Pete, did you get a burnout game yet?

I've no intention of buying Burnout. I enjoy the game within a party environment but I've no desire to own a copy.

I will probably be tinkering away at Team Fortress 2 right up until Gears of War 2 comes out.

Has anyone played Condemned: Criminal Origins ? I beat it last night (after another late night). It's an FPS that's unique for relying more on melee combat, so you're picking up pipes and 2x4s and crowbars and beating the shit out of people. It's also pretty scary and creepy. And your character, who is an FBI agent, is voiced by Greg Grunberg, so it's kind of like you're playing as Matt Parkman.

Also, I played around with GTAIV last night and had way too much fun blowing shit up. One time, I blew a helicopter in half!!

I think I might have set a record playing some Oblivion. My thief type character was at one time being pursued by a troll, two bandits, two minotaurs, a wolf, a scamp, and a warthog. She's not much of a toe to toe fighter, so I was utilizing the run away method since my character is an improbably fast runner.

By the time I made it to a town, only the troll and the warthog were left. I'm not sure if the others just fell behind or started fighting each other.

I think I might have set a record playing some Oblivion. My thief type character was at one time being pursued by a troll, two bandits, two minotaurs, a wolf, a scamp, and a warthog. She's not much of a toe to toe fighter, so I was utilizing the run away method since my character is an improbably fast runner.

Ok, a: you were pursued by a scamp? Was it scampering?
b: I'm sorry, did you say 'warthog'?

Wild boar, I think.

Wild boar, I think.

Wild? It sounds livid!

t rimshot

I'm probably last to see this, but here's Rush playing "Tom Sawyer" on Rock Band backstage at the Colbert Report: [link]

I'm currently designing an encounter for my players in the Eberron campaign, wanted to see if anyone had some other thoughts or suggestions. It takes place in the local magic item market. A gang of robbers is led by a guy with the ability to control living spells; he's pulled together a few nonlethal ones (like Invisibility, Grease, Tasha's Hideous Laughter etc) and is using them to sow chaos and panic in the marketplace. Then, his thieves hit the businesses to pick up everything they can while everyone's distracted. The Watch, as usual, is useless. (They're currently trying to cope with an outbreak of Invisibility afflicting their pants.)

I want to structure the encounter so that the party has six rounds in which to act. After that, the crooks are outta there. Over those rounds, they want to rack up at least six 'successes'. These are my ideas for successes:

1. Kill a living spell.
2. Protect a particular business, this being the main target for the thieves.
3. Catch one of the thieves.
4. Make four successful skill checks (this last one's influenced by the 4E Skill Challenge deal).

The skill checks can be directed to three goals: work out what's going on, protect the businesses, crowd control.

What's going on: Spot's useful, some Knowledge skills will help, maybe Survival too for predicting the mob's behaviour.

Securing businesses: Disable Device or Use Rope to lock them up, Intimidate to keep people away, maybe Disguise to make it look like it's more secure than it is.

Crowd Control: two reasons for this. First, fighting through a mob of panicked people makes things easier for the thieves and harder for the PCs. Second, there's a real risk of people getting trampled or pushed off a bridge. Useful skills: Diplomacy to help calm things down; Intimidate or Bluff might accomplish the same thing, but a failure here will set the PCs back; Attack rolls and Strength checks might save people from falling or getting trampled.

Anyway, I'd like to flesh it out a bit further. Does anyone else have some ideas of what might constitute a success? Or some skill uses that could help them out?

Tumble checks to get out of the way of the fleeing crowd

Detect magic to figure out what spells are in use

Grapple for catching thieves

Wild boar, I think.

Yes, it was a wild boar. My mistake.