D&Dice Fails

Music is a magical medium. It can invoke emotions such as sadness or elation. Music can speak volumes when words alone fail to capture the essence of something.

It is to music that I turn to describe Saturday night's Dungeons and Dragons session. Enjoy.

Saturday night will go down in history as the Night of the Crits, and what a night it was.

With most of the party MIA Mat, newcomer Tyler and I were reunited and free to complete a dungeon crawl sans morons (*cough* Kampo and Rafiki *COUGH*). This somehow went worse than if the morons had been present.

See, in D&D players roll a 20 sided dice to determine the outcome of certain actions, like attacking or attempting to stay on the back of a bucking displacer beast. But the 20 sided dice is a fickle creature, and can sometimes land in one of two critical positions: a critical miss, or a '1', or a critical hit, or a '20' on the dice.

"1's" are bad. Like bad-bad.

Criticals of either variety are uncommon at best, with one or the other popping up in a game maybe 2-3 times, max.

Saturday night, between only three players and the Dungeon Master, we had eighteen goddamned criticals. Eight-%#@*ing-teen. That's eight critical hits, mostly for Aaron, and ten critical misses, mostly between Tyler and myself.

It was bullhonky. Buuuuullllllllllhooooooooooonkyyyyyyy.

Let's take a look at a couple of highlights:

Miss: I take a swing at a giant scorpion, face-planting and flinging my maul in the process.
Hit: Said scorpion crit to buck me off.
Miss: A scorpion missed Mat, only to clamp down on his compatriot.
Hit: Tyler smashed a motion-sensing gem into oblivion.
Miss: I took a mighty swing at a Fell Taint, felling a stone pillar instead.
Hit: Tyler perceived ALL of the Fell Taints.
Miss: Upon inspection, Mat determined that a door was in fact a horse. Maybe.

And that was but a taste, people. A painful, stupid taste.

Dark Monday

Monday's are weird, people.

Hell, the saying "case of the Mondays" stands as a monument to that singular off-ness that only a Monday can bring.

I'm having a case of the Mondays.

This is quite unusual for me, as I rather like that bright and shining first (technically second) day of the week. But today is different. Monday different.

I died around 10 times during the two or so hours I played Dark Souls today, around nine times more than my current state of mind could handle. I fell to my death. I was stabbed to death. I was stabbed to death again. I was smooshed by the Taurus Demon. I was stabbed to death again.

In about four of my six or so encounters with the big bastard today I actually got him down to about 1/3 to 1/4 health. Then I'd die. Always I would die.

This is all my psyche could handle drawing. 

I finally gave up, grinded a few soul levels, then went outside and cleaned out my car. Take that Taurus Demon.

Into a Comic, Darkly: One year and 100 posts!!!

That's right...For my 100th post I'm announcing the return of Monday Madness.

Dark Souls is coming back with a vengeance, and I'm leaving it up to you guys to choose my punishment for ignoring it for so long.

Will I:

Be shown mercy (pick up where I left off).

OR

Pay for my crimes accordingly (start completely anew).

Vote for your choice in the comments. The choice with the most votes by this Sunday night wins it.

Please...Please have mercy...

UPDATE

By complete accident today is both my 100th post AND The Geeky Cat's 1 year anniversary! Woooo!

Madness and Money, Payday 2 Part 2

BANG! BANG!

That's not the sound of gunfire, it's the sound of me slamming my head into the wall.

This isn't due to the difficulty or repetitiveness of Payday 2. My self inflicted concussions are because of the derpiness of the PS3 Payday 2 community. Now not all of the players I meet go full retard but it has happened enough that I am afraid it's becoming an epidemic.

My full purpose behind this article was not meant to be a rage filled review. The more I played online the angrier I became. Mission after mission I had to give up on the higher amounts of money due to people charging the front door, ignoring all guards, civilians and going straight for the mission.

Now before I hear people say "What's wrong with that? It's what they're supposed to do."Understand that setting off alarms can make missions harder, longer (that's what she said) and give a bigger chance of failure.

One of the first missions in Payday 2 is a simple bank heist. The players only have to find a way around four guards, cameras and then have to control the handful of civilians in the bank. The players are given a chance to scope out the bank before starting the mission to see where the guards and cameras might be. This is a great time to do any planning. At least that's what I thought until playing with others online.

In my first few matches I played with actual people they just ran in the front door every time like madmen. They would ignore all cameras and guards going straight for the safe, getting the police called on us immediately.

Although really the NPC AI isn't much better. "No, guys, I need to finish my smoke break. Y'all can wait 'til I'm done."

Certainly these other player's veteran level didn't reflect the "madness" that has overcome them. As my level grew so did my distaste for the others that joined me. Time and time again I saw the "madness" creep into their ever so slightly sane head as they start shooting every living creature informing everyone in the city to our position and actions. What was happening to these people?

Why was this happening? Was there something wrong with the community or was there something else possibly following me around causing these people to lose all touch with their sanity?

Check out part three, when a madness of my own arises.

-Aaron

The Do's and Don'ts of makin' Moneeeeeeeeeeey

While we (not so) patiently wait for Aaron to (finally) come up with his Payday 2 Part 2 post, He and I have come up with a miniseries of sorts. 

As you'll (eventually) see in his next post, there are right ways to play and wrong ways, at least to his fussy eyes, something we'll be documenting in the Do's and Don'ts of Payday 2

Enjoy!

D&Drugs (Are Bad, M'Kay?)

Today's post is brought to you by Jake and his artist, the Great Kampo (John).

From the Book of Kampo:

After a vision quest led by the curious drug known as vision dust right now, our lord led a solitary quest into the surrounding forest.

