When I was growing up, my mother was a new-age hippie type - interested in the whole Erich von Däniken, Edgar Cayce, Ruth Montgomery, Charles Berlitz, Rosicrucian, reincarnation, Atlantis, crystal power, and the space jalopy of the gods kind of thing. Catty-corner to us lived my mother's good friend, who was a bona fide pre-'Wicca' witch, armed with incense burners, beaded curtains between doorways, mood rings, a pointy black hat, a real-live crystal ball, blank horoscope quadrant sheets, and a huge map of Middle Earth displayed prominently in the living room.
I loved that map.
My grandmother, on the other hand, was an old time, bible thumping, tent revival, fire and brimstone, speaking in tongues, casting out demons, book burning, rattlesnake handling, warrior for Jesus. Nothing was safe from her cleansing gaze. She found a OUIJA board hidden under my mother's bed once and burned it. My mother was 33 years old, married, with two kids at the time.
While I only saw the lady several times a year, this was apparently enough for her to gauge my personality. My grandmother pronounced me a 'hooligan who would burn for all eternity in hell' at the age of eight. I do not recall what I did to receive such judgment. Perhaps my disembodied head appeared to her in a dream spewing fire. I just don't remember.
Needless to say, Dungeons and Dragons was a huge issue. If she would ever have found my TSR stash, it would have been up in flames faster than the lady could switch from speaking English to speaking in Tongues. She knew I played it. I was a friend of Satan, so obviously, I played it. I had probably even attained the loathsome rank of 'Dungeon Master' in the cabal, she could just never prove it.
The thing I was interested in that she approved of was Star Wars. It was obviously the story of Space Jesus versus Space Satan. That kind of thing was okay. But the Smurfs - no way. Evil. The Smurfs promoted homosexuality, witchcraft, and necrophilia. It was obvious.
I was rather shocked when I discovered that other people began to agree with my grandmother. Kids echoing their parents, mainly.
"If we could play Top Secret, that would be okay, but mom doesn't want me playing D&D. It's a sin."
"My dad says I can't play with you because you play D&D."
"Dinosaur bones are actually whales put together wrong and when you burn D&D dice you can hear the the souls of the damned screaming."
God bless Texas.
So, years later and I'm pulling together a 4e group. The open call brought in a guy who had the potential of being a tad late to the Saturday evening games because of church. Well, that was a new one, but it was a good excuse as 'sorry dude, I just flaked' ever was.
Eventually, his ranger multi-classed into a cleric. I noticed that he never put down a word in the 'Deity' field on his character. He never did pick D&D deity specific powers like you can in 4e, either.
It wasn't hard to figure out what deity his character was worshiping, though he never did say.
I really just wanted to hug the guy and tell him that it was perfectly okay for his character to worship Jesus, and if anyone at the table had an issue with it, I'd give them the smack down. But being a dude, I just watched quietly. He stealthily went around doing clerical things in the background and no one gave him any shit about it. I have no idea if anyone really noticed.
It's funny how life works, isn't it? I'd have let my Grandmother worship Jesus too, if she'd have ever asked.
- Ark
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Monday, April 4, 2011
What Monster?
The muse has continued flitting about my head. The muse is apparently the Muse of Kindergarten Refrigerator Art, but still, she is a muse, so you have to pay attention when she screams at you to draw something. :)
Enjoy.
- Ark
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Bee!
This has nothing to do with the A-Z Blogging Challenge, though it looks like Mother Nature wants me to participate anyway. Mother Nature is crazy like that.
The Texas afternoon was nice, in the high 80s, and perfect for outside shenanigans. The Boy was off with a friend having fun at the Legoland Discovery Center. The Baby Momma was out sunning in her bikini, and I thought I'd get some sun on my pasty white nerd flesh as well. So sitting in a plastic lawn chair sun-worshipping, I notice something.
There was a noise. My first thoughts were that the wind had picked up and was rustling the leaves in the live oak behind me - a lot. The rustle kept on getting louder. I felt no wind on my skin, however. I tilted my head back to look at the tree.
There were gnats in the air.
Now big clouds of gnats ain't a strange thing round these parts. They happen. If you have to walk through them, you just inhale and dash through the cloud so you don't suck a gnat up your nose. No big deal.
The gnats were hovering above the back yard. The cloud was getting bigger. The gnats were getting bigger. The rustling was accompanied by a buzz that was growing louder and louder by the second.
"Look!" I yelled at the Baby Momma and pointed above us.
"What?" she looked at me, then up.
