Forgotten Realms

So the DnD campaign we're running is Forgotten Realms. Which i'd heard of but couldn't place, because the universe is so huge it's hard to remember everything.

I'd read the first couple Dragonlance books, and played a few video games set in the DnD universe. And that's where stuff started to make sense. 

baldur's gate, neverwinter nights, and the neverwinter mmo are all in this world. And the events of the neverwinter mmo follow the main story exactly, if you bother to read the quests! So I wasn't completely lost. Hurray!

Typically when you play one of the games, you start in a city, you. Wander into the local tavern

And are recruited for a mission by...someone. The captain of the guard, a wanted poster, a drunken brawl, something.

You wander out and bam! You get jumped.

I called this one early on, I said, leaving this tavern will bring kobalds. And sure enough. Our first encounter was a small band of kobalds.

Kobalds are stupid, and smelly. They speak draconic, but act like rabid rats. 

We had 8 minions (1 hp) with spears, and 3 regular non-minions with crossbows. 

Our healer got stinky, the rogue got glued to the ground, the other Mage caught fire. 

I hid behind a tree, flanked them, and blasted 3 of 4 minions. 

Shhhh you can't see me.

All in all it was a lot of fun. We won the day, found some silver. And discovered the dwarven mine shaft we were looking for. 

I had fun. Our DM is very forgiving of my newbness, she's really happy to answer all my questions, and understand that I don't really "get" it yet. This isn't like mmo's. The dice are confusing, and I had to be reminded a lot which I needed to roll. And math. So.much.math.

Role playing out loud is also harder for me. I'm pretty social, and have no problems being a total geek, and in that regard i'm among my kindred, on the other hand, I don't know my character well enough to BE her.

Do I see myself continuing with this? Yes, absolutely. I'd love to make an all girl game with my friends and hang out and have hard cider and kill dragons. 

Stay tuned until next week ;)

New venture

So I'll be blogging a little (maybe a lot) about a new past time for me. 

I joined an online community a while back called Gaming Mommies. It's mostly on Facebook, but i can link groups later, or you can google-fu. There are sub groups for just about anything your geeky mommy heart desires. I'm in :

- Pokemon

- Anime

- Archeage

- Crafty

- Reading

- Dungeons and Dragons

The last one, D&D, is new to me. I've been around it second hand since I was a kid. Friends older brothers played, tried to get us to play, there was math. We went outside instead.

My beast plays in a bi-weekly Saturday group of 4-6, right now they're running Star Wars. The ladies wrangle the kids instead of playing. I'm sure we could if we wanted, but the children might kill each other.

So Saturday night we had a character creation party. Online. Via Ventrilo. It took forever.

I'm now the proud owner of a Tiefling Witch named Numinya.

With a raven familiar named Orrin

Hiiiii

I'll post our first game session opinions tomorrow 😉

Metro Zoo

So in the beginning g of April we went to the Miami Zoo. I know, I'm late. I didn't forget about my blog. I'm just lazy

I always love these viewing areas. This is part of the Asian aviary exhibit 

The zoo was doing a huge thing on dinosaurs, great big animatronic dinosaurs everywhere

Connor found a his size one

This crazy was up in a tree, I thought it was a chimp nest until it started movie no

I found skunk ape!

He had to have his picture taken with the turtle 

Ross made a new friend

Emu are nasty, there was one that followed us around the pen, eyeballing kaeley

I've been freaking out people on Facebook with this picture for weeks. A Brazilian bird eating spider. It was as big as my face.

Elephant butt! 

April Reading List

April
6. 28 - Jason - Laurell K Hamilton (4/26) $$/Nook - 2 Stars
5.27 - Dead City - Joe McKinney (4/20) free/library - 5 Stars
4.26 - Ready Player One - Ernest Cline (4/17) free/library - 5 Stars!!!!
3.25 - Nightlife - Rob Thurman (4/14) - free/own - 4 Stars
2.24 - Still Alice - Lisa Genova (4/10) - free/library - 3 stars
1.23 - The Shadows - JR. Ward (4/9) free/library - 5 Stars!!!


let's see

The Shadows was excellent, I'm pretty much always happy with the Warden. I'm SO excited for the spin off series, and the next main BDB book will be The Beast, so we're revising our friends from the beginning (Wrath, then Rhage, so i guess Z will be next).

Still Alice, this one was hard for me. i enjoyed it to the point where it gave me some insight to Burdette. but it wasn't the most well written book. i'm sure i'll enjoy the movie more when i get around to watching it.

Nightlife, I like Cal, i like his brother. I enjoyed the whole premise. but i'm not really sure if i'll find the next one.

Ready Player One. Read this book..now, go do it now. pull up ibooks, get on your kindle, your nook. put it on hold at the library. just go. no...i'll give you a minute.. you back? ok. This books was excellent. probably my absolute favorite read of the month. it's video games, books, comics, pop culture. all from the 80's. i got all the references. but what i really loved, more than anything, was the message. "go fix the world, instead of living in social media, go fix your life, instead of creating a fake one online." I can.not.wait. for his next book, Armada. it's The Last Starfighter meets Galaga.

Dead City. This book was also really good. It's what The Walking Dead tv show could have been. Had Rick not been in a coma to miss the start of the zombie apocalypse, the confusion. our main character is a cop, on the front lines of the start, and so much of it is "well, these are PEOPLE...are they sick? are they dead? do we shoot them? omg they're eating other people." it was surreal, and terrifying. our MC is a parent, i literally felt his fear and frustration of not being able to get to his family, to his baby son. there were parts that made me sick to my stomach with parent-fear. and i loved it. I'll be starting the next one Apocalypse of the Dead in just a couple days.

Jason...oh Jason..Laurell...really? let's put this out here right now, this is straight up smut. there is nothing, and i mean literally, nothing else to this particular book. at least with Micah there was a point. but no, Jason has no point except group sex. It's not BAD. i'll put that out there too, i have no problem with it. and honestly i LIKED that she went over all Anita's relationship tangles in the beginning. it was a good refresher of who everyone is to her before Dead Ice comes out (august i think). I loved the Anita books in the beginning, probably books 1-6, i'll even go so far as to say books 1-8. then she just lost it. LKH went through a nasty divorce, and her characters changed. she got remarried, they changed. she got into a poly relationship, so did Anita. and that's ok, really, because her art imitates her life. If you don't like that, don't read them. but, BUT. she lost her continuity. we started drowning in HUGE lake sized plot holes. LKH has since gotten a new editor to put her back on track. she's killed off people who didn't need to be there to keep the story good, and the issues are going back to "preternatural case of the week" rather than, what big evil bad vampire do i have to kill, again. because it's the same one, over and over. but, didn't we already kill you in the last book?! yup.

I'm currently reading
The Maze Runner
The Dead Travel Fast
Apocalypse of the Dead