Brogue

I wanna point you all to this great free Roguelike called Brogue. If you've never played a roguelike game before (or an ASCII game) then this is probably going to be your best gateway drug into the scene. It's a modern game, and the entire thing can be played with the mouse if you were so inclined. Although I far prefer using the num pad. Those arrow keys just don't get used enough these days. I consider them my Dwarf Fortress keys, set aside for just that purpose.

Popping a bloodwort pod.

Gameplay is centered around delving 26 levels to find the Amulet of Yendor, the same amulet from Nethack. There are additional levels for super pros but I don't expect to be seeing them anytime soon. The furthest I've gotten so far is floor 10.
You're garanteed to always die in strange and delightful ways. My last death just before writing this post was met when I grabbed a key off a trapped alter making the wall explode and rats to come flying out of nowhere. I can honestly say I didn't see it coming.
The game is rife with strategy and smart thinking and a little luck seem to be the keys to survival. The learning curve to start playing is trivial but the learning curve to finish the game is something else entirely.

The @ symbol is your character. The "j" is a jackal. the pink stuff is gas from a Bloat that exploded over a pit.

The best part about the game though? The iPad port! It's fantastic! This game is perfectly suited to touch screen devices. It mirrors the desktop gameplay directly without any faffing about. I actually found brogue after being dissatisfied with the Nethack iPad port. It's all free on there as well.

The least impressive experience (and the only experience I've had to pay for) is the Android port on the Galaxy S4. Navigating menus and things are a total pain. I'd probably give it a miss if you're thinking about getting it on your phone. But definitely if you have a tablet this game is a must.

The game is in active development as well, so we can always look forward to new things cropping up in the game.

Post your best scores here and regail me with your adventures.

My deepest delve so far has been to level 10 with 2861 points. I was killed by a Dar Blademaster who didn't like the thought of me releasing another ogre from captivity to act as my bodyguard. I already had one, plus a monkey follower. Fat lot of good they did at the end.

@ vs Kobold

Snow: Episode 41

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Yo! We started a G+ page for +Project Snow. Check it out! We haven't dumped that much in yet. But we'll start sticking in exclusive content and behind the scenes stuff. If there's anything in particular you wanna see there feel free to drop a comment or add the page and bug us there.
I'm pretty proud of the second to last row of panels. I always do a crazy angle because I don't want the comic to feel like it's just a flat talking heads newspaper strip. And then I realize I'm in way over my head and spend ages and ages trying to get the angle of the characters just right.

Silent Blobby Comic

Yay! The blobby people are back! I've missed drawing them.

I originally did this for a Silent Comic Appreciation Day thing. But I totally missed the deadline because my computer kamikazed when I suggested to it that it should try dual screening. Since then I got a sweet graphics card, a Radeon HD 7800. I'm playing Battlefield 3 and Crysis 2 on the max settings I can get them on and it's handling them super smoothly. Not a single jitter or lag. In terms of drawing stuff I can finally run all the graphics acceleration stuff on Photoshop that I avoided before.

With that said, my game of choice at the moment is Brogue. It works amazingly on iPad as well! So I'm able to die in lots of interesting ways while I'm on the bus now!

As roguelike games go, this one would make an excellent starting point for beginners. The UI is intuitive to use, and you can use the mouse entirely to play or the keyboard if you're feeling in the mood.

The image below was drawn for the Youth group newsletter I do (I guess you'd call it a charity job). I try and get a bit wack on the designing, just trying whatever comes to mind. I've made the guy with the chainsaws their unofficial mascot. I feel like this image sums up youth perfectly.

Snow: Episode 40

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This ones getting posted at an odd time, but we'll still be updating again on Sunday. Me 'n Matt got all excited after going to Chromacon on Sunday. We're really trying to churn out a decent website for Snow now, as well as getting the story itself cranking.
Seriously though, it's great having an event like that happening in our little country. Armageddon and Overload just don't cut it in my opinion.
I'll talk all about it in a different post though. Matt took some photos that I want to steal and put up here.

