rjbs forgot what he was saying

Year 28 of the 7th Imperator, 8th of Declarations

Stomachs full of rich food and pockets full of (a very small amount of) gold, the gang retired early and took a well-earned day off to replaced lost gear, mend armor, and otherwise relax.

The next day, the got back to business early, heading off to the seat of government to look for dirty deeds needing doing. They'd hardly left their neighborhood, though, when they were distracted by the sight of a local shopkeeper being harassed by a group of terchic thugs. They stood by and watched until the terchics wandered off, and then followed the merchant into his shop to see what was up.

Igrus, the cloth merchant, was being pressed for protection money, like many of the local merchants. He didn't mind paying – that's part of doing business in the city – but he wanted to pay proper men, not protomachean abominations. Ayla expressed her sympathy with that position and said that they'd be happy to take the protection money, so that it didn't have to go to the terchics. Igrus agreed and said that the deal would be sealed as soon as the gang delivered the news to the terchics.

Everyone headed into the Vorican ghetto, and to the Burning Dog, the extortionists' favored tavern. A few hours passed before they showed up, but they did, and Ayla explained how things were going to be: the terchics would stop hassling Igrus, and nobody would get hurt. The terchic didn't like these terms, much, and set about making his position clear through pugilism.

As a few dozen locals watched from alleys and windows, the two gangs engaged in brutal combat in the street. While Ayla focused on keeping the minds of the thugs clouded and Helga and Ignatius took down one opponent after another, Redorus faced the leader in a fierce one-on-one fight. It was a close thing, but Redorus scraped through (owing to the intervention of pale-faced Olixitus) and the terchic's leader did not, finally collapsing in a bloodied heap in front of the tavern.

Calliope had cowed several of the terchics by wielding her Nexan dagger (presumably returned by Felix without significant news). This drew the attention of a few Nexans in the Dog, one of whom chased Calliope down until she gave up the dagger. When he picked it up and, blue-skinned, threatened her, she made tracks in a panic. Meanwhile, the Nexan's friend pushed Ayla and Redorus for information on the dagger's origin. They promised to tell him all about it… later. He reminded them that it wouldn't be too hard to find three bald-headed Voricans, especially if he looked for one as badly beat up as Redorus. He told them to go freely and tend to their wounded.

So they did.

Year 28 of the 7th Imperator, 6th of Declarations

Hearts still pounding after their narrow escape from the spearmen guarding the lighthouse, the party arrived at the wharves and realized (with no great surprise) that they were being pursued. Another small boat was crossing the water toward them, and the glinting brass of armor could be seen even from the shore. Calliope, still as naked as a jay bird, made an incredible bee line through the oblivious throngs of people and ducked into a dark alley, waiting for any sort of help at all. Redorus and Ayla headed off to the nearest market to find some cheap robes. Ignatius stood watch over the incoming boat. Tilton and Helga made for a small eatery near the old walls, planning to meet up with the rest of the gang later.

Redorus and Ayla found a tolerable little clothier several stadia away. The merchant was a bit surprised by the half-naked armor-toting soldier and his bald-headed female companion, but kept her mouth shut and didn't gouge them too much. When they got back to Calliope, the guards from the island were pressing the locals for information, but not getting anywhere. Unfortunately, just as Redorus and Ayla made it to Calliope's alley, the junior priest from the island recognized them, and the chase was on. Ignatius knocked over a crate in the guards' path and made a run for it, followed by everyone else – including Calliope, once she'd covered herself in her new robes. Redorus stuck around long enough to giving a solid beating to one of the guards, but quickly rejoined the others.

Running through the streets laden down with armor and coin was problematic, and it was clear that the group couldn't stay ahead of the guards forever, so eventually, having taken just a bit of a lead, they kicked in a doorway in a back alley and ducked inside. The guards went right on by while the group took stock of their new hideout.

They'd barged into a little room with nearly nothing in it: no windows, no doors, no witnesses. Just one low little bed and a horribly abused corpse.

The body had been badly mangled. Its head, feet, and hands were gone, along with at least some of its organs. The chest wounds seemed brutally inflicted; there was nothing surgical about them. Despite this, there was almost no blood spilled in the room beyond a few drops. The body was cold, but not rotting. Calliope decided it was probably a woman, and found a strange black tattoo on its back: a flower, with wings in place of the leaves on its stem.

Ayla didn't want anything to do with the creepy back room and went out to survey the front of the building. There was a sign for a jeweler, but the shop was locked up tight and seemed abandoned. When Ayla saw a little bit of light moving around inside, she went back to the rear to alert the others, but found that they were the cause of it. Calliope had found a hollow in the rear wall and Redorus had broken through the plaster, revealing a door between the front and rear parts of the building. Up front, she and Redorus found nothing but a dusty stone counter and a small metal lock box, which she took with her.

The gang decided to deal with this mystery later, and headed back toward the old walls, but the guard was still on the lookout, and eventually they were spotted and chased. Ayla clouded the minds of the pursuers with a vision of a great conflagration in the road. While they called for the fire brigade, the four made a run for it and finally caught up with Tilton and Helga, who wondered what took so long. The guards at the old city walls didn't seem to have been informed about the fugitives, and everyone enjoyed the leisurely stroll back to the Dirty Red Table.

The landlady wasn't so pleased to see the gang, though, and complained bitterly about the in and out of unannounced delivery men all afternoon. While she carried on, Calliope quietly slinked upstairs to their rooms and had a lookout for anything suspicious. She found nothing, but noted an intense, meaty, mouth-watering odor coming from behind their doors. Redorus joined her and they burst in to find their (usually quite bare) table laden with all manner of delights: fresh breads, fish, pork, figs, dates, cheeses, pears, leaks, parsnips, egg, mushroom, baklava, and a jug of fine wine. Moreover, beside each glass was a gold solidus!

There was no note or explanation, but that didn't stop everyone from tucking in and eating until ready to burst.

Befil Feth arrived, as promised, shortly after six. He was offered leftovers (which he accepted gladly) and Calliope apologized: they'd already solved their own problem, and wouldn't need his help. He wasn't too upset, and said he already knew what happened. The inner city had still been busy with guards when he passed through, and he had a guess how Ayla, Redorus, and Calliope had lost their hair. He gave them some bad news, though: it wasn't likely that their hair would ever grow back, and if it did, it might be… different.

When he left, he said he'd still be happy to hear from them again, if they were looking for work – one the heat had died down, anyway.

Saturday, the 7th day of the Red Moon, 937

Back from Drake's Rest, the group was read to get back to the Gladwell place and undeground. Jared and Derick parted ways with the group to secret the coin from the sale of the font. Jared would lated catch up with the party, but Derick didn't make it. He had some important drinking to do.

Before heading across the river, the party decided it would be a good idea to get a dwarf to come along. It was easy to decide who to ask: Torben was the only dwarf around, and after some convincing that there'd be plenty of treasure (of which he'd get a favorable share), he agreed to come along, and brought his halfling friend Mero the Deadly, to whom nobody seemed to give a second thought. Worried about leftover toxic gasses, Lyweylln also bought a canary and tied it to his wrist with a piece of twine – the last bird cage in town had just been bought the day before.

Torben had heard some scuttlebutt about Alp the Acolyte socking old Agbert Gladwell, and pressed Alp for an explanation. Alp explained by noting that there was a tunnel leading from the chapel down into the dungeons. When Torben, nonplussed, pushed for more information, Alp clambered down the tunnel. After a few minutes of puzzled silence, the rest of the (huge) group followed: Torben, Mero, Lyweylln, Delian, and the three hirelings: Rocky, Rigby, and Sadie.

The group headed southwest through the ruined kitchen and down the tunnel into the river cavern. Everything seemed to be as they'd left it – apart from the hallucinogenic blue smoke, which had cleared the area. The group surveyed the area, but found nothing much of interest. Torben grumbled, wondering when they were going to get to the mines. There were mines, right? All he could see were natural caverns, pathetic burrows, and some probably-human stonework.

Everyone kept on following Alp, who lead the first group up to the complex junction. Sadie (et al.) explored the unmarked passage and determined it to be a dead end. From there, the whole party trooped up to the big room with the big round table. Torben asked about the the boarded up passage at the east end, but Alp and Delian said that while they'd been through there, neither could remember what they'd seen there.

Lyweylln decided it was worth investigating, and he asked Rocky to axe down the barricade, which Rocky did happily. Delian, Lyweylln, Rocky, Sadie, and Mero made their way down the walkway behind it. Three zombies were loitering at the end of the hall, and things got complicated. Delian's Protection from Evil probably saved his life, but not enough that he wasn't badly hurt, so he shoved his way out of the melee and back to safety with Torben, Rigby, and Alp.

Rocky felled one undead man-eater while Sadie fought with another one, but she was quickly overpowered and laid low. Lyweylln and Mero loosed a series of arrows at the creatures. Over and over, Mero hit his marks. Lyweylln, though entirely ineffective, didn't give up.

Meanwhile, Jared had arrived and was looking around the caverns for the rest of the group. Hearing the dim sounds of struggle from up above, he made his way up the tunnels toward the table room. He ran into Alp, and after some respectful punches of greeting, they ran into the melee. By the power of Ibrim, the undead were cowed and send scurrying back down their hole.

After a bit of standard looting of Sadie's body, along with the reading of hurried last rites, Alp and Jared declared their intention to pursue the shuffling corpses down the hole. Down they went, followed by the rest of the group. Another handful of zombies waited in the room below, glaring at the clerics from the shadows. Alp brandished his silver star, but his faith wavered, and the undead were enraged rather then repelled.

