the evil aliens, only the natural disasters.

While there, we visited the medical bay.  Mal, who had received the worst injuries in the last battle, was given some cybernetic parts.  After we rested, the bug showed us a globe of the Earth, and tried to explain the situation.  We inferred that we were currently in a ship hovering above London.  We saw that there was a new continent, about half the size of Australia, somewhere South of Florida.  This new landmass was created by the evil aliens, and its creation was probably what caused the other planetary disasters.

The insectoid gave us access to some weapons and armor, and led us to some sort of vehicle.  We're not sure if it flies or floats or what, but we believe the alien wants us to take it to the new continent. 

Reminders:
All of our characters "Advanced" (leveled up), so we need to make sure all our characters are upgraded before next session.

Happy New Year!

Here's hoping you have a wonderful new year without any alien invasions or other apocalypses.

More Dice

A while back I posted pictures of my dice.  My collection has grown a little since then, so I thought I'd post a few more pix.  You know me, any excuse to take pictures. 

First up we have "Festive Dice" by Chessex: 

Festive Dice

Basically I got them because I like tie-dye.  They're currently my favorite set of dice I own.  I come from a family of artists, which probably influenced my love of bright colors and other visual stimuli.  This set of dice has a vibrant mix of colors that really calls to me.  In fact, I hear them speaking right now...  what's that, little dice?  Kill them all?  Okay...   Just kidding, moving on...

Deadlands Dice

These are Deadlands dice. I got them for playing Savage Worlds.  It includes an extra d6 of a different style, since Savage Worlds uses a distinctive "Wild Die" with every roll.

This set's design is more for Western settings than anything I've played, but they're still pretty neat.  It actually makes me wish I liked westerns more, so I'd have an excuse to use them.  But it's just never been a genre that interests me.  Westerns are just too "testosterony" for my tastes, I suppose.

"Zocchi" Dice

I got these odd-shaped dice (sometimes called "Zocchi" dice) for Dungeon Crawl Classics. DCC uses a lot of strange, harder-to-find dice.  Here we see a d3, d5, d7, d14, d16, d24, and d30. I really like most of them, except for the d7.  The d5 and the d7 have the problem of not being perfectly identical on all sides.  Both dice have two sides that are larger than the rest.  I don't mind it on the d5, because the two largest sides are the 1 and the 5.  So even if there's a greater chance of it landing on the larger sides, I still have just as much chance of getting the maximum as the minimum.

But on the d7, the two large sides are the 6 and the 7.  To me, that's just weird. However, these are made by GameScience, a company that's known for making "perfect" dice, so I have to believe they know what they're doing.  If they say there's an equal chance of it landing on any of the seven sides, I want to believe them.  But even if they're right, I still would have felt better if they'd made the d7's largest sides the max and min.  Also, I don't really like the style of the d7.  It makes me think of casinos more than fantasy gaming.

Sci-Fi Dice

I got these for our short-lived Traveller campaign. The black ones are official Traveller dice, from back when the game was more popular.  The sunburst design with the digital numbers looks cheesy now, but I suppose it looked more futuristic back when it was designed.

The others are from Q-Workshop, and I got them for specific skill rolls.  The circuit ones (Chip and Cyber) are for Computer rolls, and the gears (Mechanical) are for Engineering.

It's unfortunate that our Traveller campaign didn't last longer, but I don't regret buying the dice.  I really like the designs, and I'm sure I'll play other sci-fi games in the future.  I could probably use the mechanical ones right now for my Savage Worlds character (she's a mechanic), but her repair rolls use a d10.  I guess I could use one as her wild die when she makes a mechanical roll, but then I don't get to use my Deadlands wild die.  I know, "first world problems".

(Completely unrelated mini-rant:  One good thing about the Traveller campaign being over, is that I'm sick of the computer's spell-check yelling at me over the British spelling of Traveller.)

Elvish Dice and Forest Dice

I got these when playing a Dryad in our Unlikely Heroes campaign.  The top ones are transparent Elvish Dice from Q-Workshop.  They're very pretty, but hard to read.  Towards the end of the campaign I bought some Forest Dice (lower pic), which are even prettier and even harder to read.  Really, Q-Workshop is legendary for making Awesome but Impractical dice.

