edit: Actually, I just fixed it now, bit of a rush fix but it is good to go now. Will be cutting it close getting to work though.

In this episode, we announce that we have basically decided on a format and theme for the show, once again, but are willing to take requests on if you want us to talk about a specific book or thing. Chances are, if we can’t or rather wouldn’t talk about something on the show, we’ll more than likely reply with whatever we can. Whether it be our opinion, suggestions, etc. Even though we have an aim now, or again rather, we’re still here to please.

Questions? Comments? You can e-mail the show here. If you want to speak to one of us directly both myself (Jason) and Matt have e-mails as well, how handy. We are both also on twitter: Matt & Jason.

Download Episode 29

Matt and myself recorded here last Tuesday but guess what, I forgot the recording at his place! I was able to snag it during D&D Saturday but more family news has come in this Sunday and while I am going to promise to have the episode out by next Monday, the 8th, I will still try to have it out sooner than that for all of you. I can’t say when, because the latest family news could be very small, or very large.  I’m guessing it’ll be a middle ground sort of thing, sooooo I’m wild guessing on a Thursday release for this podcast. I know, we need a schedule right? Well buck up kid, we probably won’t have a truly solid one anytime soon.

I have gone back into WoW though, I know I know, it’s a sad thing really. If anyone has a character on Cenarion Circle feel free to look up Garik or Sarantis, those are the names I run under.

Have fun kids!

And maybe, juuuuust maybe we’ll start doing a new segment with this next one. Who’s to know, who’s to know.

Have fun kids!

-Jason-

Things with my family are progressing as expected, I on the other hand have hit another hurdle in life, and am trying to scramble over it. Thankfully my skills let me scramble over such things within a day or two at tops. My family is another matter, it’s a long process, like teaching algebra to a horse. Sure, it’s cool if  horse can tap out the number three, but it’s even more wild if the horse can figure out why X is greater than Q.

Also, I’m looking for a few things right now. The utmost are boks that are good for those who are just learning PHP, cause I don’t know any PHP and I wish I did. The other things are a really good whiskey and tequila, because well… I want to round out my liquor cabinet.

Also, I’ve decided the next thing you’ll hear about won’t be the primal handbook. Screw the primal handbook. You’ll hear something from DDI, whether it be about some cool articles or some PHB3 classes and content, and I’d expect the later of them.

Have fun kids!

Once again it had been awhile since we recorded so we had a lot of chit chat to begin with, the topics bounced back and forth but included things like Scribblenauts for the DS and a little site called Geeky Clean.

Questions? Comments? You can e-mail the show here. If you want to speak to one of us directly both myself (Jason) and Matt have e-mails as well, how handy. We are both also on twitter: Matt & Jason.

Download Episode 28

I know awhile back I said we’d be fully on schedule again but well, I didn’t intend to decieve anyone, I fully expected us to be on schedule podcasting in full earnest again, but sadly, we are not. Due to some personal issues within my life, I have been unable to podcast, edit, and so forth at all. I do have a podcast sitting on the back burner that I will, i repeat, I will release either Monday or very early next week, but I cannot say when the next one will go up. Mayhaps I can convince Matt to bring in some of the guest hosts and continue on while I am dealing with life.

I won’t fully explain what is going on in my life, but I will say that times are hard and my family needs me now more than ever. I am currently doing everything I can do support them mentally and physically. Unfortunately they seem to add to what they need from me faster than I can dole out any help, and it’s been stressful. This is not to say things haven’t been hard on me as well, so with the free day a week or every two weeks I get I have been trying to get out and have fun, rather than grunt away at yet another draining task for my family.

I expect things to get back on track …. well…. I hope things to be back on track within a month for me, but I can’t guarantee anything. Also, please accept my sincere apologies for not putting this up sooner, it actually took someone leaving a comment for me to realize I’ve waited far far too long for this.

Have fun kids! (twice as much please, gotta make up for my slack)

P.S. The next episode will be an overview of the Adventurer’s Vault 2, where we go back to our original book overview style. If you want us to look over a specific book before others, please, let us know and we’ll see what we can do. Otherwise well… you’ll probably get the Primal Handbook after the AV2.

As of right now, we are looking at going through the Adventurers Vault 2 for you and maybe picking out a few DDI things to tell you about. If there are any other books you’d rather know about sooner, let us know and we’ll see if we can swing that.

With the new year will come old things, specifically Matt and myself talking about going back more to our roots of the show,  which is 4E D&D book and DDI information. We still plan on trying to sneak in a real topic once in awhile, but based on what all of you have said, you liked the DDI and book information the most, and wer’re happy to oblige!

Besides that, you’ll notice that we are more organized and will have obvious and clean transitions from one topic to another. We plan to clean up the show a lot, now don’t go thinking we are going to stop our initial idle chit chat or side commentary on things, far from it. Removing that would make us plain boring, rather than mildly entertaining.

Are there other things we plan on changing? Yes! But I just don’t feel like sharing them, mwa ha ha. Are we still wanting you to e-mail us? Yes! We are always open to listening to what you like or don’t like or trying to answer your questions, regardless of if you want a quick e-mail or an in depth discussion on the show, we’ll do our best. Heck, you want to hear a shout out from us? Go for it, we just like your e-mails.

Have fun kids.

I really really want Monday evening to come around so I can spend all night f’ing around with my new phone.

Have fun kids!

I on the other hand, have boughten myself something, I have ordered a Motorola Droid, hooray, unfortunately myself and Verizon seem to have a mix up.  Originally I e-mailed them and basically said that even though I know I’m still 4 months out from being able to upgrade for a non-rape price, was there anyway I could get a phone at non-retail price? They told me sure, and that i could get a phone at the 1 year contract price. I am okay with this, due to the very small price difference phones can have on a 1 or 2 year contract. I order myself a Droid later when I have the time to actually sit and talk on the phone for an hour. While the ordering process was far from smooth, it was due to the guy on the other end of the line being use to a different system of menus and what not than what he was currently using, nice chap though. Regardless, the phone was ordered!

I come to find out later when I look at my Fedex shipment statement that my order is on 2 day shipping and not overnight shipping, like anything else you get from Verizon. I e-mail them asking “what the fuck?” and they tell me that if you order something on the phone, it gets 2 day, if you order in store or online it is overnight. My thought process found this odd, very fucking odd.  Oh well, that just means Droid arrives on Monday and not Saturday, meaning no time to play around on it for hours and hours. sigh.

I then get another e-mail about 8 hours later telling me how the replacement phone system works, with pictures and everything, an automated e-mail obviously. I have since dropped a line at Verizon letting them know that no one ever said I would have to send my old phone in, or that the phone I’d just ordered and paid for might be a fixer upper. To say I was upset would be like stating that seeing an real Minotaur would be unsettling. I am waiting to hear back from Verizon on if I get to keep my old phone since no one ever so much as hinted that I’d have to send in my current one. Would I have agreed to this arrangement had I known I’d be losing my current phone?

Short answer: No. Reason being, I planned on tricking out my old LG Dare and giving it to my dinosaur phone carrying brother, full of things I know he’d love. Honestly, I’d hate to have to send the Droid back because Verizon’s lingo of “upgrade” and “equipment order” really mean “trade” and “refurbished”. Also, it’d be enough for me to drop them as my carrier, except they are about the only company that gets reception in this back water town I reside in. There is another company out there, but they only get a single bar out here, maybe 2, tops.

If anyone has any strings inside of Verizon, have them get a hold of me, so I can abuse their power. I really don’t want to have to re-think what I’d do for my brother for Christmas this close to it, ugh.

Have fun kids!

I really want to hear what everyone has to say, I want to produce something not just for us, but for you. What can I say, I’m a pleaser like that.

This episode runs just under 1 hour and 18 minutes, or 77.5 minutes to be slightly more exact.

