Multiple Monkeys

Today I weigh 15st 3lbs. Down 3lbs just by sticking to diet and exercising  for 5 to 30 mins each day.

In my 13th Age game a group of my players are currently exploring a Demon Monkey Temple. Once they have finished exploring it I’ll post the whole thing. Meanwhile here is one of the monsters they fought and a one use item they found several of.

Multiple Monkeys.

8 Demon monkeys hanging from the Ceiling.

They all howl and gibber with one voice as they are actually one Demon in many bodies.

They start as 8 Level 1 Monsters.

When you kill one the remaining 7 become 2nd level. Growing in size and strength. This continues until the final Monkey is a Level 8 who will wreck faces.

Multiple Monkeys

8 x Level 1-8 Monsters

Howling Claws

+ (attack of monster of current level) Hit: Damage as per level.

One mind many bodies - Vulnerable to Psychic Damage

Cumulativly Stong - Every time a Multiple Monkey reaches 0 HP all the remaining Multiple Monkeys gain a level.

AC - as Monster of current level

PD - High defence of current level

MD - Low defence of current level

HP - As monster of current level

I used this 13th age GM Aid by Jim South to track the stats as they got harder.

Mani Wheel Scrolls

Filling these hand held prayer wheels with specially prepared scrolls allows anyone to cast the scroll with a simple flick of the wrist. However doing so consumes the drum of the Mani Wheel as well as the scroll.

Back to Fitness

This week I have restarted my diet and fitness regime having had it slip massively over the last few months. One of the reasons I started the blog was to give myself some accountability on my weight loss as well as to have a place to write about gaming.

Today I weigh 15st and 6 lbs. I have a short Diet Bet started with a colleague at work, I did Kettlebell Swings and restarted the 100 pushup challenge this morning and Thursday I’m going back to Tai Chi.

I’ll update my weight loss and exercise each Thursday and that will also give me some momentum to have something written to go with it.

My goal is to get down to 13 Stone in the next 3 months. 

Running and Shadowrun Returns

I weigh 13st and 9lbs, I have hit my target for the July Diet Bet, Due to 2 larp events and a Trip to Gen Con my goal for August is to finish it no heavier than I am now. Then I will work on losing more weight in September.

One of the things that has helped me kick the last few pounds is that I have actually succeeded at starting to run. Thanks to Dave I found Zombies, Run and downloaded the 5k training version.  It is a game and a story overlaid on an interval running program, and so far I have done 3 of the runs and the introduction (which is just a free run with the introduction of the story overlaid on your music) had me accidently run to the next town as they kept telling me I was being chased by Zoms.

Sometime last year I backed Shadowrun Returns on Kickstarter by Hairbrained Schemes. It released last Thursday and I spent the weekend playing it. I really enjoyed it, the game is quite simple and short but very engaging. It plays a bit like Neverwinter Nights with guns. Having finished the Campaign i’m now investigating the level editor, and in a wave of nostalgia it made me go look at the new 5th Edition of the RPG.

This Video also about Shadowrun Returns made me chuckle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXVO1HCNQ8M

Also 12 days to go until Gen Con!

Goal based level ups and Diet Bet

I currently weigh 14st 7lbs and have bet a variety of people £20 that I will lose a stone by the end of July. Shout out in the comments if you want to take part in your own Diet Bet in July.

This saturday we played a mammoth  session of 13th age and my players defeated the living dungeon they were delving into.

In doing so they leveled to 4th and I hit upon an idea about letting my players choose when they will next level up.

The idea ties back into what I awarded xp for in This is Thracia.

I want them to set a fairly big goal and they can level to 5th when they achieve it and gain incremental advances when they reach a significant milestone in that goal or if they significantly advance a personal plot line.

Some of the ideas I have had about what that goal could be are:

Defeat the Demonic Warband that recently escaped from the Abyss (something that may or may not have been the players fault)

This could involve travelling to the Red Wastes, finding the warband, defeating the warband, helping shore up the wards over the abyss.

Unravel the mysteries surrounding Hale and Lynch the renegade Tower instigators were up to

This could involve interrogating the pair, breaking the code on their notes, stopping the rebellious cells they have set up and similar intrigue.

Un-curse the silver coins they found that they think used to be people cursed by the diabolist

They found just over 900 silver coins with the symbol of the Diabolist on one side and a persons face on the other, they suspect that each different face represents a person cursed into coin form by the Diabolist. This could involve finding the missing coins, finding out how the diabolist did it, breaking the curse.

6 different players significantly advance a personal plot line.

This could involve loads of things.

What Goal would you set to let your character level up?

Also please keep adding hexes to my map: http://tohitarseclass0.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/hex-maps.html

Gaming Icebreakers

May was great for gaming and having fun. Less good for fitness and Blogging. This month I am back on track for exercising and dieting again. I am currently back up to 14st 8lbs but I expect that to fall off pretty quickly. I intend to be 14st or lighter by the end of June.

I had a pretty full weekend of Gaming. On Friday we played a 10th level Pathfinder one shot, That I can’t talk too much about as Gav wants to run it again for another group. (Which I will try and get him to write a guest post about).

On Saturday we played Mark’s Golden Age of Pirates D20 Game, which was excellent. We explored a Dungeon on an Island revealed by the tide but had a hard real time limit of the returning tide that threatened to drown us. It added an excellent level of tension to the adventure.

Then on Sunday we played the final part of Dan’s Savage Worlds of Slain adventure (Beyond the Wailing Marsh from Issue 16 of Signs and Portents Magazine). In which we cured two tribes of a ravaging disease and defeated the forces of the Drune Lords in a mass battle.

