I have a new side venture...

...pandering to hipsters!

Earlier today the idea for this t-shirt popped into my head unbidden. You can really buy one, if for some reason you wanted to.

Shatnerday: new Shatner sitcom

I had heard that Mr. Shatner was in talks to do a show based upon a Twitter account called "Shit My Dad Says" but I didn't know it had goe anywhere until Clovis pointed out this clip on Cinerati.

William Shatner, on a sitcom, based upon a Twitter account.  Maybe Leibniz was right and we really do live in the best of all possible worlds.  Or maybe just the weirdest.

damnedest dream I've had in a while

So I was at this high tone party in a refurbished brownstone.  It was the kind of upscale affair where celebrities were all over the place.  I distinctly remember the fashion wonk from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy sitting on the kitchen counter surrounded by a rapt audience of party-goers, expounding on his opinion that the brioche did not go with the wine.  Which is pretty weird, since after I woke up I had to go to Wikipedia to look up exactly what the hell brioche is.  Turns out it's bread.

Remember Pat Stevens?  She was a talk show hostess that Nora Dunn played on Saturday Night Live a few times in the eighties.  I always liked Nora Dunn.  Anyway, Pat Stevens walks up to me holding a frou-frou cocktail with an umbrella and starts gushing about all the wonderful people at the party, rattling off a long list of names.  I've never heard of any of these people, so I nod politely.

All of sudden these french doors fly open and in march this bunch of Hell's Angels, moving in diamond formation like the secret service use when surrounding the president.  And who is standing in the center of the formation?

I yell "Ronnie!  Aren't you dead?!" and he replies "I'm Dio, baby!  Dead don't matter to me!"  He then hands me this bar of silvery metal, maybe four inches across, eight or nine inches long, with a thickness of less than half an inch.  Inscribed on one side are Egyptian hieroglyphics in three colums, with these pre-Columbian glyphs done in relief in the spaces between the columns.  Kind of like this:

So I ask Dio what this is all about and he just smiles and says "Figure it out!"  That's when I woke up.

Oops! Read Languages.

I'm doubly embarrassed that I omitted Read Languages from yesterday's list of 1st level MU spells because A) I had the OD&D spell list right in front of me and B) it was Read Languages that got me thinking about this subject.  What can I say?  I'm an idiot sometimes.

Anyway, I consider Read Languages a pretty awesome spell.  I know the internet is full of awesome people who speak multiple languages, but I'm not one of them.  I struggled with French in high school and college.  At one point I could read well enough to fumble my way through Sartre and Voltaire, but I'm sure I've lost that and I never was sufficiently fluent to speak the tongue.  I'm pretty sure I passed my final conversational exam because I was almost twice as big as the instructor and he was kind of a nervous little guy.  Linguistics as a field fascinates me, but I just seem to have no talent for learning new languages.  I can't whistle either but that doesn't bother me as much.

So Read Languages is pretty much a miracle effect to me.  Athanansius Kircher, one of the awesomest geniuses to ever live, couldn't crack the code for Egyptian hieroglyphs.  Minoan Linear A and Olmec and many other ancient scripts remain undeciphered to this day.  But here's a spell that instantaneously allows you to read all of that stuff and the Greek and Roman classics and the original Bible texts and Nietzsche in the original German and all the other written works of humanity.  Boom.  One spell gets you access to any document put in front of you.  If a magic wish fairy could give real-world Jeff access to a single first level spell, this would be at the top of the short list.  It's a totally awesome spell and unlike Burning Hands it won't result in me going to jail for setting jerkasses on fire.

Of course, like the issues with the Light spell I outlined yesterday, Read Languages only helps if your DMs world allows it to help.  If this spells is going to count for anything, we need more rune-stones, love letters, diplomatic correspondence, roadsigns, inscriptions, etc.  And they need to be in something besides Common.

The Awesome Power of the 1st Level Magic-User

Some days I think the existence of fireball and wish blinds us to the simple fact that first level magic-users kick ass. Here are some brief thoughts on the eight spells any M-U in OD&D can cast.

