10.06.2009 - Terrence Marks:

Free books!

Not our books, mind you. When I was on my Terry Pratchett spree, I wound up with extras of Jingo, The Truth, Thud!, and Thief of Time. I figure that somebody ought to read them, and I have no business keeping two copies. Email me at if you want them. All books have been spoken for - thank you and keep reading!

10.04.2009 - Terrence Marks:

Final Fantasy XI - I got a free trial. I downloaded the 500 MB installer and ran it. Half an hour later it finished. Then it updated. The updating took ten hours. The game didn't look like it should take ten hours to update.

The website mentioned a new tutorial quest. I couldn't find it. It took me five minutes to figure out how to walk (you hold the mouse button down and drag in a direction. Dragging it too far moves the camera). The interface is entirely mouse controlled; I couldn't get the keyboard to do anything. After half an hour I figured out how to open the map (clicking the scroll wheel opens a menu - what a country!). The town was large and the town map was mostly featureless. After another half-hour, I found a weapon seller. He had one item, a pickaxe. It cost four times the starting money. Either I didn't get any money from the enemies or didn't know how to pick it up.

To their credit, this was the first game without gold spammers. I credit their proactive GM staff.

I got a few missions. You get told what to do by an NPC. Once. No quest log. If you don't remember the exact fantasy name of the NPC you need to talk to, or if you put the game down for a week, you're out of luck.

I fought a huge wasp. After a few rounds of punching it, it said "you cannot see the enemy". Did it blind me? Did I press a button that did something? Did it just move out of my field of vision? No idea.

Anyhow, after two hours, I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. Talking to NPCs took about three tries. Walking involved bumping off walls and having the camera spin lazily around me - no, I couldn't find a "lock camera" setting. I'm sure that the game is playable; there were a few people there and the game seems to be moderately popular. It's possible that the retail version included very good instructions (which makes me wonder why the free trial didn't go out of its way to do the same). There's a "tutorial" in the launcher program; however, if you switch to a different window the game ends. This was actually useful; I never found out a "quit" button, so I gave up and hit alt-tab.

10.03.2009 - Terrence Marks:

So, what has updated? Not comics right now. We're working on those. Here's what we do have:

The Fan Center has three new pieces by Dan Wheeler!

The Final Battle Adventure Online Design Blog has been updated.

My blog is updated, with a review of Final Fantasy XI that I wrote a year ago (and was sure I had posted). I don't imagine that the game has changed much between now and then.

In the meantime, we are both working on comics. Isabel is making excellent progress; she got a month of comics written today. Me?...well, I'm working on comics too. Honest. Come back tomorrow. We'll have something new for you.

09.30.2009 - Terrence Marks:

Firstly, we made the donation goal for September and we appreciate your support. What will our update schedule be like in October? Erratic, with updates coming in huge bursts.

Firstly, Isabel's grandfather died a few days ago; her aunt died a week before that. Secondly, Isabel has the flu. Thirdly, she's got jury duty in two weeks.

As you can see, it's not shaping up to be a good month.

08.28.2009 - Terrence Marks:

Ok, it was the starter, which we had just replaced a few months back. Fortunately, it was still in warranty and our car is now back up and running. Comics, however, are still being inked.

08.27.2009 - Terrence Marks:

As Isabel and I were leaving the Post Office today, our car wouldn't start. We spent an hour in the sun waiting for a tow so my father-in-law could take a look at it. At the moment, we spent most of the day out when we had not intended to. We're not sure what's wrong with it, and it threw both us and our schedule off today. Comics should be up tomorrow, we hope - it's not like we can go anywhere.

08.22.2009 - Terrence Marks:

So, I picked up D&D 4th edition a week ago. I used to play first edition AD&D, and have followed the second and third editions. What do I think of the new one?

Day 1: Whargbl! They killed Dungeons & Dragons! What happened to lawful neutral? I can't build an int rogue! Two kinds of elves? That's either too many or not enough - maybe both!

Day 2: Wait a minute. They've already ported over bards and gnomes. There's a lot of setting fluff and some of it is quite good. They'll probably bring over everything else that got cut, eventually. Or a third party will make a supplement. I mean, that's what happened with Ravenloft and Planescape in the third edition. Or you could just use the old settings and adjust things yourself. I'm sure that in two more years, they'll have added a dozen types of elves back in, and only a hardcore elf-nerd could actually tell you the difference between High Elves and Grey Elves.

Day 3: I still don't understand warlocks. Are they like sorcerors? Or are wizards like sorcerors now? Spell memorization is gone, right? You can cast magic missle as many times as you want? Is that legal? But it never was that fun being the wizard with one spell who had to stand in the back while the fighters did all the fun stuff. Or, ten levels later, being the fighter who still did 1d8+2 damage while the mages did all the fun stuff.

Day 4: I mean, I never really got gnomes. I mean, as far as race archetypes, I'm totally drawing a blank. I understand dwarves, elves, halflings, goblins, kobolds, and two or three different types of orcs. But gnomes? Ask me to describe gnomes, and all I've got is "short". Not that dragonborn look like a winner at the moment, either.

Day 5: Action points? Neck slot items? Defender and controller character roles? Picking character stats instead of rolling 3d6? Is this D&D or a pen-and-paper version of a MMORPG? It doesn't feel like D&D. But what is the D&D feel? Twenty mildly different types of polearms, monsters attacks that have a 30% chance of killing you (saving throw? not this time. Flat percentage chance for everybody.), and psionics rules that give you a 3% chance of having a massive advantage. I mean, on one level it's the same as replacing "Players have a 40% chance to find the hidden lever" with actual mechanics for spot checks. But seriously, neck slot items? And there are terms they don't define until a hundred pages later. I read about powers doing [W]+3 damage and can't figure out why thieves are hitting things using Wisdom.

Day 6: I still miss lawful neutral. I'm sure modrons will be back, but I want to play a hero who stops the lich-king from destroying the universe because the lich-king hasn't filled out Form 837/b (Removing a Tree from Municipal Property), on the grounds that destroying the universe would remove one or more trees.

Day 7: I realize that all of this, and more, has been discussed by online over the past year or so. If you look at my taste in music, "one year behind the times" is as close as I've gotten in the recent past. I really ought to actually roll up a character - wait, I mean stat out a character using one of the chosen attribute blocks. Yes, I know - the alternative is you end up gaming with the guy who swears he rolled all 18s. I want to like it, but it seems strange. The advantage of waiting a year is that I can see that other folks seem to like it, so it can't be all bad. D&D seems decidedly not-dead at present. When I get time, I'll give it a shot