The last two weeks have been pretty good. No one event really defines just what was so good about them, but all in all I’ve had a good two weeks. I’ve slowed down a little in my anime watching. I did watch another seven episodes of Hunter × Hunter. The series continues to be really entertaining, but with so much of it left I still don’t have too much more to say about it. I also watched another four episodes of The Twelve Kingdoms. The current story arc was rapped up resulting in Yōko taking her thrown as the Queen of Kei, and Sugimoto being returned home to Japan. I’ve also been keeping current more or less with Bleach (through episode 113) and Busou Renkin (through episode 17).
I’ve done a fair amount of role-playing during the last two weeks. I’ve joined a D&D Eberron campaign being played entirely over the Internet. For those who care about such things I’m playing a changeling named Kell (he’s currently a 2nd level character Rogue 1/Fighter 1). It has been really nice being a player again (I only rarely get to be one). Playing over the Internet is interesting. For our first session we used Skype to provide a voice chat client. It worked alright, but we had periodic problems with voice quality, and we needed to restart our conference call several times over the course of the evening. For our second session we tried out Ventrilo. Ventrilo wasn’t as user friendly to set up as Skype, but we had far fewer problems with voice quality. We’ve also tried two different mapping programs. For our first session we used Gametable; a very solid program that I have no problem recommending to people for use in remote gaming. For our second session we tried out MapTool. Using MapTool isn’t anywhere as intuitive as Gametable, but it has a lot more features. I don’t really have any problem recommending MapTool for use in remote gaming either (just read the manual).
Also I got to run my BESM campaign this weekend. As an added treat Dan joined us in person for this session instead of remotely (usually via iChat) as he usually does. Once again we started the evening off with some Wii action (Excite Truck, and Rayman Raving Rabbids mainly). I continue to find this BESM campaign to be highly satisfactory. What started out as a short little 2 maybe 3 month campaign where the players were supposed to track down four pieces of a magic item, and then use that to defeat the bad guy has taken on a life of its own. The characters have developed in interesting ways, and a number of very entertaining side stories have developed. The next session should be on 2/24.
In related BESM news I got both my PDF, and dead-tree version of BESM 3rd Edition during the last two weeks. It looks really good. I haven’t had a chance to really tear into it yet, but from what I have looked at I’m pretty happy. It is definitely changed from the 2nd edition. The basic resolution mechanic has changed from rolling a stat score or less on 2d6, to rolling a target number or higher on 2d6 (in both cases often modified by skills). The cost of everything has been rebalanced, and characters are now built on a lot more character points. For example under BESM 2nd Edition 25-45 points was a pretty common range for starting characters (and those characters would be pretty powerful), under 3rd Edition basic normal humans are built on 100 character points (I imagine I’ll likely be starting characters in the 250 – 350 point range).As a little side note one of my players in the BESM campaign (and also a fellow gamer in the Eberron campaign) has started a blog.
I leave you with another picture that amuses me. This particular screen capture comes from The Twelve Kingdoms. I laughed really hard when I watched this scene, and I laughed even harder when I made this screen capture. Yes Rakushun is naked in this picture, but nothing sexual is going on. I swear to you, The Twelve Kingdoms isn't hentai.
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