As I sat down to write this morning, the first thing that momentarily confused me is I thought this was the fourth session and it was the fifth next time. The reason for this confusion is the dramatic density of the game, which is good. In three sessions we have raided the tomb of a dead God, killed him and took the Heart of Ashura as well as his ancient bow, the Bow of Ashura (all in session one). We've become embroiled in conflicts between ourselves (Morn and Artemis), the local crime boss, the Tieflings and The Cabal as well as raided The Cradle, the floating tomb of a Giant hero and took his ancient Hammer (session two). This session we raided the Northern Tower of The Cabal to kill Althea, Head of the Secret Police, secure the Heart of Ashura (which had been stolen from us, only to be stolen from those who stole it) and rescue Kallista, the half-sister of Artemis.

It's like a fantasy version of Alias, and the above misses out a few other things that are building up.

This session was largely one of action: get into the tower via a network of allies of convenience, go up a few floors and kill Althea, and then go down and rescue Kallista before the rest of The Cabal turn up having sensed Althea's demise. We also hoped to re-secure the Heart of Ashura along the way. We also went into this with Morn wholeheartedly agreeing to help Artemis rescue Kallista, despite Artemis turning Kyia over to The Grub. The action scenes consisted of: defeating the demon Taltos who guards the door to the upper tower, getting through the chamber of summoning, passing through the personal chambers of key Cabal members and then defeating Althea. Once heading down we faced the demon Jacurutu, guardian of the prisoners. A more prosaic summary can be found on the DM's blog.

All the scenes were brilliant. The first combat with Taltos involved Taltos and Morn in a struggle to the death as the demon kept Morn in his tentacle grip but kept failing to pull him into its mouth meaning Morn got to beat on it while getting dragged everywhere it went. The rest of us dealt with the annoying pseudopods Taltos had released to capture and prepare others for feeding.

The second scene wasn't a combat encounter, but an angelic creature of some sort was held within a summoning circle in the chamber of summoning. We decided time was of the essence and we didn't interact with the creature despite its plea. I suspect we lost out on some future plot points here, but the actions did seemed to fit in with the single-minded nature of the characters. It's a pretty grim, single-minded, kill or be killed sort of ethos at the moment, in a dramatic sense.

The battle in the chambers of the cabal was 'hilarious' as we stumbled upon a male wizard in a Jacuzzi with two slave girls, a female wizard browsing books and their three demon allies. The female wizard was peppered with arrows in 1.5 rounds. She did take control of Morn though, which could have been very scary if he'd not made his save. Assambar used expeditious retreat for the first time which saw him move right across the set, which was cool. Assambar freezing the male wizard into the Jacuzzi was also humorous. The male wizard made a run for Althea's quarters, but got shook to the ground by Morn's mighty hammer and then got beat on for two rounds. Great fight, so reminiscent of action heroes stumbling on the bad guys in a compromising position (taking drugs, slumming it with prostitutes, whatever) and getting beat up as a result.

The Althea combat was also good because she didn't go down like a punk, it truly felt like we were in a life or death struggle with one of the major players in The Cabal. She was a solo enemy, our concern with these being they sometimes drag out, but this one was great even though we did end up just pinging her with at-will powers (though for a Ranger this isn't overly a problem as Twin Strike is pretty exciting). It did show that there is still quite a bit of 'swing' in these fights the longer they go. I think the fight was close, and put us at zero resources for the final action scene, but it could have easily gone the other way if Althea's powers refreshed more reliably (summoning Shadow Demons and a nasty AOE life drain). It was good the way it played out though.

The clock was now ticking as the rest of The Cabal was now on their way, a cut scene showing them being alerted to Althea's death.

The fight with Jacurutu was good because we were low on resources, he had a ridiculous amount of minion helpers and Assambar refused to attack the 'possessed' slaves meaning we lost his ability to take many of them out at once. While I was concerned with not getting totally smashed at the time, looking back on it now there was a lot of stuff going on in that fight, and I think sometimes the tactical nature of the game means (a) the great visuals of it don't dawn on you till afterwards and (b) some of the character conflict in the moment gets lost. Still, it ended amazingly, with us being surrounded 'zombie style' by the minions only for Azhanti to crush the skull of Jacurutu before all the minions could pummel us.

The rescue of Kallista was interesting as it brought into focus character conflicts. We first did a flashback to before the raid on the tower so we could cover the group returning to find Kyia gone, having been taken by The Grub. Morn attempted a conflict to crack anyone who had betrayed them his Intimidation skill, while Ambassar used his Diplomacy to weaken Morn's attempts on the basis he honestly believes the group would not betray each other. Morn failed so the scene to rescue Kallista played out without Morn knowing Artemis turned Kyia over. The other conflict was with Assamar, who wanted to rescue all three prisoners, while the rest of the characters were happy to take Kallista and run, in the end we took Kallista, a human female and left the Tiefling prisoner (Morn eventually smashed the chain of his cage sending him plumetting into the sewers to cut short Assambar's attempts to rescue him).

As I say, it was a great action-focused session, with some character conflicts running through it. I like the conflict resolution approach as this focuses the game on points of conflict that spin off the story in other directions. It didn't matter of Morn found out about the betrayal by Artemis or not (it's just a matter of when anyway), it just results in different story direction (though we always have to be sure those directions are options that can ultimately be resolved between the characters).

