Despite my general aversion to this sort of thing, but because it's so utterly me, and because I was encouraged to, let us play a little game. Suppose, for a moment, that you have a phone booth. With this phone booth, you will travel through time, collecting 8 historical figures to help you deliver your oral report on their time periods, and to help review the world of San Dimas, 2008. (And yes, I'm talking about what is now a 20 year old movie. Oi.)

In the original film, these 8 were:

1. Napoleon
2. Billy the Kid
3. Socrates
4. Sigmund Freud
5. Beethoven
6. Joan of Arc
7. Genghis Khan
8. Abraham Lincoln

Now as for my list, well...I'll play things interesting and stick to rough time periods and/or roles, just for kicks.

1. Tokugawa Ieyasu

I should probably have this be Magua for the sheer in-joke potential, but I'll go with Tokugawa, because he's pretty Nappy-like in his way - fantastic general, one of the most amazing politicians of all time, and...oh, hey, he WON.

2. William Tecumseh Sherman

Who isn't an outlaw, but IS of the appropriate era, and happens to be a thoroughly tough but well-spoken sort of a guy. Having read his book, I imagine he'd be excellent to talk to.

3. Lucius Cornelius Sulla

Not A Philosopher, but he'd be a hoot, if he and Tokugawa didn't kill each other.

4. Mark Twain

Philosophers, meh. But Twain, now. He's the kind of writer a guy can really get behind. Also I have the ulterior motive of wanting to read his book on how my raft of historical figures plays together.

5. Elvis Presley

Because musically I am not my father. And because the reaction by everyone else in the audience would be priceless.

6. Akhenaten

Because let's go for some interesting religious fervor here. Sun worship! Egyptians! Deformed heads! You can't go wrong!

7. Tiglath-Pilesar I

Because if you want some seriously hard, chariot-riding dudes in the vein of Khan, you gotta get yourself an Assyrian.

8. George Washington

Because seriously, honestly, I REALLY want to hear his review of the world of San Dimas 2008. Because I think it would be incredibly interesting to see one of our forefathers pass judgement on us. That's probably not the word most people would use, but I am me, so.

Honorable Mention: Thomas Jefferson, Heraclius, Marcus Aurelius, Gaius Marius, Frederick Douglass, Vo Nguyen Giap, Hatshepsut, Queen Elizabeth I, V.I. Lenin, Julius Caesar.

Do feel free to share via comments.

A little bit of worldbuilding work, here.

Firstly, the map:

Click for a larger version.

This is the third version of this particular map. The first, which got referenced a couple of times previously in this series, was in the default CC3 bitmap style, which is one that I quite like, actually, but one that just wasn't cutting it for this particular project for some reason.

Went through a lot of ideas after that, including trying to make up a style based on the 3rd Edition Forgotten Realms map (which is probably the best the Realms have ever looked, but trying to match that style...holy crap), before settling on ideas out of the Cartographer's Annual 2007, one of which was the Sarah Wroot style, which looked utterly fantastic, but was also utterly unreadable, which turns out to be a problem.

The new map is in the Mercator style, and turns out to be readable AND looks completely awesome, although I will likely change it in a few particulars, including:

- Filling in the bloody Unknown Lands once I come up with something to go there.
- Decreasing the font size for both the Western Sea and the Unknown Lands. It's a tad large.
- Naming the various adjuncts to the Sea of Vargra.
- Possibly adding ice to the Sea of Moving Ice.
- Adding in the forests that exist in Tithorea and Titheheim.
- Moving some labels about a bit.
- Moving the whole landmass over a little. When printed at 1 inch = 100 miles on a 2x2 layout, the exact middle is somewhere in the Plains of Black Ash in a sort of annoying spot. Then again, it's not bad where it is.

Other than that, I'm pretty happy with it. None of the rivers are named, mind you, but I'll save that for the inevitable series of 1 inch = 25 or 50 miles maps I'll end up needing to do.

Now, what I'm going to do for city and dungeon mapping to complement this style, I have no idea. Dungeon Designer 3 has thus far proved itself to be heavily unuseful, and while there are ways I believe it could be useful (mostly involving Symbol Set 2, which has nice stuff), some of it's going to take some work to get right. For cities? I have more options here, and will likely have even more if City Designer 3 looks as awesome as the previews show it to be. In particular, the Cartographer's Annual has this style, which I quite like though it may be too 19th century for the matter at hand. There is also this style, which complements the Mercator map well, but all you get is peaked roofs and such, which is somewhat annoying. So we'll see. Likely be ages before I do a city in any case.

On another note, I've hit upon a tool that I'm using to organize my notes, and that is a personal wiki, of which I am using this flavor, which lends itself heavily to being useful, and I find I quite like it. I've already transcribed all of my written scribblings on classes, races, and religion, and it probably won't be too much more work (at least by comparison - clerics were a bitch) to finish off the rules portion of things, at which time I'll move on to actual geography fluff. It's pretty likely I'll wind up doing a Tharavel style setting book at some point (though hopefully with better art, and I have some ideas on that). Hopefully in August I can do some work on that.

Also need to work on historical stuff, but I'll do a seperate post on that later.

Because I've had this song stuck in my head for like 5 years now, but always as music. And then last night I remembered part of the lyrics, and thanks to the Power of Google, I am victorious.

On that note, would somebody care to explain to me why my default memory for about 2002-2005 is driving in cars in Corvallis? Because I didn't think I did all THAT much of it, and I definitely didn't do a whole lot of driving on Highway 99 out by Bi-Mart (always cut over on Harrison/Van Buren), but sure enough there I am. Wonder why.

Because I'm having about 2 minutes in every 10 of internet connection right now. Which is something I remember pretty well from my days in the 90s of dialup, and also how it took about 9 years to download a megabyte. And, I dunno. Has broadband shortened my patience, here? Were we all just ignorant in 1995, and willing to put up with the repeated attempts to refresh to make things work, the slow speeds, the dropping out, because that's just how it was, man? Or is that, you know, that sort of thing was ok in 1995, but this isn't 1995, it's 2008, and seriously, what the Jesus here people?

I'm tempted to go with the latter. Hey, working infrastructure. Get it right, guys.

I don't think I've ever shown this one, and I'm not sure anybody but Whir has seen it. So behold, the worst start ever:

Remember kids. Highlands does not like you.

Because I haven't really talked Civ for a while, and I just played a pretty epic game.

Every so often, you have this desire, when playing world maps, to conquer the world. This is the unquestionable natural order of things. The world is there, we desire to conquer it and bend it to our wills, preferably while killing several million of its other digital inhabitants. I had not previously done this, preferring to win instead by space or culture or what have you, becase do you know how much land you need to conquer to go from this:

To the winning 51% land?

Quite a lot, as it turns out:

During the not quite 5,000 years it took to do that, I managed to find myself at war with every single one of 18 civilizations except one: Pericles, who pretty much kicked back in Australia and sailed around in caravels a lot.

Pacal II of the Mayans and Ragnar of the Vikings, I partially conquered and left with viable holdings as my chief vassals.

Julius Caesar of the Romans, Peter of the Russians, and Churchill of the English were less lucky - I relieved them of all but a handful of worthless cities, then made them my vassals.

As for Isabella of Spain, Shaka of the Zulus, Hammurabi of Babylon, Bismarck of Germany, Asoka of India, and Montezuma of the Aztecs? Dead, their empires mine.

Justinian of Byzantium, whose empires in Turkey and South America I took from him, ended up precipitating a world war by becoming a vassal of George Washington, my only serious rival, who had at the time as vassals Charlemagne, Darius of Persia, Charles DeGaulle, Montezuma, and Bismarck.

And it was a pretty serious war, although by that point I was driving around with a not-quite 500 unit army of battle-hardened veterans, and cranking more each turn. Guys like:

Charles Martel, who started off as a maceman in my initial wars against the Aztecs and Mayans in BC days, and was at the forefront of every conflict I ever fought;

Heinz Guderian, who got his start as an infantry unit fighting the Zulus, then went on to become the scourge of the Americas;

Georgy Zhukov, my best tank general, who fought his way through two North American campaigns before returning home to lead the struggle against the Aztec threat.

And as struggles go, it was pretty one-sided. I lost 108 units, mostly at sea where I lacked any sort of technological edge. On the other hand, I ultimately killed 1,320 of other people's units, which is slightly better than 12 to 1 in my favor, and was worth a total of 11(!) great generals.

It also took 22 hours of playing to do all this, which is one reason I don't do it very often. The other reason is the domination victory movie, which is so irrevocably lame I can't believe it. The space movie? It suffers by being lame compared to the Civ 2 space movie. The domination movie is just worthless. But I've been blathering about my hate for Civ 4's movies for like 4 years now, so.

A couple other thoughts:

- 51% land. Jesus that was a slog. Granted it's a custom map size and land ratio, but holy shit.

- As it turns out, once you hit a certain point, bonus to specialist wonders combined with the Statue of Liberty that gives a free specialist are pretty much like buttons labeled "Win." Representation in particular was letting me run stupid amounts of cash (I ended with 20k, after a whole series of multiple-hundred unit upgrades) while cranking technology at a ridiculous pace. The whole future era took me, oh, I don't know, less than 20 turns. I ended up skipping straight over most industrial warfare simply because by the time I got the resources hooked up I was two turns from modern armor and stealth bombers.

- Marines are pretty great in this game (finally!) and always have been. I can't say the same about naval warfare, which essentially consists of "throw units at one ship until it dies, then watch the AI do the same to you" at any level of technological parity, or "win instantly" if you have anything not sail powered, and they don't. Here we are, still fucking about with battleship navies, subs still suck, and there's basically no reason for all the guided missile units because you'll never get the chance to kill anything with them. All of the subtlety and complexity of land-based warfare is lacking, and that's sad, because it doesn't need to be the case.

- OTOH, Paratroopers are probably the best addition to Beyond the Sword for units. I got great use out of them this game in conjunction with air units for bombardment, both as an early form of blitzkreig before I had tanks, and then to capture remote settlements over water and mountains. Considering how much they sucked previously, this is great.

- The whole modern era unit progression is whack with regards to air units, and always has been. Also, with the advent of the F-22 Raptor, can we finally get a stealth fighter in one of these games that's not just a shitty version of the stealth bomber, and can actually go shoot guys? Because seriously, the jet war I was having with Charlemagne got really old, compounded by...

- ...my legions of mobile SAM batteries doing precisely nothing. Zero, zilch, nothing. Incredibly useless. Great idea, but if I'm supposed to have mega interception chances, I want to actually, you know, intercept dudes.

- Also, getting to that point where you can watch somebody's empire crumble completely in 2-3 turns? Awesome. Just awesome.

