Walking Dead/Game of Thrones

Okay, what genius scheduled the walking dead finale at the exact same time as the genius that scheduled the Game of Thrones premier.  Luckily GoT was the only thing HBO showed for the rest of the night.  What made me really mad was at 10:01pm when walkind dead was still going strong.  The ran it over 5 minutes.  Why!?!  to screw people who DVR?  To screw people who wanted to flip over and see the encore of GoT.  That decision doesn't make sense to me. 

Well, on to the reviews:

Walking Dead: Season 3 Finale-  I have a great idea, lets build to something all season and then make it completely suck.  Make it a total anti-climax, in every possible way.  This episode felt like an early April fools day gift.  It was that disappointing.  To compare it with what happened in the comics isn't fair, because it would have cost way more than what they did, right.  What, the comics thing might have been cheaper, more dramatic and move the story forward all at the same time.  Other things also happen that are inconsistent to the comic and this may have been the producers telling us that it isn't going to be the comic we know and love.  Lets hope World War Z doesn't make any money or the zombies will be superhuman next season too.  Almost enough to make me stop watching the show.  Horrible end cap to an amazing season. 

Game of Thrones: Season premier-  They have to set everything up, I see them combining characters and compressing stories to get to the action.  This season is very promising, but the first episode was largely a set up for what is to come.  Can't fault the show for that.  Can't wait for next week. 

Book Club

The next book has been selected for the online science fiction book club.  This months theme is "Also a movie."  The winner with 4 votes is Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.  It beat out Ender's Game with 3 votes, Cloud Atlas with 2 votes, and The Host with 0 votes.  So give it a read and head over to our good reads page and let us know what you thought.  Feel free to compare and contrast it with the movie. 

Our next poll is on Cyberpunk.  Head on over and vote, or add your favorite if it isn't already listed. 

Our First Encounter

First of all, thanks to everyone for their cost saving ideas and help on my previous post.  The suggestion to play something other than D&D was met with flippance that only a teenage girl can give.  Of course we are going to play D&D, we already made our characters*. 

We sat down on Saturday night, with a makeshift screen that I put together that had weapons/armor tables that I had copied from the books.  I had 3x5 cards with player information, NPC information, and monster information.  Keep on the Winterfell has 3 hooks included.  I explored two of them as one was a "you are going on this adventure because" type thing.  One girl was absent this week and I think this will be a great way to bring her into the adventure when she shows up.  The other two hooks with characters were put in the Goat Town Inn common room.  For the girls to find themselves.    Quick question:  If there are multiple hooks and the characters are sent by multiple people on very similar missions, do they get xp from both? I figure they should get paid for both as if they are making a map for someone and eradicating monsters as they go they are actually doing both.  Thankfully, the players only talked to the one person and then were ready to hit the road. 

Of course, while on the road they are set upon by some Kobolds.  This encounter took a long time.  First was the learning curve.  Although I tried to explain battle mechanics before we started, I had to go over it several more times.  I think there is one girl that is still pretty lost.  Second was the fact that level one characters are pretty weak and everyone was rolling high defensive rolls (including me) and low offensive rolls (sometimes including me).  I did make mention of that in the story by saying that I could tell that they were new to this as everyone was swinging wildly and missing, thankfully the kobolds were no better trained.  It took about twice as long as I had planned.  The final defensive roll on the final Dragon sheild with 3 hp left was a 19, and I picked it up and rolled it again for a 6 (on the sly) just so we could finish the encounter and divide xp and gp before everyone had to go home. 

The Girls seemed to have a great time.  Several have stated that they are going to buy their own dice this week.  We will have season 2 of community for them to watch the D&D episode next time they get together.  Everyone is supposedly bringing $5 for pizza as well.  No vegans, but have one member that keeps kosher (found that out the hard way).  My daughter has been informed that this is a one adventure deal for me, and at the conclusion, one of the girls will need to take over as the DM.  That way it can be at different peoples houses and we don't have to host. 

*one girl was a warlock and most of her attacks used constitution added to her roll, well she had assigned herself an 11 constitution.  So after we were done, I talked to her about it and showed her in the book that Warlocks needed high constitution, intelligence, and something else.  I explained that he attacks were all using it and that is why she wasn't hitting.  she reassigned her values and she should be much more successful on future encounters.  I figure that at level one, for first tiem players, playing with the numbers is pretty normal. 

So far so good. 

