Rosetta Code's been moving slowly lately, mainly because the currently-active members have filled out most of the tasks with the languages they're familiar with, and few have an interest in creating new task pages. If you feel like writing some code (or if you just want to see something done in another language), mosey on over and create a task (don't forget to include an example solution in at least one language). Don't worry if those task requirements seem a little heavy...if you don't do it right, chances are someone else will fix it.

I created a task around 3AM this morning, and by the time I woke up it had solutions in ten languages, and all three of my initial examples had been modified or added to. So there are people there, they're just waiting for something to do. :-)

Oh, and RC is on a shared hosting plan again...for the love of God, don't /. me until I get better hosting. :-)

One of the DMs on Saturday has a really cool system. Monsters are often represented by candies. If you kill a monster, you eat the candy.

In short, you eat what you kill.

So as we've been migrating the system from the tired old D1 to the exciting and awesome new D2 a number of complaints have come up. I'm going to talk about a couple of them here because I'm really looking for feedback on THESE issues. Please only talk about these points or I will mod you offtopic or troll or something.

The issue is about the use of Flat/Threaded/Nested modes. D2 cleanly replaces both threaded and nested modes- you effectively get nested mode by bringing the 2 sliders together. And threaded mode is vastly more flexible because you can choose the level at which comments are abbreviated or displayed in full text. So users of those modes should be set (obviously there are other reasons not to use D2, I'm just talking about the layouts here tho)

What's left is flat mode, which has a number of sort options. Now flat mode is used by roughly 4% of our active population. When i think about flat mode, I think about 2 reasons you would have to use it:

1. I hate indenting and whitespace. I want a big vertical column now this isn't my bag, but I can understand it and even consider supporting it in D2. I think you sacrifice legibility, but this is a personal preference. It also would be easy to support in D2. Hell, you could probably do it in a greasemonkey script no problem.
2. It's easier to remember your place in flat mode This to me is the only reason to use flat mode- you can reload your page an hour later, find the last comment you read, and pick up where you left off.

Now I Would think that the only reason to use flat mode is #2... except that only a couple hundred Slashdot readers have the 'ignore threads' sort order enabled. So either they don't understand what they are doing, or #1 above is the real reason that they use flat mode.

So in a nutshell, the question I am asking in this journal is 'Why do you use flatmode?' Is it cosmetic? To more easily keep your place in a discussion? Something I'm just missing? We have plans to implement a read/unread state retention for discussions, so maybe would you migrate to a threaded view if that function exists? Or is it purely aesthetic... an irrational hatred of scrollbars and whitespace? :)

The reason this matters is that simply formatting the page flatly is easy. Probably a simple greasemonkey hack or maybe a few lines of CSS. But re-implementing the alternate sort is gonna take some work. And I'm ok with that... except that the logs say that nobody actually USES that sort... they ONLY are using flat mode for the cosmetic reasons.

Speak out! Stay on-topic or you WILL be moderated down.

So that city campaign I'm running is going to need to drastically change. D&D just wasn't designed for something like that; It's incredibly hard to come up reasonable events and tasks that could challenge a party of even lvl 3 PCs in an environment like that.

When I say "reasonable events", I'm talking about things that wouldn't cause massive damage to the city and lead to major retribution against those involved.

So it's time to start thinking about unreasonable events.

So I'm thinking about a natural disaster.

First, the city sits on a very large island; The city proper takes up a big chunk on the coast, but the rest of the island consists of either mountains or agriculture. The mountains form a large coastal C shape around the farmland; It's not unreasonable that they might be the product of two continental plates colliding. So there might be a massive earthquake. But I like the next approach better.

The mountains form a basis for a kind of continental divide. Since they form most of a ring around the island, virtually all rain that falls on the island flows a massive network of rivers and streams, much of which ultimately flows under the city as its self-flushing sewage system. The farmland itself is largely flat. Sure, they get occasional floods, but the construction out there includes shelter, and minor structures are easily rebuilt. Water that can't fit through the city's sewage tunnel network normally would overflow into a side channel, and out into the ocean. Combine a major hurricane with a little villainy (Such as a wall of force blocking the overflow), and you've washed away 90% of the city, and left much of the rest covered in sewage.

