Mafia Dragons - You said "Impossible"... We said "Nay".

So, to kick off our Homebrewing, I thought that I'd start by giving you all a...
Preview?
That's right, we're refining the first adventure - again- so it reaches it maximum potential, for you, the valued reader. Anyways, just on the adventure::

It's going to be aimed at a 4 player party, but will be easily adjustable for more... less that 3 will take some expert Game Mastering, though it will surely be possible. Players should be around levels 2 or 3. For veteran gamers, this adventure should only be about 1 session of gaming, but if you're rolling up characters just for it, prepare hot pockets before hand; it will be a good - probably even a GREAT - 5 hours. Lastly, the adventure ends, and shouldn't lead into a campaign. Yet. Eventually we'll get around to writing some of the earth shattering ideas we had for tying it off.

Hopefully you'll all enough us being serious for a change of direction. If not, well, then the adventure should be a good laugh.

Children, it's time for a history lesson

Alright, I promised a campaign setting, so here it is. Well, the beginning of it. This is simply the basic history of the world, and includes the majority of the significant historical events of this world for what is almost the last 4000 years. Now then, let's begin.

Evalt was a flourishing world. Civilization had been established almost everywhere. A great war had ended. Evalt seemed to be at peace. Gratyi, the comet that was considered to be an omen of good luck, appeared. Many thought a great new era was going to soon begin. Everything just seemed right for it. But then something that no one could have foreseen happened.

Gratyi collided a very surprised world. Immediately it nearly completely wiped out an nation of people. Earthquakes shook the world, bringing cities to the ground. Fires broke out for hundreds of miles almost instantly from the heat of the impact. Entire nations burned in the inferno. The impact also sent massive tsunamis out in every direction. Coastal towns around the world were destroyed by massive waves. The whole world was in chaos. Most of the survivors lived on the other side of the planet. They were spared from the worst effects of the impact, although they too would soon suffer. The impact had shaken a lot of dust into the atmosphere, which blocked out the sun. The whole world was in darkness. With the sun blocked out, the remaining crops died. The whole world was beginning to starve. Many resorted to cannibalism to survive. Not only was there starvation, but the lack of sunlight made the world colder. Many of those that didn’t starve, froze.

However, not everyone was hurt by the lack of sunlight. Vampires loved this change in the world. The vampires that had survived the impact loved not having the ever fear the sun. Many began to hunt those who still lived. Vampires became as big a threat as starvation and the cold. One opportunistic vampire named Roltes saw an opportunity to gain power. Many of the vampires heedlessly hunted down the living, not realizing that if they continued like this their food would soon be completely extinct, and then the vampires would be the next ones to starve. Roltes began capturing the living, and keeping them like livestock. Soon, vampires began coming to him to obtain their food, and Roltes obliged. He began to establish a small kingdom, over which he ruled. Many vampires joined him. After all, he was the man with the food. Other vampires soon saw what Roltes was doing, and they too began to use the living like livestock. These vampires also created their own nations, and proclaimed themselves to be kings and lords.

These many vampire lords began to fight for power. War broke out between the vampire nations. What was most fought over, was food. Vampires raided each other’s cities and stole their “livestock.” For a century the Vampiric Wars continued. Many of the weaker nations collapsed under the control of the more powerful vampiric nations. Roltes did very well in these wars. He was a brilliant tactician, and a clever politician. He also amassed the largest supply of food in the vampiric world, which made many vampires willing to join him. By the end of the wars, Roltes emerged victorious, with all resistance crushed. He declared himself the Emperor of all of Evalt.

For the next several millennia, Roltes ruled over his empire. He continued to keep a tight control over the food supply for the vampires. He made sure to breed his “livestock” and be careful to not have too much of it eaten. Vampires were the only ones that had any real civilization during this time. Almost all the living people on the surface of the world were slaves to the vampires, used for food and work. After about a millennium of rule, Roltes proclaimed himself to be a god, and demanded that everyone in his Empire worship him. Temples dedicated to him, and Roltes became the most “popular” god in the world. During this time, he experimented with creating human-vampire hybrids, and ended up creating the bloodlings. Bloodlings had a slightly higher status than the rest of the living. They were rarely used for food, and could have some minor political power within the empire. The other slaves resented this, but could not do much. Some slave revolts occurred during the history of the empire, but they never had much success. The vampires were simply too strong.