If I have one minor issue it's that the tactical nature of the game can sometimes seem to preclude other options, and I don't necessarily think this is the supposed philosophy of the game. It's in danger of creating an ethos in which players only (a) try powers or (b) specific actions in the book. In my mind, cool things have been quashed, or tried to be quashed when they should have been ran with: tossing the Heart of Ashura around in session one, shooting the slave cages shut this session, tumbling over the enemy line (which does seem to be possible in some way), etc. If the fight with Jacurutu had gone further, I didn't expect my planned action to hang from the chains in the ceiling by my feet and fire arrows to work, while I'd have thought that'd be great. As players, we probably need to step black from the lust of the gamist game, a case in point being choosing to have Althea not die on 0 HP so we could question her. It's a small thing, but I think the gamist game is making slight, and I mean slight, steps to quashing everything to defined actions alone, and I'm not sure this is intended in the rules or at the table.

The other thing is finding a balance between the pace and dealing with character issues and conflicts. I don't think we've done badly with that so far. We had plenty of time for such things in session two and we did deal with them again at key moments in the action this session when it was imperative it came up (the conflict rolls cut it off for now, but that's the nature of things and just sets up others). I don't think this is a big problem, so far we have done it and I'm sure we'll keep doing so. I certainly don't want to alter the pace too much, we should be able to interweave the two, especially if we allow action episodes to have breaks that amount to the equivalent of Gandalf and Bilbo talking about the nature of fate and heroism during a brief respite in Moria.

Only three sessions? I still find it hard to believe. I know I am keeping in mind that we are looking at 10 (or so) sessions for the heroic tier story, so that is in the back of my mind regading conflicts and their resolution. Keep up the density. I'd rather do that than extend the story out too far, just hit it hard and fast.

I did have high hopes for Hellboy II, as the original Hellboy was good in a 'show the potential' sort of way. The trailer was also very good, parading in front of us all the gloriously realised 'secret world' of Hellboy in Pan's Labyrinth glory. The trouble is, I'm not sure Hellboy II, the gorgeous costumes, puppets, prosthetics and make-up aside is actually that much better than the first one and remains a bit average.

Warning: There are spoilers beyond this point.

The main problem with Hellboy II is sets up a couple of themes and conflicts but doesn't really deliver on them in any great, emotional way, they just sort of meander around. It's like all the points are there, but you never get the pay off. The point seemed to be one of acceptance for being different and linked to these humanities penchant for destroying things we don't understand. Hellboy sets of to 'come out' to the public, and this, along with the reaction of the populace, is contrasted with the plight of the Elves and Prince Nuada's quest to destroy humanity for their treatment of his race. It's a great idea, but it never sort of gets the sort of attention that actually delivers in any momentous or significant way. It feels wasted and some pivotal moments and decisions are supposed to have weight and meaning, such as Liz deciding to 'resurrect' Hellboy despite the abstract consequences that have little impact on this film, but they come across as artificial, you know they are supposed to be meaningful because you're aware of the conventions, but you don't feel it in the moment.

One of the reasons for the watering down of the central theme of the film is probably the fact the film is essentially a romantic comedy. You have the on going romance between Liz and Hellboy as well as the rather hastily dealt with relationship between Abe Sapien and Princess Nuala. The relationship between Abe and Nuala is another example of understanding the emotional context and weight of decisions due to convention, but again not actually feeling it in any way. If you throw in the slapstick comedy, such as the scene in which Johann Krauss beats up Hellboy with some locker doors it just seems to drain away and compete with any more serious theme the film is trying to run with.

The characters also suffered from being incorrectly weighted. I found the introduction of Johann Krause an unnecessary distraction. I found Ron Perlman as Hellboy to be a bit irritating and boring, he just seemed to lack the natural charisma of the first film, not sure why. It was Selma Blair as Liz Sherman and, rather oddly, Luke Goss as Prince Nuada that captivated me throughout the two hours. The film would have even been less interesting with their absence. I'd even go as far to say the plight of the Elves was more interesting than the dynamics within BPRD. In fact, the scene with Prince Nuada facing his people, his father and his sister and still deciding to follow through on his mad quest is one of the few scenes that actually delivered on its dramatic intent.

I suspect the main problem with Hellboy II is while the original came from almost nowhere and batted above it's weight, Hellboy II had higher expectations attached to it, and even made use of 'connections' to the highly regarded work of Pan's Labyrinth, and as such it feels like it didn't live up to its potential, rather than exceeding it. It could also be said Hellboy II set up better and bigger conflicts, and then failed to deliver on those adequately. Still, it's an okay film, I probably wouldn't watch it again or get it on DVD.

I shouldn't gorge myself on game trailers and cinematics I really shouldn't. I'm not sure it does me any good. It gets me thinking, sends my brain shooting off in all sorts of directions which invariable end up as some sort of dead end. Take the Warhammer Online trailer, it resulted in me spending way too much time looking into the game and it's all too easy for me to end up wanting to play it despite (a) not having the time and (b) only getting frustrated with the RvR.