I think I like the hurricane approach better. The event itself will be interesting to play out as the party scrambles to find shelter. (Best bet, I think, would be to get on the city walls.) Following the hurricane itself, the city will be a collection of laes for several days as all of the different districts drain. Central city authority will be devastated, food will be scarce, and most wooden structures will be destroyed or severely damaged.

With food and clean water scarce, those who don't form a massive exodus into the farmlands will fight for what resources remain in the city. New power structures will form and conflict, and power structures the player characters are already familiar with will be caught up in the struggle.

It's going to be interesting. I'm not sure if next session will have the natural disaster take place, or if some foreshadowing is required. (The closest thing I can think of to an early warning system is a bunch of clerics casting Divination, though there may be gnome weatherfolk who watch things like atmospheric pressure.)

I'm thinking of a category 4 hurricane, with a number of tornados thrown in for good measure. Thanks to the beauty of plot devices, the tornados won't hit the PCs, but it's going to be tough.

Hm. Considering the city walls will be used for shelter, let's put some thought into that. Let's say they're stone, hollow, and two levels high on the inside, and a third level on top. Figure they're designed to counter internal conflicts like riots and civil war, not attacks from outside the city. As such, there's likely to be two hollow wall structures for each district border, with a gap in between for buffer and travel.

In peace times, the gap between these two hollow structures is covered and contained, and serves as a sort of thoroughfare and bazaar. Effective shelter from most wind and rain, but not effective against tornados (Rip the roof off...) and flooding. The holow stone structures will be stronger shelter; Their lower level will be immune to wind and tornados, but may have flooding problems. The upper level will be immune to the first stage of flooding, but won't provide from drowning for small creatures. (And the party consists of halflings...).

I think the whole storm is going to last a week..

Day 1: clouds, light rain
Day 2: heavy Rain
Day 3: Heavy rain, thunderstorms, a tornado hits somewhere in the city Winds destroy some wooden structures.
Day 4: Severe thunderstorm, %10 chance of a tornado in their part of town every hour. Eye passes through a different part of town in the night. Winds destroy most wooden structures.
Day 5: Severe thunderstorm, %10 chance of a tornado in their part of town every hour. First level flood. Some wooden structures remain, but are unsound.
Day 6: Heavy rain, thunderstorms, another tornado hits somwhere in the city. (25% chance it's in their area.Second level flood. Stone walls perpendicular to flow of waters at risk. Only wooden structure in calm flood areas remain.
Day 7: light rain, clouds, and, finally, sunlight. Flood level maintained at second level. Gaping holes in stone walls allow quick flow of flood waters through the city.

Flooding will ease to first level on day eight, and will finally seep to below street level (i.e. through the sewers) on day nine.

It's going to be a rough, challenging session. :-)

Yes, yes yes! It has finally happened. According to slashfilm, Uwe Boll has mentioned that if an online petition gets to 1,000,000 votes he'll stop making movies. For all of humanity, please go sign this petition! Last I saw, it was only to 96,543... we need more signatures!

In-Place Posting is now live for all logged in users. Hopefully there are no surprises. We've found a number of very tiny bugs, but nothing show stopping. We'll leave the link up to the 'classic' reply form for a few weeks. Next week anonymous coward will get the new posting form... hopefully there are no surprises with that.

A few new keybindings aren't documented yet... v (end) t (top) [] change upper threshold and ,. change bottom threshold. Also 'r' opens the new reply box, m opens the mod total thingee.

The only major complaint so far is that the design changes consume a lot more whitespace. I have mixed feelings on the subject, but am aiming to strike a balance. We noticed 2 very clear places where the whitespace is excessive and hopefully that will be fixed RSN. But on the other hand, making deep threads visually clear, and drawing some attention to the 'reply' buttons is beneficial to everyone, so bare with us as we work to strike some sort of balance.