Aaron Gilmore. He may share a similar name to our comics Aaron, but that's where the resemblance ends. I kind of wanted to discuss his whole thing. When my opinions formed he hadn't bailed out of being in cabinet yet. So in light of all that has happened I want to raise a couple things.
Do we really care? Seriously. Absolutely no one ever voted for him. He has no constituents to which he's answerable too. No one to front up to when he's being a dick, other than old Johnny Latchkey. This is an argument I've actually heard brought up by people who are of the First Past the Post persuasion. Under that system you would at least have a large screening process for all the wack jobs and weirdos who currently slip in under the party vote.
Secondly, does the media have the right to fire someone? Cause that's essentially what happens. I saw one interviewer asking him over and over again whether he "promises to fall on your sword if you ever fudge up again." Watching the "interview" and then comparing it with the events that started the whole made it all laughable. You can't make a promise to some self righteous person with a microphone that you'll quit your job if you do it again. The air was thick with irony as the room of journalists told him he was an ugly bully who should have died as he crawled out of his mum.
Third, yeah he represents us and he should have been a bit more in control of himself. But he did a pretty mint job of representing what your average New Zealander is like. Just saying. There's a little Aaron Gilmore in all of us.

Forgotten Realms "Adventures" 2nd Edition Art

This is a follow up article to the 2e DMG art I pushed out the other day. Note that I don't own these images and are copywroted by a company which no longer exists. Note the past tense to copyright. This book mostly featured black and white full page images, but I opted not to put 'em in unless there is a huge public outcry for their release. In which case I'll hide them on wikileaks for no one to find.

This first image captures an intriguing moment where a unicorn and it's rider couldn't be more full of themselves.

This is just a small excerpt from the pantheon of gods. They really need to ease up on how many of those bastards they make. Milil is the fat goddess of badgering. Deneir is the great god of Goatees. Lathander is the Cocktail goddess of Peacockaroo. Sune just kind of mucks around. Torm is the god of Clubbing People In The Face. Chauntea isn't a god, but he's really good at faking it because no one ever questions a guy with pedophile eyes and a huge ass forehead. He grasps his shaft with two hands. Ready to pound someone with it.

An archer in the middle of shooting an arrow at a stupid bird that's unaware of it's impending fate. The other party members do their best to look in different directions and not encourage such outlandish behaviour.

A mage acts on some bad misinformation and shoots at exactly where the bone dragons heart isn't. Wizard to the right Lols at his hilarious practical joke which is about to get his friend dismembered. A three way split of the loot is better than a four way split.

Woman who suffers from being vastly out of proportion attempts to cover up her abnormalities by being awesome on the lute thing. Rapier Man passes the time by playing stuck in the mud with a dragon.

I'm sorry but this picture is actually really cool.

Dungeon Master's Guide 2nd Edition Art

So here's the art out of the old D&D Dungeon Masters Guide. Let me tell ya, bubbles don't last a very long time around a raging dragon vs sorcerer combo. I love how the dragons wings don't really exist. They're just all sort of spilling into the spindly armed wizard dude who has a really long left arm. If you enjoy this post, go check out the follow up one I did for the Forgotten Realms 2e supplement.

Here we have a classic depiction of a dude getting nailed by a gorgons nose cannons. It's an easy mistake to make. Those things look so docile till you rush at it with half a dozen friends screaming. Also note the chick getting perforated by a magic arrow before being able to lob her holy hand grenade. The guy at the forefront has just realised he could be easily used as a meme expression in 20 years time.

Some sort of cleric warrior dude visits the medieval version of a retirement home.

The olds are stoked to see him.

A chick bitch slaps a troll into line after he inappropriately asked her if she'd lost her way to the kitchen.

In a sudden era change a centurion yells "Quickly men! Attack that pillar! It's the only way!"

The old man on the top is feeling ridiculious after trying to mime "an Aragorn" without any actual doors.

Cleopatra attempts to commune with the anachronism gods to help bring her some more boots.

Sauron comes home early from work.

Snow: Episode 39

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If you missed Free Comic Day 2013 then don't worry! You can have this whole entire webcomic for free. Knock yourself out you thrifty smart person you. Matt has really stepped up the gears for the story now. This strip is throwing me off as much is it should be for you as well. Don't worry we aren't Lost. We do have answers coming up! But first we'll have polar bears randomly appearing where they shouldn't. Although that reference kind of falls flat when it's very likely that there ARE polar bears rocking around.

FCBD2013 went pretty well for me I think. +Matthew Rust our illustrious writer was our wheel man for the day accompanied by myself +Becky Hunt and her lil sister Lissy. We got to Heroes for sale far to soon. I guess we were rather eager beavers. A line had already arbitrarily formed and excited kids peered through the windows while their accompanying parents kept a lookout like mare cats.
We didn't like the idea of standing around so we wandered down K Road towards the Army Surplus store when we bumped into Ghøstie and Trust Me. Ghøstie was working on a piece as a part of the Street Art Festival going down. I was a bit of a dick and couldn't remember his name, although I recognized his stuff. It was pretty cool watching him work. Such clean lines with a spray can don't seem possible. It's like watching someone doing vectors in real life. To see the end results check out Streetarse

Ghøstie

Arkham Comics location is a little strange. Tucked away in Royal Oaks mall. We saw the weird looking batman again as well as Richard Fairgray. It sucks, If we had caught them together I could have asked them where their sword was.By the time we were over that Heroes had opened up. We went back, grabbed a bunch of comics and headed off. I was worried at the lack of RPG material there. The board games were there, but D&D stuff was nowhere to be seen. They could have been behind the cosplayers and the weird looking batman though. The new store is nice and big, if not a little further away from the CBD. I hope this means they're doing really well for themselves. When I told my 10 year old nephew today that there were only really two comic book stores in Auckland he sounded appalled. I hope that when he's an autonomous human being that there are more stores to chose from. He told me that he liked comics with big adventures in them, not short little ones. I felt good about that, I feel like Snow will fit his criteria when he gets a bit older.
Since we had exhausted all known sources of free comics in Auckland we boosted it to Hamiltron. You scoff. But truly Hamilton is the city of the future. We quickly gathered up more free comics. While Lissy went and poked at Marvel stuff and Matt drooled over colour copies of Scott Pilgrim I headed for the back corner to check out the D&D stuff. I caught Chris, the dude that runs the place and I awkwardly tried remembering the name of the product I ordered off him via G+. When I finally remembered I found out that it hadn't come in yet. No biggy, free postage. So I blew all my money on the regular Monster Manual and The Shadowfell (Gloomrought & Beyond) box. I was pretty stoked with the contents of the box. I really shouldn't have gotten the Monster Manual though. If you're a new DM I recommend skipping that and getting the Monster Vault instead. Better layout of the monster stat blocks and actual tokens and stuff you can use along with it.

The real surprise purchase was the original 2nd Edition Advanced D&D books I found at a second hand book store down the road. They're fantastic! Having never played any other version of D&D other than 4th Edition I treat any older versions as rich hallowed history. While I'm never going to play 2e AD&D I'm definitely gonna use it as inspiration. Later in the week I may post some of the sweet artwork they contain. There may be copyright problems, but hopefully Wizards doesn't mind if I post old TSR stuff. The art is just so great. It's done in that era where chisel jaws, blond bowl cut guys and very naked poofy haired women weren't done ironically. Also monsters actually look whimsical and creepy. I do enjoy the digital art style they use these days (and actually prefer it) but you have to dig the old stuff sometimes.
Uh. Where was I. Sorry. Oh yeah, then we went and had lunch and I punched a cup with ice in it, spraying it everywhere. Then we decided to leave. Because that's what you do.
I nudged Matt into the urinal and apparently he couldn't finish his business after that so he desperately had to go half way back to Auckland.
As we got back to town lightening decided to tag along, zapping the countryside. I managed to be looking directly at one of the strikes. It was amazing, and a pretty sweet end to this post.

Free Comic Book Day 2013

Are you doing this? You should be! If you haven't done it before it's where you troll all your comic book stores for a some free promo comics. You usually have a limit of three or so, and going to different places usually has some different stock out. Amongst my group it becomes less about the comics and more about a nerdish pilgrimage. We'll probably be hitting the new Heroes for Sale at the end of K Road and then off to Gotham Comics over in Onehunga. Edit: Apparently Gotham is closed now. But the crew that used to be there now has a new place called Arkham City Comics (I see what you guys did there) in Royal Oaks Mall. So we'll go check that out instead.

The real event though is MK1 in Hamilton, perhaps the best part about the tron. I'm hoping I'll be able to get my hands on the original Walking Dead story, although I'm not holding out that much hope to see any floating around. I know that if I was everybody else I would probably Flash mob a couple of abortion clinics shouting (all the men included) "GET THIS XENOMORPH OUT OF ME!" and then after I'd gotten bored of being everyone else I'd go and pick up a copy of The Walking Dead and leave none for the real me.

MK1 Stock

While we're out on our crusade I'll hopefully pick up some more D&D stuff. My players have gunned through The Reavers of Harkenwold and Cairn of the Winterking with only a few near death experiences. I'll be able to coast on completely original adventures for a while. It feels refreshing when you have complete control over the places and the monsters your heroes might encounter and you know exactly what the ins and outs are of the mysteries that surround each adventure. I really need to chronicle their latest adventures. Plowing a flying boat into the ground to kill two guards for their gold is just too good to not be written down.