Review – bikesbabesbytes

A Review – D&D at Fortress Sydney

My face to face game was looking for somewhere to play a long session during the school holidays. Someone suggested this Fortress Sydney place, apparently a bastion of gaming and nerd culture in the city. I had not really heard of it, so checked some websites and some YouTube reviews. Was very little to be found. At any rate, we agreed to meet. Just after lunch on a weekday.

Up front, I was a little underwhelmed. The videos and websites made solid work by making it seem larger than it turned out to be. I was most disappointed by the arcade section. Barely larger than my bedroom it had a few machines and not the den of retro gaming it was advertised as.

A LAN/gaming cafe section seemed well set up. A dark room lit only by the dozens of identical Alienware computers. The chairs seemed nice and it was all clean and quiet. I assume the PCs were pretty specced up, but I didn’t look.

There is an esports arena, with several large wall screens. It had a very nightclub styled mezzanine floor viewing area above it. Smaller than I had thought from the media beforehand. But I’ve never seen one before, so it didn’t mean much to me. (Is esports still a thing?).

There was a cyberpunk themed bar, but I didn’t go into it. It seemed closed at the time (lunchtime on a Thursday). It did seem small, but I think that was just the entrance way. I assume it’s about the size of the Tavern below it.

And the Tavern. Where we planned to play. Quite large, decorated in a kind of clearly fake old fashioned wood, role playing game adventure style. Mostly tables, some quite big, but also a few booths that were set up as console gaming spaces. As I walked in, there were maybe 3 other groups. One having lunch (looked like a Fortress business meeting actually), one playing consoles, and the last group, maybe a TCG?

Not my picture, but it gives you the idea.

I picked a large round table near the back, and set myself up. The others arrived and we got started.

We played for about 4 hours, between lunch and dinner. The little bit of food we bought was nice but standard prices for downtown Sydney, so more expensive than I wanted to pay, but about what I expected ($20 for a plate of loaded fries). Drinks were there. It wasn’t too noisy with so few people actually in the Tavern.

Would I go back is the big question isn’t it?

Well probably not to run a D&D session. It was fine at that time as it was quiet. I’m not sure how good it might be if it was busy, maybe too noisy, maybe squished onto a small table? Ok, so if it was a quiet time, I would consider it again. But a weekend, in the evening, unlikely for a D&D session. Not as DM.

I don’t need the gaming cafe part. Something like a trivia night might be interesting with some friends. But in all likelihood, with my current lifestyle and it being all the way in the city, I probably wouldn’t go back.

However you could have a very different opinion and it may still be something worth checking out yourself.

Fortress Sydney is located at Central Park Mall, Level 2/28 Broadway, Chippendale NSW 2008.

BG3 Thoughts after release

Well, first up, it’s still awesome. In fact it decidedly more awesome than it was. They’ve just added more stuff. Even in the first act, which I am still deep inside, there is more stuff and things have changed.

There are new options, such as races and when designing your character. They have added alchemy, allowing you to harvest materials and create your own potions. New party members (Karlach especially) and new twists. Some things that were hinted at have developed, such as Gale’s need to consume magical items.

But it’s harder too. I’m playing on balanced and part of me feels like the team at Larian read my blog and changed some of the bosses to counter the methods I used to defeat some of the mini bosses around. I feel like the hag is a lot harder. I am working on a way to expose her so I can silence her, as at the moment she is invisible, I think, and wins initiative, steps and casts mirror image before anyone in my party can move. And suddenly I’m fighting four of them. And they all won initiative as well.

Even getting there is tougher. Along the way there is a toxic gas, which I would simply fireball and let burn away. Doesn’t work this time. You need to spot and then block the vents. Throwing things (I’ve seen rocks used, but I’ve used bones and skulls) blocks them.

I’m going to leave her and hit up the goblin strongpoint.

Something else was harder but as I write I can’t remember what it was.

But I’m loving it.

I’m still playing the areas that I’ve already played for over 140 hours in prerelease. I am playing a new character, a bard, which is interesting but seems powerful as a utility, especially during the dialogue, opening new bard options but also with stronger bonus generally.

So I’m feeling like this game is giving me a lot and the money spent was worth it. Now after over 10 hours in release (sadly real life has been in the way), that’s less than $1 per hour overall. And as I’m still in Act 1 (is there 3 Acts?) I may only be less than 1/3 through the game. I think each Tomb Raider was 20-30 hours. And it’s fun, the story is so in depth and I have no idea where it’s going to go.