So we finally wrapped up the story arc that started the campaign. It was awesome.

First, I should point out that I had done almost zero prep for this session. I got a little bit done last weekend, but most of that was scrapped when I realized I was that the templates I was applying was turning a Sor 5 and a Wiz 5 into two ECL 7 characters--and the party consisted of varying numbers of lvl 3 characters. Anyhow, I've been unusually busy all week, so I'd planned to do the prep the morning of the session. Instead, I found myself at work until thirty minutes before I was supposed to start DMing. (I'd actually made alternate DM arrangements in the case that I wouldn't be able to get out in time; I didn't have advanced enough warning to get word out canceling the session.)

So it was in this condition that I found the PCs making an assault on the headquarters of the criminal organization, a structure that extended two stories from the ground.

Anyhow, the PCs split into three groups. A psionicist(controlled by the player I once called spider-man) and a knight (with an AC of something like 23 and some peculiar combat abilities that include forcing everyone in the area to attack him.) used a psionic spell to get into a window on the second floor. A dragon shaman (the character formerly known as spider-man...handed to a temporary player who arrived late.) climbed to the roof, and the rest went in through the back door.

It was all over in six rounds.

The dragon shaman shot a guard from the rooftop, then broke into an atrium hallway. The mass party (consisting of two rangers, a cleric, a monk, and a character I'm forgetting. (Come to think of it, I normally hold on to the character sheets, but I forgot to collect them. Well, I hope nobody loses theirs in the next two weeks, or we're going to spend a couple hours rolling characters again.) ) barged in, holding off the five or six fighters who were on duty. (Though once they started making noise, the off-duty fighters woke up and began hastily donning armor.) The cleric cast an illusion of a giant wherewolf, which sadly didn't see much action.

The real treat, though, was the knight and the psionicist. Upon entering the window, they found themselves in the sorcerer den. (triggering a mental alarm.) They immediately stole everything off the desk, and then the psionicist recognized that the bat sitting in the corner was a magical familiar.

So the knight attacked the bat, nearly killing it. (It had 11hp) The door flew open, and the sorc stood there. The bat tried to fly out through the door, and the knight got an attack of opportunity, which wound up killing the bat.

Now, the psionicist has a power where he can animate objects and fling them. He animated the bat corpse and flung it at the sorceror. Critical hit (Nat 20, and confirm roll.). Roll damage? 1d10. Rolled 10. So the psionicist dealt 20 damage by attacking the sorceror with his own dead familiar. Leaving the lvl 5 sorceror with two hit points. Which the knight took care of.

They stabilized the sorceror, and the wall erupted in flames.

Now, you have to remember something about my campaign setting...It's a medieval city the size of New York. Eight million people in combination stone and wood structures. There's lots and lots of wooden structures. Now think "Chicago fire." Uncontrolled flame is a major, major concern. To have a structure with an uncontrolled fire is a major, major problem.

So the psionicist and knight grabbed the sorceror and leapt out of the window.

The funny thing? The fire was an illusion. The lvl 5 wizard was just outside the room, and had cast major image, which includes both visual thermal senses; Unless a character interacted with it, it would, for all intents and purposes, seem real. (If the psionicist had tried putting out the fire, he would have had an opportunity to disbelieve the fire.)

Once outside, the psionicist shouted "Fire", which was heard by enough people to get the building evacuated, during which the party slipped off into the darkness.

I'm sure it would have been a funny sight to see a bunch of fighters with half-donned chainmaille tormented with between running through a potentially burning building to the distant exit, or going to the near exit--the one with the giant werewolf.

In other news, we had a session recently without the player formerly known as spider man. It was...different. Honestly? Sessions run smoother with him around; When the rest of the players are indecisive as to what they want to do, he's already planned three steps ahead. So things tend to move quicker.

