Of hobs and goblins

Over the weekend we found time for two more Dungeons & Dragons sessions with the girls. They're getting the hang of it, although Fairy Girl still giggles more than is entirely necessary.

The first of the two sessions picked up following their initial encounter with the orcs in the Caves of Chaos. After some gut-checks, it was generally agreed upon by the party that they were over-extended, with all magic exhausted and everyone sporting multiple wounds. A strategic retreat was then enacted back to the Keep on the Borderlands. With a modest amount of silver in my dwarf cleric's pockets for safe keeping (the girls are multi-classed thieves, after all) the group returned to the keep, exhausted. A couple of new NPCs were recruited to the team--a young human fighter and a gnome illusionist (don't you love gnome illusionists?). The next day, with wounds healed and numbers bolstered, they returned to the Caves of Chaos.

This time, the girls gave the orc caves a wide berth, instead exploring a different set of caves that turned out to be inhabited by goblins. Goblins proved a better match for the newly expanded party, and a rousing victory was had. I have to add at this point that Fairy Girl--a Wizard 101 devotee--had been particularly crestfallen when, against the orcs, she realized as a first-level magic user she was limited to only one spell per day. Since we're playing 1st edition AD&D rules, I invoked Unearthed Arcana and allowed her the use of three additional 0-level cantrips. I have to say I'm impressed with her use of them, particularly the "summon gnats" and "summon spider" spells, which she used to the party's advantage despite their incapability of inflicting damage. Thus ended our first session of the weekend.

The second session picked up where we left off in the goblin caves. The party, pressing ever on, found some stairs and eventually ended up in a warren of hobgoblins. The larger, more powerful hobgoblins proved a significant challenge, and several characters and NPCs in the party were at or near death before all was said and done. But they discovered and rescued a merchant's party that had been captured and tortured by the hobgoblins, fighting their way back out through the goblin tunnels to save the hostages. They also came out pretty nicely in the treasure department, with a bunch of coins, some chainmail and other assorted goodies. Monkey Girl seems to be particularly enjoying the game, using her thieves' skills (unsuccessfully for the most part, but still) and role playing her character to a good degree.

I'm looking forward to them eventually facing off against the skeletons lurking in one cave. We'll have a reenactment of Harryhausen's Jason and the Argonauts, mark my words!

Now Playing: Stevie Ray Vaughan The Real Deal: Greatest Hits vol. 2

Friday Night Videos

After a summer of blistering drought, we've had more than 5 inches of rain in the past 48 hours with more on the way for the weekend. There's been localized flooding in the area and low-water crossing road closures, but thus far it's been a good, soaking rain lacking any of the hard, driving downpours that lead to lots of runoff. So I'm not going to complain, not with the Edward's Aquifer getting a much-needed recharge and the Blanco River finally flowing again after months of dry river bed. Instead, I'm celebrating. Here's John Fogerty revisiting his old CCR classic, "Have You Ever Seen the Rain." Weather depending, I may be back next week with him performing "Who'll Stop the Rain," because Texas weather sometimes demands such things.



Previously on Friday Night Videos... Flight of the Conchords.

Now Playing: Pink Floyd Staying Home to Watch the Rain

The Keep on the Borderlands

I believe I've mentioned before how Monkey Girl and Fairy Girl have been enchanted by the siren song of the online MMO Wizard 101. Since their parents are cheap, they've only played the limited free areas, but have been clamoring for paid accounts to move beyond the limited arena combat they spend most of their online time playing. Hoping for a distraction, I showed Monkey Girl my old Dungeons & Dragons books and modules a few weeks ago, and the urge to play this strange game with books, paper and oddly-shaped dice grew until she was pestering me incessantly.

So, over the course of several nights this week, in between Girl Scouts and piano lessons and the like, we rolled up some characters for the girls. Monkey Girl is a half-elf fighter/thief. Fairy Girl is an elf magic user/thief (you can see they go for the elfin multi-class schtick). Yours truly, in addition to being the DM, rolled up a cantankerous dwarven cleric/fighter, because I like to be ornery and know full well that healing spells will be needed early and often. With all that out of the way, tonight we started our first campaign.

Remeber the classic old B2 module, "The Keep on the Borderlands"? Yeppers, that's what they're experiencing for the first time, much the same as thousands of gamers before them. The girls got to the keep, were challenged by the guards and made their way to the tavern where they rented a room and met up with my dwarf. Monkey Girl picked up on the DM's narrative clues right away and pursued the path to adventure with gusto. Fairy Girl took a bit longer to get into the spirit, standing in the doorway giggling a lot, hiding under her bed in the tavern room and generally trying to avoid any interaction with any of the NPCs. She loosened up a great deal once they reached the Caves of Chaos and barbecued a squad of attacking orcs with a "Burning Hands" spell. Unfortunately, after just two encounters with orcs in the first cave, my dwarf has already exhausted his supply of healing spells. Uh-oh. Once gameplay resumes, the party will likely beat a hasty retreat to recharge the old batteries and spells while recruiting additional fighters/cannon fodder to come along on future excursions.

Hopefully, Fairy Girl will keep the giggling down to a minimum.

