The second part of our Dungeons and Dragons adventure is now available for download. This is part of a series of podcasts we did for Wizards of the Coast. Tycho and I sat down at a table with Scott Kurtz and a DM from WOTC for some 4th edition adventuring. We all had varying levels of D&D experience. Tycho is a pro while Scott hasn't played in years. For me, it was my first time ever playing D&D. It was a ton of fun and I think that comes across when you listen to thepodcasts . Not only are we posting the recordings of our session but Scott and I are creating comic book style panels to go along with each part.

After part one went up I got a lot of requests to post our character sheets.  So here they are:


This is my character Jim Darkmagic (of the New Hampshire Darkmagics). The best part of the game for me was creating Jim and then really trying to get into the role playing aspect of the game. Jim is a real asshole with a very high opinion of himself,  so it wasn't much of a stretch. I picture Jim walking aroundWinterhaven with a stack of head shots in case he needs to sign any autographs. Jim thinks he's the star of the party but if things go south he's the first one to turn and save his own hide. Jim also speaks about himself in the third person and trade marks his spells e.g., Jim's Magic Missile™ .

Jack Thompson hasn't been a fixture around here for quite awhile, largely due to the Beetlejuzian notion that speaking his name might cause him to become corporeal. As is so often the case, it was all "fun and games" until someone contacted the FBI. Specifically, him. I did not want to be Investigated by a Federal Bureau. This had the effect of transforming what had been farce into genuine rage.

The live stream will be starting in 10 to 15 minutes. If you can't make the live shows but you still want to see the comic get drawn you can always hit the Ustream site here. I record and upload most of the shows.

Like so:

Penny Arcade prides itself on delivering a more robust assessment of the ninja lifestyle than our contemporaries, who are content merely to focus on how awesome they are. No-one wants to discuss the aftermath, once the corrupt warlord had been put down. They don't want to think about the hand that holds the certain blade, or the mind that mixes paralytic toxins from grey lichen on a high crag. Their community faces serious challenges and I think it's time they were taken seriously.

The live stream will be starting in 10 to 15 minutes.

Because I had played it awhile ago (in advance of advertising it - indeed, as a condition) I've had a chance to talk with people at conventions and so forth about my experience with D&D4.  Or 4E, or whatever the accepted nomenclature is.  As I have said, the alterations are radical.  I mean radical in the sense that evokes a skateboard launching from the lip of a pool, but the changes (and the deprecation of your previous supplements) are a serious matter I am not deaf to.

Yes, it's a real series.

The feed hasn't picked it up yet, but it should here in a little bit - in the meantime, feel free to grab the podcast for today's strip here.

So Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition will be coming out in eight days. You're probably wondering why I'm talking about this and not Tycho, seeing as I never played editions one through three. That's a good question, so here's what's up.

Wizards of the Coast came to us months ago and wanted to run some ads for 4th edition. They wanted to do something more than just banner ads though and they asked us if we had any cool ideas. What we came up with is probably one of my favorite projects to date. Tycho and I sat down at a table with Scott Kurtz from PvP and a DM from WOTC and we played 4th edition. That probably doesn't sound awesome to you except that we also recorded the entire thing as a podcast.

So you have Tycho who is the old pro, you have Scott who hasn't played since he was a kid and you have me the complete newb. If you've played D&D before but you're curious about the changes in 4th edition the podcast will cover a ton of the new rules. If you've never played and your curious if it's something you'd like, I think this is a really good example of the game. For me personally is was an extremely positive experience. There was some frustration at first as I tried to wrap my head around the rules but once I got into it I had a really good time. I think I actually enjoyed the adventuring/role playing portions of the game more than the actuall combat. The comabt was fun but it was the puzzle solving and interaction with the rest of the party that really made the game for me. At any rate if you're curious about D&D in general or 4th edition specifically I think these podcasts will be helpful and hopefully funny.


We ended up playing all day and then broke the podcast up into multiple chunks. The first of which went live today. Not only will WOTC be posting a new podcast each week but Scott and I will be creating a comic that follows the events of the adventure. There will be two panels accompanying each podcast, one drawn by me and one drawn by Scott. Today's podcast covers the start of the game as we name our characters and get our group set up. It also includes our first taste of combat and my very first official d20 roll ever. If you hit the WOTC site here you can grab the first show and see the first two panels of the comic. If you don't have one already, you will need to sign up for an account. It's free and pretty quick.

I know that utility software for the DS is a hit in Japan, and I know that people try to make these things go in the United States and elsewhere, but is quitting smoking something that people will actually do on the DS? I want to believe this is true, certainly. I want to believe that we are, in some ways, already toting around the ultimate, mutable living tool, a young lady's illustrated primer. It's a fantasy I can endorse. The challenge for them is going to be moving the product out of the core smoker demo into other markets, but that's not insurmountable.

During the writing of this strip, I was still in the grip of fever. I had spent the entire night consorting with entities of various kinds, slick with sweat, trying to figure out what to do with all the "excess nitrogen" (among other important tasks). After hours of recursive agony, I came to find myself in a canoe with a Native American. This seemed a little run of the mill as visions go, and I told him so. He seemed to find that amusing.

I had the mic for a little while in the video, and during that time I mention some fluff I wrote for the world. That stuff is now available over on the Greenhouse, right at the top.

So the chat about the game went really well. Thanks to everyone that showed up and participated. Tycho and I each took turns at the mic fielding questions about the game and PA. Here's the recording in case you could not make it to the live show.

As though fixed to some hissing mechanism, I receive a reliable drip of corporate PR every few seconds throughout the day. It's rare that I find this "content" worthy of you, and so I rarely present you with it. When Gabriel returned, knowing his abiding love for beautiful ponies and husbandry, I presented him with Ponystars - one of the bizarre gems I had sifted out of this endless accumulating ASCII. A product of the reconstituted Acclaim, I was confident the product would ensnare him, because in Ponystars one can: