D&D Changes and Why Some Aren't Fans

 So I've been finding a large number of D&D videos recently and then I found D&D Player's Stop Calling it the Matt Mercer Effect.  It surprised me because I liked Matt Mercer and listened to his DM tips as well as others.  I wondered what the video was referring to.  I have to admit I couldn't believe what they referencing and I'd have loved to have looked up more into this "Matt Mercer Effect", but a quick glance at the comments and listening to how Nerdarchy answered to it, I realized that I likely would agree with them in regards to what they were talking about, but I also realized that D&D in its popularity rise has changed.  

It's not a bad thing.  The game has been changing since Gary Gygax created it.  I've played D&D for more than 15 years, but always a player and always version 3/3.5.  It makes a difference when you look at all the different editions that are out there.  Personally, I love the ability to make a character that changes their class each level creating a savant that has access to so many things that others can't or sticking with a specialized character.  My characters have always changed with the campaign.  I created a character who was a tibbit dragon shaman originally.  The group was fairly large and had been playing 4.0 mixed with 3/3.5.  For those who don't know - 4 does not mix well with others.  The only reason 3/3.5 is referenced the way it is is because 3.5 was supposed to update 3.0.  It was not completed however before they went to the next edition.  You'll find, if you look in 3/3.5 books, that there are a few notable changes that are between the books.  Two very notable changes are the skills and boots of striding and springing in the magic items list.  The way my DMs have handled it is making greater and lesser boots of striding and springing and a ban on anything that has updated information in a 3.5 book.  If there isn't, then you have to work with the DM to figure out what changes need to be made to update it like removing Ambidextrous from the requirements list of a prestige class/feat or putting intuit direction in with survival just for a couple of other possibilities.  Trying to take a 3/3.5 creature into a 4.0 campaign or having people increase some of their stats because you're using a 4.0 creature doesn't work too well.  I've looked at the various earlier ones and even had some looks at 4 and 5.  

I don't like how 5 looks.  That's not to say it's bad.  I'm one of those people who manages to somehow create oddball combinations.  My husband has tried to create a goofball illusionist with MPD and made it OP.  I've managed to recreate Aerith in D&D 3/3.5 and an overpowered Blair from SoulEater.  I don't know how possible it would be to do the same in 5.  I do know it took a lot of research and DM rulings in each case.  In Blair's case it was could we use fireball and just have it look like pumpkins?  Since it didn't change anything except the look of the spell, yes, we could.  I should probably note at this point that when I agreed to make Blair (she was totally a tibbit!) my husband became determined to create Soul and, more importantly, and annoyingly, Excalibur.  He double-checked with both our closest thing to a psionics expert and myself as someone who was always willing to read through the information to see about any possible loopholes or missed information.  It's always good to have someone else read over something to ensure you're reading it correctly...Anyway, he found a way to do so.  When I return to my making characters series if I ever actually get it going.  I know, I know, I keep putting off my various sets of stories.  There's my cookbook/cooking series, my re-watching Charmed, and the previous campaign that I had started but didn't keep up with when life ran away from me.  I have a lot of things I'm working on and really need to just get things organized so I'm actually on top of everything...

As I said, 5 is not necessarily bad.  What little I've seen and heard about it makes it sound very similar to MMORPG's like WOW, NeverWinter, and Secret World, where you choose a race and class, but have a set of path choices after that determined by those options.  This means there's no chance of becoming some of the combinations my husband and I have played in the past.  Then when I click on a D&D article or video, if it's in regards to inner campaign workings, like character creations or world-building I have to check which edition it is before truly enjoying watching/reading/listening to it.  It's not bad, I just can't stand how condensed it is even if it may make it easier for new players.

3D Printing

I know, I had meant for this to be a post about the Descendants trilogy from Disney, but like I mentioned last weekend, my husband got a new toy - 3D printer.  It's actually pretty neat and eventually, I'll do a post using his permission to post pics of some of the completed pieces and possibly of the printer in work and the different stages of work that have gone in to what's been printed - mostly figurines.  We plan to paint them as well, so there's that.

Trust me, if you get a 3D printer it won't be easy going.  You'll have to figure out what you can do based on the dimensions of your printer and if your printer works on the metric system or not.  You'll have to figure out how to set things to print for various set-ups.  Supports are needed for parts that "hang" such as archery bows or claws.  We've tried making a set of dice three or four times now, and only just figured out the supports and other bits that go into it - all my husband's doing, of course.  Before you even get to this point you have to decide either resin or filament.  We went with resin so if you decide to use a filament printer, what I'm about to mention likely won't matter much.

