It's always exciting to play Dungeons and Dragons.

There's a chance that I still don't have computer or internet access. If that's the case then I'm really sorry, but more importantly I really miss all of you! How's it going? Has anything exciting been happening in my absence? We should be talking again soon. To pass the time, here's a favorite entry of mine about playing Dungeons and Dragons!


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June 26th, 2010

It finally happened!

12:19 PM  MIRANDA EUBANKS  1 COMMENT

The stars have finally aligned because Dungeons and Dragons is back in my life! I have wanted to play for over four years, ever since my original campaign was dissolved. My friends have never been interested in playing and even if they were I don't know how to DM. My friend Andrew is in town from California and he plays DnD, he knows that I'd like to get a campaign going. Too bad he lives in LA or else the two of us would be able to get something going. He suggested that while he's here we play as many times as we can, and I am all for that.

On Thursday night we started up a game with his brother and some of his brother's friends. It was fantastic fun! I played my human barbarian, a character that I rolled four years ago after my original character, an elf rouge, was murdered by a giant. I don't play a rouge well at all but I think I'm doing alright with my barbarian so far. We played for a good four and a half hours and I am anxious to play again!

Last night Andrew and I, with our powers combined, convinced Jake to join us for DnD adventures! We didn't play but we did make characters. I rolled one for our friend James just in case he can pop in and play with us. We spent a good two hours just making some characters and I had a pretty good time. Jake has never made it past the character making phase so I'm really excited to actually get to the campaign.

On Thursday night I found myself in a party of adventurers setting toward the forest. A blight had settled onto the forest via the magical water source, causing all flora to wither and all fauna to become deranged and violent.

We trekked toward the center of the forest, aiming for the main tree of life and the magical water's source. As we moved along we encountered an Owlbear, a black bear, a Tree Ent, and an unnamed evil vine being. Our evening wrapped up as we finally approached the main tree and we laid eyes upon the source: goblins!

Dun dun dunnnnn.

Most likely this campaign will not be continued, which is sad, but I'm hopeful that a new one will begin this very evening!

I have more that I want to say but my mind is incredibly scattered right now.

-MJ

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Under the inn, through the sewer - part 2 of 3

Be sure to read part one first!

When we left off our heroes were in quite the situation. Kobolds and zombies to the front, enemy soldiers behind. And in case you've forgotten, they're in a nearly pitch black sewer with seemingly no means of escape.

It'd be really inopportune to roll a "2" right about now.

After a near-failure of a spot check, the party discovers bars stacked on the nearby wall that look suspiciously like a ladder. Another look around reveals a circular disc far up on the ceiling that, with any luck, would be a manhole cover.

Time is ticking quickly as we take a small moment to deliberate: who should climb the ladder? Unanimously, my strength-ridden barbarian is chosen; after rolling a natural 20, she silently moves toward the rungs. 

Unfortunately, because moving silently didn't make her considerable bulk invisible, the zombies took notice. As they began their disgusting, moaning drudging toward the party, we all rolled for initiative and I began to scramble up the ladder.

"Sure hope I remembered to put ranks into 'climb'!"

As the rest of the party entered battle with the onslaught of zombies and kobolds, my mighty barbarian repeatedly slipped down the latter after a series of embarrassing rolls. The only upside to the situation was that some kobolds appeared at the sound of the enemy soldiers' clattering, and so they were being held up in their own altercation.

When at last I reached the top of the ladder and the manhole cover, I gave it an almighty push but it didn't open. My party members below were backing toward the base of the escape route, a few enemies creeping closer. Two of my fellow adventurers had already begun to climb.

Our mighty sorcerer staved off a complete invasion by casting a line of grease between us and the zombies and kobolds. Our well-aiming ranger turned the grease into a wall of fire with his ever so handy flaming arrows. 

Two rounds of battle later, with everyone else finally climbing up, and I still had been unable to successfully roll high enough to enter freedom. It was with the eventual help of our shady ranger that we were able to make it to fresh air and the world above. 

The Lich King raged in disappointment, his newly raised zombies now without targets. We had finally escaped the horrors of the sewer, and we collapsed in joy and relief. It was time to head to the castle.

In my mind it looks a little like this.

Don't miss part 3 tomorrow, it's quite the shocking ending!

-MJ

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I've been a good little dragon slayer this year.

I have to share the amazing set of dice that Andrew gave to me for Christmas!

Full sized. Brushed steel. They are awesome.

So heavy. So gorgeous. Rollin' like a champ.

I spied these beauties at PAX in August and told Andrew that I absolutely had to have them. Fortunately for me, he remembered!

The best possible news here is that we'll be playing DnD the weekend after New Years! Best gift ever.

Everybody will be jealous. Unless of course they buy their own (you're welcome).

-MJ

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It is fantasy journey time.