Detect Magic - Not every magic sword will glow like a lightsaber when drawn from its scabbard. That stick could be a magic wand or a conductor's baton. Is our ally cursed or charmed (see below)? You find a pool of water in the dungeon. Care to find out it's enchanted after you wade into it?

Hold Portal - Knowing the bad guys can't get to you, even for a few turns, is golden in retreat situations.  And you want to really mess some NPCs up?  Lure them into a house, hold the portals and set the joint on fire.  Here's another one: a pit with a hatch is just more flooring while its held.

Read Magic -  Worthless scrap of paper or wish scroll?  Only the magic-user knows for sure.  And the OD&D version specifically mentions that this spell can be used on items.  And when you think about it, this spell is the gateway to real ultimate power; all other MU spells flow from this source.

Protection from Evil - Here's an easy way to really piss off an enchanted creature: stand in a doorway with this spell cast on yourself.  The creature can't get past you to your non-protected allies, who can then leisurely ready their oil flasks, scrolls, etc.  Heck, with 6 turns to work with, they might even be able to take an alternate route to the creature and attack it from behind.

Light - I think almost every DM goes a lot easier on the subject of lighting than they should.  I know I do.  If we handled torches and lanterns in any realistic way this would be one of the most popular spells ever.  You ever try lighting a lantern without matches?  How about making an accurate map by torchlight in a drafty catacomb?  I think those tasks are approximately one bajillion times harder than we usually run them.  And even if you don't want to be a dick about lighting all the time, drop the party into a pool of water and all their normal light sources are suddenly useless.

Charm Person - In OD&D this spell lasts until someone successfully casts dispel magic on the victim.  Think about that for a minute.  If there is a single MU1 in the campaign world then you pretty much can't trust anyone that might fail a save vs. spells.  Smart MUs will probably pick one or two choice victims in any area.  Charm too many and you run the risk of a random dispel magic catching one.

Sleep - Get out any old module, the low level kind that comes with a base area like a small town.  Look at some of the entries and ask yourself how many of the homes and business would be vulnerable to a single sleep spell.  That master burglar plaguing the area isn't a high level thief.  Dude's a pipsqueak first level magic-user who peaks in the window, throws sleep, then casually makes off with the tea service and the jewelry box.

welcome to Dane's world

This is one of the several "Hey, I could totally run a campaign here!" maps I've seen on Strange Maps, but Dane accidentally went and used it for his new D&D 3.5 campaign.  Last night Dane indicated the party was starting in a small town between Labrador City and English Lake.  You can check out my character, Polymachus, son of Therion, right here, as all I did to make his charsheet was open up a new Google document and cut-and-paste from the Hypertext SRD.  Having just re-read the Iliad and Oddysey I decided to play a spearchucking Achaean hero, so my dude is from the Black Peninsula of the Mediterranean Kingdom.  Meanwhile Carl is playing a nerdy wizard, Charles made up a halfling cleric and Dane's buddy Troy showed up with a rogue that he made using the DDI character building software.

We were quite a ways through the session before the rest of us figured out that Troy was kicking so much ass because he brought a 4e character to a 3.5 game.  I initially thought he was so awesome because my dice rolls had been so pisspoor and I was standing in the front taking damage more often that his rogue was looking better off by comparison.  Seriously, the dice were pissing me off last night.  In the first fight I roll a natural '1' in 3 out of 4 rounds of combat.  And it only got marginally better after that.  There seemed to be a big hole in my rolls between the numbers 7 and 14, with way more results on the botton numbers.  But when he revealed that he had 15 hit points at first level the skew became obvious.

Despite the frustrations of not being able to hit friggin' normal, non-giant, non-magical rats I still had a good time.  Danes a newbie DM, but I thought he pulled off running the game with flair and sound judgement.  And the rest of the gang are a hoot to play with.  Troy is welcome in my game any time, though I might double check his charsheet beforehand.

Shatnerday: intense!