Bjørn Røyrvik's page

"When the lights go out" was a really good urban fantasy story. Two more books by Lee in the To Read pile out of the 8 I got after the better part ten years since my last purchase of one of her books. It's been a good year in that regard.

On to Crier's War by Nina Varela. It is a very pretty hardcover edition.

The trip to the secondary landing site was mostly smooth, if slow and unpleasant. We encountered a couple of wild pigs, of which we killed one and got some fresh meat. On the coast we met a strange thing - a dead man piloted by an oversized nautilus. The fight was mostly fairly easy except that Bo-bi got grabbed by the thing and it attempted to stick its tentacles into his brain. The GM was very nice and allowed a save against the poison. The player complained about SoD poison at second level and asked me to get the GM stop putting that sort of thing in the game. I told him he was asking the wrong person because I approve of the occasional SoD effect in a game, at every level.

We meet up with the rest of the second wave and almost immediately get embroiled in what appears to be brewing trouble. Several of the colonists are arguing vociferously for returning to Davania because they don't feel safe here. Ramona, the leader of the trip, again turns to the PCs to help smooth things over in the hopes that fellow colonists will find it easier to talk the dissenters down than she has. The other PCs do well but Tibor flubs his roll. He tried to comfort Petilia (?) the scribe but she is not reassured by his observations that every new settlement faces difficulty and success is not given and they will succeed, and must just try the best they can to make things work. Vår, who is (as is expected of this player) specc'ed for Diplomacy, swoops in and fixes the issue after calming down her first target.

We then are asked to fix the issue of the super slow ship. This is easily handled by Aidu and Tibor, primarily, since they can swim. Sylvia and Vår make minor contributions to the fight and Bo-bi spends the combat trying to rid himself of his armor so he can jump in and help. The fight is over well before he is. They do however spot some more grindylows watching the ship. Ramona again asks the party to take care of this things before the ship departs. Tibor decides to swim out to meet them, assuming he can either handle them if they attack, considering how he handled two in the first session, or can flee if they prove too much to handle. The grindylow flee but he manages to track them back to what he assumes is their lair. He returns to the rest of the colonists and informs them of his findings.

Ramona wants the PCs to 'handle' the issue to prevent further attacks and show the nervous members that things are being Taken Care Of. A brief discussion follows where we try to decide whether we should wait a night, in which case the ship would return to Thincol's Jewel and we would again need to trek cross country, or we should handle things now, in which case the ship will wait for us, considering it needs a few hours to get things ready in any case. We decide on the latter and head out, chooing to rappel down the small cliff rather than risk being caught in a boat on the open water. Clearing out the cave is mostly pretty easy, with only Salttooth proving dangerous, reducing Sylvia to 0 hp and wounding Vår. Tibor was a good tank, thanks to his AC being high enough they needed a natural 20 to hit, but poor rolls meant he was not as dangerous as he should be: he had a better than 50% chance to hit on paper but hit at best 30% of the time, and half the times he did hit he rolled 1s for damage. I got the feeling Vår again did more damage with crossbows and attack roll cantrips into melee but that may just be me being grumpy.

Despite this opposition the PCs prevail and Salttooth begged for mercy in broken Minean. Tibor, the only speaker of Minean, stops attacking and informs the party. There followed a brief discussion about what to do but the final decision was put off until next session since it was well past my bedtime.

I suspect Thanksgiving will be put off until next year some time, and at least until next week considering I work late this week, depending on what my mother feels like doing. I volunteer to do most of the work but she's set on doing at least some of it herself.

"A stroke of the pen" was generally decent. Humorous but didn't make me do more than smile or vaguely chuckle but that may be more a me problem than the quality of the writing. You can tell it's early works: some polishing is needed, and I think Pratchett worked best in long form. Still worth picking up if you like Pratchett.

On to Tanith Lee's When the lights go out.

With most of the front-liners low on HP the party decides to spend the night in what they consider the most defensible part of town they have explored so far. Nothing attacks the party during the night and the next day they explore the rest of the town after some healing.

