Raithe

Hm, well as a subscriber I get 600 coins a month.. then another 100 per month for having the CE of the game.. So I'd have to not use any for a whooole lot of months to have enough to pick up one of those Hypercrates. I can understand people getting into the aesthetics and such enough to spend 1,400 odd coins for specific sets of armour and wotnot. But over 7,000 in one go for a whole bunch of random loot?

I still have to wonder.. Who the hell is picking up the Hypercrates? Seriously, sure it's 24 whatever packs in one mass.. but 7,000 odd cartel coins?? That's spending about $60 just to get that...

Curse of the Crimson Throne doesn't have much in the way of resource management, during the last stage the GM has to keep track of a running tally of points depending on what the pc's do. Although a lot of the Adventure Paths have that feature in the final stages. Various encounters award/take away tally points depending on their actions, and then an overall "feel/result" depends on what the score is. ie: 1-3 the pc's won, but the town was pretty wrecked, 4-5, they won, there was moderate disruption, people aren't that happy with the pcs, 6-8, x section was destroyed but the rest was saved... (you get the idea, but that's not resource management) The Serpents Skull has a lot of plunder and combat. It's very much pulp serial, archaeologist adventure, lost city, ancient evil, etc etc. Jade Regent has an extended journey, leading to a mix of combat and roleplaying to build allies before grand finale sequence, but has some minor "management" of a trade caravan during the early parts of it. Kingmaker is pretty much the one thats seriously management of assorted things, so that would be one to skip if you don't like that. Legacy of Fire has the interesting arabian nights feel to it. Lots of genies based elements and plots, mysterious magics, strange locales and the like. I think the end of part 1 and some of part 2 has a few elements of resource managent (pc's helping recover a trading outpost as part of the plot), but thats more background then major and the story soon sweeps you out beyond that.

"Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag - The irony of Ubisoft making a game whose protagonist is a pirate..."

"When I make someone breakfast in bed, all they need to do is say thank you. They don't need to make such a fuss on the 'Who the hell are you?!' or 'How did you get in my house??!'"

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-02-28-assassins-creed-4-black-flag-confirmed-by-ubisoft-has-60-minutes-exclusive-gameplay-on-ps3 Assassin's Creed goes all Jolly Roger. The next in the series is to be "Assassin's Creed: Black Flag"

Don't know if its remnants from yesterdays headache and time spent in bed, but kept waking up from weird dreams that were constantly fragmenting through the early hours of the morning.. and now that I'm up I seem to be having one of those mornings where my brain keeps firing off random thoughts that aren't actually connected with anything in particular. Definitely making it awkward to concentrate and focus on anything. I shall rely on the tradition of tea drinking to see if that soothes things down.

I'd say make a short list of a bunch of the special combat maneuvers that are above/beyond the simple hack and slash. Ie - Trip, Sunder, Disarm, etc.. with a couple of notes jotting down what they do, and the basic rules. Make sure your players have a copy and award a little exra xp if they use them with appropriately fluffy roleplaying descriptions for the combat.... Or for using them in appropriate ways. It's a way to encourage them to think beyond just "roll to hit and damage" , especially if it turns combat into something a bit more tactical.

Spent most of the day so far buried in bed with a nasty headache and trying to let my thoughts roam. Forced myself up now as it's a little better and I needed some food and tea. Now checking emails and wotnot trying to focus on figuring out what needs to be done in the last few hours of the afternoon.

The montage sequence in early Children of Dune to the Inama Nushif music was fairly damn excellently placed and executed though... To me, that music set off the whole thing to close to perfection. The birth of the children along with the cleansing of the house... http://youtu.be/IGPFB8yR6zk

Now, last night for various reasons I ended up listening to the Music from the Succubus album which put me in a frame of mind to think about the classic WoD. And for some reason I suddenly started thinking about just what might happen if a Vampire decided to Ghoul one or more house cats. Can you imagine just what a bad idea that would be? Felines (while I appreciate them as pets) are pretty damn murderous and evil masterminds as they are. Throw in a little bit of vampiric vitae and just what will happen? Or even worse, imagine a couple of generations of said ghouled kitties. A revenant bloodline of urban cats all with an increased hunger and roaming around whilst said Vamp is asleep during the day. Since it's well known for cats to chow down on their owners if they croak.. can you imagine the possibilities with one or more vamp's resting?

The other flip side of Kingmaker is that you'll probably have to make houserules over the population numbers. Otherwise.. after about 3 or 4 years of kingdom building, you will have a ridiculous population compared to the rest of the River Kingdoms.

Although there was some recent study that claimed that lack of sleep can age a man's sex life 10-15 years....

There are some things man is not meant to google....

I have to admit, I've got a soft spot for the sci-fi channels mini-series adaptions of Dune and Children of Dune.

A little wandering around on the argument of why a threesome is better as a fantasy then in reality...

Somethings put me in the mood to listen to my Music from the Succubus Club album..

And more in patents then science.. but still: cnet - Futuristic Handcuffs Would Administer Shocks and Drugs/

It's the internet. There has to be cats..

Sliders started off as a great series. There were a lot of really fun ideas to it and the episodes, and the characters blended together quite nicely. But yes, unfortunately, as time went on things got a little.. weird and convoluted. And it all kind of fell apart.

Woke from some strange and vivid dreams about trying to find a psychotic professor in a Warhammer 40k university. A lil on the weird side. Now my day is feeling ever so slightly off-kilter as I drink tea and try to nudge my mind back onto poking at stakeholder requirements.