The struggle became ferocious: Alp, Jared, and Lyweylln were tackled by zombies while Mero landed shot after shot. Too much damage had already been done, though. Lyweylln managed to drive his dagger through his attacker's palate and kill him, but Alp and Jared were not so lucky, and were sent to meet their master. With their bodies looted, the party was left deciding which way to go: down the nearly-vertical drop at the east end, or back up and out of the zombie pit. (Well, except for Torben, who was more left wondering whether he'd ever figure out what happened between Alp and Agbert.)

In Memoriam

R.I.P., Jared the Acolyte
R.I.P., Alp the Acolyte
R.I.P., Sadie the Soldier (hireling)

Friday, the 6th day of the Red Moon, 937

Heading out of the south end of the dungeon, the party (minus Dumbasbrix and one of Delian's hands) had trudged north into the King Room, and decided it was time to get started on mapping in earnest. They made their way through a series of tunnels, through the Complex Junction, through the "Dwarf" tunnel, and ended up in an abandoned mine. The tunnel was closed off in both directions with cave-ins that had been constructed by hand (or claw).

The party tried going west, first. After scaring a scorpion out of his nest in the rocks, Jared dumped some oil on the pile and set it alight. This just scared out a few more of the vermin, but they were quickly dispatched. (Jared wasn't too pleased to have one of them pitchforked to death on his shin, but he lived.) Spotting some weird, dodecahedral rocks buried in the pile, the party got to work digging them out, only to be interrupted by the sound of some creating yelling obscenities in Draconic. It seemed to realize that something else was around, though, and ran off – but only after chasing a foot-across spider-frog into the west end of the tunnel. Everyone took pot shots at it until Jared knocked it out with a well-placed sling stone. He tied it up and stuck it in a backpack to domesticate later.

Later commentary on this idea did not wax enthusiastic.

From there, everyone headed east, clambering over the rock pile. They picked up a bunch of mining tools that would be abandoned almost immediately. At the far end of the shaft passage, a set of stairs led up into a large room. In the middle, two minecars were overturned, each with a good share of gold and gems. Alec the Apprentice immediately got to work shoveling coin into his pack, but no sooner had he started than the sounds of shifting metal could be heard in the surrounding darkness. Alec ran into the dark to hide, and was never heard from again. Jared (who had been lingering near the door, ready to run for his life) stepped into the light, invoked the name of Ibrim, and sent running the handful of animate dwarfish skeletons that had begun to close on the rest of the group.

Everybody turned tail and ran until they got back out into Gladwell's stable.

One of the farmhands loaned them a cart and then headed back to Edgwold with the big gold font in it. Everyone pursued his own agenda:

• Jared took the smaller, dead spider-frog to the apothecary for inspection, along with one of the seeds he'd found. He bought a small cage for the living one and placed an order for a bigger one.
• Delian and Alp headed to see Fr. Pechis for healing. Delian didn't stick around to hear about how his dismemberment was part of Imbrim's plan, but started considering making a trip to the Astodan of Cold Flame to see about some serious miracles. Alp paid five sovereigns for the laying on of hands.
• Delian also took some seeds for inspection by the apothecary, and gave a detailed account of where they'd been found.
• Lyweylln went back to his room to rest, having felt not quite himself for nearly half his time below ground.
• Derick got rip-roaring drunk and went shopping, but manage to avoid buying anything, even the tempting surcoat emblazoned with the device of St. Ishibek.

Before turning in, the group contracted three hirelings, a thief and two fighters, for 10 gp a day each, plus a share of the treasure. To cover initial expenses, the first thing the next morning they delivered the (cleaned off) font to Edwin, who had them escort him to Drake's Rest. After tediously protracted argument about how to sell the thing, the group settled on 760 sovereigns and headed back to Edgwold and on to the Gladwell place.

R.I.P., Alec the Apprentice

Year 28 of the 7th Imperator, 5th of Declarations

With their only pressing business – the return of the obsidian statuette to Aranaius – complete, the gang's next order of business was to deal with he Meek Servant of All, their surly, newly-acquired imp. Calliope had promised to get him out of his cave within five days, and the understanding was that if they couldn't get him out by then, he'd spill the beans to Mariava about who stole him and where they were. There was more talk about trying to just off the little blighter, but Calliope held firm: she wanted to at least try to get the imp free. Her plan was to get Kossix to introduce her to the "stupid brother-in-law artificer" he had mentioned. Everyone waited around until Kossix showed up that evening to talk about what had happened.

He implored the group to continue in their efforts to help him expose Mariava's fiendishenss. No one was interested, except for Calliope. "I'm an adventurer!" she said. "I'm always interested!" Kossix admitted that he didn't have a new plan to suggest, but said he'd keeping looking for one and would be in touch. He reclaimed his codex and, just before leaving, told Calliope where his brother-in-law, Befil Feth, could be found. The group resolved to go see him because... well, they didn't have any better ideas.

Year 28 of the 7th Imperator, 6th of Declarations

With only three full days left on the clock, the gang (Ayla, Calliope, Helga, Ignatius, Redorus, and Tilton) got an early start heading to the docks near the Montan quarter, where they found Befil at work in a shabby office with a half dozen other bookkeepers. He was surprised at the suggestion that Kossix would've sent anyone to see him, but thought he could help with the problem. He said it would probably run about five or six gold, but when Calliope explained that this was way out of their ball park, he said that they could probably work out some kind of exchange. Befil had some jobs that needed doing,truth be told, and he'd be happy to talk the situation over with the gang, one he got a little background from Kossix – and not at his place of business. He arranged to come see them, and the imp's cage, after business.

Having most of the day to kill, the group decided that they'd better not squander their precious time. The leaped into action, finding an excellent spot for an early lunch down by the wharves.

With sustenance dealt with, they decided to head home and press the Meek Servant of All for more time. He was unimpressed by their request for more time. "You still have three days. Beg for more time when you really need it." He was also unimpressed by threats of torture or death. "Oh, you don't want to do that." Frustrated, and with the day half gone, the sought other council: Ayla's old mentor Flavius of the Lucii.

They went in only looking for some information about the dagger that Calliope had lifted from Mariava's house (and subsequently sold to Helga). He was quite interested in the piece, and explained that it was a rare collector's item: a Nexan warrior's dagger, from before the collapse of some long-lost civilization. He said that other than the obvious effect on the wielder's appearance, he didn't know of any other rumored effects, but that he'd be happy to give it a further look. Disgusted to learn that it was good for nothing but turning blue, Helga demanded her money back, and Calliope complied.

Helga also decided that as long as they were here, they should ask for information on the imp and his cage.

Flavius didn't have much information on killing imps, other than the suggestion that it was probably a really bad idea. He said a silver blade was the suggested technique, but he didn't know much about it. Imps, he said, were vindictive and stuck together. Getting on their bad side (individually or as a group) wouldn't end well. The cage, though, was another matter. After a series of questions, he postulated that the cage was made from a rare metal (or metal-like substance, but he tried to skim over the finder details) called "Enoriaster's chain." Probably their only hope to deal with the cage was to bathe it in moonfire, the rare substance of the lunar seas, which from time to time fell to the earth. The stuff burns just about anything but flesh, and is much too dangerous to keep in the city. Flavius suggested a few places where it might be found, including the Great Lighthouse, and that became the group's next destination.

By early afternoon, a ferryman had been bribed and the gang landed on Ithek, the lighthouse island. The lighthouse entrance was guarded, and approached and pestered the guards until they told her to go talk to the priests. The priests, for their part, were baffled to have a bunch of surprise visitors show up, and even more baffled when Helga said they were there for the tour and Calliope begged for it in a cockamamie accent. Eventually, though, he realized that everyone was mostly interested in seeing the moonfire and, in a decision destined to haunt his future in the priesthood, said that something could be arranged.

He directed the "tour group" to take a seat at the nearby meeting area until a sample could be brought by. After about an hour and a half, he returned with an acolyte and a long wooden pole with a sample of the moonfire in a glass orb. Calliope asked whether it was hot to the touch, and was invited to feel the glass. When everybody gathered around, Ayla compelled the priest to hand over the staff and run, which he did, followed shortly thereafter by his acolyte, who knew that nothing good was going to come of this.

Calliope set down the imp's cage on the dais and Ayla smashed the globe over it, setting the dais and her robe on fire. The silvery flame caused no burns, but quickly consumed her clothes and staff. Within seconds, she was engulfed in flame and, while the imp sat impatiently in his cage, she began to strip off her flaming clothes and bat at her hair. Redorus tried to help douse Ayla's burning hair, but didn't accomplish much beyond setting himself on fire, too. Piece by piece, his armor's straps were burnt off and his armor fell away.

Calliope took a staff in hand and got to work prying open the bars of the now claylike metal. Though she began the work gingerly, trying to avoid the moonflame, it spread all too readily, and soon she was engulfed as well. She tossed aside most of her belongings, but managed to save very little. The imp slowly made his way out of the cage.

Helga and Tilton had tried to restrain the priests, in an effort to keep them from bringing the guards down on the group, but the acolyte slipped away and ran for the guards, screaming. In short order, everyone was sprinting back to the ferry, in various stages of undress, many cupping handfuls of silver pieces. When the two nearest gaurds began to catch up to the lagging Redorus, and Calliope was stricken by a thrown spear, Ayla sent one away in a confusion and Helga turned the other away with a well-placed and nearly fatal bowshot.

The six mercenaries, breathless and still running, clambered into the ferry and urged him back to the mainland while the ferryman mumbled to himself, not eager for the inevitable questioning he'd be receiving later.

