The party’s druid successfully caused the King’s Players’ performance to be delayed a day. This gave the party enough time to properly prepare themselves to face the nefarious bards who were trying to bring an ancient evil into their world. When the King’s Players attempted to put the show on again the next day, the party was there again to face them. Some of the party members were already inside the playhouse, while others were lined up along the side in the alley to attack the bards from the side:

The battle went well at first. They soundly defeated the four bards, but the evil from another world still found its way into their world. Half of the party ran in terror, while the other half found themselves grappled by the thing from the lake:

Tonight was Nad’s last game with our every-other-week D&D session. In person, at least. Even though she’ll be in Texas next week, we are gonna set up a notebook in her normal place at the table so she can still play. We’ll connect a webcam to it and use Skype or some other video chat service to bring her into the game.

Edit: The top image opens up Picasa in a Greybox pop-up, while the bottom image links you directly to Picasa. Which do you think is the better method for displaying images?

I haven’t been writing about our D&D games lately because they have been consistently cancelled every week since mid-January. This past Sunday, our Dungeon Master (DM, the guy who runs the game) finally cancelled the game for good.

The remaining members of the group discussed options for continuing the game. After tossing around a few ideas, we settled on making me the DM for the group. I have lots of experience filling this role, but I haven’t done it in about three years. I have two weeks to get prepared, which isn’t a whole lot of time if I want to run a good game. I have lots of books to read through to get caught up with all the current rules, not to mention writing a story for them to play through.

This means that Soren will no longer be telling his stories here. I’ll continue talking about the game I run though.

This week we’ll take a break from the adventure to talk about the people in the group. For the first time in my 15 years of role-playing, I am in a group where there is an even split between male and female players! Much like video games, men are seen as the dominating gender in role-playing. This is a nice change of pace.

The regular members of the party:

• Nadia plays Amalana, an elven swashbuckler. She excels at quick movement and avoiding attacks. Her character is the most accurate (i.e. she has the highest base attack bonus).
• Guillaume plays Elian, a halfling druid that rides atop a wolf. He has taken the leadership role of our group, and is the only spellcaster, making him our healer, buffer and blaster. His wolf (I can’t remember his name) is also an effective combatant.
• Terra plays Madeira, a half-elf monk. She often fights along side Amalana; the two start combat with a volley of arrows and bolts, then move in to the front line to meet the enemy head on.
• Jess plays Cadfel, a gnomish monk, the one the Soren refers to as “the bald guy.” She is the only player in the group who plays a character of the opposite gender. Cadfel is a pacifist, and spends as much time parlaying as she does condemning us for “killing everything we see.”
• I play Soren, a human barbarian. The primary damage dealer, he is the focus of Elian’s healing goodberries to keep him alive.

The occassional members of the party:

• Katrina plays Freiya, the half-elf sorcerer. The presence of her character exposed a gaping hole in our group - arcane spellcasting. Freiya facilitated a number of encounters we had, which Soren would have settled with extreme violence.
• Pete plays Sam, the human rogue. I should probably put his class in quotes, since nothing about his character suggests that he is actually a rogue. In an adventuring party, one expects a rogue to find and disarm traps, amongst other things, but Sam doesn’t do that sort of thing.

Matthew, our DM, rounds out the group, making it an even 4/4 split. Very nice!