10 songs to sum up the weekend.

10 songs that sum up your weekend...or were on your weekend playlist...and one picture that relates back. (oh, and if you feel like it, tell us why you picked the songs you did)

I don't normally do this particular meme. Weekends aren't WEEKENDS to me. They are just Saturday and Sunday, another couple of days of the week - given I get half of Saturday off work, and most of Sunday off (4 hours plus of Church and Meetings). So finding songs that sum up an arbitrary two days just doesn't seem like something I do - Plus I generally don't do special music things to gear up or wind down from a weekend.

However I did have something special this weekend, and the list:

White Cliffs of Dover - Eric Johnson
Sabotage - Beasty Boys
Devil Went Down to Georgia - Charlie Daniels
I Think I'm Paranoid - Garbage
Maps - The Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Sunshine of Your Love - Cream
Even Flow - Pearl Jam
La Grange - ZZ Top
Welcome to the Jungle - Guns 'n' Roses
Dani California - Red Hot Chili Peppers

Yes all these songs have 2 things in common:




And let me say that "Playing" White Cliffs of Diver was amazing.

Top Five on Thursday night. :)

Top 5 On Friday - Week 180

Top 5 albums that you can't stop playing lately, and tell us why you love them!

I been finding music that I first ran into playing Rock Band, and have been enjoying.

Up first - Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Fever To Tell.

Great solid straight ahead rock with a female vocalist. I really enjoy it.

Up Second - Garbage - Version 2.o

I never listened to Garbage before. Never heard them on the radio. So when I really liked their song in Rock Band I had to give this album a try. Again, really solid rock, female vocalist (I've been in the mood for rock females recently).

With the listening of female rockers I of course have been listening to:

This is just a classic. Not a single bad song on the album. Bitter and agry it really has strength of emotion.

My favorite beauty and the beast band recently has been Sirenia. Great Powermetal/Gothic sound. Beauty and the Beast is a type of music with a soaring female vocalist over a growly deathmetal vocalist.


And finally - with the concert not to long ago Romantic Warrior by Return to Forever is still getting a lot of airtime. One of the greatest Jazz albums of all time. Chick Corea, Al DiMeola, Stanley Clarke, Lenny White. Great Great stuff.

Tunage memes

From the Music Memoirs

Tuesday Tunes
Who is your favorite Beatle?
Paul. Lennon was too political (and Yoko is annoying). Ringo is bland, and George is # 2.

What is one of your favorite Beatle songs?
I've always loved Taxman. Revolver is my favorite album.

Best/Worst cover of a Beatles song
Worst- to many to name.
Best- Elenor Rigby by Godhead. It's an industrial cover, but the style and sound really work with the theme of isolation and loneliness in the song.

Best song by a Beatle after the breakup
I don't know any Ringo tunes, but I'll do one for each of them.
George - Devil's Radio. Song about Gossip, and I love it.
Paul - Silly love songs. A critics said "He just recorded another silly love song" and this song was the responce to that comment. Don't piss off the bard.
John - Watching the Wheels.

Top 5
Top 5 postal songs
(props if you don't use that obvious song done by a girl group in the 60s and that the Beatles covered as well as the Carpenters in your list)

I'm gonna sit right down and mail myself to Elvis. Paradoy song I heard on Dr Demento years ago.
Stealing People's Mail - Dead Kennedys.
The Check's in the Mail - Al Yankovic. Another funny one.
Another Postcard - Barenaked Ladies
Sealed with a Kiss - Paper Lace

Nerd God!!

From the Nerd Test

Not that I really expected anything different. Programming in ancient computer languages, comic book geek, book geek, video game geek...

Tuesday Tunes, on time. :)

Remember tell us the first artist/song/album etc that comes to mind when you see the following words.

Note that I saw Return to Forever (my favorite Jazz band) last Wednesday (playing together for the first time in 25 years... yes it was awesome). This will bias my resutls.

jazz: Return to Forever
cool: Miles Davis
swing: Big Bad Voodoo Daddy
club: 2 Am Paradise Cafe (Barry Manilow Ablum with Sarah Vaughn and Mel Torme among others)
street: On the Street Where you live
thank: Sly and the Family Stone (no idea why)
rose: Seal
party: Funkytown
sex: I'm a (Berlin Song)
water: Take me to the River (Talking Heads)

Moving Music

There now that I exhausted myself with the quick commentaries on D&D 4E....


