My Turn? Maynard Hides.

Those of you who read my novel-draft The Ghost-King's Revenge, probably remember Maynard the werefox, whose defining characteristic (besides being a werefox) was that he was a "failed coward." Contrary to all his upbringing, and sure to bring shame and disgrace on his poor mother if any of the other werefoxes found out, Maynard kept recklessly putting himself in danger, coming to the aid of others, and even occasionally engaging in wanton acts of bravery. This, of course, made him feel terribly guilty, when every werefox is taught from an early age that one should always do their best to hide, keep safe, and never, ever stick their neck out -- especially when there's nothing to be gained except possibly helping somebody else.

Well, for jamesbarrett's new sideline D&D game, I wrote up Maynard to play as a PC, using the Fox Hengeyokai from Oriental Adventures, making him a Rogue 2/Wu Jen 1. Between skill ranks and feat selection, Maynard has +11 on both Hide and Move Silently, and as I discussed with Jamie, Maynard is pretty much constantly assumed to be taking 10 on both of those skills unless there's a particular reason to think otherwise -- giving him a constant state of hiding with a DC 21 Spot check to see him. I figured this did a pretty good job of reproducing Maynard's "obfuscation" trick as described in Ghost-King's Revenge.

Jamie was all for it; Maynard was one of his favorite elements in GKR, and so when I presented him as a possibility, Jamie's eyes practically lit up. I had originally wanted to play Gazeddor, my Conan-clone barbarian character, but since lythandra is playing a melee-based kick-butt cleric and pholph is playing a halfling fighter (!!), I figured a rogue was probably more useful to the party than another melee monster. (Given that Maynard has completely failed to detect any traps yet, while pholph's fighter keeps getting chewed up in every encounter, I'm not entirely sure I was right. But that'll change when he levels up -- at 4th he'll get another point of Int and pour a bunch of ranks into Search. I'm expecting him to have a +8 Search check next level at least.)

On the whole, it was a fun first session. We've got a pretty eccentric party of oddballs, except for lythandra's cleric who is fairly normal as 6'1" female clerics of Kord with the Strength and Luck domains go. 0.o (I'm just waiting to see her use her Strength power to suddenly be wading into combat with 20 Str or something.) On the other hand, it's a pretty eccentric oddball adventure so far. It's a 3.5 update of B4: The Lost City, which is more or less a D&D take on Robert E. Howard's "The Devil In Iron" or "Red Nails" ... an ancient should-be-abandoned city in the middle of nowhere is populated by the lotus-dreaming, insane-behaving descendants of the now-ruined civilization. This particular module seems to be a bit more played for laughs -- or at least sheer confusing weirdness -- rather than for the gibbering horror of Howard's tales, but we've just got into it, so we'll see how it goes.

So, I'm having fun playing up Maynard's jumpy nature among all these bizarre happenings. I'm also looking forward to trying to bring more of his character out, in particular his vanity and his peculiar inverse moral code. (Anybody who thinks being chaotic good is basically a weird compulsion on their part, and sees throwing themselves in harm's way to help out their compatriots regularly as a moral failure to be ashamed of, is going to make for interesting roleplaying opportunities.) Still, I regret not playing Gazeddor. Maybe next time!

-The Gneech

Sunday Workout Report -- "I Felt That" Edition

I woke up in the wee hours with major back pain this morning, so my initial plan was to give the workout a miss. But after getting a little more sleep, my back had shut up enough that I was willing to take a couple of Advil and risk it. I'm sorta looking at this regimen as a staring contest between myself and entropy -- and every time I don't skip a workout, I win! So far, I'm in the sixth week of my winning streak. ;)

Also, a lot of the weights went up this week. ( For those who want numbers... )

I should mention here that yesterday lythandra and I walked around the lake (~1 hour) and spent a few hours tromping around Fair Oaks, Christmas shopping as well.

FWIW, the workout (and the Advil) seems to have relaxed my back muscles, so now aside from being a bit worn out, I'm feeling much better. :)

-The Gneech