It’s smooth on my very middle ranged system (no Mac version released yet, so I’m on my PC). In early release while both systems worked well, the newer NVME drive in my PC made loading times so much swifter than the older hybrid SDD/HDD in my few years old Mac. Though this didn’t affect actual gameplay or switching to cutscenes, just loading times.

If you have interest in story, or D&D, or RPGs, I highly recommend it.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Dear Star Trek, when your show’s intro talks about a mission to investigate new worlds and discover new civilisations you hardly expect the Enterprise to be… delivering engine parts to an outpost, dropping off power units to a station, on a routine supply mission, doing a routine survey, returning to a planet that the Captain himself had been to, some years before.

But these are the premises of 7/10 of the episodes of the new Star Trek SNG series. These don’t sound like missions involving strange new worlds or civilisations. Heck, most of these don’t even sound like tasks for a warship, let alone the Federation’s flagship (I’m fairly certain that the Enterprise is that, please correct me if I’m wrong). To be honest, I don’t know why you would send a fleet’s flagship to “explore strange new anything….”, the flagship’s job is to control the fleet, float about doing flag waving activities and be ready to pound anyone who wants to start something. Exploring is the job of the Comstar Explorer Corps (from the Battletech universe), not the ComGuards.

Now granted, strange, unexpected things do keep happening to the Enterprise on these “routine” missions. But it’s like the Battlestar Galactica remake (to bring a third franchise in to confuse dear reader), 4 series in and they’re still saying “…. and they have a plan.” Pretty sure their original plan didn’t have them following an escaped Battlestar and fleet across half the galaxy…

Anyway,(end rant) look, I’m not a Trekkie and to be honest, I haven’t really watched Star Trek consistently until the more recent movies (starring Chris Pine) and the newer series (I’ve watched Discovery, Picard and now Strange New Worlds). Why? Because I didn’t really enjoy the older ones, and I like the newer ones. I have seen TOS when it was on TV, probably reruns, and pretty confident I’ve seen all of the theatrical releases. But I’m not deep in the lore, and as I said, have seen only bits of the older series. I think, something around 20 episodes of TOS, TNG, DS9 and Voyager combined.

Strange New Worlds is pretty good, but I think both Picard and Discovery have better (in that the stories are wound along a longer narrative) than SNW does. It’s more in the classic (almost) everything is resolved by end credits, unlike the other two. I think I enjoy the former more. Which is probably why I didn’t really watch the older shows (like TNG and DS9).

So I’ll watch it, but I’m not hanging for the next episode. It’s a time filler for me.

Baldur’s Gate 3 – first impressions

Background – I’ve not played any Baldur’s Gate games, the closest I’ve played is probably several years of WoW. This probably causes the most common mess up that I have been doing while playing.

After all the tribulations I was fascinated by the game. In my D&D so far, I’ve not come across Mind Flayers, so am not aware of any of their background history etc. So the whole opening event with tadpole, red dragons, flying seashells all new.

I was a little worried as there wasn’t a character creation at the start… they let you watch a little story first. When it comes up, there are lots of options, so I kicked off with a current character I’m playing. Sister Fredis is a War Cleric of Morradin. With BG3 in early release I only had a choice between Life, Light and Trickery. I went with Life.

I was even more confused when the next screen had me designing my “dream girl”. That was weird.

The main difference I have picked up is just because of that familiarity with WoW. I keep right-clicking to do things, but actually you can just left click most of the time.

The other thing that I really struggle with is range. I feel like the spells have really short range when compared to playing on something like Roll20. Now, it’s metres not feet, and 60′ range is about 18m, so Healing Word having a 18m range is right. I just feel like 18m is a lot shorter in this game. But it probably isn’t.

Being early access, the level is limited to 3. And there are physical restrictions about how far you can wander on the map. But it also appears that there are encounters that are placed there to support higher levels. And playing on the assumption that as they know the level limit, they have only put things that a level 3 party can deal with, then this game can be quite hard!

Several encounters seem way overmatched for my party. 3 come to mind – a group of phase spiders and their matriarch, about 5 gnolls of varying powers with a pair of hyenas, and 3 level 5 githyanki. All of these, when put into the encounter builder on D&D beyond are well into the fatal range.

I’m enjoying the dice rolling (and it’s way easier to remember to cast guidance on yourself in this game). It’s very D&D 5e, and that is the reason I picked it up.

Overall I am enjoying it and keen to play more. I will have to take a look at some other build, like paladin or fighter perhaps. Something with a bit more stopping (and tanking) power.

Shadows of the Tomb Raider

So Tomb Raider moves up to clear second place (in my tally of games in a franchise that I’ve completed). About 23 hours to finish. Some side missions and a little (but not as much as in Rise) of going back to gather materials and equipment.

