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4E Monster Manual 2 (random comments)

This is not so much a review of the 4E Monster Manual 2 (MM2) as it is a few random comments about one of the newest books in my 4E library. I order this one earlier this week from Amazon, which means the MM2 only set me back $23.07 (no taxes; free second day shipping via Prime service) instead of the suggested retail price of $34.95.

I do not have the time or inclination to research older versions of the various Monster Manual releases to see which of the approximately 170 monsters spanning 223 pages of the MM2 are new to Dungeons & Dragons. Suffice it to say that there are obviously many repeats, but that is too be expected.

The MM2 is fairly standard fare; presented in the same format as the first Monster Manual. Each monster entry has a brief description and ample statistical game information. Most also include some background information on tactics, lore, and encounter groups. For what is presented, it is fairly down to earth, but I wish that more time were spent on ecology type information. In 4E ecology information is sparse, but perhaps it is better served in other accessories, Draconomicon: Chromatic Dragons being a perfect example. It is worth noting that there is a special call out section on the Rust Monster (“A Guide to Using Rust Monsters”); more of these types of call outs would have been appreciated.

Speaking of dragons, the MM2 introduces several Metallic dragons: Adamantine, Copper, Gold, Iron, and Silver. Each entry includes statistical game information for Young, Adult, Elder, and Ancient forms. If you like dragons, the MM2 gives you 14 pages of dragon goodness.

For some longtime Dungeons & Dragons fans, the appearance of Demogorgon (L34) may be a selling point. Dagon (L32) also makes an appearance, but I do not remember this Demon Lord from my younger playing days.

As you can see from the chart below, the MM2 contains a fairly diverse range of monsters, but I could not help myself for wanting to see more lower level creatures, especially humanoids. I guess there is always the Monster Manual 3. I have already alluded to two of the three 30+ level monsters. The third is the Ancient Gold Dragon (L30).

Rounding out the MM2 is a 4 page glossary. If you are picking up the MM2 you probably do not need a 4 page glossary. While it is helpful to newer 4E players such as myself, it is really throw away material. There is a single page covering the Racial Traits for possible playable races: Bullywug, Duergar, and Kenku. While this section is interesting, I would rather see more details or have it removed all together to a future Dungeon Master’s Guide. Finally the MM2 wraps things up with 3 pages of Monsters by Level. This section is certainly helpful, but I wish there were also encounter tables – by level, terrain, etc. I really miss those from my AD&D days (before there edition designations).

MM2 is certainly a quality book that will give Dungeon Master’s a new set of tools to play with, but future versions could be improved by expanding ecology information, and this old gamer believes that encounter tables are a must. I will probably rate the MM2 on Amazon as 4 (out of 5) stars.

SEC Predictions (Week 9)

This is going to be a quick pick day; been sick as a dog the last 24 hrs, so I want to get these posted and go back to bed. I am using the Danny Sheridan odds as seen in USA Today.

Going into today I am 29-22. I will be happy if I escape for a 4-3 record, but will gladly go 0-7 if the Dawgs beat the Gators!

24 Mississippi at Auburn
After getting off to a 5-0 start, Auburn has found itself in a tailspin, dropping the last three games. The Tigers are getting 4.5 at home, but it will not matter as the Ole dudes win, cover, and send the boys from the Plains spiraling with four straight losses.

Eastern Michigan at Arkansas
At 0-7, it is painfully obvious that Eastern Michigan sucks, and Arkansas will use the Eagles as part of their get healthy plan and stop their two game losing streak. The hogs are giving up 36.5, which is an awfully big number to cover, but just for shits and giggles I am going to say the Razorbacks only win by 35. As a Native Texan, I don’t care for Arkansas; never have and never will.

11 Georgia Tech at Vanderbilt
The Commodores are getting 11.5 from the Bumble Bees. Obviously I have some serious hatred for Tech, but I have to pick them here (to cover and win outright) as they continue to march to a one loss season.