On saturday evening because we had so many different people staying or visiting for Gaming we had a BBQ which led to some extremely interesting conversations about peoples experiences with Gaming. Gav asked the first question, which was very similar to the one Keith asked us as an Icebreaker when he was doing Have Dice Will Travel.

He asked each of us “What is your favorite system?” and got some extreamly varied responses;

Mine is Feng Shui, but others that were mentioned were 13th Age, Apocalypse World, Dnd 3.X, Mage: The Ascencion, FATE (specifically Spirit of the Century), and Call of Cthulhu.

This led to a variety of other questions from What was your favorite Campaign, Favorite Character, Favorite Adventure? to what is an example of the worst behaviour you have experienced at a Game? If you don’t GM, Why not? (Leading to me lending someone The Armitage Files, which I hope they will run.) What is your Favorite XP system?

What would you ask as a gaming Icebreaker? What is your answer to any of the Questions above?

Diet update and 13th Age item

I weigh 14st 7lbs. I re started my Kettlebell swings yesterday morning and K8 and I trained at Reading Ninjutsu Last night.

Over the Weekend Nats ran her first session of Pathfinder which she blogged about here. I am playing an Alchemist and am already enjoying Bombing things.

Also today I have a 13th age Item and a variant monster and things that I wrote for my 13th Age of the Hungry Phoenix game.:

Mask of the Charred Zombie:

A plain slightly Charred looking porcelain mask. (or could be made of burnt wood or something similar)

Attunes as a head slot item and adds +1, 2 or 3 to MD

1 per day the wearer can remove a copy of the mask from the front of it and place it onto a corpse. This chars and animates the corpse into a Charred Zombie.

The wearer can control 2 of these zombies per Level but can make more if they have another way of wrangling them.

The mask is always warm, and becomes very hot when it’s power is used, often burning the face of the wearer.

Quirk: Over attuning causes the wearers skin to start to crisp, they become unsightly and averse to cold temperatures.

Charred Zombie

As a Zombie but it heals from Fire Damage and slowly regenerates normal damage by catching fire. I give them extra fire damage after they have been hurt. They can’t regenerate Cold Damage.

Weekend of Gaming

Today I weigh 14st 4lbs. Diet bet is going well.

The girls are off to Empire  but instead I am planning on building a fort out of boxes in the living room, Calling it my Fortress of Solitude and then ruining the solitude part by inviting a load of my mates over to play games.

Gav  is going to run a 10th level Pathfinder one shot, and I am going to run the Demo adventure for Dragon Age (as it is Tabletop Day on Saturday)

In addition to that I’m going to play a bunch of Warmachine and Hordes using Dwarven Forge as terrain.

Speaking of Dwarven Forge they have an awesome Kickstarter running at the moment. The Overseas shipping is still a little bit heavy but the sets do look cool:

My plan for the Warmachine Dwarven Forge Scenario is to co opt The longest night scenario from the Privateer Press website has some interesting special rules for zombies turning up everywhere so I’m going to import them and possibly have a neutral set of Celaphx roaming around the level.

I’ll post about how the weekend went next week. What are you doing for Easter or Tabletop day?

Nijitsu Seminar and April Diet Bet.

On Saturday despite the snow I attended a Ninjitsu Workshop by Jim at Bujinkan Reading (he also blogged about it here.)

We did a bunch of things with Bokken, both striking defending and stopping people from drawing their swords. As well as some more traditional Attacks and blocks. I also got talking to Dave one of the other Black Belts who is planning on starting a Womens Self Defence Class in Reading.

My Push-up bet for March is not going well, and as a result Last week I started Aprils Diet Bet early. before the end of April I will lose 10lbs. This time around I am joined by Lisa, Mark and Becky. Each of whom has their own targets. I have also escalated by cheating on the diet forfeit to adding £5 to the pot every time I break Diet. I currently Weigh 14st and 8lbs and will be under 14 stone before the end of Arpil.

Dragon Age, Terrain and Diet Bet Victory

This morning I weigh 14st and have won my Feb Diet bet. I’m doing another one in March, this month I bet that I will be able to do 100 Push ups by the end of the month.

Last weekend we played Dragon age, with our friends from across the pond Charles and Tammie over a G+ Hangout.

I loved the Dragon Age stunt system, the resolution system is 3d6 with one of them a different colour, the Dragon Die. If you roll doubles you get stunt points equal to the roll on the Dragon Die which you can spend on doing interesting things in the fight; Knocking people back or over, extra damage or ignoring armour. It’s a really interesting critical hit mechanic.

Dan ran us through the intro adventure and one of the things that stood out for me was that each of the fights featured some sort of terrain, and each time it came into play because of the stunt system.

**Spoilers for the intro adventure below.**

The first fight was an ambush by a gorge where the rope bridge had been cut by Darkspawn seeking to trap us against the ravine. During the fight I got knocked down the ravine along with several of the darkspawn.

The 2nd was on a steep hillside with a switchback road leading up to it, and we started on the wrong side of a gully, everyone had to get across the gully and get up the hill in time to save the defenders from a massive Darkspawn attack.

Playing through it reminded me of this article from Criis perkins: Things I learnt from various editions http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4dmxp/20130117

In it he mentions that the thing that 4th ed brought home for him was making sure there was some sort of interesting terrain in each fight.

The fights in dragon age all had some cool piece of terrain I them, even if it was just big pits. combined with the stunt system that meant that everyone gets to do the cool cinematic style fights with knocking opponents over or pushing them back and things like that. It made all the fights more interesting.

It is something i’m taking ino my This is Thracia adventures, making sure I put fights in locations more interesting than a 20ft by 20ft room.

What is the most interesting terrain you have put into a roleplaying adventure?