1. If you had to pick a single invention in a game you were most proud of what would it be?

I'm pretty happy with Awesome Points so far, although it's probably too early to say I'm entirely sure they're a success. Still, I'm sticking with it.

2. When was the last time you GMed?

Saturday.

3. When was the last time you played?

Phew! I can't remember, 2003 maybe?

4. Give us a one-sentence pitch for an adventure you haven't run but would like to.

The PCs hear rumors of a sunken city of the Ancients under the lake, and have to decide whether to blow up the damn and slog around in the mud looking for treasures.

5. What do you do while you wait for players to do things?

I do as little as possible. Maybe I stare at the minis.

6. What, if anything, do you eat while you play?

Pizza for 4E, nothing for B/X or M&M.

7. Do you find GMing physically exhausting?

Not physically. It leaves me feeling drained, but I think going from running the game to doing some kind of difficult manual labor might be a nice move. Run a dungeon crawl, then chop some wood...

8. What was the last interesting (to you, anyway) thing you remember a PC you were running doing?

I had a guy recently turn around and try to get a job working for the junior BBEG to get some inside information, which was pretty unexpected. The general utter disregard for each other's gruesome deaths that most characters display is also interesting, in a way.

9. Do your players take your serious setting and make it unserious? Vice versa? Neither?

I think things are always taken less seriously than I imagine them, which is what I always expect.

10. What do you do with goblins?

I wrote goblins out of my 4E game. In my B/X game, they're a constant minor annoyance, but I think the PCs are going to have to strike a deal with them and head through the goblin woods at some point. My goblins are more hated than hateful.

11. What was the last non-RPG thing you saw that you converted into game material (background, setting, trap, etc.)?

The guy from the old 7-Up "Uncola" ads makes a great NPC, voice-wise.

12. What's the funniest table moment you can remember right now?

Everyone appreciated when Keralon the lich tried to doom the party by summoning his chained-up hydra, not realizing it was long-dead. Any time I get to describe the horrible death of anything, I giggle inside.

13. What was the last game book you looked at--aside from things you referenced in a game--why were you looking at it?

S&W White Box. I keep wondering whether I want to eliminate thieves from my B/X game. Other than D&D-ish stuff, probably Eclipse Phase, which I received for Christmas. Holy cow, that book is enormous!

14. Who's your idea of the perfect RPG illustrator?

I really liked Jeff Easley's work on 2E. I don't know if I'd call it perfect, but I liked it a lot. "Cut Down to Size" still makes me happy. Jim Holloway's stuff on Paranoia also really makes me happy.

15. Does your game ever make your players genuinely afraid?

I think sometimes I make them anxious, which is about the best I seem able to do. Sometimes it's because I can build up the right atmosphere, but just as often it's when I roll on some random table and mutter to myself.

16. What was the best time you ever had running an adventure you didn't write? (If ever)

I've never done it.

17. What would be the ideal physical set up to run a game in?

Windows, sunlight, a chair on which I can cross my legs, a round table with plenty of room for tiles, and maybe a few whiteboards in arm's reach.

18. If you had to think of the two most disparate games or game products that you like what would they be?

Mage and Human Occupied Landfill

19. If you had to think of the most disparate influences overall on your game, what would they be?

William Gibson and He-Man.

20. As a GM, what kind of player do you want at your table?

Somebody who will shut up about the last game he was in, how this reminds him of an episode of Star Trek, and who will pursue a goal further in the future than ten minutes.

21. What's a real life experience you've translated into game terms?

Nothing springs to mind.

22. Is there an RPG product that you wish existed but doesn't?

I want the 4E D&D Compendium for old-school games, complete with inline expandable explanations of monsters' spell-like effects.

23. Is there anyone you know who you talk about RPGs with who doesn't play? How do those conversations go?

Sometimes I tell a co-worker about an amusing scene, which works with no context. A few weeks ago I tried to explain to a neighbor where I was headed (to a M&M game). It was harder than I expected, at least when I tried to fit it into a few sentences.

Friday, the 6th day of the Red Moon, 937

Thursday night, Alp the Acolyte, Delian the Elf, Derick the Soldier, and Alec the Apprentice had arrived back at the baron's keep early and, after a rough day beneath the Gladwell place, got a good rest before their next day undeground.

The next morning, they reported to Captain Horn to get scrolls, ink, and more bodies. All of these were waiting for them – along with a tongue-lashing by the captain, who was not pleased to have gotten the first word of the scuffle between Alp and Agbert Gladwell from old Gladwell, rather than from one of his own men. Alp promised that he was going to apologize, but Captain Horn told him to just steer clear of Gladwell for a few days to let things simmer down. Head hung, Alp agreed.

As for the reinforcements, they didn't have much to add, save for Lyweylln the Elf, who added a few cheerful notes on his freshly-carved flute. Captain Horn, hardened to elfin nonsense by years of exposure, kept his thoughts to himself.

Once on site, Lyweylln had a quick chat with one of the farm hands, and asked about whether he know much about any history of trouble at the estate. He very pleasantly told all that he knew, which amounted to roughly nothing. He said that once in a while a horse would go missing, or goblins would be spotted nearby causing mischief. Apart from that, though, the only excitement he'd seen in his three seasons with the Gladwells was the disappearance of the men from town and the altercation between Old Man Gladwell and Alp. Lyweylln gave the farmhand his flute in thanks, and the farmhand happily accepted it and clambered back up to the top of the watchtower.

The party descended the tunnel in the stable without incident, and Alp immediately suggested hauling the bloodsoaked font back up the tunnel to be salvaged. When met with resistance, he decided to do it himself, and with a tremendous effort, managed it.

Meanwhile, the party lit a fire in the small fireplace near the still-hanging, now slightly rotting horse carcass. (Setting the tone for things to come, Delian had to leap to action to prevent Dumbasbrix the Medium from trying to light the fire with a magic missile.) With no results of note, the fire was extinguished and the party descended the tunnel behind it into the cramped complex junction with the labeled passages. Through the yet-unexplored "water" passage, they found a huge cavern with a gently flowing river. Before the room could be fully explored, all attention was quickly focused on the seven planters along the northwest wall. Dumbasbrix quickly found a seed in one of them and, before he could be stopped, took a taste. His reaction was unreserved: "Yummy!"

Unfortunately, he continued to work his way through the seeds, with increasingly deleterious effects. One nut-like seed was full of a sticky green goo. The sprout inside the goo – along with plenty of the goo itself – ended up in Dumbasbrix's mouth, causing swelling, itching, and the inability to speak. After that, another seed seemed to have no effect, apart from possibly some numbness. The final seed sealed his fate: the green good quickly liquified and poured from his mouth. Then, too, did his tongue, jaw, and chin dissolve into a pink mess. He collapsed, dead, and his traveling companion Lyweylln quickly and respectfully looted his corpse and dumped it in the river.

Other adventurers were not deterred from further experiments in extemporaneous subterranean botany. Delian attempted to reproduce the acid admixture, and succeeded, dissolving his hand cleanly to the wrist.

Derick took a bit of time looking into the round stone pillar in the middle of the river. In doing so, he drove a large, weird frog from the water. It was deep purple, eight-legged, as big around as a saucer, and quickly bisected by a blow from Derick's shield. Alec collected samples of the various oozes that issued forth, just in case.

Lyweylln, investigating the blue moss growing on the south wall, smeared some of it onto an arrowhead. In a feat of exemplary elfin archery, he fired the arrow into one of the small pips that Jared had found, producing a plume of grey-blue smoke. Delian, picking up the pip and getting a good whiff, was overcome by some sort of fit and ran to the north entrance, waving his arms wildly and gibbering something about goblin hordes. Jared cured him of this condition with the careful application of his sword's pommel. When he then suggested dragging the elf around the dungeon by his feet, Derick volunteered to heft him over his shoulders.

With their interest in the river cavern exhausted, the party headed up the south tunnel to the ruined kitchen, where Jared looted a small pewter pot from the belly of the stove. The went north through several intersections and found themselves in the room with the smashed idol.

It was 16:00, and play ended.

R.I.P., Dumbasbrix the Medium

Year 28 of the 7th Imperator, 4rd of Declarations.

When last we saw the gang, they were in the middle of trying to recover a stolen 12" obsidian figure of Lanas for Aranaius, a priest of Lanas. It had been stolen (or purchased, or something; it was a matter of some contention) by Mariava, an antiquities dealer of ill repute. Ignatius had met Kossix Senth, who had an unknown axe to grind with Mariava, and arranged for the party to meet with him and have a talk.

Kossix showed up at the Dirty Red Table with a few guards, who stayed at a distance. Kossix was eager to share what he knew about Mariava – clearly, Kossix said, the man was a necromancer. He cited evidence: Mariava had dealings with the Icarian "scholar" Xook, who is far and wide suspected of various unwholesome things; he had been seen more than one accompanying a friend to the great temple of Lanas, but not entering it; the candles lit in his windows at night would dance in sync, a well known sign of a necromancer's home! The party was less than convinced. Kossix insisted that Mariava was behind the strange new sickness infecting some of the neighborhood's beggars and indigents, having poisoned the water "or something like that."

He suggested that his new friends could sneak into Mariava's house and gather evidence. Redorus was a bit wary of yet more advice to break into this guy's house, but Kossix said he would provide the party with a magic book that would record anything happening around it, and that they could plant it to gather information. There was general grumbling of disbelief until Kossix produced the item and demonstrated its function. When asked where he'd gotten it, Kossix explained that his idiot brother-in-law, when a student at a lesser academy of daemonology, had produced the thing to write novels for him, only to learn that real life made for poor fiction.

