About Dark Souls.....

And I just want to point this out about Demon's Souls. The only way to get a strategy guide for that game was to preorder it and get the collectors edition. I didn't know there was a collectors edition and thus I didn't get a guide book. It was hell without help but I managed.

Dark Souls has a guide book for sale.

Good luck trying to find it. My wife did for me and it is awesome. But I'm only falling back onto it when I really hit a wall and can't move on. I want to earn this like I earned victories in Demon's Souls.

For me the real joy of this book is this is the guide book for me to convert this to tabletop. Hell, just flipping through it looks more like an RPG book than a hint book. Its hardcover, full color, heavy stock paper with maps, info about the world, gear & magical items, monsters (with tactics), NPC's you encounter, some history of the world. Its better than anything WotC has produced in the past 5 years. Its better than what Paizo has put out in the past 2 years (mostly due to the fact there is no Wayne Reynolds in it... I'm so sick of seeing his work on most of the Paizo books. Find some more artists to use please! They are out there!).

Conversion will be a bit slow but it will happen. All I'll have to find are people willing to play through a rather dark setting where death will occur and the souls of the fallen empower you and are the currency for the land.

Sounds pretty good to me. Especially around Halloween.

Scary Difficult Games: Demon's Souls

To anyone who plays video games of any kind this game should give you a 'fight or flight' response at the mere mention of its title. To some this is an ungodly difficult game that was built only for the most hardcore basement dwelling virginal gamers still living at home with their parents. To others it was the supreme test of patience and tactics where every inch of the terrain gained was a major victory and each death was a learning experience. And some hear the name and say ' dis iznt HaLoEz! LOLLololll111!! Ur Gai N luv buttsecks'.

I hate those people. They need to have their controllers taken away and their parents need to send them to their rooms without dinner & take away all electronic devices so they can troll no more.

When I picked up this game I fully was feeling the old school call of proving my hardcore-ness from the glory days of the NES. I wanted something that the masses would deem too difficult and run away from. I could feel the raw testosterone pumping through my veins as I plunked this into the PS3 with the sole purpose of owning this game. I created my character, a knight (high defense & strength) and begin to plunge into the realms of Demon's Souls.

Two minutes into the first part of the first area I died. Respawing at the central hub, I returned ready to face the challenges ahead of me, and then died again.

And again.

And again.

This went on for close to an hour as I kept getting killed by the undead warriors guarding then entrance of the castle I was supposed to explore. I could feel the rage starting to build up. The controller was trembling in fear as it knew I was close to throwing it. Instead I turned off the game and stomped off somewhere to relax.

After such a sound thrashing from this wicked game I started to doubt my abilities. Actually I was quick in pointing out it was the games fault (even though I knew it wasn't true at all). I felt there was something wrong with what was happening. So I decided to change tactics. I was going to move very slowly, picking my targets deliberately, and using my surroundings for any and all tactical advantages I could get. And if that didn't work I'm returning this frakking game cause it MUST be the games fault.

Well I'm pleased to say that my second choice for play style was the correct one. And upon doing so I managed to work deeper into the castle than ever before. On the way unlocking shortcut passageways so I didn't have to traverse the direct paths when I died (and I still did....but not nearly as badly as day one). Over the next two days I traversed deeper into the castle, learning new tactics against the newer and more powerful enemies it held within. My least favorites being the gargantuan red dragon that did fly by fire breathing over the exposed bridge to the next area you had to run over and the infamous blue eyed knights that would chase you down and murder you like it was going out of style.

Every new area opened, every new enemy defeated was a well earned victory. And it felt good. And all I did was fall back into how I played D&D with some of my friends. We planned, we implemented, we learned and eventually conquered. It took time but the rewards was worth it.

I will admit that I never actually finished Demon's Souls. I defeated most of all the bosses in the game (plus 3 of 4 Archdemons defeated!) and reached a battle that I will have to grind for experience to get past. Tactics be damned but I just don't have enough defense and dexterity to avoid its attacks or soak more than 3 hits. So I put the game on the shelf where I will get back to it eventually and finish what I started. Besides, its spiritual successor just came out and I've started that and the craving to return to the dark fantasy world has returned.  

Oh and what is the name of its successor?

And its amazing. So amazing I'm thinking that I'm going to convert its world into a tabletop RPG. All I got to wait for is my Tome of Horror Complete and then I can begin.

Rise of the Runelords: The Battle for Jorgenfist

Saturday the Runelords group assembled to keep pushing deeper into Jorgenfist in the hopes of breaking Mokmurian's forces and eventually breach his inner sanctum and confront the tyrant himself.

I would say the party is approximately 2/3 of the way through book four at this point. Depending on how they handle themselves they will either get to Mokmurian at the end of the next session or the beginning of the one afterwards.

But who is 'the party'? Here's the refresher on them:

The PlayersBruce - Marcellus (Human fighter 10 / damage sink / constantly hungry / Aerodus older brother)
Mike  - Seoni (human wizard 1/ cleric of Calistria 9 / Marcellus' girlfriend / scary lady)
Jim     - Aerodus (human sorcerer - destiny bloodline 10 / too willing to commit murder for his own profit)
Matt  - Nicholai ( half-elf bard 10 / wanna-be playboy / skill whore / Wren's....boy toy)
Jess   - Wren (human rogue 10 / pie thief of Sandpoint / linguistics master / Nicholai's lord & mistress)
Brian - Zatara ( half-elf barbarian 10 / damage monster / the party's conscious / afraid of Seoni/ saved AGAIN from death by a plot twist card!)
Me  - DM (slightly grumpy DM / storyteller / had a headache through out most of the night / master of the circle game)

In a bit of meta-DM'ing I had Jess triple check the party's treasure they have accumulated over the course of the four modules they have played in to check to see if they still had the Wand of Knock I know they got from an earlier book. Thankfully my wife doesn't throw out any of her notes and did find they still had the wand and didn't sell it either. Good for them as it expedited opening the ancient locked scroll case they lifted from the Black Monk ( a mummy/monk that was guardian over the ruins below Jorgenfist). Really I was glad they still had it because it would make a long process even longer as Wren needed to make 5 DC 40 skill checks in succession to open the locks. Failure meant they reset and they couldn't take 20 on the checks either. However each use of Knock opened 2 locks. 3 charges off the wand later and success!