The rest of the looti-, er, exploration goes smoothly with me shaking his old school head at the amount of magic items we get right off the bat. This day Sylvia has prepared Detect Magic and has a rank in Spellcraft so we can actually identify the items we find. A few things we find strike us as odd. Well, odder than the Roanoke-ing of the colony. The colony's charter was found hidden away in the house of the governor pro tem, and a bunch of names were stricken from the list. The logs found in the council house were stuffed in a bag for later perusal. Aidu notices a strange metal spider thingy and utterly fails to catch it, and is full of sour grapes about it and does not bother to properly inform the party about it. Fortunately we heard his little attempt and managed to get some information of him.

The food storehouse is full of cockroaches and Tibor leads the retreat since no one has anything that can handle them. Outside Sylvia casts a bunch of Light spells on the PCs and their equipment, and this prevents the roaches from being too bothersome on the second attempt. The party recovers fair amount of food and packs it up. The colony full explored, we collate our findings and set out to meet up with the ship at the secondary anchorage. We take with us such things as we can carry and would find useful, primarily food. Sylvia is weirdly fixated on the blacksmith's anvil and wants to bring it along. The rest of us think that if it was undisturbed for a month or more, it will likely remain undisturbed for a few more days and no one wants to lug a freaking anvil cross country. We level up and leave the abandoned village.

During the trip the party comes across an ankheg, which resulted in a surprisingly long fight since both sides spend most of the time missing. In fact, the PC that hit most often was Vår, who ignored poor Dexterity bonus and melee penalties and hit every round. Tibor, on the other hand, missed every attack for three rounds straight and did minimum damage on the one attack he did hit with. Still, the ankheg rolled equally poorly so it wasn't a difficult fight.

We end the session there.

We watched it this weekend and enjoyed it. Visually excellent - very Gothic.

"Dragonshadow" was good. Scarier than the first book, more worldbuilding, and some very Slaaneshi demons. Looking forward to next book in the series.

Currently reading A stroke of the pen, a collection of older stories by Terry Pratchett, some of them under a pseudonym. So far I'm enjoying them. A lot of them are Christmas-related, for some reason.

True, but even so I have players who have expressed interest in trying the MT in PF1.

My one experience with MT is from 3.5 and it was a great support character. He always had spells available, even when the primary casters were running on empty. He always had something useful for any situation. He didn't offend the enemy to the same degree as the full wizard, nor did he heal or buff as well as the full clerics, but he was a jack of all trades and that was useful.
The Practised Spellcaster feat does feel like a bit of a tax but it does really help, and I allow it in PF.

Not as good as a full caster but fun and flavorful and useful.

My GM burnout has lasted longer than I expected, so Otheriel’s penultimate stage on her quest for Immortality is put on hold some more. After the better part of a year of WanG the GM of that story wanted a break and my wife has stepped up to run Ruins of Azlant for the group, adapted to Mystara. The new group has nothing to do with the old one, and no one is allowed to worship the two who have become Immortal since RoA takes place before they have ascended.

The starting island is in the Thanegioth archipelago in the Sea of Dread, not far from the infamous Isle of Dread. Thyatis, expansionist as it is, has started encroaching on the Sea of Dread from its colonies on Davania and one of the newest is a small island called Thincol’s Jewel.

Dramatis Personae

Tibor
Tortle monk from Zul (the ‘civilized’ tortles). A young, quiet farmer bit by wanderlust who signed up with a Thyatian expedition to the settlement of Thincol’s Jewel for free travel to an area he wanted to explore. He has an interest in tortle history, especially the idea that there was an ancient advanced civilization of tortles. He has an old artefact he is convinced is from this supposed civilization, and he thinks the Sea of Dread might hold more signs of this civilization. As he is from the Savage Coast he suffers from the Red Curse, mutating him and giving his shell and hide a scarlet tinge and spiky growths that need regular trimming. I made this character simply so I could play a teenage mutant ninja tortle.

April Mai, called Vår (“spring”)
Gnome unicorn sorcerer with no Spellcraft or Knowledges because the player is physically incapable of making characters who don’t max Charisma, Diplomacy and Bluff, and heard we were going to need Swim in this AP and so went out of his way to get Swim as a class skill. Bit of an airhead. A good friend of hers came on the first wave of settlers to Thincol’s Jewel and she wanted to follow, planning on selling her magical knowledge to the other settlers.

