09.30.2009 - Terrence Marks:

Firstly, we made the donation goal for September and we appreciate your support. What will our update schedule be like in October? Erratic, with updates coming in huge bursts.

Firstly, Isabel's grandfather died a few days ago; her aunt died a week before that. Secondly, Isabel has the flu. Thirdly, she's got jury duty in two weeks.

As you can see, it's not shaping up to be a good month.

08.28.2009 - Terrence Marks:

Ok, it was the starter, which we had just replaced a few months back. Fortunately, it was still in warranty and our car is now back up and running. Comics, however, are still being inked.

08.27.2009 - Terrence Marks:

As Isabel and I were leaving the Post Office today, our car wouldn't start. We spent an hour in the sun waiting for a tow so my father-in-law could take a look at it. At the moment, we spent most of the day out when we had not intended to. We're not sure what's wrong with it, and it threw both us and our schedule off today. Comics should be up tomorrow, we hope - it's not like we can go anywhere.

08.22.2009 - Terrence Marks:

So, I picked up D&D 4th edition a week ago. I used to play first edition AD&D, and have followed the second and third editions. What do I think of the new one?

Day 1: Whargbl! They killed Dungeons & Dragons! What happened to lawful neutral? I can't build an int rogue! Two kinds of elves? That's either too many or not enough - maybe both!

Day 2: Wait a minute. They've already ported over bards and gnomes. There's a lot of setting fluff and some of it is quite good. They'll probably bring over everything else that got cut, eventually. Or a third party will make a supplement. I mean, that's what happened with Ravenloft and Planescape in the third edition. Or you could just use the old settings and adjust things yourself. I'm sure that in two more years, they'll have added a dozen types of elves back in, and only a hardcore elf-nerd could actually tell you the difference between High Elves and Grey Elves.

Day 3: I still don't understand warlocks. Are they like sorcerors? Or are wizards like sorcerors now? Spell memorization is gone, right? You can cast magic missle as many times as you want? Is that legal? But it never was that fun being the wizard with one spell who had to stand in the back while the fighters did all the fun stuff. Or, ten levels later, being the fighter who still did 1d8+2 damage while the mages did all the fun stuff.

Day 4: I mean, I never really got gnomes. I mean, as far as race archetypes, I'm totally drawing a blank. I understand dwarves, elves, halflings, goblins, kobolds, and two or three different types of orcs. But gnomes? Ask me to describe gnomes, and all I've got is "short". Not that dragonborn look like a winner at the moment, either.

Day 5: Action points? Neck slot items? Defender and controller character roles? Picking character stats instead of rolling 3d6? Is this D&D or a pen-and-paper version of a MMORPG? It doesn't feel like D&D. But what is the D&D feel? Twenty mildly different types of polearms, monsters attacks that have a 30% chance of killing you (saving throw? not this time. Flat percentage chance for everybody.), and psionics rules that give you a 3% chance of having a massive advantage. I mean, on one level it's the same as replacing "Players have a 40% chance to find the hidden lever" with actual mechanics for spot checks. But seriously, neck slot items? And there are terms they don't define until a hundred pages later. I read about powers doing [W]+3 damage and can't figure out why thieves are hitting things using Wisdom.

Day 6: I still miss lawful neutral. I'm sure modrons will be back, but I want to play a hero who stops the lich-king from destroying the universe because the lich-king hasn't filled out Form 837/b (Removing a Tree from Municipal Property), on the grounds that destroying the universe would remove one or more trees.

Day 7: I realize that all of this, and more, has been discussed by online over the past year or so. If you look at my taste in music, "one year behind the times" is as close as I've gotten in the recent past. I really ought to actually roll up a character - wait, I mean stat out a character using one of the chosen attribute blocks. Yes, I know - the alternative is you end up gaming with the guy who swears he rolled all 18s. I want to like it, but it seems strange. The advantage of waiting a year is that I can see that other folks seem to like it, so it can't be all bad. D&D seems decidedly not-dead at present. When I get time, I'll give it a shot

08.09.2009 - Terrence Marks:

So, what have I been up to lately, besides not updating the blog? Those of you who follow me on Twitter have seen that I've been listening to music, working overtime, and reading. I've been in a state of "too busy to blog", as opposed to "plenty of time, nothing to write about" - I'm usually in one state or another. In the last few months, I've read about two-thirds of the Discworld books, and I recommend them. After reading them, I tried to find out which of the books people liked most and couldn't (though I get the feeling that I like The Amazing Maurice more than most other people do). So here's my list, from favorite to least favorite:

Mort
Night Watch
The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents
Guards! Guards!
Men at Arms
Interesting Times
Wyrd Sisters
Going Postal
The Truth
Pyramids
Hogfather
Lords and Ladies
Carpe Jugulum
Jingo
Monstrous Regiment
Reaper Man
Making Money
Feet of Clay
The Fifth Elephant
Thief of Time
Thud!
Maskerade
The Last Continent
Faust Eric
What say you?