The gang agreed to meet Kossix after dark and do the deed.

Calliope decided to head in alone, while everyone else took up positions around the neighborhood – some nearby, some a few doors down. She clambered onto the rear balcony and easily defeated the lock on the door and pushed her way into a small, bare room. Lighting her way with a candle, she moved through a curtain into the next room, a larger open area crowded with statues, display cases, and other bric-a-brac. Also, in the room was a 12" metal cage containing a small blue imp, who quickly saw Calliope and asked what she was doing there.

After a bit of negotiation, the imp (who would later give his name as the Meek Servant of All) agreed to keep his mouth shut and report nothing, if Calliope would agree to get him out of the magic cage within five days. She agreed, and got to work figuring out where to hide Kossix's magical codex. She decided to slip it under the base of a man-sized gladiator statue. The imp cried out for her not to touch it, but it was too late. The statue lurched forward from its stand, and brought up its sword. In a panic, Calliope ran for the balcony, taking the book with her, as well as the imp and whatever else she could grab on her way out – a dagger and another codex. The statue caught her with a terrible blow that could easily have been fatal if not deflected by the unbreakable metal cage she'd held up as a shield. Badly injured, she lept to the street and was dragged away by Redorus.

One of Kossix's guards met the regrouping party and got the story. Worried about possible repercussions, he was on his way quickly and said they'd be in touch. Tilton laid hands on Calliope and sealed her wounds. Helga found a sack and shoved the cage, codex, and dagger into them to take back home. Everyone else went directly to Aranaius to return the statue. He paid up the agreed-upon 180 silver, but was unhappy to hear that he might still hear from Mariava. "I may be in touch again," he suggested.

Helga became quickly enamored of the dagger, once she learned the wielding caused her to turn a bold blue. Upon Calliope's return, the two haggled for some time over what price Helga would pay for it. Ayla spent some time inspecting the codex. It was marked as property of the Imperial Bureau of Census and Taxation, and the pages were filled with names, grouped by the names of cities or towns. Some names appeared or disappeared as they read, and some sections were badly smeared and entirely illegible.

Faced with the prospect of freeing the imp, the gang discussed just tossing him in the oven or a bucket of water, but he pleaded that this wouldn't be helpful for anyone and suggested that he still might be able to tell Mariava what had happened. Calliope, wishing to keep her word to the imp, said she would take responsibility for it, for the time being.

Everyone retired to sleep after the busy day.

I was writing up a big post about how I want to deal with skill checks from now on, but I think I need to write it another time. Instead, I will write about old school saving throws.

I have never, ever liked the basic D&D saving throws. They don't make sense. Why is dragon breath its own save? Why are some things saves versus totally unrelated things? (I seem to recall rules calling for saving versus wands for needle traps, or versus petrify for falling damage.) So, what about the 3E saves of Fortitude, Reflex, and Will? Well, I really, really respect the attempt to rationalize things, but I'm not a huge fan of those categories. For one thing, I liked that magic was its own thing. For another, I want to keep using the original tables! I just want to have some internal reasoning for why I pick a given save to require.

I want to use saving throws a good bit more in the future, so I wanted to sort this out soon. Here's the mapping I'm going to use:

B/X Says                  RJBS Says
Death Ray or Poison   →   Death
Magic Wands           →   Projectile
Paralysis or Petrify  →   Distraction
Dragon Breath         →   Assault
Rods, Staves, Spells  →   Magic

This mapping makes me happy.

I wrote about healing surges a few months ago, and have implemented some of the things I said I would, and am now going to implement the rest and more. Here are the new official rules for my "Ethos" campaign (aka, Monsters on a Plain):

• Healing surges are now called Awesome Points. (Thanks, Old School Hack!) They are not just for healing. They are for being awesome. Your surge value is still relevant, as it's what you get back when using Second Wind or other healing powers, which will still often cost Awesome Points.

• Action points are gone. Any Power that used to cost an Action Point now costs two Awesome Points. This is like starting every day with a lot of Action Points, but you do not recover them at milestones. Encounters wear you out, you do not get "on a roll."

• You can spend two Awesome Points to take (only) one extra action on your turn. In other words, the most common use of Action Points is preserved, but…

• You can spend as many Awesome Points as you want in a turn. This might be limited by other factors. For example, you can only use Second Wind per encounter, because that is how Second Wind works. On the other hand, there is no such limit for extra actions. This means that if you have ten Awesome Points, you can take ten actions in a five round combat – you just better hope you have no need for those points any time soon.

• Healing outside of combat is limited to one surge per hour. In other words, getting a five minute break outside of combat is not enough to get all your HP back. You can get a quarter of them, and if you can stay out of trouble for another hour, you can get another quarter – but you might not want to, since those Awesome Points will have other potential uses in that upcoming encounter.

• You don't regenerate all of your hit points from an extended rest. An extended rest restores your surge value in hit points. If you want to get all your HP back overnight, you need to spend Awesome Points. An extended rest is still, by definition, enough time to fully recover your hit points, but…

• You don't regain all your healing surges overnight. Instead, you get two. This means that if you're down to 1 HP and zero Awesome Points, it will take two two days to get back up to full HP, at which point you will have two Awesome Points to spend.

• You can spend an Awesome Point to reuse an encounter power. You can do this as many times as you want. Combined with extra actions, this means that you could spend three Awesome Points to, in one turn, use a standard action encounter power twice.

• You can spend two Awesome Points to reuse a daily power.

• Everyone gets the daily power Awesome Effort. This power costs one Awesome Point to use and is a free action. You replace a d20 you're about to roll with a d30. Because this is a daily power, you can (for example) use it twice in a single encounter for a total cost of four Awesome Points.

That's it for now. I would also like to add a means to use Awesome Points to end status effects, but I want to think about it some more. It will probably be that you can spend one to end a status effect only after suffering through it for one round.

I have a few goals here: one is my original goal of forcing the party to spend more time recuperating. I think 4E originally rejected this because it wanted characters to feel heroic. I want them to feel heroic, too, but I don't think the original "back to nearly 100% after every combat" was working for me, for reasons described in my previous post. I want them to feel heroic by doing awesome stuff, and that means inflicting huge amounts of damage, succeeding at highly improbable tasks, and surviving against all odds.

Another goal is to force players to choose more clearly between offense and defense. Do they want to be able to heal after they win, or are they more concerned with winning the combat now?

Yet another goal is to encourage the players to spend more time in safe places, resting, interacting with "locals," or hiding out from omnipresent threats. I want the campaign to feel like bouts of caution interspersed with tremendous, brutal bursts of activity. I think these rules wil help.

I will report back after our Jan 14th game.

Year 28 of the 7th Imperator, 3rd of Declarations.

After their failure to recover the stolen truncheon of Carus the Spiteful, the gang was back to menial jobs: standing around looking tough, protecting or tailing messengers, and other entirely unadventurous stuff. He paid half the fee, but not gladly. With Carus' bitter complaints slowly spreading, and the party's reputation slowly sinking, their chances of breaking into better jobs seemed slim.

Their luck seemed like it might be changing, though with the arrival of Aranaius, a priest of Lanas somewhat advanced in years and anxiety. He needed to find someone outside the "usual channels" available to him to help retrieve a lost artifact that belonged with the temple and would soon turn up missing. He explained that he'd briefly entrusted it to Mariava, a reputable antiquarian who was interested in the piece. (The artifact itself is an obsidian replica of the great statue of Lanas the Foresighted.) He said too many questions would be raised if the temple or magistrates were brought into this, and that he could pay 180sp plus reasonable expenses for the item's return.

The deal was made, and the gang headed to the north shore and Mariava's shop, where he and a few clerks were at work. Redorus stood in the door while Ayla and Calliope went in to negotiate the return of the figurine. Meanwhile, Ignatius waited nearby in the street.

Mariava was not receptive to demands that the figurine be returned. He said it had been pawned and subsequently sold, and that Aranaius therefore had no claim on it. When Ayla suggested that declining to return the item might lead to trouble, Mariava made it clear that he was not afraid, and that perhaps Ayla should be more afraid of him than he of her. He said that if they gave up the job right now, he'd be willing to throw some work their way in the future. Eventually, she left empty-handed.

During this conversation, Calliope left and circled behind the building to scout for a rear entrance. She found one, guarded by a sort of scrawny-looking slave. He seemed clearly feeble-minded, but couldn't quite be convinced to leave his post. He was very intent on staying at the door, eventually declaring he'd better go ask his master what was going on. When he turned to enter the building, Calliope struck him several times with her staff, but the slave (Beechus) took the blows easily and just glowered. "You shouldn't have done that."

Calliope got out while the getting was good.

When the gang regrouped out front, they decided to make a second go at Beechus – all but Ignatius, who continued to wait outside, waiting for Mariava to leave. (It was coming up on closing time.)

Back in the alley, Redorus charged Beechus while Calliope took shots at him from yards away. Beechus took the punishment. He staggered and bent, but never seemed likely to go down, and when he retaliated against Redorus, it was brutal: he took two vicious bites into Redorus's arms, each of which caused terrible and unnatural pain. Calliope kept up the attack while Ayla pulled Redorus out of the alley, but with her aim shaking and Beechus looking generally unphased, she fled, too. As she left, Beechus was sitting back down on his chair and sopping the blood from his mouth with a handkerchief.

