Alright, I’m in the Tri-Cities now. I left late because today was Brett’s birthday and I wanted to treat him to lunch and so on. The drive down wasn’t bad at all… I listend to an audio CD I’d burned earlier in the day (songs from KT Tunstall, the Raconteurs, and Rent), then Augusten Burroughs’ Possible Side Effects audiobook, which I snagged from the bargain shelf at Barnes & Noble the last time I was here. The most interesting chapter I’ve heard thus far was about him and some friend buying signed, first edition John Updike novels while conspiring to kill him with their minds. The story about raising a bulldog puppy was pretty good too.

So last night was the second session of our weekly Seattle GURPS game. Quick summary: We made two trips to Gotha-20 (the radioactive zombie world); first, to get environmental samples and a live zombie, then to contact survivors near Mount Rainier. Ended up taking all six of the survivors’ kids with us to “Alaska” (actually, we took them back to Homeline in the parachronic conveyor).

Anyway, after the game we were all talking about GURPS stuff in the hall and Martin said something like “Well, that’s how we did it when I played with Sean.” And I go, “Sean Punch?”
“Yeah.”
     “The Sean Punch?”
“Yeah, I was in his Dawn of Magic game.”
     “Seriously?! Sean Punch, AKA Dr. Kromm? The GURPS writer?”
“Haha, yeah. I played an alchemist with Quick Gadgeteering.”

Needless to say, I was amazed. To think, I’ve been playing with a GM who’s practically a celebrity! And what’s funnier is that, after I did a little reading about his character in the DoM campaign, I realized mine’s pretty similar — they both have Roman names, both are expert engineers, and even share some personality traits (like refusing to admit fault). Weird, huh?

Okay, so here’s the promised D&D summary from Monday: We killed the dozen aberrations wandering around the coliseum, then used the ship’s 1,200 lb. anchor to bust through a stone slab in the center of the arena. After dropping inside, the portal in the ceiling snapped shut, but we managed to reopen it by figuring out the pressure plates.

The interior of the dungeon had a not-at-all-subtle chance/gambling theme. Every door (except an impenetrable silver one in the first room) had a unique playing card design. We passed some basic traps and a briefly fiddled with a metal hatch that, when unsealed, released a rose/rosemary smell (which, in Chris’s campaign, means vampires). In the last room on that level, we fought a stone golem (sculpted to look like a jester) before going up the stairs to the giant roulette wheel. (Oh, and there was a brief exchange with some trapped minotoaurs protecting a chest. We didn’t try to fight them.)

The roulette room (basically a round chamber with a roulette wheel for a floor) had only two exits and we eventually deduced that our only option for proceeding was to pull the giant lever in the center. A large steel ball fell from the ceiling and skipped around as the whole room spun. I learned the hard way that cheating (manually moving the ball to other segments) was rewarded with gouts of flame, requiring reflex saving throws.

One result on the wheel caused a ghostly blackjack dealer to appear who then demanded five party members play five hands of twenty-one. This turned out to be something like playing with a Deck of Many Things — you’d play, then pick from one of three categories of mystery prizes or misfortunes. I played one hand and beat the dealer with 19; this earned me a permanent +2 damage modifier for my longbow (which now, thanks to my strength and enchantments, deals a whopping 1d8+2d6+6 per shot — hoody hoo!). But Anthony was the big winner for that encounter: He doubled a 10,000 gp bet he placed on the last hand.

One exit from the roulette room led to a rose/rosemary-smelling sarcophagus (which we left alone), the other led to a hallway guarded by two undying soldiers and the largest warforged any of us had ever seen. That battle was rough… But I was able to flank our enemies thanks to some cunning wordplay. To wit:
Giant warforged: None shall pass!
Kreft: How fortuitous, my name happens to be None.
Giant warforged: Oh… go ahead then.

Okay, it wasn’t all that cunning. We were just lucky to catch some sub-Stormtrooper intellects on guard duty. Down the hall they guarded, we found a carcass crab squatting over a multi-colored magic portal. That thing was especially nasty — kept crashing through stone walls to get to us. And the stone debris clung to its sticky shell, increasing its armor as the battle wore on. Damn crustacean actually took my ranger to zero HP before the cleric got to me.

Through the portal we found a smaller straightforward complex containing more guards. There was a centaur and two armored men — I believe they were all constructs of some kind. The two men were definitely the most difficult opponents of the night. In fact, I think they were the toughest things we’ve ever fought. We managed to knock one into the portal they were guarding (causing him to disappear in a flash of light), the other we took down by brute force.

That’s pretty much where we ended. Brandon had gone through the portal during the skirmish, but he was kind of trapped by pools of lava.

Some cool links: An interesting somewhat Risk-like Flash dice game, and two awesome music videos by the band OK Go: Here It Goes Again and A Million Ways. Those have really amazing choreography, especially Here It Goes Again. They do some really clever things with treadmills.

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