Questions? Comments? You can e-mail the show here. If you want to speak to one of us directly both myself (Jason) and Matt have e-mails as well, how handy. We are both also on twitter: Matt & Jason.

Download Episode 27

Also, I will try to be better about posting here again, I slipped and well… I apparently fell asleep on the ground and no one woke me up to make sure I posted here more. Whoops.

Thank you again e-mailer, you know who you are.

Have fun kids, this time, at our expense.

Have fun kids.

In this episode we talk about:

• Google Wave and how it help us set up characters and RP potential in our upcoming game
• How we want more RP and how some systems depend on it
• D20 Modern and why it failed for us or how we failed it
• Group size and what we think of ours
• Microsoft Surface table
• How maptools leads us to distraction

This podcast is much more of a trainwreck then we were all planning, hopefully it’ll still be enjoyable. If anything, at least we have a real omnidirectional microphone for our group now.

This episode runs about 42 minutes. Please send emails to podcast@runningdtw.com with questions or suggestions.

Download Episode 26

In short, it’s a fucking train wreck. You’ll enjoy it though I’m sure. We did at least!

I went on a slump with the posts because I was attempting to find something that’d work well for my MMO needs. In short, this is what happened: I quit wow; I picked up Champions Online; Champions Online was great fun; Champions Online decided to start doing nightly maintenance and told me they hope I can play during different hours, since I gamed during their downtime; I quit Champions Online; I picked up Fallen Earth, going against everything I had said; Fallen Earth was great fun and I’m still playing.  That little string took a long time and well… more money than it should have.

Besides Fallen Earth I have picked up Brutal Legends and must say this is a grand game that is affectingly fun. It blends a lot of different game styles into it and at times, that really sucks. I generally don’t like the RTS style game moments the game has, even though it still handles very much like the action game it generally is during these moments, which makes it just that much harder to truly be strategic during these moments of the game. Most of my RTS fights have consisted of gathering up a few resource areas, building a bunch of grunts, and then just zerging towards the bad guys. This tactic seems to work more than it should too. All in all though, Brutal Legends is a fun game that I plan on completing. Not a lot of games have what it takes to truly grab onto my ADD like brain and keep it going, but then again, not a lot of games let me kill people with the power of metal either.

Borderlands, which I am going to get for PC, lands next week and boy howdy am I excited. I’ve always loved the desolate post apocalyptic stuff and that’s what Borderlands is, with a handful of Diablo style game play. I say Diablo because if I said something like Titan Quest, some would get it but many would snarl because I would be ignoring “the original” or something. But yes, Borderlands, it has a lot of what I want, about the only thing I could ask for is custom characters. I’m a sucker for character creation in games, and not just a little bit. Any game that has that ability in it instantly gets my attention. Oddly enough, my excitement for Dragon Age: Origins has gone downhill in a hurry here lately, even though they apparently have some magical machine in which you create characters.

We also ended up getting a new microphone for group recording here as well, so don’t expect anymore of staticy group crap we posted last time. I actually felt sort of bad posting that, seriously.

Have fun kids!

Yeah, I’ve slumped in my posts here, and I apologize for that. Life has been.. intersting? Either way, I’ll get back on track with posting more, I swear! If any of our listeners play Fallen Earth, you can drop me a line, name is Sarantis in game. Maybe we’ll go kill some zombies together. I know I’d like that, I need more crafting materials.

WARNING: This episode is a much lower and more staticy quality than usual. We attempted to use our old extremely sensetive USB Rockband microphones as an omnidirectional microhpone in order to have a better “round table” discussion with… mixed results. We are looking into an actual omnidirectional microphone soon, a good one.

In this episode we talk about:

• Supernatural Season 5 (with spoilers)
• Matt drops a bomb
• Battlestar Glactica, spoiling it for Tim
• Spoiling things in general and how fun it is
• House M.D.
• Babies
• Retarded Policeman (Youtube Show)
• Shoutout to Trapcast. Specifically Jenn and Sara
• and finally… on to the show

This episode runs about 50 minutes. Please send emails to podcast@runningdtw.com with questions or suggestions.

Download Episode 25

In this episode we talk about:

• Cracking knuckles and other body parts
• What Jason likes on Tuna
• Misspent Youth/Rob Bohl
• How Jason wants to play a mouse in Mouse Guard
• Fables comic
• Scribblenauts
• MMO’s (Champions Online, WoW, Fallen Earth, CoH, etc etc)
• Party roles in your D&D 4E group and how to cope without them
• More MMO talk

This episode runs just shy of 57 minutes. Please send emails to podcast@runningdtw.com with questions or suggestions.

Download Episode 24

I am currently playing Champions Online. A game I bought and honestly figured wouldn’t be as good as it currently is, which shows how much I look at where my money goes. I expected it to fall under the same spell as City of Heroes and get old very fast, but it didn’t, which is amazing. I’m really really enjoying myself. If you want to know my name shoot me an e-mail and I will let you know. Here is a hint, so far I have never seen another 1) Rat person 2) tunneling travel power user.

There is another MMO on the horizon, not even a week out from launch, that has my eye as well. It doesn’t just have my eye, it’s petting it and whispering sweet nothings into its ear. This one is Fallen Earth, a game where you can’t ride a mount forever and have to worry about how much gas is in your car. I know that doesn’t sound exciting, but come on, that’s fucking awesome. From the last video I saw they said that almost everything you can find in the game as far as weapons and armor goes is craftable, and honestly, it’s about time for that as well. This game has a lot of promise I think, and I’m tempted to get it too and try out the pre-launch stuff, but… I really shouldn’t, well… because…

DDO is now free… sort of… unless you want to truly play the game as it was meant to be played. Thinks like Warforged, Drow, and the Monk are kept from you unless you want to drop some money on them or pay for a monthly fee. Bah I say! I am currently installing it as I type this out to give it another go, but honestly I don’t expect anything truly grand out of it. Unless they flipped it upside down and made a whole new game out of it, like they did with Star Wars Galaxies, except that destroyed SWG, so we’d want the opposite of that. Granted, I’ll admit, that I only played during the beta, but it felt terribly broken and… shitty.  I was terribly sad to see D&D get such a bad MMO, it tore me up inside.

One game that isn’t an MMO that I will most definately be picking up Tuesday is Scribblenauts for the DS.  I don’t know what it is about this game that seems so appealing, maybe because I want my brain to explode from not being able to figure out a puzzle because I suck at spelling. I have seen a lot of the Vs. style videos this game has produced, and I think they are great. My favorite so far is the devil vs. a priest in a tank, which was a draw due to the fact the devil couldn’t hurt the tank and the priest didn’t want to bother with the devil, odd.

Tuesday I don’t plan on doing a lot besides spending money, having a few drinks with my Father, and recording for you people. Look at that, I’m filling my Father’s day with joy and going out of my way to give you my beautiful voice. Be grateful!

Have fun kids.

• We start off with Jason talking about his trip to AnimeIowa where he became some guys boy toy.
• Jason mentions the lack of body odor at AnimeIowa and I bring up the GenCon 1-2-3 rule (minimum 1 shower, 2 meals, and 3 hours of sleep per day).
• Neither of us made it to GenCon and we are sad about it.
• GenCon Twitter updates were a major source of my jealousy.
• Jason talks about how much drinking goes on at GenCon and a drunken phone call he recieved from Kevin of The Walking Eye podcast.
• Jason earns a gold star and suddenly we are now tracking the good things Jason does.
• Divine power
• Monster Builder, the first tool in the new Adventure Tools released for DDI.

This episode comes in at 68 minutes. Please send emails to podcast@runningdtw.com with questions or suggestions.

Download Episode 23

What I meant to post here was some of the things that video game companies have been doing here lately that either made me raise an eyebrow out of sheer awe or both of them out of “what the fuck is this!?”. We’ll start off with the good, cause I want you all back down at a working morale level when this is done. 