Since I was thinking about this earlier, a little bit more blathering on The Civil War. Which is going to be mostly YouTube clips of the thing, hitting what I think are some of the emotional high points, starting with:

This clip from Episode 1, which lays out the basis for the thing about as well as anything can, I suppose, or at least gives you enough graphic reason to convince you that slavery is a bad, bad thing.

As to these next three, the first 1.5 are the bittersweet ending, and the second 1.5 cover Lincoln's assassination, a topic I will return to in a moment.

This clip from the end of Episode 1, which contains a letter you should listen to.

Also, that music. Gods, the music. Listen to that top embedded clip, and you'll understand why the music of this film has stuck with me half my life.

Now, as to Abraham Lincoln, it occurs to me, and I imagine I am not the first, that his assassination may well be the most tragic event in American history. On one level this seems obvious, but consider. Here's the man that freed the slaves, and transformed the Civil War from a squabble over political powers to a struggle for the freedom of a people. And that was done before he was killed. And you end up with this brief moment, something on order of ten years, where you really do get something approximating equality for black people. And then the whole thing goes down in a blaze of corruption, greed, and entrenched racism that took us a century to overcome, and nevermind the intense sectional rivalries and hatreds.

Now, there's only so much Lincoln can do in a single term as President, and unless he pulls an FDR and goes for 3 and 4 terms, he'd mostly be an elder statesman, but could he have dealt with the excesses of the Radical Republicans? Could he have somehow helped heal the country, forge real political and maybe even social equality for the former slaves? I sure dunno, and it's a pretty big task, but if there was anyone to do it, Lincoln was that guy.

Andrew Johnson? Not so much. Not so much.

In that continued saga of looking at the possibility of editing for various games, let us take a brief glimpse at Civilization IV's editor.

A very brief glance, since, so far as I can tell, the editor that has been provided with the game may as well not actually exist. It turns out that, for something like half of the editing I do, which is random civs in specific spots on a specific map, it turns out that the easiest, most efficient way to make any changes I have is to open the file in Notepad and edit a bunch of random things that look like this:

BeginPlot
x=19,y=49
BonusType=BONUS_GOLD
FeatureType=FEATURE_FOREST, FeatureVariety=0
TerrainType=TERRAIN_PLAINS
PlotType=1
EndPlot

Deriving the proper X and Y coordinates from loading up the map in the editor and looking. Since there's no way to figure out the coordinates from inside the editor, what this essentially means is picking a place you know the X, Y coordinates of (starting locations are good for this), and then tile counting until you get the right spot. By way of the penalties for missing, let me note to you that it is indeed entirely possible to have copper in the ocean, although I have no idea what good this does you.

This whole process comes about from the fact that to get to the editor, you have to, get this, start up an in-process game, then go to the menu and go to the editor. It's even better if you use the load button to load up a different map. It loads great - as a savegame, so you can PLAY it. The lack of sense here is astounding, but if you get past it, there's actually a reasonable map editor, if not so much a scenario editor, in there. Works great if you're creating something with a specific set of civs in a specific set of spots.

And if you're like me, doing something with a set of random civs in a set of specific spots? You hack files to make terrain changes. Or else every time you use the editor, you get to wipe out and recreate by hand, all your start locations, all your civs, all your teams, all that.

Oh, and every time you want to check if your changes worked? Close the game, restart it, let it load, start a new game, go to the editor, and check. Takes about 5 minutes. You COULD just quit to the main menu and save about half that time, but then your changes only have about a 50/50 chance of being reflected.

Now, supposing you want to do some modding, and I actually do. Well, I hope you like hacking up XML files, because oooh boy are there a lot of XML files to hack up to do just about anything. And, as these things go, they're mostly pretty well laid out XML files that are, as these things go, a joy to work with.

It's just that, and this should sound familiar to most of you, if you don't know what you're looking at, it's pretty well impossible to get anything done. And documentation for all of this is by and large nonexistant, inconsistent, and/or fragmentary. This should sound pretty familiar to some, but man, it's BAD. Oblivion, BFV, BF2? Wikis, and pretty good ones, plus forum support. Civ? Couple main forums, and...it's not good, so far as I can find.

This isn't helped by the near obligatory hacking of Python files for half the things you might want to add, like, oh, I don't know, techs, let's say. Religions. Little things of that nature. Great if you know Python, not so great if you don't. Again, there's a lot of playing Dude, Where's My Docs? to get anything done. And speaking of Python, if you know it, you can write all sorts of crazy cool map scripts for random maps. If you know it. If you can figure out WTF these people are talking about. I can't, so no random maps out of me. Makes me long for the days of Age of Kings, where at least they gave you documentation for the complex scripting language.

In short, awesomely editable game. Looks pretty fun to do, even, and as a long-time modder of Civ games, I'm pretty aware of the gratification you can get. But I'm pretty sure I won't be doing much for this one, because they've made it so damn impenetrable.

Which is a whole other rant. From the days of Civ 2, where I started, the game has gotten progressively better as a game. As an editing environment, we're actually worse off in a lot of ways than we were when Fantastic Worlds was released in 1997. Ten years later, in 2007, we JUST now got workable random events back.

But hey, at least outside of unit graphics you can still get by with Notepad and Paintshop Pro 4, which is pretty much what I was using to edit Civ 2, so that's a plus. The XML also makes it really hard to fatally crash, which is also handy. It could be a great editing environment, if I could ever figure out what the hell to do.

As fireworks are called in some parts. In honor of the thing, two versions of a quote, and a little blather.

As is my wont from time to time, I'm rewatching that immortal Ken Burns epic, The Civil War. I've talked about this series before, and last year at this time, no less, and others have said a lot about it too. And I could say lots more about it, like how the first episode is perhaps the finest piece of documentary filmmaking ever done, but instead I'll just say this:

For the last 15 years or so, I've had The Battle Cry of Freedom stuck in my head. It's my default humming music.

Now, as to the quote:

"Whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some transatlantic giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe and Asia could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we will live forever, or die by suicide."

---Abraham Lincoln, as quoted in The Civil War

"At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years.

At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we will live through all time, or die by suicide."

---Abraham Lincoln, Address Before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, January 27, 1837 (from The Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln)

Since I finally appear to have found a way to do this that is not ridiculous, here's the proper way to get one's textures to stop checkerboarding in the BF2 editor:

1. Go to the Texture tool in the terrain editor.

2. Go over and pick the texture you want, and select it's layer over on the left.

3. Change your LowDetailMap to 0 in the tweak bar.

4. Go over to the editor bar on the right, and hit Set Low Detail Texture, select the default one, and generate.

Do this for each texture layer.

----------------------

Now, having said that, I'm going to heap scorn upon the BF2 editor for a bit, because Jesus Christ, this is bad. It's so bad I'm not even sure where to begin. It's so bad, it makes the BFV editor and its attendent issues (and I refer you here for some of them) look great. The Oblivion editor, whatever its faults, and there are faults to that editor, pretty much glows and walks on water by comparison. It's so bad, I am unable to recall an editor in my entire life which I have thought was worse.

Yeah, it's really that bad.

To give it some credit, at least we're not fucking around with RFA files like in the days of yore, or Oblivion's BSA files, and we're using straight .zip files. On the other hand, we're still using RAW files for heightmaps, and we're using them in such a way that apparently only Photoshop and a couple of fan-made utilities can even look at the things, much less attempt to edit them. For all the trouble you're going through here you might as well just use greyscale bitmaps or .tif files or something and have done, but no. This inability to function makes terrain editing a lot harder, as I'm sure you can understand.

That aside, when they don't inexplicably fail, the terrain editing tools are actually quite good for the most part. Certainly the Oblivion CS does a lot worse.

Placing objects, too, is pretty much shit, both because it's inexplicably hard to find the object you want, considering how many objects this game really doesn't have, because attempting to use the rotate tool requires some kind of arcane PhD, and did I mention the complete lack of objects? Like, oh, wow, we were totally too lazy to clone a Chinese city set. So, uh, no Chinese urban maps for you. Sorry. Oh, and forget trying to align anything properly.

The really criminal part of this editor, though, is how it takes pretty much every task imaginable, and adds about ten steps to it. And if you deviate from any of these, you are done. In all sorts of really simple ways it's very easy to fuck up your map irrevocably. Take texturing, for instance. Back in the day, you popped open your terrain editor, selected a texture, and went for it. BF2 is smarter than that. Here you need to select a texture, select your low detail texture, make sure it's in the right texture layer, and then do all that happy stuff I posted at the beginning, or else you wind up with a checkerboard. And all of that happy stuff I posted at the beginning? So far as I can tell, you have to do it exactly like that, meaning the inclusion of those settings is meaningless and pretty much only exists to fuck you. And it's basically like that for every single thing in the whole editor. Roads? You don't wanna know about roads.

I haven't gotten that far, and I may not ever considering the level of pain involved, but I'm told that pathmapping for bots involves some amount of work with either 3DSMax or Gmax, which I'm sure is a whole new level of insanity.

It's a real abortion of a system.

I have much work to do.

Via Flash Gordon:

Friends don't let friends dress like...well, any of these people, really. But Dr. Zharkoff, what were you thinking?

This is just awesome.

Which is my reading list for my current assignment. Which I should probably save because I'm sure I'll want it later.

As continued from...the post below. That aside, I really must start categorizing my posts again.

Basically because it's about time I need to start referring to this stuff, a brief reference for various things I've actually decided on (or close enough), followed by some actual crunch in the form of races.

Races:
Aischroi (kulloi/deinoi) - Two subraces, one region.
Humans (humans) - With no subraces, but four different regions (Sanagos, Free Cities, Kingdom, Northlander)
Ossith (lizardfolk) - Slaves of the Ssithil. One region.
Peretoi - slightly changed human nomads. One region.
Ssithil (yuan-ti) - The inhabitants of Great Ssithilos. One region.
Vargrans (hobgoblins) - The inhabitants of the northlands. Two regions.

Gods:
Sanagos - In Healer/Watcher/Traveller/Ruler guises. Worshipped in Sanagos.
Nestos - "The Hidden Lord". Ascended Ssithil (or human) deity of magic. Free Cities, wizards in human lands.
Ashakaros - Guider/Protector God of humans. Worshipped in human lands.
Garrack - "The Red-Tooth". Ascended Ossith hunter deity.
Spirits - Peretoi spirit worship.
Vargra - Vargran wolf-god. Athena-like
Great Ssithilos - Creator of Ssithil.

Languages:
All languages have written form as well unless noted.

