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D&D 4th ed. – The MMOD&D

2009-07-11T08:20:17Z

Originally published at /var/log/vadept.log. Please leave any comments there.

I haven’t really said much here about D&D 4th edition or what my feelings were about it. I really wanted to get my hand on a book, and actually play a game before I blasted on how much it sucks like most of the other D&D players on the internet. So have just gotten back from my first game, here is my $0.02.

Character Creation
- Coming from 2nd edition with zany math, and having that simplified to the 3.5ed rules, making a 4th ed character was quite a shock. I got the feeling that I was making a computer-game character with “Here are your 2 choices for a Warlord”. The skills have been cut down so far that you can’t have a rouge that is good as forgery, disguise, and spying; It’s all been lumped together into “thievery”. You can’t have a character that cant spot anything in front of his face but find a needle in a haystack if he/she is putting his mind to it. Major skills are all lumped together into these broad reaching categories that really kills it for me.
- The powers. You have your at-will powers, your daily powers, your encounter powers, and utility powers. In fact, WotC makes these cute little cards you can /buy/ so you can have all of your powers right at your fingertips. Thats right, your choices now short of movement and basic attack have resorted down to little cards. Let me peg you into little holes now. Oh, did I mention that no matter what character class you are, everyone follows the exact same progression as to how many at-will, daily, encounter and utility powers you get? Wizards get cantrips, and certain classes get a few speciality powers, but the majority of everything is flat across the board and level dependant.
- 1/2 your level bullshit. Most all saves and AC have a positive modifier of 1/2 your level. Thats right, the wizard, rogue, and cleric all get the same bonus based upon 1/2 of their level. Long gone are the days of the Cleric actually having a better Reflex save when they are flat footed (and denied their Dex bonus of -3 from full plate) than when they see it coming. Everyone gets treated equally.
Saving throws
- I dislike this so much that it gets its own section
- In the 3.5 days, you would get a collection of modifiers to your Fort/Reflex/Will saves. They come from your ability scores, feats, armor, etc. When someone casted a spell on you; you would roll a d20, add your modifiers, and if the resulting number was higher than the DC of the power being used on you then it had little to no effect.
- In the 4.0 days, you have a number that is like 10 + 1/2 your level + ability modifier. The attacker now rolls and determines if he/she succeeds. Saving throws in 4th ed are like attack rolls in 3.5. You have a set number that you cant change, you cant roll a 20 to resist, you cant have that uber-god roll a 1 and fail.
- The whole 1/2 level flat-across-the-board really bugs me. Before the bonuses to your saving throw was 100% dependant on your class, not just what level you are. A level 20 rogue should not have the same bonuses to his will or fort save that a level 20 cleric does, and a level 20 wizard should have a reflex save even close to what a rogue has. 4th ed obviously thinks differently.
Healing Surges
- Mechanically I have no idea where they got the idea where characters can just spontaneously heal when the conditions are right. Every character has these ‘healing surges’ where they recover 1/4 of their hitpoints when conditions are met. Clerics don’t really have any “Healing Powers” anymore per se, they just allow people to use up their healing surges. Paladins use their healing surges to heal others with ‘lay on hands’, warlords can command people to use their healing surges. So really why do we have clerics when every other class out there seems to have a power that allows characters to spend /their/ own healing surges on themselves? Don’t really care for that. How can a fighter just spontaneously heal after a Warlord gives him a pep-talk? Why do healing potions just allow you to use a healing surge instead of actually healing you. If you drink a healing potion and you have used up your healing surges between rests, then you just wasted a potion! Its a hackish way of getting around the age old problem of not being able to heal unless you had a Cleric, Paladin, or a Bard in your party (uh, boo hoo? Make someone play a Cleric! You wouldn’t march into melee with a rogue and a wizard would you?)
Its so easy any idiot can play!
- This is what I have a big issue with. Back in the 2nd ed and 3/3.5 days, playing D&D wasn’t the “cool” thing to do. You were nerds, you got made fun of when you broke out your source book and leveled up your character between classes. Now all of a sudden since WoW became famous everyone wants to play D&D. We have our little nerd club, and because you got a level 80 computer game character you want to be a part of it? I’m sorry, it doesn’t work that way. I’m one of those “walked up hill both ways, while calculating THAC0, and wondering why a save vs wand was different than a staff/stave.”
- WotC made 4th ed so dumbed down that any idiot can play. Just look on the internet how many people refuse to buy the 4th ed books, look at how many people are angry just like I am at how they have fed the rules lead-paint until they drool.
- Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition obviously has a few extra chromosomes in its genome.
No OGL
- One of the huge awesome things about 3.5 was the Open Gaming License. This Open Sourcing of the core d20 rules allowed other people who make rule books that were 100% compatible with D&D (or new games that used the exact same rules). There were a TON of 3.5 books that were published by 3rd parties that were perfectly compatible with D&D 3.5 (The Book of Erotic Fantasy was a big seller. Yes, someone wrote rules to incorporate all the wierd sexual fetishes in your D&D campaign). All the book needed was to just have the OGL printed somewhere in the book, and not use any proprietory D&D stuff (like inital character generation, so you had to buy the D&D main book, understandable)
- 4th ed has no OGL. It has some free/low-cost licensing but who knows if WotC is going to renig on that. Its not open source one big, and Paizo refuses to publish anything under the 4th ed ruleset just for that reason.