I had a bad thing happen. My computer failed to recognized my 500 GB external HD. It did after a bit, but when playing music, sometimes it just shut off the connection.

I'm thinking that the drive is starting to go.

This is the drive I have all my music on.

PANIC!!!!

So we looked around for cash to replace it, found enough, and off I go to Costco to replace it. They have the exact same make and model. And right next to it because of a 15 dollar instant rebate they have a 750 GB external hardrive for 5 bucks more.

So I splurged. :)

I am currently moving all the stuff from my 500 to the 750. Now the 500 wasn't full (it still had about 150 left), but now I have even more space.
Heh heh heh.

I just hope the old one lasts long enough to get everything transfered off.

D&D last.

Healing and combat

Okay. Combat runs about as fast per combat as 3.x did.... however the structure is different. There are generally more monsters/bad guys per encounter, and rounds move faster, but there are more rounds. So something that would be a 20 minute fight in 3 rounds in 3.x is a 20 minute 5 or 6 round fight in 4th.
Powers were mentioned previously – dailys are once per day, per encounter are recharged between encounters, at will can be used anytime. Magic Missile is an at will for the mage, for example. Lots of these abilities move around allies, you or enemies. Combat is very tactical (but really no more so that full on mapped Hero combat). The different classes and roles focus on different things – Paladins and Fighters move enemies, and get enemies to stay on them, whereas Ranges and Rogues move around a lot. A lot the tactics in 4th is team playing, each player working to set up team attacks, or help teammates set up for a nasty attack. It fosters teamwork.

I really like that.

Healing is really different. One of the biggest complaints about the Cleric in 3rd ed is that he couldn't do fun stuff, but had to save up for healing. 4th has a compeltely different paradigm. Hit points have always been abstracted, but they extend this out to the rest of the healing system. Every character has “Healing Surges” that heal ¼ of his hit points. A character can take a second wind and heal that every encounter. And many classes (and some races) have abilities to use a healing surge due to the power (The Orc racial lets the orc get a healing surge anytime he hits a bloodied enemy). These surges represent energy, force of will, focus or whathave. A perfect example of a healing surge in movies is Inigo Montoya shaking off the thrown knife in the Princes Bride.
Another element is Bloodied, as mentioned above. You are bloodied when you hit half hit points. A number of abilities are triggered by this as well. That is the point where actually physical damage occurs.

Simulationist will generally hate this. I like it, or at least how it is handled here. I like that healing surges can be represented by any number of things in the – healing, an inspiring speech, or simple force of will.

One of the big changes the designers made is moving away from resource management. Apparently people didn't like that about older versions of D&D – so no more worrying how many spells you have for the day, or how many days you need to rest to get up to full strength. Encounter powers recharge between every fight, and one night's rest restores all daily abilities and heals all hit points, healing surges ect. So every morning you are full and ready to go.

I'm ambivalent about this, but it does make for a simpler game, and to be honest I do like that.

Encounters and adventure builders/monsters

Monster making is simple. Monsters have a role just like characters, and there is a chart in the DMG (or MM I don't recall) that gives you a basic grid of attack, defense, hits ect per role per monster level. This is for building monsters of your own – you just choose level, get numbers, add a power or two, and away you go. There are also some oddball – minions who have full attack and damage efforts, but one hit point of damage kills them. Then there are elites and solos – these are monsters that are tougher than others of their level. Every monster in the MM has a role, level and XP rating.

Each encounter is assumed to have 1 standard monster per character. An elite counts for 2 regular monsters and a solo counts for 5. Minions count for ¼. So you mix and match roles and power levels to get your encounter. Easy to build, easy to balance. It's actually a little more flexible than what I just described, but just as simple. :) (the actual mechanism using XP as a guide). There are also templates and such as well, that lay over creatures.