Too Poor to Play

My oldest, after watching the episode of community, has wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons.  I have never really played.  As a kid I remember me and a few of my friends wanting to play and looking at the plethora of books in the bookstore.  All of the books were $15-20.  We new we would need at least the player Handbook and probably the monster manual and someone would have to DM so we would need that one too.  Not to mention dice.  So it looked like we had around a $60 price point to start.  Unfortunately, our families were not in the financial position to spend this much money on a game that I might or might not like. 

Fast forward 20+ years and now my daughter wants to play.  The player's handbook has a cover price of $35, another $35 for a DM book and $20 for a monster manual.  While the books are probably below inflationary increases and I am much better off than my parents where when I was a kid, they are still really expensive.  Now the game almost requires figurines, map boards, and other peripherals.  You can still get by with just a pencil and paper apparently, but it seems to be discouraged in the player's handbook and DM Guide. 

Thankfully there is a library and while our branch doesn't have the books, they are in the interlibrary loan and we have copies of the books at home for at least the next couple of weeks.  Longer if someone else doesn't put them on hold.  This will allow us to try the game out, see if her friends will like it so she will have people to play with. 

Saturday night was the first night she had her friends over and let me tell you it was a mess.  None of us knew what we were doing. I am slowly figuring things out and trying to pass this on to my daughter so that she can desiminate the information.  For instance, I told them to write the At-Will, Encounter, and daily powers on an index card so they would know what their attacks were.  Did they write down what to base the attack on or what dice to roll for damage? Nope, they all wrote down the flavor text which will help them naught as they will still need to open the book to check everything (one book=time consuming). 

As I never played growing up, I am clueless.  I don't feel comfortable playing DM as I feel like I am going to be botching things left and right.  We are playing a free adventure; Keep on the Shadowfell.  I imagine there will be lots of trial and error. 

Any tips/hints on how to do this.  Challenge:  players are 11-13yo girls. 

Book Club poll

Just posted the poll to select our second discussion book.  If you are not signed up there is no time like the present.  Voting will be open until March 25. 

Voting for the first book closes in 5 days, if you haven't voted for that yet. 

House at the End of the Street(2012)-Spoiler Free

I remember seeing the trailers for House at the End of the Street last year and thinking that I needed to see it.  Then it came and went in theaters and I forgot about it.  I don't think it really made a buzz and that is a bit of a shame as the movie wasn't bad. 

Jennifer Lawrence stars as Elissa, a city girl just moving to a rural environment.  The house next door is infamous due to a double murder that happened there.  Turns out the son of the couple married, Ryan (Max Thieriot) still lives in the house.  Elissa, of course, falls for this quiet damaged boy. 

Jennifer Lawrence puts on a much better performance than she did in the Hunger Games as she does seem to have some chemistry with Thieriot.  Thieriot himself plays his part very well.  The mother's (Elizabeth Shue) dialogue comes across as strange.  She keeps saying things like "I am trying to be your mother" that I suppose indicates a back story of an irresponsible mother.  The mother is, however, a doctor, so, I can see absent but not really irresponsible. 

Overall- It was a pretty good movie that plays well as a horror/thriller.  I think it sets itself up for a sequel but don't know if the returns will ever justify making one.  There is some language and I think the PG-13 rating is pretty much accurate.  I might let my 12 year old watch it if she stated interest. 

Warlock- Movie Review

Warlock(1989) was on one of the pay channels recently and I sat down and watched it with my wife and kids.  I haven't seen it in years and years.  My wife had never seen it.  I remember absolutely loving it as a kid.  It is still good.  Well, if you liked it back in the day, it is still good.  If you hated way back when, then you probably won't like it any better. 

The premise of this overlooked movie is that a witch from the 17th century escapes through time before he can be tried.  A witch hunter, whose wife the witch killed, is able to follow him through the portal into the 20th century.  Upon arrival in the 20th century the witch proceeds to summon Satan and get orders to put together the Grand Grimiore, or, as it may also be known, Satan's spell book.  This would give the witch the name of God that he could then say backwards, uncreating creation. 

The movie is a lot of fun and spawned a couple of sequels.  It is rated R in the 1980s system, but might be more of a heavy PG-13 in current standards, for blood, violence, and profanity.  My wife, who will always raise objections if any are to be had, didn't say a word.  She gets scared easily and screamed several times.  If you don't watch it for any other reason, do so to learn the signs that a witch is in your house. 

Does anyone else remember this one?