Tulane at 9 LSU
This is another game with a boat load of points to cover; LSU by 36? Tulane stinks (2-5) and their wins (McNeese State and at Army by 1) do not exactly inspire confidence that they have a chance keep the Tigers from lighting up the scoreboard. With that said, the Tigers have not scored more than 31 this season, so it is hard for me to say that they are all of a sudden going to light things up.

I think LSU is better than BYU (they beat Tulane 54-3), but you just have to expect LSU is looking towards next week’s SEC West showdown against Alabama. It is with some trepidation that I say LSU does not cover the 36. I came this close to saying they will cover, but even if the Tigers have this one in hand, I expect they hold something back for the Tide.

Mississippi St at Kentucky
I think this is one of the better games (from a competiveness standpoint) this weekend. Kentucky is expected to win by 3.5. Before looking at the line I was thinking this was going to be one of those games that ends on a last minute field goal, which means Kentucky does not cover, right? I do not see how Mississippi St gets back up after that tough one against the Gators, so I am going to say Kentucky covers.

21 South Carolina at Tennessee
The Volunteers seem to get better with each passing week, and they should have upset Bama last week. With that said, the Fighting Chickens are the ranked team, but are getting 6 in this one? Win or lose, I have to take South Carolina and 6; Tennessee is not going to cover.

Georgia at 1 Florida
I long for the days when this game actually mattered; when it was a rivalry. Some pundits (I would expect mostly Georgia homers) are saying that Georgia can pull the upset over Florida because the Dawgs are coming off a bye week. They go on to say that these #1 ranked Gators are just not playing well. I don’t buy it, and can easily see a 33-17 Florida win, which would be just enough for Florida to cover the 14.5 they are giving up to the struggling Dawgs.

The Bulldog fan in me looks back to 1985 when Georgia upset the #1 Florida 24-3, so there is some history of the Bulldogs doing the unthinkable. Of course deep down inside I want a win, but I just do not see my beloved Dawgs winning this one (outright or via the 14.5 line). Hope I am wrong on this one!

Go Dawgs!

Good Fox ratings equal bad press for the Falcons

According to the AP, last Sunday’s Atlanta-Dallas game was a huge rating success for Fox.

The late game, led by Atlanta-Dallas, earned a 16.8/32 with 28.4 million viewers. It was Fox’s most watched Sunday NFL game in 13 years.

This Monday night will be the last in a three-leg National ratings bonanza, providing tons of exposure to the Matt Ryan led Falcons – Oct 18 (ATL hosted and beat Chicago on NBC Sunday Night Football), Oct 25 (ATL visited Dallas and laid an egg on Fox), and Nov 2 Atlanta comes calling on the Saints on ESPN Monday night football. I do not expect the Falcons to beat the dreaded Saint, but I hope they put up a respectable showing.

Dungeons & Dragons Online. OOTP 10 Sale.

Today is a slow news day; nothing new, exciting, or interesting to report from the various happening across the interwebs. I didn’t get to any of the topics that I wanted to address last weekend, so I have some catching up to do over the next few days. I do have a couple of PC gaming tidbits.

Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited
I downloaded Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited
(D&D Online) last night, but will probably not get a change to check it out for a couple of days. I figured it is free and it is Dungeons & Dragons, so why not check it out. Plus I wanted a chance to get some Eberron flavoring; I am not really familiar with this new’ish D&D product setting.

I am not sure what the angle is for this one; free seems strange for a major title, but maybe the previous D&D game got lost in the shuffle (or shadow) of all the other MMORPG, including of course WoW. Maybe this one is free to play, but you have to pay for extras? I am not really sure, but one of the reasons I never seem to stick with WoW is because of the monthly subscription fee. I rarely get my money’s worth, but with D&D Online that should not be an issue.

I just home my computer can actually run this one have way decently. I probably just need to bite the bullet and get a new computer, one more gaming centric, for Christmas.

OOTP 10 is $10 off
I missed the last couple of sales, but plan to cash in on this one. OOTP 10 is once again $10 off:

The World Series is about to start, and those of you who are rooting for the Yankees or Phillies are probably having a great time! But even if your favorite team has been eliminated, there’s still some good news: through the last day of the World Series, OOTP 10 is now $10 off! This will probably be your last chance to get a discounted copy of the game about which GameShark said, “Every single facet of building and running a complete baseball universe is included in this game. It produces believable results while giving you an unprecedented amount of statistical and player development information. The revamped pitching system is tops. This is the single best baseball management sim available!”

