My summer of conventions.

Here is what I did during the summer.

San Diego Comic-Con
Had fun. I did not get to all the panel I had wanted to, but I did get a few autographs I wanted. One being was the full cast autograph of the Mythbusters and one I did not plan on was with two of the Farscape cast signed a Farscape comic book cover.
Got the chance to walk the floor of the convention more than the past and found some good swag and other items I did not know I wanted till I found them as seen here.


Here are the videos I shot at SDCC.


Here are a few panel I went to that were found online:
Mythbusters Panel Podcast from San Diego Comic-Con from the Nerdist Podcast.
Comic Con 2010: Joss Whedon Experience Panel (When Nathen Fillion shows up)
Comic Con 2010: Bones (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4) (Part 5)

A panel I wanted to goto, but could not get in to or end up skipping:
Comic Con 2010: Big Bang Theory (Intro song by BNL) (Part 3) from CBS, good camera placement, got the whole stage.
Comic-Con 2010: Castle Panel (Reads form Heat Wave) (Pranks on set) (Embarassing moments on set) (Ryan and Esposito's relationship)


GenCon

Here are the videos I took while at GenCon.

Some videos that I show up in that were filmed by the people at Fear the Boot.

Fear the Boot: Gen Con 2010 Booter Dinner (Buca di Beppo) - Video #1

Fear the Boot: Gen Con 2010 Booter Dinner (Buca di Beppo)- Video #2

Fear the Boot: Gen Con 2010 Wing Night

Dan Runs Star Trek

Here is a search on YouTube for the Wil Wheaton Panel at GenCon.

D&D Preview Show from Gen Con from Dungeons & Dragons Podcast.
Dark Sun Seminar from Gen Con from Dungeons & Dragons Podcast.

Dragonflight
Played in some RPG game with some convention friends and played some new boardgames. Fun times.

See pictures here.


PAX

I got to be in a YouTube video that was shot at PAX with Paul and Storm, Molly Lewis, Wil Wheaton, Kim Evey, Jonathan Coulton, MC Frontalot and the 68 volunteers and PAX enforcers who showed up on a tweet.

I'm the one who took the bottle of water from Storm [0:28 - 1:12].

Click to watch.




Here was the basic idea (in video form):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGsqbpm7YZU

Behind the scenes pictures of the video being shot:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/heathbar/sets/72157624750465359

Also check out the D&D podcast with the members of Acquisitions Incorporated that was done was at a panel durring PAX.

My Character Review

Our 4th Ed D&D game is over. We completed the Keep on the Shadowfell and want to start something different. We are restarting our Hero System back up, now with more players.

With my character being mothballed, I wanted to reflect on the choices I used for the Feats, At-Wills, Encounter, Daily and Utility Powers.

My character was a Ranger and I had fun.



First off are the Feats:

Defensive Mobility: It helped some when the attacker came to me when I was off to the side pelting them with some arrows.
Lethal Hunter: A great benefit with my Hunter's Quarry target.
Elven Precision: It helped when I got to re-roll one of my attacks for Elven Accuracy
Distant Advantage: We leveled up our character for the last battle and did not get a chance to use this at all. With past battle in mind. I think it could be put to good use.

Next would be At-Wills:

Wit the two at will I had, Careful Attack and Twin Strike, I found out I mostly used the Twin Strike attack. You have two chances to attack and most of the time you would hit with one of the attacks. A few time you could hit with both. I could see using Careful Attack with Distant Advantage to get the To Hit bonus up to +4, but never got a chance to try it out.

Next would be Encounter Powers:

The two power that I used were Two-Fanged Strike and Thundertusk Boar Strike. With Two-Fanged Strike it helped out some, it is like Twin Strike, as you attack twice, but has the possibility of a little more damage. Almost all the time I used this power I only hit the one time that boosted the damage a little. This would be a power I would change if I remade the character.