Then, after several millennia, the dust began to settle. The vampires were extremely worried, as sunlight was beginning to reach the surface in some parts of the world. Over the course of several centuries, more and more light began to shine through. One thing however, became obvious. It only shined through on one side of the world. On the other side, it never shined through. Astronomers were perplexed. From the knowledge that was left over from before the impact, they knew that the world turned, so that the sun eventually shined on all parts of the planet. Yet it constantly shined on only one part. Clearly, something was very wrong. However, the vampires did not concern themselves with this too much, because they were far more worried about keeping their empire. Roltes was especially worried, as light was beginning to shine down on his capital, making life very difficult for the rulers. Successful slave revolts had happened in several parts of his empire, where the sunlight was too strong for the vampires to do anything. Roltes began to move himself and much of the vampire ruling class to the part of the world still in darkness. The slaves in the capital city took this opportunity, and began to revolt. The sunlight made fighting difficult for the vampires, and the slaves succeeded in their revolt. Roltes was in the city at the time, and he was never found after the revolt. No evidence has been found of him dying, but he has never been seen by anyone since the revolt, so no one knows if he’s really dead, or simply hiding somewhere.

With the fall of Roltes, the rest of the empire quickly fell apart. Vampires fled to the dark part of the world, while the slaves rebelled. The vampires in the dark side of the world had lost their unity, and were in chaos. Historians mark the fall of the final vampiric city at the year 3567 AI (After Impact). After this point, the slaves were free, and the world began to return to normality.

Except that not all was normal. The slaves realized that Evalt no longer turned like it used to. The impact had stopped it in space. Life soon adapted to this new strange world. Nations established themselves along the edges of the illuminated part of the world, for the majority of it had become an extremely hot desert due to the constant sunlight. Civilization began to re-establish itself.

It has now the year 3901 AI. The world is now divided into three zones. Pozahr where the sun always shines creating an incredibly deadly desert, Zgobisch where the sun never shines over an icy cold land, and the Central Belt, where civilization has established itself, and is thriving. The vampires have never regained the unity that they had under Roltes, and now stay within the Icelands most of the time. The world still has many problems, but it is healing.

Now, I think I'll be specific

Alright, so Mr. Mud hinted at some of the things we will be doing in the future. Now then, I'd like to give definite details about this stuff. We've discussed some of this, and planned it out. This is by no means a totally definite list. We're likely to add some stuff to it, and I don't think that we'll be taking much away. Also, most of this is stuff that I'll be involved in, either together with Mr. Mud or alone. Mr. Mud might have some stuff planned for himself that I don't know about.

Firstly, we will be doing quite a bit of D&D material. Together with Mr. Mud I've been writing an adventure. It started off as his idea, and the adventure itself is somewhat standard (don't worry, it's still good), but it leads to other things that can be...quite exciting. I won't say any more. I think we should have this adventure up by the end of the week if all goes well. It should be in 4th edition D&D, as Mr. Mud is the one who intends to use it, not me. Although I myself prefer 3.5. There will be a few more adventures, but they'll come along later

Next, is a campaign setting. This will be somewhat of a longer project, and it will be mostly done by me, with some contributions from Mr. Mud. He's already given me an idea for a race. This will be using 3.5 edition D&D. However, I am considering making a 4th edition version. We'll see. The basic premise of this world, is that in the past it was hit by a large comet. It now no longer moves through space, and no longer turns, due to the impact. One side of the planet always faces the sun, while one side always faces away. Civilization thrives in the middle between these two sides. That's all I'll say for now.

Our next idea is a bit more...silly. At some point I actually wrote up how you would have to modify a fighter jet so that a T-rex could fly it. As someone with actual experience in a plane, I have a fairly good idea of how the plane would have to be modified so that it could fly a T-rex. Now then, you might ask me why I did something so ridiculous? Well obviously I did it because it's so damn cool. Come on, it's a fighter plane flown by a friggin dinosaur. And this won't be the end. Both me and Muddie will be making more machines modified to accept animals.

Next, I'll be reviewing some music. I'll be doing an album called De Profundis by Vader. It's not exactly new (it came out in the 90s), but I've been listening to it a lot, so I'll review it. This should interest anyone that likes metal, especially if the metal that they like is DEATH METAL.

Another musical thing that we'll be doing is a "weekly song suggestion." Basically, each week Muddie and I will pick a song that we like (probably one that's recently been released), and then one of us will write a brief paragraph about it. Most of these songs will probably be metal, since we're both complete metalheads, but that might not always be the case.

Also, when Mr. Mud said that we'd have art, that was total crap. We both suck at making anything remotely artistic.

That's all for now!

.... God, I wish we had these ideas sooner.

Come one, come all, to the Mud Puddle Magic Emporium... This week, to kick off the new open season of blogging, we shall be covering a few, NEW topics (not like we really covered anything before.... but I digress). In to what we usual rant about, we will be trying to write about one of the follow, maybe two times a week... Here's a complete list of what we were thinking of:

Movies
Video Games
Politics
Music
Random Internet Goodness.
[insert all other avenues of creativity]
New Game Mastering (table top games)
New Our crazy Ideas of world domination.*
New and finally... Art? More on that at a later date.