The trailer is pretty smart, not because it features the 'next big virtual babe' since Lara Croft (allegedly), but because it summarises in 70 seconds the trashy-pulp Saturday morning serial-style idea complete with melodramatic conflict, bloody battles with hordes of mooks, martial arts, gun-fu, mystery, mayhem, revenge, lurid episode titles, grainy film and a sort of John Wu meets J.J Abrahams meets Quentin Tarantino extravaganza all wrapped in a Tomb Raider meets Kill Bill package.

I'll recover after a nights sleep. That's what it usually takes. I've got The Simpsons movie to watch now so that may also do it, sort of like the film equivalent of taking a cold shower for the imagination.

I'll also cross my fingers WET is actually good when it comes out.

I've mentioned this before, if Blizzard are known for anything it's blisteringly good pre-rendered cinematic films both as part of games and as promotions for future games. I thought the one for The Burning Crusade was inspiring and I also liked the amazing sound quality on the Diablo III trailer cinematic. It's with no surprise that many people were waiting for The Wrath of the Lich King cinematic trailer. It was released today at the Games Convention in Leipzig.

The shocking thing is it's very underwhelming. Very, very underwhelming. A good 80% of it is just Arthas doing nothing, or some would say acting all moody, in the snow covered mountains of Northrend. The Burning Crusade cinematic had action, a sort of foreboding doom and a sense of scale and excitement. It had movement. It would seem the overwhelming characteristic of The Wrath of the Lich King is death by armoured 'emo'. Okay, we get an undead dragon rising out of the ice and flying over an undead army at the end, but it's hardly the challenge of 'you are not prepared' that was thrown down in the last cinematic.

Now, compare this with the Warhammer Online cinematic, which is just astoundingly brilliant on every level. It has atmosphere, it has depth, it has action, it has humour, it has you wanting to play at least seven different types of character as you watch it. It even has a hot Elf chick and an amazingly cool 'bad girl' Dark Elf sorceress strutting around in a 'Princess Leia bikini'. It is a work of art when it comes to these things. While Warhammer Online is going to have its problems, and almost certainly isn't going to overtake Warcraft's subscription numbers, if this cinematic shot across the bow is anything to go by Mythic are giving Blizzard a kicking at their own game.

If there is one thing I remain very ignorant on it's the education system. This is probably the reverse of some of my friends because they have kids, work in education or both. While I don't work in education and don't have children, so I suppose it's natural that it isn't really high on my agenda. I tend to encounter it through the experience of others, like when I discussed how school had changed after hearing about my niece's experiences of starting the same comprehensive school I went to.

As an example, one thing I was surprised to discover, is the Eleven Plus exam still happens. I thought the whole point of the comprehensive school system, ignoring any critical assessment of its failure or success, was that selection at 11 didn't happen any more? I thought the idea was to dismantle the Tripartite System that streamed kids to grammar school, secondary modern or technical school based on a single exam at 11? Apparently this isn't always the case as Grammar Schools do exist and they still self-select on the basis of an Eleven Plus Exam and claim circa 25% of the best students in their area. Not only that, I'm lead to believe both political parties have expressed a policy of increasing the use of selective education to the extent of effectively introducing a different hierarchy system, though what type of schools exist in such a hierarchy seems a bit muddy (Specialist Schools can apparently select 10% of their intake).

I'm all for allowing kids to reach their full potential, and I have no doubt that they will reach their full potential by going through education with a cohort that challenges each other. This in itself would suggest, all things being equal, you'd like your bright and intelligent kid to being going through the 11-16 year old system with kids of similar ability. I know I would, purely from an academic perspective. The problem I have with it is I probably would not have been streamed into the high end of the hierarchy based on my performance at 11. I view myself as a pretty clever person, but that intelligence seemed to mature with age and probably started kicking into gear at 12-13 not 10-11. If I understand it correctly the Tirpartite System would have rendered me into a solution for my 11-16 year old education based on that one spot test at 11? Hence I'm wary of going back to it.

While this isn't in anyway linked to empirical reality, and I'm not for a moment suggesting it's indicative, my experience of the Comprehensive Education system was very good. It was very good because the school itself was streamed into bottom, middle and top bands. While not exactly the same this is essentially an educational hierarchy for my 11-16 year old education. The difference from my personal experience is that it was a hierarchy within one educational institution and this offers one important advantage: fluidity of movement within the cohort. As a result, students entering my Comprehensive School often saw some fluidity of movement in their first year. I saw fluid movement upwards to the top band. It had it's faults, in that I probably wasn't 'top band' in maths, but it worked well enough from my perspective. Apparently, when talking to Louise, who was only a year behind me, her Comprehensive School wasn't streamed, and may well have been mixed-ability teaching, which sounds like a horror story.

What's the solution? I have no idea, I'm just surprised it's got that complicated as there seems to be a lot of different things going on involving a myriad of school types rather than one understood process. All I know is I'll always be nervous about an exam at 11 dictating too much about education between 11-16, especially if the hierarchy isn't fluid.

Still, I don't have children so I don't have to directly concern myself about it. It just seems very complex and very stressful if you do.