Now what I do like about D&D 4th ed, is that the books seem to be colorful. and nicely laid out. Uh, it allows me to hang out with my friends (some of which who do like D&D 4th ed). Some of the new classes are kinda neat.

Dax said it best. The system is solid, and would be a winner if they wouldn’t have put the D&D name on it.

Mutants and Masterminds - Huge leaps, tons of drama

2009-06-01T07:44:38Z

Originally published at /var/log/vadept.log. Please leave any comments there.

This weeks Mutants and Masterminds game was.. Interesting..

First off, we had 10 (!!) players show up to game. I know all of the ST’s out there are are thinking to themselves “Wow, that’s a ton”. It is a ton, an unplanned for ton. Unfortunately in order to keep order I had to act like an asshole, understandable if you wish to get anything accomplished with only about 4 people playing in the game and the remaining 6 goofing off or having outside conversations.

An interesting tidbit of experience that I have gleaned, is that when you throw a few players a tidbit of information, they are more than likely going to make a whole bunch of assumptions, take those assumptions as complete word-of-God fact, then run with them. Usually this okay, but sometimes it can invoke a bunch of arguing and drama (especially when it starts to get really late and tempers/patients grow shaky due to fatigue). I can handle in-game drama to a point, but arguing over rules and semantics get to me (especially when I’m tired as well). I guess when you have more ST-time under your belt you can see these things coming and prepare for them.

Game otherwise is going great. The players got through the first part of my plot and are on now to diabolical plot number 2.

My current challenges:

Player count has gotten way too high. Need to send the word out that we are no longer accepting new players.
Need to find out a method of increasing the difficulty of the game to compensate for a few players having some broken powers without making the plot unbeatable (when the burly players are not there) or party-wiping everyone.

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Less mutant, more mastermind

2009-05-18T08:09:44Z

Originally published at /var/log/vadept.log. Please leave any comments there.

So I havent wrote about the M&M game much over the past weeks. Here is a recap:

I had the players go into this time-warp alternate-reality where the world (as they saw it) had been destroyed by an alien force. They wake up without powers. I wrote this awesome script to take everyone’s powers, randomize them, then assign them back to the players, so as time progressed, “random” powers started to manifest. My original intent was to make them realize that sometimes throwing powers at a problem was not the only way to solve a problem. Plus I was curious to see how the players would cope with not having the safety blanket of their powers at their immediate disposal.

Well, party morale seemed to drop considerably after that happened. So this last game they did some events that allowed them to regain their powers again. It was an interesting experiment, however I think my delivery was sub-par and really ruined (or didn’t get the message across) the experience. Oh well, live and learn.

This last game however things started slow, but towards the end we ended up running past the allotted time of midnight to get to an ending point. I think that the party could of ran for another hour or two but I had to cut it short due to myself having to work in the morning. There was an obvious morale improvement as the powers were regained which made me happy.

As random things happen for random times, as I was at Starbucks with a player who is home on summer break (and thereby an active player yet again), we met a starbucks employee who is a UOP grad and what seems to be a die-hard tabletopper. I shot him an email to see if he wants to jump into the M&M fun, so we’ll see how that turns out. He recently graduated UOP with a degree in physics, so it would be a welcome addition to get another hard-science major in the gaming group vs all of the fruity soft-science (yes, that means you Brandon) majors that we have.

