1d20+16 (10+5 fire)

Yesterday was a wonderful day.  

You may ask why as you sit there perusing the internet while doing something I imagine to be effortlessly fashionable and chic.  Sipping lattes? Arranging elegant photos into pictorial arrangements? Reviewing high cinema? Updating your beret appreciation blog?

Well the answer is the thus: Yesterday Wizards of the Coast released the version 2 rules of Dungeons and Dragons Miniatures!

It was an exciting time for myself. This game is quite the hobby of mine and a total revamp of the rules could've led to disaster. If they were crummy, it would've rendered the 1,000 of miniatures I own obsolete and sent me careening for some other hobby to indulge in with the guys.

All I could think of was smoking crack. That would've been expensive and weird, so I'm glad the rules are great.

Deeply Uninteresting Geek Tangent: The rules are simple and elegant. They retain strategy while streamlining the game and add or update a number of elements including shifting, champions, charging and ranged targeting. Crits are a concern, but I'll hold judgement until I see them in play.

As socially unacceptable as it is, I've been a Dungeons and Dragons fan for quite some time.

When I first got in to journalism I struggled with the clinical nature of the writing. Removing my opinions led me to believe that it was all a bit dispassionate. I later found out I just wasn't doing it right.

At the time though DnD offered a great antidote; firing the imaginative muscles by writing nutso crap about dwarves and orcs. For someone too lazy to write a novel, it was a great way to write in the days before blogs.

Those who introduced me to it thought my inaugural character 'Gravox the Dwarf' implied a lack of seriousness on my behalf. We soon got over that though.

People slag off the hobby a lot. It's an understandable opinion. DnD conjures images of a group of people wearing paper mache elf ears and talking in olde english through vocoders while they try to imagine what girls truly look like. My experience hasn't been like that. Well, except for one guy...

The dynamic of playing is the same as when a group of guys sit down to play poker.

Well, now that I've sold you on that I can get on to writing about something else. In the meantime, start rolling up your character while I iron your cloak.