When it comes to resin printers, you have to decide on the base resin.  There are a rather large number of colors and durabilities to them.  We've decided to use a rather durable gray for most things with a slightly more durable transparent blue for dice at the very minimum.  Then we had to find everything necessary for a curing station set-up.  I won't get too much into that.  Suffice to say, it was neither cheap nor easy to find everything we needed and we started at Walmart and finished with orders on Amazon.

After we finally got the bulk of things figured out in regards to the actual printing, we looked into painting them.  We haven't started on that yet, but we went to Michaels yesterday to get some base supplies that will be used.  We researched and found that most apparently used an airbrush.  Neither my husband nor I wish to use one.  We've decided to hand paint.  So we bought some spray paint primer and finish for before and after painting the figurines and a 36 count box of Craftsman paints and a small box of hair paintbrushes (at the moment I can't remember what type of hair they were) to get us started.  We will likely get most of our supplies there.

If you do decide to get into 3D printing, be aware to start with a large figure.  Work your way down to learn the system and its idiosyncrasies.  We got advice from a co-worker who went through 3 bottles of resin because he started with the smaller figurines.  We only went through 2 and started by printing a tarrasque.  Our printer can't put it at its full size for the D&D mat, but we already printed off a figure and it's pretty decent.  Having figured out what our printer can handle, we've decided on some back-up ideas for the figures that we are likely to need for our campaigns.  Hopefully next weekend we'll have actually started to paint the figurines we've printed off!

Sports and Games and Writing

First, let's just all admit it's been a long and tiring year.  To be completely honest, I'm typing this as I listen to an anime I decided to finally try to watch: Haikyu! after having gone out with my husband to watch Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.  While watching this I started to compare volleyball and basketball.  They almost mirror each other in a strange way.  This is going to severely simplify things. 

See volleyball has six players per team on the court at any time.  There's an out of bounds area, but the biggest thing to remember is to keep the ball in the air - to hit it across the net in the center of the court.  For basketball, there are five players on the court and an out of bounds area, but that's about it for the similarities other than taller people tend to have a better time playing the sports or at least they tend to get more recognition.  Instead of keeping the ball in the air and from hitting the ground, a player has to dribble the ball.  This means it has to keep hitting the ground.  The only time to have the ball in the air is to either pass or shoot for a basket.  Basketball keeps track of points during a specified amount of time.  Volleyball takes its time to reach the points to win a game.  So as I said - they mirror each other oddly.

The other reason I started to type this particular post?  The new Jumanji movie got me thinking.  I think I want to write a story with a similar concept, but more like really throwing the stereotypes on their heads.  We've seen instances where guys and girls switch bodies and people either age or get de-aged, we've seen general change-ups in stereotypes: mostly the exact opposite.  Some examples would include the jock whose actually a brain, the "ugly duckling", and my personal favorite (note the sarcasm in this bit) the gamer girl.  Obviously, there are a lot more, but for this story, it would be a take on the gamer girl.

Well, that's it for this year's rants.  Hopefully next year I'll be better at my weekly aimed posts.   Have a Happy New Year for 2018, everyone!

Laze-about

Okay, so last week I actually had the intention of typing up a post about some thoughts I'd been having about Pokemon GO and the buddy system, then I had thoughts about Charmed that I thought of making into a post (and I still plan on doing each of these eventually) but as Sunday got closer and closer, I felt myself losing interest in writing much of anything.  Finally, on Sunday, I ended up just lazing about.

What I mean is that I spent the day, a day I should have been cleaning, doing schoolwork and finalizing my weekly blog post just laying in bed, reading.  And I wasn't reading regular books either.  Confession time: I was reading fanfiction.  I know, it's not much of a confession when I look at previous posts.  If I write them, I have to read at least a few, right?  But here's the kicker: I was reading fanfiction as a way to detach myself from a world I've found myself increasingly losing interest in.  It's hard finding stories that don't piss me off in some way - and fanfictions are the worst for it.

It's not like I can justify disappearing to the library for hours of reading anymore.  I also can't just go out and buy every book that interests me and read as quickly as I used to.  Part of it is because the few people I deal with seem to delight in distracting me from whatever I might be working on.  It truly does annoy me when I'm reading to be drawn from a well-crafted world just to answer a question about something like dinner or a new game or going out that night for a walk...It shouldn't though.  I just have always found reading the best way to escape from a world I don't understand and, more importantly, don't wish to understand.

