Dust Raven

Well, we now have less than 12 months before the end of the world. Even now rumors of apocalyptic destruction are flying about the delusional half of the new age crowd. If such foretellings are true, the Earth shall be consumed by a black hole, annihilated (somehow) by the solar maximum, or collide with Nibiru. Some also believe 2012 will actually issue in an age of enlightenment and peace in some kind of “Age of Aquarius”. But if you believe all the futurist sci-fi literature, all we can really expect is the total economic collapse America and a possible religious takeover of the government.

2011 was an… interesting year. This has been my first year since becoming unemployed from a full-time permanent job that I’ve not worked or earned any money at all. None. I’ve gotten a few interviews but nothing that’s actually progressed all the up to a pay check. I’ve also received no freelance work. Fortunately DeAnna is still gainfully employed and her job alone can cover the majority of our expenses. I know I can’t expect to receive unemployment benefits forever, and they are really dwindling now, but the supplemental income is helping to make ends meet. Seeing as how I can expect them to run out sometime in February I’m going to expand my job search to part-time and minimum wage positions, as any wage is better than no wage.

Back in October I receive a new smartphone for my birthday. It’s a Samsung T-499, which is kinda low-end, but function and does all those things I want a smartphone to do. I’m actually quite impressed with it. Even without installing any apps it was capable of just about everything I was looking for in a phone. A few apps later and it can now do things I never expected a phone to do (such as roll dice and look up rules for RPGs). I’m gonna have to get DeAnna one of these for her birthday, provided we have the income to afford the extra $35/month T-Mobile wants for 3G service.

Our cat Ember is now over a year old and has spent a full year with us. She is still so tiny. Here is a (blurry) photo of her:

We lost Jared this year. He was old, but not ancient, but very sick. I’ve had Jared since he was a kitten. I adopted him from the Humane Society, almost by accident. I had given a friend a ride so she could adopt a cat of her own, and I had asked to see a black kitten only a month or so old while I was waiting. As it turned out, she could not adopt as her apartment management could not be contacted to confirm they allowed pets, but rather than leaving empty handed she paid for my adoption of the kitten, which I named Jared. That was so long ago. I miss you Jared.

With our loss of Jared, we’ve considered getting a new kitten to keep Ember company, though we wanted to wait until after the new year to look. I’m not sure what we’ll be looking for but as with Ember, I’m sure something will come up and just the right time and will be perfect.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my cousin Mark moved in. His job is going well, though I’m not sure if it’s paying him enough to give him any independence. This coming year I’m hoping he’ll look into getting financial aid and get into school for something better. Any amount of independence won’t happen until after college, but he’ll be working in that direction and will be expanding his network of people he knows here in Phoenix. I’m worried he doesn’t get out enough, but who am I to talk?

Another one of our friends moved up to Seattle just prior to Thanksgiving. It seems that’s really the place to go, as we now know more people living up there than we do locally. Kinda weird since a long time ago DeAnna and I had decided if we were going to move anywhere but here, it’d be to Seattle. It’s comforting to know what once we make the move we’ll already know so many people there.

In the gaming world, my MMO of choice, City of Heroes, went free to play. This thrills me to no end. There are still plenty of perks to having a paid subscription, but it’s good to know if I can’t make the subscription payment for a month or two I can still play. My other MMO of choice (Lord of the Rings Online) went free to play last year, and I’m loving that as well. My new D&D campaign is going surprisingly well, though I’m still aching to actually play something rather than be the GM all the time. One of my players has offered to run, and is interested in taking over as GM for my campaign. I’ve never handed over the reins of my own campaign world before, so I’m a little scared and a lot excited over the idea. Best of all I’ll have a chance to play. I just hope I don’t try to back-seat GM or criticize too much.

Christmas has come and gone, and despite not having a lot of money to go around we managed to get gifts for everyone. Mom was thrilled to get Cowboys & Aliens, and we got Jacob a remote control helicopter (which I immediately broke after opening, but I’ll get him a new one come payday). We got mark an iTunes gift card for use with his iPhone and a 6-pack of Lucky Buddha beer (the bottles are shaped like a Buddha and the beer tastes great!). We did a gift exchange with our D&D group as well, which was awesome. I got Bruno, who is new to the game and who I don’t know that well, a 6-pack of Lucky Buddha beer. DeAnna got Marianne a set of spooky shot glasses. Rob made us an ornament made of copper wire which bears our name (we might keep this up year ’round). Shane got me a t-shirt (Sarcasm: the body’s natural defense against stupid) which actually fits. I’m of a large size and impossible to buy clothing for, and this is the first time anyone has bought me a piece of clothing that fit since I was 12. (Not entirely true, but I’m not counting the t-shirt gifts from my friend who already knew my size because he was the same).