I'm currently on two social networking sites: Linkedin and Facebook. I was thinking about them this morning and how I keep them separate. As an example, the purpose of Linkedin is quite focused, it exists purely as a career networking site. I'm probably not using as much as I could, but the people I'm connected to on that are purely career related. This means the content is career related as well. What's interesting about Facebook is the line isn't as clearly drawn, in fact I suspect it's all too easy to fall into a very dangerous trap with Facebook in that you end up creating an accessible website that doesn't necessarily show you in the best light.

I recently went through the settings of Facebook religiously to make sure I knew what I was making visible to whom. I was doing this out of principle, not necessarily because there is anything on my profile I need to worry about. I went through the security settings making sure the only people who could see anything were people on my Friends list. It's surprising how many people have their full profile universally visible.

I also do a lot to control the content of the profile. It strikes me, though I'm not expert because I've not experimented with it, some people might have actually lost control of the content of their Facebook profiles and may find they regret that? My Facebook page is minimalist, neat and looks good in a simple aesthetic sort of way (and for this reason the Facebook design changes are a bit frustrating to me). As well as not being cluttered, it also means I've not got a legion of applications on my page that others can control the content of. As an example, one of the biggest offenders of this is Superwall, as it seems people can post all sorts of crap on that just like they can post text on your traditional wall. I'm sure you can remove Superwall content but get your security settings wrong and have the wrong person peruse your Facebook profile just after someone posts an offensive or illegal video doesn't seem like a good idea to me? You don't even have to use Superwall, just the ability to see your photos and all your Friends photos by clicking on a single link is a bit scary when you consider it might be a Friend who posts something you'd rather not have hanging around on the web.

You have to monitor and control your Friends in relation to this as well. I currently have a Friend who supposedly knows me from school, though I can't remember him at all, who is insisting on spamming me with every notification possible for a legion of applications. I take the same action to all of them, click the option that means I won't receive another one related to that application. You'd think he'd have got the message by now and realise I don't want a virtual beer or take part in some inane game. At the moment, most of my Friends are family, people I knew at school (or so they tell me) and I haven't really communicated with any of them. A few of them are ex-colleagues from previous jobs. If you have a more lively Facebook profile than mine and have current work colleagues on it strikes me you might have to watch what you or other people post?

These sites break down barriers, which is the whole point, and sometimes those barriers have less than stellar results (I'm always reminded of the Lotus Domino discussion applications in a previous role that became breeding grounds for Scottish and English rivalry and this was before internet forums). If you're not watching what you are doing you let people into an extended social space that you wouldn't normally invite them into by sending them an e-mail, IM or having a conversation about it. Not only that, unless people take specific action the door is always open after letting them in.

Over the last month we've been watching the Long Way Around, which has been really good. Since we got a bit impatient waiting for the new episodes we also acquired the Long Way Down and we've been watching that as well. For those who don't know, they are both documentaries of Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman's epic bike rides from London to New York the long way round and from John O'Groats to Cape Town the long way down.

The Long Way Around is the more interesting of the two. The main fascination is the sense of adventure. The idea of just breaking out of the daily churn of life and doing something ridiculous. Obviously, Ewan McGregor has some advantages in this regard, as he's undoubtedly comfortable financially and can afford to go off on this 'damn fool crusades', he even gets to visit UNICEF projects along the route. The interesting heart of the program is the journey through Eastern Europe, Asia (places such as Mongolia) and back end of beyond of Russia along the Road of Bones. It got so bad at one point, the infrastructure so shot, that they had to join up with the support team and travel that way as it was the only way to get across the rivers deep within Russia. This part of the journey was so epic and such a trial the trip across the continental United States felt like an epilogue, despite being a large proportion of it.

The Long Way Down is good as well, but it suffers for two reasons: it's not original and I get the impression it was planned and executed a bit more functionally. You get the sense the first one was a grand adventure, while this one was just a very audacious trip that they tried to fit into a very tight schedule. At times they were just having to blaze a trail to get from one time trial point to another. It's true some of these were critical paths, such as boats that only left once a week, but it was also true they couldn't lose that week because of the schedule. It also seemed they spent more time with the support crew on the Long Way Down, leaving you with the sense the riders might have done less bike riding on their own. Well worth seeing though, particularly once they start getting into the heart of Africa.

They went through Tunisia in the Long Way Down, and they visited the Star Wars sets there, and it was slightly humorous to see the two of them joking around taking pictures of Ewan McGregor in the location and stood next to posters of himself yet no one seemed to recognise him.

The one thing I found enthralling about the whole thing, which is something you know, but it's always great to see it, was the general similarities and willingness to help of all the people they encountered. True, some of this was probably influenced by the cameras, but at other times, such as being in the middle of nowhere in Mongolia, it clearly wasn't.

Well worth seeing, but if you have to choose go for the Long Way Around.

Way back when, at an exact date and time I can't remember, when Neverwinter Nights was in its marketing phase, one of the key 'selling points' was the concept of portals. Portals were essentially connections between one server and another, the idea being you could jump between the world or module on one server to the world or module on another. In reality, it was a function that never seemed to get used, or I never saw it used much. I suspect this was because the servers had to be explicitly linked (or it possibly the function didn't get implemented?). It could have been a cool idea though, allowing characters to move around the NWN space.