Firstly, I’ve only heard about it off and on but the game MAG for the ps3 is sounding rather cool, especially with the neato trailer. I’ve always been a fan of FPS games with vehicles and classes, in fact I’m addicted to them. I haven’t found a good one in years though, and am worried that this one might fall under the same fate. I’d rather hope it doesn’t, but well… I’d rather stay pessimistic, so that way the crushing blow won’t seem so … crushing? The idea of 128 vs 128 alone is enough to make ones head explode, but when I saw vehicles I can garauntee you I woke up the neighbors with my squeal of excitement.

Secondly, I’m not going to buy Halo 3: ODST but the little videothat Microsoft and Bungie put together was awesome and sad all at the same time, thus it being in the middle.  It is absolutely awesome to watch, and you realize that maybe a Halo movie could look cool and then you realize that it’s a video game that would get made into a movie and has such a low chance of success that you might as well start crying about it now, telling everyone how they’ll do it wrong. That won’t stop you though, you’ll buy your tickets a week in advance regardless.

Lastly, Darksiders was a game I was looking forward to, heavily. Getting to play one of the four horsemen of the apocolypse, all of them are role models for me after all, in a game that is all about killing things was right down my alley. Until I noticed the weapon unlock, and I fuckinghate that stuff. Giving away something that is suppose to be in the game as a pre-order bonus is a 100% sure fire way of getting under my skin, especially when it has the ability to drastically change how you play the game. Infamous did this as well, but I was unaware until after I picked it up. I make it a point to avoid games that do that sort of thing, so I won’t be picking up Darksiders anymore. I know my single copy won’t cripple the company or anything, but now that I know, it’ll eat away at me that I’m playing a gimped game. The only way to change my attitude on this is to have the weapon really just be a different skin for a weapon that War picks up. If that is all it is, then great! But I doubt that.
——–
I started reading webcomics…. I think I was done anyway? So um….

Have fun kids?

While I did not go about the house touching his things to my taint, I did do my best to encourage his dog to stay up late into the night, slightly nudging and prodding the beast to prevent it from sleeping throughout the night. By the last night the dog was on a schedule far from what I wanted, it was also very far away from what it began with. Knowing Matt’s dog though, it’ll probably adjust instantly and ruin my entire plan. Stupid dog.

We’re also late, as of right now, but that is due to a few things. Such as one of your companions having a child, and both myself and Matt have been on vacation. Or at least in my case, away from home and in strange new lands. Actually, blame Matt. He is the technical guy who uploads the episodes and deals with the RSS feeds and what not, but don’t hate him. He got home from vacation Monday afternoon, let the man adjust!

A man by the name of “ghosr” on Twitter shamed me today by twittering how much he had accomplished in the day, and I refuse to have this by me list tomorrow:

1. wake up
2. roll out of bed 2 hours after awakening
3. realize the sun is setting
4. stare out window
5. fall asleep

Which means I must make a list worthy of my manly self, and follow through with it. Here is my list for tomorrow:

1. Write out and mail bills.
2. Clean and organize bedroom
3. Clean and organize library
4. Clean and organize living room
5. Do the dishes and put them away, even though I’ve only created 1/20th of the pile
6. Re-sort dvd’s for new additions
7. Create at least one avatar for myself and Matt (2nd highest priority)
8. Look at monthly income and see how much I need to save each month in order to afford all my trips for next year (San Diego, CA being highest priority)
9. Smell the roses

There, a mighty list! …. Man… that thing is huge. I guess I won’t be playing WoW all day then going to my friends to play board games and drink beer after all…. that sucks!

After finishing the first few Harry Dresden books by Jim Butcher I realized one thing, I can no longer read books like I use to. I realized I was reading sub-par books and that things far far better were out there for me to read and enjoy. I began to stray away from what I now call, cookiee cutter fantasy, and read things that have no orcs and are generally set in the modern world. I fell in love with first person writing and well, let me tell you, first person modern world fantasy is a very slim market. I then trudged back into the third person world and read some Simon Green, specifially The Man with the Golden Torc, and enjoyed it. Following the idea that the widely accepted third person format was once again alright to read I picked up some books on a whim. By whim I mean they were on an endcap at the bookstore and I had looked at their art adoringly before and decided to just snag them.

These were the Night Angel books, and I must say I regret not getting them earlier. The Night Angel series was something beautiful to watch unfold, or read rather. It handled a trilogy release in a way that I felt was correct and rarely saw. The main character throughout the books is constantly developing, shifting how they act and feel based on what happens to them and those that are around them. I can list the amount of books that show this adeptness on one hand, and still have enough fingers to hold and drink from a can of soda-pop.

Rather than shoving a world down your throat from the first chapter and making you understand it or drown under the constant torrent of geographical references, you are allowed to ease into the world. There aren’t 800 cities you’ll have to know, and you won’t be getting exact distances between places. What this means is that you’ll become very familiar and comfortable with the world insanely quickly, won’t be breaking out the graph paper to make your very own map versus the one in the book and seeing if they match up, and by the end you will come to see some of the regions of the world in a warm loving light that one rarely gets in books.

Many of the characters in the books are fleshed out in such a way that you’ll think you know everything about them even when very little has been revealed about their past. This is due to their social interactions mostly, but yes, they will reveal a lot of themselves over time. This is contraty to a lot of books where you get something like this: “Meet Harvey. Harvey is skilled with swords, was born 27 years ago before the onset of a harsh winter, has 7 brothers and 264 sisters who all are named Jennifer, loves tacos, and has a dark secret… psst, his secret is about him having to murde 232 of his sisters… and a box of puppies that he was deeply attatched to”.

Another thing I felt that this series did very well was slowly introduding the readers into that worlds version of magic and how it works. For a long time there wasn’t any, and I rejoiced in this, and when some was finally revealed I felt an exhileration, since it was apparently such a rare thing to see. What it really turned out to be was with how things were handled with the characters, they just never ran into any. It wasn’t a dodge on the authors part, it was just very viable for there  not to be any for a large part of the first book. The slow introduction to magic works much the same way as the slow introduction to the world and characters, it lets you soak it all in and understand it fully. By the end of the third book there is magic being tossed around like candy, but that is very much due to a few specific characters too.

You may feel a twinge of fear due to the fact I have said “slow introduction” to each one of the topics, and are afraid that these books are poorly paced. WRONG! Wrong I say. While these things are presented to you just as fast in other books, that make your brain twitch, their slow leak of information with each reference or mentioning makes it seem far more natural and pleasant. The overall pacing in these books was wonderfuly done and I am eagerly awaiting the next piece of work Mr. Weeks puts together.

What I am trying to say is if you are looking for a new series to read, want it to be fantasy but not contain orcs, have interesting and deep characters, then go pick up these books. This is a series I can and plan on revisiting many times, which in the end will destroy the physical bindings on the book itself. Seriously people, read these. If you can’t buy, then go bug your local library, but you should buy them. That way he can buy cereal to eat.

See what overthinking something does? Stop it!

I have been playing some Fable 2 lately and I finally got around to beating it. Hooray! I am now buying my very first download content, which is the Knothole Island add-on. I feel accomplished in doing so, since I have never done said buying before. I also ended the game with my buy being hugely obese since it seems the only way to lose weight is to eat celery. I guess running all over the contenent and swinging a sword like a crazy person just doesn’t do as muc as a good vegetable. Which is what I’m off to do right now, go run around and eat celery till my guy isn’t a tub of lard anymore. ugh.

Have fun kids!

If any of you out there know me, you know I cannot let a Kodak moment go by without somehow twisting it. What this means is I have to balance out what I just said, thus ruining what would be a nice moment via my very own work. Lets do this in list form!