There's another new player who played in the previous two sessions. For a few different reasons, he's unpleasant to be around, leading to a lot of behind-the-back talk. I've given him the option to suppress some of these things, or not play in my campaign. Honestly? He took one warning, and seemed to fix the problem. (The issues that arose this week were more the fault of another player who was provoking him.)

There are only a few simple rules to playing in my campaigns. Don't smell like you have bad hygiene, and don't be negatively social. (Meaning, mainly, don't do something just to get a rise out of someone.) If you can do that much, you'll fit in well enough.

Discussion2 rolls on... the most recent addition to the system is in-place comment posting. Essentially, little dynamic ajaxy slideout boxes to post directly within the thread, without going to a stand-alone page. This is great because you don't have to lose your place within the thread to post.

this functionality is currently only available to paid subscribers, and several hundred of them have tested it out already. We still need to make it look pretty and add a few minor things (like the CAPTCHA for anonymous posting) but it's almost done.

Also worth noting is that logged in users can click on the 'Score' field of comments to view the moderation information on the comment. This information was previously not visible within D2, unless you navigated outside the d2 system (opening a comment in a new window did it). I doubt most people really care about this info, but it's available.

We also have one (perhaps minor) thing to get in... right now if you visit a comment directly via a CID link you can navigate within that thread, but navigating 'up' the comment hierarchy results in a new page, and a new discussion... this makes context a pain to maintain. So pudge is going to change that page to display the parent posts in an abbreviated format. This will mean that you can climb back up the thread easily, even if you entered the forum via a link deep into a thread.

A few minor items left on the todo list (keybindings for threshold changes... maybe press 'r' to open the reply slideout from the current comment, and a bunch of small design issues to make the threads a little more visually clear and easily navigatable) and we're ready to call D2 finished.

We have no plans to remove D1, so those of you who hate D2 are welcome to stay on the old system, but obviously new moderation tools and whatever else we think of will be attached to D2, not D1, so you've been warned ;)

Taken from StalinsNotDea:

Post a comment to this thread, and I will:

1. Tell you why I befriended you.
2. Associate you with something - fandom, a song, a color, a photo, etc..
3. Tell you something I like about you.
4. Tell you a memory I have of you.
5. Ask something I've always wanted to know about you.
7. In return, you must post this in your Journal/Blag/whatever.

This comes from shadow wrought, stoolpigeon, JC, Smitty, and originally, I think, RM6f9

Post a comment to this thread, and I will:

1. Tell you why I befriended you.
2. Associate you with something - fandom, a song, a color, a photo, etc..
3. Tell you something I like about you.
4. Tell you a memory I have of you.
5. Ask something I've always wanted to know about you.
7. In return, you must post this in your Journal/Blag/whatever.


Update: Ahh, the 2 minute rule... killing my productivity from answering all these... I'll get to you eventually, but it'll be off and on over the next day or two. Sorry!

In the last few weeks, we've switched most users over to the new 'D2' discussion system- a fully ajaxified discussion system. There are a number of minor bugs, but I figured I'd toss up a few quick notes to address the biggest user complaints.

1. you can turn it off if you log in. Some people get stuck in there ways, and no matter what we build it will never make you happy. So you can have the old lame system and we'll all enjoy the new cool system without you.
2. you can get 'nested' mode back by dragging the 2 thresholds together in the floating slider. they connect and become a single thing. it's quite nifty, and if you are logged in the setting is remembered so you don't have to click to navigate deep threads.
3. you can get more comments at once from the 'prefs' link. the default is currently 50, but choosing 'many' changes that (currently) to 250, which means you will get roughly the average number of comments in a typical slashdot story. Yes you will need to click 'more' on a huge discussion, but at that point we're talking about very large pages and slower computers like to choke on huge pages anyway so we have to balance size and performance.

there are 2 huge wins here for everyone... the first is retention of context. You can wade into a thread, retrieve more comments, change your threshold, all without losing your place like you did in the old system. And using the WASD keys to navigate makes it very easy to peruse discussions in a number of interesting ways. mouseover the help text in the floater for more information about how they work. We're open to suggestions on how this should work- i'm not totally happy with it yet... but it *is* possible to mash a single key and go from start to end of a discussion, which pleases me.

the second is that the default users see the highest score comments first. You can change this by logging in and toggling the retrievable order to oldest first, but for most people this means that the first comments they see will be the best. There are so many great comments on Slashdot, but most users don't see them because they are buried within the discussion. I think this goes a long ways towards helping.