One of the interesting things about Fable 2 is it re-introduces this idea, but in a much cooler way. Each player of Fable 2 can tweak settings to make their game world available to others. What is interesting is you don't travel to this world by excepting a game invite and entering a lobby you just find the connecting artefact in the game and zoom into the other world. Basically, as you are playing your game of Fable 2 you will come across little glowing globes, these glowing globes are people on your Friends list who are also playing the game and are at that location in their game world. If you interact with the globe you travel to that individual's game. Pretty clever. It's neat because it's so fluid, available and integrated.

It's also interesting because this network of connected worlds is a unique spin on the MMO world. It's specifically interesting in the case of Fable 2 as the world may be different for each player depending on the choices he has made. He may have bought the castle on the hill, he may have a wife and become evil while you may have not done that at all. It offers an alternative approach, one which doesn't promote the the 'one world everyone adventures in' but instead the concept of parallel worlds which can be jumped between. I would also find it really fascinating to be happily playing and have people from my Friends list popping in to see what's going on.

I think the level of integration, availability and ease of use is very clever, but we'll see on release if the same thing happens to this feature as happened to NWN portals and no one ever actually uses it. Clever idea though, for sure.

When I last cancelled my World of Warcraft subscription I speculated that I may return to the game when Wrath of the Lich King hit the shelves. The reason for this being quite simple: the levelling process is, by and large, the best part of the game as it's the part which involves the most exploration and seeing and doing new stuff with a minimal of character building (be it gear or anything else). It's also the time the community is at its most diverse and interesting as everyone is levelling and bumping into each other doing quests and 5-man dungeons, etc.

As time has gone on I've reached the conclusion I am very unlikely to rejoin World of Warcraft when the expansion is out.

The main reason for this is time, I'm just not sure when I'd actually find the time to play the game. It's true that World of Warcraft is very accommodating to the individual that just wants to put in a bit of time here or there, but I'm not sure that's for me. I like doing the dungeons, and that tends to demand an amount of time measured in blocks of hours. I'm not sure the variety in actual play of the game would be diverse enough based on the very casual time periods I'd be able to dedicate to it. I could drift into playing it more but that wouldn't be good on numerous fronts.

The other side of it is I think the balance of elements in playing World of Warcraft have shifted to the point the parts I don't like now outweigh the parts I do like. This isn't necessarily a change in the game, but probably more in me. This tends to make me think that the MMO market will be off limits for quite a while as most of them tend to fall into the same tried and tested model. World of Warcraft was probably an aberration to do with a time, a place and the nature of the game (mostly its Blizzard history and the ease of initial entry). In continuing down this line I've also lost any incentive to play Warhammer Online as well.

I do remain intrigued by Champions Online, which promises to turn what has traditionally been a lifestyle (the current MMO games) into a fun game. It seems to be doing this by creating an MMO version of an Action RPG. This sounds great as a lot of the speed bumps and weird attempts to make it a simulative world with economies and crap are stripped away and instead you have superheroes, a visual world and lots of things to give a good kicking. There is every chance the game might fail on release, but it is an interesting idea that I hope works and is a great game to drop in and out of. The best way I've heard it described is it's like the game Crackdown, but instead of playing co-op with another genetically enhanced Super-Cop you have a whole host of other superheroes to kick the shit out of stuff with and they have laser eyes and super-strength. It could also be seen as a 3D, superhero-powered Diablo with some interesting looking cell-shaded graphics.

I am watching it with interest.

It was a dense session this week, and I'm not even going to try and summarise the plot in detail. It's suffice to say it involved a number of personal conflicts, politics and a whole host of double-crossing over the search for the Heart of Ashura which we secured last session and which has now been stolen from the rebellion. By the end of it we had been to the palace of The Grub (a Crime Lord of the city in the style of Jabba the Hutt) to try and secure the gem, been dropped into his (Rancor) pit and raided a Giant's Cradle, the floating tomb of a giant, which was making its way down the river out to sea. Next session also became quite complex as numerous forces coincided around retrieving the Gem and rescuing Kallista, who stole the Gem only to be taken by The Cabal. I can but only hopelessly summarise.

A more detailed explanation of the plot can be gleaned from the DM's blog.

It was a very different session, one might say more traditional. I'm not sure if the skill challenges were working the same behind the scenes or not, as I completely forgot about them. That's isn't a value judgement in anyway, just an observation. It did make it different from the first session though as the skill challenges were front and centre in that. As a result there was lots of role-playing and interaction on all levels and it was good. It was good because the first session set-up how the action part of the game was going to play and the second session has broadly outlined the characters and they are really good, very different characters. I've found it particularly interesting because I usually play the most heroic character of the group, in that I usually end up with the Sheridan (if you follow Babylon 5), Buffy or Captain America analogue by and large. This character is just as heroic in that sense, but he has a driving hatred for something that blurs every other dimension of his personality. Actually, it may not be that different, as virtually 'hero' I play as an obstacle in the way to become who he is meant to be, so it's probably 'same as usual'.

This brings me to my second interesting about the session: player versus player conflict. We like it, but in the past we may have shied away from it a bit. The player versus player conflict in our regular games is certainly much lower key than it is in our shorter games, this is only inevitable as the characters have to find way to share a dramatic space together for a long period those in the shorter games don't have that restriction. At the same time, it's all about setting up conflicts so the resolving of the conflict is a growth opportunity for all characters involved. This is how happens in most TV shows, the conflict is only really an invitation, at some ultimate point, to resolve it. You have to find a way to navigate a conflict toward being a conflict, but not one with a particularly redundant dead end for both or one party.

