lederhosen

"If I've been infected by the wererat... that means I get monk bonuses with my natural attacks!"

"...wanna be my animal companion?"

- the party's monk and ranger making the best of adversity.

I was also entertained by the moment when the ranger unexpectedly took out the last of their foes while trying to surrender to them. (Note to party: if you're going to try bluffing your enemies all the time, one of you really ought to put some skill points in Bluff. Also, if you have advance warning of combat, consider using your buffing spells BEFORE moving into range of the big hurty ogre.)

Annoyed a couple of weeks back: one of the NPCs in my D&D campaign is a priestess somewhere in her sixties. I wanted to paint up a figure for her, so I went by Mind Games in Melbourne to look through the miniatures...

It's always been easy enough to find female figures, of course. Granted, the ones who don't look like pole-dancers from a fantasy-themed 'gentlemen's club' are still a minority, but these days it's a large enough minority to offer a lot of choice. If you want a sensibly-armoured woman holding a mace, you should be able to find one.

If you want a woman over the age of fifty - or even thirty - that's quite another matter. There are, of course, any number of old men, ranging from a hundred and one Gandalf wannabes to any number of grizzled generals. But as for human women... a couple of Wicked Witches, and that's pretty much it.

This bemuses me. Some of the most memorable people I've met IRL have been grand old women. Even in fantasy novels, Tolkien excepted, there are quite a few. And the number of female warriors/mages/etc suggests that there must be plenty of openings for them in people's gaming universes... so what happens to them after they hit thirty? Do they all sprain their ankles and retire from adventuring? Do all those queens and princesses grow less powerful and important with age? Or have the Men of Gor stolen them all by then? In the end I went with one of the Ragnarok figures - a priestess who wears a full-face mask, so at least her age is ambiguous. For this particular character, that might make sense, but it's not really a universal solution.

And now that I'm done ranting, ( miscellaneous campaign fluff from my game. )

Oh, and: exercise since last: 40km, total 560km/336mi: 5th day from Weathertop. Slacked off during January, trying to get back into it now. Got 16km done while watching Day of the Jackal, which is still a good movie after all these years. Along with Princess Bride, one of the very few book-to-film adaptations that stand up alongside the original.

Revived my D&D campaign yesterday after nine months' hiatus. We'd agreed that three of the players would drop out of my game, because it's easier for them to come to half our games (i.e. Rey's sessions) than all, and added one new player (workmate of Rey's) so we now have four players, which is a nice manageable number. One monk, one cleric, one ranger, one fighter/sorcerer, all second-level at the start of this session.

( PC don't grow on trees, you know... )

Crossposted to roleplayers, an adventure I inflicted on my D&D group over the last couple of sessions. One of the basic ideas for this came from Ravenloft, but the embellishment is mine, with a little help from Disney :-)

( The Village. )