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Yay grateful

2009-05-05T06:09:59Z

wtf, cryo like stays up all night fixing the userpic issue (with my instructions) and nobody even gives a thanks?

:( that makes me sad.

sigh

2009-04-30T04:13:27Z

Oh userpic keywords, why must you taunt me with your not-working?

Seriously, throw me a bone.. :(

Mutants and Masterminds - Game 2

2009-04-23T06:31:35Z

Originally published at /var/log/vadept.log. Please leave any comments there.

So the second game was this last Sunday.

From the general concensus, everyone had a really good time. We were missing a few players, and there was one that I was really disappointed didn’t show up (school studying, understandable), but the night went on well.

The players haven’t gotten certain things to me yet, and I’m trying out a new DEMERIT system for the people who like to goof off during game and be a distraction. They are moving along in the story quite nicely, but the acid test will be this coming week when the plot starts to get thrown at them from every angle.

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Mutants and Masterminds, one game down.

2009-04-13T04:02:05Z

Originally published at /var/log/vadept.log. Please leave any comments there.

Last Sunday (yeah, I’m a slacker), was my first game as the Mutants and Masterminds storyteller.

I must say, it went rather well.

There is one aspect that I got a taste of when I ran Shadowrun that I really see now. No matter how concrete you think your story outline is. No matter how much you have prepared for the game thinking of all of the possible sidetracking your players will go on, they will always think of something that you didn’t. We spent most of the game ignoring the fact that all of the superheros of the world went missing (except the ones in Stockton) instead on trying to balance the budget of California so the Stockton Arena wouldn’t get shut down.

Yeah. My players wanted to move the prision system to another dimension to save California money. Yeah, I’m at a loss too. It wasn’t until I made something very dear to them go missing did they get back on track. Wow, screwing over the rest of the world to save the Stockton Arena and California. Never saw that coming.

Other than that, keeping my fingers crossed for another good game.

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scsi @ 2009-04-07T22:47:00

2009-04-08T05:47:43Z

What about this site stresses me so much when I have to do any work on it?

Its like I have PTSD when admining DJ.. :(

Making music with telsa coils

2009-03-30T04:56:36Z

Originally published at /var/log/vadept.log. Please leave any comments there.

Wow. I’ve never seen this before, but its really neat.

Basically if you switch a telsa coil on and off at a specific frequency, it creates lightning that ionizes the air at that frequency. Thereby you can turn telsa coils into gigantic speakers that shoot out lightning that resonates.

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A new chapter in the Mutants and Masterminds game.

2009-03-29T07:06:44Z

Originally published at /var/log/vadept.log. Please leave any comments there.

After over a year of running the Mutants and Masterminds (MaM) game, our Storyteller Sky has decided that he has had enough. He wants to play for a change so he put his game up for grabs to whomever wishes to continue it.

Needless to say, after my latest Shadowrun game exploding and collapsing, I was a bit hesitant to take the torch. However, most of the Shadowrun players (some who play in the MaM game as well) told me that running the MaM game would be an excellent experience for me, so I gave it some serious thought. After discussing time issues with Tiffany (whom if I was not running MaM, I would be there playing anyways), you are looking at the new Storyteller of the Mutants and Masterminds game. Uh, yay?

I start in 3-4 weeks. Melinda wants to try to run the game for 3 weeks as a transitional ST while I get some things prepared, but I think i’m capable of starting as soon as tomorrow night with some preliminary story/tying up loose threads from Sky’s game. Everyone is keeping their same characters, time will just march on under my compassionate hand instead of Sky’s.

However the million dollar question is that I’ve been handed this running game of ambitious, good natures, fun-loving players who really dig their characters. A part of me wants to turn the game from less zany/comic-bookish into a darker mood game. Like turning Adam West Batman into The Dark Knight movies. I setup a quick survey on our internal gaming website, a few want a change, but the majority was right in the middle (and not everyone has submitted one yet).

Do I make this game darker, give the players more realistic challenges, more evil villains, and have them actually make planned decisions as to what course of action they will take? Or do I keep the same zany, wacky, no-real-fear-of-dying that we have had for the past year. I can do the scientific way and make the game dark until people start to bitch, then back off 10%. Not sure if there is a good way to do this that will make everyone happy.