1. Andrew stated on his twitter that she is the spitting image of himself, this means he is not only a baby but a female as well… or at least was at some point in his life.
2. Avery’s full initials are ANJ, I am slightly sad that Andrew missed the opportunity to name her something like “Valorie” or “Veronica” and then follow it up with an appropriate middle name to get the initials VAJ. All is not lost though, he may spawn again.
3. If I ever spawn, I am totally getting the initals of VAG though, since my last name starts wigh a G, so I win. Yes, this is regardless of gender.
4. Tim could have children with the initials of TIT
5. Matt could have children… I am still working on funny initials though for him. Something that ends with a B…. If his last name started with a P the initials of FAP would be highly entertaining.
6. Statements 2 though 5 have made me realize I should never ever spawn or be involved in the naming of babies.

I think that really balances things out, don’t you? Once again Andrew and Krystal, congratulations! Speedy recovery to the mother.

Have fun kids! (you too Avery)

P.S. Andrew, this will probably be the last time I refer to Avery by name, she will be called by her appropriate title of “apprentice” henceforth.

This episode runs about 34 minutes.  Send any questions, suggestions, or feedback to podcast@runningdtw.com

Download Episode 22

I personally haven’t been up to much, besides the lame movie for my birthday I had the spark plugs and wires in my car replaced, joy! The auto shop also decided to leave it outside, unlocked, with the keys in it. Thanks guys, I will be talking to you in the morning, I’m looking forward to it. Actually, make that afternoon. I work nights for the most part so I sleep into the day, meaning that when their day is winding down and their in a bad mood already I’ll show up just starting mine in a very good mood. I prefer that one, otherwise rolls are reversed.

I have taken notice of a little site out there that Matt introduced to me, it’s called Uncrate, and it’s magnificent. It shows a lot of cool stuff, and really, it’s about time Star Wars went this route. Sadly though, this means they are running out of ideas and things are going to close up soon. Sometimes they have cool books, other times awesome machines, and well… sometimes things that are just weird, but in a manly way. I also found an article about machines that will break your brain.

I have been openly bugging Robert Bohl on twitter about hurrying up on misspent youth the game, and it has helped apparently. His author edition/tester edition is done. If you can get in a game with feedback to him in the next month, you should get in touch with him. You can do that through his site or stalk him on twitter. Okay, I don’t expect anyone to read this who isn’t already bugging him but meh, it’s worth a shot. Don’t say I never did anything for you now Rob! …. just in case you try to say that, but I don’t see him trying to say I never did anything for him.

Alright, I’m out! If you want to try and get in on a game, let me know and we’ll see what we can set up.

Have fun kids!

Our deepest apologies.

Also, this totally counts as one of my posts!

Something that I’ve had my eye on for awhile finally came out on the PSN, it’s about fat chicks.

Beyond that we have played our first game of Mutants and Masterminds, I have no idea how it went or whether the players liked it or not. Honestly, I do not care, what I care about is giving them sparkles of hope and then crushing them. If you think about it the same way that Gabe and Tycho from Penny-Arcade do, then I’m Tycho. I have been doing the … okay I can’t say I have been since so far we’ve only done one, but I planon doing our MnM sessions much like a tv show has episodes. This will let us drop the game at any moment so we can curl up to something we’re more familiar with.

This Saturday is one of our gaming nights, and we plan on doing things during the day beforehand. With the women folk and unborn fetus going on their own adventure, that leaves us men types to have a full day to ourselves. Right now one of the thoughts is for Lazertag, something I am all for, cause it involves guns, running, and possible injuries. While I expected some form of mild to moderate wound last time we did the tagging with lazers, we had none. I promise someone will get hurt this time, even if it means I have to jack someone in the soft part of the skull. And FYI, the inside layers of the skull are actually very tender in comparison to their more outwardly layers. What this means is I will find a way to punch the inside of someones head if no one at least sprains an ankle. If we do indeed shoot at each other we are going to run into a problem, we have an odd number of players, anyone have any good lazertag games we could do? Specifically ones with odd numbers.

I have become a fan of many podcasts now that I have a zune and a desire to listen to podcasts, in fact I find myself listening to one far more than the others, but it may be due to the fact one of the hosts is a horrible person…. and I love that.

OH! I said I’d talk about Dogs in the Vineyard last time didn’t I? What I will say is that out of the story games I’ve played so far, it is my favorite. It could be due to the fact it is far “crunchier” and more dice involved than the others. While there is no attack roll per say, it does feel a lot like playing poker or other card game with the person you are going against. One of you sets the stakes, the other matches, then they raise, the other matches, then they raise, etc etc until one player is out of dice. While this would normally mean defeat, in this game you can escalate things. Normally you are trying to talk to one another and figure things out, but then you can go to fists, then weapons, and guns… guns end badly for a lot of people, I think it’s the bullets.

The fact this system feels like a card game is very well suited for the time in which the game is generally set in, which is western times, when all they had were cards and guns. I won’t go deep into the why and how the game does what it does but what it is meant to do is make you think outside of your normal moral norms and probably make you feel like a monster afterwards. In this game, you are the law, period. You can walk into town and set fire to an orphange without having to explain yourself to anyone, except your fellow players that is. More than likely though your fellow players would be involved in finding a way to secure the doors and windows, then you’d all meet up for some tea and high five.

I’m not shitting.

That is a very likely scenario.

Honestly, I want to bring this into my own gaming circle, it was that much fun for me. Although honestly, I don’t think one of our players would be allowed to play, his wife would murder him.

Also, I want to play Misspent Youth next, someone tell Robert Bohl!

What I will say is I played Dogs in the Vineyard and… it was friggin awesome!  I will definately be talking about that later too.

Have fun kids!

I got a chance to look at Digital Squire, a tool for use at the table by players. It allows a player to load their saved character file from the DDI Character Builder and track game information within the application, replacing a printed character sheet. Digital Squire has a built in dice roller, allowing you to do a quick roll, where you can type what you want the app to roll, or you can choose the die icon next to many of your characters stats and it will roll using your character’s modifier. The app also has the ability to track damage, healing, healing surges spent, powers expended, and short and extended rest.

When spending a healing surge it allows you to specify an additional modifier to be added in, easily taking into account any healing kicker from your party’s leader. Power’s that you have expended, automatically refresh after clicking the rest buttons, encounter powers after a short rest and encounter and daily powers after an extended rest.

The feature I found incredibly handy, was the tie in with the DDI Compendium. Once a character is loaded, the Compendium menu at the top allows you to quickly open the Compendium to your character’s class or race. There is an option to have the Compendium info open in an external browser or by default it tries to open the info in a window created by Digital Squire. I could not get the info to display in Digital Squire, but once I set it to open in browser, I was prompted to enter my DDI log-in for the web page and was seeing the entries in no time.

The tie in with the Compendium also works with equipment and powers, allowing you to quickly get the full description for any item, ritual, or power you have. The one thing I wish you could see in the program is your character’s feats, with the ability to look up in the Compendium.

In the Powers screen, you can see all of your powers broken out into At-Will, Encounter, Daily, Utility, and Extended. You can select a power and choose to use it, which brings up a dialog where you can pick what weapon or implement to use with the attack. From there, it will make an attack roll with your modifiers and display the results. The results show a break down of  attack and damage rolls, as well as show any misc. modifiers you may be able to add from class features. For example, I loaded a copy of a rogue for a player from the last DnD game I ran. When using a power it would roll the attack and damage for the standard power, but it would also list +3d8 once a round for sneak attack. I don’t like that it doesn’t roll this damage, I would rather it roll the damage and keep it separate to be added if needed, but it is nice to have these things shown as a reminder.

It will be a while before I get a chance to try this at the table, but I can see this being something I would use. Our current gaming setup involves players from out of state, so our setup includes several players with laptops out at the table. I think having the Character Builder open to make any permanent changes, like xp or new items, and Digital Squire open as my character sheet, I will enjoy not having to shuffle around several pages of character sheets and power cards.