Unfortunately the dice arrived right after our final session, so I never got to use them.  But there's always the possibility we'll pick that campaign back up again.  In any event, I like playing tree-hugging characters, so I'm sure they'll get used eventually.

Probability Die

And last but not least, I picked this one up on a whim. "Probability Die" from Koplow Games.  The sides are:  Certain, Likely, Equally Likely, Unlikely, Highly Unlikely, and Impossible.  Really just about sums up all RPG rolls, doesn't it?  You could probably run an entire game using just this die.

Books: The Savage Caves

"The Savage Caves" was the first in a series of D&D books released in 2002-2003, which followed the adventures of some of the more iconic characters in the D&D universe.  This book stars Regdar the fighter, Jozan the cleric, Lidda the rogue, and Naull the wizard. I can't find anywhere that says what universe this is, so I'm assuming it's the generic "Points of Light" setting they use in the Players Handbooks.

I'm generally an optimistic reviewer, so if I don't like something, you know there's a problem.  I didn't exactly dislike this book, but I can't possibly recommend it to anyone else.  It's written with the generic tone of a newspaper article, with no discernible style whatsoever.  Actually, it reminded me of the writing style used in "Choose Your Own Adventure" books (minus the choices and second person POV), so maybe they had a young audience in mind.  Even if so, I've read much more interesting children's books.

That said, it did remind me more of an actual D&D session than most books.  Most real DMs are not professional writers, and the writing style definitely made me think of the way DMs describe things.  Like the players in a D&D game, the characters use a lot of modern slang (especially Lidda).  This kind of thing bothers some people, but I'm okay with it.  This is a fantasy world, not medieval England, so I see no reason they should stick to the Queen's English.  Who's to say this universe didn't evolve slang similar to modern day America?  I already ranted on R.A. Salvatore's use of fortnight in a Forgotten Realms book, so maybe it's safer if writers avoid attempting Shakespearean English in the first place.

I didn't like some of the interactions between the female party members; there was some inappropriate giggling and sophomoric innuendo that reminded me of how boys think girls act.  It was enough to make me want to look up author "T. H. Lain" on Wikipedia to see if they were a male of female.  The answer was interesting - there is no T. H. Lain, it's a pseudonym for nine WOTC employees, in order to keep this series of D&D books shelved together.  This particular book was really written by Philip Athans, then-managing editor at Wizards.

In my "Keep on the Borderlands" review, I gave an example of characters rationalizing in-game mechanics (fighting monsters to get experience points).  But there's a line early on in the Savage Caves that really takes the cake.  While Regdar is looking for someone, it says:  "Regdar had never been trained to hide, but he had been trained to seek."  So I pulled my copy of "Dungeons & Dragons for Dummies" off the shelf, since I knew it had a level one version of Regdar in it.  Sure enough, he has Search and Spot listed as skills (though he's very low in them), and no ranking for Hide.  But wow, that's a silly sentence to put in a novel.

But that's hardly the only mention of such mechanics.  Jozan makes reference to spontaneous casting - specifically he gives Lidda a speech about how if he heals a particular creature, it will use up a potentially more useful spell he might need later that day.  Naull also makes some references to the possibility of spell failure due to trying to concentrate during battle, but these passages are actually pretty well done and make the original game mechanics that much more believable.

I thought it was fun reading about characters I'd already seen so much in the PHBs.  Their personalities were a bit one-dimensional, but that worked in a way.  It almost felt like real players were running them.  Okay, so picture those "examples of play" sections you see in every PHB.  Now imagine an entire book written in that style.  No, it's not actually that bad, but the impression was there.  I could almost see this book being adapted from somebody's session notes.

It's a bit of lost opportunity, because they could have given these characters truly unique, memorable personalities.  Instead they just play them the way any convention-goer would after picking up a pregen.  You've seen all these characters before with different names.  Lidda is basically just Tasslehoff the kender from the Dragonlance novels, and so on.  It's not such a horrible thing, but it does make the book a little bland.

My favorite character was Naull.  She seemed slightly deeper to me than the other three adventurers.  Lidda and Jozan were just too stereotypical (for their classes), and I have something of a personal grudge against the existence of Regdar (See this article).  In a magical world filled with sapient mythological creatures, the last thing D&D needed as an icon was a white, male, human fighter.  But, any time this gets to me I just look at page 297 of 4e's PHB, and then I feel a little better.