So, I spent last Sunday just reading, or at least trying to when a friend of ours shows up just as I was starting to get the energy to actually get up and do some much-needed housework done.  Suddenly I felt sapped.  All the energy I had gained from the enjoyable day before and the reading I'd done that morning was gone.  I didn't want to think or work or write, so I returned to finding fanfics to read.  I didn't go outside for Pokemon GO - lost that week's seventh-day rewards.  I didn't eat much.  I didn't even log on to my e-mail or Facebook...not that I check my Facebook that often anyway...  I just felt completely drained again.  Between my husband wishing to go out all the time and friends popping over to borrow our internet, I don't think I've had more than an hour to myself in the last three weeks, if not longer.  It grates on my nerves and makes me unwilling to do things I may once have loved doing.

Hell, I can't look at my stories because I know I have ideas, but there's no time for me to get all the proper research done, like rewatching a show to ensure things get written properly, but I can't seem to get ideas for the stories out of my head unless I hunt down fanfics and then I get annoyed because the stories that may actually fit the ideas in my head are either with pairings that I can't stand to read about (Harry/Hermione in anything HP related, for just one example) or use gender-bending, not as a part of the story as such that it had to occur or that the person truly felt that wy in their story, no, they use the gender-bending because they wanted to rename the character with a different name, or they will give them another sibling for that sole reason.  It doesn't matter what it was, most gender-bending stories I can't stand.  I'd rather read a story with male pregnancy than read one where this guy was actually born a girl and raised to believe they were a boy complete with all the bits.  That's not to say anything against Haku's story in Naruto.  That one is actually one I'm still unsure of their gender...

Anyway, I just needed to get a few things out of my head, and while it annoys me to no end that I feel a need to constantly strive for some time that is strictly for me and constantly failing, I love my husband who is always trying to get out and go places or spend time with me, and I love my dog who is curently sleeping after a late night in the city.

Cookbooks: Microwave Cooking, Week 1

So in 2016: It's A New Year!, I mentioned doing a weekly synopsis to help me go through a number of cookbooks to try and cut back the number of them that we have.  I randomly chose a cookbookfrom our large stash.  It's Betty Crocker's Microwave Cooking.  The version I have was printed in it's format in 1986.

The first two recipes I tried out of it were Hamburger Patties on page 10 and Broccoli Italiano on page 50.  The hamburger patties were actually really good.  I did forget the prepared horseradish and brushed homemade ketchup over the top.  Disappointingly, we didn't have buns to put them on, and using regular sandwich bread just wouldn't cut it.  I, however was not a huge fan of the broccoli.  They were easy to make though.  If I had tried a bit better to time it right, I probably wouldn't have had as many frustrations, even if I had read both recipes a few times before starting.

The only real hiccup I ran into was not having ketchup and not wanting to go out to buy it, so my husband found a recipe online and we made our own using vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, and tomato paste.  The ketchup turned out really well.

When it comes to the broccoli italiano, I personally felt that it had too much breadcrumbs used rather than a flavorful mix of crumbs and parmesan cheese topping broccoli.  Perhaps it's just the grittiness that I had an issue with.

These were the only recipes I managed to try out of the cookbook, and it was an easy start.  Would I try to make them again?  We both enjoyed the hamburger patties, and yes, I plan to make them again.  Maybe this time I won't forget the horseradish.  If I choose to ever try the broccoli dish again, I hope to alter it so the breadcrumb topping isn't quite as disappointing.  The broccoli was good, however so there were redeeming qualities to it.

LANZ: Session 1

I know, I meant to type this two weeks ago, but kept finding reasons to put it off...We started the campaign two weeks ago!  As I sat here trying not to allow the local carnival distract me as I try to think of things needed for tonight's session and realized I had yet to update on the first session.  It was awesome to play without arguing with each other over semantics.

In fact it only took us about five minutes to get set up.  It took maybe another five or ten minutes to get the backstories straightened out enough to play.  I have a habit, and the DM's have mostly allowed said habit, of figuring out my character's backstory as we game.  I was already having trouble with this particular character's backstory.  It just kept refusing to reveal itself.  That is until the DM and I talked about the background of the fey'ri race.

In Races of Faerun, the fey'ri were created thanks to power-hungry sun elves of a particular house in the realm of Faerun.  For this campaign, we switched theories.  Instead of sun elves using succubi and other demons to be made stronger, the succubi kidnapped elves of all kinds to use for breeding, trying to increase either certain abilities or the effectiveness of their looks.  It did not work the way they wished.  In fact, the succubi saw these creatures as below them.  They saw them as so far below them that they referred to them as slaves.  These slaves were kept hidden in cells that had anti-magic fields upon them.  They had learned with the first ones that fey'ri had easy access to a number of spells.  They decided to use them for their own goals.  While the fey'ri were never certain of just what their purpose was the older ones were feared even more than the ones who had sword and shield tattoos upon the backs of their hands.