Aischroi (no written)
Sanagosi
Kitilumian (ancient, precursor of Sanagosi, western languages)
WESTERN HUMAN LANGUAGE (name after the main kingdom)
Ssithil
Peretoi (no written)
Vargran

Which is 12 languages, counting written variants. May be cool to have spoken-only Ossith/firenewt dialects of Ssithil. Also ancient Ssithil and Vargran.

===========
RACE STATS
===========

Humans - As per PHB.

Aischroi (Kulloi)
+2 Dex/Str, -2 Int/Wis/Cha
Darkvision 60'
Scaled hide (+2 AC)
Clawed (1d4/1d4 natural)
Favored Class: Barbarian
Level adjustment: +1

Aischroi (Deinoi)
+2 Cha/Int, -2 Str/Con
Darkvision 60'
+2 Spot/Search/Decipher Script
Decipher Script/Use Magic Device always class skills
Magical Affinity: Can use 1 0-level arcane as a Su ability Cha mod times
per day as per sorc
Favored Class: Sorcerer
Level Adjustment: +1

Peratoi
+2 Con, -2 Int
Low-light vision
+2 Survival, Spot
Weapon familiarity: Peretoi broadspear (1d8, 20 ft range, can set for charge)
Favored Class: Scout (Complete Adventurer 10)

Vargrans
+2 Dex/-2 Cha
Low-light vision
+4 Move Silently
+2 Intimidate
Favored Class: Fighter

Ssithil
+2 Dex, +2 Cha
+2 Hide
+2 saves vs poison
+2 saves vs enchantment
As sorc of equal level: 1/day - animal trance, charm lizardfolk
detect poison, speak with serpents at will
Favored Class: Wizard

Ossith
+2 Str, +2 Con, -2 Int
+4 Swim, +2 Hide, +2 Move Silently
-2 penalty to saves vs enchantment
Weapon familiarity: atl-atl
Natural weapons: 2 claws (1d4) and bite (1d4)
Favored class: Barbarian

Half-X
Possibility exists for half-human, half-Aischroi, Peretoi, Vargran children. Instead of creating a bunch of weak-ass half-elf types (because half-elves have never not sucked), how about we treat them instead like humans, except they gain any one stat bonus (to a single stat) or racial power (or set, in the case of skills) of their parent other race, in place of the human feat. They keep human skill bonuses and multiclassing, however.

This SEEMS balanced enough to me.

I can't make an aasimar that I don't hate, so instead of that, we'll create a Chosen of Ashakaros feat which simulates some of that functionality, like a bonus to Heal and either a low-level lay on hands ability, a shield other ability (lose 1 AC and transfer to any ally in X feet?), or a flat Cha or Wis bonus, pickable at first level only.

In addition, Sanagosi humans at the least will have a series of Tainted Bloodline feats that allow various (small) stat bonuses or low-light vision. The low-light vision one will have a darkvision upgrade.

Ssithil will have access to a whole bunch of feats from Serpent Kingdoms as racial feats.

Peretoi could probably also use the Tainted Bloodline series, come to think of it.

Everyone else but the Vargrans are ok as-is. I am unsure as to what to give them for feats, but some kind of Chosen of Vargra feat giving limited wolf shifting could be cool, at least until they run into somebody with the Wolf Toss feat.

In addition, there will be regions, the feats of which I am unsure of as of yet.

For class notes:

Ranger - replace with scout, or a modified version of same.

Wizards/Sorcerers - A fairly interesting idea from Tigana was mages lopping off two fingers to get more attuned with magic. This fits the flavor for human wizards a whole lot. Some sort of feat that gives magical bonuses and may be required to get past, I dunno, 2nd level spells, perhaps. Alternately/also look into planar power sources from Pathfinder.

Clerics - A big one. Two ways of doing this. Either keep things mostly how they are, or create a series of classes with new powers and spell lists. One is simpler, one is by far and away cooler than the other, but needs severe fucking with spelllists, which sucks so much.

A few ideas.

Ashakaros - A mix of healing/combat/protection. The most like a traditional cleric.

Garrack - Very druidic, focus on hiding, hunting, etc.

Great Ssithilos - Priests are wizards, and don't actual gain power.

Nestos - Does he even HAVE clerics? Perhaps not. Maybe something like arcane devotee PrC or something.

Peretoi - Probably a more or less straight port of the OA shaman class.

Sanagos/Healer - Pure, unarmored, focuses mostly on healing, with some abjuration thrown in. Alternately, let all Sanagosi clerics draw from the same spell list, and give individual powers based on aspect.

Sanagos/Watcher - Combat and divination stuff.

Sanagos/Traveller - Probably some druid stuff in here, and things like fly, etc. A few combat things, very mixed bag.

Sanagos/Ruler - Enchantment-type stuff, with a bit of abjuration, and things like Shout.

Vargra - The priest presented in HR1 Vikings is a good start. A focus on personal combat, battle rage, and maybe wolf-shifting. This could be wildly cool.

In which we return to the world I keep jotting notes for, previously detailed in posts here and here.

This time with two maps:

Overview showing the whole continent, with my rough notes on who or what is going where. Note the awesome CC3 graphics, about which I shall perhaps discourse on another time.

Regional map showing the whole continent, this time roughly broken down by races and regions. Eventually, this will become the basis for a Forgotten Realms-style region list, or perhaps something stuck directly into the racial rules when I get there?

Let's go over each of those and talk about them some.

Black: Uninhabited

Which is probably off by a little bit, but at the least uninhabited by PC races, since I know those mountains in the northwest are going to have at least semi-sentient monsters in them. Too, I've been writing most of them off as "will develop later," which is going to start biting me in the ass, since I need to, you know, develop them at some point. But not yet.

Also, while I've got a lot of swamps, I don't really have a ton of forests, at least not big, big ones like you ought to find in a world at this stage of development. Some of that will fill in later, when I get down to actually designing individual kingdoms (and I really DO need to finish up my demographics rules), but I could probably fill some of that vast wilderness in the north with some more trees. I don't necessarily want to add new races and such, since the 10 or so I've got is probably more than enough, but things could get a bit more interesting, terrain-wise. I should probably go to the level of detail of adding trees to the actual mountains, to show that they're forested, most of them.

While we're on this terrain note, at 30 miles to the hex, even the Middle Sea is pretty small by our standards (the Mediterranean is something like 4 times the size). This means shipbuilding is probably way way way less advanced than your typical D&D world, and mostly oar-driven biremes and triremes, longboats in the Vikingesque north. Maybe those eastern wizard types have actual, you know, sailing ships, which makes them awesome. We'll see.

Also note that black-covered island down south I still haven't figured out what to do with.

Somewhere in here, I need to move all the larger off-shore islands much further off the shore (so that getting to the wizards is an actual chore, and not "I leap on the boat and sail 20 minutes", among other things.

Red: Empire of Great Ssithilos

Our yuan-ti kingdom. Who won't be called that when I get done with them, but Ssithilans or some other name. I think I'll also ignore most of their stats as presented and give them a few minor powers or stat increases, plus a "bonus feat" they can use to pick either one of the awesome yuan-ti feats from Serpent Kingdoms, or the precursor powers thereof.

They rule over lizardfolk (who I'll talk about in a bit) slaves, and something akin to firenewts (see Monsters of Faerun). Towards the rest of the world (mostly human), they're probably pretty amiable in a sort of ancient Chinese "Greetings, you ignorant barbarian, please buy our stuff, then leave" sort of way. Wouldn't want humans as slaves much, because the ones they've got are just flat out better, but they could still use them for various things, like cannon fodder.

We've previously discussed that the whole place will be sort of like China meets the Aztecs in the Old South, or maybe something akin to sticking Ancient Egypt in a jungle and removing the god king part. Settlement is mostly riverine, with large plantations on the big, navigable rivers. Cities probably mostly coastal, with a couple that break the pattern. Lots of lizardfolk working the land for various crops, fishing, hunting the big ass dinosaurs in the jungles, and such on yuan-ti run plantations. In the mountains, all those volcanoes are probably a great source of gems, and the firenewts are well-equipped to go in and mine them.

We've previously established that the whole place is ruled nominally by Great Ssithilos, who really is a god, but who's been sleeping in his capital city for the last however long. I will need to establish history as to why this is. Government is by the Twelve Hooded Lords, whoever they may be, but probably some sort of temple bureaucracy plus satraps of the various parts of the country. Probably elects itself. Probably a lot of Politburo-style intrigue, too. If there's any kind of wizard's school, they probably have a seat too.

Lower levels of government are probably pretty non-existant outside of the cities, since each plantation owner pretty much calls his own shots as long as he's obedient to the Twelve.

Society is pretty insular, and the model I'm thinking of here is China, except without the treaty ports. Foreigners are pretty much free to come and go (if they pay taxes), and for the most part, Great Ssithilos is big enough, rich enough, and on the surface powerful enough that they just don't care about anyone else.

They also have a big running issue with slave rebellions, and I imagine a big part of the foreign trade is hiring mercenaries to go fight them, since actual yuan-ti are pretty thin on the ground.

Oh yes, and Great Ssithilos is the original source for like, all the dinosaurs, and the yuan-ti are good at controlling some of them. Triceratopses with howdahs, that sort of thing.

Orange: Lizardfolk enclaves

Which for the most part will probably be called "Blerk swamp" or just "Lizardfolk tribes" rather than given actual country names.

As a race, lizardfolk are going to need to get widely scaled back so as to be playable. Will look into this, but lesser stat bonuses, lesser natural AC, etc seem like a good starting point. Probably penalty versus enchantments, since the yuan-ti roll that way.

As places, these are all refugee slaves combined with some native lizardfolk. Tribal structure, with chiefs and shamans of the lizardfolk god, who's portrayed as an ex-slave yuan-ti asskicker. As areas, they're dirt poor (wet dirt at that), and the lizards mostly live by raiding and hunting hadrosaurs and such. Probably some major league rituals around taking all the males of the tribe and bringing one down.

The southeastern enclave is pretty isolated, and might actual be a real civilization with some actual organization. Maybe not.

There's an enclave up near the Plains of Black Ash that has the potential to be interesting. Probably lots more civilized than the others, they've got enough Kitilumian influence to use arcane magic, and they're probably more traders/pirates/ruin looters than anything, and they just live in the swamp 'cause they're amphibians.

The enclave in the northwest is surrounded by the main human kingdom, which has some potential. I have the urge to play these guys mostly straight, hunters/raiders like the others, except mostly raiders, and what's more they're actually good at it, and have good steel weapons from the humans.

Dark Red: Peretoi

Who I have previously described as mostly human Zulu types. Tribal based, they do a lot of hunting and raiding and suchlike, mostly with each other, and they also facilitate trade with various people. Great Ssithilos has at one time or another probably brought whole tribes to go fight for them. Signature weapon is some sort of spear, probably a Zulu-esque short hafted, broad-bladed spear that does a d8 damage and has a 20' range increment, plus can be set against a charge. Exotic weapon that they get for free, like dwarf weapons.