NeverWinter Nights spider

There were a few parts where I really felt the book was bad about descriptions.  Sometimes I had trouble visualizing what the author was trying to say, which is sad considering how dumbed-down the book is.  Sometimes this trouble came from missing details.  For example, early on they fight some giant spiders.  The book doesn't say how big they are, just that they're huge.  Over and over, it just describes them as big/large/huge, without saying being more specific.  So, having fought plenty of spiders in NeverWinter Nights, I pictured their size somewhere between a sheep and a cow.  But once that was firmly in my head, the spiders started climbing up someone, or hanging on to their shield, which meant they were actually closer to the size of a small dog.  But to be fair, it's possible I missed a sentence somewhere.

The final lines of dialogue in this book are so trite that... well, back in high school I used to draw (very cheesy) comic books, and I once ended a story with the exact same piece of dialogue.  But remember, "The Savage Caves" was not written by a serious author trying to create literature, so much as a marketer trying to advertise a product.  Maybe I should have gone into marketing.

Overall, I did enjoy reading the book, but that doesn't make it good.  (In fact, I'm starting to wonder just how bad a book has to be for me to give it a bad review.)  I liked this book in more of a "so bad it's good" way, like the movies you see on MST3K.  I also had fun reading it because the anachronisms reminded me of actual D&D sessions, kind of like "Knights of the Dinner Table" but not as funny.  I might still read some of the others in the series, but only if I find them very cheap.

Character: Terri Bolton

This is my character in the "Rifts 2112" campaign.

Full Name: Terri Elizabeth Bolton

Occupation:
Mechanic, Part-Time FEMA Emergency Responder

Age: 23

Edges: 
McGyver - Can improvise tools from common items.

Hindrances:
Overconfident (Major) - Believes she can do anything.
Big Mouth (Minor) - Can't keep secrets.
Quirk (Minor) - Brags and exaggerates her accomplishments.

Background and Personality:
Terri was always closer to her father than her mother.  Her father was an auto mechanic, and Terri was fascinated with watching him work.  By the time she was in junior high, she could put an engine together with her eyes closed.  Her mother never really approved of Terri's masculine hobbies, and tried to encourage her to be more feminine.  Her father died when she was a senior in high school, and Terri and her mother grew even farther apart.  After high school she went into her dad's business, and started working for FEMA in her off-hours.  In her spare time she enjoys restoring classic cars, and target practice at the shooting range.

Terri is egotistical and proud.  Sometimes she can't help but brag about things she's done, and embellishes her stories to get attention.  Her exaggerations, combined with her inability to keep a secret, have cost her more than one friend.  Worse yet, she believes her own hype, causing her to overestimate her skills.  As a result, sometimes she bites off more than she can chew.

Creating this Character:

As explained in this post, I made her a mechanic because the party didn't have one, I drew inspiration from Robin's doppelganger from How I Met Your Mother, and I picked her name because it was unisex.  I hate to admit to being uncreative, but a bit of her background is similar to Dervish, a character I played on NeverWinter Nights.  But it had to be done.

Given her inspiration, I'm being ambiguous about her sexual orientation.  Part of me wants her to be gay or bi, but another part of me is offended by the butch/tomboy lesbian stereotype.  Hopefully it just won't come up in gameplay.  The party is trying to survive an apocalypse, so it's not like people are going to find time to hit on her.

Rifts 2112: "...And One Time... At Refugee Camp..."

Game Date: 12/8/2012
Campaign: Rifts 2112, Session 2
System: Savage Worlds
DM: Rusty   

Characters:
Emma Snow (Star): Medic
Jim Bagg (Cliff): Military Reserves
Sgt. Malcolm Reynolds (Ted): Active Military
Terri Bolton (Matt): Mechanic

The Session:
The session began in Columbia, SC.  We learned that these disasters have been happening all over the world.  Countries have been falling to floods, volcanoes, earthquakes, and other natural disasters.  We received some radio signals from someone in Branchville, requesting our aid.  The governor of Columbia gave us some vehicles and we were on our way.

We stopped in Orangeburg and picked up some more info.  We learned that Charleston was underwater, and that people were disappearing all over.  We continued on our way.  When we finally reached the small town of Branchville, Mayor Glen Miller (I bet he gets kidded a lot) pointed us to a nearby refugee camp.  The camp was run by a reverend named Bowman, which worried us a bit.  The last thing we need at the end of the world is a potential cult stirring up panic.  We gave out some food and made some small repairs, until it was time to turn in.