Christmas Eve DeAnna and I took a drive around the neighborhood to take a look at all the decorations once more. Right around midnight some had decorated an entire neighborhood with luminaries. It was incredible! Many of them were still lit and they made the night more magical. I have no idea who was responsible for it, but I thank them for such a grand effort, despite the lateness of the hour it did not go unappreciated.

Well, it’s now the new year, and it’s time to pack up our decorations, and hopefully pack up a few things for a potential move in a few years. Provided the world doesn’t come to an end before then of course.

So Lost is over. I watched the finale on Hulu today. While I wish there would have been more, I was satisfied with the ending. I really would have liked to discover more about the island and its history, but I guess the show was really more about the people who ended up there rather than the island itself. I can deal with that.

Of course, that means I’m free to make it all up on my own and use it as part of my D&D setting. My main dilemma is determining why that statue only had four toes on a foot. My previous theory was that the builders watched too much Family Guy, but I don’t think that will translate well into an RPG.

A long time ago in a game system far, far away…

When WotC bought the rights to D&D and started rewriting the system, they promised to create character creation program which included a number of campaign management tools. While they went through a few developers in getting this done, they eventually ended up with a program called E-Tools. While not perfect, E-Tool did what was promised and was extremely useful for both players and GMs. What is great about it was that it allowed players to add in their own material, such as new monsters, spells, magic items, etc. Its one great flaw was there was no way to create or even significantly modify an existing class.

Years have gone by, and the developer of E-Tools no longer supports the program, and WotC has a new edition of D&D with a whole new program. I, however, still play D&D 3.5 and use E-Tools. I started a new campaign a few months back and one of my players wanted to play a sohei. The sohei class was originally released for Oriental Adventures for 3.0 and was never released as an expansion for E-Tools. When the transition to 3.5 occurred, WotC had already dropped all its plans for L5R which it used for the setting for Oriental Adventures, and so never re-released the book. While they did release many of the classes in a number of their Complete series, the sohei was not one of them.

I went over other classes which might allow the player to achieve his character’s concept but nothing really worked. Ultimately we just went with the original sohei class, modified based on an update article I found which brought the class current and balanced for 3.5. We just couldn’t use E-Tools to build and manage his character.

Until now.

All of the information in E-Tools is managed in an Access database and is user accessible. Granted, unless you know how to use Access this doesn’t really help. Fortunately I’ve had a little training in its use. This didn’t make the job of trying to edit the database easy though. Fortunately most of what needed to be changed was logically named and easy to find. I did have to go back and keep changing things, and adding things in different places but I got it done. Now I have a fully functioning sohei class I can use with E-Tools.

This thrills me. While this would have been no great task for a real programmer, I am extremely pleased I have learned how to do this. What it means to me is that I can continue to customize my campaign universe by adding in other classes I feel should be there (should I find or think of any), as well as make major modifications to existing classes, particularly prestige classes.

For example there are several prestige classes presented in Complete Divine which require the worship of a specific deity of the official D&D universe. I’m using my one unique pantheon of deities, however, so all of these classes are barred to me even if a few of my deities are extremely close in nature and outlook as the official ones. Well, now I can go in and adjust those requirements, even renaming the class to reflect the name of the deity or faith of my own universe it’s attached to.

The same goes for all of those organization prestige classes as well. I may not have those organizations in my campaign world, but I could have similar ones or ones with a different name. It’s an easy matter to simply rename them as appropriate.

So now it’s off to see what all I can customize!

Well, my predictions for this year were… well, completely off.

Among my previously listed goals, I’ve achieved getting a level 50 character on City of Heroes, and DeAnna has Vegas. The others have just crapped out. The one that bothers me the most is the computer. Turns out I made too much money this year to qualify for the EIC I’d normally get for being a poor single parent. On top of that, DeAnna didn’t get gainfully employed as quickly as I had thought, so the computer is gonna have to wait for awhile.

As for the content of my website, I’ve been overrun by other projects (once again) which have taken up my time. With the new year starting, I’ve gotten the urge once again to run a game instead of just playing. I’ve gone through several ideas and it seems what’s been decided upon is a D&D campaign using the 3.5 edition rules. I’ll be using my own campaign setting I’ve been developing for the past four years or so, which I call Riadus. Lately this has kind of taken over my free time and I haven’t gotten any work done on my other projects.

Another “interruption” (but in a good way) has been that I am now contributing to the APAzine, Haymaker!. Haymaker! is a quarterly publication for the Hero System featuring supplimental rules, characters, settings, scenarios and adventure ideas for the Champions genre. I’m really hyped about being a part of this. Unfortunately I missed the first deadline, but I’m already working on my submission for the next issue.

Wish me luck!

So, feeling the need for regular gaming, and having the sudden inspiration for a kinda weird character concept, DeAnna and I sought out a D&D campaign. We found one in our new friend Jason, who we located through a note left on the bulletin board at Imperial Outpost Games. Well, meeting a new gamer who may potentially be running a game for you is definitely an experience and always kinda… well… touchy. This is even more so when it’s all done cold as opposed to being introduced through a mutual friend. Well, after a few emails, a phone call and a night of coffee at Denny’s, we figured this guy was OK.

Well, we rolled up our characters and had our first real game yesterday. My character’s name is Lishnak. He’s a disgruntled half-orc barbarian. He’s disgruntled because he’s this big, hulking, brute who swings a greataxe like it’s nothing and this kinda bores him. He wants a real challenge. He was born stronger and tougher than most full blooded orcs after all, and this fighting thing comes too easy to him. So, he decided to pursue the most difficult thing he can think of: wizardry. And wizardry had proved in fact the most difficult task he’s ever undertaken. For one, he’s a 3rd level barbarian and has just recently met a wizard who hasn’t shown any interest in teaching him, and still won’t until he learns how to read.

DeAnna is giving her non-musical gnome bard concept, which didn’t see its full potential in my own short lived campaign, another shot. Khestra is so far kinda everything a bard should be: good natured, resourceful, and able to help out everybody and incapable of outclassing anybody except when it comes to knowing things. She did manage to bring an entire epic-like combat to a screeching halt with a single word, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

Basically our story starts in the little village of Not Worth Remembering The Name Of. Lishnak calls it Town With Party because there was a festival starting upon his arrival. Well, shortly after the culmination of the festival’s events, which include a spectacular light show by a traveling wizard, the village is attacked by a raiding party of slave traders from the north. Lishnak hates it when this happens.

Lishnak goes about investigating the intruders before they reach the village, and promptly gets himself captured after killing one and injuring a few others. He wakes up in the cargo hold of a north bound slave ship along with his gnome friend, wizard friend, and a couple new friends who want to get the hell of this ship as much as Lishnak does.

Let’s introduce everybody. We have Lishnak. That’s me. Lishnak’s friends are Gnome, Wizard, Skinny Human and Elf. I’m sure each of these people have names which they go by, but Lishnak hasn’t come to know then with such familiarity yet. Nor does he much care if they have names. He just knows the gnome has promised to teach him to read and the wizard has promised to teach him magic if he can learn to read.

So back to the story. Most of us manage to wiggle out of our bonds, those people who are definitely not Lishnak cast some spells on our guard so he get’s sleepy, then those people who are Lishnak smack the guard with extreme prejudice. Now Lishnak has a greatsword and a lot more optimism about escaping. Skinny Human sneaks out of the hold and looks around, and finds one of the main cargo holds. We do a little exploring, kill a few sailors who inconveniently notice us (although Skinny Human seemed to prefer killing the many sailors who were sleeping), and eventually recover our weapons and other equipment just in time for the actual military types on board to notice we weren’t tied up anymore.

This begins the epic-like combat, which involves Lishnak getting so angry he forgets to fall down when he’s been stabbed too many times. Then Gnome shouts the equivalent of “parlay” and calls for the captain. It’s about this time Lishnak remembers he’s supposed to have fallen down, but fortunately Wizard also knows some good healing magic. Lucky me.

Well, much to Lishnak’s disapproval, the group makes a deal that the slave ship will peacefully keep us all in our cell and then let us out when we reach the slave port in the north. For some reason, the others don’t seem to agree with Lishnak’s uneasiness with this arrangement. On the upside, they’ve agreed to let us keep our weapons, and Wizard has agreed to teach some magic on our trip. How we’re getting home I have no idea.