Photo Story: Never Adventures (Part 1) - #IntPiPoMo2015

[Part of my photo story folder and part of IntPiPoMo2015!]

I've always been a fan of table top gaming.

I'm also a collector of board games!

So it's no surprise that I found my way to Neverwinter Online.

Here I found some familiar faces.

And the occasional god.

Lord Neverember rules the city without ever sitting down.

He used to have a huge statue of himself in the plaza too.

But that's since been replaced by a magical tree.

Nearby floats the Moonstone Mask, a tavern full of those people your parents warned you about. Yup, it's full of role players. :P

Regardless, for the time being this city is my home.

Current #IntPiPoMo2015 Count - 10 / 50

Dragons: Riders of Berk

It wasn't till recently that I stumbled across the TV series of How to Train your Dragon entitled Dragons: Riders of Berk. As to be expected, the quality of the textures is definitely not a match for the movie counterparts but the animation, expressions, voice acting and most surprisingly - the story lines are! Extra bonus for having Mark Hamill lend his talents for some episodes!

Also known as Dragons: Defenders of Berk

Taking place right after the first movie the series examines the difficulties faced by the Vikings of Berk by befriending dragons in compact, 25 minute episodes. Yes, most of these are still designed with kids in mind but for me and my wife we still find it very entertaining. Besides - anything with more Hiccup, Toothless and the gang is almost an automatic thumbs up! In fact the only negative I can think of with the first season is the lack lustre "opening".

I was also surprised to find at least five different How to Train your Dragon games floating out there... Alas, the only one I tried entitled "Wild Skies" has something wrong with the texturing in that all organics are very... blue? Lol. Still, for those who are How to train your Dragon fans (*pokes Ravanel*), the TV series might be worth a look. ^_^

Sunset Six: Monumental Victory

[Part of my Sunset Six story.]

At the end of a tale the final tests in each discipline become available: the building of monuments for each of the seven schools. Not only do these constructs need an obscene amount of resources, but they also require their character slots to be filled, specific to their rank in the discipline. A monument needs exactly 1 Oracle, 2 Sages, 4 Masters, 8 Scribes, 16 Journeymen, 32 Prentices and 64 Students. All up that's 127 people!

It doesn't look like much when it starts.

The monuments also hold a second purpose: they contain a player made suggestion for a future test in the next telling! Obviously there are many ideas that get put forward and after the "oracle" type players have a chat with Pharaoh Pluribus they get an idea of which ones are actually feasible to implement and from there can only pick one to go forward.

Imagine my surprise when two of my ideas made it through then: The Test of the Sculptors (Art and Music) and the Hand of Ra (Architecture)! Gotta admit, I am overjoyed that my input will potentially shape the future of the game. Those are the best types of events a player can have in an MMO right?

The Monument of Art and Music!

As my self imposed "final" quest for the telling I decided to try visit all the sites, failing only to reach the Monument of Thought in time which was the hardest to build due to lack of students in that discipline. I suppose like me, everyone was content solving puzzles instead of building them!

From top left to bottom right: Leadership, Architecture, Worship, Harmony, Thought, Body

Did I mention there are strange gods? Well there are. Just uber rare to run into them.

And so, the sun finally sets and Tale 6 comes to a close - it's time to say goodbye to my Level 54 Scribe of Two. While this is the end of my story, it is just the beginning of another chapter for Egypt and who knows, maybe next time it's you who will have A Tale in the Desert.

Thanks for reading! =)

Justice League: Gods and Monsters

A bloody rendition in an alternate universe!

So straight up, I'm not sure why Bruce, Clark and Diana even made it to the cover of the box because they are NOT present here AT ALL. Instead we get Mexican Superman Hernan who is the son of Zod, Bekka the red haired amazon and Kirk who unlike Bruce, has no gadgets but makes up for it by being an f*ing vampire. Not sure how the "League" was formed with just three members, but it doesn't matter as the public hate them anyway.

Why? Because they kill bad guys. Yep. Because they KILL. And that is what makes it bloody awesome. After adjusting from the off-balance of this alternate universe, I was quite entertained by what ensued. The story is passable and gives each of the three their own little back story of how they came to be and the art is of regular Justice League level, but the action sequences are what got me. Yes, there are somewhat "generic" bad guys but boy is there a lot of onscreen killing, stabbing, immolation and such and that gets a massive thumbs up from me.

Confirmed: Best status to inflict on an enemy is "death".