Bo-bi Nuar and Aidu
Human Cavalier. Bo-bi is from the Pearl Islands, a fairly recent Thyatian conquest and the type of person that adapts to the new regime almost entirely, ignoring many ancestral traditions. When he was young he found a water drake egg which he took home and cared for until it hatched. Aidu is a dumb, vain, cowardly lizard who at present is more trouble than he’s worth.

Sylvia
Human druid (herbalist). Came to explore new lands and plants, and offer her services as an apothecary to the colony. Fairly happy-go-lucky.

Session 1

The trip to Thincol’s Jewel was uneventful, though stories of the rough storms in the Sea of Dread and aquatic monsters were constant worries among the passengers and crew.
Tibor spent most of the time on deck out of the way of the crew, meditating and watching the waves. Bo-bi spent most of his time entertaining his warhorse and his drake, neither of whom liked being stuck on a boat for weeks, while Sylvia and Vår socialized.

Upon arriving at Thincol’s Jewel the PCs were annoyed at being called upon to investigate the apparently deserted settlement while the ship took everyone else to the back-up port. The players did not make too much of a stink about this because it was obvious where the rails of the adventure went and we wanted to get on with it. Tibor put his belongings in the ship’s boat and jumped into the water as he outmasses everyone else put together (tortles are chonky). He easily solos the grindylow who show up to attack the PCs.

On shore Aidu is attacked by the fuath and fails his Reflex save against the clingy water, but AIdu can breath water so isn’t in any danger. He screams like a scared chicken anyway. Bo-bi dispatches it easily with his sword and the PCs successfully make their required skill rolls to notice the sabotaged canoe. They make their way into the seemingly abandoned settlement. They look around and notice how everything seems to have been devoid of the inhabitants for weeks. All the fields are overgrown with weeds and one of them seems to be infested with dire moles. They first enter the smithy and handle the monkey goblins with ease, making note of things to loot recover for later use by the new colonists. They then enter the chapel. The signs of death and the smell of decay are unnerving but Bo-bi’s eyes are immediately drawn to a fancy longbow hanging on the wall and he resolves to ‘recover’ it. Tibor thinks that stealing stuff from the house of the Immortals is probably a bad idea and says so. The others say nothing but try to figure out what happened here. It seems obvious that someone was wounded or killed and then dragged from one end of the chapel to the other. I wonder how there is any sign left of the blood, considering the tropical environment and the time that has elapsed from the killing til now, but am told not to think too much about it. The PCs find the priesthole pretty quickly and the poltergeist emerges and frightens everyone away. This has the happy benefit of stopping Bo-bi from stealing the pretty longbow on the wall. Outside the gang recover their wits and wonder what they should do. Tibor says he wants to try something and goes back inside.