I'm thinking some kind of animistic spirit-based religion, with a dash of Celtic druidism thrown in (mostly the inviolate nature of druids, and their roles as peacemakers and such). I've marked out some "Cairn Hills", so I bet they bury their dead with some amount of ritual at holy cairns or holy necropolises, which can be ancient ruins too, and in one form or another they're probably responsible for a ton of undead, incorporeal or otherwise.

One future idea is to have an actual Peretoi kingdom in the southeast, near all those civilized types. Kinda crappy as kingdoms go, but we'll think on it.

Yellow: Kitilumia

Where the aischroi live. I've described these guys in a lot of detail in previous posts. Demonic-blooded, sorcerous guys ruling over brutal, dimwitted ones. All of them deformed humans, living precariously in the demon-infested ruins of what used to be one of the great civilizations in small groups, living on a mostly meat diet, sometimes trading a little bit with the other, more advanced civilizations around them.

Blue: Sanagos

Which is a human city-state described in excessive detail in previous posts. Theocratic kingdom ruled by the Chosen of Sanagos, who is a Dalai Lama type figure. Best metalworkers in the world, which is their edge in trade, plus they sponser groups that loot the ruins of ancient Kitilumia, get killed by demons, or both at the same time.

Light Blue Undefined kingdoms

Being that area of the map I have no good ideas for whatsoever.

Brown Arabic/genie clockwork wizards/sha'irs?

I've sort of elaborated on how this civilization might work in the second post - guild-driven, highly regimented sort of place, which is at not-quite-Tokugawa-Japan levels of insularity from the outside world. This is riddled with problems, since clockwork has been done, the whole thing feels a lot like what I know of Eberron, and I'm unsure about how to make any game revolving around it fun without having it be self-contained. So we'll think on that, too.

Light Brown Pirates! Yearg!

Or maybe coastal fisher yuan-ti, but that's kind of boring and pirates aren't, so. Plus we need somewhere for all the scum and villains to go. Plenty of lizardfolk, yuan-ti, humans, you name it. Will probably develop this more if I ever need it for anything.

Magenta Seven Free Cities

Which may not end up being called that, exactly. I'm thinking a collection of human city-states, independent of the Brown Kingdom over west of them, who squabble with each other a lot, but unite every time the King comes to fuck with them. Pretty Italian Rennaisance stuff, in other words. Probably have a couple republics, a few tyrranies, stuff like that. These guys are some of the major traders, being smack in the middle of things as they are. In addition, lots of condotierri mercenaries, lots of whom stick around to fight in the penninsula (and sometimes take over ruling), many others of whom go off to work in Great Ssithilos to make their fortune.

As southern humans, I've got these guys pegged as being sort of Greco-Sumerian as far as culture goes, with lots more emphasis on the Greek part than the Sumerian part here.

Brown Major Human Kingdom

Which is pretty much how I described it. Used to be a much stronger human kingdom, but lost parts to civil war, invasions, and what have you. They'd honestly like it back, and the king works to do so when he has the chance, aided by knights and the like. Sort of a Greco-Sumerian take on the classic human kingdom, of which we need the one. Probably fairly Crusaderish, and hate the hobgoblin tribes of the north an awful lot, which gets them in trouble, as we shall see.

These folks are the major breadbasket of the continent, and sell grain all over the place.

Purple Saxonesque human/hobgoblin mixture

Probably some sort of ex-Danelaw type of situation, where the Viking hobgoblins came to stay, then actually broke free of the homeland and set up a mixed sort of society, much like how lots of 6th century Europe must have looked between Romans and barbarians. We're going for the whole decentralized, witan/weak king thing here, and there are probably several actual kingdoms. The crusaders in the south piss them off, and they get raided by the hobgoblins in the north. Lots of hill forts and the like.

Purplish-Blue Viking Hobgoblins

As described previously. They've got some kind of wolf-god thing going, and those mountains definitely have gibberlings, and things like hags. Since the north is pretty crappy, they mostly raid the south. Very individual thanes and such sort of deal, although maybe some titular kings of varying levels of power.

Bluish Finnish Hobgoblins

Who definitely herd rothe. Very freaked out by the gibberlings and the hags and the kenku. The whole north is going to have that semi-horror movie Beowulf feel to it. These guys also get looked down on by the more civilized Vikingesque hobgoblins. All very tribal and such. I sure do have a lot of nomads in this world. Pretty good chance of them having a slightly more wise and paternal deity than the wolf god. Sort of a paternal protector type that saves them from all those big nasty forest spirits. Again, OA shaman to the rescue?

Green Kenku

Who I really haven't detailed at all, except so far as they exist. May well end up not being a PC race, like the gibberlings aren't going to be.

Deities

Sanagos - Has Traveler/Healer/Warrior/Ruler aspects, which is about like having 4 gods in one. Runs on clerics.
Ssithilos - Currently fast asleep, but still has temple bureaucracy of either wizards or clerics. Perhaps Dark Sun templars? That could be wildly cool.
Hobgoblin Wolf God - clerics
Hobgoblin Protector God - shamans?
Peretoi - shamans
Aischroi - no deities, but sorcs run things
Human Healing God - aasimar clerics, paladins, etc. Have talked about this in previous posts.
Lizardfolk god - probably clerics

The possibility of ancient Kitilumian gods and any other unexplored area's gods are unexamined, though the Kitilumians probably skipped out on gods entirely, they were arrogant enough.

Core Classes

Barbarian - really, this guy is really designed as a berserker for the lizardfolk and hobgoblins. Humans worshipping the wolf god probably take this class, too. Likely does not need any modification to use.

Bard - arcane magic is wildly problematic considering how many people flat out despise the stuff in this world. As some kind of skald class, might work out ok for the hobgoblins, etc. One or another of the books probably has powers for this. Must look into it.

Cleric - Would like to take this class out, at least as-is, and replace with something more akin to how, say, Aquerra does things. Each class with a different set of BAB, saves, armor restrictions, powers, etc. 2nd edition specialty priests, essentially.

Druid - Probably take this out. None of these gods are particularly nature-oriented in that fashion.

Fighter - Can go completely unchanged. Everyone has fighters.

Monk - Ah...no. Just no. There are some concepts here that might work well enough with the aasimar healing god, but on the whole, maybe not. OTOH, I do want a sort of Confucian feel to the aasimar healing god. This may not be the way to do it however.

Paladin - With the exception of the turn undead and the mount stuff, these guys work ok for that aasimar god. In slightly different form, these also work ok for Sanagos, except oriented towards demons. Pretty good chance of scrapping these and just going with fighters/divine champion PrCs, however.

Ranger - About half of me thinks it would be a great idea to scrap rangers as a class idea, and go with the Complete Adventurer Scout class instead, which skips some weird magic, and the whole "animal companions are annoying" thing. Not many people are that nature oriented, too.

Rogue - like fighters, everyone has these. Unchanged.

Sorcerer - Check into the Pathfinder RPG rules for demon binding here, as the source is demonic and not draconic. Of the races/regions, aischroi are big sorc users, and there's a fair smattering of humans and peretoi near Kitilumia, too. Outside of that, probably rare. In pretty much all societies, they're going to be reviled, or at the very least distrusted, with the exception of Great Ssithilos, where nobody cares.

Wizard - In general, not many of these. Outlawed flat out in Sanagos, at the very least distrusted most everywhere else, except Great Ssithilos, where you get a lot of wizards, some of whom are actual Transmuters and Enchanters. I could see a lot of the illusion school going to the lizardfolk clerics, and abjuration to the Sanagosi and hobgoblin protector god shamans. Necromancy either as a school or as individuals to the peretoi?

I can see the hobgoblins having some sort of runecasters, depending on how cool that can be made to be.

Languages

Not many of these, at least compared to the main game. Each race has one, plus abyssal, plus ancient versions of Kitilumian and Ssithan if not others. There Is No Common. Also a whole set of written languages, all of which cost extra language slots to write. Literacy is not free!

Technology

Slightly lower than the high middle ages presupposed by D&D. See if I can dig out my Dark Ages tech list from somewhere, which I think is buried in my Player's Options book somewhere, which is tragic as that is in Oregon. In any case, things like pikes and crossbows are probably gone, as is plate mail, as are a few other things. I'm not sure about imposing regional restrictions on equipment, but I will at least have regional suggestions.

Ships are going to suck, as previously mentioned. Not a lot of riding going on, except some dinosaurs in the south. Are there rules for controlling howdah-carrying animals somewhere? Not a lot of riding going on in the north, I'm thinking, which is perfectly ok. Horses are dead. Bye horses.

This sure was long. It's gonna get longer.

Because apparently we needed to have a thunderstorm. At sunset.

In which I'm going to pretty much post a list of what's on my (now mostly in storage) AD&D bookshelf, and then (and in between items) I'm going to talk about it a fair bit. If that's not your thing, stop now, before things get ugly.

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AD&D - First Edition:

1978 - Player's Handbook (1st Edition)
1985 - Oriental Adventures (1st Edition)
1986 - Dungeoneer's Survival Guide
1986 - Wilderness Survival Guide

The 1st Edition PHB is pretty much the book that started me in this hobby. I found my brothers' old copy right about the time I was really getting introduced to fantasy literature in a big way (Thanks for the Eddings stuff, Jason), and I basically said "Wait. You can make...characters? And play them? Kind of like in Might and Magic and Wizardry and Ultima? This sounds great!" Lack of money and rulebooks put a stop to that for a (brief) while, but the seeds were planted, right about the summer after 6th grade.

The 1st Edition OA is one of my favorite sourcebooks, being the avid Shogun reader and fan of Japanese culture that I was and am. Samurai? Awesome! Ninjas? Cool! It had lots of interesting cultural stuff and DM aid stuff in it too, which is why I still keep returning to it. Also, I searched many, many book shops for it, once I figured out such a thing existed.

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AD&D - Second Edition

1989 - Player's Handbook (2nd Edition)
1989 - Dungeon Master's Guide (2nd Edition)
1989 - Dungeon Master's Screen (2nd Edition)
1991 - Tome of Magic
1993 - Monstrous Manual

The Monstrous Manual was the first thing I ever picked up with my own money for AD&D, and I still have fond memories of walking into Papa's Pizza, getting my mother to order me a pizza, and then essentially ignoring her to read it. It's still the most complete monster book TSR/WoTC have ever done, and while it has its share of dud monsters, it stands in marked contrast to many later monster books (All the 3rd edition monster manuals, I'm looking at you here) in how many of the monsters don't suck. As I came to find out later, that's a pretty rare thing.

