BILBO!

Behold, Bilbo Baggins (with his dwarvish "guests" in the background) in all his tea-chugging, bread and cheese horking glory!

Oh yeah, that's actor Martin Freeman (Love, Actually) as the would be burgler. Nice! This movie can't come soon enough for me.

The Icewind Dale Trilogy

Drizz’t Du’orden. Sure, a cool character twenty years ago, but like a lot of people I’m pretty Drowed-out these days. Hell, a player in my current campaign and his Drow character have me pretty much never wanting to see or hear of another Drow ever again. In the 80’s they were one of my fave species, but nowadays blah.

So the fact that I have been reading a book about D&D in general, much less one with a Drow as the main character, is pretty WTF. Much as I love the game, I never had a desire to read a D&D based novel.

From what I understand, R. Salvatore created Drizzt at the last minute, when his publisher asked that he include a backup character to the ones already created. So comes a Drow, not just a good and kind one, but a ranger no less. Drizz’t lives in the snowy North, fighting Yeti and Frost Giants and generally helping out the ungrateful humans who live in the snowy hell. Other main characters include a dwarf, a young barbarian Drizz’t trains in combat, and a female human child raised by the dwarves (that I guess the Drow gets to nail sometime later when she hits that age, or a decent mirkin is found for her).

I’m not a huge reader of this kind of stuff, but I can tell it is very basic writing and very basic storytelling. But the big draw for me is the D&D references. It’s fun to hear about encounters with Verbeeg, frost giants, and white dragons. This is the same reason I enjoy the Baldur’s Gate video games; you get to fight rust monsters and beholders and gnolls and all that good stuff. If it is something out of Monster Manual 1 & 2, then consider me tickled pink.

I picked this thick book up at the Socal Minicon as a freebie earlier this year during the summer. I’m only a third of the way or so through it, so that gives you an idea of the level of thrill I get out of it. Let’s put it this way, yesterday I read almost 100 pages of a book called “Blood Meridian” (by the author of “No Country for Old Men), something it took me months to do with Icewind. So there, that’s my review. I get some enjoyment out of the D&D references as I said, but it is unlikely that I will finish this book. Especially right now when I have about three other books I am more excited about and trying to pound through. But when I feel like some light, Jr. High School level reading about creatures out of D&D, I can always grab up Icewind Dale. It’s in the back of my Jeep…waiting for me to finish the others.

Should I have titles this post "Icewind Fail?" Yeah, that would have been funny...

Treasure appraisal – how do you handle it?

OK, in a nutshell, the characters in my games generally need to have magic items identified – for the most part. There is often some clue with certain items. Protection necklaces and rings often are in the shape of a shield. And it is safe to assume that a potion with little feather bits floating around will be feather fall or levitation or something similar.

If a player uses the item a bit, like fighting with a magic weapon, they will usually find out on their own what it does (I assume a seasoned fighter can tell the difference between a normal sword and a plus 2 one after a few rounds of combat).

But I never really bother with making the characters take gems and jewelry to town to get appraised. I just tell them the worth (which, if I feel like it, I can have vary depending on what part of the lands you are in – certain gems may be worth a lot less to dwarves than they are to humans) and that is that. It’s just easier, and doesn’t seem to detract from the game. The players sure don’t seem to mind.

I guess I may be robbing them of certain role-playing opportunities, but really, there are better things to do in the big city than spending an afternoon haggling in a jewelry shop.

So how do you handle this?