Really, Spiderman has NOTHING on the climbing abilities of Lara Croft. She goes all over the place, never gets tired, always manages to find a way and she doesn’t have webs or superpowers. And NO fear of heights either…

Seriously, no way am I swinging my way out there….

Shadows was a fun game. I have definitely enjoyed all 3 in this last set of TR games. The improved swimming was especially noticeable, it’s now more like the very first TR game ;P. Again, as I played on normal modes again, I found myself with plenty of resources and skill points. This time there are ways to pick up the “special” materials several times so this isn’t a limiting factor.

Not everyone or everything was friendlyOn

My favourite parts (alongside the sotry itself) were a couple of the challenge tombs and side quests. Specifically “Howling Caves” had me a bit stumped. It was the only time I used a walkthrough, and only for 1 step). The “Howl of the Monkey Gods” was a fun puzzle, and “The Pillar” was lengthy and impressive locations. In fact all over the locations were beautiful, or horrifying or expansive or amazing.

The main problem I did have was with the map and getting lost on side quests. I ended up taking up about 5 side quests in Paititi and trying to complete them all at once. Only problem was I kept getting mixed up and heading to the wrong places for each quest. Then I got lost trying to find my way back to the skull cave to hand them all in AND I forgot who was which….

The end story was fun and the last boss fight, even on normal, was hard without being frustrating.

Great game.

Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles – and then….

I recently finished watching The Sarah Conner Chronicles. I watched it a few years back but was curious to watch the ending again. I remembered that John had jumped forward to the future and then the series ending. I rewatched it from the beginning, and was pleasantly reminded that it’s a pretty good show. There are a few slow episodes and the odd weird choice (like late in S2 when there is an episode that is between Sarah in the back of a van being interrogated and her in a mental hospital). But overall its interesting and it certainly finished as a cliffhanger!

And that’s what most of this is about… what we know in the end.

So in the final moments, John and the Catherine Weaver (the liquid metal) jumped forward. She disappeared as John met his uncle. His uncle and his father, and neither know who John Conner is. He’s clearly not the leader of the resistance. Enough has been altered in the past to wipe his part out. And as the screen goes black, we are left with Cameron, or by the reaction of the dogs, the human who gave Cameron her form. She clearly doesn’t recognise John either.

The future has changed a lot.

We also know that the Cromartie body, with Cameron’s chip inside is already here. But is it the protector Cameron, or due to damage in her prison assault has she defaulted to her Terminator programming? She hinted at this earlier in the episode. That doesn’t seem quite right as she probably would have laid waste to any humans she came across in the future, which doesn’t seem to have happened. What if it is actually John Henry in this chip? We have no idea what he might do… or a mix of them both, or of John Henry and the default Terminator. Who in the future would appear to be hunting someone who didn’t actually matter.

But the Catherine Weaver Liquid Metal knows what happened in the future, or at least one version of the future. Remember she mentioned the “No I won’t join you” interaction from her, Jessie and Cameron in the past. And it seemed as if the other Terminators from Skynet were attempting to destroy her, so they are enemies? So now we have two Terminator factions.

Or are they two Skynets, but from different futures? Or were the new Terminators just targeting the Weaver faction, simply because they identified John Henry and decided it was a threat.

But if the second Skynet isn’t being opposed by John, then why did it carry out such an elaborate hit, to hit them all? Or again, there were standing orders to eliminate any other Terminators around… and they were actually after Cameron – that doesn’t fit, they left her behind to snatch Derek.

Did the Catherine Weaver recognise John or Sarah? I am not entirely sure. I think she didn’t recognise John, though at the psychiatrist’s office, they may not have actually seen each other. Seems odd for a Terminator not to assess everyone they have around them. But then she must know who he was, or how would she know about the joining interchange.

I am really stumped with what might have happened next. Someone, not John, was clearly in charge of the Resistance. Kyle was still alive, so going back to protect Sarah hasn’t happened? That’s why John isn’t the “Great Leader’. So are the other Terminators (not the Weaver faction) after a new “Great Leader”. Who is this? And is it because John jumped forward and not lived forwards…..

Time travel always makes for problems.

Anyway, I just wanted to dump my thoughts here. It was a well done show, and I would have loved to have seen what happened next. I am sure it wouldn’t have answered every question and tied it all up nicely.

But life is messy.