07.16.2009 - Isabel Marks:

Hey folks... so as I'm sure you've noticed, comics have been kind of not happening too regularly over the last few months. Things in my personal life, getting used to new medications that still leave me a little sleepy some days, and a persistent cough that's keeping me up at night have left me feeling creatively drained. To make things more complicated (and I'm sure is in relation to the previous listed issues), I'm having a lot of problems writing the current ND arc. The best way I can sum things up is this: the story is like a huge rock tied to my waist. I can walk around and it go as far as my leash allows me, but I'm still stuck to it and I need to deal with it before I can move forward. This has kind of caused all my creativity to be blocked, which is hurting You Say it First and .net's comics as well. Everything I've been writing has been pretty much unusable at this point. So... I think I need a small break- not a "I'm going to make comics up later" break, but an actual break, with sketches. ND.net comics, however, will be made up. I've post-dated sketches into the comics's archives (.net will come this weekend) and there will be sketches up next week- so at the least there will be something. I'm going to aim for just one more week of sketches, from there I'm just going to admit defeat on the problem topic and do some drastic retooling- if after all this time I can't write this story arc, then it just doesn't want to happen. I'm really sorry for not posting about this sooner, every day for the last two weeks I would hope that would be the day I came out of this funk and scripts would spill out of me, it's happened before... it's just not happening now. I try to be stubborn but I think I need to admit defeat and see if a little relaxing will help things form in my head clearly. I'm really sorry everyone... I've let you all down, thank you so much for putting up with me and my delays. For those who left, even know this won't reach you, I am sorry you gave up on the series, I hope you'll try it again. For those worried that I'm going to never pick up the comic again (and have doubted in the past)... and I say this with all the sincerity in the world... Dude, I've been doing web comics for almost ten years- do you really think I'm going to stop any time soon? It's not going to stop happening.

In happier news... .net wallpapers are now up, I owe the biggest thank you to all you .net people- hopefully I can get something nice done for you all during my week(s) off!

07.09.2009 - Terrence Marks:

Asda Story is the final game in the MMO review series I'm kinda doing. I spent a lot more time on this game than any others. I put it down a few months ago (much like I wrote most of this review months ago, but put it down until now). When I did play, there were new features added every few weeks, which was pretty cool.

It's a 3D game, free to play but with paid content. The art style is anime-influenced, and the target demographic seems to be teenage boys. It had some translation issues, such as referring to all NPCs as "he". These aren't figures in dark cloaks and armor where it could go either way; the predominant theme of the female NPCs is "anime cheesecake". One translates "west of the river" as "east of the river". When you trade items, you're told "It is possible to trade charged items by 24 level". This means, I'm told, "You must be at least level 24 to trade items bought with cash money".
Similarly, the game has a "title" system. Titles were a random mix of nouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives. "Stealthily", "Sworn Clan", "Confident", "Come Back Home", and "Bad Habit".
The good points:

I love the skill system. There's a ladder system. You need to put a total of 5 points into the first row of skills to unlock the second row. You need to put a total of 10 points into the first and second rows to unlock the third, and so on. There are three such ladders, which means there's a bit of strategizing to this. Each ladder has a good mix of attacks, buffs, and support skills. But you don't choose to be a fire mage or a healer or an ice mage. You choose to be a mage, then put points in where you want them, and you need to decide if you want to upgrade your fireball attack or put your points into a minor buff on the healing side to help unlock something really good, for instance.

The bad points:
The camera can be manually moved. But when you turn, the camera doesn't. If you have it pointing North, it'll point North until you move it. The problem is that every single dungeon is a maze of twisty paths that requires the camera to be moved every few seconds.

There are quests - plenty of them. I like having quests. It gives me something to do other than wander out into a field and kill stuff because it's there. The early ones have decent stories (too many RPGs just throw four pages of backstory at you because they think more words will make you care more). The later ones just tell you to kill a couple dozen of something. But quests make you feel like you're doing something worthwhile, that you're working towards a goal. Then about level thirty, the quests stop and it's all about squad-based instanced dungeons. Everything is balanced for an optimized party of six - and because of the skill system, it's hard to tell what your mage is good at. If you have five people, or don't have the right group, it'll be tough going. If you have four people, you die. I was spending more time trying to find a party than I was actually playing. That's when I quit.