This is where I end up biting off more than I can chew. As always seems to be the case, I have a huge backlog of games. FIFA 10, Demon’s Souls, and D&D Online. I guess we are heading into winter, so that may help me find some gaming time!

Falcons schedule – bye weeks.

I wrote about this before the season started, and mentioned it in my post about the Dallas game. The Falcons face a tougher than normal schedule because they face multiple teams (four to be exact) coming off bye weeks. It is pretty ridiculous. According to the NFC South blog at ESPN …

John in Denver writes: Hey Pat, Love the blog. By the time the Falcons host the Redskins in two weeks they will have faced 3 teams coming of bye weeks in a month’s worth of football. The last team, Washington, will be after a short week for the Falcons because of the Monday night game in NO. I am not trying to whine but is this a huge oversight in the schedule or just one of those things?

Pat Yasinskas: I think it’s just one of those quirks that sometimes happens with NFL scheduling. I don’t think the NFL was intentionally trying to make life tough on the Falcons. But I’m sure the NFL has gotten an earful about this. Falcons president Rich McKay is a co-chairman of the influential competition committee and I’m sure he’s let some important people hear about this matter.

It is more than a quirk, but I do not believe that the NFL was intentionally trying to screw ATL. I do think that it is inexcusable; hope it happens to the Saints next year!

Is portable gaming going the way of the dinosaur?

Will simple (and much cheaper) games available on the iPhone/iTouch eventually kill off portable gaming as we know it today? Will systems such as the PSP become a thing of the past? PS3Center has an interesting article on this topic.

Now here is the point of this article, what does Sony absolutely need to worry about in order to stay in this game? Firstly, make it easier for developers to make games for the PSP Go. A lot of developers are flocking towards the iPhone, because it’s so simple and easy to make money off of. Secondly, make sure to pay attention and listen to the fans when the time comes for PSP 2. We definitely need two joysticks, touch screen is almost a must, tilting the PSP via SixAxis of some sort is also very much needed, but to top things off it needs to stay portable like the Go.

Of course Nintendo is Nintendo; there will always be a GameBoy/DS type platform. Mario and company will live on forever. As for the rest, I wonder how long Sony will be able to maintain its current model. I have written often about how f’ed-up their decision was to do give a discount for games available via digital distribution. I thought that was going to be the hallmark of the PSPGo. Little did I realize that Sony would not see the light. If Sony is going to continue to find itself in the portable gaming market, they do have to make some changes, but before even considering a PSP2 they need to get their pricing model in line with gamers ever changing expectations.

More on Turner slowing down

Does anyone know what is wrong with Turner? Pat Yasinskas of the NFC South Blog at ESPN goes into detail pointing out that without a running game, the Falcons are in trouble.

But Turner and the running game haven’t been looking fine and what happened Sunday against Dallas may have demonstrated there’s a problem that’s getting worse instead of better. Turner carried 18 times for 50 yards. That’s a 2.8 average, which would translate into a 0.8 if this were a grade-point average.

Tired legs? He had a couple of big plays in preseason. Undocumented injury? At some point you would think that someone would come to Turner’s defense and point out that he has some sort of problem. Is he just spent after last year?

If the problems with the running game and Turner can be sorted out, I hope the coaches figure out what is wrong in time to keep the Saints offense off the field this Monday night.

Disappointing Day in Dallas

The Falcons loss to the Cowboys was disappointing on multiple levels. First, they started off so well, but ended up playing very poorly. Second, something is plain wrong with Turner; maybe he got spent last year. Third, the Falcons are now two games behind the Saints heading into their Monday night showdown in New Orleans.

The Falcons have to be able to run the ball to be successful, but they also have to protect Ryan. They did neither well yesterday. Perhaps more disturbing is was lack of ability to get pressure on Romo, but when they did, they could not complete sacks, which resulted in big scrambles or busted coverage. Speaking of which, the secondary truly sucked yesterday.

