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I've started posting Chapter 3 of my story, Getting Educated, over in the forums at The Podge Cast. Pug gets his first recording session, Jorgen appears again, and Harry starts looking for a place to brush up on his bodyguard skills. The newest material is in the last three posts. I'm trying to break it up a bit to avoid the "wall-o'-text" effect you get when posting material online.
Total word count is up to 32,000+ words after three years of off-and-on work. How long will it be when it finishes? Heck if I know. Easily twice as large as it is now. I'm just getting through the "Introduce Things" stage of the story and things are starting to move forward plot-wise.
Technically, this should probably be Chapter 4 as Chapter 1 was crazy long and should have been broken up into two chapters - one for arrival at D'Aubainne International Terminal and getting to the University and a second for getting things started at the University. Maybe a third as well, but I'm not certain about that. I'll review that once I'm done with the story and shift into serious edit mode. My current goal is to write and post every two weeks, which will keep me writing rather than putting it off until later. Major road block? My wife wanting as much of my time as she can get. This is in no way a burden, but writing is solitary work, so some balance is necessary. We've been hanging out at the local Borders every so often, with me writing in their cafe while she reads a book or magazines or some manga. We're both avaricious readers, so this gets her reading fix in without breaking our household budget and we are both spending time together out of the house. (She works at home, so this is very essential for her, plus it is easier for me to write away from the 1001 distractions that exist in my home.)
That's it for now. Later!
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My wife asked “How can you stare at a computer screen all day at work and then come home and stare at it all night?” I just realized that the real answer to this question is “Because I’m not looking at the screen itself – I’m seeing what I’m reading/writing.” At work (where I am a tech writer and editor), I’m not seeing the monitor but the words. I’m mentally visualizing what the words are saying/describing, and verifying that what they say is what the author meant and that they make sense. Grammar is the structure I hang the images on, and if it is not correct (provides a false image or fails to integrate with the rest), I can see it and fix it. Similarly, when I’m writing, I’m not seeing the monitor but the action unfolding in my head as though I was there. I “hear” the dialog in the voices of those speaking (or at least what I think those voices should sound like). The same when I’m reading something online: I don’t see the words, but the scenes the words are describing (or the actual images in the case of a visual presentation, whether a webcomic or video). How can I stare at a screen all day and all night? I don’t. The screen is just a medium I stare through to see other things. Who’d want to stare at a monitor all day? They’re boring lumps of plastic that do nothing.
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I read comic books.
Yes, I read comic books. Enough so that my wife and I have a pull-subscription at our local shop. I get between 5 and 7 titles each month, depending upon mini-series or one-offs or just freaking rare issues (e.g., Planetary #27, which took something like 2 YEARS to come out after #26).
I buy nothing from Marvel that isn't a European mini-series reprint, because I know Marvel had nothing to do with the writing on those and as they are only 3-5 issues each, it limits the amount of money I have to give to Marvel.
I used to read every title Marvel used to put out, up until 1986, when the Mutant Massacre storyline ran. I started dropping Marvel titles at that point. By 1988, the end of my second year in college, I had dropped everything Marvel put out. The art had dropped off and the storylines became more about setting up the next big fight rather than actual character interaction. And let's not talk about the Big Boobs era in the 90's.
Right now, virtually everything I read (comic book-wise) comes from Dark Horse or one of the other small presses. The artwork is consistently good and the stories are actual stories. And the heroes are heroes.
This morning I spent time looking through Marvel Previews #75. It's their advertisement book on upcoming material, showcasing what's going on in their titles and where things are going. It's their way to entice stores and readers into ordering their material.
For me, it was the biggest and best argument against ever buying anything they ever put out ever again.
Everything was either a "shocking betrayal", a "shocking plot twist", a "shocking conclusion", or the start of a war. Not a fight, a war. There don't seem to be any fights in the Marvel universe, only war. (Have they been cribbing notes from Games Workshop?) War against the Asgardians, war against the Olympians, war against anyone and everything.
(BTW, those quotes above are actual quotes, not paraphrases that I'm trying to draw attention to.)
I've been buying and reading my own comics since the late 70's and read the (remaining) collection of my dad (covering the end of the Golden Age) and that of one of my uncles (covering the beginning of the Silver Age, including Fantastic Four #1). So I have a sense of history of comic books and the changes that have happened over time. It wasn't all art and some of it was downright silly (thank you Comics Code Authority). What I remember most is stories and character development.