This was the dilemma this week. Mourn, Neil's Paladin character, is romantically involved with Kyia a Teifling Princess. It's a bit more twisted and complex is he was a slave to her father and subsequently her. My character, Artemis, has had swathes of his people and his family destroyed by Kyia's father and his supporters, and hates all Teiflings with a blinding, all consuming passion. This is made more complex by the existence of Kallista, his half Teifling sister. Obviously a conflict arises when Kyia comes to the group, Mourn is open about sleeping with her, and she wants help getting out of the city. If it only involved myself, in a particularly vicious streak, Artemis would have probably killed her (assuming success) and sent her body to her father as a message. Obviously, this would put the conflict between Artemis and Mourn at a point of no return? Instead, I had Artemis betray Kyia to The Grub, who will use her in his ploys against her father and if she gets roughed up along the way he'll not lose any sleep over it. It may also put the future conflict with Mourn in a place that is dramatically interesting, but not a dead end. This is especially true when he's helping Artemis rescue Kallista next session in the honest belief Artemis was going to help him get Kyai out of the city (though we'll 'discover' she's been taken next session).

It was interesting because I don't normally do the player versus player thing, not via such betrayals anyway, I've made noble decisions that get the same result, but not so much underhand ones.

There was two combats this session. One was in the aforementioned Grub's pit and the other was during the raid on the Giant's Cradle. The fights offered the usual variety and surprises, though it is probably about time we varied it up a bit with more opponents. In the first fight we selected the Thri Keen Warrior out of The Grub's choice of him, a Naga Witch and a Carrion Crawler. It was pretty cool that I got to use my Nature and Dungeoneering skills to assess our possible opponent before we made a choice. The Thri Keen Warrior had a nasty invisibility power which he used on us in the opening round, causing lots of wild shooting to try and find him. The fight in the Giant's Cradle was a Mechanical Golem guarding the door of the tomb. The Mechanical Golem had a rather humorous ability to run around in a mechanical panic swinging his arms at everyone once he got bloodied. Rather annoyingly I got knocked to below zero hit points twice. This session seemed to be the ignore the defender and pound on the striker week, which is deceptively easy to do when terrain can't stop the enemies from just ignoring the defender. It makes life interesting though.

Looking forward to next week: We 'discover' the abduction of Kyai and we set off on the heroic rescue of Kallista, against The Cabal, hopefully getting the Heart of Ashura back and possibly killing a Cabal notary along the way. Are we striking at the heart of the enemy? Helping the rebellion? Or are we just pawns to our own loves, hatreds, desires and the political whims of others? I'm sure we'll find out in the future.

If there is one thing I like about the 4E campaign it's that I've chosen the right class, the Ranger's focus on a relative simply tactic of keeping moving and causing lots of damage works quite well. One thing the first session has got me doing is looking through my available dice. I have to say it's a bit of a paltry and ancient selection.

I've managed to rustle up the selection pictured above as part of my dice set-up: it's about speed and the glorious feeling of rolling a handful of dice. Basically, the attack I use most of the time is Twin Strike, this allows me to hit things twice. The quickest way to do this is to throw two sets of dice, each set containing: 1 D20 to hit, 1 D10 for bow damage and 1 D8 for Hunter's Quarry damage. I also have two D6's for the odd time I use Sneak Attack (I have the Rogue multiclass feat). That's what I was doing last week, apart from when I forgot I was trying to save time and re-rolled the damage dice on hitting. It occurred to me during the week, during a slow moment, obviously, that I need two sets of dice, each stream a different colour, one for each strike. This way I know which bow damage and quarry dice apply to which hit, and which set belong to which target. My available dice weren't up to two distinct colour streams.

As I dug through the dice though it was interesting to note some of the contents. The first thing that jumped out at me was the selection of Vampire dice. I'd forgotten I had them, the old black dice with the red text and the rose where the 1 should be. It's easy to forget that Vampire was more than just a role-playing game for some people and more of a way of life. I was just a sucker for merchandise. Then you have my old orange D20, pictured in the top right of the picture, which holds pride of place in my collect as I'm pretty sure it came in my Golden Heroes box, the first role-playing game I actually purchased. If I'm wrong, and didn't come in the box, it was certainly being used when running that game not long after purchasing it.

Still, I feel the need to invest in some colour coordinated dice for my 4E adventures at some point in the future. We shall see, I may become enamoured with the mix of colours and venerable age of the selection.

It's been an interesting four weeks. Since week three I've had some relative high levels of anxiety regarding the work load, I've tried to speed up the study process only to slow it back down to two units (one per module) a week. I've had serious issues with whether I'm actually remembering any of it, but now I've hit the other end of the spectrum and think I should be taking a longer-term approach to that. I've also sent off the Global Environment TAA, which involved a bit of Excel graph work. I'll be crushed if it's not rated well. I'd have liked to have the Managing People TAA done, but it's driving me slowly insane (more on that later). I've also hit and studied unit 7, the halfway point in the 14 unit modules of the core modules. This also means the subject matter in each module changes, Global Environment switches from Microeconomics to Macroeconomics and Managing People switches from topics like personality, motivation, leadership and so on to Human Resource Management.