Ayla and Calliope arranged Redorus' cloak to cover his wounds and hauled him through the streets to the temple, where Tilton was tracked down and put to work calling upon the gods to heal Redorus. With Redorus back on his feet, everyone headed for the tavern -- save Tilton, who headed right back to work, and Ignatius, who had begun tailing Mariava home.

Mariava's place was a bit nicer than his neighbors', but not by great lengths. Outside, a slave sat watch over the door. When Ignatius tried to chat with him and gather some information about Mariava, the slave seemed somewhat thick, and Ignatius gave up. He waited another hour, and was about to give up and head home when Mariava and his assistant emerged, headed south. Ignatius, seen, introduced himself to Mariava and said he was looking for work. Mariava said someone would be in touch.

Someone was in touch, and told Ignatius to show up for work the next day. He did, and was put to work sitting around the Forum of the Mad, waiting for the arrival of a speaker who someone wanted silenced. Rather than go through with an attack on the man, Ignatius took him aside and warned him of the attack and said he'd like to talk to him privately. The man hesitantly agreed to meet with the party that night and left peacefully.

That's where we left things. Unfortunately, I didn't save my little list of likely pending action items, but that's okay, because I remember the meat of it:

• meet with the speaker
• consider casing Mariava's house for a break-in

Here is a sample from work IRC today, as I pounded on a weird test failure I'd just introduced:

<rjbs> I think I see it.
...time passes...
<rjbs> or not.
<rjbs> this is really ibzarre.
<rjbs> zibarre
...time passes...
<rjbs> hoyl cow
<rjbs> WOW
<rjbs> WOW WOW WOW
<rjbs> p.s.
<rjbs> WOW
<rjbs> astounding. okay, committing, pushing
<rjbs> mjd: check my df4ae63 and be amazed
<mjd> OMG

Then I went off and, unable to think about anything else, spent dinner explaining mutability, references, and action at a distance to my daughter. She was very interested in it, it seemed. Action at a distance lends itself to really good examples, as a general concept.

Anyway, what was the bug? Well, I'm going to simplify it, but you won't miss out on the non-baffling parts.

Our application has an Environment object that mediates access to the outside world, like the object store, the mail queue, and the clock. If you want to know what time it is, you say:

my $now = Environment->now;

This is tremendously useful in testing, because our test environment's clock is not just a call to time, but has a simulated clock that we can pause, speed up, turn back, or whatever we want. Since everything has to go through that Environment call, we can test all our code pretty easily. This is vital, since a lot of this code has to test things happening over the course of days, months, or years.

There used to be an object in the system that started its life like this:

has last_event => (
  ...,
  default => sub {
    my ($self) = @_;
    Environment->now - $self->event_frequency;
  },
);

In other words, it would pretend that it acted just long enough ago that it was now ripe to act again. This was, as my colleague put it, a lie. We wanted to remove it, because other parts of the program needed the truth. So removed it and rewrote the code that relied on it in terms of the object's created_at attribute:

has created_at => (
  ...,
  default => sub {
    my ($self) = @_;
    Environment->now;
  },
);

Every single test still passed except one. In that test, the event never fired. It just kept waiting. "What the heck is going on?!" I cried, shaking my fist at the sky. I added print statement after print statement. Finally, I added the right one.

Every time the thing said, "When was I created, again?" its answer was a day later than the previous time. Its read-only created_at attribute was changing! What?!

Well, it turned out to be quite simple.

The test Environment's time-travel facility has an elapse_time method for turning the clock forward. It looks something like this:

sub elapse_time {
  my ($self, $duration) = @_;

  X->throw("can't elapse time when clock is not stopped")
    if $self->_clock_state ne 'stopped';

  X->throw("tried to elapse negative time")
    if $duration->is_negative;

  $self->_clock_stopped_time( $self->now->add_duration( $duration ) );
}

We make sure we're only moving the clock forward, then we make a DateTime equal to the old one plus the duration, then we replace the Environment's time attribute with the new one. What's the problem?

The problem is that add_duration affects the time piece on which it is called. When the objects with created_at attributes called Environment->now, they were getting the same object as subsequent calls, when the clock was stopped. When the clock was moved forward, the add_duration affected not just the pretend wallclock, but also the created_at of any object created during that time period. Madness!

The fix was incredibly simple: we added a ->clone just before ->add_duration and another one inside the test Environment's ->now method. We're also going to see whether we can't just make our application's internal subclass of DateTime entirely immutable. Still, what a bug! If the system had been much larger, I think I could have easily spent a day on it.

Remember, friends: mutable state is the enemy

Thursday, the 5th day of the Red Moon, 937

After being dispatched to the Gladwell place in the middle of the night, never again did anyone hear from Maxwell, Dave, Neptune, or the anonymous knife-licking fighter. Growing worried about the horses, Bellory led them from the pouring rain into the stables. ("It didn't seem like the best place, but I couldn't think of none better!") By morning, the four were still absent, and their horses still present, so Bellory headed back to town to report on it.

Captain Horne assembled another party to investigate -- this time one made of sterner stuff -- and sent them out to look into the situation and report back before sundown. The four mounted up and rode to the farm where they quickly found the tunnel in the barn and headed down bellow.

The tunnel ended in a crude wooden barrier, but it was knocked down in no time and the crew emerged into a crude subterranean abattoir, startling a knife-wielding man-eater. Despite some initial panic, he was dispatched quickly and the party set about exploring the caves -- the fighter had been badly injured, but was sure he'd be fine once he got all the blood out of his boot. The cleric was also interested in spilling blood and hacked a deep gouge into the golden font that was being used for draining the blood of animals slaughtered here. The blood was dumped onto the floor and the party wandered off east.

In a large room with several natural columns and a stream leading to a depressed pool, they found a long-extinguished fire and a very dead man-eater corpse floating in the pool. In his purse they found a few strange Dwarven coins. The bloody boot was drained into the pool and the wound dressed. Following the stream north, they found another large cavern with a big flat stone surface being used as a table by a group of quietly-arguing man-eaters. When the party entered, though, they put their bickering aside and set to work killing -- or trying to. The elf felled two with arrows and the acolyte brought another down with a single blow from his axe. The thief had managed to circle behind the things undetected, but as he rushed to attack he stuck himself on the blunt of the man-eater's pitchfork and was winded. Everyone rushed to finish off the surviving monster, and soon he was done for.

One of the elf's victim's had made a run for it, diving for a tunnel. The party made a note to check it out later.

Meanwhile, they were intrigued by the crudely walled-off passage to the east. Planks of mismatched wood were nailed or crammed into place, closing the passage. Smashing it, the thief and cleric headed through, along a bending passage, and down the tunnel at its end. They didn't stay long, though: at the bottom, peering out into the next room, the thief spied a pair of pale purple legs sporting numerous deep lacerations and spotted here and there with patches of fur. When the feet began to shuffle toward him, he reversed direction, calling back at the cleric to get the hell out of the way.

The undead man-eater followed him out, grabbing at the thief and followed by more friends, but fled in screaming terror when confronted with invocations of Ibrim and the presentation of the sacred star. The mouth of the tunnel was seeded with caltrops and a new barrier erected.

Reassembled, the party clambered down the tunnel and into a small landing where another man-eater cowered, warding away the men (and the elf) with a stick. The party tried to communicate with him in a number of languages, including Common, Elven, and threatening yelling, but when he tried to turn and run in a panic, he was stricken down.

Further down the tunnel, the party entered another small room, this one with a half dozen tunnels leading out, each marked with a crudely painted glyph in the old writing. They went up the tunnel marked "king" and found a few sleeping areas and man-eater corpse, as well as a badly damaged stone idol. Out and to the south, there were more corpses, these scattered around a complex intersection where they also found a strange insectoid arm nearly two feet long. The walls were spattered with something yellow.

Further south, they found a long painted cavern terminating in a deep crack and a short ledge. Beyond there, a crude kitchen. Finding a barrel with a few inches of brackish water in it, someone dumped it down the tunnel at the west end of the kitchen area, only to catch a glimpse of a bright blue gemstone clattering down the now-stinking tunnel and out of sight.

Heading up another nearby tunnel, the fighter found a wooden door which, when smashed opened the tunnel into the long-disused chapel beside the house. The group decided to exit through the chapel and report back to Captain Horne... but not before the cleric confronted the elderly head of the Gladwell household, Agbert Gladwell, to demand that he restore the abandoned church. Agbert bristled at the acolyte's tone and commands, and told him to get lost. The cleric laid hands on Agbert and had to be physically removed from the area by his party members and some nearby farmhands. Agbert yelled that if he was going to be abused by the Baron's men, he'd just stop paying his taxes -- and that he'd be interested to see who took the blame for that, Agbert or the cleric. The gang hit the road.

The report was straightforward: they'd found a large series of caverns beneath the farm, along with man-eaters both alive, dead, and undead, and evidence that there was something else down there. When Captain Horne asked, the party reported that yes, the Gladwells would probably be fine overnight before more extensive exploration could begin. Horne said he'd send the same crew back, and expected them to get busy mapping it out and figuring out just what was going on down there. He was also confused by the off-handed half-mumbled report about Agbert Gladwell not paying his taxes. Gladwell was one of the most heavily taxed landowners under the Baron's protection, after all, and Horne would've heard if he'd stopped paying his taxes.

With nearly no treasure to show for their delving, the party retired to a modest dinner for the evening: no carousing.

Wednesday, the 4th day of the Red Moon, 937

Neptune, Maxwell, Dave, and Gabe's nameless fighter continued to explore the caverns beneath the Gladwell place. Presumably quite unknown to the Gladwells, there seemed to be a whole clutch of man-eaters living beneath their land. By the time the party was discovering this, though, they'd been largely slaughtered already, though the culprit has not yet been found. A few man-eaters, still clutching weapons and on the defensive, were found and dispatched, but not their attacker.