* Yes, we've finally put together a plan, in which you all are the pawns, in our nefarious scheme of total power... But anyway, be sure to look for a post of something extremely awesome... And half baked. But we've half baked it twice, my friends.

Autobots, and Decepticons, and Bears; Oh My!

Well, it's been a little time since my last post, and I'm kind of disappointed it took me this long... Expect a bit more over the next few weeks.

Let's start back up with Transformers Two: Rise of the Fallen.

Now, I always liked Transformers in my (very) juvenile years, when it was on TV frequently, and the graphics weren't spiffy and 3D resemblance, but I never was a hardcore fan. I knew the basis of the show, who Optimus Prime was, Megatron, Hotshot, Bumblebee, Starscream... and so on, but I never really knew anything past that (probably because I picked up halfway through the series, and missed the entire beginning... Anyway.

Transformers 2 was pretty good, compared to the first one which I really didn't care for. I thought the action scenes were superb, and I actually felt a rush from two several-megaton robots beating crap out of each other for my amusement (or the fate of earth. Whichever.). Although admittedly, sometimes there were just so many moving parts in different parts, and they were all, for the most part, that metallic silvery grey, I had no idea who was choking who. Now for the bad:

Michael Bay definitely tried to hard with the humor bit. There were probably 12 unnecessary gags in there, that drove up the production cost up a few hundred thousand... I mean, sure, even if Sam's mom running into a hanging flower pots cost... $20, it ruins the whole moment of suspense... Transformers is an action series... And should be an action series. An occasional joke here and there is fine, but I mean it just seems like they're giving up the key nerd demographic, to entice more and more people to come spend money for the two bit puns.

Which I won't stand for ;).

So in hindsight, Transformers 2: Rise of the fallen is definitely must see if you're (A) into the series, or (B) like lots of action. If you're not either of those two, I'd definitely recommend renting T1 and T2, just because they're all around great movies...

I'd say Transformers 2: Rise of the Fallen scores a solid, 8 god-killingly-awesome-transforming-Cameros, out of 10.

Matt Lauer Can Suck It!: Land of the Lost (spoilers possible)

The movie is hilarious, so I'll try and keep the spoilers low, but it's going to be hard... It was Classic Will Ferrell, backed by a great supporting Cast... They entailed: Anna Friel, Jorma Taccone and Danny McBride (more on him later). Supporting casts, are really the heart and soul of Ferrel movies; for without them, who else will he verbally - and sometimes physically - abuse?

But right, saving the best for... first, I guess we should start with the opening trailers... There Were 4: Year One, 9, G Force, Funny People. Two looked great, one looked... intriguing to say the least, and one looked AMAZING!
... For 8 year olds.

Let's start Funny People. I hadn't heard of it until tonight and all of you, sans Adam Sandler fanatics, haven't either. It looked kind of confusing in the beginning, but the movie in general looks pretty funny. Basically, Super Funny Man (Sandler) has sustained a flourish stand-up career for awhile... And his biggest fan (Seth Rogen.. score!) knows every joke by heart. They meet, get close and Sandler reveals he is really sick... and Rogen might have to take the throne. All turns out well though, and I'm sure Sudden-Death-due-to-Laughter is one of the diseases Sandler is affiliated with in the Flick.

Now for... 9. I saw this trailer (all) of the times I went to see Star Trek, and each time I didn't really know what's going on... see if you can make sense of it:
Mad Scientist is one of the last people in a dying world, and he's putting his legacy into a tiny, cloth, homunculus resembling creature, whose destiny is to save the world... Some big scissor monster is chasing him, and he's hiding in a mouse hole with other homunculi rag dolls. It sort of looks like one of those "Hero gonna slays the Dragon, and probably gets the girl to boot", which I'm not a big fan of, but hey, Tim Burton *is* magic.

G-Force, or the movie that was totally out of place being shown in a Borderline PG-13/R movie, would have looked kind of cool to me if I was half my age... It was about CIA agents, that were the government's pride and joy, and were being closed down and spread through out the country because they were becoming too well known. They started to live normally lives, only for the government to call them back again when they need them most. Does this seem like a R rated thriller to you, at first glance? Me too! Except, I forgot to mention the aforementioned CIA agents, are guinea pigs.

Lastly, Year One has looked epic since the firs time I heard about it. Hell, I was excited when I saw the cardboard cut out of Jack Black and Mike Cera. So basically, if you haven't heard any of the hub-bub, it's really like history's first round trip... But this time we use my favorite medium: Foot. They set out from their primitive hunter gather tribe, to some big city (looked like Rome... but that wouldn't make sense. Probably Jerusalem, or something like that). They stumble their way through the town, and comedy ensues. Can't you just wait for Black to over-deliver every joke, and Cera to under-deliver everything?