I think I need to take a serious look as to why I like to play in the MaM game and what makes it fun for me. I think I’m going to start writing about the MaM game more here to document how things panned out.

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End of an era

2009-03-19T07:44:46Z

Originally published at /var/log/vadept.log. Please leave any comments there.

At 10:00pm on 3/18/09, I went down to the InReach building at 4635 Georgetown Place to move my one lone server out of their colocation area. I got a call 2 days prior saying that they are shuffling everyone left in the building over to their rack at Pac-West telecom. They are moving out of that building. That building that I helped wire, that I helped setup, that I spent more hours there than anywhere.

I got to walk around the vast empty InReach building. I knew where all of my desks were throughout the almost 10 years I worked there. Looked at the tiny pieces of CAT-5 jumpers that I wired by hand well over 10 years ago. My eyes started to tear up to realize that I’ll probably never ever see the inside of that building again. I spent most of my teenage years confined within that small building working on servers, putting out fires, dealing with shit that now-days I could of never deal with. Remembering the laughs, the long nights, the sitting at my desk wondering how in the fuck I was going to fix this server (but yet always did), the walks to McDonalds. A ton of people who read this (or my LJ) worked there and grew up there with me. That faculity saw the birth and the move of DeadJournal and housed zillions of bytes of data that I could never replace.

I unracked my one server, and followed Mike over to Pac-West. Considering that over 10 years ago VAdept (this server) started out in the PacWest colo was sorta ironic. I could still hear the sounds of the Ascend modem boxes heating up the room like huge rackmount hair-dryers. Visualizing the USR 5+U modem chassis with the HyperDSP cards (that could never work right). The smell of a real colocation faculity, and how a few times I slept on that cold raised floor hearing the air woosh under it while waiting for an array to rebuild. Remembering the time Andy formatted a web-server array by accident, then said “See ya!” and left me there to restore from tape (you dick, I still remember that.. ). It was a very weird and awkward feeling to be there again. Everything looked exactly how I remembered it to be.

So since I was there, I decided to help Mike rack the gear that he brought over from customers who didn’t care enough to drive down to move their own damn computers. It was such a weird feeling, that its hard to describe what it was like to be sitting in that colocation again after so many years. In a way its fitting that my server ended back up to where it was born, with real generator power, real Halon and temperature monitoring, real 24/7 NOC, a “real” facility.

But using the same rackmount screws, the same power cord, and the same piece of cat-5 I’ve used for years and years; I’ve managed to pocket a few handfuls of dirt from the grave of the InReach colo. Really, my server is its legacy.

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Obama screws the pooch with taxpayer funded stem-cell research

2009-03-07T20:03:29Z

Originally published at /var/log/vadept.log. Please leave any comments there.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gmrZqrq_6H7mQuJkfn7NHIjHz9aQD96ORJ3O1

WASHINGTON (AP) — Reversing an eight-year-old limit on potentially life-saving science, President Barack Obama plans to lift restrictions Monday on taxpayer-funded research using embryonic stem cells. The long-promised move will allow a rush of research aimed at one day better treating, if not curing, ailments from diabetes to paralysis — research that crosses partisan lines, backed by such notables as Nancy Reagan and the late Christopher Reeve. But it stirs intense controversy over whether government crosses a moral line with such research.

Now a ton of people get this confused with “banning stem cell research”. No, Bush banned taxpayer funded stem cell research. I think Obama really fucked up by reversing this (surprise surprise).

Think about it; your tax-dollars are now going to be used to fund research that a private company is going to charge you 10.4 zillion dollars for you to recieve benefits from. Thats right, WE as taxpayers are paying for R&D that a private company is going to profit from. That sound like a good idea to you? You think this company that makes something awesome is going to cut us taxpayers a break because they got their research subsidized by the government? Hell no!

It would be different if the private company used private funds to fund their research. Then I can see charging an arm and a leg for this stuff, but no, they will be getting a subsidized ride via an already broke government on our broke backs so they can make a zillion dollars. If we want to socialize the research, then lets socialize their profits too! Its bullshit, and I’m tired of using taxpayer dollars to subsidize things that the private sector should pick up the tab for! The only way that I will be in favor of this is if all government-funded research gets put into the public domain (ie: not patented) so anyone can use it.

