Anarchy Out, Walking In

There's a point in the Venture Brothers episode "Escape to the House of Mummies, part 2" where Brock Sampsom turns to the "camera" and says "This is getting STUPID!"   I've finally reached the "This is getting STUPID" moment with the TV show "Sons of Anarchy."   The first season was pretty good, a look at the lives and problems of motorcycle dirtbags.   It was never in doubt that even though they were the center of focus of the series, they were, in fact, dirtbags.   Also, they were in conflict with other dirtbags and had problems that dirtbags might have (rather like the Sopranos on motorcycles).

The second season started to get slightly stupid.  The conflict was against a guy who owned a cigar store, but led a secret neo-nazi group.  It was still somewhat interesting, if getting more and more far fetched all the time.  

This third season is just plain stupid.   The hero's infant son was kidnapped by an Irish terrorist-gangster guy and then the Irish guy gets killed, and for some unfathomable reason, some other Irish guys won't give the son back, and now the motorcycle gang has gone to Ireland.  The writers even had some Mexicans kill off the only honest cop in the gang's hometown, I really don't know why, I don't know, maybe because he was making his dirtbag heroes look bad?

Bleck,   Season pass cancelled.

The new Walking Dead series, however, is pretty good so far, so it's taking the place of the rolling dirtbags.

All Campaign Documents Complete and Finalized

Well, gentlemen, the time has finally come.  I have put together Final Versions of all the campaign houserule documents and general setting information.   I have replaced all the older drafts with the final versions on the wiki site, and all the documents are available for download herein:

http://www.lordsofhack.com/home/doku.php?id=badlands

The documents include:
Combat Rules (modifications to regular AD&D combat and compilement of modifiers etc.)
You should all read through this document once to get the drift of combat procedures

Character Rules (minor changes to classes and races, additional classes for player use)
You should probably read through this once before we roll up guys.  Also, get familiar with the Spending for Experience Rules.

Campaign Rules (some rules governing the larger campaign sequence, NPCs, Dogs etc)
This is more behind the scenes stuff, and things that will be the DM's concern.  Not much need to read this unless you're into the whole picture and want to know how the whole dealing with NPC's is going to work.

Gear Book  (complete list of all normal equipment from arms to food to buildings and NPC spell casting)
This is the most important document, if you have easy access to a printer, this would be the one document to print out and bring along.

Magic Book (a few spell modifications, new rules for item construction, spells for Summoners)
This is mostly important for Summoners, and magic-users who plan to make magic items, otherwise just give it a glance.

Setting Booklet (a run down of a large amount of info on the city-state of Portchester, the Province of Gatavia where it is located, description of the world's alignment and religion system, character name generation, and much much more).   If you are generally interested in settings and want your character to fit in, read through this.  If you just want to show up and hack things, you needn't bother.

Portchester Filled In

I've gotten Portchester all roughed-in now.  I have a large-scale map, drawn by hand. based on Portus Nardo from the last campaign.   Then I made 1 "Campaign Mapper" computer-made map for the central section of each of the 5 Wards of the city.   I used a lot of your suggestions, which were very helpful, thanks one and all.

Stuff in the City

I'm putting the city of Portchester details together.  Is there anything that needs to be there that I may forget?

Halloween Board Game Re-cap

Our Sunday session was Jason, Bob, Chuck and I.   We played 2 games of "Betrayal on Haunted Hill"  where we explored a haunted house until one of us turned traitor and spooky stuff happened.   In the first game, Jason turned traitor, knifed Chuck to death and sent firebats against me.  But, Bob finished the exorcism ritual and he and I survived.   The second game, Jason turned traitor AGAIN, shrunk us down to mouse size and unleashed his cat against us.   The cat ate Bob, Chuck and me and so Jason won the game.

After dinner we played a card-game called Gloom, wherein you had to make your "family" miserable and then kill them off, while trying to cheer up the families of the other players.  Chuck won that game, I seem to remember.

Finally, we played an awesome game of Robo-Rally.  We raced our robots around a factory floor blasting each other with industrial lasers.  Bob finally won that game, although I was doing pretty well near the end. 

All in all, good Halloween action.

A Miniature Victory

The day has finally come.  As of Sunday, my "To Be Painted" bins are both completely empty.  I gave my last 3 unpainted "Special Collectors Edition" miniatures (which I had been given as free bonuses with old orders) away as prizes for our Halloween Board Game Night.   Now, I am back to paint as I go.  Never thought I'd see the day.

Character Sheets

Just a question for the entire crew.  On a scale of 1 to 10, how important do you find having a pre-printed character sheet.   I know I usually prefer writing my characters on plain paper.  I'm working on a sheet for the campaign, but wanted to know how much time should waste on it.