This last weekend I had the epic pleasure of playing through a Dungeons and Dragons session. It was a one off campaign DM'd by our housemate's girlfriend. She crafted us a fascinating world with a giant dead god named Azo. He had been taken down centuries ago by necromancers, and his decaying body became the site of civilization; cities, farms and homes. This great, dangerous god was beginning to whisper itself awake, gathering motes of restorative power and threatening to rage destruction across the entire world once again.

We are the grey pieces. The blue guy in the middle had a glowing

orb that we desperately needed. All of the white-ish figures are

skeletons that we happily slaughtered. 

We all spent a good chunk of time rolling up characters, and I'm feeling rather attached to mine. I went with my favored make of a half-orc barbarian. The first time that I ever played DnD I went with a slick elven ranger, and I did not play her well. I simply don't have the finesse or the brains to role play the build. It was a disappointment to me, but at least I was able to quickly learn my path. I believe someone else suggested a barbarian, but it was so long ago that I can't exactly recall.  Either way, ever since then I've rolled a barbarian that is either half-orc or human. The +2 to strength is appreciated, so I lean more toward half-orc. I like to just rush in and swing wildly. This proved to be a poor decision though when my stampeding knocked loose some precariously perched rocks and I lost almost half of my HP.

Sadly, all of that strength doesn't do too much against rocks. Also, I 
eventually named my character Tagli, in case you were wondering.

Oh well.

I'm going to be perfectly honest with you all here; I am experiencing some intense writer's block. I've been working on this blog for over three hours. I've typed sentences and almost paragraphs that I later erased. I've taken food breaks, wandering breaks, TV watching breaks. I've been bouncing ideas off of Andrew and even though I have so much to write about I can't seem to string thoughts together in a way that I am pleased with! It is insanely frustrating. Perhaps I should keep this knowledge to myself, but I like sharing and being honest! Stay with me here please.

The other night Andrew and I took a bunch of painting with light photos. We took a turn for the awesome and started doing wizard/wand shots. Things were starting to go very well and we're going to be having another wizard shoot soon. This is a little bit of a cross post from my photo blog, which I apologize for, but it is just so relevant to my geek blog! There are some really interesting potential Harry Potter things brewing in the mix. It has got me all aflutter because I love me some Harry Potter in a very fierce way. Have I shown you my dedicated shelf? I wish it were more impressive, maybe someday I'll have more things to add to my wand, time-turner and scarf collection :D

I enjoy nonchalantly casting spells.

His monstrous power impresses even himself.

I thought it would be fun to offer up some content that you can have! Would you be at all interested in a background featuring a fantasy dice set? What about a background full of dice in general? I'd love for you to have them! Just click on the image and do a good ol' fashioned right click -> save as! I went with the three most common resolutions (based on a little research), but if your screen size isn't here then I would be more than happy to provide one in your size! Just ask :D

                                            1024x768                                           1280x1024

                                            1680x1050                                       1680x1050

                                              1024x768                                        1280x1024


The fantasy dice set is also a print that is available for purchase here!

I'm hoping that next week's post won't present me with such difficulty (edit: I ended up working on this post for almost seven hours)! But everyone has off days :) Are there any kinds of geekery related backgrounds that you'd like to see? Let me know!

Oh! One last thing and one more story for you today:

It's beautiful.

In February of this year I ended my six year and four month employment stint at GameStop. A lot of interesting things happened over that time, and perhaps I'll have a nice long post about it someday. But for now I want to comment on the fact that the first day that "Zelda Wii" was available for pre-order (because at that point the name 'Skyward Sword' hadn't been released yet) I grabbed my wallet lightning fast and slapped five dollars down to reserve my copy. Whether or not it was a necessary move (it wasn't, the stores will get enough copies at launch), I had a bit of a 'street cred' line of thought going on PLUS I just love Zelda a lot and I was excited to have it that much closer to my hands. I forget exactly when it went on pre-order, but it was well over a year ago. Maybe even two? It has been a while.

Well, I have since left my job and moved out of state. That makes it a bit difficult to pick up the copy that I reserved. Before I moved I decided with a heavy heart that I should cancel my first place Skyward Sword reservation. It was a sad day. But then, E3 came along and Nintendo dropped the announcement of the gold wii motion plus controller. I clearly recall my jaw hitting the floor and saying out loud to no one in particular (because I was alone, you see), "I will have that controller". But how? I couldn't figure out if it would be sold separately or if it would be a pack-in. 

As it turns out, it is a bundle that costs only twenty dollars more. SOLD. Or rather, pre-ordered and now I wait for it to be released on November 20th. The few days of waiting for it to be shipped to me will be a little painful, but I'm certain I'll still be working on my Fallout 3 file at that time so I won't have a shortage of games to play.

Have you pre-ordered your copy of Skyward Sword yet? It also comes with a free 25th Zelda anniversary CD with orchestral tracks from the upcoming Zelda Symphony tour. I think you should be interested.

-MJ

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The backgrounds offered fall under the following:

This work by Miranda Eubanks is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

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