The only evidence of the attacker, beyond corpses, was a set of unusual footprints in the blood in the abbatoir and a weird severed limb amid some dead man-eaters -- and a few sprays of fragrant, bright yellow blood on the walls there.

The party slowly made its way through the caverns, gathering a small collection of treasure as they went, mostly in silver and gems. They found a few priceless religious artifacts, which Maxwell destroyed quickly, lest their blasphemy escape the cave. The fighter picked up a small, grotesque rag doll and a block of kitchen knives covered in a weird, multicolored crust. Its true nature was never determined, but a daring lick by the fighter did identify it as highly poisonous. (He lived.)

Our heroes found evidence of tunnels here and there, but mostly stuck to the main passages. Eventually, they found a long, slightly broader passage that led to a dead end. Its walls were painted with large, crude murals of the man-eaters' epic stories, and the room terminated in a broad crack in the stone, across from a ledge covered in coins, small animal remains, and other bits and bobs. After picking through the stuff, the fighter decided to find out what was down the hole. Dave the Magic User dropped a torch, which put its depth at about 75', but the torch landed in a shallow stream, and when the fighter (and Neptune, who followed) reached the bottom, they had to light a new torch... revealing a towering, revolting humanoid, who did not take kindly to visitors.

The rest of the party rushed down into the black abyss to join the fray, but even with their powers combined, they were no match for the thing. Its touch was paralyzing, and its wounds closed on their own. Even once the thing slew Neptune and began attacking with the trident -- losing its paralyzing touch -- there was no change in the tide of battle. Soon, all hands were lost. The party's bodies (not to mention their accumulated treasure) were left to the creature's whims.

Wednesday, the 4th day of the Red Moon, 937

With their shift patrolling the temple dungeon nearly over, the crew was headed back topside to see whether the shift-marking timepiece had been properly calibrated, or whether they'd be coming out into the dead of night again. Before they got to the surface, though, they heard some noises coming from down the hall of the old dormitory area. Before a plan could be formulated, Gabe's fighter (Int 4) took off down the hall, only stopping when he realized he hadn't brought a torch.

A group of goblins had taken refuge in one of the larger rooms, and when the party closed in on them, they had nowhere to run -- except straight through. One of the goblins slipped through the line and made a break for it, only to be chased by Gabe's cleric (1 hp). It didn't take too too long for that to end badly. The dead cleric was avenged by Ben's magic-user, who bravely held off on casting his one magic missile, instead taking the goblin out with a lucky bowshot.

Meanwhile, the fighter and Poseidon (Ben's Dex 6 "Thief with a Trident") engaged the other goblins, showing no mercy. The fighter hacked one right in two, and Poseidon skewered one on his trident... but was quickly disarmed and killed in turn by the goblin's fellow, before he was knocked down, disarmed, and skewered by the fighter, who was eager to see the death of his friends avenged. The magic-user scavenged a set of goblin clothes from one of the less-bloody goblins. You know, just in case.

With the goblin bodies dumped down the waterfall and the PC's bodies strenuously hauled out of the dungeon, the party met their (now mostly drunk) replacements waiting for them at the shelter atop the temple. One of them made a clumsy attempt to help load the bodies, only to be knocked sprawling by the figher, who was eager to see his friends' bodies handled only respectfully.

No rest for the wicked, though. When they got back to the barracks, Capt. Horn sent them right back out: Bellory, the good-for-nothing dogsbody from the Gladwell place had come in looking for help and reporting a goblin raid. Restocking on adventurers, the surviving magic-user and fighter headed out to the farm, with a fresh cleric and thief (with a trident, suspiciously named Neptune).

In the stable, they found two badly mauled horses, lying atop a rough hole leading into the ground. They crawled down the hole and found a large room under the stable, with a days-old horse butchered and hung up, and signs of a fight in spilled blood on the floor. Chimneys lead up and down, and a passage out to the east, where the party found a small curtained alcove with two dead man-eaters in it, killed by brutal puncture wounds to the chest.

...and that's where we stopped.

What a day! I kept really busy. I did some good (I think) refactoring of some libraries for sending transactional mail. I made a nice little improvement to our (on-CPAN) mail generator to make our Markdown-based messages look better in both plaintext and HTML. I deleted 36 obsolete fields from an annoyingly large table. I felt pretty productive.

My productivity streak, though, came to a crashing halt with this really weird test failure, that looked something like:

want subject: User rjbs@example.com wants to subscribe
have subject: User rjbs@example. com wants to subscribe

I didn't have to curse and sputter too long, though, because I've seen this before. It's because of Encode.

Before I go much further, I want to say that Encode rocks. Although I am about to complain bitterly about it, I love it and am glad it exists and is maintained by somebody else. (Dan Kogai does a great job, too.) The problem is more that dealing with email header encoding is a huge pain. That said, Encode gets a number of things pretty wrong.

So, let me set the stage. As of RFC 2047, if you have an email header field where a word token is expected, you can substitute an encoded-word token. This lets you get non-ASCII text into the header, because words can only be ASCII. Encoded words can be Unicode. As of RFC 822 (meaning roughly forever) header lines can be folded to fit a narrow terminal by turning horizontal whitespace into horizontal-and-vertical whitespace. So, these should all be equivalent:

Subject: Eat some "pie!"

Subject: Eat
  some "pie!"

Subject: Eat =?utf-8?q?some?= "pie!"

Subject: Eat
  =?utf-8?q?some?= "pie!"

Encode offers a way to convert any of these into the first form, and to convert the first form into whatever form is required to transmission. Great! Unfortunately, it gets stuff wrong, and that's what I want to write about. I'm going to write this stuff as tests, and each snippet really starts with:

use 5.12.0;
use charnames ':full';
use Test::More;
use Encode;

So:

my $header = "=?utf-8?q?jabber?= =?utf-8?q?wock?=";
is( decode('MIME-Header', $header), "jabberwock", "two encoded-words join" );

When you have two encoded-word tokens next to each other, the space between them is dropped. Imagine you have an 80 character string in Tibetan. Encoded, it becomes something like 240 octets, and you want to fold that (for some reason) so you need to break at whitespace, but you can't, because there isn't any. You can break the encoded string at character boundaries and fold there, and this rule promises that the strings will be run together after decoding. Great!

This works with folding, too, because that's just whitespace.

my $header = "=?utf-8?q?jabber?=\r\n =?utf-8?q?wock?=";
is( decode('MIME-Header', $header), "jabberwock", "two encoded-words join" );

Encode passes this test. Unfortunately, it passes for the wrong reasons. For example, it fails this test:

my $header = "jabber\r\n wock";
is( decode('MIME-Header', $header), "jabber wock", "two words don't join" );

When we fold, we turn a horizontal space into vertical and horizontal space. When we unfold, we turn it back into horizontal space. Unfortunately, Encode turns it into no space. This means that it unfolds non-encoded words badly, running words together.

It has other folding problems, too. These are especially insidious when you can't detect them when round tripping:

my $header = "Randomly eat mussels and maybe you can eat what nobody "
           . "else's stomach can handle without hurling.";

is(
  decode('MIME-Header', encode('MIME-Header', $header)),
  $header,
  "round trip!",
);

Great, this works – and why shouldn't it? It doesn't have any words in need of encoding, after all. Unfortunately, there's a bug.

like(
  encode('MIME-Header', $header),
  qr/else's/,
  "we didn't break on an apos",
);

This fails, because Encode folds at the apostrophe! Woah! You get this:

Randomly eat mussels and maybe you can eat what nobody else'
  s stomach can handle without hurling.

When someone receives this mail, they will probably decode it properly, and there will be a mysterious space in the displayed header.

Really, Encode should not be dealing with folding. Folding is about formatting messages, not about encoding MIME words. If Encode stopped folding, all these bugs would just go away!

Unfortunately, it's not the only problem.

For example, you can't use an encoded word inside a quoted-string token, but:

{
  my $header = qq[I like "Queensr\N{LATIN SMALL LETTER Y WITH DIAERESIS}che"];
  unlike(
    encode('MIME-Header', $header),
    qr/like "/,
    "the double quotes are encoded into the encoded-word",
  );

  is(
    decode('MIME-Header', encode('MIME-Header', $header)),
    $header,
    "round trip!",
  );
}

Encode will see that y-umlaut and encode it… but it won't encode the quotes around it! You end up with the wildly illegal: I like "=?UTF-8?B?UXVlZW5zcsO/Y2hl?="

The round trip works, which seems good until you realize that this means that Encode is also decoding improperly because that illegal encoded form should not be decoded!

This last one is really nasty. Here's some text that appears in the Encode test suite:

From:=?UTF-8?B?IOWwj+mjvCDlvL4g?=<dankogai@dan.co.jp>
To: dankogai@dan.co.jp (=?UTF-8?B?5bCP6aO8?==Kogai,=?UTF-8?B?IOW8vg==?==
  Dan)

Should this be decoded? What a mess…

I'm really not sure about that From header. I think the encoded-word and route-addr tokens should almost certainly be separated by spaces, but is it strictly required? Probably not. The problem is, more or less, that we can only know this by knowing that From is a structured field with the structure phrase route-addr. It comes down to RFC 822's insane off-handed remark that

Rather than obscuring the syntax specifications for these structured fields with explicit syntax for this linear-white- space, the existence of another "lexical" analyzer is assumed.