As I look over more of the tools created by Asmor, I may post additional posts if they seem as handy as Digital Squire appears to be.

-Matt

In other news, I have become an avid watcher of woot, and got myself of all things, a zune. Do you know what this means? I’m going to start listening to more podcasts! Seriously, as a podcaster I really should listen to more. Before I got my zune and started using its associated software, I listened to maybe one a month. Now on the other hand I have six different podcasts lined up on my zune for listening. At the gym, podcasts are great.

On an odd note, this is one reason I don’t like spiders…. they can get huge.

Also, I picked up Watchmen and Overlord 2, PC edition, today. I will say a few things about Watchmen. Firstly, it looks great on blu-ray, mmmm… friggin glorious. When I was walking around Best Buy I noticed that they had some creepy asseditions of Watchmen out. The normal editions were almost out when I walked into the store and there were piles of those, gee, I wonder why. Overlord 2 on the other hand, is fun as crap. I never did play the first one so this is my first trip into its little world. It’s a fun and comical game really, and I suggest you go find a demo for it and give it a try. If you do have a pc that can handle it, get that one…. and the fact the PC version is $20 cheaper than the console version helps a lot. That $20 might even cover the cost of say… your Watchmen movie?

Have fun kids!

P.S. The Eberron Campaign Guide came out yesterday, go pick your copy up! If you’re me… your nearby stores are all sold out and you now hate them.

This episode runs about 50 minutes.  Send any questions, suggestions, or feedback to podcast@runningdtw.com

Download Episode 21

If you run into any issues with the new site, please email podcast@runningdtw.com to let me know.

Since this is a game for the short term I am going to try and basically build “episodes” rather than an overal story arc. Tonight I am trying to decide if I should go for my “Toyland” episode or my “Carnival” episode. Originally I planned on them being horribly comical but I find trying to put punchlines in everywhere overly trying and tiring for my brain. Instead I’m going to go for cliche and a moderate amount of comedy, but I expect that most of the comedy will come from the players and ecounters themselves.

In other news… I need a game! I am taking a break from raiding in WoW so I can get some other stuff done in life but still have time for a bit of gaming, and I want something other than WoW. I have played and beat both Prototype and Infamous so I am much in need of something new.

Well, I’m off to go watch Ghostbusters and work on things, wish me luck!

Have fun kids.

In light of things I have begun reading Engadget much much more and well, I’ve come across a lot of cool things. Most notebably would be a certain story that made me laugh… hard. The idea that Apple called and asked Microsoft to stop playing it’s laptop hunters commercials is hilarious, I don’t care who you are. I’ve always felt that apple’s computers were horribly over priced myself, so I find this story extra great. I also make sure to never ever buy an apple product, mainly because even though they say that ipods play nice with windows, I refuse to attempt it myself. It’d be like someone telling me that Pepsi with a splash of Coca Cola is delicous. I trust not those people.

Also, Engadget shows things occasionally that make me drool and pass out due to excitement. I’d link it but I don’t feel like searching for it but they talked about a netbook that had both XP and Android on it. Sweet.

I’ve always been a reader of Kotaku, and I feel like I need to read more of their sister sites now…. but that’d require more time and reading… do I really want to do this? hmmm.

I might have mentioned getting the chance to play a game of Blazing Rose by Edward “Sabe” Jones and absolutely loving it, so I suggest you all go and at least pick up the ashcan pdf of the game. At first I know all of our audience will shy away from it, but I garauntee you that this is one heck of a fun game once you get into the mood and swing of things. Last I knew, his full version should be done soon, and I will let you all know when it comes out.

If any of our listeners… well… readers really, are from Iowa and or plan on being at Anime Iowa this August let me know, I am going to be there myself and am more than willing to let any and all of you buy me a drink(s).

Have fun kids!

And as usual, twitter and e-mail stuff would go here, but you know that by now.

 Honestly, I find their new format for the classes 100% annoying as shit. Before you would get a pdf that looked very much like a class entry in any of the standard D&D books (except for it’s page size). Now instead of getting power names and descriptions, you only get the names of the powers and are forced to go to the online compendium to actual read the powers. I can understand why they increased the costs of Dragon honestly, but to then go and put that sort of crap into the articles is unacceptable. I get why they did it, it prevents people from having an account, downloading it, then spreading it out to the world since they’ll need login info to look at the powers and so forth. If they continue to do this, I will without a doubt cancel my subscription.

In lighter news Push came out on dvd, and I loved it. I have heard a lot of good things about it and it came through. I’ll admit that I am a junkie for that sort of thing though. People who can throw lightning, fly, ride in big robots, etc is all fine, but you show me a bunch of people than can move stuff with their mind and I generally scream and wet myself in joy. If anyone has any suggestions of other movies, books, etc that I should look into for my addiction, let me know!

Construction on Matt’s basement continues and thus we don’t have a solid place to record. I am going to attempt to see if he’ll let me help him on Saturday a bit, but I’m sure him and the county will have something to say about allowing me to use sharp objects and hammers.

The 4th of July came and went, and I also forgot to send out messages to all my friends on the following day that it was the 5th and that they should stay safe while they have fun. It’s hard to tell, but I’m one of those people that is on the recieving end of a long line of texts every holiday, stating that it is the holiday. I have decided to start sending out messages on random days about it being that day as well, but I doubt they’ll get the point.

The real reason for me bringing up the 4th was to point out while everyone else was out blowing stuff up and cuddling under the stars, I was stuck at a wedding. Granted this wedding had free beer and many old friends, so it was a good time. A total 3 of us decided we needed to make a pyramid from out beer glasses, so we did. A 3d one, so it was very large. The cleanup crew actually laughed when they got to our table, and called out their friends.

Have fun kids!

P.S. Don’t forget you can follow us on Twitter and send us any show suggestions, comments, etc to our e-mails.

We will be seeing it with mostly our gaming group, two of which you have heard before. Guest Host Andrew will be there and the faint voice in the background called “Mike” is going to be there too. Before that though, as men, we will go get food. Since I am not driving I plan on consuming some adult beverages and hitting on the waitresses heavily.

In other news, I have read Mouse Guard and loved it, the art is what truly got my attention though. The idea of mice with swords is also awesome. A certain set of podcasting friends have recently done some actual play podcasts on the Mouse Guard RPG, which is awesome. Awesome because you can hear it before you buy it but also because there is a friggin RPG for Mouse Guard.

Remember, you can e-mail either of us or follow us on twitter. I’d list that info here but peh, we have a contacts page and twitter feeds/links right on the site and it’d take effort to link that stuff up. Much less effort than typing all this out, but well… I’m complicated like that.

Have fun kids.

It is a link from my blog post to another blog post about one of my “favorite” organizations, PETA. It is a post by the almight Oxhorn, who you’ll only know if you’ve seen his WoW machinima or are a member of the wegame.com community.

Either way, here is the post, enjoy… and I promise I’ll post something soon. Really…

I swear?

The books I went looking for aren’t widly known and didn’t sell out, they just never arrived. It’s taking over a week for books to hit the shelves now? Last book I wanted I was able to go in and buy on its release date rather than over a week later. If it wasn’t for the fact that they are horribly overpriced I’d just get a kindle and avoid all this shipping bullcrap in regards to my novels. And in all honesty, no, I wouldn’t even then, a book just isn’t a book unless it is on 100% real paper. Paper as in the kind we murder trees for.

My escapades weren’t a total wash out though, I did end up buying 25 pounds of rice and the 20 pound bag I bought is perfect rice for making onigiri. Now all I have to do is go get some stuff to fill them with. I do believe I have some tuna somewhere. And  yes, I already have the nori needed to make them complete. Although honestly I prefer them without the nori. Meh, to each their own. I already know I’ll be getting strange looks for eating them at work.

