T-4 days

Warhammer: Well, it's 4 days till the Hombre, and I totally don't have a painted army, just like usual. I should really be working, but instead I'm watching TV. At least I've got Thursday off from work, so I can drop a rush job and have everything just a little less crappy looking by the time I get to Killeen.

Descent again

Board Games: Well, we played Descent again with a ramp-up for the Overlord, and things were a lot more balanced. In a nutshell, each treasure chest gave the monsters bonus wounds and armor. We said that Coppers were +1, Silvers +2 and Golds +3. Things were pretty tough for the heroes, and the Overlord won. I don't think things were severely overpowered for the Overlord, though. I for one made some bad decisions, basing my thinking on the way the game was, and not how the changes would affect the power of certain cards.

Descent variant for next session

Board Games: Here's the changes to Descent I'm going to advocate for the next session:

1. The Overlord draws a number of cards each turn equal to the number of heroes. This might overbalance him at first, but I'd like to see. It definitely speeds up the game.

2. The Overlord doubles production every time he cycles the deck. This will also speed up the heroes' actions, and will hopefully lead to them making risky decisions.

3. The Overlord always receives a number of monsters when summoning equal to the number of heroes. If this means that additional monsters have to be added, they will be the scrub type.

Descent

Board Games: The group I roleplay/board game with played about our 5th session of Descent tonight. I really think this game needs work. We've only played with 4 and 5 players, so I'm not sure if fewer changes things. I've only played as the Overlord (GM) once. After that, and talking with (and seeing the reactions of) the other three guys who have done it, I've come to the conclusion that it pretty much just sucks. Rolling through the dungeon as a Hero is fun, but that basically means the Overlord just gets to sit there and say "yep, you killed it" after virtually every roll. The problem is really with the massively over-powered level 2 and 3 treasure chests that you find in the dungeon. These swing the game from difficult to simple for the Heros. All in all, it's fun, and I want to play it again, but I think I'll either advocate using some of the house rules from The Geek or something all the players, GMs and I can go along with.

Computer Geekery

Computer F/OSS: I've had a series of plans to create some Free software that relate to Warhammer. The oldest of which was for an Army Builder replacement which would work on Linux. Most recently, I've been thinking about doing an AJAX-based map campaign utility. Basically you'd have units which you could drag and drop to move them their alloted distance. You'd also have a GM interface to approve these orders. I was thinking that an AJAX Army Builder program would work pretty well. Particularly if it used XML files for it's army and roster definitions, so that other programs could be written to read and create the armies. I've got some basic XML done for the army and rosters, as well as some example Perl code for reading them. Of course, what I need most is not to jump to a new project till I've finished this one.

First Post!

This blog is mostly a place for me to record some of my geek activities, as I believe you all totally need to know about them.

So, let's get started.

Comics: I bought 40 dollars worth of comics Saturday. I hadn't been to the local store (The Comic Books Store, which doesn't apparently have a website) in over a month, so upon arrival, I found that I was two issues behind on several of the series that I've been reading. I grabbed up about 15 books just before closing time (6 pm), and headed over to work to read before I met some friends for dinner.

I've been reading almost exclusively DC, as the Infinite Crisis event has been pretty interesting. JSA, JLA and the Outsiders have been the core of my interest. From Marvel I've been reading the New Avengers and Marvel Team-up, but the characters just haven't been singing to me.