Now, to the feature presentation *lights dim, and cool music cues*

Land of the Lost, I think, was probably the best movie I've seen in the last 2 or 3 years, sans Stepbrothers for the sheer hilarity, and Star Trek... for well, being Star Trek. But Land of the Lost, was some of Ferrell's best work... I clearly remember, at one point, the whole theater was laughing from one joke, to the next big one about 2 minutes later... There were only about 30 people present. I don't want to spoil the whole entire movie, but Ferrell is dismissed as a mad man, by Matt Lauer and the scientific community and now teaches 7th or 8th grade children. Another scientist (Much younger and hotter, might I add), from Cambridge comes to talk to Ferrell about his theories about time travel... He shows him some fossils, and he eventually gets around to finishing the machine to take them, not backwards, but sideways in past, to the Land of the Lost. There, he does all of the following: Get's a blood feud with a T-Rex.
Roundhouse kicks an alien into a fiery oven.
Becomes the master of a half ape half man.
Freezes a Dinosaur my catapults nitrogen into it.

See what I'm getting at? Who else, but Will Ferrell. Movie is great though, I really recommend it... and if you're pretty liberal on what you kids (probably 10 or 11 is the minimum age I'd advise) watch, it's decently family friendly. Funny as anything, but not too vulgar... But I digress. At first, I thought land of the lost would ruin Ferrell's great dynasty of Hollywood Comedy dominance, but I was pleasantly surprised tonight. I can't really stress how funny it was, and everyone needs to see it for him or herself. There are puns, and tons of irony... even penis jokes! (PENIS JOKES FOR GOD'S SAKE!)
The movie was 9.5/10, where I thought it'd be in the high 5.x at best. Get off my blog (for tonight) get on Fandango. And go see this movie.

Ah right, and about Danny McBride... I thought he did a good job of acting, but I really wish the "Will Ferrell, and John C. Reily duo stuck together... they were harmony and hilarity... Harlartiy? I think that he would've played the place of Will a bit better, if only becasue him and Ferrell have a history of sheer awesome behind them.

-- We have topped the 500 hits mark! I'm looking forward to another 500 with you all :D.

A Shout-out to Coidzor!

HOLY $#!T: My Playthrough of X-Men Origins: Wolverine

As the title states, there was one phrase that me and my buddies couldn't stop shouting during epic fights... "HOLY ****, WOAH! DUDE!" reverberated through my basement louder than my guitar amp. This is simply because X Men Origins: Wolverine was:

GOREgeous.

I mean, sure, if you're not into the whole 'bloody heads being pulled off in the most acrobatic ways possible' then The game, probably isn't for you. But if you are... Every kill you'll feel the adrenaline pumping through you, and excitement of the slow-motion head being chopped off. I remember, at one point, there is a mini-boss battle, and you push the "Windigo" off a small cliff... you proceed to walk down it, only to be ambushed by the half-dead mutant, and we tries to crush you to death... Of course, the "Mash 'Y' Button" trap is waiting for you, but once you flex out of it, you rip the Windigos head off... while doing a back flip. I distinctly remember letting out a roar at this part, as the tension was so great... But when it really gets down to it, XMO:W is really just a button masher, with slow motion scenes of awesome gore... which, on no scale is bad, and is special in its own right, but the game could have been made so much more in depth. The game play is decent, and the skills and upgrades section, while essential in games these days, is nice. The game play, and the minor puzzles in XMOW are very... transparent. While the combat moves look nice, you're sort of limited to what you can do... and after a little while, it seems that the only strategy that will efficiently end your foes: Lunge, stab, stab, roll dodge, lunge, stab, stab, roll dodge, lunge, stab... et cetera. Camera Angles also weren't the greatest. The camera would occasionally glitch, and zoom really close in on Logan, making seeing the environment impossible (for all my World of Warcraft players can you say, Strigid Screecher?). This wouldn't be that bad of a problem, if it didn't happen most every boss battle. Last peeve that I have with XMOW, would probably be the redundance of all the puzzles presented to Logan... a striking majority of them - I'd say over 90% - are "Pick up the [C4/Crobar/Battery] and plug/plant it into/on the [truck/Cage/Generator/Machine] and press B". Even the very first time you do it, you feel bored, but by the 50th time...

So, in hindsight: X-Men Origins: Wolverine was great fun, even thoguh it's not very special... The gore is spectacular, if you like that kind of thing, but if not this game isn't for you. Be wary of the the camera glitches, and extremely poorly thought out array of puzzles and traps. X-Men origins is probably not worth the $50-60 to buy it, but renting it for a week or two worth is a great deal.

7/10.

A note about The Mud Puddle in general: Firstly, I'd like to give a big shout out to Mr. Nameless, on GitP for making this sweet banner, which you can see in my signature on the Giant in the Playground forums. This is the first post in a series of probably about 100 over this summer. I hope you all are as excited as we are.

-- Mud.