Besides that I spent a good portion of my day tearing through Infamous like a starving animal does food. I could have easily put the controller down at one or two points, but I really wanted to know the ending, and the ending was spectacular. The twist at the end is only hinted at a mere 4 seconds prior to it unraveling, and you have to have a quick mind to pick it up, and one that think up super weird twists quickly.  I most definately will be doing this game over again to see how it plays as an evil person, then choosing the good ending.

At the end, you get the ultimate decision of good and evil and even though I read the good one, and meant to hit the button for the good one, I sorta… instinctively hit th evil one. whoops. The bad thing about that though is that since you power up your abilities purely on the good or evil side, if you do the switch at the end, you are fighting the end boss with your powers at their lowest, unless you have some extra points to spend.

This isn’t a problem though, they foresaw this and made it very pausible to beat the boss as a guy with tons of powers at their lowest.

Infamous was far longer than I expected too, which was good. If you have a ps3, go get this game. It lets you throw lightning, nuff said.

-Jason-

First off, we mentioned on the last podcast that our normal recording spot, my basement, is currently under construction and I will be spending much of my free time working to get it finished.

Second, we have been working on updating our site.  In addition to a new look, we are changing a few things on the back-end.  I am hoping for a smooth transition with these updates, but if I think these changes will effect how you receive the podcast, I will post on the site with details.

Right now, it looks like sometime in July for the construction in my basement to be done, or at least to the point we can start recording again.

In the mean time, you can still follow us on Twitter (Matt or Jason), or email the show with suggestions for anything you would like to hear us talk about on the show.

-Matt

We met up with Kevin and Jen from The Walking Eye Podcast and had some good times. There were others there who’s names I’ve mostly forgotten/didn’t learn properly. Okay, I walked away learning one name. I was slightly biased on learning that name though, it belonged to a female, and females are far more worth my time then hairy men. I know I know, I’m biased.

If you’re into indie games of the pen pencil and paper sort then you should definately check them out. Not only do they talk about them and interview the makers of some of them, you’ll actually get to listen to a lot of the play sessions.

Matt and me got to actually partake in an indie game called Wicked Age, and it was a glorious time. Even though there were A) Far to many people from what they told us for a good game and B) Too much booze in some of the people for a good game. Either way, it was entertaining to say the least. Even though I played a horribly comical character, I have become fond of him and plan to put him into our own games somehow.

Beyond that… I forgot. Seriously, I had stuff to put here. I opened up both this and facebook and that was the end of that. It seems my friends only wish to communicate with me when I’m attempting to get all of my thoughts together for you guys.

We had pointed out to us that episode 20 of our podcast was awfully quiet, and we do in fact apologize. The room/location we normaly record at was under some construction and we had to relocate, which was sadly to a room where there was some modest amount of background noise that just seemed a bit too loud if we tried to adjust anything. I am personally unaware of when we’ll be able to record in our normal dungeon again but until then, we’ll do our best to adjust things better.

I am looking forward to Tuesday myself. I get to go drop money on Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children Complete and Sims3. You heard me, I am getting Sims3.

Now if you’ll excuse me. I am going to go read my books for a good hour before bed.

-Jason-

I’m pretty sure once I get my oil changed and I pick this game up I’ll make the drive back to my house to play for a few hours rather than getting some much needed sleep before my evening plans kick in.

I’m looking forward to my oil change purely because it’ll give me time to read my book since whenever I go to play a “single game” of Team Fortress 2 it turns into… well… not even “a single hour”, usually it’s confined to “a single couple of hours”. I got my first two item drops last night though, ignore the fact I think they’re both worthless. Give me medic drops! It’s rewarding to be a medic since no one else is, people tend to love you for it.

I’m out for now, gotta get dressed and ready for the day. Have fun kids.

-Jason-

This episode runs about 67 minutes.  Send any questions, suggestions, or feedback to podcast@runningdtw.com

Download Episode 20

I ended up watching Taken with Liam Neeson and I still loved it. Now all i need to do is remember to take that to Matt and Dead Like Me to Andrew…. I doub that’ll happen.

Right now my plans are to take a small nap/sleep for about two hours as a reward for getting my character leveled up for what might be the climax and finale of our D&D campaign. Once this campaign is all done and over with it’ll be up to me to carry on the torch, in spandex, cause our next game is Mutants and Masterminds.

The biggest challenge I have today is going to be getting up from this short sleep in time to get done what I want to get done before D&D. I have a few things I want to get done but meh, we’ll see.

Have fun kids.

-Jason-

… maybe I’ll get on WoW instead…. no… sleep…. WoW… crap.

For anyone out there who still enjoys one of the most well known animes out there, you have the final releases of it’s remasted set coming out today as well. I personally plan on picking them up. Honestly I haven’t watched through all of them yet, but I plan on it now that most of the shows I watch have had or will have their season finales soon. What that means is I might have to go back and revisit some favorites.

Next on my table to watch is Taken, a great little movie that I watched back when it first came out and loved it, but then again I am a sucker for revenge movies. Seriously, if you have any revenge movie suggestions, let me know.

I started reading the Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks here about a week ago and even though I’m only a few chapters into it I love it. I don’t know why, I have been spoiled by first person novels a bit and started to sneer at the standard third person narative, but this stuff gets my approval. Based on what I’ve read on his site, this is the only thing he’s written. Huh.

 I was going to put something up about a web comic or two here but honestly, I’m really tired. I had no idea how long writing and linking a post could take if you wanted to toss in a lot of links. Either way though, I’m going to bed so I can get up and get the firmware on my phone updated… crap, I need to back up that stuff first.

Bah!

-Jason-

The front page of the DTW site seems to be more of a podcast archive than an actual place to read things and that is going to change. I declare that I shall do my best to filter entertaining things here onto the site. Whether it be posts about how weird my day went or links to articles I come across and so forth. I shall cast aside the other blogs I have attempted to use and focus my attention here for all of you, that and to my twitter account.

Since I don’t have anything huge to post here, or entertaining, if any of you play World of Warcraft during the late hours, you are more than welcome to drop me a line. I run on the Staghelm server, look for Gordetsky.

Have fun kids.

-Jason-

Instead, the Monk has become a Psionic character, a striker no less. My first thoughts were something along the lines of “Really?”, but once I thought about it more it started making sense.  To me the Monk was always about obtaining perfection in mind, body, and soul, which seems like a perfect fit for the Psionic power source.

Then I went through and read the Design and Development article about the creation of the Monk. It talked about how they thought the Ki power source seemed to be getting thin. They didn’t want to just dump all of the Asian themed classes into it, just to fill it out. As Jason put it, “We don’t need the Asian power source.”

We will talk more about some of the mechanics and powers of the Monk in our next episode of the podcast.

If you have a DDI subscription and haven’t looked at the Monk playtest yet, I would definitely check it out.

-Matt

This episode runs about 69 minutes.  Send any questions, suggestions, or feedback to podcast@runningdtw.com

Download Episode 19

In this episode we talk about what it means to be a munchkin versus min/maxing, how they are different and how they are the same. We also discuss how they have changed over the years, if they are necessary, and the morality of both.

This episode is done in reverse format by accident, blame Jason, so if you were wanting to listen to our ramblings first, then you should skip towards the end. We apologize if this throws anyone off, but once again, blame Jason.

This episode runs about 39 minutes.  Send any questions, suggestions, or feedback to podcast@runningdtw.com

Download Episode 18

This episode runs about 72 minutes. Send any questions, suggestions, or feedback to podcast@runningdtw.com

Download Episode 17

Anyway, you can follow my adventures on my twitter page. Hopefully this’ll be worth the sudden crazy I’ll be going through.

