A real post this time!

Well, haven't done a new honest to goodness post in quite sometime...so how about we do one now? Eh?

So, in the tabletop gaming scene... there's some cool stuff going on. We have played a couple more games of Pathfinder, now using the official release rules. I do not own the book yet, but since the game is written using the Open Gaming License the rules are available online via Paizo's PRD. We just finished a cool story arc involving a "haunted" mansion, and now we are moving on to the big city... we are playing through one of Paizo's published "Adventure Path" modules (a series of published modules all linked together) Apparently there is a fight at the end of this current module that is the most difficult one in the entire adventure path... can't wait. :) So far, my cleric has dropped to negative hit points every adventure...(never said I was good at playing clerics...heh)

My Earthynn campaign got started at GenCon, and our next game is coming up in a couple of weeks. We were trying to get some online gaming done via MapTool; however, we have been having server issues, and at least one of the party is not very computer literate.. so it has been difficult getting it set up. We are still determined though, so it'll happen eventually. But the up coming game looms, I still have some work to do on the story... it is going to be kind of a mini dungeon. They will be trying to free an old abandoned Dwarven Gate Hold from the hands of an Ogre and rescue the poor captured Thri Flamebeard. These are just level one characters so they not meant to fight the ogre... I am setting that encounter up as a skill challenge. Ogres are stupid so talking/tricking the ogre should be fun. Also, I wanted to make sure I had a dungeon-y adventure so we could take advantage of our Dwarven Forge terrain! woohoo! And to make the night even more geeky... I ordered a 12 pack of Dungeons and Dragons Soda for us to guzzle during the game! (see how nice of a DM I am?)

Also, in another great move, Privateer Press has released the official Warmachine MkII rules online for FREE. They are very stark, just the text, no artwork or diagrams.. but they are free, and available months before the rulebook actually comes out (January) The rules are great.. streamlined, cleaned up, clarified.. I can't wait to try them out.Again, a great company who thouroughly support their game. They also now sell art prints in their online store, and just announced the Iron Kingdoms RPG books (which have been out of print for some time) are now available in PDF. Awesome. Oh, and you can now follow them on twitter: @privateerpress

In the electronic gaming front.. I have really been enjoying GameFly. I have gotten to play several games that I normally would not have bought. Currently I am playing Prince of Persia. Its a fun game with some cool mechanics.. the world is also really beautiful... although it hasn't been able to hold my attention. Its basically a big 3D platformer.. you jump around in a complex environment collecting glow-y orbs, and then there are interspersed combat segments, which basically play out as quick-time events. I also have Assasin's Creed, but I have not played it yet. The big news however, is Halo 3 ODST. I ordered it up from Amazon and it came on Tuesday.. I had been waiting a long time for this game and was really excited. But sadly, the damn game doesn't work. The disk keeps giving me "Disk Read Errors" every time it goes to load a cinematic or I attempt to load up the Firefight mode. I can't even get past the second mission without this happening. So Tuesday night I contacted Amazon for a replacement. They sent me a new one right away, and it arrived Thursday. Sadly, I got the same problem... so after a quick internet search.. I discovered it wasn't just me. Turns out the problem is with the game itself and not the disks. A trip to Bungie's own forums yields a thread over 30 pages long with lots of people reporting the same problem. No solution as of yet, and Bungie and Microsoft have yet to say anything "official" about it. And it seems to be a random occurrence, and mainly striking people with older 360s. Like me. So, I have a brand new $60 game that I can't play. (and man, I really want to... the little bit that I could play was awesome...) A game of this caliber.. having this kind of release problems? Someone dropped the ball...

Lets see.. what else... After a long boring slow summer at work, this past month has been crazy busy. Which is great for business because our numbers have been pretty low. We had one employee laid off, and run the store on a bare bones staff (3 people total, including the owner).. but at least the days are flying by now and I'm getting a little bit of overtime. (and I am gonna need it to buy the Retribution models coming out next month)

Think that gets me caught up.. will hopefully be blogging on a much more regular basis soon...