IRL Update from Xeviat

[Xeviat]

Hay Guyz!

Vreeg has alerted me to my absence, and that I've been missed. A lot has gone on in the last couple of months, so here's an IRL update.

As I said a while back, I developed a foot condition while working for Disneyland (plantar fasciitis for you curious folks). I started receiving surgery for it at the beginning of the year, but apparently my condition is fairly severe so the surgery hasn't been working as well as it should. The amount of pain I'm in from even cooking dinner is so severe that it has put me into a bit of a depression, so I have been rather ambivalent about doing anything as of late. I need to do something though, so I'm going to try to be around here more often to keep myself busy and occupied. My AIM's JAGXeviat, for those of you who don't have it, so if you see me on and I haven't posted anything, harass me. Really, I need it.

On the good side of things, I proposed to my girlfriend of 5 years on June 28th. Here's the YouTube video (I'm not sure if I can just embed it here):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8InnCdlCjiQ

No ETA on the wedding as of yet; we want to get used to the idea of calling each other our "fiances" and not "boyfriend/girlfriend".

As for gaming news, I am going to start up my new game on Wednesday this week. It will take place in my setting, but I am trying out Mutants and Masterminds instead of D&D. Took a while to get everyone's characters set up, but that's all taken care of and we've figured out all of the scheduling concerns (times like these I miss high school when we could get a 12 hour game in every Saturday ...). I am going to keep a running journal of it, probably in a blog or something.

I'm eager to look over some settings here. I see lots of new names, so I'd like to get to know the new folks.

See you around!

[Nomadic]

I D'awwwwwww'd

[Ishmayl-Retired]

Congrats man!  Good to still see you around.

[Stargate525]

Indeed, congratulations. And terribly sympathetic about the foot thing.

[Matt Larkin (author)]

Agreed. That's rough Xev. Maybe your campaign will take your mind off of it. It can help to throw yourself into something.

[Sarandosil]

As I said a while back, I developed a foot condition while working for Disneyland...

Are you the guy who tends the man eating carnivorous plants they feed unruly children to?

Good to see you around.

[Xeviat]

Unfortunately, no. Besides, those are just myths ...

<.< >.>

[LordVreeg]

I can't wait to see some game logs, now that you have the group coming together.
What makes M&M the right system?

[Xeviat]

M&M is letting me put a lot of intricacies into racial design, things that D&D wouldn't let me. For instance, dwarfs have terrible vision; they can recognize things with it at short distances, but it is too inaccurate to target attacks. But their sense of smell is quite keen, and can be used to identify individuals at some considerable distance. Additionally, their sense of touch is so fine that they have a tremorsense ability.

Additionally, the variety of characters that can be built with the system is much larger. I was disliking the class designations for my setting. Additionally, the power sources were beginning to mean less and less: In my world, all magic is drawn from nature spirits. The only difference between a 'divine' and an 'arcane' caster is that 'divine' casters are given their power from the spirits while arcane casters simply command it.

For a class-like distinction, my rule is that magic power arrays have to be focused on each element (or be non-magical). You could not have a fire and ice spell on the same array, for instance, as fire is fire and ice is water. A character may have multiple magic arrays, but like multiclassing this would cause deficits in other places.

Now, truthfully, I am taking several ideas from 4E D&D, and I will be using some of the more tactical combat options for M&M (such as opportunity attacks). Otherwise, the main reason I'm giving it a try is that I really like M&M. For my first fantasy game with it, we have a Halfling adventurer who was blessed by a spirit of good fortune who fights with a flurry of daggers, a human city guard who is skilled in subduing foes with grappling techniques as well as swordsmanship, a human air sorcerer who works as an info man for a powerful thieves' guild, and a former grave robber who has recently fallen into the service of one of the dual gods of death after he was unnaturally bound to the body of a golem (he serves death in order to extend his life).

Game was supposed to be tonight, but it might be moved to tomorrow; someone's work schedule got shifted around.