A bunch of curse scrolls, a bunch of divine scrolls and one scroll with the password needed to get into the library under Jorgenfist...well to pass its guardian anyways. And my original idea was to give them the XP for now being able to bypass that hazard but I ended up forgetting until after the night was over and people headed home.

Now some people wouldn't give them the XP for it, well not until they reached and successfully passed the guardian. I'm not that type. I know the characters won't forget this information so there is no reason to penalize the players for a brain fart. Its just stupid and detracts from the fun of it. I'm not going for realism, I want enjoyment.

At this point in the session its really up to the players to dictate where they wanted to go. I mentioned that they would not meet Mokmurian tonite...at all. Not that they wouldn't be ready (well....they could possibly get slaughtered) but I forgot to print out his info before they arrived and didn't have time to fetch it after we got going. The party decided to explore the other structures on the ground floor within the walls of the fort.

The first building they ventured into was a building dedicated to various nature totems (mostly bear totems). On a successful perception check they hear voices within. Four stone giants and another speaking giant in a strange dialect. Kicking open the door they found out this was also the resting place for a frost giant envoy to a frost giant tribe that is en route to join the war against mankind. And the battle began. It was a rough one and if it wasn't for a well placed plot twist card Zatara would have been a smear on the ground. The card (played by Bruce after I confirmed a critical hit on Zatara but before damage was rolled had the giant drop his weapon negating the attack...that's how I ruled it anyways). It was a giant sized great axe. That's 3x damage on a crit. I had 9d6 in my hands ready to roll.

Dammit.

Oh well, while I didn't like that cause I like rolling large amounts of dice, I knew the next building has a much worse encounter ahead. And I'm glad they plowed on ahead, down some of their resources from this fight.

So the next building, the feasting hall, the party did the same tactics. They snuck over to the building successfully, set up their attack formation outside the door and then rolled their sneak to open the door slightly and look inside. This time they were noticed by the head of the giants army, Mokmurian's general. He flashed a hand gesture to the giants inside after the party closed the cracked door to cast spells & buffs on themselves. Now the giants were expecting them. And now so was the building's guardian. A awakened dire bear named Embers. Embers was the real threat in here. The others baddies I was expecting to die fairly easily....not Embers though.

Now it was all up to the initiative rolls. And for a bit the party was handling the fight pretty well. Wren however got tangled up with Embers who pinned her to the ground getting ready to maul her next round. Nicholai, not wanting to see his honey-pie bite it, cast 'grease' on her so she could escape Ember's grip. And she did but she was badly hurt. While this was going on Aerodus was slinging lightning bolts at the giants while Marcellus and Zatara waded in swords swinging. Then Zatara got toe to toe with the general. He did a lot of damage to him with his three attacks (confidentially he almost killed him) but it wasn't enough & on the generals turn all hell broke loose and the desperate portion of the battle began for the party.

The general unloaded hell upon Zatara. Three attacks. One was a crit. The general was packing a heavy pick. 4x damage on a crit. He pushed 75 points of damage into the barbarian on the second attack and Zatara fell into the negatives. Then the pushed on with the third strike on the fallen barbarian ending his career of adventuring.

Knocking Zatara down made the players sweat. Killing him made them panicky and upset. And now risks were starting to be taken. Some worked and others didn't. Somewhere in the fight the party started to figure out that Embers was what they *should* have focused on first. He started with over 200hp and was a monster built for dealing a lot of damage. At one point he got his paws on the bard and damn near killed him but the bard was saved after a combined effort from the surviving players to unleash a full out assault on him, killing the bear.

After living up to the party moniker of ' by the skin of our asses', they survived and collected their fallen friend and retreated to their 'safe house' in the cliffs. By now they are preparing to plans to revive Zatara. The following day Seoni cast 'Raise Dead' on him and one application of 'restoration' to negate one of the two negative levels Zatara had. The next one could be removed a week later with another casting...providing they survive that long.

And after re-evaluating their plans they decided its time to go into the lowest levels of Jorgenfist. They didn't get too far into the lowest levels but they have started to encounter the more ancient and weird parts waiting for them. So far they fought a runeslaved hill giant in a trapped room that shrunk some of the party members (Wren did disarm the trap after it reset a few times). After about 10 minutes the shrunked party members returned to regular size. Then into the last room of the night the party battled a stone golem guarding a 12ft tall cauldron with the seven pointed star emblazoned upon it. When the fight ended I called it for the night.

I do want to add that I like how golems (and other creatures previously immune to precision damage) are now effected by it. Now rogues are no longer useless fighting constructs, plants or undead. When flanking they can still sneak attack. And why the hell not. EVERYTHING has a weak spot. And rogues are great at exploiting them. Its one of many corrections the PFRPG fixed from the 3.0-3.5 D&D rules.

All in all it was a good night. I believe the players all had fun. Everyone survived but there is a loss of supplies and some lingering battle scars. And now they are in the end game for book four. Which means that soon the Runelords game will be on hold for a little while. Then when break is over its onto the final two books. And its just gets harder from here on out. For both the players and myself updating an older rule system into the newer one. And I will touch upon that horror of DMing when we get to book five: conversions.

Blah.