First look of Halo Nightfall. An interesting montage of new footage, including bits and pieces of the story and locations. Very exciting. Cannot wait for it to be released.
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When you come to, the last thing you can remember are the explosions that rocked the airship when the pirates attacked.
As the ringing in your ears stops, you realise you blacked out and are no longer on the ship, but are hurtling downwards, towards a great unknown city interlocked with narrow spans of bridges set upon tall spires of square rock.
As flaming debris falls past you from the now-shattered airship, thoughts of self preservation become your primary concern.
#askstable: What do you do?
- Mathew out!
I see if I can maneuver myself so that I surf on debri thus slowing my decent and buying time
I’ll allow it! Give me an Acrobatics or Athletics check, whichever is highest.
On a D20 I got a natural 12 on athletics and 8 on Acrobatics
Ok!
With your 12 you manage to see and grab a hold of a large scrap of blue and white fabric - part of one of the flags that hung from the rail of the ship. As you reposition yourself and turn about, it pops open and turns into a sort of parachute that, while not a modern parachute designed to prevent death, does slow you down enough to make two more actions before you hit the ground.
At this point, we’re going to do a special skill challenge. You can describe any two actions you’d like to do and apply any of your skills to them - but they have to be skills you haven’t used yet (ie: no Athletics). Tell me what they are and what skills you use to try to save your life from the fall.
Quick memory test for rope, should I have some I will attempt to lasso the arch with a use rope check and hold on for dear life
Sadly, you used the rope you had on you last session ago to help repair the sail on the airship. The rigging was loose and it needed new ropes to keep everything together. Sorry buddy - it was a great idea though! Any other ideas?
Spot check for a waterfall
Looking around, you do manage to see a network of ponds close to a series of merchant stalls below you. The normally-bustling marketplace is in a panic as you can see upturned faces and people running from the debris rain down from the airship.
As you hastily approach one of the ponds you’re sure you’ll make the landing but there’s one problem - you can clearly see oversized koi fish swimming lazily in there. You suddenly realize that the ponds might not be as deep as you’d originally thought.
As you close your eyes and brace for impact, you realize after a few moments that nothing has happened. Stunned, you open your eyes and see a figure dressed in flowing monk robes with two vertical dots painted on his forehead and a bristling brush-like beard floating next to you in mid hair.
He nods, points to a symbol of the moon on his chest and sets you down gingerly, albeit still on your head. As you collect yourself he points up, over your shoulder and you follow his stoic gaze to the air. Hanging in the sky are six large zeppelins, each dark as the night sky with spiked chains hanging off their envelopes like curtains. Painted on either side of them are large red symbols that you recognize but can’t quite place.
Once the debris from your airship stops falling, there is an obvious pause. And then it comes: streaming out from the sides of the attacking airships comes thousands of little black shapes that emit blood-curdling screams as they descend on the city, snatching folks and swirling about them. You can see nearby folks be picked to the bone as the clouds of black slivers swirl about them and abruptly leave them alone when there’s nothing left.
Moon taps you on the shoulder, points to a nearby building and the two of you make a break for it. As you get the door shut there is a thud as a stream of the creatures pound and flutter against it. Outside, you and Moon can hear people screaming as night sets in.
You’re certain the city will never be the same. Hopefully you and Moon can find your other teammates from the the airship in the morning.
That’s it for tonight, thanks for coming to the session.
- Mathew out!
Overview on the fresh Hearthstone meta, after the leeroy and buzzard nerfs
The first thought, when I read about this for the first time, was that this was going to be cool. The old maps were terrible, but would it not be cool to play Heart of the Swarm on those maps?
Then I thought… “yeah… they were terrible weren’t they?”
In fact, the more I think about it, the more I am terrified by the idea. The old maps were small, with short rush distances, with insanely abusable features like cliffs and ledges.
Reapers, blink all-ins, and speed medivacs are just some of the horrifying thoughts that springs to mind when you start considering playing on maps like Xelnaga Cavern or Scrap Station.
If they were work the chosen maps, then, obviously, there is nothing to worry about but we have long been suffering from poor map quality in SC2, and have only recently achieved maps that are even remotely balanced.
The old maps would hit zerg particularly hard, because of the third base; they are, almost exclusively, difficult to take, and by that I do not mean it is difficult in the sense that third bases usually are. They have always been open and easy to harass, but the old maps take it to a whole new level.
Just consider Xelnaga Caverns; where would you take your mandatory third? No matter which of the two options available you pick, you will be destroying rocks, which will slow you down immensely. If you pick the gold, you are expanding towards your enemy on an already incredibly short map and open to attack from three direction. If you take one on low ground, you will be open to the usual runbys, as well as shenanigans from the high ground behind the mineral line.