In the middle of the night, we saw some purplish lights in the sky, and they were getting closer.  Occasionally they would dip below the treeline and cause explosions.  We ordered anyone who would listen to take cover, then we piled into our ride and headed downtown - towards the lights.  Malcolm got out of the vehicle first, and proceeded further downtown while the rest of us looked for a good place to hide the SUV.  So Mal was the first one to see the horrors that were invading the town.

In the center of downtown was a hovering platform, covered in lights.  Piloting this craft was some sort of reptilian monster, with a crocodile-like head and several tentacles.  There were also some armored ape-men, wielding futuristic glowing axes.  We also encountered some very tall women, wearing metal bands around their eyes.  These amazonic ladies used guns that fired restraining nets.  Some of the creatures were gathering up townspeople and taking them to the reptilian's ship.

These aliens did not come in peace, and we fought a tough battle.  At first it looked hopeless.  The reptilian was protected by a force field, and the apes were too armored for us to damage.  Jim and Terri spent a lot of time tangled up in nets, and could not break free.  But Mal finally managed to take down one of the apes, and the battle was a little easier once he had the ape's ax.  With great effort, we finally took down most of the apes and amazons.  As Jim set off a smoke bomb, the final ape jumped back on the reptilian's craft, and it flew away.

We scavenged everything we could from the aliens we'd killed:  armor, weapons, and bodies for possible study.  We learned that roughly half the town had been abducted.  We're going to regroup for now, lick our wounds, take inventory, and come up with a plan.  Jim and Malcolm both need healing.  I haven't looked at how healing works in Savage Worlds, but I bet it's pretty slow without magic.  So much has happened in such a small amount of (in-game) time, that we probably don't have time to let these guys rest up for too long. 

Afterthoughts:
Someone once asked the internet, "What's the plural of apocalypse?"  The internet answered, "If you're in a situation where you need to know the plural of apocalypse, you've probably got bigger things on your mind than spelling."  What I'm wondering right now is whether the alien invaders were actually responsible for all the natural disasters plaguing the Earth, or if the alien invasion is just one of many coincidental simultaneous cataclysms.  In other words, are the aliens a symptom or the disease?

It also seems highly unlikely that three such very different alien species would form an alliance just to take over the Earth - any one of them could probably take us on their own.  I have little hope in humanity's chances of coming back from this one, with so much of the world's population being exterminated, and us being comically outmatched in technology.  But hey, if Will Smith and Bill Pullman can do it, so can we.  We will not go quietly into the night!  We will not vanish without a fight!  ...or something less cheesy...

Reminder:
There is no game for the next two weekends. Our next game will probably be on 12/29.

Rifts 2112: The Cataclysm Begins

Game Date: 11/24/2012
Campaign: Rifts 2112, Session 1
System: Savage Worlds
DM: Rusty   

Characters:
Emma Snow (Star): Medic
Jim Bagg (Cliff): Military Reserves
Sgt. Malcolm Reynolds (Ted): Active Military
Terri Bolton (Matt): Mechanic

The Session:
This was the first session of a new campaign.  Our characters are members of a FEMA team in Atlanta.  Shortly after Midnight, there was a large thunderstorm and an earthquake.  Each of us was contacted individually and told there was an "All In" alert.  As each of us headed to the FEMA headquarters, we discovered that there was no cell phone reception, and it was raining ash.

We arrived at HQ and were briefed by Melissa Miller, a geologist and FEMA's second-in-command.  They were still trying to piece things together, and weren't able to tell us much. Half of the satellites were down, and it was hard to get any clear information.  There had been an earthquake in the Bahamas, creating a 100 foot tidal wave that left Florida underwater.  Yellowstone had erupted, and there was lava from Oklahoma to Salt Lake City.

FEMA sent out teams in different directions, to find out more.  Our team was ordered to head for Charleston, NC.  We piled into a Humvee, but soon discovered that a lot of the interstates had collapsed.  We made do with back roads.  On the way, we discovered that the our compass no longer pointed North.  Eventually we reached a spot where trees had fallen over the road, and had to clear them to continue.  At this point we had an interlude (a Savage Worlds roleplay mechanic) where Emma told us a tale of woe.