Inside he sits down in the middle of the room and places a piece of chalk in front of him and waits. When the poltergeist starts acting up again, Tibor masks his fear and says “O restless spirit of the unjustly slain [Tibor made some assumptions], I wish to talk. If you cannot speak, please write,” and gestures to the chalk. The poltergeist takes him up on this offer thanks to Tibor being able to use his Constitution modifier in place of his Charisma modifier once per day, and a brief conversation follows where Tibor politely asks the name of the haunt, who killed him, which Immortal’s he paid homage to, and if he will allow Tibor to bury him. The haunt, Silas, answers and Tibor moves to the corpse. Trying not to think about the smell and the liquids pouring down his arms, Tibor wraps Silas’ remains in his blanket, takes him outside and buries him with the fancy bow. Not knowing much of anything of Silas’ patron Zirchev aside from name and basic interests, Tibor prays to Zirchev and asks Him to grant His follower the peace of death currently denied. After this he performs the traditional tortle death dance since he has no idea what sort of rituals Zirchev’s clerics practice and figures something is better than nothing. Once this is done the dirt of the grave starts moving as something pushes its way out. A brief moment of panic at the thought that Silas’ body may have become undead as well as his spirit passes through the PCs, but what emerges is actually the bow. Tibor assumes this means Zirchev accepts the death rites, and he takes the bow and promises to pass the bow on to another worshipper of Zirchev. Then he goes down to the beach to wash off the rotten corpse juices all over him. The PCs then investigate a couple more places until they find some fairly fresh tracks of something heavy being rolled from one house to a farmhouse on the outskirts of ‘town’. Sylvia easily follows the trail, puzzling at the strange footprints left by the being rolling the presumed barrel. The PCs enter the house at the end of the trail and force their way through the warped entry door, causing it to creak loudly. Inside they find hints that something has been here fairly recently and Sylvia spots something hiding in a corner outside and calls to the other PCs. Tibor gets there first and is attacked by a drunk choker, who quickly chokes out the hapless tortle. The other PCs fell it quickly and Sylvia and Vår set about healing the poor reptile. During their investigation they find a plum tree, which had me wondering how they grew in a tropical environment. I was told not to worry my pretty little head about that. Near the base of the tree the PCs found a Clue - a brief missive hinting at power struggles in the little colony. We dutifully note down all names.

Once this is done Sylvia sits down to make some more potions while Vår and Bo-bi want to explore some more. Careful comments about splitting the party from the DM fall on deaf ears. Tibor elects to stay with Sylvia in case something comes upon her. Sylvia protests that such caution is unnecessary but Tibor does not pay any attention to her. Vår and Bo-bi check out the strange-looking fields. By lucky dice rolls the bloody maize does nothing to them and they handle it fairly easily. Then they go to the dire molehills and find out they were actually ankheg hills. Being a veteran of Baldur’s Gate that’s what I feared but hoped it was dire moles. The good news was they were tiny ankehgs and Vår, Aidu and Bo-bi manage to survive and run away and we end the session there.

"The Return of Robin Hood" also ties into the Shakespeare episode of nuWho. On the whole, a decent enough core story dragged down to disappointment by unnecessary ties to nuWho stuff, some dropped plot points, and the inexplicable presence of potatoes in 12/13th century England.

I then read Voices by leGuin, one of the Annals of the Western Shore. I am reading these in the wrong order but it does not seem to matter much. AS you might expect, it was good. I have the first of the series, "Gifts", sitting in the To Read pile.

Currently reading Dragonshadow by Barbara Hambly, the second Winterlands book. I really liked the first and bought the rest not long ago. Dragonshadow is good so far.

"Carson of Venus" was typical ERB: pulpy fun, though it gets a bit same-y after a while.

Currently reading The Return of Robin Hood by Paul Magrs, a 4th Doctor novel with Sarah and Harry as companions, immediately preceding "The Loch Ness Monster". It's also a sequel to the Capaldi-era Robin Hood story.

Watched it yesterdayu and thought it was OK. I loved the retro-aesthetics and thought it did it better than Loki. I liked the flashbacks of previous heroings.
Silver Surfer and Galactus were...fine. Overall the movie was better than anything Marvel has done since Shang-chi.

I also read Their Kingdom Come, the third and final volume of the Night Eaters by Marjorie Liu and Takeda Sana, the creators of the magnificent story Monstress. Highly recommended.

"Bury your gays" was good, though not quite so good as "Camp Damascus". It spent a little more time developing the story and characters, which was good, but there were a number of basic plot questions I felt were a bit shaky. Overall a good read, and enough to keep me coming back to Tingle should he release more mainstream literature.

Currently reading ERB's Carson of Venus. It's the first Carson book I've read and I made the mistake of thinking it was the first in the series when I picked it up at the used book store. They had just got in a bunch of ERB, more than I felt I could justify picking up in one go, so I grabbed a few Tarzan books, a few John Carter books, and this thinking it was the first in the series.
Oh well, so far it seems pretty standard ERB fare so I doubt I'm missing much other than details.

I've never heard of that one. I'll have to track it down.

If they make a third movie in this series I demand it be called "Godzilla Minus Zero/No limit".

I think that's the first time I've seen a spambot give relevant and correct information in a thread.