At the moment I seem to be at an almost surreal point of calm regarding proceedings, a small part of me wonders whether I'm too calm. I think I'm on the top of the bell curve though, relaxed and experiencing all I can survey, but in truth it's only a moment of calm and at some point I'm going to come crashing down the other side of the curve and it'll be twice as fraught as it was on the way up. It's always the unknowns, it'll be interesting to see what the next two modules are like having experienced the 6-month cycle through to exams once before. The second time around I'll have a better feeling for how study speed, study method, assignments, revision information provided by the University and the exam all fit together. You sort of need that to avoid under or over studying totally blind.

The first signs of descending down the other side of the bell curve sort of kicked in this weekend as the Managing People essay is really dragging me down. This is surprising, as I thought I'd hate the economics TAA and love the essay, it's writing after all? The trouble it's a special kind of writing. A kind of writing which seems to involve pulling together the work of others rather than doing anything that creative yourself. This involves finding study after study to link to because virtually everything you want to say has to be supported in some way. It also involves a balancing act between the principles of things being open to answer the question in many different ways while still answering the question. It's the academic side of it. I find learning about the topics interesting, but that doesn't mean I want to write an academic argument about it. As an writer in the Financial Times said this weekend: 'A lot of the time academic research serves mainly to confirm what we already know.' I suspect I should take this as an indication the project at the end is going to be my personal nemesis? It probably depends on the type and style of project, but it's worth keeping in mind when it gets closer. The project is a long time away though, I might be a changed individual by then.

The inevitable period of questioning what the hell I'm doing has been, gone, come back, and gone again (a part of the journey to the top of the bell curve). This was inevitable. It's just so easy to think that you could get exactly the same experience from buying a few books. If you then feed in the fact that an MBA is quite academically focused, while the books you might educate yourself with might be more practically focused, you do start to question the endeavour. Deep down you know it's right though, as it's important to have something to show for your effort and this way offers a qualification. It also keeps you focused and it's already changing the way I speak and come across in certain situations. I now read more papers, for instance, regularly hitting The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent, The Financial Times and The Economist websites on a daily basis. I can feel the changes. I'm not sure some of these changes would be happening just fitting in books in my spare time (while the MBA sort of becomes your spare time).

I find I'm really looking forward to the On-site Seminar now. The On-site Seminar is four days of interesting activities, and I get to meet people, network and the like. It's one of the things you don't get from sitting around and reading the odd book. I am speculating on increasing the study rate so I have at least encountered all the units before this event. The idea is I've encountered all the units,I can then use the time after the seminar to focus on things beyond 'getting through' units: doing an extra TAA, taking part in online seminars, doing the assignment that contributes to the final mark, independent learning and review of units and ultimately revising. I think this will be more productive based on the actual doing of the TAA. The example study schedule provided by the University has units being studied until quite late in the day. While I'd still be doing that really, as I may be doing Independent Learning for modules at that point, I'm not sure I want to still be reading modules for the first time well towards revision while trying to do the marked assignment.

The amazing thing is, some people are doing four modules in six months and they have a full-time job. These people are either fiendishly intelligent, have a photographic memory or they know something about the study level to exam ratio that I don't.

When it comes to debt I'm very conservative. In fact, I probably count as Old School. I'm so old school, when the way I managed my finances was 100% my decision, I'd always only spend money at the end of the month when I knew how much I had left. I still remember when buying a house demanded a 10% deposit, and someone asking for a 125% mortgage would be looked at like they'd just asked their bank to hand them over 10k from the vault. There was a time a 100% mortgage was generally taken as something 'you should not do' and you had trouble getting one, but it could be done with the right advisers and the like. Luckily I've never been in that position.

I don't do debt. Like all people I accept there is debt you sort of have to incur: the mortgage and things like a car. Even on these things I begrudge them, and I've avoided the car one so far, and if we had a more continental view to house ownership I'd be happier. I have slackened my view somewhat when it comes to free loans, which I realise are a product of the out of control debt culture that allowed 125% mortgages to exist. I have been guilty of going on holiday, paying for it on an interest free balance transfer and then paying it back. I let this slip past my debt radar because it was well within our price range and it was just like saving for it reverse. Go then save, rather than save and then go.

One of my most interesting experiences was a few years ago. I was surrounded by all sorts of professional people who I knew earned not much more than me or less. The trouble was they seemed to be earning vast sums more than me in terms of the way they spent. It didn't so much worry me, but it was puzzling. These people had way more commitments, they had kids for instance, and yet they just seemed to accumulate stuff: expensive cars, caravans, vast houses, whatever else. I did talk to someone about it one day and I came to realise the key thing I wasn't enjoying over the last 10 years or so was debt. A lot of their stuff was financed by debt, accessing funds by increasing mortgages or buying houses they couldn't really afford on the basis if they ever truly couldn't afford it (say the interest rate went up too much) that would be okay as they'd sell and they'd have made money on the house. Their debt had earned them money.

Of course, all this assumed that house prices would still be rising, interest rates would still be low and that banks wouldn't go back to the days of saner lending and certainly not giving out 125% mortgages.