It suddenly clicked in my head. "Run!"
"What?" she looked back at me.
"Get inside! It's a swarm!" I leaped out of my chair.
She looked back up. "No . . ." Her eyes widened and then we hauled ass inside.
With our noses pressed up against the sliding glass door, we watched the sky dim and the airspace above our house fill with bees. Thousands of bees. Perhaps tens of thousands of bees. It's damn hard to count bees in situations like that, but to properly describe it takes a lot of expletives.
"Look on that branch," she pointed at the live oak. Bees were . . . coagulating . . . on the branch, dangling in strings like some freaky form of bees-laden Christmas tinsel. More and more bees created the bee chains until there was this massive, writhing blob of bees infesting the tree.
I'm still rather stunned by the whole thing.
Lots of internet searches and calls to bee wranglers gave us some information about what had happened. These were perfectly normal Texas honey bees doing what they do. A new queen left a nest, taking about 60% of the old hive's worker bees with her. The swarm decided to use our backyard as a way-point in finding a suitable place to build their permanent hive.
Great.
Multiple experts said they will probably clear off the next day to their new home. One slight problem would be if they discovered holes in our roof or eaves where they could set up shop.
Great.
We coated the eaves with Wasp poison and are hoping for the best.
Of course this lead me to thinking about such an event in game terms. It was freaking scary! But imagine if these were a couple of thousand D&D Giant Killer Bees. Entire villages could be wiped out during a swarm. Imagine a swarm decides that the capital city would be a good place to live. The sewers would probably be an ideal home for the giant bees.
Okay, I think I've thought to much about this. My skin is crawling and I need to go scratch my entire body.
- Ark
The Texas afternoon was nice, in the high 80s, and perfect for outside shenanigans. The Boy was off with a friend having fun at the Legoland Discovery Center. The Baby Momma was out sunning in her bikini, and I thought I'd get some sun on my pasty white nerd flesh as well. So sitting in a plastic lawn chair sun-worshipping, I notice something.
There was a noise. My first thoughts were that the wind had picked up and was rustling the leaves in the live oak behind me - a lot. The rustle kept on getting louder. I felt no wind on my skin, however. I tilted my head back to look at the tree.
There were gnats in the air.
Now big clouds of gnats ain't a strange thing round these parts. They happen. If you have to walk through them, you just inhale and dash through the cloud so you don't suck a gnat up your nose. No big deal.
The gnats were hovering above the back yard. The cloud was getting bigger. The gnats were getting bigger. The rustling was accompanied by a buzz that was growing louder and louder by the second.
"Look!" I yelled at the Baby Momma and pointed above us.
"What?" she looked at me, then up.
It suddenly clicked in my head. "Run!"
"What?" she looked back at me.
"Get inside! It's a swarm!" I leaped out of my chair.
She looked back up. "No . . ." Her eyes widened and then we hauled ass inside.
"Look on that branch," she pointed at the live oak. Bees were . . . coagulating . . . on the branch, dangling in strings like some freaky form of bees-laden Christmas tinsel. More and more bees created the bee chains until there was this massive, writhing blob of bees infesting the tree.
I'm still rather stunned by the whole thing.
Lots of internet searches and calls to bee wranglers gave us some information about what had happened. These were perfectly normal Texas honey bees doing what they do. A new queen left a nest, taking about 60% of the old hive's worker bees with her. The swarm decided to use our backyard as a way-point in finding a suitable place to build their permanent hive.
Great.
Multiple experts said they will probably clear off the next day to their new home. One slight problem would be if they discovered holes in our roof or eaves where they could set up shop.
Great.
We coated the eaves with Wasp poison and are hoping for the best.
Of course this lead me to thinking about such an event in game terms. It was freaking scary! But imagine if these were a couple of thousand D&D Giant Killer Bees. Entire villages could be wiped out during a swarm. Imagine a swarm decides that the capital city would be a good place to live. The sewers would probably be an ideal home for the giant bees.
Okay, I think I've thought to much about this. My skin is crawling and I need to go scratch my entire body.
- Ark
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Dice Bonanza
Look what arrived in the mail today!
From top left to right bottom:
Note: Observers from across the house think that when I roll several d30s together on my desk, it sounds like loud farting.
- Ark
From top left to right bottom:
- A big-ass red d30.
- A big-ass d12 hit location die.
- A d30 alphabet die with 4 wildcard slots.
- A mythical rientsdie.
- A six-sided multiplier.
- An X/2X/3X d6.
- An eight-sided compass rose die.
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
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
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
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
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