As an added weird thought…. What do we do with all of these Terminators littered through history all with perhaps slightly different “stories of the future past”. What if Cameron, Cromartie, Uncle Arnie, Evil Arnie, the other Terminators from the Chronicles, and the TWO liquid metals. What if they all ended up meeting somewhere, kind of like the Dark Fate movie. What a mess. And Derek, his team, Jessie and even Kyle…

M1 iPad Pro 11”

Partly as a treat to myself for Christmas and for changing career, as well as spending some money my wife gave me and finally as my original iPad Pro 9.7 was starting to have battery troubles, I upgraded. I admit, I probably could have gotten away with a current Air, which is still a pretty sweet spot between price and capability, I wanted to go all out again.

So just before the back to school sales finished up, I bought the iPad Pro 11″, and the new Pencil. I already had the keyboard case (not the fancy one with a trackpad, you can’t fold that one right back to tablet format) as we had one that wasn’t being used in the house. Scored a free set of AirPods as well. Put them in the cupboard for when the battery dies in my current set.

Anyway, so I could have waited to see if Apple dropped an upgraded one this year, and I expect they will. But two things (apart from just plain impatience) were motivating me. One, I would want it when school started, and Two, if they did change the shape it would be another couple of hundred to pick up the keyboard case too.

That was then. It’s now Week 6 at school and the iPad Pro is proving a very useful device. Now I’ll admit, there probably isn’t much that I am doing that my 9.7 could not do. OneNote, Edge, Outlook, Google Slides and Docs. This M1 iPad is very smooth and battery life is wonderful. I rarely get below 80% a day. My 9.7 would have managed this back when I first got it (and it was second hand when I did) but now, about 6 years later, nope.

I do love that it uses a normal USB-C connector. I have a USB-C to HDMI cable which I just plug straight into the class displays to run my lessons. It saves problems with logging in and out as I move about the school. (I don’t have my own class, I teach the same subject across 8 classes). Again, the 9.7 with the adapter could do this alright too. But I can also connect memory sticks easily, which is new.

But I’ve found my Surface Pro has been cast aside by the iPad. Chiefly weight is the issue. The iPad, is close to half the Surface. Smaller too, but the screen is fine for me. So overall the iPad is less bulky. Add the protective case on the Surface and it is even more skewed to the iPad.

Compared to a MacBook, that I’ve never had, I think the touchscreen, pencil and tablet form are much more useful than the MacBook’s traditional laptop form factor. This is still where the MacBook falls down (and where the multitude of Windows based 2 in 1 ought gain something back).

By using cross platform software (OneNote, Outlook, Edge, Google Docs/Slides) I’m not tied to OS. So working at home on my iMac, at work on my iPad, upstairs with the Surface or (for reasons I can’t think of) on the gaming PC, I have access to all of my work, synced across the lot. Even if I do log into the Windows PC at work I can access everything. But I find myself using the iPad as my preference. I like it’s pencil the most.

One thing I haven’t tried is one of those paper-like screen protectors that a couple of folks at work use. I might see if there is one for the Surface, experiment with that. Or what about the Surface without the Type Cover and with the paper-like protector… hmmm

The couple of people at work (one has the 12.9” iPad) use Goodnotes instead of OneNote. For me, that means my Surface, my PC and my work computers can’t link to my work.

Oh, non work related – I did connect an xbox controller and the iPad Pro easily coped with a couple of games (Pathless & Genshin Impact). This is definitely something that the old iPad Pro 9.7 (and to be honest, the Surface Pro) struggles with.

Overall, super happy with the iPad Pro

Mouse Trouble

For a long time I have used the Razer Naga Molten as my mouse. It’s been excellent. Recently though it’s had a little trouble moving about on the desk. It turns out that the slick plastic sliders on the bottom of the mouse have worn right down to the hard plastic shell. It was becoming awkward to use. And I can’t seem to find a way to just replace those parts.

I started investigating replacements and of course the first place to look was Razer. Here, the Naga was now in several versions, with the fanciest being the Naga Pro. This had the three swappable side plates (so normal configuration, 6 buttons and the 12 button like my Naga). It added wireless, including Bluetooth.

But the Razer software no longer supports OSX. Though I’ve never used the Razer software on my existing Naga. With my birthday coming up, I put in my request.

Success! Birthday came along and so did the Naga. It connected fairly simply to the iMac. Obviously the software wasn’t working but I didn’t think much of that until I tried to play WoW.

Here I came across the problem I didn’t face with the older one. The Naga Molten has a switch on the bottom. This manually selects the 12 side buttons as either the top number row on the keyboard or the number pad. Now I had always had it as the number pad. This worked great as I used the number row on the keyboard for my attack rotation, then the Numpad on the Naga as my interrupts and other more situational actions.

Well, that’s what the software does in the newer ones. That software that doesn’t work on OSX. Mapping the keys in WoW didn’t help because the mouse thinks its the number row. I did manage a work around as I made them all bound to SHIFT-number.

