Cute Kid. Evil, Though.

My first tipoff that something was wrong was that somebody was knocking on the bedroom door. That's not something that's supposed to happen. lythandra, who happened to be standing up at the end of the bed, gave me a somewhat surprised look, then went over and opened it.

On the other side was a little blond-haired boy, something like seven or eight years old, very normal looking. When he spoke, he had the voice of Joshua Seth, who I always think of as "Souichi Sugano" from eX-Driver but who might also be familiar to you as the voice of "Young Knives" from Trigun.

Anyway, Laurie said to him, "What are you doing here?" or something along those lines to indicate she wasn't real happy about the way he just let himself into the house, and I agreed with her. What was the point of knocking on the bedroom door after you'd already bypassed the front lock?

He said, in an amiable tone, "Hi there. I figured I'd better come by and talk to you in case you've killed anybody you weren't supposed to."

I had no clue what that was supposed to mean, but I knew it wasn't anything good. I jumped up out of the bed and was at the door in two steps. With a vehemence that surprised me, I ordered, "Get out! Get out of here right now and don't come back!"

"But I was just--" he said.

"I don't want to hear it!" I snapped. "Go on, beat it!"

He rather poutily went down the stairs and out of sight. Thinking that he might decide to lurk downstairs, I said, "Go on. I want to hear that door close!" A moment later, I was gratified to hear the door shut with a quiet, almost embarrassed click. Via remote viewing, I could tell that he was indeed outside and heading across the parking lot to places unknown.

At that point I woke up, with my limbs in a state of extreme torpor, as if they'd been disconnected for the night and would take a few minutes to start up again ... wondering what that was all about.

-The Gneech

Happy Birthday, berin!

For your present, here's today's Forgotten English!

avails
Profits and proceeds. It is used in New England for the proceeds of goods sold, or for rents, issues, or profits.

--Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon, c. 1850

Bell Ringer Sought
Henry Edwards's Old English Customs: Curious Bequests and Charities (1842) reported on a quaint endowment: "John Beddoes, by indenture dated 20th April, 1565, conveyed premises to feoffees [estates] in trust, that they should, amongst other matters, out of the rents keep and find an able person to ring a bell in the parish church of Presteign [Radnorshire] every morning forever, between the feasts of All Saints and the Purificiation of Our Lady, by the space of one half hour, which should be called the day bell; and also nightly forever ring one other peal with the same bell at eight o'clock in the [evening], as well in summer as wintertime, by the space of one half hour, which should be called Curfew; and that, if the ringing of the said bell should be discontinued for one year (unless the plague was in the said town of Presteign, or other reasonable cause) then the said premises to revert to his heirs."

-The Gneech

Uberdwarves [gaming]

I've been having an extended debate on the Paizo boards about dwarves vs. half-orcs in terms of play balance in D&D. I originally started from the premise that half-orcs were underpowered compared to the other player races, but as time went on I finally came to the conclusion that it wasn't so much that, as that dwarves were overpowered.

I eventually settled on making dwarves +1 LA for my new side game (that is, a 1st-level dwarf is treated as a 2nd-level character in terms of gaining experience etc.). The people who were arguing with me on the Paizo boards don't agree with this move either, but I'm pretty sure that the answer there is going to boil down to "we just plain don't agree, get over it." However, I am also wondering if it's actually worth the trouble to do that.

Of the gaming group, I'm the only real numbers-runner among us; I like to plumb and tweak the system, which is why I enjoyed using the HERO System so much. As such, I'm the only one in the group likely to care about a numerical imbalance between the mighty, mighty dwarf and the sad, gimped half-orc. I don't think any player in the group has created a dwarf character yet since we first started using 3.0 back in 1999 or whenever it was anyway (Has this group really been at it that long? Yikes!), so it's not like dwarves are being abused left and right. Part of that may be becuase I nixed dwarves, halflings, and gnomes for the first game we were doing, but there have been plenty of other games since then.

So I dunno, maybe I'll drop that idea and just let dwarves be uber. It's not like the GM can't stomp on 'em anyway should they choose to. ;)

-TG

Most Unsuitable, Sir

BBC Radio 4 is currently playing a version of Code of the Woosters which is, in a word, awful. 0.o

Hearken ye lads and lassies: Monty Python is Monty Python, and Wodehouse is Wodehouse, and you attempt to mix them at your peril.

Ugh.

-The Gneech