A final word about the ads in there- unfortunately there are ads in the new system. Changing from a static page-page-page system to a dynamic ajax system with a single 'page load' causes us to serve hundreds of thousands of fewer ads. We worked out roughly how long people read discussions and are trying to strike a balance so that you see roughly the same number of ads under this system as you would have under the old one. We'll tweak it of course, but we gotta pay the bills here people!

And obviously all of this is a work in progress. Pudge is leading development work on this. The next project is to make it possible to post without losing your place in the discussion, and then to refine navigation keybindings and thread expansion/contraction controls to make the whole UI clean. We appreciate constructive criticisim. There are bugs (especially in IE, but almost no slashdot user runs IE) but we're mashing them out- thanks for your feedback on them. As we sand off the rough edges I think you'll all find the new system a vast improvement if you just play with it for a bit and give it a fair chance. Not all change is bad ;)

I played this class for about a month and a half in another DM's game. The game was a cross between D&D and Star Wars Saga Edition, set some time in the steam era.

The class isn't my creation, though I got permission to post it.

The Mechanic

Class Table

Lvl Special Craft Materials

1 Craft Pool 50 100g

Tech Savant +2

Tear it Apart

2 Master Scavenger (75%) 100 200g

Swift Repairs

3 Personal Touch (+1) 150 300g

4 Quick Rig 200 400g

5 Temporary Modifications 250 500g

Tech Savant +4

6 Instant Repairs 300 600g

Personal Touch (+2)

7 Master Scavenger (100%) 350 700g

8 "Off Switch" 400 800g

9 Tech Savant +8 450 900g

Personal Touch (+3)

10 Tech Paragon 500 1000g

Class Parameters

The Mechanics gains a d8 HD, a medium BAB (as Cleric), a +2 bonus to Reflex defense and a +1 bonus to Will defense. Mechanics gain 6 trained skills at 1st level, plus their Intelligence bonus.

Craft Pool

You gain a Craft Pool as listed in the table above. These Craft Points work as detailed in the Unearthed Arcana supplement, page 97.

Materials

You gain a limited amount of random scrap metals, springs, gears and other bits and pieces that you keep with you, which you can use to build mechanical devices. Your Materials pool is essentially a pool of virtual gold pieces, which can be "spent" only to pay the cost of crafting, modifying or repairing technological creations.

Tech Savant

You are a master at working with technological wonders. You gain a +2 bonus on all Craft (Mechanics), Devices, and Knowledge (Mechanics) checks. This bonus increases to +4 at 5th level, and to +8 at 9th level.

Tear it Apart

You gain a +2 bonus to attack and damage rolls against any mechanical device. You know just where to strike to disable key gears and important parts. In addition, any time you move a machine down the Condition Track, you apply a persistant condition. This condition cannot be removed until the machine has been specially repaired, requiring one hour of work.

Master Scavenger

You become adept at scrapping mechanical devices, turning them into spare parts with which to build new machines. You may take an hour to scrap any technological device of up to medium size, gaining Material to spend to craft new devices. You gain Materials equal to 75% of the base cost of the scrapped object. At 7th level, you gain Materials equal to 100% of the base cost of the scrapped object.

Swift Repairs

You may make a Craft (Mechanics) check to repair a mechanical device in one minute, instead of ten minutes, by taking a -5 penalty to your check. You may make a Jury Rig attempt as a standard action instead of a full round action.