I read a lot of the Tome of Magic over pizza, too, except this time in school during the 8th grade. I used to bring my books to class a lot, and read them when class was boring (as it frequently was). For some reason, this went over badly, and I eventually got told to stop doing it. It was fun while it lasted though.

1989 - Battlesystem Miniatures Rules (2nd Edition)
1991 - Battlesystem Skirmishes Miniatures Rules

I picked these up because I always wanted to run mass battles, and what better way to do so than to get the official rules for doing so? Yeah. Highly complex, took a lot of conversion work, and it took for bloody ever to actually run a battle. It's a cool idea though, and I definitely want to revisit it some day.

1989 - PHBR1 Complete Fighter's Handbook
1989 - PHBR2 Complete Thief's Handbook
1990 - PHBR3 Complete Priest's Handbook
1990 - PHBR4 Complete Wizard's Handbook
1991 - PHBR5 Complete Psionics Handbook
1991 - PHBR6 Complete Book of Dwarves
1992 - PHBR7 Complete Bard's Handbook
1992 - PHBR8 Complete Book of Elves
1993 - PHBR9 Complete Book of Gnomes and Halflings
1993 - PHBR10 Complete Book of Humanoids
1993 - PHBR11 Complete Ranger's Handbook
1994 - PHBR12 Complete Paladin's Handbook
1994 - PHBR13 Complete Druid's Handbook
1995 - PHBR14 Complete Barbarian's Handbook
1995 - PHBR15 Complete Ninja's Handbook

And here is the reason I'm never going to buy another D&D class book again. I mean, good fuck, look at all those! And while some of them were actually quite good (we'll return here in a sec), there were plenty of duds as well, and as a group they introduced so so so many rules issues. I don't miss those days at all.

That having been said, as an elf fan, PHBR9 was awesome. A whole 128 page book about ELVES. While it was filled with its share of ridiculousness, it did have really cool stuff, like bladesingers and a whole lot of great fluffy lore.

PHBR3, the Complete Priest's Handbook, lays claim to being perhaps the best idea that 2nd edition ever had, which was specialty priests and rules for creating them. Replacing the cleric with a series of unique classes tailored to each deity was such a fabulous idea (later carried to perfection in the FR Faiths and Avatars series of books), that I am still, closer to 15 years than not after stealing Jason's copy of it (thanks Jason), still pretty bitter about how the killed the idea for 3rd Edition. No, domains aren't good enough, you fakers.

1990 - DMGR2 Castle Guide
1994 - DMGR6 Complete Book of Villains
1995 - DMGR7 Complete Book of Necromancers
1997 - DMGR9 Of Ships and the Sea

I've always had a fascination with castles (I wanted to be an architect for a while), and so the idea that you could, with the aid of this book, design your own castles and populate them with people, and tell stories around that, really took hold of me. I still have a very firm memory of seeing DMGR2 sitting on a rack of D&D books (along with PHBR2, as it happens), and immediately purchasing it in the 3 nanoseconds or so it took for me to get it to the register. After I stopped being excited. Rather later in time, I have another memory of myself with a pad of graph paper and my Castle Guide, sitting in the shade taking a break from deck building by sketching a few towers and a wall. We've had a lot of fun over the years, my Castle Guide and I.

1991 - HR1 Vikings
1992 - HR2 Charlemagne's Paladins
1992 - HR3 Celts
1992 - HR4 A Mighty Fortress
1993 - HR5 The Glory of Rome
1994 - HR6 Age of Heroes
1994 - HR7 The Crusades

The Historical Reference series of books is probably my favorite set of books ever published for AD&D, and they've seen almost constant use in the years I've owned them. For each world I build, I peruse several of them, and sometimes even when I need Forgotten Realms ideas. Best world design tool I ever had.

1996 - World Builder's Guidebook
1998 - Dungeon Builder's Guidebook

...besides the WBG, that is. Mechanics and guidelines for worldbuilding, from the top down, or the bottom up, as you preferred. And neat 20-sided hex paper so that, when you got done with your latest map, you could cut it out, fold it up, and make your own globe! This book was the doom for many a colored pencil. You have no idea.

199X - Castles
1992 - Strongholds

I got sick one time in the early 90s, and after the clinic visit, we swung by Trump's to check out gaming stuff, as was the habit of the times. And...oh, hey, fold-up cardboard castles? Sign me up right now. You would never know I was sick, I was so busy with that project. Also, turning Castle Hart from the Castles box into a Campaign Cartographer 2/3 map is probably my longest running project ever, starting some time in the late 1990s, finishing in the early 2000s, and then continuing after a hard drive swap obliterated my files. Yes, I'm still sad about that. You have no idea.

1995 - Night Below

A Christmas gift one year, this thing looked so awesome. "A game where you go from 1st to 20th level! In the Underdark! Awesome!" I wanted to play it RIGHT THEN. More than 10 years later, I'm still waiting. Soon, I hope.

1994 - First Quest

For a brief period in the early 90s, TSR flirted with putting CDs of voices and such in their products. This particular starter version of 2nd Edition AD&D was one of them. I don't recall as how we ever used the CD, but we DID play through the adventure. And, using my Monstrous Manual, Jason went and bought some fire lizards after one particularly hard section, and then waited like FIVE YEARS to breed an army of them before taking the rest of the dungeon by swarm. Ah, those were the days. We were gamers once, and young. And kind of dumb.

1996 - Monstrous Compendium Annual, Volume Three

Which was a completely unremarkable book, except that monsters that weren't in the actual Monstrous Manual? Many of them were very very bad. Let us never speak of them again.

1995 - Encyclopedia Magica, Volume One
1995 - Encyclopedia Magica, Volume Two
1995 - Encyclopedia Magica, Volume Three
1996 - Encyclopedia Magica, Volume Four

1996 - Wizard's Spell Compendium, Volume One
1997 - Wizard's Spell Compendium, Volume Two
1998 - Wizard's Spell Compendium, Volume Three
1998 - Wizard's Spell Compendium, Volume Four

1999 - Priest's Spell Compendium, Volume One

These series seemed like a good idea to somebody at the time, including me. Unfortunately, they ended up being incredibly broken, as there was never any attempt at balancing done throughout 1st and 2nd edition, nor were any realistic guidelines established for doling items or spells out. Combine with a bunch of munchkin teenagers, and you get predictable results. I never did get either of the 3e compendiums, for much the same reasons.

1996 - Player's Option: Skills and Powers
1996 - Player's Option: Spells and Magic

These were basically AD&D 2.5, and, like so much else in that edition, there were a lot of great ideas, badly implemented because they were completely and totally broken beyond words. Constructing your own classes by using options is something that really worked in 3rd Edition, but here, it made for unstoppable juggernaughts of unspeakable power, especially when combined with, say, munchkin items from Encyclopedia Magica. Clyos the Minotaur to the axe-shaped courtesy phone please.

1998 - Core Rules CD-ROM 2.0
1999 - Core Rules CD-ROM 2.0 Expansion

Towards the end of 2nd Edition's life, TSR came out with a set of CDs that, among other things, included a character generator as well as the core and many of the PHBR/DMGR books in rtf format. Revolutionary at the time, of course, and the whole thing worked fairly well, in a way that I'm not sure 3e efforts really did - that character generator CD that shipped with the first set of 3e rulebooks was a sad, sad thing indeed.

And yes, here at the end of the 2e section, I should note that I really did buy way too much gaming shit over the years. Thank you, being a teenager with disposable income and no bills, not to mention time to read all of that stuff. It was fun while it lasted.

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AD&D, 2nd Edition - Greyhawk

1991 - Greyhawk Wars
1998 - Greyhawk The Adventure Begins

I actually got Wars as a Christmas present before I really knew anything about D&D. As it happened, it was more of a Risk-like boardgame, with different types of monsters and such, and you could go questing for treasure. Very cool, but took forever to play. One of these days I wish somebody would write a computer version of it. That would be great.

The Adventure Begins is so totally the fault of Thomas Miller's Adventurers series. Damn you for making me actually like Greyhawk. And for wanting to be Belphanior.

AD&D, 2nd Edition - Dragonlance

1992 - Tales of the Lance

"Well, the Dragonlance novels were kind of cool, and I really liked the Elven Nations Trilogy. Maybe the setting is cool, too?" No, as it turns out. There are lots of individual elements that are really great - kender, for one, and the Solamnic Knights and the way mages work. But something just didn't speak to me about it, and so it never really got used.

AD&D, 2nd Edition - Dark Sun

1995 - Dark Sun Campaign Setting (Revised)

"Well, it's like this. It's a desert world, right? And there are all these evil god-kings. And everybody's fighting. Oh, and there's like no steel anywhere." Cool setting, but we never really did get into it much, save for that brief period where Jason ran a 3e game for Cole and I that featured my amazing leaping thri-kreen (praying mantis PCs for the win!) and a slightly drunken but now immortal conversation revolving around the phrase "chirpa clicka jihad?"

1994 - Planescape Monstrous Compendium

I never really got Planescape as a setting (lots of people love it, but it didn't do a lot for me). However, this book has awesome monsters. In fact it's my second favorite monster book ever. Because it has Hordelings. And Vrocks. Demons are cool.

AD&D, 2nd Edition - Al-Qadim:

1992 - Arabian Adventures
1992 - Land of Fate
1993 - City of Delights
1994 - Complete Sha'ir's Handbook

1993 - Secrets of the Lamp

All of this is the result of...Christmas 1995, I think, when I also picked my FR boxed set, Night Below, and some other stuff. Santa kicked ass that year.

Another in the long list of settings that was completely awesome, but never actually got used for anything because we just never quite got there. That having been said, I steal pieces of it for my own worldbuilding, and I swear that my next Calimshan game is going to have sha'irs in it. Hell, if I ever play a PC again, it may be a sha'ir.

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AD&D, 2nd Edition - Forgotten Realms

Now behold the depths of my obsession. I am a huge, huge FR fan. Huge.

1990 - Forgotten Realms Adventures
1990 - FR11 Dwarves' Deep
1991 - Ruins of Undermountain
1992 - Menzoberranzan
1993 - Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting (Revised)
1993 - Ruins of Myth Drannor
199X - City of Splendors
1994 - Ruins of Undermountain II
1995 - Ruins of Zhentil Keep
1995 - Spellbound
1995 - The Vilhon Reach
1996 - The North
1996 - Netheril: Empire of Magic
1997 - Lands of Intrigue
1998 - Empires of the Shining Sea
1998 - Calimport

As a whole, this series of books and boxed sets represents what I consider to be the finest body of world background written, and easily better than its 3rd Edition successors in such a way that's completely tragic if you've ever compared any of it, with the exception of the 3rd Edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, which actually is superior to its predecessor, fond of that box though I am.