When we could go no further by Humvee, we left the land vehicles behind and hitched a ride with some boats in a nearby river.  They took us through some flooded areas, finally letting us out in a life raft.  We floated through a submerged town, occasionally passing flood victims sitting on their roofs.  Unfortunately we couldn't help them, as our boat was too full.  When the water finally got too shallow, we left it behind and continued on foot.  Finally we reached a checkpoint in Sherman, SC, where some people had congregated to help those who needed it.

The Shermanites gave a car that we used to drive to Columbia.  Over the course of all these stops, we picked up a few bits of information here and there, some of them conflicting.  At one point we heard that the President was safe in Denver, but elsewhere we'd learned that Denver was destroyed.  We saw some shapes floating against the glowing blue sky, which might have been vehicles.  We also learned that Charleston was gone, which put a bit of a damper on our mission.

We slept at Columbia's capitol building.  Someone woke up Jim to point out something in the distance.  There was a mushroom cloud in the direction of Atlanta.  We also checked our compass again, and found that it was off by about 30 degrees.  Also, we learned about the blue lights in the sky:  they are static fields of energy crossing through North Carolina, about three miles high, stretching from horizon to horizon.  Some sort of barrier, maybe?

It was time to think about our next plan.  We were supposed to head for Charleston, but we knew it was gone. We couldn't return to Atlanta, because it appears to be gone as well.  Our current plan is to head East, and find a boat to explore in that direction.  We ended the session there, so Rusty can have time to decide what we find in the East. 

Afterthoughts:

I like the story so far, and look forward to learning what's happening to the world.  Note, just in case there's any confusion: "Rifts 2112" is the name of the campaign, but the system we're using is Savage Worlds.  I'm hoping the campaign's name will make more sense once we find out what is causing this worldwide cataclysm.

This was the second time I've played Savage Worlds, but the first time I've actually created a character for it.  The character creation process wasn't bad at all; it's one of the more intuitive ones I've come across.  Sure it took a while to make my choices, but that's just because I've never looked at the book before.  Once I've played a few Savage Worlds characters and know what all the options are, I bet I could build a character in five minutes.

I wasn't feeling well today, so I pretty much stayed in the background.  That's okay, it just means I have a little more time to flesh out my character's personality before I do anything that cements it in-game.  I think I've got all the attributes and skills where I want them, but I want to pick hindrances that really make sense for my character's personality. 

Creating the character:  Going in, I had no clue what I wanted to play.  Cliff and Ted already had military covered, and Star had a medic, so Rusty suggested a couple of roles that hadn't been filled yet.  I chose mechanic, at the risk of playing a character similar to the one I played in the Traveller campaign.  But other than similar occupations, I don't think they're going to be all that alike.  I'm picturing Terri as being more of a tomboy.  Hopefully she'll be a lot less accident-prone than Malta was, but that's really up to the dice.  In my head I'm seeing "Lesbian Robin" from How I Met Your Mother.  I named her Terri because I wanted a unisex name, and it was the first one to pop into my head.  The surname Bolton came from thinking about mechanical words, which led me to "nuts and bolts", which became Bolton.  Just in case you wanted to know more about my thought process.

Books: Keep on the Borderlands

Wait, just "Keep on the Borderlands"?  Not "THE Keep on the Borderlands"?  Without the "the" there, it sounds more like a command than a location.  Like, "Hey you kids!  Stay on the Borderlands!  No touching the edges!  The edges are lava!"  ...Anyway... 

After reading the high level adventure The Tomb of Horrors, this book felt like starting a new campaign at level 1.  The characters in it are by no means inexperienced, but overall the story felt a lot more mundane than I've become used to.  At first, it also felt like a low magic world.  I was well into the book before I came across anything that couldn't happen in real life.  With a few minor adjustments, Keep on the Borderlands could have been released as historical fiction.  But that works in the book's favor.

Most of the characters didn't really feel like "classed" in a D&D sense.  They would use any weapon available, freely switching from sword to bow, and picking up hammers or clubs if their swords were broken.  I'm so used to characters that are optimized for their favorite weapon, that it felt weird to read about generic fighters.  I liked that - it made me feel nostalgic for editions of D&D I never really played.