Personal Touch

You know the details of your gear by heart, including all the little quirks and idiosynchracies. When using a piece of equipment you have crafted yourself, using points from your Craft and Materials pools and nothing else, you gain the listed bonus on all attack, damage and skill rolls involving that particular piece of equipment.

Quick Rig

You may jury rig a mechanical device that is not disabled, moving it up the Condition Track and healing HP as normal. The device still becomes disabled at the end of the encounter or scene.

Temporary Modifications

When you jury rig any mechanical device that has not been moved down the Condition Track at all, or that you have jury-rigged or repaired to the top of the Condition Track, you may choose to make temporary modifications, increasing the performance of the object for a short time. Any object you improve in this way gains a +2 bonus to all attack, damage and skill checks involved with it until the end of the encounter or scens, at which point it becomes disabled.

"Off Switch"

With a practised twist with a wrench, you can disable even the most complex machines. You may make a DC 20 Devices check as a standard action. If you succeed, you move the targeted device -1 step down the condition track, -1 step per 5 points by which you beat the DC.

Tech Paragon

You may use your Swift Repairs ability with no penalty on your Craft (Mechanics) roll, and you heal an additional 2d4 HP for each minute of work.. In addition, when you make a jury rig attempt, you move the target 3 steps up the condition track, and heal double the normal amount of HP. Finally, when you use the jury rig option on a device that is not disabled, it is not disabled at the end of the encounter or scene but is moved -1 step down the condition track each time it is used, instead. If the device is made for continual use, it moves -1 step down the condition track per round of use.

Well, like any young couple buying a(n old) house, at some point you reach the inevitable point where you need to get outside jobs done. In our case, we had a lot of repairs to do, but one of the more obvious ones was a leaking rain-pipe on the street-side.

Meanwhile, after consulting various people and opinions, architects, etc, and making sure that our roof was still in acceptable conditions, we had some people install 3 windows (Velux) in our roof, so that we could have sunlight in our rooftop story. At first, we were very happy while blinking our eyes from the contrast adjustment, until we discovered that the quality of the work had been seriously below par. Pans were sitting loose, rain would seep in on the sides, and the windows themselves had been damaged and placed quite arbitrarily.

It was in august, and it was, completely in check with any other Belgian summer, raining cattle and zoo. While all kinds of animals fell from the sky, we started looking for a second team that could repair our rain-pipe. It was broken just underneath the plumbing of the collector, at the end of our tilted roof. After 2 people not showing up and 2 others being either too expensive or not very trustworthy, we thought we had found our guy. At first he would only remove one chimney, do the repairs on the plumbing, and the re-placement of the Veluxes. We were happy to have found ANYONE working for a fair price and helping us out. We signed him up for the job. This was around the end of September. He would only be free starting from mid-October and estimated that the job would be finished beginning of November. This sounded good, knowing that wintertime was coming. I wanted things to be done by December.

It was already the end of October when he first showed up. He had an elevator lift with him, and the removal of the chimney went swiftly. We were pleased. After he showed us a finished house he did from top to bottom a few blocks away, we talked about having the room isolated and prepared, and he volunteered to do this as well. Then he discovered that some of the large wooden ledgers were rotting away where they jointed with the walls. The ledgers had indeed looked a bit doubtful, bending under the weight of the keepers quite significantly as well. The whole roof would have to go, but he assured us that building a new roof and removing the old one would "just take 1 or 1.5 weeks extra". We were skeptical, but we signed a new contract detailing the extra work and materials.

