def loot(character_sheet_file)
  @xml ||= Hpricot::XML(character_sheet_file.read)
  @loot ||= @xml.search("//LootTally/loot[@count!='0']").map do |item|
    res = item.search("//RulesElement")
    case res.size
      when 0: nil
      when 1: coder.decode(res.first.attributes["name"])
      when 2: coder.decode(res.last.attributes["name"].sub(res.first.attributes["type"], res.first.attributes["name"]))
      else    res.map { |re| coder.decode(re.attributes["name"]) }.join(" ")
    end
  end.compact
end

Character files from D&DI Character Builder store loot as a list, but the names of magic items are concatenated with names of their connected mundane items, so you have to mix them based on the magic item’s @type.

Also, the Character Builder stores every item you’ve ever added, even if you deleted it immediately, so you have to filter out items with a count of zero. You have no way to tell if this was an intentional item purchase, an item accidentally clicked on or a found item from a module, so items with @count=0 are useless.

What could I possibly be building‽‽‽

“Grind” is, perhaps, an inappropriate term—I was playing a game, after all—and I met a lot of cool people and excellent DM’s along the way. Our tables included the prototypical nerds and die-hard gamers, but also parents and their kids; women are also fairly well-represented in Southern Californian D&D.

Mizrae’li, my character for the event, is a gladiator-trained Drow and tough as a coffin nail. She’s an unconventional fighter that zig-zags across the battlefield harrying enemies with her whip and throwing axe, keeping their attention while her allies finish them off. Laconic on the best days, she holds a lifelong grudge against the dark cult that sold away her childhood, and her hunt for them led her to Zhentil Keep.

At the last convention in February, SPEC 1-1: Shades of the Zhentarim, offered some missing history between 3rd edition Forgotten Realms and the 4th edition set 100 years in the future. This time, for SPEC1-2: Zhent’s Ancient Shadows, I teamed up with three of the five players from the first half. It was supposed to be a meatgrinder—one of our friends had his character die in the first fight and had to turn back. We were no little bit nervous.

We were returning to Zhentil Keep to clear out the undead menace we had uncovered before. Gathered with us was an army of clerics and paladins whose vocation was destroying undead. For six hours we carved our way through wights, vampiric trolls, and a huge, bone-shard-spitting [REDACTED]. It was a miracle we even survived, yet we were only halfway finished.

After an extended rest, we climbed a mile-long chain into a floating cathedral, and confronted a horrific [REDACTED]. The thing was so tough we had to take another rest after one fight. What we learned lead us on a chase through the city to some familiar ruins, an army of undead on our heels. Our allies and us pitch an epic last stand, as we complete the ritual that banished the undead, we were cheered by a victorious army.

Module box text has never left me as speechless or elated as it did that night. SPEC1-2 was by far the best written and most challenging adventure I’ve played in Living Forgotten Realms. The game would not be fun if every Friday was this stressful, but as the pinnacle of a long con. it was perfect.

But the best part was playing the module with my group of friends—most that played SPEC1-1 with me as well—an my fiancée by my side for the last half. And against the perfect DM: he scoffed at my character concept at a lowly first-level, but has since been brought around. But he was perfects hardcore. Almost all of the minis he used were exactly as described, and when he slapped down that [REDACTED], everyone at the table shrieked in fear.

I generally don’t tout this hobby because of the bad stereotypes given to its players, but it’s just too rare today to have a group of people of all ages sit at a table and play a game—good clean fun. And this past weekend, the only way to describe the experience is epic.

I’m going to try something new here, and introduce my readers to a side of me I usually reserve for my closest friends. For the past four months my distraction du jour has been the new Dungeons & Dragons Living Forgotten Realms campaign. My character, the repulsive yet good-natured Körgeth Tunneldredger has travelled around the Realms finding adventure—and having it find him.

Living Forgotten Realms is a more strictly-administered version of 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons, where DMs report their results online and players earn in- and out-of-character awards that they take with them from game to game. The modules are designed for conventions, but the true benefit is that anyone in the world can sit down together and play the game with the character they’ve built themselves, and so long as it adheres to the creation rules, won’t disrupt or imbalance the game.