Do I want comics without conflict, where everything is happy and nice? Hell no. I read Usagi Yojimbo, a samurai comic with deaths in it, and all the Hellboy-related comics, which are almost by definition dark stories. But none of what I currently read has combat for combat's sake (except maybe Groo, and then it's to make a specific point about what an idiot Groo is). Everything in Marvel Preview emphasizes the fact that there is combat, not conflict, but combat and it's gonna get ugly before it's over-style of combat at that. And EVERY title is like that.
Want kids to freak about what their kids are reading? Give them Marvel Preview, any issue. That aught to do it. Heck, I no longer want to even look at their stuff, let alone pay money for it.
That's it for now. Later!
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So here are the various links I promised:
Getting Educated - Chapter 1 and most of Chapter 2 of my current novel. I'll be completing Chapter 2 this month and go for as long as I can fit time for. My goal is to get much farther along this month as my NaNoWriMo effort. Deadlines are wonderful for focusing my mind.
The Bold and The Determined - Session synopses of the superhero game I'm running. Currently only two sessions. The wiki has a good deal of background info that I'm adding to as I need it. It is reasonably organized.
Naze Valley Rangers - Session synopses of the fantasy game I'm running. There are many sessions worth of material, scroll down to Little Hungers, Part 1, to get started. The wiki is not as organized, being my first wiki on this site. I'll be developing a Table of Contents in the future based on feedback.
Time to go fix dinner. Later!
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So after my last posting wherein I unloaded a bunch of personal baggage to my friends so I could get past it (which helped tremendously BTW, so thank you very much for listening), I need to post something of an update.
My wife has clients! The business conference she attended two weekends ago was a bust for content, but generated many business leads and she has work this week. :) Checks will be cut and cash will start flowing in the positive direction! :D So things are starting to look up there.
As to writing, I am returning to Getting Educated this month, partly as part of NaNoWriMo, but mostly to get more story out of my head and written down. Plus, David at The Podge Cast was talking smack about me never finishing, and the best way to answer that is to finish. Or at least write some more until I finish. I'll post a link to the part that is available for folks to read when I get to a computer system that does not block game sites - it's posted in the forums at The Podge Cast (see above link) if you'd like to go looking for it now. Or maybe David will read this and post the link in the comments. Could happen.
I've managed to (mostly) clear my writing schedule so I can devote time to this. My adventure writing for my two active campaigns (The Bold and The Determined - a superhero game with two teams of superheroes running in the same city, and Naze valley Rangers - a fantasy game where the PCs are a team in the service of the local Count, keeping the frontiers safe) has been set aside for our traditional holiday hiatus, wherein we have great difficulty scheduling games. My Pathfinder campaign has a session this month, but it is the completion of last months adventure, Pungent Spices (wherein a character died and the adventure was diverted for a way to bring him back - man, "wherein" seems to be my word for the day), and the only thing I need to do is draw a map for the final encounter. Which reminds me, I need to post the adventure summary on Obsidian Portal, again once I get to a system that does not have a game filter active.
That's it for now. Thank you for reading.
Later!
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The weeks been busy, prepping for Saturday (yesterday) and beating a deadline at the Dayjob that I'm a bit slow on letting folks know how the guest lecture went.
It went cool.
I switched up the order I covered stuff, which seemed to work out well. Rather than mentioning a topic in the "Yea Me!" section and then trying to come back to it, I talked about the topics as I brought them up. Made the "Yea Me!" section longer, but I think the talk as a whole was more coherent.
In the Q&A section at the end, I illustrated some points I made and answered questions using (sanitized) stories from the Dayjob, which went over well. Turns out about half the class was college students and the other half people taking work-related classes as part of their continuing education. This is important as 4 or 5 guys were actual engineers (as opposed to engineering majors) and a lot of my job is translating Engineering into English and so I use engineers as examples fairly often. Did not know the actual mix until after all the students left. Luckily, I HAD pointed out that I use engineers as example as they are the folks I work with mostly and I wasn't TOO harsh on their writing skills.
I got good reactions from the class when I pointed out that no matter how good you are in whatever field, if you cannot communicate effectively, you are pretty much useless to your employers. Employers don't like having to spend almost as much money they paid you to do work trying to figure out what you did later when you've left. this was an eye-opener for several folks.