That is, there's supposed to be some kind of preprocessor lexing this stuff before you can apply the rules that might otherwise seem simple. But Encode isn't that lexer. It neither is that lexer nor assumes that lexer nor has access to such a lexer.

Look at that To header, up there, too. Should that work? No, but not for the reason you might think.

This should be legal, with two encoded words:

To: dankogai@dan.co.jp (=?UTF-8?B?5bCP6aO8?= =?UTF-8?B?IOW8vg==?=)

You can use encoded words in comments, even without a space between the parenthesis and the encoded word. This is explicitly spelled out in 2047. On the other hand, we had this:

To: dankogai@dan.co.jp (=?UTF-8?B?5bCP6aO8?==Kogai,=?UTF-8?B?IOW8vg==?==
  Dan)

Those aren't valid encoded-word tokens, because they're not set off from the interior tokens by space. It would be one big encoded word, but the encoded text can't contain question marks, so that's illegal. Aarrrrggh!

Actually, it's worse than this! This is only legal because we can see that this is a To field! Let's muddy this up:

dankogai@dan.co.jp (=?UTF-8?B?5bCP6aO8?= =?UTF-8?B?IOW8vg==?=)

Okay, given this string as something you pulled out of a header, can it be decoded to Unicode? Well, maybe. If the field is structured, then yes, those could be two encoded words in a comment. If the field is just a *text field, though – like Subject – then you can't have comments, so the parenthesis is literal, and there are no valid encoded words. Strip the parens and you have encoded words again, though, because a *text field can be composed of words and encoded words.

In other words, you can't really decode MIME headers without having a real grammar and lexer for the email. Yup.

So, what should a MIME header encoding routine do?

• It should not deal with folding. (At the very least, it should not get it wrong.)
• It should assume it's dealing with *text fields only

That means that it should not decode comments like the ones above. That's fine, because if you really need to deal with comments, you should actually be tokenizing the header according to its field definition and decoding encoded words only where appropriate. In reality, though, you're probably safe just throwing away comments in these fields. The only fields that tend to have useful comments are Received headers, and those are prohibited from having encoded words. In almost every case, these two rules would mean that you could pass a string with words and encoded words, always divided by whitespace to a routine and get a character string back. The reverse would also work.

Of course, this solves the problem by saying that we should ignore most of the complexity. It's not fair. On the other hand, that's how we deal with a lot of email problems, and it seems like one of the only winning strategies.

Old-school D&D rewards experience for treasure on a 1 GP = 1 XP basis. I stopped finding this horrible ages ago, and I think it makes plenty of sense, and don't care whether any given DM wants to use or not use that rule.

I'll be using it in my B/X game. The B/X rules say (page B22):

Experience points are given for non-magical treasure and defeating monsters. For every 1 gp value of non-magical treasure the characters recover, the DM should give 1 XP to the party.

This is expanded on in the AD&D DMG, p85:

Treasure must be physically taken out of the dungeon or lair and turned into a transportable medium or stored in the player's stronghold to be counted for experience points.

All items (including magic) or creatures sold for gold pieces prior to the awarding of experience points for an adventure must be considered as treasure taken, and the gold pieces received for the sale add to the total treasure taken. (Those magic items not sold gain only a relatively small amount of experience points, for their value is in their usage.)

I think I am going to go one step further and say that the treasure must be turned into a transportable medium and stored in the player's stringhold. In other words, just because you got that gem-encrusted coronet out of the dungeon, you aren't getting 3,000 XP. You'll need to convert it into coins or common units of exchange, and that is the value you get. Sure, you can sell it to the local jeweler for 750 gp, if you want, but wouldn't you be better off tracing down the provenance of the coronet, finding out who might be most interested in it, and ransoming it to them for a much greater profit?

I'd even be willing to say that you can get full value for it by "simply" tracking down the heir to the throne of Cawdor and handing it over. That should be easy enough, right?

I might be willing to say that non-coin treasure has some fraction of immediate value as XP – something to make it at least as profitable to haul out of the dungeon, even if you never do anything else with it. So, a two pound crown may be worth much more than its weight weight in gold (a lousy 20 gp!) but it can continue to be worth much, much more in experience if the players pursue it.

In other words, many (though likely not all) non-coin treasures become hooks for both more story and more XP. More gold, though, isn't necessarily promised.

Am I a role-playing blogger? Yes, obviously in the strictest interpretation of the words, but do I get anybody following my blog's feed mostly to see my write about RPGs? I don't think so. I think anybody doing so is probably chased off by the technical posts... but there's little to no chance I'm going to try maintaining two blogs. Blech.

Anyway, a few weeks ago noism made a little list of Things Role Playing Bloggers Tend Not To Write About and a few people posted their thoughts on those topics, and I thought I might as well do the same.

Book binding. (I can't be the only person who bemoans the way new rulebooks tend to fall apart like a sheaf of dry leaves after about 5 seconds of use).

These days, I tend to buy two kinds of RPG books: D&D 4E books, which are pretty nicely bound, and PDFs. I've bought PDFs lately of Rotworld, Labyrinth Lord, Mutant Future, some Judge's Guild stuff, KC&C, and other rules, not to mention a bunch of games that were available for free, like Mazes & Minotaurs, Eclipse Phase, etc. Even when these are available in print, lately, I'm opting for PDF.

All of the small press or print on demand books that I've bought have been decent (or better) quality. I haven't suffered anything falling apart after use, yet. The thing is, it's often about the same price to have the PDF printed at Staples and then spiral bound. Spiral binding for RPG books, so far, has been much better for me than stitched binding. So far, the only books I've found too hard to get spiral bound have been full-color books (which cost an arm and a leg to print one-off) and digest-sized books, which Staples just doesn't do. Does anybody have a good source for those? (And is there an Encounter Critical PDF that puts one page per page, instead of the two-page spreads that I have?)

"Doing a voice". How many people "do voices"? Should they? How do you get better at "doing a voice" if that's your thing?

If I had to pick one thing that my players have liked over the years, it would be NPC voices. I don't know if they like anything else in my DM arsenal, but NPC voices get mentioned a lot. I always have fun with them, and a funny voice can communicate a huge amount about the character without needing to dedicate valuable table time to actual character development. If the guy sounds enough like Boris Badenov, the point is clear.

I've always liked doing funny voices, so I have no good advice. Jeff Rients' post on these questions mentioned listening to Billy West and John DiMagio talk about doing voices, which seems like good advice. They have a lot of interesting things to say. In fact, I've heard lots of voice actors say interesting things about how they develop voice-only characterizations. I can't say that I've intentionally gone to them for advice, though. I just goof around.

Breaks. How often do you have breaks within sessions?

I dunno. Once every two hours? Any time someone really needs to use the bathroom, or get a cigarette, or when I know that we haven't had a break in a long time and I think a time-consuming 4E combat is going to begin soon, or when we're out of drinks... which leads to:

Alchohol at the table?

Sometimes we have a few beers. Never more than two each, I think, because never more than a six pack. I don't think I've ever been in a game where we wanted more than that. Nobody wants to get all logey. We can go out for drinks on not-game-night for drinks.

Description. Exactly how florid are your descriptions?

Not very. I try to let the players imagine whatever they want – although my sneaking suspicion is that for the most part nobody is working on forming a coherent and detailed imagining of our games beyond what I say. I try to keep descriptions only as involved as the described thing is complex, and I try to make sure that if there is one really important detail, there are at least a few others to keep it from being too obvious.

If the sword is inscribed with the magic name that will control it, then there will have to be a number of other embellishments: inlaid gems, a pommel in the shape of a boar's head, etc.

Where do you strike the balance between "doing what your character would do" and "acting like a dickhead"?

I have almost never had this problem, thankfully. The PCs in my games are usually pretty well set-upon, and fighting within the party is going to spell disaster. Even when the ship's captain (a PC) liked to harass the hired gun (another PC) and get him into trouble, it never seemed like it would lead to hard feelings – or a TPK.

I don't think I'd have any trouble telling a player to fall in line, if he was making everyone else unhappy. Who wants to have his leisure activity become a big source of unhappiness?

PC-on-PC violence. Do your players tend to avoid it, or do you ban it? Or does anything go?

I don't think it has ever happened. Once or twice we had out-of-game mock combats just to figure out how some rules worked, and this was usually fun, but so far, no PvP. I wouldn't mind player characters offing each other, as long as nobody got too bent out of shape. In my current 4E game, I think that, at present, it would just be inconceivable. (See my previous answer.)

I thought there were a few times in my space pirates game that the crew was going to have to really mutiny, and if it had, I think there would've been one night of grumbling, and then business as usual. I don't think I'd ban it, but if it started to become a regular event, and it was causing player unhappiness, I guess I'd have to consider doing so.

How do you explain what a role playing game is to a stranger who is also a non-player? (Real life example: my friends and I were playing in the local M:tG club space. A M:tG groupie teenage goth girl came over and asked, "What are you playing?" We answered. "Sounds kind of gay.")

I hadn't had to do this in a long time – doesn't everyone know D&D by now? Well, no! I was talking to my neighbors, who are in their late 20's, just last week and said that I was off to a D&D game. "What's that?" I used Jeff R.'s explanation: It's like an old-timey radio serial, but instead of a script, the actors improvise, and there are some rules for figuring out the results. Later, my neighbor asked, "Did you win or did you die?" I said, "I was the referee."

What's acceptable to do to a PC whose player is absent from the session? Is whatever happens their fault for not being there, or are there some limits?

