2008-12-11: Bye Bye Mr. Charming!
by Emily
Shreyas and Elizabeth are taking part in a 4e Dungeons and Dragons game where they play Divorced Princesses. That is the best thing ever. I'd like to invite them to talk about it here. How is the game going? What have your Princesses been up to? How do you like 4e? And what is it like to ride a tiger?
2008-12-11 19:33:32 shreyas
Boys haven't been a big deal in the game as yet. The game is pretty god, although it's on hiatus now due to the holidays and family issues involving some of the players.
4e is pretty dang sweet. I don't think I've ever had as much fun playing a combat game, ever. My character is a thief and it's a big improvement from 3e, where I felt like I stopped being useful after the first round of combat. Now that the positioning game is so much more sophisticated, the opportunities for sneak attacks are much thicker on the ground, and my own ability to reposition mobs allows me to take a much stronger role in assisting the other characters.
We have been steadily defining our setting as we go, and we're rebuilding skill system for non-combat-oriented professional abilities; I'm not sure what we plan to do with that skill system, but it's cool that it's there.
Later I'll show you my celestial abacus!
2008-12-11 19:43:30 Elizabeth
Yeah, "Divorced Princess" is a different game Shreyas wants to write; our 4E game is about princesses in a gender-segregated boarding school. It's been really fun so far—Josh is one of those people who is just a naturally delightful GM, and he puts a lot of thought into the things he brings to the table; I believe he definitely puts some amount of time into it as well, but I get the impression this isn't the two-hours-of-prep sort of thing past D&D editions were.
Combat's really interesting. I'm a Warlord, so I jump around moving mobs, ordering people to attack, and healing people. My character is also an intensely socially awkward leader—sort of like the more human moments we got to see of Princess Azula in Avatar. She's used to being in charge in this really strict, disciplined, caste-stratified nation, and it's great to see how her dorm-mates are showing her how to let her hair down.
That's been the other neat thing: since all the princesses are from different nations (we had to come up with our coats of arms, rough land size/population, imports/exports, climate, etc), seeing the ways our cultures mix and clash has been a lot of fun as well. Shreyas' character comes from a family of semi-Grecian semi-hippies, and at one point her character and mine were talking about horses, and she mentioned how much she loved them. My character asked her if she had one, and sort of confused, Shreyas' character said no—the reason being that her family sort of shares everything among the royal family. My character was heartbroken by the poverty she assumed Shreyas' character was living in, and wrote to her mother to gift Shreyas' family so she could have her very own horse. It was pretty funny.
More later! I'll show Josh and Casey this thread as well.
2008-12-12 01:25:57 Emily
Yeah, "Divorced Princess" is a different game Shreyas wants to write; our 4E game is about princesses in a gender-segregated boarding school.
Ha! Of course. Got them mixed up. Have to follow up when Shreyas works on that game.
That's been the other neat thing: since all the princesses are from different nations (we had to come up with our coats of arms, rough land size/population, imports/exports, climate, etc), seeing the ways our cultures mix and clash has been a lot of fun as well.
Sounds like this makes for fun clashes and funny mis-communications between the girls, like you one about the horse. Any chance you'll venture out and go visit any of those cultures?
Now that the positioning game is so much more sophisticated, the opportunities for sneak attacks are much thicker on the ground, and my own ability to reposition mobs allows me to take a much stronger role in assisting the other characters.
You both mentioned dealing with mobs. That brings to mind wonderful images of the girls taking on the masses. What have they been fighting in the prep school?
More later! I'll show Josh and Casey this thread as well.
Yay!
2008-12-12 04:02:56 shreyas
Oh! "Mob" is MMO slang, for "mobile," meaning a hostile killable NPC. We have had some really interesting fights lately, like one with some giant spiders - they have a "swarm aura," which means that they're surrounded by tiny baby spiders, and if you end your turn adjacent to them, it damages you. That made for a really intense scene, where we had to strategize really tightly to minimize damage to the characters (at 1st level, we can't wade into these things carelessly) while trying to get in a reasonable damage-per-turn rate with a complement of mostly melee weaponry.
(I believe that was when we were sneaking around the mysteriously closed Building 7, which has a weird catacomb underneath it, and seems to have sustained pretty bad structural damage.)
The culture clash things, so far, are subtle and personal, since we haven't had a lot of extended interactions with the other students yet. They're very satisfying, though, and I'm sure that, knowing Josh, the game will get wider-reaching with time. I'm in no hurry!