Atlanta does have one of the more difficult schedules, and if you told me at the beginning of the year that they had a change to go .500 with teams coming off bye weeks (Bears, Dallas, Washington, Giants) I would have taken my changes.

If the offense can get untracked, they may be able to make up for the short comings on defense, but some of that starts with the running game, which is starting to look like a non factor.

Marauder Round Two

I got in some trigger time yesterday with my new .22 Marauder; the new replacement from Crosman. Did I mention what a stand-up company Crosman? Not only do they backup their warranty, they made things right for me by sending me a replacement. I have read on the forums (mostly yellow) that Crosman has sorted out a few issues (trigger, bolt, pellet consistency) with their September batch of Marauders, so I am pleased that my July Marauder has been replaced with a fresh off the press October issue.

Not that the Marauders with defective or faulty. It seems like most of the dissenting voices have been a very few vocal minority. Yes, I had issues with my July Marauder, and in the end it was beyond my limited skill and Crosman felt it had enough issues to warrant a replacement. I do not think that means that the Marauder is a hit-or-miss PCP. I think it means that it is a new product, and while there may be some issues with the initial manufacturing runs, Crosman has shown a willingness to correct any problems.

So back to my new Marauder – 009xxx248. I shot several clips with mixed results. It took me a few shots to get my Hawke 4-12×40 Air Max on a solid zero (at ~60 feet / 20 yards). As always the Crosman Premier pellets (14.3 gr.) shot extremely well and accurate. I loaded a clip of Beeman Crow-Magnum pellets s (18.20 gr.), and I was very pleased to see that these were extremely accurate without any spraying. My July Marauder would not shot these at all; in fact my new Marauder is my first airgun of any caliber to actually shoot these puppies accurately!

I tried a clip of Beeman Silver Ace pellets (15.74 gr), but these were all over the place; not at all consistent. Same story for a clip of RWS Superdome pellets (14.5 gr.), which surprised me because these seem to be a nice general all purpose pellet. Perhaps worst of all were the Napier Power Hunter pellets (15.6 gr.), not only were the first three shots inconsistent (think shotgun spray), but these pellets caused a clip jam, which was a bear to fix. I should have released that there were problems looming because the pellets were tight loading into the clip. These things are not going anywhere near my Marauder.

I do not have a Chrony, so I cannot report on all the facts and figures. I can just report what shoots well, and what does not (or is not accurate).

Today I will shoot another clip of Crow-Magnum pellets, just to make sure they were not a fluke. I am also going to give some RWS Meisterkugeln pellets (14.0 gr.) and RWS Superpoint Extra pellets (14.5 gr.) a go. While I do not generally like pointed pellets, the Superpoint Extra pellets work great in my .22 Beeman R1, so I have plenty on hand.

If I have time, I would also like to sort out some of the following pellets: Beeman FTS Double Gold (14.72 gr.), Beeman Kodiak Double Gold (21.12 gr.), and JSB Diabolo Exact (15.9 gr.).

Hopefully some of these others will work really well, giving me several different pellet options. If the results continue to hold for the Crow-Magnum pellets, it will indeed be a happy day. Not only will the October issue Marauder shoot a variety of pellets well, it will also give me multiple options for plinking, paper punching, and pest control. Good stuff indeed!

Happy shooting!

Falcons visit the Cowboys

If my dad were still with us, I am sure we would have a friendly wager on this one! Being a native Texan, Ollie was a die-hard Cowboys fan. I think it was always sort of looked the other way at me being a Falcons fan. While I am proud to be a native Texan, and have really grown to appreciate that fact now that my dad is no longer around, growing up in Georgia made me a die-hard Falcons fan. So the lot is cast …

I really do not get how the Cowboys are favored in this one by 4 points. So far Dallas has beaten Tampa Bay, Carolina, and Kansas City, while losing to the N.Y. Giants, and Denver. I understand the home field advantage thing, but when Atlanta pulls this one out; please do not call it an upset.