Afterward, the prof asked if she could keep asking me back for later semesters, so I did well enough to be asked back. I said "yes" and I look forward to doing it again. It'll still give me some butterflies just before, but that apparently doesn't show through, so I'm covered there.
Later!
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Wednesday I'm giving a guest lecture at Lone Star College - Montgomery at a friend's Technical Writing class (she's the professor). I gave a similar speech last spring, but there's some things I want to change around and I've been in major avoidance mode for a week.
So now I'm posting about it. Go figure.
I'm not really keen on public speaking. It makes me nervous and I worry that I'm spinning off tangent and no one cares. I like conversations better. More immediate feedback and it is easier to direct what I'm saying. Plus, you know, not having to stand up in front of a room full of people who are all staring at you.
<deep breath>
It should go fine. I just need to actually focus on prepping for it and I've already squandered the day. Sigh...
Later!
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I still live - just been mighty, mighty busy getting a new campaign up and running and then there's the Dayjob.
The campaign is a superhero one and can be found on Obsidian Portal.
The new project I'm on for the Dayjob has Internet access, but blocks LiveJournal, so I can't post during lunch and by the time I get home, I've got tons of "Honey-do's", not to mention actually getting projects done. (Man, that's a long sentence.)
So, sorry about the scarcity - I'll be back more regular now.
But right now, 6-hour slow-cooked brisket calls my name...
Later!
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My wife's been ill, so most of my free time after the Dayjob is being spent doing more around the house so she doesn't have too. It's good to take care of a loved one.
The laptop was a repaired with a replacement fan and heatsink and is working better than fine. The Dell repair service is worth whatever the Dayjob pays for it.
Ran my Pathfinder game last Saturday for a full group minus the new guy who had some Reserve work he had to do. The fight started in an ambush and the PCs actually retreated. This was cool from a DM perspective for several different reasons. One, it means the players respect the threat level enough to pull their characters out of a dangerous situation. It also means that their characters are more than stats and lead to some good roleplaying, including the team leader waiting to make certain her team was safely out before finally leaving herself.
They of course spent some time resupplying and then went back and kicked some major butt, but that's the response I was interested in evoking. I've seen many a game where the players will press on, either believing the DM won't kill their character of not really taking into effect that their character is really close to death and should start thinking about saving themselves (that is, no roleplaying).
It's a difficult balance for DM: make the threat serious enough the players treat it with respect but not so deadly they feel there is little their character can do to survive but not so easy there player characters just waltz through it with no fear.
I'm writing the session summary, but, as mentioned above, I'm a little short on time right now to get it done. It should be posted to the Obsidian Portal site tomorrow of Friday and I'll post a link here for those interested.
Now I have some dishes to put in a machine.
Later!
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So I sat with the Dell technician as he replaced the cooling fan in my laptop, which seems to have fixed the issue I was facing. Dayjob machine all fixed now.
To do this, he literally had to take the laptop completely apart. When he finally pulled the old one out, the only thing left was the internal chassis. Even the monitor was disconnected and set aside. Then he put it all back together again.
Now I used to work PC support for desktop units, so I'm familiar with the insides of a PC. I've even removed all the "owner accessible" items from a Compaq laptop, never anything to this level. Despite completely disassembling the laptop and then reassembling, it took all of 10 minutes, tops. I think my best time for a complete disassembly of a desktop unit is about 10 minutes, let alone putting everything back. So this was major cool for me.
Long story short (too late!), my laptop is up and whole again.
...Because some of you asked in person.
Later!
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So the laptop I use is assigned to me by my Dayjob. I tend to use it for many things, mostly communication and reading webcomics. I also store a lot of my gaming notes on it, which makes it a nigh indispensable tool.
I think it is dying.
Specifically, I think the cooling system for the CPU is in the process of failing, if it has not failed already. I've started getting memory errors when I run it for many hours and today it failed to load up my profile. It makes a rattling noise periodically that is definitely on the side of the CPU and not the hard drive.
I'm waiting for a friend with a ginormous USB hard drive to get here so I can pull all my data off in one go before trying to reboot. Like, 31.5 GB of data. Only about 10 of which is Music. The rest is reference materials and documents - mine or the Dayjob's.
So long story short, I may go offline for a bit until I get this laptop fixed (preferably replaced) by the dayjob IT or switch to my old laptop (8+ years old to be specific).
Later!