I've used four of these in actual games (Vilhon Reach in my current game, Empires of the Shining Sea/Calimport twice, and Lands of Intrigue more than I can keep track of), and Lands of Intrigue and Empires of the Shining Sea are some very, very fine works indeed.

1990 - The Horde
1990 - FRA1 Storm Riders

Transplanting the Mongols to the Realms was a really supurb idea, and The Horde is a really great boxed set full of great stuff I've just never had the opportunity to use beyond a couple of Tuigan caught in the West after the horde fell apart. Again, one day I will come back to this stuff.

1989 - OA7 Test of the Samurai
1990 - OA6 Ronin Challenge
1990 - FROA1 Ninja Wars

Because I think I mentioned how awesome I want Oriental Adventures to be. And I should also mention how disappointed I always end up being with most of the books, because most people just can't do it well, or at least they couldn't in 1990. Some of this stuff is pretty good (OA6 and most of OA7), but Ninja Wars is actually a comedy adventure they sold as a real one. Would the Shogun readers in the audience like to identify a bigshot general of the Shogun named Hiro-Matsu who carries his sword in one hand? How about an arogant archer samurai named Buntaro? Sound familiar to anybody? Yeah. Which is a shame, because it's actually kind of cool. It's just...ouch.

1991 - Maztica
1991 - FMA3 Endless Armies
1992 - FMQ2 City of Gold

TSR had a lot of really great ideas that just didn't work, and Maztica is unfortunately one of them. Precolumbian America is a great idea for a setting, but you sort of have to run it as its own thing, given the power differences between it and the actual Realms. But since its an FR tie-in, they used the Amnians as Spanish analogues, and created something that, while it COULD be really great, is a little hard in practice. One day, though.

1993 - Player's Guide to the Forgotten Realms Campaign
1994 - Volo's Guide to the Sword Coast
1995 - Wizards and Rogues of the Realms
1996 - Warriors and Priests of the Realms
1998 - Cult of the Dragon
1999 - Demihumans of the Realms

Most of these, with the exception of the excellent Cult of the Dragon, ranged from pretty forgettable to outright shitty products - Player's Guide to the Forgotten Realms Campaign was utterly devoid of anything useful. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero. 128 pages of absolute nothing, and if you think I'm bitter about that still, buying it thinking I was getting real setting info, well...yes, actually, I'm pretty fucking pissed off about it, why do you ask?

199X - Monstrous Compendium, Volume Three: Forgotten Realms Appendix
199X - Monstrous Compendium, Volume Six: Kara-Tur Appendix

In which we get monsters. The OA ones are awesome. Some of the FR ones are awesome. Many of the FR ones are also retarded. Enough said.

1996 - Faiths and Avatars
1997 - Powers and Pantheons
1998 - Demihuman Deities

To continue what I was saying about the Complete Priest's Handbook, this trilogy is amazing. Not only does it carry the idea of specialist priests to its ultimate form, it also does the same for the Forgotten Realms pantheon of gods (which as you can see is very very large). Again, and I'm going to keep harping on this, this was something done very well in 2nd edition that was totally biffed in 3rd, where we got one book, in large type (F&A is the same size but in very very small type), which couldn't hope to cover more than the basics, and in reality we barely got more than was put into the actual Campaign Setting. Very sad.

1999 - Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas

As a map freak, this thing is awesome. It's kind of like having Google Maps for the Realms, only back in 1999, and with lots of floorplans and such. Not every single map ever published for the Realms made it in here, but enough did. Oh yes.

======================

D&D, 3rd and 3.5 Editions

2000 - Player's Handbook (3rd Edition)
2000 - Dungeon Master's Guide (3rd Edition)
2000 - Monster Manual (3rd Edition)
2002 - Monster Manual II (3rd Edition)

2003 - Player's Handbook (3.5 Edition)
2003 - Dungeon Master's Guide (3.5 Edition)
2003 - Monster Manual (3.5 Edition)

2002 - Stronghold Builder's Guidebook

2001 - Oriental Adventures (3rd Edition)

I've griped a lot over the course of this over how bad a lot of the fluff changes between 2nd and 3rd edition books have been, and believe you me, they are BAD, but let us also be clear that the 3.0 rules, followed by the 3.5 rules, were an absolute revelation to us at the time about what a good ruleset could be. It solved essentially every single problem I ever had with 2nd edition (which were very many), and my main gripes now are that I still want my goddamn specialty priests, and it takes way too long to do encounters because I have way too much fun with statblocks. Considering how much 2nd edition material I have for fluff, I'm more than ok with that, but I fell sorry for those poor bastards who don't have it, although in this age of $4 PDFs, why don't you?

You'll note that the list got really short all of a sudden. Part of that's less money - I grew up somewhere in there - and part of it's I learned lessons in 2nd Edition, like "Keep the game simple, stupid. You'll be happier." Haven't quite succeeded, but I'm trying.

Note the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook. Not the Castle Guide, but it tries, and does so well. I can't quite love it like I do its older brother, but I have my affection for it, after its fashion.

I can't really say the same with OA 3, though. They got it about half right, and James Wyatt obviously has some enthusiasm for the thing, but the class balancing choices were ridiculous, and we're all still wondering - why the hell did you ditch Kara-Tur for Rokugan, which not only has its own game, got its own d20 support not long after? What a waste.

========================

2001 - Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting (3rd Edition)
2001 - Monsters of Faerun
2001 - Magic of Faerun
2004 - Player's Guide to Faerun
2004 - Serpent Kingdoms
2005 - Lost Empires of Faerun

Again, you will note how many less books I have now than in days of yore. One reason is that are simply way less books - I have about half of everything that's been published, and the other is that for the most part, the books are crap, and in places I don't care to run a game in any case. God book? What do I care, I have Faiths and Avatars. Waterdeep? I've got the City of Splendors box. The exceptions are Serpent Kingdoms, which was actually NEW all the way around (and cool because it has yuan-ti, who rock), and Lost Empires, which was actually good. Everything else, I have because its essential for trying to run a 3e/3.5e FR game.

Again, I exclude the FRCS from this, because it really is an amazing book. For once, unfettered by page counts, the best people in Realmslore combined to produce what is the defenitive overview of the geography, the people, the cultures, the classes... Lots of great stuff got started in this book, like regions. The only bad thing I can think to say of it is that the map sucks when you compare it to the poster maps of old, but then, all of 3rd Edition had shit for maps, so its not surprising, and again, I have all my old 2nd Edition stuff to back me up.

============================

Final Thoughts

We'll see what this ends up meaning for me and 4th edition. Bad things, I suspect. I'll be getting the core books, of course ($57 on Amazon right now, which is something like getting one book free), and I'll probably pick up the 4th edition FRCS when it comes out, but...enh. If the rules are good, I'll probably switch, but I'm worried about what WoTC's setting reboot on FR is going to mean. I'll keep watch, but I'm going to guess none of this will matter to me for a while. Everyone I know wants to play 3.5, and my FR is still in what's essentially the 2e timeline anyway.

I'm done now. Who made it this far? Who even cared?

Let us, for a moment, talk about home improvement, as we have so many times previously. Though usually our discussion topic is decks, let us move into the realm of interior decorating.

First, the before shot:

And now the after shots:

My air mattress dying has brought changes, as you can see. The bed, well, that was obvious. As it turns out, I need a soft bed, or I can't sleep well. Combined with my need for storage space, it was clearly time I broke down and bought a bed. Meanwhile:

Sarah: You know, those blinds are crappy and falling apart. You should get curtains.
Me: Yes dear. One of these days. When I have time and money. And maybe if I'm not moving. Eventually.

*a week passes*

Sarah: You know, you should really get some curtains.
Me: Somehow, I feel as I've had this conversation before.

To make a long story short, we took a trip to the IKEA store. And let me tell you, that place is...something. On the one hand, the gigantor showroom area was impressive just for the size. On the other hand, the bright colors, furniture, and happy 60s music were on some level deeply disturbing, as if somehow at the end of the line, instead of the personable and helpful cashier we actually got, they were instead going to kill us and use our bodies in macabre rituals. This may just be me. And on the other other hand, the very large warehouse area full of boxed and ready to assemble furniture was deeply impressive, especially when I thought about how awe-inspiring somebody from a little more than a century ago would find the thing, because pretty much the only people capable of the logistics involved in putting all that together have been Western civilization in the last 80 or 100 years or so. And yes, I AM a history major, why do you ask?

In the event, after cracking the requisite IKEA jokes, thanks to Roberto, we found a bed. And then, disaster struck.

Sarah: You know, you should REALLY get some cu...
Me: YES. FINE. I WILL GET CURTAINS. CURTAINS ARE WHAT I WILL GET. JUST PLEASE SHUT UP ABOUT THE CURTAINS.

Now, prospective curtain shoppers at IKEA should realize that their curtains come in two lengths: 110 inches, or 98 inches. Now, perceptive viewers of those pictures should realize that my ceiling is in no way either of these lengths. And herein lies my revenge.

Sarah: These sure are way too long.
Me: Sure are.
Sarah: I guess I could probably fix that for you.
Me: I think, especially as you're responsible for all of this, that you should.

I am told that later, sewing machines were involved. But I would not know about these things*, as I am a man, and my part of the proceedings involved manly things, such as putting the bed together.

Anyone who has put together furniture will know that there are a pretty obscene number of pieces to these things, including roughly 16,138 varieties of screws, and the instructions are generally...not so helpful. However, I have had extensive training in such matters:

Sarah: I cannot understand how this all fits together.
Me: Yes. This is because you did not play with Legos. I, however, DID play with Legos. I know exactly how this all works.

And then I gave her the bedside table to put together, which is the furniture equivilent of one of those $5 Lego sets with one guy and a treasure chest. This took her 20 minutes or so, thus proving my point about Lego construction as a life skill.

And so it went. Until I realized that I need to actually drill holes in the frame. And that I had no drill. And this is when, driving to Home Depot with Sarah, I realized that I had become my father. Because, as anyone who has ever done a home improvement project with him knows, there will inevitably be at least one sequence like this:

Dad: I really do need part/tool/lumber/thing.
Me: Better head for Jerry's.
Dad: *drives off to Jerry's with Mom*

For my own part, Home Depot is definitely not Jerry's. At no time in my life did I ever envision undertaking an epic quest for a drill. In a hardware store. I also wanted an awl, but abandoned that as not happening when I realized they didn't carry any such thing. As it was, I finally found a good hand drill masquerading as a heavy-duty screwdriver, and for a reasonable price, as opposed to all of the electric ones, which started around $100, and kept going.