This will, of course, affect all three races but both terran and protoss have a lot of viable two-base plays, while zerg has almost none. You can do an early pool or some kind of roach / baneling all-in, but that is about it, and both are easily defensible; particularly on a map where your opponent can easily scout / predict it.
So, here is to hoping Blizzard has not completely lost it and reworks whatever map wins the vote.
Check the article and a way to vote -> here.
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Disney Character Oil Paintings - Created by Heather Theurer
It has been a long grind so far, but I’m almost there; another ten wins today brings us to a total of 420 wins with our priest. Only 80 more to go for the golden priest portrait.
How do you recognize a true friend? By how someone is always happy to see you; coming to greet you, to give you a hug and tell how they missed you. They don’t care about looks or trends, but just that you are finally there again, to share time with you.
Roosa was a friend I met many years ago, back when she was just a curious and utterly fearless kitten. It was a time when floppy discs were still used and when a gigabyte of space was still a lot.
Even when Rolle, the bigger cat in the house crouches and growls another warning, throttles and slaps her, Roosa kept going to him, being the perfectly innocent, beautiful child. In the end she would win all our hearts.
Now she is gone and I need to remind myself that I do not grieve for her, but for the loss of my dear friend. I have no regrets, except that I could not be there to pet and comfort her, and to watch her fall a sleep one last time.
Goodbye my beautiful friend. Words cannot express the void your passing leaves in our hearts. We say farewell and thank you for the many years of joy you brought to us.
I have finally settled on a theme that I liked and felt comfortable affording. It is easy on the eyes, not too flashy, yet stylish, easy to use and navigate, for both me and my readers.
Although affording probably is not the right word; more like not yet ready to spend 49 dollars for one of the spectacular themes, simply because I have just started blogging.
I’m confident that I will keep it up and enjoy blogging on Tumblr immensely, but just in case, don’t want to sink too much monetary investment into it yet. There will be time for that later.
Anyway, lets get blogging :)
Since I made my first book review about halo, it only felt appropriate to share some the more awesome bits of halo art. I particularly like the wallpaper.
Unlike what I would have expected deciding on the object of my first book review was not very difficult. I have read quite a few novels in my years, both science fiction and fantasy, but because I wanted to make it a relatively recent book and a series that a lot of other fans will recognize, the final decision was pretty easy.
Enter, Glasslands by Karen Traviss.
So, some introduction…
Glasslands is the first part of the Kilo-Five trilogy. It takes place right after the events of Halo 3, and importantly, before the events of Halo 4. A peace treaty is signed between Earth and the Sanghelli; the race of warriors, known better as the elites. The covenant itself has fallen, although a lot less due to human action but a civil war that took place in the Halo 3 game, brought on by a sum of events, such as the arrival of the flood and betrayal of the San ‘Shyuum, who are also known as the prophets.
But before I go any further, let me express just how spectacular I thought this book, and indeed, the whole trilogy is. If you enjoy science fiction and / or the halo universe, I absolutely recommend you pick it up.
There… with that out of the way, lets get into the whys.
The first thing I liked about this book is that it takes a completely different approach to the halo universe, compared to other halo books, like the Fall of Reach, the Flood, and the First Strike, which all are very action oriented.
There is nothing inherently wrong with that but the Kilo-Five series is first and foremost a character story, and by that I do not just mean humans. The book takes a look at the aftermath of the war on both Earth and Sanghelios, the home world of the sanghelli, who find themselves in the proverbial pickle because for a thousand years, they have been warriors, period.
They have relied for the lesser covenant races, like the unggoy, known better as the grunts, for both the production and import of foods, and other essentials that you would expect for a civilization. The san ‘shyuum provided them with a purpose and the huragok, also known as the engineers, for repairs and technology.
They have no infrastructure and find themselves re-learning basic things, like thatching a roof. They cannot properly maintain their ships and technology either, so slowly, but certainly, they are devolving down from a spacefaring race.
On the other side we have the humans, represented mainly by the Kilo-Five, spec ops team, whose mandate is to keep the sanghelli destabilized and from recovering their society. On the one hand they are providing support to Avu Med ‘Telcam, leader of a splinter faction of religious zealots, who still worship the forerunners as Gods, and wish to see the arbiter Thel 'Vadam overthrown for abandoning the faith and accepting truce with the humans.
On the other hand, Kilo-Five wants to stop 'Telcam from succeeding, and keep the different sides playing against the middle.
Traviss does a really great job of fleshing out and breathing life into her characters, both human and alien. There are the pragmatic ODSTs, Vaz and Mal, anthropologist Professor Evan Phillips, Naomi the stoic Spartan, Black Box, or BB for short, the smart arse and spectacularly smart AI, and of course the leader of the group, Captain Osman who is destined to become the next head of ONI.