To beat a joke to death, I was tenderized and left to marinate underwater so no salt would have stayed on me.

One of my favortie types of LeGuin stories is the one where she goes full anthropologist, and this collection had its fair share of those.

Coming up, Chuck Tingle's Bury your gays. I never thought I'd find myself buying his stuff, much less liking it and buying more. I don't think I'll ever try 'classic' Tingle but I love that it exists.

My game which has been on hold since February will be on hold a little longer. GM burnout was worse than I thought.

In better news, with WanG wrapped up my wife will run Ruins of Azlant, transposed to Mystara so I can play a teenage mutant ninja tortle.

In even better news, my original gang met again for the first time this year and started a new campaign which is an interim game of the last one now that two members are on parental leave. First session was on Friday and it was a lovely time. Lots of laughs and wonderful swingy 1st level fights: half an hour of everything missing, me being grappled by a giant leech and reduced to negatives by another PC in attempt to help me, spider poison requiring the better part of a week to recover from.

"Annihilation" was interesting, much better than the movie, though in fairness the book is hard to translate to film. The wife has the rest of the series so I will be getting around to the rest of the novels eventually.

Currently reading Le Guin's A fisherman of the inland sea, a collection of short stories. Some I've read before, some not, and I remember little of those I have previously read. See my earlier post about how I should not buy any new books.

I need hardly say it's a good collection, considering the author.

I consider the 'within one step' more of a guideline than a rule. Part of it is natural selection, so to speak. People who are of vastly different moral and ethical inclination than a particular god will probably not gravitate towards their service in the first place. Also, a god will prefer servants who align more closely with them, so even if a mortal thinks they would be a good fit it's still up to the god to accept them.

I'm also a fan of the employer-employee take on divine servitude. As direct servant of a god a cleric has a job to do and certain set of standards to uphold. As long as they can do this many gods will not particularly care what a cleric's actual alignment is. You might be required to act a certain way that is not your innate inclination, but if you want a bit of the power and authority of a god that's part of the deal.

What I did when my players met Xanderghul in my very much not canon adaptation of ReotR was have the illusions in his demesne be so strong and so thick that True Seeing was worse than useless, giving the visual equivalent of being in a blinding technicolor snowstorm.

I should never buy new books for precisely this reason. I could jsut reread everything I have for the rest of my life and probably be content. Doesn't stop me buying new stuff, though.

Not yet.

More Spy Family, more Ranma 1/2, and surprisingly, more Tales of Wedding Rings. A good season on this alone

OK so first one to really catch my attention this season is "May I ask one final Thing".

The wife and I are tried it on your recommendation and are enjoying it. There's something so pleasing about seeing unpleasant people getting punched in the face.

Bjørn Røyrvik wrote:

Work today, and it seems like it will be very quiet. I fear I will be forced to look for a new job soon.

Because you don't want to work there anymore, or because you'll be getting laid off or something similar?

The latter.

Construction is in a slump in Norway right now, and since I work at the most expensive supply store...

"I whip out my PENIS*; does that help?"

*Piezo-Electric Necron Interference Shard
For context, we were playing WanG (Wrath and Glory, a WH40k game) and we encountered Necrons. Previously I had gotten a device which was supposed to mess them up in some way. We spent quite some time trying to find a name for the decive that would be puerile enough for us.

So you have a bunch of gamers ages 35 to nearly sixty giggling like children at the continual references to my PENIS.

Work today, and it seems like it will be very quiet. I fear I will be forced to look for a new job soon.

A trip to my parent's house tomorrow to check the mail, water plants etc. while they are at the family cabin, then game night.

"Vinas Solamnus" was decent. I didn't like it quite as much this time around - there were a few issues I felt could have been handled a bit better but I'm inclined to put that down as changing tastes rather than improved taste. I should reread "The Legend of Huma" and see if I like it more now.

Currently reading Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation, the first of the Southern Reach trilogy, which was adapted to a movie.

"Metallic Love" was good, as expected and half-way remembered. A different sort of book than SML was. Darker, a bit scarier.

