A Green Mushroom

After finishing the first two books in the first Drizzt trilogy I thought I could power through and finish the third.  I knew I wasn't going to stick with the series long term but I figured I could at least get through the initial trilogy. It turns out I could not. I gave Sojourn a try and made it maybe a fourth of the way through.  But, unfortunately, Drizzt is the only interesting character in the book.  And the book keeps cutting away to a bunch of other POVs and characters instead of sticking with him.  Even if it did stick with him he's still not very complex as a character at this point in the series. I had to set the book down and move on to something else.  I started avoiding reading which it how I knew it was time. I'm still not opposed to a good D&D novel.  I would love to find one that clicks with me.  It just looks like the Drizzt series isn't going to be it.

I've never read a Dungeons & Dragons novel before in my life but after watching a bunch of the D&D episodes of Acquisitions Incorporated they had a guest appearance of Drizzt and they all freaked out.  Since they're all people who's opinions I tend to like I thought I should check out the source material. That brought me to the first Drizzt book, and there are many.  This one is called Homeland and it's set in the Underdark in the city where Dark Elves live that starts with the letter M but I'll never be able to spell it from memory. It was a good fantasy book, but not a great one.  Nothing crazy or unpredictable happened but it also wasn't so formulaic that I was bored the whole time.  It really was a middle of the road fantasy novel. But, it got me interested enough in the character of Drizzt that I'll pick up the next book.  I just hope that he gets out of the Underdark setting and gets to go explore more of the world.  I would love to ...

Acquisitions Incorporated is my absolute favorite live D&D game to watch.  They just partnered up with the Card Hunter team to release a Card Hunter expansion starring their characters. I jumped back into Card Hunter just to play it, and while I loved the story and pre-made decks of the Acquisitions Inc campaign I was very quickly reminded why I stopped playing this game. Namely, it's often just too hard to make progress and it's unclear what to do differently to get better.  If there was some progress being made or some skill being learned that I could get better at and see improvement then Card Hunter would be a game with a lot of legs. But, for me, it's just not.  I love the core gameplay but hate the progression system and the lack of player messaging when it comes to progressing. Card Hunter got me back for a couple days to play the Acquisitions Inc content, but now I've bounced off it again. At this point I'm just going to keep an eye on this...

D&D Sword Coast Legends was another game I had never heard of before PAX.  My brother had heard a little bit about it and wanted to check it out. We finally got to the game on the last day of the convention and it ended up being a cool experience.  You could be forgiven for thinking this is a generic action RPG set in the D&D world.  I certainly thought so until we got half way through the line.  Then we were made into groups of 5 and asked who in our group wanted to be the Dungeon Master.  No one else jumped at the chance so I volunteered... and I'm so glad I did. I think I might have been bored being one of the players, but being a DM was amazing.  I got to control the dungeon and tweak it on the fly.  I could add things and take them away.  I made their first encounter easier which got me some DM currency to make a later encounter much more challenging.  I laid traps in tricky places.  I dropped monsters in behind them...

Our group weekly topic this week is Roleplaying!  I haven't really done much of it honestly, but I wish I had gotten into roleplaying more.  I haven't ever been worried about the stigma associated with it, I just haven't had a good opportunity to dig in. I've only tried DnD a few times for probably less than 8 hours total.  My brother did some DMing for my family and we all seemed to like it.  The problem has always been scheduling.  It's hard to find time for a group of people to sit down and game on a regular basis.  It's only gotten more difficult afte having kids. I'm hoping to try out more DnD and attempt some other role playing systems once my kids get a little bit older.  I think they'll have fun with it, and it gives me a great excuse to get into the hobby. The main thing on my roleplaying radar at the moment is Thornwatch.  I'm really excited for the Thornwatch roleplaying game from the Penny Arcade guys!  I love their work, th...