So in 10 years, when we’re still in debt, but a brand new treatment is out for $foo that nobody can afford (and the company is reporting record profits this year!), think of me.

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Railing against society

2009-02-27T07:27:15Z

Originally published at /var/log/vadept.log. Please leave any comments there.

At what point do we, as a society, tell people “produce or get the fuck out”.

Sitting at work today, I wondered why I do it. Why do I put up with the bullshit? Why do I contribute to a system that just rewards laziness and irresponsibility. Why don’t I do like everyone does and have my ass wiped for me by the government?

People waltz around without a care in the world fully knowing that the government will provide them with a place to live, food on the table, and their basic needs; a luxury that I do not have. I stand there, 9 hours a day, serving these people that have contributed NOTHING to the well-being or advancement of society. They are the hemlock, the blight ; feeding off of us who bust our asses to make ends meet. I’m at work, they are not. I bust my ass to do whats right and they just bitch and leech and contribute nothing. I do everything for them, but what do they do for -me-? Help thine neighbor is a two way street and all I see are red street reflectors.

They are the proverbial royalty, and we are the serfs who tend to the farmlands so they royalty can eat. They wake up at 3pm when I’m at work by 9am. They have no cares in the world other than how they are going to waste away their day living off of their SSI or disability check due to the forms that some quack for an MD that bought their pity-party story signed off on. Their blight-filled ride is just enhanced by narcotics that WE as taxpayers pay for to treat some “condition” that is a candy-coated rationalization for addiction and abuse.

Sure there are exceptions to this. People who want to work whom are physically unable to do so. People with small children that they cannot leave unattended. There is an exception to every rule, however those people should be as angry as I am because the hemlock above waste they resources that they can use to get into a position of production. The working class pays to help those who cant, not those who wont. Why should a man learn to fish when the town provides him with all the fish he can eat?

But no, we rationalize it away that we are ‘helping’ whilst cowering under the heavy stick of political correctness and the squishy “can’t offend anyone” mindset. We hide in fear of being tagged with stereotypical or racial remarks as the leeches of society grasp at straws to justify their behavior. Race cards get thrown down, feelings get hurt. People cant take the harsh reality of the situation and would rather just throw money at a problem and pretend it doesn’t exist. Now the money is running out, and the problem wants their paycheck.

There isn’t an easy solution to this problem, nor am I trying to state one here. With California nose-diving into the financial ground the boil of society is about to come to a head, and I don’t think we as society are prepared to face the monster that we have created.

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More Octomom developments.

2009-02-26T06:34:18Z

Originally published at /var/log/vadept.log. Please leave any comments there.

I dont know why I keep on giving octomom more air-time on here, but I really do like to point out how utterly stupid she is.

Octomom’s house is about to be defaulted. Thats right, booted out into the street. Maybe she can use some of the cash she got from those interviews to pay off her mom’s house. Wait, that would be planning ahead, HAHAHAHA!
Octomom was offered $1 million dollars if she would star in one porn movie. She would also get 1 year of health coverage for her and all of her kids.
Octomom might not be able to take her kids home until she proves that she is capable of taking care of all of them.

Really, this woman is a distillation of what is wrong in society today. She obviously does not plan ahead, she fucks up royally, and shes going to come out of this smelling like a rose with more cash than I’ll ever make.

What does that teach you kids? We reward you to be irresponsible. However you have to REALLY fuck up before the checks and money start coming in.

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Mutants and Masterminds

2009-02-23T02:54:27Z

Originally published at /var/log/vadept.log. Please leave any comments there.

Many of you have asked “What is this Mutants and Masterminds game you always tweet about?”

Its a role-playing game that I play every Sunday with a group of people. Its a game where you play a comic bookish superhero. The rule books have every single power from every superhero in existence and allows you to pick and choose ones to fit your character. The rules are quite ambiguous and at times outright confusing, however we make the best of it.

A really dark form of the Mutants and Masterminds genre can be seen on the TV show “Heros” where ordinary people get super-human powers. Our game is no where near that serious/dark but more slapstick, goofy and funny. The setting takes place in modern day Stockton, and we are to play ‘ourselves’ but with superhero powers. Needless to say, this gets quite interesting.