So it is amazingly simple to build monsters and encounters in the game, so the GMs job is much much easier. I love this as well – the reason I stopped playing 3.x is that the Wife GMed me, and it was solo play in our spare time, and once the game got to where I really enjoyed it (low teens) it took so much work to come up with encounters and adventures, we just stopped playing. Now that shouldn't be as much of a concern for us.

Final Overview
The game is limited, with very specific choices. Later books should expand that, but that will cost extra cash.
For my need, though, this game fits exactly. I've always like the trappings of D&D, so this is still a nostalgia trip for me.

Nature at work

While at work last night, rain came down over the mountain, and we had a really nifty rainbow. I pulled out the camera and got this:

Part three

Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies, and class roles.

D&D4th is really focused on you keeping your class. You base class never changes in the entire game, which runs to 30th level and then stops* However there are three distinct levels of play – Heroic (levels 1-10), Paragon (levels 11-20) and Epic (levels 21-30).

During your Heroic tier you fight monsters, but death is death, and you deal with local problems – orc infestations, or maybe a small dragon causing a problem. You get your main class abilities – and you can do some very basic multiclassing that comes through spending feats.

At Paragon levels things change. Death is something you can fix, fighters are city and region level, and you deal with all sorts of other kinds of monsters. You also gain what is known as a paragon path – this is a similar to a prestige class in D&D 3.x, but you don't take it instead of your main class it is in addition. The bonuses you get give nifty color, some cool abilities, and choices for some powers that come from the paragon path. In the PH each Paragon path only takes a page or so. It adds to your character, not overwhelms it.
You can choose to multiclass further into your class instead of taking a paragon path. What you get it slightly weaker, but it is much more versatile, you can really do stuff outside your role.
Epic Destinies are the path you take telling you where your character is going to end up for eternity – whether immortal or joining the essence of magic itself. At Epic levels you are dealing with region or world level threats, and death is a speedbump (direct quote from one of the designers). One of the powers available in an Epic destiny opens with “Once per day when you die....” Epic Destinies have some really fantastic and fun abilities.

I like the structure. It is interesting, and it allows GMs and players who want a particular feel focus on the aspect of the game they like – someone who is interesting only in “gritty” low level type adventuring might only allow Heroic play and cap level advancement at 10th. Someone who really like a big epic feel might start a game at 11th and go from there.
And.. hmm... where have I seen a game that splits different types of games into differeing levels like that... hmm... ummm... HERO? :)

Party Roles

Going all the way back to the origins of D&D “Every party is assumed to have a fighter, cleric, magic-user and thief, and adventures are written that way. If you are missing one of them your chances of finishing the adventure are made more difficult. Miss two and you might not make it through” (Paraphrased from the 1st Editition D&D).

4th has just made this a little more explicit, but expanded the idea. There are 4 party roles: Strike, Controller, Defender, Leader.

Striker deals a lot of damage, and deals it to single targets. Rangers Rogues and Warlocks. Rangers have an ability that lets them pick a single target and do an extra d6 of damage every attack. And he can switch the target of that ability.
Defenders fight, and suck up damage. Paladin, Fighter.They have better hit points, healing surges, and special abilities to keep the enemies focused on them. The paladin has an ability that targets an enemy, and if that enemy attacks someone besides the Paladin, it takes damage.
Leader have abilities to help the party members: Warlord, Cleric. They can cause extra healing surges (see healing and combat next time), they can give bonuses to allies, move enemies or allies around the mat.
Controllers deal area effect damage, and control the battlefield: Wizards. Example – Fireball, Wall of fire ect.

Monsters have their own roles too – Brute, Artillery, Soldier, Skirmisher, Lurker, Controller. All of the Monsters in the MM have these classification, to help the GM build encounters. (More on that later– building encounters and adventures)

I've got a give a take on this one – I don't especially like the roles, or having the characters pigeonholed... but it does work with the game that is designed, and with multiclassing you can get around the specifics of a role (my ranger has Fighter stuff, my Paladin does some cleric stuff ect).

What the roles do that is nice in that it give guidance for building classes. Further books (and make no mistake this game is uses the splatbook train publishing model) can have other power sources and classes that fill the role for the source. That will be interesting to see.