All fey'ri that reached one hundred fifty years of age were "sorted" based upon their abilities.  They were all tattooed with an unfilled heart at birth.  As they were raised to be put to use as entertainment and cannon fodder when needed, the heart would be filled in if the fey'ri were troublesome.  Upon losing their virginity somewhere between the age of one hundred fifty and two hundred, a teardrop would be tattooed either filled in or not, to match the heart.  Often times the filled in hearts went to more sadistic creatures for breeding and entertainment.  They were taught only the weapons with which their first owners would allow.  Every owner branded their own symbol upon the fey'ri and when said fey'ri gained a new owner by being sold to a new owner, the old owner dying, being traded, or just a partnership in the ownership of the creature.

On the troublesome fey'ri would be a tattoo of a skull and crossbones on the back of the neck starting at age two hundred.  Every infraction or instance of disobedience, the tattoo would increasingly be filled in to be a completed skull and crossbones with black eyes.  After the tattoo was completed the infractions would result in the loss of applicable body parts.  Each demon owner held different limits before they would get fed up and punish their piece of property.  Either way, those that would be considered troublesome would be severely scarred and the older ones would be missing parts of their wings, fingers/claws, tongues, etc.  The older fey'ri were feared because they survived and some, not many, were survivors of some of the most sadistic owners.

My character was definitely among the troublesome.  She didn't exactly filter her mouth and seemed to always wish to fight.  She was put in with those who gained the sword and shield tattoo.  She gained a filled in heart and skull and crossbones.  In fact she only had one more eye to color in before she would be losing parts.  Her tongue would have likely been first.

Anyway, the race mostly managed to escape about fifteen years prior to the start of the campaign.  While they'd been captive, they were kept bald and held to other standards.  None of the fey'ri that had been held captive were willing to sheer their hair after their escape.  They aren't sure exactly how they escaped, but they traveled on different planes until about twelve years ago they managed to find safety on the Plane of Air.  Now, the planes are bleeding into each other and Sul'ri, named for what they are the descendants of, has been sent to find more information on how to keep them safe and been given carte blanche to fight those who challenge her.

Luckily, it's now time for us to head out for the next session.  Here's to gaming in D&D 3/3.5e!

New Campaign: LANZ Session 0

Getting ready to start a new D&D campaign on Saturdays with a group of friends who live nearby.  Before anyone asks, we play 3.0/3.5e.  I tend to call it 3.25, because there are some things we like to keep from 3.0, but then the bulk of it is 3.5(such as the boots of striding and springing that double base land speed(BLS) and add 10 to jump checks, whereas in 3.5 they only add 10 to BLS and increase jump checks by 5, but the cost is higher.  We've made them greater and lesser boots of striding and springing.)  We'll be playing this campaign approximately every other week so I'm hoping to type a blog for the sessions, that is if anyone's interested, though I may do so even if no one is interested.

I'm creating a duskblade fey'ri with a major titan bloodline trait and two levels of fighter.  Haven't decided much else yet about the character, but the DM(Dungeon Master) is allowing Level Adjustment (LA) buyback from Unearthed Arcana.  The same is true with the bloodline traits.  If we want character flaws or traits, those are being allowed as well, but, mostly, not for me on those.  I'll take the loss of a few(max 3) HD, skill points and save bonus increases in exchange for a boost every so many levels to every level.

I've decided to go with the fire resist and plus two to saves against poison and electricity, but yet to choose the fourth demonic ability.  I thought about the damage reduction.  Being a duskblade, I decided to make her more of a tank, but I don't want to up the LA to 3 instead of 2.  Not sure if it's worth the headache...

Anyway, one of the others in the group is going to be a monk/divine caster(he has yet to make up his mind on which divine caster...last time he was debating between cleric or druid to qualify for the sacred fist prestige class.)  The second one is playing the arcane artificer(last campaign he played the psionic version.)  The final current known PC(player character) is still trying to decide what he wants to play because mostly everything is covered.  There are gaps, but most of them will easily be covered by other abilities the characters will have based on the builds.  I'm not certain on any of the other races, but that's part of the fun.

This campaign will definitely be dealing with multiple planes and planar travel and creatures are going to be commonplace.  We'll be working on characters again this Saturday, but there's a possibility that we may actually start play since once we know what we're playing the rest is pretty easy.

