Saturday, April 2, 2011

Dice Bonanza

Look what arrived in the mail today!


From top left to right bottom:
  1. A big-ass red d30.
  2. A big-ass d12 hit location die.
  3. A d30 alphabet die with 4 wildcard slots.
  4. A mythical rientsdie.
  5. A six-sided multiplier.
  6. An X/2X/3X d6.
  7. An eight-sided compass rose die.
Yeah!  I can officially join the Order of the d30 now!  I never realized, though, how freaking HUGE those d30s are.  And HEAVY.  You could put on of those in a sling and kill Goliath.  And they roll so strangely - like they can't make up their little minds.  It's a very odd beast.  But yeah!

Note:  Observers from across the house think that when I roll several d30s together on my desk, it sounds like loud farting.

- Ark

Friday, April 1, 2011

I've Seen the Future and I Repent!

It's official!

- Ark

A-Z Blogging Challenge!

Are you kidding?  No freaking way!  There is going to be too much good stuff to read that I'm not going to have time to write!

Time to set out the lawn chair, pop open a beer, and watch the eruditic correspondence pullulate.

- Ark

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Tik Zak Toe

I was playing Tik Zak Toe last night.  It's basically a way to look at relationships of things in a game.  Go read it.  I'll wait.

Okay.

While Zak initially aimed it at creating adventures, I began to think of another use (ed. or rather, I just checked and he mentioned this use too) - that of charting out relationships between entities in a campaign - kind of a record of adventures already gone by.  The things that go on between players and npcs can get messy and confusing in a long campaign, and the matrix is useful for examining those relationships.

Here is one I worked out last night for the Tales of the Razing Zone campaign I am running:



It's a fun exercise and got my head cleared up about some things, like how the Sorceress had never met Ferrit, but had put a price on his head.  That's good to remember when and if they finally meet.  I screw up things like that in campaigns.  Little details.  It's a neat tool.

- Ark

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Homeschooling

Sometimes the best laid plans of mice and men go awry and you end up with mouse pellets in your mashed potatoes.  We are home schooling the Boy now.  I had hoped things could be worked out at the public school, but despite a lot of effort, nothing changed and the bullying continued.  People can suck.

So the Baby Momma and I were discussing curriculum and teaching tools and got on the subject of math.  My eyes brightened.

"Do you know what they are selling as teaching aides?  It's a product called 'Math Dice.'  They come in all different sizes, like fours and sixes and eights and tens and twelves and twenties.  The student can roll up numbers and use them to create math problems on the fly.  The dice look remarkably like the Boy's D&D dice.  In fact, they are exactly like them!" I grinned and wiggled the empty fake Tupperware sandwich meat holder thingy that happened to be crammed packed with the Boy's dice on the kitchen table.

Baby Momma looked at me as if that was the most insane and nerdiest thing I had ever said.  Not even close.  The conversation moved on.

Later one morning I'm telecommuting at my desk while she and the Boy are in the middle of lessons at the kitchen table.

"It's math time," she said and pulled out a sheet of blank paper.  "I'm going to write down some problems and you can work them out."

She stared at the blank paper, as if taking in the complete and total blankness of it all.  It was very blank.  She looked up at the Boy.

"Go get your dice."

"Woohoo!" he ran off to get them.

I . . . yeah . . . hmm . . . never mind.

:)

- Ark

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

A Pearl By Any Other Shape Still Smells Like Swine

At least I think that's how the saying goes - from Shakespeare on the Mount 2: Electric Boogaloo, wasn't it?

Anyway, this is my latest visual spam.  The brilliant Daddy Grognard suggested that I replace the pearl with a d20, so there you go.  Over there.  The orange thing.  Yeah, that.

Let me know what you think. :)

- Ark

Monday, March 28, 2011

Links To Wisdom - Now In Technicolor

After replying to Carter Soles about color schemes and playing around a while with color, I think I have something that bridges the colors that I saw in my mind's eye with the palette on the Links To Wisdom site itself.

So the now colored logo attempt is now up.  Right over there.  You can't miss it.  Hopefully it evokes some sort of Wisdom.

Critiques welcome.

- Ark