Sand, Steel, and Sunsets: The Town of Guinness

The party, with Backpfeifengesicht loses Hidden Bolt's Trail around the city of Guinness, in Texas. Some of them continue into the city and the rest try to follow up on Dalton's trail. Those who continue into the town meet up with Earl, a shopkeeper who works for Ma Torel. Earl offers to connect them with Hidden Bolt Dalton if they convince local town personalities to put up fliers for his campaign for town sheriff. Meanwhile, local mogul Bill Williamson wants Nathaniel Cavanaugh to swap ballots for him.

Steel, Sand, and Sunsets: The Tournament

My recollection of some of these things is fuzzy. If I've misremembered something, let me know. I don't want to overlook anyone's achievements. Episode 1: The Tournament Coughinstone travels to Dodge City on the orders of Ma Torel. He's looking for a tinkerer, one Professor Blue Cloud. He owes her money and she intends to collect. Blue Cloud is a notorious gambler, so when Coughinstone hears there's a poker tournament in town, he begins looking for a way in.

Coup D'etat 02: Downtime Exposition

The following takes place between Battery City Run (Session 03) and Burnt at Both Ends (Session 04).

                Bryn'Danal pulled a panel off of a wall, checking the wiring underneath, "After payment, we should still have sufficient stores left on board for our needs."

                Sitting at the helm, Albin Orryx casually flipped some deactivated buttons. He looked out of Community's control room, watching the shipyard workers lower the new FTL into the stern deck's newest hole. "Tragic though; choosing between an operational ship and the kind of party all those hors d'oeuvres and alcohol could've gotten us."

                Ever the professional, Bryn radioed down to the team on the Drive Deck to check her connections before replying, "My impression is that parties are often places where friends gather," she jammed the panel back into place, "and I don't think we have that many friends between the six of us."

* * *

                Raxx attenuated the medical scanner and started it again. Almost immediately, the Massert let out a pained gasp. Before it could become another groan of restrained pain, the necromancer shut it off.

                "What is it?!"

                Jonah D'Lante somewhat impatient when he didn't have a strange device locked onto his skeleton. Since beginning the diagnostic, Raxx's understanding of the device had expanded from "unknown" to "not designed to improve wearer's patience."

                "I still don't know; it's gripping your skeleton, but it's not emitting any kind of signal. It's only active when I try to scan you."

                D'Lante slipped through the retracting 'ribs' of the upright scanner, "Yeah, I know; I'm the one whose ass gets shocked every time you do it."

                The shutdown on the scanner was still acting funny. Raxx put it on the list of minor things to fix around the medical level, "I don't think it's a danger and I've done all the analysis I can. Our best hope is to find that Monolith."

                "Yeah, then all we have to do is schedule an appointment for a weird bone grabber-ectomy and I'll be off." He picked up his datapad and started thumbing through technical schematics for the docking bay they were making out of the #1 Equipment Pod.

                Before he could make it out of the door, the medical bay's intercom crackled to life, "Raxx. Jonah. It's Al. The 'boat is coming back. Be a good time for a talk." He was referring to the gunboat that Tr'Hati and Jaha had taken to the surface.

                Raxx jogged over to the nearest comm panel and keyed it, "No problem, Al. Be up in five. Jonah, you in?"

                The Massert sighed and threw his hands up, "Sure? Why not another meeting?"

Coup D'etat 2: The Zones, Session 01

As the story begins, Tr'Hati and Jonah are traveling together as the mechanic and his ally on a standard trade vessel. They take on a strange Chlorophen traveler. After a pirate attack, the traveler dies and asks Jonah to take his place on an important, if vague job. Meanwhile, Al and his protoge, Ty'lear, are investigating rumors of an ancient Zurai treasure being found in The Zones. Their investigation leads them to Blue Eyes and Battery City, a seedy, inhabited asteroid. Finally, Raxx and Bren are contacted to do a valuable job for one of their contact's bosses.

The three pairs cross paths and find themselves with Blue Eyes. He explains that he has found Memory Alpha, a repository of potent Zurai technology from Eras ago. One of the valuable components he needs is a computer core on board a cruise company's flagship, Community.

The pay is good, so the six sign on and devise a plan. They will sneak aboard, disguised as crew and passengers, wait for the other half of Blue Eyes' team to create a distraction, fake an emergency to get the real crew and passengers off, then reconnect the FTL drive and return to the rendezvous point.

All without a hitch.

Coup D'etat II: Tides of Time Primer

The Worlds at Large

The second Coup D'etat campaign takes place during the 31st year of the 81st reign of 55th era, aka 55.81.31

You guys remember this, right?

Let's start with a review of the universe as it was in a period of time we could conspicuously call "before you found it."

Magic the Gathering Campaign System

The Pitch
In standard Magic games, players take the role of planeswalkers who encounter one another and duel. The assumptions are that each competitor arrives fresh to the fight, fights for nothing, and fights to the death (0 life). That's fine for a tournament environment that has to be equivocal, but I'd rather have someone show up bloody to a fight, victory mean more than just winning, and close matches carry more weight than a one-sided beating.

Overview
Linked Campaigns use two teams of three decks (whether that's three decks with three players or three decks with one player on each team is up to you). Each Round, both teams put up a deck that will be playing while its other two decks Recover from their previous Beatings. The players for each playing deck prepare for the game, but lose life or mill cards according to their previous Beatings before they mulligan. At the end of the duel, each player totals up the beatings for their deck and the winner takes a Location card for their team's Command Zone. Location cards have points (some have abilities) and the first team to 20+ points wins.

Making a Minecraft Adventure World

As they often do, my thoughts have tuned to Minecraft. Specificlly, what it would take to make a Minecraft Adventure world. For those of you who've never used the dangerous "/gamemode 2" command, Adventure mode is a version of Minecraft where your ability to gather blocks and otherwise manipulate your environment is severely limited, at least in comparison to other Minecraft modes where your only real limits to block manipulation are knowledge and time.

Adventure mode, as the name suggests, is a mode based more around conventional video game interaction rather than the self-motivated, directionless motif of Minecraft. Unlike the remainder of Minecraft, it requires a conscious architect. So what kind of challenges can you pose with a Minecraft Adventure World?