UPDATE: Dell should be sending a technician Monday to replace the cooling fan, which may be all that needs to be done. We'll see.
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It's been a bit since I last posted. I've been doing things, but not a lot that seems postable.
I've realized I got out of the habit of writing in general, so I'm consciously moving back there, but damn, there is a never ending parade of things that "have to be done first" so I can get some uninterrupted writing time. This phase won't last forever, but it is...aggravating wading through it all when all I want to do is sit and write for a couple of hours.
I have a story I want to get back to (not the least so ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) bafadam has more to read) so I can actually finish it. I'd like to get the major plot running by the end of this year. I'm so close to it that I can smell it (I've been able to see it since February this year).
I also have some games I'm running that are taking up time, but I begrudge them not the time. Especially the superhero game, which starts September 12th. I'll post the Obsidian Portal page here Labor Day weekend or there abouts as I'll have enough material posted by then to justify the interest and time of my readership of, well, however many folks are reading this.
That's it for now. There are "things that must be done" that I have to go and do now.
I need a vacation from my free time.
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Saturday was my wife's birthday and we traveled across most of Houston, going to places we liked and she wanted to go to.
First was the breakfast buffet at Baba Yega's. Tasty-tasty fruit, scrambled eggs, muffins, and bacon. My wife had the waffles with cinnamon-banana syrup (made with slices of banana, syrup, and tons of cinnamon) instead of the bacon. We ate until we were stuffed silly.
The we went to the Lego store. Glee! So after buying a couple buckets of spare parts and learning that the new Space Police (cool aliens!) sets won't arrive until Monday (today, actually), we headed out and wandered the mall for a bit, mostly remembering why we don't do that very much anymore.
Then we made the drove to the Rice Village area, detouring along Beltway 8 to avoid a 7 mile stretch of traffic on I-45. There we ate a small lunch at Mi Luna. My wife was wilting from the heat and it had been hours since breakfast, so we got a few tapas and cooled off. From there we stopped at The Path of Tea to restock one of my wife's favorite teas (Earl Grey Green Tea if you are interested) and then Whole Foods to get a few other things.
At this point we were beat by the heat, even with Scoot's A/C (Scoot is metallic green, a color no longer offered). We headed back north to home to catch a quick nap while waiting for my wife's BFF from high school to call so we could arrange a dinner or something. As this was a last minute thing, the timing never worked out so we went to Chuy's for an excellent dinner.
Sunday, we had homemade breakfast, cooked by myself, and breakfast is my area of specialty. A bit later my wife and a friend went to see Night at the Museum 2. It had Ben Stiller being slapped by monkeys - my wife loved it.
Me? I did research for my idea for a new Champions campaign - even Ben Stiller being slapped by monkeys was not enough for me to see that movie. More on the campaign idea as I get it fleshed out.
That's about it. A good time was had by all and I scored bonus husband points. :)
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So here is how June played out:
( Cranky stuff... )
Enough grousing.
I last promised to talk about cliff diving in Jamaica. The other folks at the villa (friends of the bride and groom as opposed to us, the groom's family) found an ATV ride tourist-y thing that ended with cliff jumping at the end. The ATV part was US$75 per person. The cliff jumping was FREE. Guess which part we choose to do and which part we kicked to the curb?
( Read more... )
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So I was sick for a week (see previous post) then worked like mad to get things wrapped at the Dayjob and get all the stuff I needed to take with me to Jamaica, which left zero time for posting or anything else online.
But now I'm back hand have a bit of time to type.
My wife and I went to Jamaica to be at her brother's wedding. we went with a large group (including my in-laws) who rented a villa "just down the road" from where the villa where the wedding was going was going to happen. I put "just down the road" in quotes as there was nothing "down" involved and, in some places, very little road for that matter.
Our villa was up the mountain, along roads that were at a 45 degrees angle or steeper. At one point we turned where the completely paved road ended and onto the partially paved and partially washed-out road started, still heading up. We were in a bus for 22 people with a great driver (named Denton) and so while initially worried about the road condition in parts, we quickly learned confidence in his driving.
The villa was great and had two ladies working there, Grace and Cadian (pronounced like "Katy-Ann", so much so that that is what we thought her name was until the last day). They were great hostesses and cooks and took care of us very well. I'm working on getting a PhotoBucket account up for all the wedding photos, but it keeps failing with no explanation why. I'll post a link once it gets straightened out. The scenery from the villa was amazing. We could see 10-15 miles (possibly more) with the mountains on our left and the ocean on our right. It was beautiful.