Also, if you follow me on twitter and your twitter is that of a an artist of some sort or company, let me know and I’ll gladly follow you back. I’ve had a few seemingly random followers along those lines so far.

Have fun kids.

-Jason-

This episode runs 59 minutes long. Send us any questions or suggestions to podcast@runningdtw.com

Download Bonus Episode 1

-Matt

Hint: Me.

-Jason-

Also, Quantom of Solace came out this last Tuesday, if you don’t have it, go get it.

I was thinking of setting up a twitter account, but the real question is if any of you would be interested in following me through my daily tweets. If so, let me know by dropping me a line.

Lastly, if you were wanting to be a part of the forums and didn’t get the activation e-mail for your account due to spam filters or internet ghouls drop Matt a line to fix it and start posting, you’ll need to send him the username you were aiming to use and he can do it manually. While you’re waiting for that to go through, let us know what sections are missing from our forums and boom, they’ll appear… if they’re appropriate of course.

Have fun kids.

-Jason-

If you registered for the forums but never received an activation email please send an email to matt@runningdtw.com with the user name you registered with and I can manually activate your forum account.

-Matt

Today I am going to a car lot and telling them exactly what I want, since I already know what car I want, I do my research. Right now I have 3 cars lined up if for some reason one falls through, you know, backups. Either way though I am looking at getting a car 7 years newer and with roughly 130,000 miles less. Yeah, that 130,000 alone is a lot.

Once this is all said and done I’ll make sure I put up my farewell hug picture to my car of roughly six years, the picture of me giving the hello hump to the new car, and finally the before and after pictures of my haircut… so to say. Haircut is putting it lightly. It’s more of a mauling really.

Have fun kids.

-Jason-

Supernatural
The Dresden Files
Heroes
The Unit
Burn Notice

This episode is a short one, coming in at 36 minutes.  Leave a comment below or visit the forums if you want to talk about the episode.  Send any emails to podcast@runningdtw.com.

Download Episode 16

We go over our weeks and talk about the recent BSG episode. I talk about our up coming LAN party and how I have been playing some FPS games for the first time in a long time.

We start in on our main topic, the Character Builder. We go over our first impressions and do a walk through of creating a character.

Check out the demo for the Character Builder here.

This episode runs 72 minutes. Leave a comment below or visit the forums if you want to talk about the episode. Send any emails to podcast@runningdtw.com.

Download Episode 15

Even though Seth on the easiest setting can be beaten without too much trouble, i decided to try something out. I found a 100% sure fire way to get Akuma and Gouken in just 3 short arcade runs once you unlock the rest of the characters.

Firstly, do exactly as the blog from capcom told you to do, just add in something I like to call “the safety switch”. What do I mean by this? What I mean is have a 2nd controller hooked up, connected, whatever, to your console. What this allows you to do is interrupt and basically restart a fight if things aren’t going your way by pressing start on the 2nd controller, then you can quickly beat the uncontrolled player and get back to things at hand.

When you hit start on the 2nd controller, win, and go back, it’s as if you just started that fight for the first time. Didn’t get the first attack you needed that fight? Hit start. Looks like you’re going to lose? Hit start. It’s that easy.

By abusing the system properly you won’t have to go through arcade over and over again to get Akuma or Gouken. Now I know this isn’t fun and is horribly cheap, but it allows you to fill up your roster quickly, in case you have friends coming over or what not.

There you go my little children, the “safety switch”.

-Jason-

P.S. Yes I did end up unlocking Akuma and Gouken this way when I was testing them but have since gone though arcade again, fought them both, and beat them both, as a regular person would. Now to try it on a harder difficulty setting.

I’ve gone through the game with a few people to see what they’re like and when I found out one of my favorites went more or less untouched I hoped online with him to find out that well… I suck. There was the occasional fight where I put up a struggle and almost won, but generally I found people who were all sorts of crazy good at Street Fighting who put me in the corner where I apparently belonged. The thing about these people is their little signs would be the ones that say “go easy on me” or “in training”. Only one of the people who stomped me into the ground had an appropriate sign, which said “don’t hold back”, and I can see why.

One of my friends is a big Akuma fan, and I can see why, Akuma has always felt horribly unbalanced compared to a lot of the other characters in my opinion. Which means when he comes over here soon to play he’ll expect me to have Akuma unlocked for him, I’m thinking I might not go about that. Not like I use him, besides, he’s a pain to unlock.

What I am saying though is if you have Street Fighter 4 for the PS3 and want to get a match in, hit me up. I’d love to get a game of Street Fighter in with you guys or most any other game really. My PSN is sarantis and Xbox Live is sarantis118. Feel free to add me, just make sure you let me know you found me here.

I look forward to being pwned by you all.

-Jason-

With all four of us on the mics we get off the main topic a lot but what’s new. Editing also my seem a little below standard as we tend to talk over each other a little more.

Our topic of discussion is Campaign Settings: Published vs Homebrew. We all give some pros and cons for each and we each state which is our prefered type of setting. Tim and I come at this from mostly a DMs view point, while Jason and Andrew talk mostly from a players view.

This episode runs 57 minutes. Leave a comment below or visit the forums if you want to talk about the episode. Send any emails to podcast@runningdtw.com.

Download Episode 14

Here are the links to the couple of side topics we start out talking about.
A Different Point of View
Radio Rivendale

This episode runs 56 minutes. Visit our site: www.runningdtw.com To discuss this episode or anything else, head to the forums or email us at podcast@runningdtw.com

Download Episode 13

Do a search for “ddi” and delete those files, simple as that.

The character builder will toss files not just into the Wizards of the Coast main program folder, but also make folders in your “My Documents” and “My Pictures” folders as well. Uninstalling will get rid of the main Wizards of the Coast folder but the two DDI folders in your “my documents” and “my pictures” area will remain intact. From what I can tell if these folders stick around it’ll cause the character builder to grab it’s head and scream and cry a lot. If you just uninstalled the beta and find yourself not able to update, it’s probably due to some beta files left over in these folders.

I’ve got mine fully up and running now and I wish you all the luck, let me know how it goes for you all.

-Jason-

First upon downloading the file to download the actual setup file it told me that I did not have the downloaded file that my downloaded file downloaded in order to setup the actual program, which was odd since I was staring straight at it. I go to re-run the downloaded programs download program and then it works fine, not sure why it did this time but thats cool. 

After installing it tells me there is an update for it, umm… okay? I go to get the update and the updater screams and cries at me, insisting there was an error of sorts, then it crashes, but not fully. I close out and start it up again for it to do the exact same thing. I go and delete everything thinking maybe I just had a weird install, so I uninstall and do it all over again… and it all happens again.

As of right now even though the character builder is telling me there’s an update, it also won’t let me get it. 

So far I haven’t noticed anything major when actually using the program and am glad to see it out now. Personally this thing is going to be a friggin time saver.

-Jason-

-Matt

Banter:
How our holidays went.
Avatar
Battlestar Galactica and Supernatural returning soon.

Topic:
We discuss different terrain features you can add to your encounters to add variety to your basic battleground.

This episode runs 67 minutes. Visit our site: www.runningdtw.com To discuss this episode or anything else, head to the forums or email us at podcast@runningdtw.com

Download Episode 12

Season 4.0 is out now, and it is available at many fine establishments. If you are dieing to get into the series then there is an amazon specific bundle that contains seasons 1 through 3 ine a nice little package. You can snag it at amazon or target only apparently.

Don’t forget, that in less than two weeks the final episodes of Battlestar Galactica will air on the Sci Fi channel. It retuns on the 16th of January to be exact, that’s a Friday by the way. In the meantime you can watch their 10 part webisode series, which isn’t bad at all. 