*I'm already planning what kind of house rules I'm going to run to play beyond that point.

Palyer's Handbook impressions part 2

Mhoram's Overview/Review Part two – Classes and sources.


Okay the way the classes work are using the unified chart for progression – and everyone gets the same base attack and defense bonuses. ½ per level. Then add other mods like ability mods, racial mods and such.

Skills are simplified – you are trained or not. All skills are at ½ your level + ability mod (just like above). If you are trained in a skill, then you gain a +5 to it. There is a skill focus feat that gives you an additional +3. Some skills have uses that only can be used if trained. Very simplified. I both like and dislike it – without all the niggly little skill points, using skills to differentiate your characters, or add to roleplaying is difficult. I like the fact it is so bloody easy. You can have the skill bonuses of a 15th level character in a matter of moments. Can't do that in 3rd (you can thumbnail close but...).

Classes each gain some class features (used to be called class abilities) at first level. Everything after that is a power. Class abilities are a lot of the specific things the class in known for – Mages get spellbooks, Clerics get Turn undead, Paladins get lay on of hands, Rogues get sneak attack. Ect. That is all front loaded at first. (check addendum of this post for multiclassing).

After that you gain powers. Every character starts with 2 at wills, 1 encounter, and 1 daily. These are written up in a precise little stat block with name, powersource (more on that in a moment) hit and miss affects and wht you hit with. The characters gain more as they progress. In the game a character gets a feat, power or ability increase every level – so no dead levels.

What is nice about the structure of the powers is that every class gets the same amount, so every class has something “cool”. Played a 18th level fighter in a group with an 18th level mage or sorcerer. Tended to get bland. This gives mechanical things for every class to do, and know. Fighters get abilities to draw attention to themselves, extra damage, cool effects like stunning and immobilization. Rogues often make opponents attack themselves or allies (just to quick). Wizards get spells as do clerics. Paladins get nifty divine stuff.

I really like the way this works – as I mentioned last time, with the same structure, each class is it's class features and it's powers. So making new classes with a new feel is really easy, and it doesn't have to be more powerful to be special.

Power sources are interesting as well. They define the source of the powers, and give them flavor. Arcane is obviously arcane magic, Divine is from the gods (whether by spell or ability), martial is from weapons skill and training. Future sources include Primal (nature), Psionic, Ki, Shadow, Elemental.

Really the power sources and Hero style special effects for the mechanics in the power. A paladin and a fighter might both have a high level daily power that gives them 7xweapon damage, but the fighter is massive raw damage (or super skilled placement) while a paladin is channeling his gods aura through his weapon. The stark mechanics of powers lend themselves to having nifty special effects for use. Those that don't think effects based (like Hero) have said it bland. I call it freeing up for the player.

And that leads to my last point – I've seen the game called a tabletop war game because there aren't rules for roleplaying (like non combat skills), but really I see it similar to Hero. You have the mechanics in place for combat, but the rest of the character is non-mechanical – the roleplaying aspects of the game are SFX of the character. If you want a character that is great at diamond cutting, he it. You don't have to buy ranks in a skill. It is roleplaying the background and ability. A very differencing approach than previous editions, but I find it refreshing in its simplicity.

Addendum :

Multiclassing – you don't actually take a level in another class. You take a feat that gives you a class skill and a class feature, and you can take a feat to get a power from another class instead of one of your own. There are three of these (and other avenues in higher level play). If you want to mulitclass really a lot, you can take all three feats, plus the initial multiclass. If you want to splash you can just take the basic feat. If you want some special skill, take one. A fighter could just use the multiclass feat to get arcane knowledge and then later spend a feat to choose a Wizard ability – boom you have a fighter with a fireball. Great color. It is more restrictive than previous editions, but it works really well with the class structure they come up with. And with further classes coming out every year in the yearly Players Handbooks, the ability to create exactly what you want grows.

Next time Paragon and Epic Paths.

D&D is back - Players handbook review/overview part one

D&D 4th edition is here, and I like it!! Here are some thoughts about the PH - I plan on doing a piece of a review/overview each day or two.

My D&D PH review Part 1:

The basic structure of the characters.