I play ‘Dr Gizmo‘, a pharmacist exposed to a unique mixture of drugs during a pharmacy “incident” which gave him super-human powers. Dr Gizmo’s power is ‘Gadgets’ meaning that he can create pretty much a gadget or gizmo that does anything. To keep in the pharmacy paradigm, his gadgets must be explainable in medicinal terms (an injection to allow water breathing, or bandages to heal otherwise lethal wounds). Yeah, I’m basically Inspector Gadget but a ton cooler. Did I mention that Dr Gizmo has to wear his underwear on the outside of his pants for his powers to work? Its true, all superheros have their underwear on the outside of their pants.

Dax plays “Apollo”, a half-god of (you guessed it) Apollo. Dr Gizmo’s theory is that he’s just delusional, and he got his powers not from a “God” but from some silly dental accident involving the x-ray machine.

Brandon plays “Brenden”, an “Alien” that has the ability to self-replicate. His character is the most zany and absolutely psychotic in the whole game. We have done everything to a Brenden replicate, cooking, launching, shooting, zapping, experimenting on, etc. Crazy. Dr Gizmo thinks that he’s just a regular guy with some delusion of being an alien from another planet, although having a crashed space-ship on the moon as a base isn’t jiving with the ‘regular guy’ theory.

Other people play, but I really have no attention span at this moment to list -everyone- and their powers. Maybe later.

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Shadowrun comes to a close

2009-02-07T23:57:50Z

Originally published at /var/log/vadept.log. Please leave any comments there.

Last night I concluded my shadowrun game. The ending wasn’t as exciting as I imagined it in my head, however my players were tolerant and were really good sports.

I did however, realize how much Shadowrun is a very binary genre. People either love it, or hate it. One of my players loved it, 2 of them hated it, and one was meso-meso. I think it really takes a lot out of/kills a game if the players don’t care about the setting that the game is in.

Shadowrun v4 all-in-all is a very complex system to the point of being annoyingly complex. Unless everyone is a die-hard cyberpunk fan (and knows the rules to the game inside and out) the game grinds to a halt the moment the stats are involved. Complex dice rolls for everything, and a lot of things make sense to people who are (in real life) computer literate, but no sense to people who have no idea how the internet/computer work (like certain hacking related rolls are 100% based upon your comlink, no character stats are involved).

It was a fun experiment to do, the backend I wrote (although nobody used it) was a good experience, and short of all the arguing and drama over this game I really had a good time running it. Of course I say that now rather than last night when I wanted to murder some of my players.

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ST’ing/DM’ing 101

2009-02-01T21:51:56Z

Originally published at /var/log/vadept.log. Please leave any comments there.

Running a good tabletop game (to me) is something that can be explained in 1000 books, yet all of which give you no useful information. It is one of those skills that has to be fumbled around through trial and error. Since I am crotch-deep in this Shadowrun game that I’ve been running for the past 3 months, there are some things that I have realized and decide to share (in case anyone else reads this and has the urge to run a tabletop game).

My players are the hard-core types. They wish to have character development off-of the sheet. They are not a big fan of Experience Points to add dots or ranks to their characters. Usually dice aren’t rolled unless they are doing something great or has a great deal of ‘can fail’. These players tend to enjoy to see their characters evolve, like to see their backgrounds (which all of them wrote) incorporated into the story, and really have their characters be actual ‘people’.

Thats not to say that the game is 100% serious-face with no laughing. There is plenty of antics, off-the-wall plans, etc. Its just ‘realistic’ off-the-wall plans. We have an zany-antic game thats seperate from this one that a few of us play in for crazyness.

Now I’ve played (as a player) in tons of RPG Tabletop games. Boring ones to exciting ones. However I’ve never really ran one of this caliber. It was a new system with a bunch of die-hard players. Die hard in the way that the’ll expect a ton out of me, but also will ride out any storms due to my inexperience.

