DnD
While we were out eating there was a fender bender. It sounded like a bad crash, but it wasn't. The birds took off like the movies. It sparked a conversation about past wrecks people had over the years.
Our group is pretty light this time. A bunch of people couldn't make it.
I didn't bring my laptop, so I'm writing this out longhand. I hope I can read it later.
Ethan starts out with a request about a bunch of items we were supposed to have had since the last adventure. We did a favor for a high level mage. When you buy magic items it isn't always money that limits the items you can get. The items take quite a bit of game time to complete. I have no idea what to get.
It is a-la-cart today. we get to choose our adventure.
* Diplomatic Kidnapping
* monk Raids.
* Nesman - 100 person caravan destroyed.
* Another caravan problem.
Ethan helped me figure out what to get. I am never able to plan in advance. I pick skills and items to help me in combat.
It is funny the stuff we get on a tangent with. We cover some Belgium Beer and private importing in peoples suit cases.
There is a group of traders in trouble. Random encounters are kind of a drag when you are over tenth level.
There is nothing like the first box text of a new module. We approach a burned caravan. Many dead. CSI DnD style. We determine it is fireballs, not dragons. The caravan still has the cargo on board. It doesn't appear that any one is missing. Some one came in after the initial blast and killed the remaining survivors. We find some tracks headed north. Some of them were manacled. We are a good party, but we still loot the caravan members for magic. "There is no reason to leave it to the elements." We divvy up the loot. The randomly rolled stuff is oddly handy. Normally, all the items you role are crap. For example, wand of endless feathers or something on that par.
Ethan keeps complaining that the random monsters suck. He is scrapping for a fight. The DM makes us all role a spot check. We all fail. That must be what it means when you get the hair standing up on the back of your neck. It takes us fifteen minutes to figure out how much damage we take because of the special abilities of the enemy caster and our resistances. The DM had to use a calculator to tally a bunch of arrows to on of our guys. One trouble with hight level mages is they kick ass. We are up against a couple of demons that are fire based. They were summoned by the high level magic user. Again, it takes for ever to calculate everything.
The girls are working on a puzzle in the living room.
One of the demons died and the other bailed. The wizard surrendered. Our pet Sladd has him pinned. We nearly lost him. We need him for information.
I loath leveling my characters. It is allot of work. If I enjoyed working on this stuff, it would not be so bad. I read too slowly to keep up.
We map by laying a white board flat on  a table. We use miniatures at a one inch equal five feet scale. I could go on for hours describing the miniatures and the rules that apply. There are books dedicated to moving the miniatures around how things interact.
Lucky me, I get attacked while doing a fly by over an ancient wizard's tower. I hate how the surprise rules work. It never fails, I'm the one who gets screwed. This time is not different. Our wizard cast protection from normal missiles to give me a chance. We are up against rogues who are hight level or something with a good hide ability.I hate strange battles like this. We are up against gargoyles. I prefer straight on army encounters or mono a mono. We spend five minutes to draw the area of effect for a fireball. Something about how  thick some bronze doors are. Brian can sneak. Bryan (different person) can do 100 points of damage in a round. with his six attacks. I managed to do 52 points on a critical hit. Not too shabby. That just isn't good enough for a twelfth level fighter though. By this time you should be dishing out massive hurt on just about anything that stumbles into your path.
Once inside the tower we find a dungeon. We find some spell books. We get attacked by a beholder. Those are annoying. One of our party is charmed. Normally that is the worst. The beholder is to lazy to go kill a cult that we are out to kill ourselves.
The bad guys are always taking over Dwarf strongholds. I mean, why do the dwarfs abandon all these strongholds. As much as the dwarves put into these places, you would think they would hold on to them. Now we have to assault the barracks. The cult has taken up residence there in. We should probably be careful of the prisoners. We take our time setting up for the battle. There are only four of us. We need to take out the big guys quickly. Our wizard is going to cloud kill one large mass of the lower level bad guys. (I should have brought my notebook.)
I'm taking on some guards. We have a five minute discussion on the rules of move vs. move equivalent action. I'm not much in to the higher level characters. Everything has funky abilities and too many of the rules conflict.
We loose the Wizard on our side. The bad guys surrender. That always makes things more complicated. It is easier when the enemy fights to the death.