I was kind of disappointed, so I handed the Naga over to the Surface to work with. I do like that I can actually use it for multiple computers. I have the USB cable connected to the iMac, which works. And when I switch the BT on, the Surface connects to it.

Anyway, after some more research, I picked up a Logitech G604 for the iMac.

This is also a Bluetooth mouse (that was one of the criteria for my choice) and it has 6 side buttons. The Logitech software also works on OSX.

So this arrived and connected. It was really slow to move across my desktop (I have the 27” iMac and another 27” screen slaved to it). Then I got into the software and messed about with the settings. This helped.

I’ve also set up the keys when outside WoW as a bunch of short cuts.. cut, copy, paste, screenshot. Works well for that.

I have struggled a little with it in WoW, but I’ve also not played much so I reserve judgement on that side of things. I can’t quite seem to get the Logitech software to automatically switch profile as I thought it did. Again, I haven’t played with it much to be sure.

However, I have been having trouble with it even working. It will often lose the BT connection and simply stop. I’ve had to go through the reconnection steps several times. Switching it off, clearing it from the iMac’s BT list etc have eventually got it up and running.

The other trouble is that, well as I said, without the G-Suite application running, it’s really slow across the screen. At the OSX login screen (there are profiles for each family member on my iMac) its slow. And it remains slow even after login (or wake up from sleep) until the G-Suite kicks in. This can be several seconds. Or it isn’t until I actually open it. Or it just doesn’t.

This has all been quite frustrating. Sometimes it all gets back together, or I have to switch on the Apple Magic Mouse that I have, or I’ve resorted to plugging the Naga in (via its USB) cable. On one recent afternoon I had to dig out an old Apple Trackpad to get some response from the cursor on screen.

So in summary. Naga Pro isn’t great for OSX (well it’s not supposed to be). G604 seems really flakey. Apple Magic Mouse is good for general stuff, but not games, make sure you keep a trackpad around…

Anyone got an older working Naga they want to let go?

Oh and my old reliable Logitech M555 that I kept for travel seems to have died.

Marvel’s Agents of well not zzz

I have an apology to make. Way back in 2013 I posted my thoughts on the (at the time) new Marvel series. I wasn’t too impressed.

However, I’m deep into the third series, and while it’s not the best show ever (The Expanse is one of my picks for that), it is worth watching. So I don’t fully retract my comments at the time, but I’m enjoying it.

I didn’t like the lead hero, who turned out to be a bad guy (maybe I knew). And I kind of still don’t. It is still awesome to see Ming-Na (to the best of my knowledge the only Star Wars character, Marvel hero and Disney Princess – though technically the wife of a General doesn’t make her a princess).

But the stories have evolved from what I felt was like a bad guy/alien of the week to a series of engaging story arcs. It does and it doesn’t link in parts of the movie series. I’m not sure yet if it relates to the Inhuman series as well (I’ve had the same with that… it was watchable, but I didn’t really get into the show).

So worth a watch if you’ve been watching other parts of the Marvel universe. And probably engaging even if you haven’t.

D&D – Sleeping Dragon Wakes (Review)

With the next module in the series complete (aside from the tidy up) it’s a chance to review this one too.

Again, I think it is a pretty good module, with some interesting scenarios wound together into the story. I ran it without using the “Quest Board”, adding some story links to have the party get involved in things. Partly, so that I could control which parts I would need to prepare, but also, it fits with the story better. They were very much a part of the town by this stage, so having them look for jobs on a board made no sense. For a party that starts here, maybe it would fit?

A running battle with the sahuagin proved a challenge for the group. Later a similar, multi stage battle with some bandits could have really punished them, if the zombies and chimera waiting in the wings could have gotten involved. Some smart tactics helped them there. At the higher levels they are reaching, simply throwing a crowd of enemies isn’t really a challenge.

I gave them the full credit for getting in to meet the green dragon without having to fight almost anyone in the entire lair. They basically talked their way in, as they also did with the bronze dragon earlier. This made for some fun RP.

Overall a great part 2 of 3 adventure with a terrible “to be continued” ending. However, if you consider it all as one, then its not an ending.

For Roll20 users

Again, I added a bunch of maps, but nothing like the last module. I mostly reused a couple of maps with different creatures, to run random encounters, so not strictly required. The maps provided did a better job of covering the action. Might not be so for the next module.

And so it’s on to Divine Contention and the final showdown. The core of this is a long defence of the town itself as the two factions attack. It will really test the endurance of the group. It will also be interesting to see what they remember they have picked up (they have several healing scrolls that will come in handy – if they remember them!).