All classes have the same advancement chart – It tells you when you gain a level, and what you get: Feat, new Power, Ability score increases. Hit bonuses and defense bonuses are the same for every class - ½ your level + Ability mod. The defenses are AC and what used to be saving throws.

I like this for two reasons.

One - Simplicity. Everyone works off the same chart, and it's pretty easy to remember.

Two – Growth in the game. One of the design goals for D&D 4th was class equity (i.e. Everyone gets to do fun stuff, and everyone gets to do about the same amount of fun stuff at the same level) that works well. And it puts into place a framework for characters presented in later books to not be too powerful, the bane of the splatbook train model of publishing everywhere. Classes are very tight in focus, so introducing new stuff by changing color and flavor instead of powerlevel is good.

Some basic note –
Feats are gained every other level, and are somewhat less powerful than in 3.x
Class features (as opposed to powers) are all front loaded at 1st level. As the multiclassing system is very different (you actually don't get a level in another class) that works well. You get your class stuff at first, and everything after is powers. Skills are asigned at first level and there you go – although feats allow extra skills.
Ability score increase you get +1 to two Ability scores every 4 levels, and +1 to all of them at 11th and 21st.

Characters are in three “tiers” of ability – Heroic, Paragon and Epic. Thing Heroic, superheroic and high powered superheroic in Hero terms. Each one covers 10 levels. Paragon takes on 11-20, Epic 21-30. The advancement stops there (I already have in mind house rules to go beyond that).

I really like that, it gives a nice character story arc. And some of the Epic abilities start with phrases like “Once per day when you die....”.

Characters gain powers as they go up. For a mage this is their spells, Clerics are their prayers, Fighters get special fighting techniques ect. From someone coming from hero, this works well – the mechanics are the same (gain a power) but the Special effects of what it does is different depending on class. And it really lets rogues and fighters keep up with the mages in the “Cool things I can do” department. In general I didn't see a lot of overlap in the powers, although there were a few.

It is a simple basic structure that allows for modular plug ins (new classes) that because of the framework can allow future classes to not up-power (I know I said this, but I wanted to repeat it). I really like that.

Overall creating a character is a breeze. I made three in about an hour and a half, and that was learning how to create a charater. Once I have the system down, I could likely create a character in 10 or 15 minutes. And said character will have 2 at wills, one encounter, and one daily powers, in addition to any class features he gets. It is a lot like a character beginning with a multipower with 5 or 6 slots – you get a lot of stuff you get to do right away at first level.

Next time I'll cover classes more specifically.

Catching up on the Music Memes

From The Music Memiors

Going from most recent back....


Top 5 On Friday - Week 177

Top 5 songs about work or are work related:

Working Man - Rush
Working for the Weekend - Loverboy
Take This Job and Shove it - Johnny Paycheck
Working in a Coal Mine - Devo
Why Don't you Get a Job - Offspring


Tuesday Tunes: Week 34

Another word association week. Remember name the first song/artist/album etc that you think of when you see these 10 words.

Country: k d lang
Patriotic: Presidents of the United States of America
Summer: Hot Town, Summer in city - Nick Guilder
Heat: Heat Wave - Linda Rosnstadt
Fun: Barenaked Ladies (The band not nessisarily the concept)
Beach: Boys
Surf: Little Dead Surfer Girl - Marillion
Park: Peaches and Cream (don't ask me why)
Live: Live
South: Phil Harris Orcestra

Tuesday Tunes - Week 33

This week is word association week and it's all in colors! I'll give you a color and you tell me the first song/artist/album that comes to mind when you see it.

Pink: Pink
Purple: Donny Osmond, Prince
Blue: Elvis Presley (the album for the Moody Blues album was made on blue vinyl)
White: Queen (the cover of Night at the Opera is White with the logo)
Gold: Sold Gold Hits of the '70s (a K-tel record series that we had a number of when I was growing up)
Silver: Bob Seeger & the Silver Bullet Band
Green: Rock on - David Essex (it mentions Green Lantern)
Yellow: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road - Elton John
Red: Arcadia (the album is So Red as Rose)
Brown: Mr Brownstone - Guns and Roses