It was also hot and humid with minimal air conditioning and mosquito netting over every bed (although that was not really necessary for the first few nights due the the heavy, 30-minute rains in the afternoons).
I'll type more later this week, including the cliff diving we did. Not watched, DID.
Later!
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There are many things I hate about being sick.
Right now its the insomnia from the combination of 24 hour Sudafed and not doing a lot to tire myself out.
Scratch that - it's the itchy nose and random sneezing.
But the cough that won't catch? I REALLY hate that. Makes sleeping difficult. Makes sleeping next to my wife without waking her up every 5-10 minutes impossible.
So I got out of bed an hour earlier than when I'm going to work (did I mention this is now my third sick day in a row?) and read from a Christmas gift I finally got to - Cartogaphia: Mapping Civilizations, by Vincent Virga. It's a bid coffee-table sized hardback that works its way through the history of map-making, a topic I have some interest in due to my hobbies. I'm about half way through it now and it has been an educational read. It explains a lot about why maps were drawn the way they were and provides excellent examples along the way. The part on Chinese map-making was particularly good and inspired me to try some different things in my own map-making. Now if only I could draw well...
I have an Adventure Log update to write for Obsidian Portal for my Naze Valley Rangers campaign. I updated the wiki with information about New Crosswalshire, a small city the PCs will be visiting soon, now that they have put an end to the ghoul threat (again, still need to write that up).
That's it for now. I need to go take some more Sudafed and maybe make some breakfast before my wife gets up. Then maybe I'll try and get some sleep. If my nose and the cough will let me.
feh.
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So I've discovered a paradox at my Dayjob.
In many projects, there is a point where the client is paying us to sit and look busy while they finish their stuff so we can do the job they hired us to do. Sometimes this is a couple of hours, sometimes it is a couple of weeks. This is the second project I've been on where it is measured in months. Yes, MONTHS.
But that's not what I'm here to talk about (today).
Normally during this slack time, I get a lot of writing done on my personal projects. I work in Word and I write in Word and I use very similar templates in both, so I look busy on work either way. Previously, I was a worker bee and not management and so I had plenty of time to my self. This time, I'm part of management and during this slack time, I am paradoxically very busy. So busy that I had to take time off from that project to get any time to do work on another project assigned to me that I was supposed to be able to work on during the slack time.
So what keeps management busy during slack time? Process updates, one-off format jobs, make-work from the client, stuff like that. PLUS, I have an entire team of folks asking me what to do while we're waiting. As a professional I have to set an example and find things to keep them from going stir-crazy, most of which has been training and data collection for the client. So despite being on the project for 4 months and the work we were hired to do being another month away, I'm actually very, very busy.
My team? Not so much.
Now once the work appears, the team will be VERY busy, while I keep everything on track and work assigned. This will leave me with tons of free time.
To recap:
So when there's no work, management is busy and the team isn't.
When there's work, the team is busy and the management isn't.
Later!
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First off, No, I haven't seen the Star Trek movie yet. That will happen this weekend. Yes, I've heard it rocks, I just haven't taken the time to see it yet.
Why? Well mostly because I had other stuff going on. Like the session 2 of The Mountain Kings, which was run by 4 of 5 last Saturday. She has also started an Obsidian Portal page for the campaign. Once set up a bit more, I'll start posting my campaign journal for that campaign there.
I'm currently working on the next part of Little Hungers, my current Pathfinder game. I'm struggling with the resolution of the current sub-arc (recurring villain or let the PCs kill him?), so I'll need the next two weeks to work out a satisfying resolution. I'd go into details, but at least one of the players is one of my small audience here, so I'll refrain. You can of course read the campaign log of what has happened here.
That's it for this week.
Later!
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Last Tuesday was jury duty for me. I got picked. The case itself was OK (civil court - a fender bender damages case) and I was OK serving as I consider it one of my few duties as an American (the others are voting and complaining about taxes). The biggest drag was getting to the actual trial.
I arrived downtown at 7:15 am on the bus so I wouldn't have to pay for parking (plus free ride with a jury summons). Got to the jurist rally point and waited until 8:30 when they started assigning us to pools. Not bad, just time consuming. I read part of the GM's section of the Spycraft 2.0 rules while waiting.