I suspect I had it right. I may have done without (though not in a hardship sense) but I wonder now what situation some of those people are in. It's all to easy to see affluence, the four wheel drives, the big house and the demanding kids with all the toys they want but what you actually have are people living on the edge.

A few of them may now have fell off the edge.

Back in 2007 we had the Disney World 2007 trip, and despite the number of times we've been it was probably one of the best experiences, up there with the first few times. The primary reason for this was getting the Disney Dining Plan for free, which meant lots of eating in the best restaurants Disney has to offer for absolutely nothing. While it took Louise a while to persuade me to go on that holiday, as it was a bit of a financial risk considering long-term projections and the like, she was right in her assessment that it might be a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Disney have changed the free dining plan in 2008 and are changing it again in 2009. In 2008 the Disney Dining Plan was the same as what we got in 2007 but the tips got taken out of the deal and your table service tokens only get you two courses. This meant the deal was still very good, in that you could still visit all the restaurants on the plan, but it wasn't no longer a free deal as the tips would obviously add up. In fact, while I've not sat down and done the maths a quick quest-imate in my head would tell me the cost of the tips at all the top restaurants would probably add up to the same or more than the food bill incurred at places we'd normally eat at. Still a good saving though, but not a patch on eating on the whole holiday for absolutely free.

In 2009 it changes again, and they've done the inevitable: linked the Dining Plan you get for free with the resort you are staying at. They will have done this for numerous reasons, the most likely one being to save money, as it must have cost them a fortune to give those full Dining Plans away to every UK guest. It will reduce costs because I suspect there is a weighting of UK guests to the lower priced hotels, so only giving the full dining plan to the top tier reduces the outlay. It may also reduce the demand on restaurant seating. It also plays into human psychology, and the privilege factor. One of the key things about the US is while the UK is supposedly the society based around class, the US often seems to do a lot more and people are often more vocal about privileges, however they come about. There was a massive outcry that UK guests were getting the Dining Plan for free (in an off itself that is a valid complaint if you are American), what was more interesting was the belief it would lower the tone of the restaurants or that people paying 'out of pocket' are in some way more worthy, etc. The linking of the full Dining Plan to people staying at the Deluxe Resorts keeps the prestige factor and also plays into the fear the 'wrong sort of people will end up at the restaurants'.

Another interesting twist in all this is I suspect Disney did a bit of data mining and they may well have discovered that too many people who got the Disney Dining Plan in 2007 didn't use it to the fullest. We can only go an anecdotal evidence but we encountered many people who had loads of credits left and certainly hadn't visited any of the better restaurants. In short, they wasted it. The reason for this are numerous: people feeling the top restaurants aren't for them, feeling it's too much hassle with kids, not being prepared to put in the planning to get a seating (there was quite a lot of people drifting from restaurant to restaurant trying to get seated), etc. The data may well prove that while we would lose out under the new regime, the average person on the Dining Plan in 2007, especially one at a Value or Moderate resort, isn't losing out by having the stripped down offering as it may be more what they used it for.

If we go to Disney World in 2009 (I'd rather go somewhere different) the rumour is the Dining Plan would consist of two counter service tokens a day, 2 snack tokens a day and a re-fill mug for the resort you are at. This isn't that bad really, and you certainly can't complain if it's free, as it can only reduce your food bill. It is a far cry from the fine dining offered in 2007 though. It has totally removed any of the table service restaurants from the Dining Plan for people staying in Value and Moderate Resorts. This makes it a nice to have, but it's hardly the thing that persuades you to actually book and get on the plane.

While we saved circa 1600 USD by using the Disney Dining Plan in 2007, I'm pretty sure it costs more than that to upgrade to the top tier hotels (plus you also have to consider it's not money we'd have spent if it wasn't for free). Still, as an incentive to stay in that gorgeous Animal Kingdom Lodge with a view across the Savannah it's not a bad one if you're feeling the need to seriously splash out.

Apparently Eden Studios Presents #3 is about to be released. If there ever was a return from virtual death than the concept of Eden Studios Presents is it. I've been doing some basic research and it would seem the birth of ESP was circa early 2004, and the last issue was released before the end of 2005. It's been about three years since the last issue, which is pretty bad going for a series of mini-supplements for Eden Studios games that was supposed to come out every six months (it may even have been every quarter).

The amazing thing was I had work commissioned for issue 4-6, with the work for issue #4 having been completed and sent in (two articles). Since the publication seemed to have died I was in no rush to finish the work for issues #5 and #6. In fact, the last query I can find for this is me checking this was fine in March 2006 (triggered by the alleged release of #3 way back then), over two years ago and there was no schedule for those issues.

The release of issue #3 is interesting as it possibly means that issue #4 may be released at some point and I hope my articles are still in it since they were written, given editorial perusal, tweaked and sent back in. Funnily enough, I suspect my material for issues #5 and #6 has been forgotten or given the push and new material been commissioned. I can't say this bothers me much as it's so long ago I've changed significantly as a person since I wrote the damned things and so has Eden Studios product range, etc.

I'd still like to see issue #4 with my articles in though, even if it is circa four years after they were written. It will be a bit of a blast from the past like. Of course, it may take another 2-3 years to get the next issue out.