With Thundertusk Boar Strike, it attacks twice. The option of this was that it also pushes the target it it hits. I used this many a time to get the target in the right place.

Next on the list is the Daily Powers:

With Split the Tree daily, you do need to get the two targets near each other for this to work. With the attack, you roll 2 dice and take the best one. Then you roll the high damage on targets. This as help a many a time to deal damaging and killing attacks.

The last item was my Utility Power choice:

The Yield Ground option sounded good in the begining, but only got used once or twice. With Being a arrow chucker, I was off to the side or in the back and when I did get hit it was by ranged attacks. Yield Ground only kicks in on melee attacks. This would be the other item I would change.

My Skill choices worked for the character and I do not see any changes that would have help durring the game.

That a my review of my character choices. Now to put the character sheet into the folder and put the folder onto the booksheld with the other RPG book and papers.

The choices for the game.

After our D&D game last night, we talked about how we have around 5 or some games till we finish the Keep on the Shadowfell adventure. After D&D we are planing on going back to our HERO game, but now with more players. We have one confirmed player, one player that fit in but due to work plays in about half the game and the last player is new to gaming and still has not found his grove. With the two original players (that includes me) and the one confirmed player we are looking at a minimum of 3 players and a GM.

Questions came up for characters and the game world.

With the characters I saw three options:

1. We keep our characters (powers/level),
2. Make new characters or
3. We power down our characters.

With the game, it was decided we stick with a fantasy setting, but with the story I came up with another three options:

1. We continue the story where we left off with some minor adjustments,
2. We jump ahead in time in the game world and restart the story from there or
3. We start over from scratch.

Time will tell on what we do.

My day at Worldwide D&D Game Day

Saturday was Worldwide D&D Game Day.

I got to the game store about 11am and waited around for a bit for a second GM to appear. The game started about 11:30am with a full table. The first encounter started with the players getting use to the new character classes. Hit were traded and the enemy took most of the damage. We won. Someone from Wizards (that works on D&D Insider) showed up to talk, ask questions and watch our game for a while. He even spotted my dice shirt I had on for the game day done by Wil Wheaton and he asked if I have heard about the current D&D podcast with the D&D game with Wil.
With the second encounter it started out normally till someone started to play with fire in the mill and the grain dust exploded. There was fire everywhere. We finished the encounter off the map.
The third encounter was not as tougth as I thought it would be. The monster was defeated in no time. Speaking of time, it took somewhere around 4 to 5 hours to finish the 2 to 3 hour game that it said it would take.
The game was fun and enjoyable, we even got to keep our minis and some of the others that used in the game.

Chech out some pictures I snaped with my cell phone of our game.

Our Pre-Game Meet Up

We are starting our first game of 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. For me, it has been a while sense I have played D&D. I recall some games of 2nd Edition and a few games of 3rd Edition. For some of the others that are playing, they have not played D&D at all. That is including our Game Master (GM). Most every one has play in some kind of Roll Playing game, but one from what I know. We are starting our game from a pre-made adventure called Keep on the Shadowfell.

This last Sunday (11/02/08) we meet to go over our character and get some info on some backgrounds for use with our characters. I had planed and read up on Clerics and Rangers. The Cleric was passed onto Bill for his use. That left me the Ranger. The GM brought up that it was strongly suggested that we have a Rogue in our party and we need some one with a range attack. By the time I left, I was playing 2 character to fill out the party. The Player's Handbook suggests that a balance adventuring party include a wizard, a fighter, a cleric and a rogue. Norm was goint to play the Wizard (a Controller), Janielle is playing the Fighter (a Defender), Bill is playing the Cleric (a Leader) and I am playing the Rogue and the Ranger (both Strikers) to round out the skills for our group. Found out today that we may have a 5th player for our game from where Bill and Bob (our GM) work. Time will tell. If he does play, he can use one of the two character I made for our group adventuring party.

Friday (11/07/08) is our first game with our first level character.