If you need to catch up on the last few episodes of season 4.0 before you watch 4.5 (aka The Final Episodes) then you can hit up Hulu if you don’t feel like buying season 4.0. Besides, Hulu rocks. Seriously, they’ve become better than I remember. Keep on truckin’ Hulu.

Well, that’s all the news for now. Have fun kids.

-Jason-

P.S. If everything goes right, you may have a new podcast come Monday.

In the meantime a new article has come out from Wizards regarding the next new class from the players hanbook 2. If you read carefully, you might have noticed this class listed in the minotaur article. That is now 3 out of 4 roles with the primal power source. In case you’ve forgotten you have the druid for controlling, barbarian for striking, and now this class for defending. There weren’t a lot of nature based classes before, back in the 3.5 ed days, and I really wonder exactly what they’ll use for the leader class role. Hmm… speculation time!

We talk a lot about TV shows and just in case you might have forgotten, a lot of them are finally in swing again after the holidays. Namely: House M.D., Dexter, Sanctuary, and the final episodes of Battlestar Galactica. Now these are really only the shows I watch heavily and almost religiously for some.

I’d talk about exactly what I’ve come to love and hate about the Clone Wars series, but I’ve been talking too long already.

Have fun kids.

-Jason-

Either way, Happy new year! Hopefully next year we won’t get any of those stupid 200X glasses, well okay it’d be silly to have them seeing as how it’ll be 2010 and a set of 200X glasses would just be wrong numerically… you get my point darn it. I want those friggin glasses gone!

As of right now you know Matt said we’ll be back come January but honestly I would expect mid January, wild guess here. We’ve got a few things we’re brewing up and a few things I want to toss out to him still yet so who know what we’ll be like come full swing of the new year!

-Jason-

We will be back with a new episode in January.

Banter:
Jason talks about his week of things breaking on him.
We talk about our recent holidays.
Supernatural
World of Warcraft
Death Knights
QuestHelper – quest addon
Lightheaded – show comments for quests from wowhead

Topic:
Does DnD 4e = WoW?

This episode runs 53 minutes. Visit our site: www.runningdtw.com To discuss this episode or anything else, head to the forums or email us at podcast@runningdtw.com

Download Episode 11

-Matt

Matt has been using Chrome for awhile and I’m rather sad I didn’t use it sooner. I tossed aside Firefox about as quickly as I tossed aside IE for Firefox when I found that, which was fast. The one thing I’m curious about is if Chrome will know when a newer version is out and update itself, like Firefox. I know someone out there has an answer, and Matt probably does too, but hey, I can’t get all of my information through him.

Anyway, I highly suggest you all go check it out. Remember though that Chrome is built around multicore processors, so if you don’t have one it may feel slower than Firefox or IE 7.

Have fun kids.

-Jason- (jason at runningdtw dot com) 

I’m not sure if I should be happy about this or slightly sad. Maybe once we know more I will be able to have true feelings on it.

-Jason-

We talk a bit about the system and how it handles a few differnt mechanics, specifically the Force and space combat. We also look at how it bridges the gap between 3.5 and 4th edition rules. Lastly, we breifly talk about the additional books that have been released for the system.

This episode comes in at about an hour. To discuss this episode or anything else, head to the forums or email us at podcast@runningdtw.com

Download Episode 10

-Matt

-Jason-
jason at runningdtw dot com
send me some love (or hate)!

-Matt

We start off talking about the shows we have been watching recently.
Eureka
Supernatural
House
Dexter
Sanctuary
Strange Wilderness

On to the topic of Magic Items in 4th Edition.

This episode comes in at about an hour. To discuss this episode or anything else, head to the forums or email us at podcast@runningdtw.com

Download Episode 9

-Matt

We start out talking about the 4th season of Battlestar Galactica, where Jason gets on the subject of the anatomy of male Cylons…  We also talk about some recent video game releases including Fable 2 and Saints Row 2.

On topic we start out talking about the Swordmage from the Forgotten Realms Player’s Guide. We briefly cover this new Defender from the Arcane power source.

Next up we talk about the Artificer playtest article from the July issue of Dragon magazine. We talk about our experiences with the Artificer from 3rd edition and our impressions of how the class is looking for 4th edition as a Leader from the Arcane power source.

Last, we look at the Barbarian play test from the October issue of Dragon magazine. This Striker from the new Primal power source has both Jason and myself wanting to roll one up to test out.

This episode comes in at about an hour. To discuss this episode or anything else, head to the forums or email us at podcast@runningdtw.com

Download Episode 8

Banter Items:
Battlestar Galactica
Least I Could Do Link
M. Night Shyamalan and his movies
Caprica TV series

Main Topics:
We talk about the Warforged and the Gnoll articles released in Dragon magazine. We discuss the expanded info about the races culture. We also go over the revised racial powers, new racial feats, and paragon paths for these races.

When talking about Gnolls, we compare them to Reavers from Firefly

Jason talks a bit about Forgotten Realms. I jump in about some of what I have heard about Forgotten Realms, as well as what I have heard about what is planned for Eberron.

We also breifly mention the Genasi and the Drow (just another elf).

This episode comes in at about an hour. To discuss this episode or anything else, head to the forums or email us at podcast@runningdtw.com

Download Episode 7

-Matt

While episode 7 will not be using this new equipment, episode 8 most definately will be. It should be rather, that is if Matt can pry me away from the mixer while I randomly twist its knobs and pretend I’m aboard some spaceship on a mission.

Hey, when something has that many knobs and bright lights, you can’t look at it and not think of some 80’s space tv show console.

-Jason-

Current:
Dungeon and Dragon Magazines
The Rules Compendium
Bonus Tools: Ability Generator and Encounter Builder

Future:
Character Builder
Character Visualizer
Dungeon Mapper
Virtual Game Table

Here is the picture of the shifter in Speed Racer, Jason was talking about.

This episode runs a little over an hour. To discuss this episode or anything else, head to the forums or email us at podcast@runningdtw.com

Download Episode 6

-Matt

-Jason-

We’ve also been a bit busy looking into some new recording equipment, mainly because we are slowly becoming dissatisfied with our current equipment, which wasn’t much honestly. Once we get all that bought and settled in we’ll sound crisper and cleaner than ever. Booya! Right? Meh, maybe I’m the only one to get excited over these sort of things.

In the meantime I highly suggest reading this webcomic, it is by far and far my favorite out there on that interweb thing.

And don’t forget, you can e-mail us with any comments, concerns, ideas, etc. To reach myself (Jason) or Matt individually send us mail to “[our name] at runningdtw.com” or the podcast in general at “podcast at runningdtw.com”

-Jason-

Have fun kids!

-Matt

Tools we use:
RPTools
Ventrilo

We get off topic a lot in this episode, as Tim and I go on talking about different gaming moments.

Download Episode 5

-Matt

We change it up a little this week and start out with some banter talk. We talk about, Mario Kart DS, Battlestar Galactica, the Dresden Files, Pineapple Express, the Clone Wars movie, and the new James Bond coming out later this year.

Our topic of the week is Battlemats and Minis.   We discuss the various options we have used over the course of our gaming. We also discuss the importance of using a battlemat in Dungeons and Dragons through the various editions of the game.

We get a little off topic in a few places, but manage to bring it back around to topic.

Episode runs about 1 hour. Head to the forums or email us to discuss this episode or anything else.

Download Episode 4

-Matt

Character Sheets:

WOTC’s character sheet
Shado’s landscape character sheet
Mad Irishman’s character sheet

Power Cards:
Ander’s Core Complete Set
Magic Set Editor
Kiznit’s Combat Crib Sheet

Condition Cards by Jim Goings from Dragon’s Avenue

The episode runs about 46 minutes long. Head to the forums to discuss this episode or anything else.

Download Episode 3

-Matt

So Enjoy our ramblings about 4th Edition in general and its comparison to previous editions of Dungeons and Dragons.

-Matt

Download here or listen below.