So far I’ve experienced (and - obviously - survived)

• Tornado
• Forest fire
• Flood
• Blizzard

I slept through an earthquake. I just don’t feel right adding it to the list. Maybe someday

Next up:

Everyone’s good buddy Earl is going to stop by and spend the night. And it appears he is going to count as a full-on hurricane this time!

Still to come:

• Avalanche
• Comet strike

p.s. I technically have three hurricanes on my life list but by the time they got to where I was they hardly counted

p.p.s. Not really looking forward to the comet strike. Maybe I can just skip that one?

My wizard/monk Oriental Adventures took her 12th Monk level the other day. She already had eight Wizard levels: This means a few things:

1. One more character for Epics
2. One more character I may TR
3. Abundant Step

I am definitely the most jazzed about item 3.

Oriental is my first and only character to have Abundant Step. I once had a Favored Soul hit level 17 for about ten minutes before I reincarnated her again but really this is the first chance I’ve had to explore the capabilities that Abundant Step/FvS wings provide.

i.e. my own personal jetpack!

One minute I am fighting over here, then suddenly *whoosh*zoom* and I am fighting way over there!

I can lead the group - every time! Even when I am trailing, *whoosh*zoom* I am caught up instantly.

I can go places I have never been and *whoosh*zoom* reach everything!

I am having so much fun with it that it is becoming a source of amusement to some of my guildies. So I decided to do some rational analysis of the feature rather than continuing the undisciplined joyousness I had been experiencing.

I made a list. One of those Pros and Cons lists, where you put all the good things about something on one side and all the bad things on the other to help you figure out how you really feel about it. Here’s my list:

Good things about Abundant Step

Everything

Bad things about Abundant Step

Nothing

That pretty much settles it for me. I love Abundant Step. Now if only I had more Ki …

- - - -

Because I love this picture and needed an excuse to post it

Commandos !

We have a dire situation here !!!

Enclosed is a foul item I accidentely found during a mission in the Menechtarun desert. We must reinforce our security, no doubt such items were crafted in order to plan a full out war against us. Found… in the secret stash of the highly sought individual by the name of Utah Sandcrawler, this arrow, exclusively engineered to harm us noble halflings, is to be analyzed in order to find a strong defense against it.

I advise caution to any of us commandos planning a mission in the Demon Sands, at least until we have found the source of this evil…

Serpentine relation contact agent Framboise. Out.

Attached to the game mail: a +1 Greater Halfling Slaying Arrow

Too funny.

I’ve updated my new Favored Soul to incorporate the lessons learned in initial playtesting and now she is New! Improved! Lemon-Scented! (and she also has a lot more hit points).

The change has made a really significant difference in her melee survivability. She is able to fearlessly lead the charge, zerg mercilessly, and still have time to heal whatever damage she takes. Except of course when I get too excited mashing the attack buttons and forget that she is a healer

She buffs Shield of Faith and Nightshield, and keeps Prayer and Divine Favor on her main hotbar. She uses the latter two like attack boosts, and never enters a fight without both of them in place. Her favorite tactic is to jump-cast Soundburst while charging into melee, take out anything stunned right away, and then commence with general hack-and-slashery.

She dominates the kill count.

But - and this is a big BUT - I am not sure her domination is due to her build. The early levels of DDO are really easy, most characters can dominate if they play hard and fast. Plus I built her a nice sword. Really nice for her level actually, It is a +1 True Chaos Falchion of Pure Good that also has Icy Burst and a tiny guild augment slot that I fill with Flame touch.

The sword gives her five damage numbers on most attacks, and the bad guys just melt away. All she has to do is manage to hit them.

The fact is, she is built to be primarily a healer, albeit one that heals from the front line. I suspect that as she increases in level she will find that her melee ability is less dominant and that she has to focus more on healing to be of use to the party. My hope is that her melee remains at least functional, I can’t imagine that it will remain as top-shelf as it has been to-date.

But all I have is what I have seen from her so far, and that has been outstanding. Bottom line: up to level six, my new Favored Soul Beatifica is a huge success

Gets great mileage too

Guys:

Shorts, a t-shirt, and either (1) mandals, or (2) sneakers with crew socks, often black. The t-shirt was always about a game, comic, web meme or geek movie. I saw one Denver Broncos t-shirt but that doesn’t count, it was on me. Everything else was 100% nerd culture reference. Which, I suppose, is as it should be.

Girls:

Corsets. Yes, I said corsets. Occasionally as part of some sort of steam-punky costume but usually not. 

On some of the girls the corsets looked tremendous. On some of them it looked horrifying. But on most girls it didn’t improve or detract from their overall appearance, it just did really strange things to their boobs. As if the bottom 2/3 was simply gone, or maybe some mad scientist had removed them and replaced them with frisbees and nailed them onto the girl, perpendicular to her torso.

Think a muffin top but with no muffin. Now imagine two of them.

Some of the more endowed women were skewed into truly fantastical shapes. And I don’t mean that in a good way, but rather in the way H.P. Lovecraft would use the word.

Costumes:

The Lady of Pain was one of the many outstanding costumes

Many of the costumes were perfectly made with loving care and high production values: they looked stunning. Others looked like a duct tape explosion. Most were somewhere in between.

There was a staggering array of costume subjects. Every character from every anime, video game, comic book or movie is fair game. Oh I forgot TV shows. And card games. And anything that let you wear a sword, or that might be somewhat steam-punky. There were even two girls dressed as Tetris blocks.

By far the most common character was Link from Zelda (or maybe from the Legend of Neil?). There were so many different Links that they had to devote a special section of the contest to them. Green Links, White Links, a Maroon Link, a Black Ninja Link… really a lot of Links.

Fashion Lessons Learned:

Men, you are perpetuating the utter nerd gamer stereotype. Okay, we are utter nerd gamers, but consider mixing it up a tiny bit. For instance, buy some white socks.

Ladies, any effort you make to emphasize your chest will always be welcome. But make a mirror-driven sanity check before going outside: boobs are much cooler when they are at least vaguely boob-shaped.

One can’t help but overhear random fragments of conversation when wandering about. No context, no story, just a phrase that stands out and grabs your attention.

Here are my favorite three snippets so far:

#1: “No, no, don’t worry, I’m going to kill you last”
#2: “Batman is not a superhero. He’s a vigilante!”
#3: “If I only had ONE more zombie!”

It’s 2:00 am at GenCon and downtown Indianapolis is full of gamers. Its a warm night and we are filling every street downtown with our probably-overweight-but-definitely-in-shorts-and-tshirt selves.

I get back to my hotel and the lobby is filled with gamers. I can see at least ten different games being played as I write this, with at least 40 players all going strong.

Did I mention that it’s 2:00am?

GenCon is awesome.