The key to this one will be the Falcons ability to run the football. So far this year Turner has not looked very solid, and has gotten a case of the fumbles. Norwood is out, which means no true change of pace back, however Jason Snelling has played well this year and continues to pick up more playing time. Expect Snelling to see considerable time at FB and HB, especially if Turner struggles early and if regular FB Ovie Mughelli cannot make a go of it today.

Ryan thrives on play action passes and the hurry up offense. If Dallas removes the threat of a rushing attack, then it will be a long afternoon. I do not think that will happen, and while injuries are starting to deplete the surprising defense, I think they can hold Romo and company in check.

I can see this one being 24-17 Atlanta. Go Falcons!

SEC Predictions (Week 8)

No predictions this week. Much like the Dawgs, I am taking the week off; however I will enjoy some quality time in front of the couch and plan to catch some of the following games: Georgia Tech at Virginia, Arkansas at Ole Miss, Clemson at Miami, Tennessee at Alabama, Florida at Mississippi St, Auburn at LSU, and of course Texas at Missouri.

Nice weekend of college football action. I hope that Georgia heals up in time for a respectable showing on Halloween against the #1 Gators.

Never fear; Friday is here!

No real updates this morning, but it is Friday, so that is always a good way to start a morning. Upcoming news and notes – more FIFA 10 impressions, some Blu-ray meanderings, Falcons prep for Dallas, and of course I will be checking out my new Marauder. I think we may even see a triumphant return of Now Drinking.

Oh yea, my wife picked up a new cat. Getting a new pet is always an adventure. There is the picking out process, the finding the right name, the settling into the new home, and of course the expense (fixing, shots, and such).

Happy Friday!

FIFA 10 – More First Thoughts

One of the things that surprised me about FIFA has nothing to do with the gameplay, but for me is a most welcome addition. After a game (I have only played quick matches) there are actually detailed statistics. Back when I was playing more, and reviewing games, one of my gripes about soccer games in general and in particular FIFA, was the lack any detailed statistics. Most game just had the standard possession percentage, shots on goal, maybe shot accuracy, fouls, cards, and who scored. This was always disappointed because I did not understand why developers could not make deeper statistical games along the lines of what you would see in your typical Madden, NBA Live, and MLB game.

Of course all of this could be old hat to some of you, but this is my first foray into a PS3 soccer game. Hopefully the end game summaries after the quick match mode foretell deeper statistical tracking in the other game modes. Seeing player ratings, man of the match, and a graphical representation of where shots were taken and by which player almost brought tears to my eyes. OK, not really on the tears part, but this type of statistical breakdown is a most welcome addition.

More to come over the next few days. Hopefully. God willing and if the creeks don’t rise.

Marauder goes under the knife (update 3)

My new Marauder arrived fresh from the factory today. Actually it would have been here yesterday, but no one was home to accept the signature confirmation package from Mr. Brown.

This was a super quick resolution by the fine folks at Crosman. I sent my July Marauder (709xxx357) to Crosman on Oct 6 via UPS, it arrived Oct 9, and by Oct 21 I received my replacement, SN 009xxx248.

I have not had time to try the Marauder yet; I did notice that it arrived with 0 psi on the gauge. The first order of business will be to pump it up and see if it holds a charge. I hope to have time to shoot some over the weekend.

Hats off again to Crosman for their fine customer service. I am a very satisfied customer.

FIFA 10 – First Game

I got in a quick game of FIFA 10 earlier this evening. I have not played a FIFA game in a while, so I just ran with the default settings. I started a quick match against Mexico and promptly lost 2-0. Unfortunately I have no idea what I am doing yet. Besides probably sucking, I just looked lost on the pitch. I actually controlled time of possession and out shot Mexico 13-2. Of course the CPU landed its two shots, while I was all over the map with my shots.

So far I like what I saw. The graphics are nice, the presentation is top notch, and the commentary was entertaining without being too repetitive (only one match in so keeping my fingers crossed). The gameplay is what matters, but it is way too early for me to offer up any sort of impressions. I just hope with a little luck I will get better, master the controls, learn how to shoot with some accuracy, and actually beat the CPU on a regular basis.