Helpful tips for some new ST’s that might be reading this and want to run a game:

Get your shit together before game. Know the system inside and out (especially Shadowrun, the most complex and poorly written (see page 123) book (see page 13) ever (see page 56 subtable on page 57) written).
Get a feel for what your players want. If they want zany then ninja-clowns and unpossible feats (which in turn are very much possible) so be it. However if they want dark and serious and pseudo-depressing, then be prepared for that.
Always roll dice. I made this huge mistake when the story-running NPC first came into play. He had so much dice ahead of the players that I didn’t bother rolling. Always roll, even if what your NPC does is scripted. Not only does this give the player a sense of actually having a part in his/her fate, but also gives you colorful ammo in case they horribly fail/botch the roll. That snowball may roll 4 dice against hell’s 4000, but what happens when the snowball fails horribly?
Give small victories. You may wish your game to have the Blade Running doom-and-gloom, but pay attention early on what your players wish they can get, and if the game is turning too dark, throw them that bone. It’ll improve player morale.
The players have to win. They may not win in the fashon they want, nor their definition of ‘win’ might not be the same as yours. However having them show up to your game week in and week out to have them ultimately fail (unless they were being total dumbasses) is going to leave a bad taste for future games.
Don’t fall into the rocked NPC trap. Sure, its fun to play a totally butch bad-guy NPC with tons of stuff you would never -ever- get as a player, but always have a key weakness. The weakness might be known but not obtainable yet, or may be something stupid but unknown.

Last and not least

No matter how hard you plan, no matter how much track you lay down to railroad your players into a direction you want the story go to, they will ALWAYS find a way to derail your story and make it their own.

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hooray we won!

2009-02-01T06:58:35Z

Originally published at /var/log/vadept.log. Please leave any comments there.

hooray we won!

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Why I’m writing here, tile update, etc

2009-01-28T03:37:08Z

Originally published at /var/log/vadept.log. Please leave any comments there.

So I figured that since I went through all the trouble of setting up WordPress here, I should actually use it. I have it setup where it auto-posts to LJ and DJ so it really encourages me to be lazy here. I really wish I could import all of my LJ entries here, however there are problems:

No easy way to download all the entries into a format where the WordPress importer can understand
No easy way to shove all of my LJ entries into one category.
No security levels. Hell, I’d be happy with setting everything to ‘private’ on wordpress but alas there is no way to do it.
There isn’t a really clean way of doing this. The wordpress LJ import plugin (so I’ve read) doesn’t do true XML parsing but is regex central, so like the jdump.pl xml output just makes the importer die.

Ideally there would be a plugin already written that would do all this for me, but searching gives me zip.

Anyhoo, about life:

So today I called the tile place. B&W Tile (www.bwtile.com) out of Gardena. Really nice people on the phone. I just told them what my tile person told me and they faxed over a quote. $1400 and that included tax and delivery. Being shipped tomorrow, 14 boxes at 500 lbs.

I placed the order and we’ll see what comes in.

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sigh bathroom shower replacement woes.

2009-01-27T06:36:28Z

Originally published at /var/log/vadept.log. Please leave any comments there.

So Tiffany and I are replacing our shower. Our pink shower in our pink bathroom. Turns out that I found out a few months ago (while crawling around the house running cat-5) that the shower leaks. Yay.

So we got the shower all ripped out, had the hot-mopping vs liner debate, and got everything all boarded up and drywalled and everything.

Then it was time to find the tile to replace it. Because I didn’t want to rip out my entire bathroom and redo the tile, the tub, the toliet, the sink and everything else, I found this place in southern california that specializes in old 1950’s tile.

Its going to probably cost me about 2k just for the tile alone. The maroon you see in the picture, this place has a perfect match for about $13/sq ft. Yeah. This shower is Tiffany and I’s trip to Belize or anywhere fun this year. I need to call the tile place tomorrow to order it, but something makes me think that the price is going to be over 2k.

On another note, since I want to move everything off of LJ to here, you’ll notice that I have LJ comments disabled. You can comment via OpenID. Put in your LJ/DJ/whatever (AIM is also an OpenID Provider) and you can comment here.

I’ll let you know what the final bill is for the shower once I call the place tomorrow.

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Ugh, Hockey

2009-01-26T03:28:00Z

Originally published at /var/log/vadept.log. Please leave any comments there.

The worst part about the Stockton Thunder is their inconsistancy. For example, they can totally kick ass against one of the best teams in the league while at the same time losing to someone lower than themselves on the standings.

I guess this can happen with any sport, but all I wish is that we would be #1 for once.

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sigh

2008-11-19T07:13:56Z

I would of had emailpost working an hour ago if cryo wouldn't of tweaked
my config file.. :( :( :( :( :(

Church and Bass

2008-10-07T06:07:23Z

http://www.crackunit.com/2008/09/26/more-church-and-bass/

Holy shit, I think i just crapped my pants!