This is another facet of the book that Traviss does really well; explaining some of the inner workings, innuendo and backroom politics and strategies of ONI, the halo equivalent for CIA, NSA and KGB put into one and raised to the power of two.
It is a really captivating and riveting story, despite being slower and more character driven than many other halo books. I found myself wanting constantly to go back to it, engrossed in the characters, and occasionally laughing hysterically. That is the final bit that I really like about it, the way Traviss embeds humor and hilarious sarcasm into the events that are truly dramatic and serious.
The one downside is that it leaves you in a major cliffhanger, right when things begin to really happen and go wrong for Kilo-Five. The book is really a setup for the second and third book, which is a bit frustrating in the end, if you have to wait for the sequel, like I did when I read Glasslands for the first time.
But still, I give full due credit to Karen Traviss for putting together and absolute masterpiece. So if you are thinking about picking up a halo novel, I strongly recommend it.
If you prefer audiobooks, I recommend the one by Euan Morton, available on audible.com, who does a superb job of giving the characters that one extra umph, raising the experience to a whole new level.
I have been playing table top games now for up and around 20 years. The different games and systems have come and gone, settings have changed drastically since those times, as have my own perspective approaching these games.
For the longest time though, my game of choice has been Dungeons & Dragons, which I originally began to play with just one friend of mine, back in 2nd edition days, when it was actually known as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, or AD&D for short.
We began playing in the Forgotten Realm, a fantasy gaming world that the same company was selling, and still does in fact, to this day. We did not think much about it back then, just beyond the fact that it was a cool setting to play in, with haunted forests and dungeons to explore. Today however, I prefer the make my own settings.
There are several reasons, the least of which is not the fact that it costs copious amounts of money to purchase these books, and you kind of have to repurchase the books in a regular cycle, if you wish to keep up with the updated material. But also, I found that many times I would simply overwrite a lot of the things that the books were saying.
It began as just tinkering with minor details and moved onto making significant changes the world history and events. It brought me the realization that I might as well write my own setting, a persistent world from scratch and be my own master about its history, events, locations and the lay of the land; and so Alargoth was born.
The world itself is split in several major continents, surrounded by vast seas in between. The continents are Olôrmaren, Mhlaur, Galvanar, Kharein, and Calérien. That might not sound very big but the scale is purposefully very vast; Olôrmaren is over half the size of South America alone and Mhlaur is the size of Europe.
I have yet to map even half of it all, which I like very much. Of course I have a sense of what is where but writing and describing things in detail will keep me busy to the unforeseeable future. It means there is always something new and interesting to explore, somewhere. The real kick I get out of writing a detailed world history. I really enjoy that kind of process of imagining how everything came to be the way it is today and it is incredibly rewarding when, after a long time of micromanaging different pieces of various shapes and sizes finally all comes together.
To go along with Alargoth, I am in the works of developing my own iteration of the D&D rule set. I avoided it for the longest time, but in the end, after trying to make it all work the way I wanted for so long, I decided it would just make everything easier on all of us, if I created my own rule set. The real gist of the problem is the exact same problem that I had with the world settings; the fact that the publisher strategy is to make money first, and perfect a great system second.
I can of course understand that, considering that they run a business, but it aggravates me (and consequently my wallet) too much to see a game system become obsolete and deprecated in a regular cycle of four to five years. I call my game system the Unearthed Arcana Evolved and it is a highly modified version of the 4th edition D&D rules.
Why 4E in particular? Because it was the first D&D system that made a significant effort to fix some of the fundamental flaws that has plagued it since inception. Unfortunately the publisher, Wizards of the Coast, went too far simplifying the system, so I have spent considerable effort trying to pull back on some features, making it more like 3E, while maintaining all the things that 4E did very well.
This way, with only my own creativity to hold me back with the world setting, and a system I myself made the way that I like it, the gaming experience is suddenly beginning to look a lot better than it has. A lot more fun playing the way that I wish to play.
It has been a long time since I have last blogged anything. But as I’m restarting my table top games and play my fair share of digital games, it felt like the right thing to do. Blogging has always been one of those things that felt almost like vanity, when done without a specific purpose.
Just posting images of your life, writing what you happened to do on a particular day, whether it was washing dishes or taking the cat out for a walk, has no meaning; unless you happen to be a rather spectacular person.
Me, I’m also a very private person, which is why I never got into the social medias very well. So to ever share anything, I feel like I need an interest or specific topic to share to those who share a passion for it, and for me that has always been things like gaming, the world of fantasy & science fiction, and creative writing.
So these are going to be the topics that I will write and report about. I will share some of my experience with table top games, computer and console games, books and magazine I might read, and if I can muster something of sufficient quality, maybe some of my own creative writings.
So please, stay a while, listen, and share my journey.
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