I was part of the 6th group for the day. We were lined up, moved off to another hallway, and assigned a juror number. There were 26 of us in this particular group and they only needed six people. I was number three.
Then we marched about three blocks away to the civil court building (as opposed to the criminal court or juvenile court buildings). Through security and then up to the floor with the actual courts. There we hung around for a bit until they were ready for us to come in.
Next we do the voir dire, where the attorneys decide who the want or don't want on the jury. The plaintiff's attorney basically told the folks on the back row "you aren't getting picked, so I'm not going to ask you guys any questions." I was on the front row and got asked questions. At one point I was certain that my answer got me dropped as after I gave it, the plaintiff's other lawyer started scribbling something down. In hindsight, it probably was something like "this guy understands, we have to have him."
So once both sides talk at us a while, we get excused outside while they work out who's been selected. I notice a TV truck over at the criminal courthouse and think "lucky me."
We get called back in and they start calling out names. "Jurors 1, 2, 3,..." I stopped listening at that point as I didn't care once I got picked. At least I knew what I was doing for the rest of the day.
Once all six of us were in the jury box, they excused the rest and we got sworn in. This was around 11:00 am. The judge explained that we'd take a lunch break at Noon, another break at 3:30, and probably wrap up around 4:30 unless we had to come back tomorrow for jury deliberations. I was hungry at this point, but I could wait another hour. So they started calling witnesses and asking questions to get all the info into the record. We took notes.
Lunch was at a place called "The Cloister". It's in a historic church downtown and catered by a cajun place called Treebeard's. Good food. I had the chicken fried chicken (like chicken fried steak, but with a chicken breast) with mashed potatoes and jalapeno cornbread. Plus a chocolate chip cookie I saved for later. Good move on my part.
After lunch, we returned and the lawyers continued. The plaintiff's lawyers did not appear very competent. If they had not had the stronger position to start with, they would have lost money on this. The defense lawyer was better, but clearly had the weaker position. He brought up some important points on the medical files that we might not have noticed otherwise and saved his client several thousands of dollars.
After both sides were done with the witnesses (there were three: plaintiff, plaintiff's husband, and the defendant), they did summations, listing what monies were being asked for. We missed writing that down. We regretted that during deliberations. So in deliberations we asked things like: is there a police report? What were those amounts again? Are there any photos? All got shot down with the same rubber stamp: "Use what you remember and was entered into evidence and during testimony. No more, no less."
Foo.
So we deliberated for about an hour and a half and rendered our verdict and damages (which we had to borrow a calculator from the bailiff to work out). I figure both sides went home equally unhappy. The defendant had to pay money, but it wasn't as much as the plaintiff was asking for. We did fair by both sides and got to leave at 5:00 pm without needing a second day. Good day all around, if a long one.
the weirdest thing? The judge could have been the twin of my father in looks. Really. He was a little heavier than my dad, but had the same hair, mustache, and face.
That's it for this week. Sorry for the delay, but, you know, jury duty.
Later!
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As much as I'd rather not blog about the weather, we got 10 inches of rain over the last 24 hours (or so). The streets today were "full" to say the least. And just in time for morning rush hour, too.
This past weekend I ran the next session of Naze Valley Rangers. I was particularly pleased about how this came out, even though I almost had a TPK at the end. My players wised up that this was more dangerous than they could handle and bugged out of there to heal and regroup.
This is harder for a GM to achieve than you might think.
Players have a tendency to lead with their chin (or at least SOME players do) and the GMs choice is kill their character, and everyone else's, or let them get away with it. Now while I like big cinematic, over-the-top fun combats, there is a time when a modicum of reality must exert itself. If there is no fear of death (or at least the death of your character), then where is the excitement of the challenge? Of not knowing for certain if your plan of action will work?
On the other hand, more challenge than fun is a bad combination as well. When there is no reasonable chance that your plan will work, why try? I've been a player in this style of campaign and it is no fun and all were short-lived campaigns.
So the fact that I was able to present a credible threat to my players without having to kill all of them or nerfing the villain part way through the fight was very satisfying. And my players are ready to go after the villain again, after a suitable period to heal up and re-provision with some appropriate gear to face an undead nasty. Next session should be very interesting in deed.
Later!
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accomplished
working
grumpy
busy
awake
hungry
chipper
sleepy
contemplative
aggravated