He then started to remove the pans from the roof. This dragged on for quite some time, took about a week. Our hopes were still somewhat high but then the weather turned nasty. So nasty in fact that he didn't show up for one week, two weeks.. in the meantime it started storming and raining.. and we had no pans on the roof! The old under roof, a sort of light wooden layer that was looking like carton boards, was our only protection, and was getting soaked fast. After installing rain pots to deal with the biggest leaks that started popping up, I called him to provide a solution. He came and told us he had draped large plastic covers over the roof. We were somewhat happy that it didn't rain in our house (or so we thought), but our patience was starting to run out fast. 2 houses down the street, other roof workers had removed and re-constructed a new roof in only 2 weeks, rain or no rain. The next day we were on the 1st floor and we noticed odd yellow lines on the white painted ceilings. Going to second floor, we saw a soaked visitors bed, soaked books, soaked (freshly scraped) wooden floor, soaked IKEA pets, and a ceiling that was displaying weird patterns and bulges. Running to the top floor, I saw that the floor was wet, but not *THAT* wet. Apparently the water had found it's way down quite rapidly. I was trying to keep my calm and made another phone call, while installing more buckets. Our worker team came to take a look and agreed to repair it, at their expenses. Meanwhile I had found the source of the leak, and after a little bit of parley, the guy told us that yes, the badge he had used to fight off the rain had been about 80 cm's too short. Well. I guess that was the end of me being nice to him.

The story dragged on all the way until the 20th of December. By then the roof had been taken down (finally) and a new wooden construction was put in place, and new water collectors had been constructed to get the rainwater to the pipes. But the collectors still had to be leaded and the pipe connection itself (the reason that we had ventured with him) was still broken! This had taken another week. We were planning on going to Zandvoort / The Netherlands for 3 days. We had phoned him every day multiple times to get him to work on our roof, and he promised us to work during the weekend so that it would be closed up. In Zandvoort we got a phone call that the roof was closed. We were cheering at least a little bit. At home, we found that the room was closed with some kind of plastic cover under-roof sections, but the pans were still nowhere to be seen. It took Christmass and New Year to come round before the last pan got on the roof, at the cost of one call per 10 pans or so.

So now it's almost the end of January, the front collector has been leaded and the joint with the rain pipe is fixed. About 60% of all the protective slabs of the roof have been placed, and there is still some woodwork missing at the underside of the rain collector. We haven't even started discussing how the inside would be done. The guy does not pick up the phone or return calls for about 7 days. We have sent him a paper that states all the problems caused by him by mail (for which he has to sign) so we are now officially following legal proceedings.

I hope your roof treats you more kindly!

I feel pretty good. I could go on and on about all the prep I did, but I got a bit of praise in email that made me feel really, really good:

We ended up using only one of my prepared encounters. I triggered it at an awkward time, but I'm comfortable with how I managed to tie it in.

I introduced two new main characters this week, Gilbert Malevict and Lewis Westville. Gilbert Malevict is a member of the community elders, and Lewis is a personal bodyguard of his.

After accepting custody of the captured bard, Malevict inquired if the party was interested in more work. He informed them he would get in touch with them the next day. However, Lewis approached them outside the elder's offices, took them aside, and, on behalf of Malevict, asked them if they would take on a private job to deal with a "discreet matter".

Lewis made the pitch, explaining that there were a few individuals in a syndicate known as the Backbreakers* who were extorting Malevict. Malevict wanted the individuals roughed up, but not killed, such that he would no longer be their target.

* The Backbreakers are into the protection racket.

The party demanded a contract for the job, and demanded to see Malevict. Lewis left, and returned with Malevict. The party grilled Malevict, pressing him to be the one to sign the contract. Malevict hemmed and hawed, but eventually conceeded to sign the contract, under the stipulation that future private dealings with the party would be through Lewis, and the contract would be held in escrow.

After the arrangements were made, the party split up. Two of the characters left to scout the Backbreaker's territory, while the third (A new player showed up this week, and two others failed to show.) stayed behind to learn what he could of Malevict and Lewis.

The two scouting characters learned that Backbreaker members typically have an orange wristband under their right sleeve. (DC 20 spot check to confirm) Through this, they discovered and tailed Garret (The PCs don't know his name), and begain tailing him.

It was at this point that I triggered one of my planned encounters, which honestly wasn't originally intended to have anything to do with the Backbreaker, but ah well. Anyway, the characters (and Garret) hear someone shout "Stop, thief!", as a man bursts out of a nearby armor shop and races down the thoroughfare.