After this, remaining assembly was essentially trivial. Beds were constructed, and we realized they were at excellent height for movie watching, and we did this, and it was good. And the people rejoiced.

And then I tried to sleep on it, and realized that the addition of slats and the futon mattress made the bed Very Hard. And while some people apparently like this, I for one cannot deal with my joints popping all day. Call me crazy. But this is why smart people invented the 4 inch thick foam mattress pad. Not a waterbed, but comfy. And I like comfy.

So yeah. My room is now better! Faster! Stronger! More sleeptastic!

* - And rumors that I took home ec and can actually use one are a lie. Yes.

Rumors of my demise are slightly exaggerated. Rumors of my enemies' demise by way of large barrels of exploding pitch and naptha, however, are not. Make of this what you will.

I can promise you much more extensive updating later, once the events necessary take place, which should be in, oh, 20 minutes or so. For now, two things:

1. On the blog technical note, entry permalinks (which you may access by clicking the date in an entry) now lead to a page for each individual entry, rather than the monthly listing. I did this because it was impossible to link reliably using said monthly listing. This way is better. You can still browse the archives via the monthly pages.

2. For those of you playing or thinking about playing that most excellent Oblivion mod, AFK_Weye, you should download the new version here.

Thanks to Samson's help, bugfixes are legion in this release, and include everything from cell lighting changes and missing voice mp3s to fixes for quest breaking bugs. So please, get the thing. Please note, however, that this is not the final version, although you may find...evidence of further work being done.

Also please note that if you use the UL:Arrius Creek mod, there is apparently a fairly bad conflict between it and Weye. This will be fixed in due time.

First, for you Weye followers, you may find the version 2 beta here. Please note that this is liable to be updated as bugs are found, and if you do find anything busted, please do let me know about it.

On an entirely different note, if you've been following this blog for any length of time, you know that I'm a pretty big fan of S.M. Stirling's body of fiction, but especially the trilogies that start with Island In the Sea of Time and Dies the Fire, and his new one that starts with The Sunrise Lands.

Now, lately I've been doing a reread of those in a sort of bizzare order where I read Sunrise Lands, then went back and did the Dies the Fire stuff, then went back and re-read ISOT for the first time in a few years. And I had a few thoughts on that experience that I'll probably want to come back to later, so let's just blather on that for a bit, shall we.

As a native Oregonian, and, being from Monroe, I've lived most of my life pretty close to the main thrust of the action, I'm pretty well obligated to love Dies the Fire and its successors, because hey, it's set in Oregon, and how cool is that. Furthermore, if the prologue thank-yous are to be believed, Stirling himself relied on other people for the setting stuff, rather than actually going there, though I could be wrong. In either case, he got a lot of our local quirks right, including:

- Portland as the Evil Empire. Being a not-Portlander, that's hilarious.
- Every depiction of the Corvallis city-state ever. Especially the beaver flag. I'm an OSU alumnus, and I find that side-splittingly funny. About the only way to make that particular bit of nationalism more hilarious would have been to use UO and that whole "The Ducks are our civic religion" thing, but you know what? he leveled Eugene. As a Corvallan, I can't do anything but applaud that.
- The whole Eugene coven thing was pretty cool, although I have to alternate between thinking they're enormously annoying and kind of cute, which I guess is fair because I do it with their real life counterparts too.
- Since I pretty much have an inate superiority complex about my native state in any case, the fact that Oregon turns out to be one of the bastions of civilization in the Changed world is pretty awesome. Another is England, which as we know is another of my favorite places. It's hard to argue with that.

I also find it pretty cool that over the course of the books, I've learned quite a bit more about my native state's geography than I knew before, which is cool.

Also the books are flat out awesome, as I've said before. If sometimes we get a little too regional stereotyped, and maybe we're a little too fast on the decay of society thing, well, that doesn't make it any less neat. As I've said before, the whole guys with longbows and chainmail cruising around Oregon thing is great.

As to Island in the Sea of Time, I'm once again remembering how interesting this world would be for some kind of RPG. I'm also reminded that there are plenty of hooks left in the third book to support a bunch of sequels in various ways, and if he doesn't get to it in the current set of books, I sure would like to go back and see if Althea turns out to be awesomely evil like I want her to.

I had also forgotten how great the Babylon parts of the second two books are, and how they made the parts of the book that were NOT Babylon sort of drag a bit. Also, I really, really wish we could have seen more of Egypt, but again with that whole needs-a-second-trilogy thing.

I also forgot how...utterly tacked on the airship crew stuff felt, and how I couldn't care less about them. I realize why they're there, and other minor character couples in the same vein, like the Marine privates, work just fine, and I like them. I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that Cofflin and Stoddard are generally in the same scenes as other, way cooler characters like the Hollards and Kashtiliash. Along the same lines, the Ranger subplot bored me to tears this time, which I can't figure out because I liked it before.

Now, on a more thematic observation. Somebody, who I suspect is a random Wikipedia editor, said something interesting, to the effect of Stirling's having a strong belief in the inherent goodness of Western civilization or some such. Now, keeping the acknowledgement in the front of Conquistador firmly in mind (and I'm pretty sure I was there for the discussions that provoked that), I find that observation to be pretty true, and you have only to read ISOT through Conquistador to figure that out. There's, for the most part, a sort of attitude to the characters therein that wouldn't be out of place in a late 19th century Englishman. More enlightened, of course, but not out of place.

The interesting thing, though, is that Dies the Fire onwards is, if not precisely the exact opposite of this view, then pretty damn close. You get the sense that everyone doesn't exactly miss the 20th century like they might, and indeed lots of them are actually pretty happy about it. Certainly they aren't going out of their way to keep bits of it alive, like Nantucket does - the Mackenzies are a moderately representative democracy, but pretty much nobody else is, for example. Maybe I'm reading too much into that, but it'll be interesting to see how, if that whole vision thing turns out like people think, he resolves that dichotomy, or if he does.

And it's midnight and I'm incoherent, so enough of that.

One of those things about me that most people don't actually know is that I'm something of a map geek, especially when it comes to gaming maps. Now, most of you, my faithful readers, pretty much know this - the whole Cartographer's Guild thing for one, and I've posted plenty of Campaign Cartographer doodles up here.

One of the things that really really doesn't get talked about is the fact that, in amongst my D&D things, I have a box that, once upon a time, back when they were the height of technology, contained an external 100 MB Zip drive. Now it contains AD&D poster maps. 81 of them, to be exact, ranging from the 3rd edition FRCS map of Faerun to the Dragonlance maps from Tales of the Lance to maps of Europe from the Historical Reference series. About the only thing missing is my two-poster Greyhawk Wars map, which is still in Oregon.

Totally, they represent much of my spending money from my teenage years. Some kids collect baseball cards. Others clothes. Some people spend it on their cars, or dating. Me? I can recreate most of the Forgotten Realms in 30 miles to the inch poster maps.

With a larger version here.

That includes maps from:

Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting: Revised (1993)
The Horde Campaign Setting (1990)
Maztica Campaign Setting (1991)
Spellbound (1995)
The North (1996)
Vilhon Reach (1996)
Lands of Intrigue (1997)
Empires of the Shining Sea (1998)
Storm Riders (1990)

Not pictured are the two 30 mile to the inch poster maps from the Al Qadim set, which would be somewhere south of the two brown maps from the Horde and Storm Riders, approximately where my kitchen cabinets are. We'll also skip out on the 15 mile to the inch map of Michaca from City of Gold.

Now, while the entire 2nd edition line of FR boxed sets was supurb (culminating in the ridiculously excellent Lands of Intrigue and Empires of the Shining Sea), I actually did a lot of my collecting not for the source material, but for the maps. These are the best sorts of maps, really, because you can point to some ruin on them, look up that ruin, and go imagine yourself having adventures there, which was incredibly important to my teenage self, and I suppose still is. In any event, I have a fair number of maps I've never actually used, such as:

With a larger version here.

You FR savvy types will recognize three of the great cities of the Realms there:

Waterdeep, from the 1994 City of Splendors box
Myth Drannor, from the 1993 Ruins of Myth Drannor box
Menzoberranzan, from the 1992 box of the same name.

Never used a one of them, but they sure are cool, aren't they? City of Splendors in particular was an awesome box for maps - in addition to the two-poster city street layout you see there, there are also maps for Castle Waterdeep, a tavern, and two photographed posters of miniatures layouts of parts of the city. Made of win. Also the books were great.

And this is the sort of thing that, aside from the actual 3rd edition FRCS, which is the best basic set for the Realms to date, is sadly lacking recently. By way of illustration, let's show this picture of my 90 miles to the inch FR poster maps:

With larger version here.

With maps from:

Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting: Revised (1993)
The Horde Campaign Setting (1990)
Al Qadim Campaign Setting
OA6: Ronin Challenge (1990)

By contrast, do you see that sole, single poster, 120 mile to the inch map that's had chunks edited out of it to fit? That's the 2001 3rd edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting map, and it's pretty much the only one you're going to get in all of 3rd edition. And that's just sad, now isn't it?

Now, that's not the only thing hard to love about the new map. While, for gaming purposes, 30 miles to the inch is a great scale, and it's pretty much the only one I like to use, 90 miles to the inch isn't a bad scale, and those two FRCS:Revised maps in the northwest corner are pretty well-loved. But 120 miles to the inch? That's unusably small. Which wouldn't be so bad if 3rd edition products had made up for it, but they really didn't. And I for one am pretty sad about that.

In which I, having not done so previously, shortly review the downloadable content for Oblivion. I'll go through each one, then I'll talk about the series as a whole.

DLC1: Horse Armor

Which gives you the ability to buy armor for your horses, allowing them to live longer in combat, and also look cool. Which is fine, and all, if you want your horse to look cool, but considering it's more expensive than all but two of the other DLCs (Mehrunes Razor and Knights of the Nine, both of which are very large), I'd expect more, and do anyway. Let us be clear, here: Oblivion's mount system stinks. It's a gimmick, and with the exclusion of actual mounted combat, a poorly executed one at that. Considering that you get leaped by enemies every five seconds in the wild, better armored horses is nice and all, but fails to address how annoying it is to have to hop off the horse and fight constantly.

Which explains why I don't use horses (multiple characters don't even have the free one), and why I've never used the horse armor, though I paid my $1.99 for it.

DLC2: Orrery

I wasn't particularly thrilled with this second entry in the DLC series, either, considering that it was so blatantly and obviously cut from the game in the first place, whether because of lack of time, or specifically to make it a DLC, who knows. Again, for the money I pay for the thing, even $1.89, I wish the quest was a little bit more substantial than "Go chase down bandit camps in the wild. Repeatedly." That aside, the orrery itself looks great, and the powers are kind of neat. I just wish that the quest weren't so completely uninspired.