On to Vinas Solamnus by J. Robert King, a Dragonlance novel.
I read it years ago, found a copy at a used bookstore recently and got it. I remember liking this one much more than "The Legend of Huma", though the latter is far more famous a Solamnic Knight. We'll see what I feel about it twenty plus years after I first read it.

Without just giving out free XP with no explanation...
bring back some old school items like the Libram of Gainful Conjuration, one for each class or just multiples of a generic one which any class can use. Let them find them in Karzoug's library. He never got around to using them and probably couldn't benefit from them in any case but he didn't want to give them out to underlings (greedy bastard, and all that). That or he kept them around in case he lost levels the old school way and needed a way to quickly regain them.
That's one level.

Add more encounters along the way with tougher opposition to push them up. If the party has a good trapfinder, litter the place with nasty traps - it shouldn't take much game time to go through them if the PCs can just take 10 their way through but will drive home the point that the place is dangerous and give a lot of XP.

Apart from mere XP you can give the PCs more loot and increase their power that way. Xin-shalast is supposed to be an astoundingly rich place and you can show that by giving the PCs far more than WBL would indicate.

I read that one twice. A decent book.

"Three body problem" was a bit different from the TV show. Apart from the Westernization, the show added a bunch of characters and plot elements (which might be from later books for all I know). We actually got to 'see' the Trisolarans and their tech in the book, which made events make more sense but also made them more human. The show's choice to show everything from the POV of humans worked quite well.

On to Tanith Lee's Metallic love a sequel of sorts to her "Silver metal lover".

1-3: It's my name. I got tired of making weird names for online forums.
4: Norway, for simplicity's sake.

"Unconquerable Sun" was OK. Our title hero was only the focus of about one fifth of the book, but it's pretty obviously building up to some further books. I may or may not pick them up.

On to Liu Cixin's Three body problem. I've seen the TV show and bought the book so I could compare. After 100 pages it's too early to tell how different they are but the obvious alteration so far is that they, to my great annoyance, changed almost all characters to Westerners.

Work tomorrow, game night has been moved to Monday from Sunday, but I will have a facetime call with a cousin. I didn't get to go to her wedding this summer so we'll try to reconnect virtually.

So all the giants he smote end up in his home? Sounds like a bad way to get rid of enemies.

"Through a glass, clearly" was good. Not Asimov's best but good.

Curently reading Kate Elliot's Unconqurable Sun.

The Machen were pretty good, worth looking into if you are interested in pre-Lovecraftian weird fiction. One somewhat major quibble is that the cover claims the book contains one story it doesn't contain. A bit annoying. I will definitely be keeping an eye out for more Machen.

Currently reading Asimov's Through a Glass Clearly, a collection of four short stories/novellas. I'm pretty sure I've read one, perhaps more than one, of the stories before.

I love the IgNobels.

If my hypothesis of the 'racists won the race war' is correct, I suspect AlterAdrian is leading the resistance. He and PrimeAdrian will be two peas in a pod once he processes the fact that PrimeChris =/= AlterChris.

Sounds like a job for the High School Harem Comedy RPG

Work tomorrow, up to see the folks on Sunday, game night on Monday.

Awesome. I have another seven years before my 40th D&D anniversary.

Because really powerful wizards are hard to put down permanently?

Because it's a trope with long history in fantasy stories that powerful evil wizard is defeated but returns at a later date?

Because the devs wanted to?

Because players want to see what he can do at full strength?

I have to admit, killing people who look different and taking their stuff is on brand for white supremecists.

My only experience with Cat's Eye is the Lupin III crossover movie.

And we will soon get an announcement about the new Magic Knight Rayearth.

It was already announced and know we're getting an announcement for another announcement. Seems to me as though there are a a couple unnecessary steps there.

Currently reading a collection of short stories by Arthur Machen called The Black Seal and other stories. It's a slim volume with only 5 stories. You may recall that Machen was one of Lovecraft's influences, something that is obvious to those who've read both authors. Enjoyable.

Saw it last week and it was thoroughly meh. Didn't care about anyone, the story and development was obvious and uninteresting. Kudos for having better actions scenes than most Marvel has had recently.