Honestly the violence and Michael C. Hall (Dexter) voicing Batman are the only two things this has going for it. I just hope they can continue the story since they did kill off a heck of a lot of people in this one movie. Given the character list available to them though, it shouldn't be a problem. This one is definitely worth a watch, and one I wouldn't mind watching again a few times. I give it three alternate heroes out of five.

I should also note there are three, six minute clips focusing on each of the new alternate heroes. Not really a lot happening in them nor is six minutes enough time to get invested into the action but if you like the movie, you'll probably like those too (though technically you should watch them -first-). :P

Sunset Six: Exclusion Zone

[Part of my Sunset Six story.]

We've finally come to the last two tests of Worship which I feel are the worst from an organizational stand point. In the Test of Festivals you must again sacrifice things to gods (seven this time) to make them happy, one at a time. To work out what things exactly you need a partner to perform a quick ritual at a properly prepared altar (eg. Isis requires seven glass torches to be lit nearby while Bastet needs 21 jugs of milk). Satisfying them is a percentage based on the number of players who successfully pleased the same god in the period of one in-game hour before and one in-game hour you did. If the number is less than three you gain NOTHING.

To this end there is a player made Festivals guild in game that holds scheduled festivals every weekend, one god a day sort of thing. Unfortunately due to my timezone and unwillingness to wake up at 4:55 AM to participate, I'm kinda excluded from this but it does look pretty cool.

A festival in full swing. I'm not there. :(

The final test I haven't yet talked about is the Path of the Pilgrim. In it, you must form a troop of seven and march across the land to visit the very far apart holy pilgrim shrines and give tithes to each to gain points. Good time to mention that every time I've been mentioning a number of players for the Worship tests, they are EXACT. You cannot have less or more. It's worse in this test because you need the SAME SEVEN each time you want to gain points. Changing members results in points going back to zero. Each week, the group with the most points passes. Once again, Jeromai from Why I Game has more experience running this test so I invite you to read his post.

Awesome. Now I just need six other people.

With that concludes all the tests I have access to at the moment, and  now it's time to celebrate with a glass of milk!

Clearly KebiRoz spiked it. >.<

Invincible

I... think they forgot to put the word "Not" at the start of the title.

Mark Wahlberg plays a football (should I say, grid iron) fan who so happens to be out of luck in finding work, and in life in general. An opportunity arises when the team / club he follows holds open try outs for the new season. Did I mention this is a Disney movie? Well, you probably know how it goes then. It's also supposed to be a true story on the life of one Vince Papale, but you know how things get lost/edited in translation to the silver screen. :P

If they were really invincible they'd play like the Aussies and not wear armor.

Acting wise, everything is ok - especially all of the pub gang. I didn't quite feel the chemistry between the love interests though. Also there are a lot of sepia toned shots which while they set the era fine actually became annoying for me. Obviously there's a fair bit of football here too, and numerous shots that only serve as name dropping for actual fans I imagine. Overall it's a decent enough movie and one I give two and a half touchdowns out of five to. Don't really have a need to see it again though.

Sunset Six: Be like Jesus

[Part of my Sunset Six story.]

Continuing with the tests of Worship, the Test of the Messenger, a new Worship test released at the same time as Throne of Pharaoh, is similar to the Test of Beacons. In it you must sacrifice ink and paper at an altar to receive -only- one of seven parts of a ritual. You must then work out with others the full requirements, incantations and sequence and then work as a pair to perform it at the ONE correct altar. The first seven pairs that do this advance, and everyone else is out of luck - needing to wait for the start of the next cycle. Advance five times to pass.

It's good to be the backup guy.

The Test of Leavened Bread requires you to be like Jesus. In it, you need a team of five players to see visions of what needs to be done (randomized), make beer, bake bread then share the bread with others. Specific others. Probably those not in your party. You have seven days to do that before the bread goes bad. You get points for the correct people eating the bread. Yep, give it to your enemies and it's still valid for them to just chuck it out.

Hah, I had all my required guys at the table!

Also requiring five people is the Test of the Humble Priests, in which you must form a devotional group to a particular god and sacrifice something to them in an orderly, structured manner. It's worth mentioning that all these rituals are very specific in what you are supposed to do, who is supposed to do them and what you must type. Making a mistake at any point results in a fail, wasting all those items you sacrificed. As an example in this one "Priest three must do five emotes in specific order (based on his vision)".

Please all five of your randomly chosen gods (out of twelve) to pass.