As he needed to be off to seek divine guidance our group came to a bridge that will forever be known as the vagina to the river womb that gave birth to our lord on this day. Tossed in only what he was born with down the current he was delivered unto the world once again.

Drugs aside, this is why you don't smoke just...everything... -Geeky Cat

Let today be known throughout history as 'The Divine Birth'

Praise be to Kampo!!!

D&Dammit Kampo, Part 1

With us this week was yet another fresh faced adventurer, aka D&D noob, Emily.

Our current campaign, as well as any other we've run in the past, uses D&D 4th edition. Now, before you Master Race Pathfinder players and 3.5 advocates get all uppity let me say this: shut up.

Now, admittedly 4th edition can be a bit combat heavy. Just a little. But today was to be a special encounter, Aaron told us: a combat style encounter with, get this: no combat. Sweet.

We started the evening's activities with a visit from the Scarlet Steel head office, an Orcish agent dropping off a new recruit, Emily, aka Eimile, aka 'the other elf'. She was just in time to witness an NPC named Shauna crashing through the tavern doors in desperate need of our particular line of skills: Pack bitches

I had worked with Shauna previously, body guarding, being a sentient mule, the usual boring mercenary stuff. The important thing is she gave me money, and I saw this as an opportunity to claim more of the same. Shauna was desperate, and desperation could give me the edge in payroll negotiations. I grabbed Tokkichuu (Marissa) and the rookie and tailed Shauna outside, with Karash (Mat) and the idiot twins Kampo an Rafiki (John and Jake) hot on our heels.

She needed to get out of town, fast, but first she needed her stuff. Finally, it was my time to shine. No more sitting worthless in narrow hallways. I knew exactly where all her barrels and crates were (since I was the lucky mule that put them there). I sent Karash after some of the barrels, taking the Elves with me, leaving Rafiki and Kampo to do Pelor knows what, probably stand around farting and giggling at each other.

But there was no farting, nor giggling. The moment we left earshot Kampo's inner sociopath woke up for the day to discover Shauna right in front of him.

This is where it gets dumb.

*click* *click* COOKEHS! *click* *click* *click*

Video games may not have been around for very long in the grand scheme of human existence, but since its creation it has left an eternal and irreplaceable mark on our species. Gaming has the ability to draw its audience into fantastical worlds in ways movies and books never could, making heroes of men, women, and children alike.

Gaming as a whole is inherently good.

Once in a while, however, a seed of evil is planted. Hiding among the good sprouts until it breaches the soil and blooms into the world, these games are unrepentant in their wickedness, drawing victim after victim down into the abyss.

Now, I'm not talking about bad games, I'm talking about evil games. This brings me...To Cookie Clicker.

Cookie Clicker is exactly what it sounds like: Clicking cookies...To get more cookies.That's it. That's the game play. All of it. You click a cookie to make more cookies.

But you can't get very many cookies simply by clicking! No, you need far more cookies than mere clicking can allow, so the unbreakable chain begins. See, you can spend the cookies you've earned (by clicking the cookie) to buy tools, such as additional cursors to click for you, and grandmas working 'round the clock on production. As your CPS, or cookies-per-second, rises, so does your cookie making empire. You build farms and mines to strip the world of its natural cookie resources. You send ships to the deepest parts of space in search of planets with cookie dough cores to bring back home. You create a time machine so you can reclaim cookies before they were ever eaten.

Well Agnus, if you and the BINGO club hadn't called the Board of Health on me demanding insurance, I would still be paying you...In cookies. 

The game preys on a player's worse levels of OCD. Click the cookie, get a cookie. Click a cookie, get a cookie. Just click the cookie, one more time. Hey, now you get two cookies when you click the cookie. Now three. Now four. Now you get 16 cookies when you click the cookie. Spend a few cookies and buy a couple upgrades so you can now get 1,898 cookies every time you click the cookie. Spend a few more cookies and hire a few more grandmas. What do you do with all the cookies from your grandma army? You fund scientists to open portals to other dimensions so you can get their cookies too. Just a couple more clicks, and you can afford a new antimatter condenser, since all antimatter might as well be cookies.

This is your existence. All of it.

The numbers also skyrocket at a pace I didn't think allowable by physics, rewarding the player's frantic clicking with enough cookies to feed several small countries. Enough cookies to conquer the universe.

How pervasive is this disease? Aaron was the first victim, quickly becoming a sort of Typhoid Mary of cookies. He started playing sometime yesterday evening, and as we speak is thinking up ways to automate the clicking for him...As a click withheld is a cookie wasted. His first convert was our friend over at Kitsune Dream, who when tasked with cookie clicking laughed. Surely a game so ridiculous couldn't be so addictive, so all consuming, as Aaron claimed. A bold statement made while clicking away the entire time...A clicking that was still going strong three hours later.

I became the next sacrifice to Big Cookie. The elation I felt as my CPS rose higher and higher rivals that of my first meeting with Aaron. I wanted, no, needed more cookies. At time of writing my CPS is at a minuscule 879,787.9 cookies, compared to Kitsune's 52 million and Aaron's mind numbing 254,000,000 cookies per second...

Now I'm at 888,267.9 cookies every second, with an additional 17,877 every time I manually click on the cookie. I have 97 grandmas, three farms, a mine, three space ships, four alchemy labs, 16 dimensional portals, and seven time machines, all working to make all the cookies.

All of them.

*click*...*click*...*pause*...*click*...*click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click*

1,013,658.3 cookies per second.

1,388,831.4 cookies per second.

Update!

2,779,009.9 cookies per second.