If I can write the PC out of the session, I do. Unfortunately, my games have an ugly habit of ending in media res, so it's hard to extract one PC. When that happens I play the character, and have him or her keep quiet when possible, and act reservedly in character when not. I used to also run them in combat, but lately I hand them over to the other players, and so far this hasn't resulted in any real problems.

The only way I'd let the absent PC's character die is if there was a TPK. Other than that, I think it's just not fair.

When I started my current 4E game, my goal was that whenever a player could not attend, I would run a side game with different characters, set in distant part of history that would inform the rest of the game, but not really affect it.

I was really happy with that, but it ended up happening too often. We tried to play every 3 weeks, but half the time it would get delayed a week, and that would mean something like two months between any two main-story games. My players, wonderful guys though they are, don't have the best memory for what happened from session to session, and putting more time between the main story sessions was a problem.

I'd love to do it again, though, with a more regularly-scheduled game.

Absolutely ages ago, I decided I wanted to start running a second D&D game. I've been running a 4E game since January 2009, but we only play about once a month, and while I enjoy the game and the players, I find the infrequency of our play to be pretty unsatisfying.

I started sketching out ideas for a new game and fiddled a little with my Scrivener document for the campaign a little every day or so. Because I didn't have enough local friends who wanted to play, I decided I'd run the game online. This became a big psychological road block, though. I didn't know how to run a game online, and I knew I'd need a battle map, because playing 4E gridless is not the kind of challenge I wanted.

Fortunately for me, though, I have a big mouth. I kept mumbling about the game, and Nick Perez kept getting more and more interested, and then more and more annoyed that I was all talk and no play. He finally found just the right software to use, helped me test it, and continued to needle me to get things started.

In March, put together a campaign overview document and told a bunch of people I'd be starting the game. People made characters, talked about background, and so on. I kept sitting on my hands. To be fair, summer was really busy, but every part of my year tends to be really busy. Also, I was growing less and less interested in 4E for various reasons. Finally, as I continued to squirm and waffle, I discovered Mazes & Minotaurs. M&M is half joke, half serious. It tries to be what D&D would have been if its origins had been sword and sandal (peplum) instead of sword and sorcery. It initially tried to emulate the feel of the 1970's rules, and then an entirely revised edition of the game was released, emulating the feel of the 1980's rules. The rules are all available free, there's a ton of extra material, and the game even has a somewhat active fan community.

The setting I'd put together was meant to be a fantastic city inspired by Rome and Alexandria of classical antiquity. M&M, with its greatly simplified rules and its focus on nearly the right setting, seemed like a bolt from Olympus.

A few players had already made characters in May. Nick had even gotten a D&D Insider subscription, which was such a massive, farcical undertaking that it would be hard to summarize here. Despite this, after talking to two or three of the players, I declared we'd move to M&M. In late September, I announced the change in rules, declared that the soonest we could start was November 5, and said that no matter what, I would be spending the time in front of my terminal playing M&M, even solo if I had to.

Fortunately, I did not have to. Nick and Abigail showed up on time, and we got to work making characters. The first thing I learned is that Revised M&M character generation is much more time consuming than Basic D&D. There is a big pile of bonuses to compute for each character. This means that even though you basically have six attributes to roll, you then have to figure out all the attribute bonuses and sum them up in a bunch of different ways to figure out your secondary stats – and those are the ones you'll use most of the time.

Combat was also more complex than I'd anticipated. Or, more accurately, I didn't understand combat as well as I thought I did. Like Basic D&D, things like missile and melee attacks occur in distinct phases. There seem to be quite a few more, though, in M&M. For example, unarmed combat occurs at the end of the round. Magic takes effect at the end, also, but (I think) before unarmed combat. Initiative is individual, not group, and actions are declared in reverse order before resolution begins.

The result of this is that the round begins simply with the construction of a "who will do what" list, but then becomes more complex as the actions take effect, because they are not strictly resolved in initiative order, and I had to take care to keep things happening in the right phase. Abigail helped keep me in check.

Characters in M&M felt much sturdier than characters in Basic D&D. At first level, they all tended to have at least 8 hits (read: hit points), and none of the threats they encountered did even 1d8 damage. That said, healing is quite slow, so I think it may balance out over time.

I definitely have some learning to do about building interesting adventures.

The game was just the three of us, which was fine, although I hope to have two or three more people in most games. Nick and Abigail were both in the Netherlands, so we were playing in my afternoon and their evening. We used Mumble for voice chat, and it worked very well. Once or twice my client churned and I couldn't hear anyone, but it wasn't so bad. I was surprised at the sound quality and lack of lag or other problems. I started off using a lousy headset microphone, but it kept cutting out, so I finally undocked my laptop, opened the lid, and used the built-in mic.

We used Gametable for text chat and dice-rolling, and just once for a combat in which there was slightly more complex terrain. I'd expected to find it merely tolerable, but I actually liked it quite a bit. The ability to label monster tokens with the amount of damage they'd taken, or a common designator ("Monster 2") was very, very useful.

As for the actual game, I think it went well, and I didn't get any notices that the players were no longer going to be available or anything. I definitely was not as well-prepared as I like to be, and I need to get back into the groove of running a city-based game. (I was very pleased with the city-based year or so of my Philadelphia-homed "Complexity" sci-fi game, and need to remember what I did right.)

The PCs, a small mercenary group in the increasingly overcrowded city of Alar, were hired by minor government official and crime boss, Carus the Spiteful, to track down the well-known two-bit hood that had stolen not only his gold but also his well-known truncheon. After asking around and determining that Passu (the hood in question) had somehow gotten the service of a few daemons, they tracked him down, roughed him up, lost him, beat his lackeys to death in an alley, tracked him down to his home town, took his sister hostage, and captured him in a secret cave hideout… but lost the truncheon, which was spirited away by a, uh, spirit.

We ended the game there, and I was feeling pretty beat. We'll probably run fewer than five hours next time – and with a bunch of the learning how things work put behind us, I think we'll still get as much or more stuff in.

Next steps: fix all the errors in my "M&M in a Nutshell" quick reference, pick a next date, remind the stragglers to show up, and sketch out some notes on what may happen next!

...by the way, the game is still open to comers. Mailing list instructions are under "Alar" at my RPG site.

A week or two ago, I read Grognardia's quick write-up of Rotworld. I was interested! Rotworld is an old-school early-80's-like RPG of the zombie apocalypse. I picked up a copy and put it on my tablet. Pretty soon I decided it would be worth getting a printed copy. (I like having RPG PDFs printed and spiral bound for easy reading.)

I sent it to Staples, which I've done with a lot of my PDF RPG books. Usually I send them to the one nearby my home in Bethlehem, but this time I sent it to the one near my office in Philadelphia, since it would be more convenient to pick up. When I went to pick up the book, the guy said, "Oh, this print job looked cool! I thought it was a comic book at first..."

So I figured he was going to then talk about how he had no idea what it turned out to be, but instead: "...but it's an RPG! My buddy is running a zombie apocalypse RPG right now, actually!" I told him that this one looked pretty good and was from a company with a good track record for cool stuff.

Anyway, now I've finished a first pass. I will definitely need to make two or three. I think part of this is that there's a lot to take in, and it's a system with which I'm not familiar, but part of it is the book. The game seems to have a core mechanic in the Action Table system, which is primarily covered on pages 6-7. I found these two pages really baffling – specifically the section of "specific checks." In part, I think my eyes started to cross at "cross-indexes." Looking at the Action Table itself helped me believe that things weren't all that complicated, but despite the book's claim that "the game rules will always tell you which column to use" I couldn't find much about that when I went look later.

The big concern I got when reading the rules was, "how will I ever keep all this in my head?" There seemed to be many, many specific cases to the rules, and any "specific" check involves complicated lookup. It makes me wonder whether the rules will slow down play. When I start to feel that happening with other games, I tend to make up a rule that feels like the rest of the game, fits the odds, and is simple. I had a hard time imagining what kind of rules I'd make up, since the Action Table system seemed like it should be universal enough already.

The book has (as far as I can recall, anyway) only one example of play, on page 7. It's a decent overview of what the game might feel like before you start reading the rest of the rules, but it isn't enough to demonstrate the rules in play. (If you're following along with the book, for example: how do we know the zombie hit Ann by a margin of seven?)

I'm willing to believe that the Action Table system can be a nice, simple mechanic for dealing with almost any challenge, but it doesn't come off that way in the rules as written. I'd love to see the explanations on pages 6-7 rewritten, and to see a few more detailed examples of play throughout the book. I'm not sure what I'd want to jettison, if I had to, to fit this in.

The thing is, the book is actually very dense with useful stuff. Like many old-school RPGs, it has dozens of one-off subsystems for different scenarios, and I think most of them are good ones to include. It has a bunch of rules for scavenging, determining whether the TV news is still on, or whether that bite you just got is going to be fatal. It's a great set of rules. If I try and try and can't get my head around the Action Table system, I could definitely see myself using half of the rules in the book, anyway.

The layout is usually very good, although sometimes there's inset text that makes columns too narrow. (See page 28, Base Chance Determination.) The skills lists marks "exclusive" skills with a †, which is fine, except that it puts it at the beginning of each line, making it a little harder to scan. These are pretty small nits, though. Overall, the book looks good and just like I'd expect. The art is good, and has the "serious but fun" look of the 80's RPGs that the whole game recalls. I don't think there's clearly too much or too little of it, either.

So, the book was definitely worth it, even if I don't end up running a Rotworld campaign. I'm hoping to get my head around the rules, even if only long enough to really determine that I don't like them. I think what I might like to get at least as much as text reworking, though, is a podcast of some actual play. I think those are seriously underused as a teaching mechanism.