Almost exactly halfway through the book, the heroes return from having defeated a bandit camp.  As a "reward", the lord of the Keep offers them a new quest, to explore the Caves of Chaos.  Sounds like a true DM.  When the heroes are discussing whether to accept the new mission, we get this bit:

"C'mon, Eddis, why not?  If we do find caves and monsters and all that - well, we get better at what we do, we probably find a lot of gold and gems they've stolen from travelers, and we come back heroes."

"We get better at what we do" as an excuse to accept a mission?  That's right, a character in the book tries to justify undertaking a quest in order to get experience points.  It's always fun when the novels try to explain game mechanics, but this one's darn near Lampshade Hanging.

This book doesn't really feel like a D&D module, at least not at first.  The way the heroes are given multiple missions, it feels like several sidequests rather than a novel.  It does eventually introduce an actual villain who might be responsible for the presence of all these monsters... but he doesn't show up until the last 30 pages, and I don't think he's ever even given a name.  It's light on plot, even by "disposable paperback based on a D&D module" standards.  But then, from what I've seen, the actual module also seems to be one of the lighter ones. 

As usual, author Ru Emerson does a great job of describing the mundane aspects of adventuring, like making camp.  Some of the combat is less "heroic" than I usually see as well.  Fighters don't just shrug off all but the most direct hits.  Getting hit on the shield actually causes pain, and recovery isn't limited to bandaging open wounds.  Arms go numb, people get winded, and weapons are actually heavy.  I don't know how realistic the book actually is, because like most people, my knowledge of science has been ruined by television.  But it certainly felt more real to me than most D&D books I've read.

I'd like to point something out to anal, by-the-book DMs: After several combat encounters, there's mention of characters retrieving any unbroken arrows they can find.  See?  It can be done!  And in good fiction, no less!  So remember that when you run your campaigns.  I don't care what your PHB says, it's not necessarily unrealistic to allow characters to retrieve ammunition.  Also, sometimes a character would shout "Arrow!" and his companions would drop so the enemies could be hit.  While some rulesets impose a penalty for firing into melee, this novelist understands what teamwork is.

That teamwork was one of my favorite things about the fight scenes.  There often wasn't enough room for everyone to fight at once, so the fighters would form lines.  When the front line got winded, they would switch places with the fighters behind them, so the freshest fighters were always in front.  I wish D&D had a mechanic that let two allies use their movements simultaneously to switch places, to help with fighting in narrow hallways.  Some 4e powers let you do this, but I'd love it if was a standard ability for everyone.

I have a thing for female characters (no, really?), so I was pleased that the book's primary character is a swordswoman.  Eddis is well-developed (for a short novel, anyway), and very competent. By the end of the book I knew a lot about her: childhood, favorite foods, and so on.  That's some good detail for such a thin book.  But then, it's not a very deep module so I guess it had to be padded a bit.

One of my favorite things is when these books make me think about the morality of dungeon crawling.  At one point the party is forced to execute some bandits they had captured.  They don't feel good about it, but all the alternatives would have endangered the mission.  Later, when they clear out the first kobold cave, there's a bit of a discussion about whether to kill the females and their young.  This scene was especially funny to me because I read that chapter right before I ran a friend through the same cave in the D&DNext Playtest.  He chose not to kill the females/young, and if we hadn't had to call the session short, I probably would have made it bite him in the ass.

These are the kind of things some players do to NPCs without even thinking twice about it.  But in a novel, it makes me feel uncomfortable.  When I read the scenes of kobold slaughter, I kept meantally replaying it from the kobolds' point of view.  They're just sitting at home in their caves doing kobold stuff, when this group of humans bursts in and starts killing everyone.  Sure, the kobolds had previously ambushed human caravans, but the the two races had a history of killing each other, so who knows which race originally started it.

The only thing that really bothered me about the plot was the little girl.  At one point the heroes rescue this child from a bandit camp, and they take her back to the Keep.  When they're given the next mission to clear out the caves full of deadly monsters, they take the girl with them.  They had their reasons - the girl had imprinted on two of the main characters and might have regressed to a feral state if they'd left her behind - but I still don't see taking her on such a dangerous quest.

Bottom line - I liked this book.  It was light on plot and felt more like a couple of short stories than a novel, but that didn't bother me.  I wouldn't want to read a lot of books written that way, but the novelty of it was pretty cool.