Any suggestions from other D&Ders as to what I should have for my fourth demonic ability?  Leave it in a comment, but my fey'ri is based off the ones from Races of Faerun.

Viruses during the holiday? Mostly scam.

I know it's been a while.  Between Thanksgiving, finishing (or trying to finish, anyway) my NaNo, my birthday, Christmas and now the New Year I thought I wouldn't be putting anything up until the New Year, but then as I reading before bed on my Kindle Fire a fanfic on Fanfiction.net, I dozed off.  I may have had a random show on Hulu as well...

Anyway, I shake myself awake and check where I'm at in the story only to find I've been locked out and have to pay a fine or wait until an investigation by the FBI is finished, but there are no dates and my desktop and husband's (who happens to be at work) are both fine.  It didn't make sense that I could still download items to my Kindle, but I could not even pull up the last webpage I had looked at, so I took to checking into ways of figuring out what had happened.

I could barely manage to look at my history to figure it out that way or rather clear the cache, hoping that would help.  It didn't.  Finally I shut it down while I put in because of the website and alleged crime "is porncheck a scam" on my desktop's search engine.  Turning the Kindle back on and choosing to go to the web again, It gave me the option of restoring tabs.  Of course I did, not thinking and had the same issue, so I shut it down again.

Upon turning it back on, I did not restore the tabs.  It seems to have cleared the scam out.  Part of what made it so suspicious is I know someone that was accused of child pornography on his computer.  Heads up, they don't lock the device remotely in the middle of the night.  Just informing.  Hopefully this helps if someone else has an issue, but at least it didn't happen when I came down with the flu.  Talk about a disastrous end to an epic D&D session!

SoBe and Harry

So here I am reading a Harry Potter fanfic on AO3 and open a SoBe green tea.  I don't know if you've ever had a SoBe, but the lids always have some sort of saying on them.  I've gotten some that were just ironic for what I was doing or what our party in D&D were doing or things that were funny.

We also had a rule in one of our D&D campaigns.  If you had either a shirt or SoBe lid or some other item that could be associated with the current campaign it was an automatic temp bonus to the stat that aided your character most.  I must admit my d6 earrings paired with my SoBe lids always seemed to gain me a better temp bonus than others...Then my short range fighter was regularly paired with a long range druid and was best friends after spending almost a millennium in a time loop with the party's cleric....The druid and I were nigh unstoppable, nothing seemed able to beat us!

Anyway back to the irony of tonight's SoBe cap.  Here I am reading a Harry Potter fanfic when I open my SoBe green tea and read "YER A LIZARD HARRY".  I am not joking.....Maybe eventually I will edit this post by adding the pic of the lid...Although if you drink SoBe you've probably seen that one.

Do you have any ironic SoBe cap stories?  Go ahead and share them!

County Fairs

Okay, so I meant to write like two weeks ago, but I decided to host my own pity party since I couldn't go to San Diego for Comic Con or Nerd HQ.  Then I was mad at myself for not writing, but seriously, the only thing I could have written about was what I was missing.

I mean, they have so much every year and even if I hadn't been working, I'd have had no money to go.  Then last weekend was the county fair where I live.  Now I've been to county fairs and they've always been disappointing for me.  In the beginning we just didn't have the money, but as I now can spend money that I want on what I want, I find little that I actually want.  I know that sentence is most likely a run-on, but I don't feel like fixing it.

I find the shorter town "drunk fests" or festivals are often better thanks to the parades, a better variety of both games and rides, and, sadly, the entertainment.  I've heard that my current county's fair tends to be better than the last one I would go to, but I was even more disappointed by it.  Between a lack of prizes for older generations as well as the lack of rides for the elder fair goers and the lack of interesting booths and events for those who would go later, even though they had a parade (which I had to work during), I felt that it was a let-down.

I like to think I'm rather easy to please when it comes to enjoying my time out.  I don't complain that often and am more than willing to bypass things that I want to do in favor of something someone else I'm with wants to do.  Having said that, I couldn't find anything that really appealed to me.  Games like Pop the Ballons and Ring Toss had poor prizes if one were to win, and almost every single ride was more for the younger children, not even teens, but children than anyone else.

This isn't to say that county fairs don't have some awesome draws for them or that they are all the same.  It's just one of those things that I remember TV and books making them seem so much more interesting and to have so many more attractions than what they seem to have nowadays.  I still go for funnel cakes, but other than that, what happened to what we were brought up as believing to be the county fair?