I’ve since passed the test to DM home games, and have twice run Pieter Sleijpen’s module, Inheritance. It’s an incredibly well-written module with some nice free-form RP opportunities and brutally challenging combat.

Warning: I’ve tried to omit any information that might spoil the module for a first-time player, but inherently there are some clues. If you want to play this module, you probably shouldn’t be reading this.

Unlike most modules, Inheritance has quite a focus on skill challenges and RP-only encounters, less on fights. I find Skill Challenges … um … challenging to run for a couple reasons:

• During free-form RP, type-A players tend to dominate the encounters.
• When one player succeeds a check, many DMs will announce, “you notice <dramatic revelation>.” But by doing so, it stifles RP, as the players have no need to converse with each other.
• Players often metagame, attempting to do what they’re good at, rather than what fits the situation. These types of skill challenges often become backwards: the player asks, “I’d like to make a Diplomacy check; what do I do?” This is largely because the penalty for failing skill checks is quite high (you usually need two times more successes than failures).
• Especially towards the end of the adventure, fatigued players and DMs will resort to “saving throw versus box text” in order to move on to the next combat.

I tried to compensate for these problems by forcing a little extra role playing. Instead of announcing “You notice <the thing you notice>.” I handed the character pre-printed card describing what they noticed. At the top of each card, I put a warning that reading the card verbatim or showing it to other players would result in a -2 to all rolls for the rest of the encounter. My players loved the drama caused by the small rewards, and really ran with at.

In addition to the skill challenges are the nasty fights. Most LFR combats are not incredibly challenging. Many are downright easy. In the first combat of Inheritance, I managed to drop a leader and a defender on the same round before any of the monsters died. TPK is not fun for anyone, and while the last fight is partly avoidable, the fact is not inherently obvious and it would have killed the party.

The DM’s instructions suggest that a level 5, complexity 3 skill challenge can convince some of the enemies from attacking, but never really fleshes out how that would work. I knew my players would take that option if it seemed available, so I wrote one.

The fight turned out to be epic, and everyone played a role. The defenders and a striker kept the other monsters at bay, while the rest took turns aiding each other in what turned out to be a very difficult skill challenge. It ended up 7/3, with the next check (and some great RP) deciding victory or defeat. A very close die roll sealed the win.

Afterwards, everybody cheered. Even me.

My only regret is that the players succeeded in the first skill challenge. Their success kept them from meeting a very intriguing NPC, and I was excited to role-play his sadistic slow clap as the players emerged from the Forbidden Zones…

Notes

1. Körgeth’s solution to this problem is to repeat (often interrupting) the DM, in-character. DM: “you notice a trap door.” Me, pointing: “I’ve noticed a trap door!” Someone usually chuckles. ↩

Made with the Magic Set Editor.

This guy had been pounding him ever since they started, and he’d not been able to offer much in defense—a jab he or there, but he’d mostly just thrown what he could in the path the onslaught. But he wasn’t out yet. He had cards left in his hand. Taking a deep breath, he made his draw, praying it was enough. “Tap your mana, Ryan,” he whispered to himself, “it’s time to make the Magic happen.”

After a twelve-year hiatus, my cousins dragged me kicking and screaming back into Magic: the Gathering. Of course, they weren’t the only reason. Already I’m in, whole-hog.

Gathering around a table with friends and strangers is sadly rare in our society. Looking for a Magic game is a great reason to meet new people and doesn’t require a backpack-full of apparatus like Dungeons and Dragons or Warhammer 40k. I’ve spent more money on it than I should and even built a Magic Game Tracker to keep track of scores on my phone.

In 1996 I forswore the game and money wasted. I sold my five-color, twelve dual-land deck of every flying creature in the game for $160 to a hobby shop and who in turn probably sold the rares for ten times that. The commons and lands I just threw away. Even chucked a Mahamoti Djinn I found a few years later because I was so sick of them.

But now I’m in a strange city and know few people. The ones I’ve met at the hobby shop are the most friendly and decent so far. In exchange for that, broken promises are but dust.