The PCs tailing Garret chose not to interfere, but Garret gave pursuit. One of the PCs gave chase to Garret, while the other waited.

Here's where I ran into a problem. The thief tried shaking Garret a couple times, but it wasn't working. And the PC was chasing Garret, but wasn't really improving on his position. Things got even worse when two more Backbreaker's joined Garret in chase, but were far enough behind that they were actually behind the PC. And nobody was gaining on anyone. So I had to end it somehow.

The thief tried sliding under a cart, failed his check, and smashed his face on the cart. The three Backbreakers quickly caught up, though the PC kept his distance and watched.

So I solved one problem and created another...I had a conflict between four NPCs, with an emphasis on N. At this point in the game, I was running the whole show, and the players were stuck on the sidelines. Two were standing thirty feet away (the chase circled around the block), and one was halfway across the district.

So I handed the three players the stat sheet for the three Backbreakers (prep pays off!), I took the stat sheet for the thief, and we roleplayed the encounter.

I have to say, those Backbreakers are vicious! And I don't get why these players always play good-aligned characters. The thief was let off with a warning, a broken knee, and was nearly made to smell of someone else's urine.

Anyhow, after dealing with the thief, the Backbreakers split up and and left for their usual rounds, except Garret, who returned the item that the thief stole to the armor shop.

Eventually the two scouting PCs followed Garret home. One of the PCs following Garret (I've called him Spiderman previously, for his ability to climb at his base move speed.) entered his home and, well, terrorized him. Probably wouldn't have gotten away with it if Garret's kids hadn't been in the house, though he did manage to convince Garret he could fly...The player missed a hint in the dialogue, though.

The PC who tailed Malevict and Lewis scored an incredible 34 on his Hide check, and was able to position himself comfotably in the cart that carried Malevict and Lewis home. He didn't learn anything terribly useful.

The next day, the PCs staked out Garret's home, and witnessed two scruffy(low-level commoners) men(halfing men, not Men in the Tolkien sense) and a tough-looking(Ftr3) woman enter Garret's apartment. Eavesdropping revealed Garret explaining the situation to the woman, and the woman telling him to stay home; They'd take care of it.

The three Backbreaker's left, and began questioning everyone in the neighborhood to find out if anyone knew anything about the flying man. They came up empty, of course. The three Backbreakers then split up. The three party members split up and followed the Backbreakers, with the level 3 Rogue following the tough-looking woman.

The rogue witnessed the woman meat with two more tough-looking Backbreakers, but then she started to look nervous. (Her Spot beat her tail's Hide, but the PC didn't know that, even though the player did.) She continued, and met with another tough-looking Backbreaker, and then left down an alley.

The PC followed her into the alley, where he saw her turn the corner down a narrower alley. He then saw the other tough-looking Backbreaker enter the alley behind him. The Backbreaker shouted at the PC, who hadn't yet drawn a weapon. Then we rolled initiative. The two fighters go first, followed by the rogue.

And then discovered it was 10:45PM; It was time to end the game for the night.

So, next week, we resume the encounter where the level 3 Rogue was caught in a pincer move by two level 3 fighters. The player thinks his character's going to die, but I've been telling him he can probably survive; He just has to play his cards right.

Ah, crap. It's 4:53AM. I'd like to sleep while it's still dark. :-)

It took three days, but I'm finally ready for Saturday's game. I've got three encounters ready, over 90 unique NPCs, and a potentially recurring villain. I'd intended to have another 30-40 NPCs in another organization, but with sixty NPCs of various classes ready for unplanned occasions, I can fudge a little.

I've technically got the makings for a couple more encounters, in case the players sail through the way they did last session. To help prevent that, I planned all the encounters at at least CR4. (It's a party of level three characters.) A couple of the encounters can stretch farther, if need be.

Hm. I've got an idea for one more encounter involving two sorcerers and two wizards.

I'll post the notes for them after the game. Don't want to spoil it if Redgar's watching. :-)

Oh, and this NPC generator is awesome.