DLC3: Frostcrag Spire

Finally, a DLC I can really get behind. This is a house mod, and a fairly well done one at that. There are a lot of good gimmicks in it, and some really great and useful stuff for wizards, like summoning altars, spellmaking and enchanting altars, an alchemy garden, and teleporters to the mages' guilds. Also, it looks awesome, and when the view from the spire is present, it's fantastic. The only thing I can really think to say negatively is that if there was ever a place to put display cases, boy that entry hall area is it. For $1.89, it's worth having.

DLC4: Spell Tomes

I love the idea of this mod, which is to insert spellbooks with learnable spells into the loot lists. I kind of wish you could just do this with scrolls in the first place, but what the hell. On the other hand, the execution is...flawed. Firstly, they're...reasonably rare, which may be me looking in the wrong spots, but even Alera, world traveler, hasn't found more than a few, and very few of the good ones. Secondly, it's hard to tell which spell you're getting, because of the annoying "Do you want to learn this spell?" popup. Yes, I probably do, but I can't tell what it does, so who knows? Given the inability to clean out your spellbook in Oblivion, this can get annoying. Thirdly, all things considered, if I'm going to find rare spells, I'd like them to be worth having, as opposed to "not quite as good as the ones you can make yourself", which is what they are in reality, and as opposed to sigil stones, which really ARE better than you can make on your own.

That aside, for $0.99, I don't see why you wouldn't just run out and get the thing. I nitpick, but it's still cool.

DLC5: The Vile Lair

As houses go, this one isn't precisely bad, exactly, but it's definitely not Frostcrag, and it's a little too 14 year-old Goth munchkin for my taste. The layout? Cool, especially the shrine. Secret hidden loot? Cool. Not so secret loot that rivals the best stuff in the game? Munchkin as hell. An altar that prevents you from needing to do the vampire cure quest? Probably ok, because that quest is fucking annoying, but still munchkin as hell. Also, I don't really feel EVIL in my evil lair. Just sort of misunderstood and on the run. The Dark Brotherhood sanctuary? Oh, now THAT place is evil. The Vile Lair just sort of plays it on TV every so often.

Go spend the $1.89 on one of the other house mods. You'll love yourself more.

DLC6: Fighter's Stronghold

Now THIS is a house mod. Every time I walk into some noble's castle in Oblivion, I say to myself "I gotta get me one of THESE!" And now I can. And while I have a couple of nitpicks that are common to all the DLCs, this is about as perfect as it gets. We have display cases. We have secret passages and rooms and enemies. I can watch the sunsets from the roof. Spar with my trainer, and take my men at arms to go hunt bandits. There's even a taxidermist to make awesome stuffed versions of wildlife. Run, do not walk, to buy this. Even if you aren't a fighter, Battlehorn Castle is worth it.

DLC7: The Thieves' Den

There's a lot of pretty intriguing stuff about this house mod, like it's location (which is kind of a pain to get to, but interesting), and things like the lock training chest and the trainers and the fence. Pirates are cool. What's not cool is that it's a little hard to actually store your stuff in what little room your personal cabin has. And that's the whole reason for house mods in the first place. That having been said, it's still a whole lot better than the place you get as part of the Thieves' Guild.

DLC8: Knights of the Nine

To borrow a phrase, this mod is so perfect that any possible nitpicks are nullified. A temple faction (which was the best faction in Morrowind, or near enough, and it's better here)? Great. Awesome quests? Well...awesome. Fantastic new gear and abilities? Hot. One of the single best cinematic views of the entire game (which has some awesome views, let me tell you?) Icing on the cake. Knights of the Nine is so good, I like it even more than the actual expansion pack, and there are even more factions (like the Imperial Legion) which could have used the same treatment.

At $9.99, it's the most expensive of the DLCs, but it's by far the best, and considering the amount of content and the scope, it's hard to see why you wouldn't put down the money. Stop reading here, and just go get it.

DLC9: Mehrunes' Razor

This is basically a $2.99 dungeon crawl with an artifact at the end, which I assure you you've done previously in Oblivion. If you haven't, are we even playing the same game? But I feel pretty confident in saying you've never experienced one quite this cool. Mehrunes' Razor takes cave scenery about as far as you can take it - cities, ruins, a little dash of Oblivion itself, combined with interesting enemies and some good loot. It's worth doing.

DLC Series

And now the series as a whole. On the whole, I feel like this series was weaker than what we got with Morrowind. Things like the Seige at Firemoth, the archery shop, and adamantium armor plugins were cooler and probably more useful than almost any plugin here, and they were free.

For things I had to pay for, there were some noticable clunkers here - the horse armor was pretty offensive, especially as a first plugin. So was the Orrery, which had a quest that was wildly inferior to almost any Oblivion quest, more on par with some of the ones in Morrowind - good at the time, but we're _better_ than that now.

On the other hand, some of them are quite superior. Frostcrag Spire. Battlehorn Castle. Mehrune's Razor (number last, but actually one of the earlier plugins) showed us that the DLC series could actually be quite good if we and they let it. And Knights of the Nine is clearly a superior work, giving a faction that is immediately in the top tier of faction quests, vying with the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves' Guild. Most of the house mods are generally better than the houses you have to pay for (which except for the Skingrad and Anvil ones, probably aren't worth it).

One more nitpick, however. The practice of having a huge quest dump upon exiting the sewers after chargen, or upon loading your game, is atrocious, and decidedly Not the Way To Go. Most of them could have been done better easily, ala Knights of the Nine and its rumors. I know they wanted people to be able to immediately use their new stuff, but it breaks immersion and gives you massive quest clutter, which is a lot worse than waiting around to hear a rumor.

Related to that, there were opportunities for quests, especially in the house mods like Frostcrag or Battlehorn, that, had they been expanded on, could have been quite good. Battlehorn came closest to this, but ultimately failed (that was a pretty weak ass bandit seige), and seriously, what was with the guy who just gave you Frostcrag? A missed opportunity, I feel. For the price, I suppose I get what I pay for, but I wouldn't have minded a few cents more for a little more polish.

All in all, though, most of these are worth having, and a couple of them make the Oblivion experience so much richer, it's hard to understand not having them.

How do you know cataloging is pain?

Notice, if you will, the multitide of 2" thick books, the 2" binder that's full, and yes, that's so totally a flowchart there.

Yes, I AM crazy, why do you ask?

Which not all of them are, but never mind that.

So a few people now have asked me about my various Oblivion characters, and since I've played enough of them, I've started forgetting who they were. So I checked. And you, dear reader, can be the beneficiary of some show and tell.

Valerius: Male Dunmer Custom Class, Level 29
Playing Time: 70h, 2m

Skills: Blade 125, Alteration 47, Destruction 75, Mysticism 59, Restoration 56, Light Armor 100, Sneak 72
Factions: Mage's Guild (Arch-Mage), Fighter's Guild (Master)

My first character, who also beat the main quest, explored a LOT, and did two factions worth of quests (Fighter's Guild? It sucks. Trust me here.). As you can see, primarily a light armor blade fighter, with a bit of magical versatility (only since you have to really devote to magic, not really). He worked, as far as he went, but light armor, blade-wielding, non-stealth characters are pretty rough going, so my first game was pretty challenging, until I reached high levels and custom enchanting, and then...well, not so much, really.

Twitch: Male Khajiit Custom Class, Level 25
Playing Time: 54h, 22m

Skills: Blade 68, Acrobatics 60, Light Armor 68, Marksman 115, Mercantile 53, Security 104, Sneak 111
Factions: Arena (Grand Champion), Dark Brotherhood (Listener), Thieves' Guild (Gray Fox)

Twitch is a result of Samson and Whir going "You don't have a Dark Brotherhood character? It's the best faction in the game! What's WRONG with you!?" Since I wanted to try a stealth character anyway, I went for it. Allow me to inform you that, not only is the Dark Brotherhood easily the best faction in the game, followed by the Thieves' Guild (note the factions), stealth archers are, once you get over that initial phase of running away because you suck, pretty much a God class. Twitch, via night eye, is able to traverse dungeons as if in daylight, quickly gunning down even the most powerful of enemies in one or two bow shots, almost always without ever having been seen. If it weren't so fun, it would be disturbing.

Alera: Female Altmer Custom Class, Level 32
Playing Time: 51h, 10m

Skills: Alchemy 100, Alteration 100, Conjuration 100, Destruction 100, Illusion 82, Mysticism 42, Restoration 50
Factions: Mages' Guild (Arch-Mage)

In which I attempt playing a mage character, devoting body and soul to it as I know you need to. And it works, mind you, after a fashion. Against many enemies, Alera is a Goddess of Destruction, laying fiery burnination upon the masses, or summoning daedra lords to do it for her. Due to the way magic leveling works, it took forever to get there, but what the hell. Suffice it to say that I feel like Oblivion PC magic got nerfed hard from previous games, and it's now more annoying that fun. In addition, Alera has yet to complete the main quest line, as she is stuck in Kvatch. At level 32. You know that tip where you should do Kvatch before level 5? They mean it.

Hrolf the Ganger: Male Nord Custom Class, Level 26
Playing Time: 33h, 19m

Skills: Armorer 91, Blade 60, Block 51, Blunt 100, Heavy Armor 100, Restoration 77, Security 42
Factions: Knights of the Nine (Divine Crusader)

"Hey, Knights of the Nine! I should make a crusader character to go through it!"

It turns out that, when played correctly, heavy armor fighters are highly effective, both at killing and leveling. By simply getting in fights, then repairing your gear, you level quickly and easily, and at later levels the game helps you by making the fights longer. Restoration helps you heal up after the carnage.

After doing the atmospheric Knights of the Nine, Hrolf was also my first (and so far only) character through Shivering Isles, which was...something. I remain highly ambivilent about my SI experience, not in the least because a paladin was not meant for SI storywise, and because there's not many things more annoying than having to spend literally 2-5 minutes fighting every time you see a Grummite. Those aside, I had fun with SI, but my favorite DLC is still Knights of the Nine.

Rankin: Male Redguard Custom Class, Level 19
Playing Time: 20h

Skills: Armorer 47, Athletics 48, Blade 75, Acrobatics 51, Light Armor 75, Security 49, Sneak 62
Factions: Arena (Myrmidon), Thieves' Guild (Shadowfoot)

My current character, such as he is, assuming I decide to ever play him again, which should give you some idea what I think of his playing style. The problem is the same thing that makes fighters easy to play - he levels quickly, and can rapidly outpace his equipment (he still has a Kvatch guard helmet at level 19). Too, it's that same thing as Valerius. Light armor is really bad to take to a fight, and he gets in a lot of fights. It seem