Thoughts on the Acquisition

2008-10-07T05:34:22Z

You all have have by now seen the new_shit post regarding Warped acquiring DJ.

Back in 2000 (or thereabouts), I was hanging out on the Warped IRC server when someone jokingly made a comment to start up DeadJournal.

I originally started it as a joke. People used it to rant and rave, so I kept it up. Borrowed some money from my parents to buy a server. One thing lead to another and at its peak DJ had 13 servers running the site you see today. I was in school back then, so I had the time to manage the server, do code upgrades, etc. It took a good chunk of my time/money, but it made people happy.

This site had made and destroyed friendships, allowed me to meet my wife, made me friends all over the planet that I would have never ever known. It has brought people together, broken people apart, and allowed people to record a past shell of what they once were.

Fast forward 8 years to today. The site hasn't had a code upgrade in 2+ years. The LJ code is light-years ahead of what you see here. Journal sites such as this have been stomped on by Facebook, Myspace, and other sites with billions of cash and hundreds of servers. However this site still trudges on funded only by the die-hard population who keep their paid accounts current (thank you!)

What little time I have that's not spent dispensing medication to people (oh, I'm a pharmacist if you haven't gotten that point) is spent waking up at 2am to fix dead hard drives and replacing aging equipment with DJ money that drizzles in. DJ doesn't make enough money for me to hire a full time admin. Yes, it (mostly) pays for its own upkeep, however DJ was never intended to pay my bills. This is a site thats ran on the love and dedication of myself, the volunteers (hi support people!) and the people who spend the money to make sure that the bills get paid and new hard drives get bought.

I was between a rock and a hard place and running this site began to take a toll on not only myself, but the people around me. Increased responsibility at work, myself getting married and hoping to start a family soon, etc whittled what time I had to dedicate to DJ fade more and more. I thought about shutting it down, but I just couldn't do it after seeing people flooding back here years after their accounts have sat untouched due to LJ policy changes. Add on a colocation facility (where the servers are kept) being bought out by yet another company makes the stress even higher as I don't know if I'll get a phone call one day saying I have 48 hours to find DJ a new home.

About 4 months ago, after knowing Bill Coldwell for 10+ years, I asked him if he would like to continue running DeadJournal. Ironically it was on his IRC server that the whole idea was started in motion. Of course, he agreed. I'm not pulling a 6A takeover like LJ where I get 4.5 hochillion dollars as they butcher the site. I just needed someone who works in the internet business to take over the administration and to help me get some of the features up and running that we want to see here.

The past weekend Bill and I (after 2 months of planning) moved DJ to Amazons EC2 server cluster. Huge facility, stable company, stable home. Bill can bring up servers that would cost me a years worth of paid account revenue in a few clicks. I don't have time to keep up on whats latest and greatest in the server-hosting world. He does.

I guess what I'm trying to say here, is that I hope you dont get the impression that I'm leaving DJ or disappearing. I've put 8 years of my life and thousands of hours, tears, sweat, and long nights into this place. I can't mentally handle running this site alone and keep what little sanity I have left. I've known Bill for ages, he's an extremely talented and great guy and it makes me happy that he gets to deal with the 2am crap while leaving me to do the fun stuff as my time allows.

So here's to another 8+ years of DJ!

scsi @ 2008-10-05T00:17:00

2008-10-05T07:17:28Z

Its been such a long few days. :\

Help control the pet population

D&D 4th ed. – The MMOD&D

Mutants and Masterminds - Huge leaps, tons of drama

Less mutant, more mastermind

Yay grateful

*sigh*

Mutants and Masterminds - Game 2

Mutants and Masterminds, one game down.

scsi @ 2009-04-07T22:47:00

Making music with telsa coils

A new chapter in the Mutants and Masterminds game.

End of an era

Obama screws the pooch with taxpayer funded stem-cell research

Railing against society

More Octomom developments.

Mutants and Masterminds

Shadowrun comes to a close

ST’ing/DM’ing 101

hooray we won!

Why I’m writing here, tile update, etc

*sigh* bathroom shower replacement woes.

Ugh, Hockey

*sigh*

Church and Bass

Thoughts on the Acquisition

scsi @ 2008-10-05T00:17:00

sigh

sigh bathroom shower replacement woes.

sigh