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Hell, thy name is Bastrop

I went with the family to the Bastrop vs. San Marcos football game last night. One of my brothers oversaw the construction of the new stadium in Bastrop, which also happens to be The Wife's home town. So we met up with my mother-in-law, brother-in-law and young nephew for a football family reunion of sorts. We were coming from the San Marcos direction, and traffic wasn't bad at all--we arrived maybe 45 mintues before the game, had free buffalo wings from Chili's and looked the stadium over.

It's pretty impressive for a high school field. Seating a maximum of 8,000 (I was told) it featured aluminum bleachers in two levels separated by a wide walkway. The visitor's side is of the same design, sans the multi-level press box. The field itself is artificial, the new long-bladed fake grass with granulated rubber particles simulating soil, so the surface will give and reduce the number of ACL and turf toe injuries such as associated with traditional rugs. And there's a jumbotron in the endzone, an very loud one. All in all, an impressive package.

The teams themselves played like it was the first game of the season, with fumbles being the defining feature of the night. IIRC, Bastrop was holding a 10-7 lead with five minutes left in the second quarter when the ordeal began. Lightning flashed to the south, and the teams cleared the field for a mandatory 30 minute wait before the game could be resumed. Only the lightning didn't let up. And the wind picked up. And rain started to fall. We were heading to the van even as the announcer told the crowd a heavy thunderstorm was moving our way. We cranked up at 8:20. At 9:20 we had moved exactly 12 feet from our parking spot.

I spent the entirety of the 90s as a working sports reporter. I covered--at minimum--more than 100 high school and college football games in that time, not to mention basketball, baseball (high school, college and professional), pro hockey, rodeo and untold numbers of other sports. Friday night in Bastrop was, without a doubt, the single most FUBAR traffic control I've ever seen. Even after the game had officially been canceled, the traffic cops continued to allow in a seemingly endless stream of latecoming traffic. WTF Bastrop? There were exactly two exits to the parking lot (a brilliant design, he says sarcastically), and they'd closed one to allow these other cars in, choking the parking lot up with many, many unnecessary cars as everyone else tried to escape through the one single exit on the opposite side of the parking lot. During all this the heavens opened up and poured, with the wind blowing so hard the rain fell sideways. And the lightning! All around us, flashing and crashing like the end of the world, with us stuck motionless through the worst of it.

Tempers, understandably, grew short. After an hour of not moving, honking horns, curses and angry gestures grew more frequent. I expected a brawl to break out at any moment, tempers were so frayed, and probably the only thing that kept that from happening was the monsoon washing over everyone.

Bastrop officials should really be ashamed by the incompetence on display Friday night. They weren't even dealing with a capacity crowd--at the the time the players left the field, the stadium (including the visitor's side) was only 1/2 to 2/3 full. So despite the relatively light crowd, it was 9:55 p.m. before we finally pulled out of the parking lot. Absolutely pathetic. I covered high schools at every level, and colleges as well, writing stories up after games witnessed by tens of thousands of spectators. I normally had my story finished and submitted to the paper within 45 minutes of the game's end, and vast, empty parking lots invariably greeted me as I exited the stadium. I'll wager dollars to donuts there were still cars desperate to get away from Bastrop's new stadium two full hours later.

It was a nice stadium, for sure, but you couldn't pay me enough to go back to that log jam again.

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To summarize...

We now have video of Bush I pitching his educational policy to school kids in a broadcast speech, and a transcript of Saint Reagan The Infallible telling kids criminals from San Quentin would come and murder them if California passed a gun ban. So obviously, in that context, President Obama going on the air to tell children to stay in school, do their homework, listen to their teachers and try hard will be the downfall of western civilization and indoctrinate our kids in the godless ways of Islamic communism. You know, because Hitler did the exact same thing.

Now Playing: Pink Floyd Delicate Sound of Thunder

Friday Night Videos

I've heard so much about Flight of the Conchords over the past year from folks like Chris Roberson that The Wife and I decided to Netflix their HBO series. And let me tell you, these New Zealand pseudo-folk satirists are witty and funny as all get-out. They're like Dumb & Dumber, or perhaps Bob & Doug Mackenzie, only with musical talent and a lot more innocence. They've been around for a long time prior to the TV show, and part of their shtick is their constant failure as musicians. One bit involves how, as New Zealanders, they were invited to compose a theme song for Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies--a theme song which was subsequently rejected. The TV series afforded them the opportunity to make a video for it, and the result is brilliant:



But the live concert version is well worth the time as well. Funny still, but in a different context. These guys are definitely recommended.



Previously on Friday Night Videos... Jimmy Buffett.

Now Playing: Pink Floyd The Wall

Chupacabra thieves

This is interesting. It's an image collage of the so-called Chupacabra, a WikiCommons image produced by someone going by the moniker of Olvetigabor. The images is copyright Wikimedia Commons. The image collage accompanies an article by Sylvia Cochran regarding the possible origins of the creepy looking beasts:



Except that the majority of the images contained in the collage--namely, the good, clear ones--come from my blog, Gibberish. I published them on October 14, 2004, as part of a entry titled Return of the zombie chupacabra." And the images most certainly aren't the copyright work of Olvetigabor or Wikimedia Commons--they are the copyright property of Sharon Womack, published by myself with her explicit permission. Not only did this Olvetigabor blatantly pinch the images, they didn't even have the common courtesy to indicate where they originated from. That's just low.

I realized that as a professional journalist, many in the so-called "new media" look upon old-school ethics as passe and irrelevant. But no matter how you spin it, passing off others' work as your own is just downright sad.

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