D20 versus 2nd ed.

     "Lis I have a problem with my players." My brother mentions on the phone while talking with me to fill the silence between my work and my apartment.  "They're all Munchkins*."  I roll my eyes a little at this only a little jealous that my younger brother has been running a campaign in Dungeons and Dragons and I have yet to run something in anything.  But he did have an older sister to guide him into geekdom.
     "Well that's what you get when you play 3.5." I put in my normal jibe at his choice of game. To which he replies, exasperated "that's what they said."

     It should be noted I don't play a lot of Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 or D20 system (both copyright Wizards of The Coast.)  I have played one extensive D20 Star Wars campaign and I once, long ago, played one 3.5 campaign that I dropped out of.  My overall impression of the system is blandness.  Not that they don't have good points.  The GM's and groups I was playing with were fun.  The Star Wars game was where the weird intergame intragroup trope of me playing small fuzzy things came from.  Yet overall I just don't have a lot of love for the system.
     Some good aspects of 3.5: its adaptability. There are many D20 system books out there for almost anything you are a fan of and they can be effectively combined. Want to play a game where a Stargate team goes to a planet where Darth Vader is currently pitching a battle against Cthulu? All you need is those three D20 books (all of which exist). If you are looking for more firm rules in your role playing experience D20 gives you what you need.
    Mostly I play Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd ed.  There is the fact that this is what the people around me run (or run slight alterations of).  I still have to agree with my friends' reasoning for running this system. One of the first is you can make choices as you go. Now I know there are 3.5 players who will say that you can definitely change your mind about a character as it evolves but so many skills have such weird prerequisites that you need to plan everything perfectly in advance half the time.  With 2nd ed there are no feats to get prerequisite feats in. The skill system is very simple.
    Another problem with D20 is topending.  In 2nd ed most rolling for skills is dependent on rolling under your stat. So the higher your skill the more likely you are to roll under it.  In D20 all skills have a skill check that you have to get by adding your skill to a d20 die roll.  There are examples of why this doesn't work too well. The first example is that it is very easy to just make an unpassable check.  A DM can simply set a check so high that a player can't possibly make it.  The other end of the scale I like to use a personal story to tell people about.  In the starwars game I played I was a tech specialist.  All of my skills were maxed to mechanic repair, astrogating, piloting and computer use.  At one point we were doing something that involved breaking into a computerized lock. I made a roll of like a 4 and had enough skill points that when I said what my final roll was (I honestly can't remember it was somewhere in the 30s I think) the GM just said there was basically no way I could fail this roll as the challenge ratings were all below my skill numbers. I couldn't shoot worth a damn (all combat skills were hard to get with my class I wasn't trying to minmax but it just happens) in combat my best bet was hiding which I sucked at. But if we had to fly somewhere or hack something there wasn't even a brief moment of "oh maybe she won't make this" tension. I just automatically did it, rolling was a pointless action that I took to make it feel like I as a player had some contribution.
    The third and final problem I have with D20 is it is hard to take what you want and make the game you want to play (aside from setting information.) Original Dungeons and Dragons was made to be modular. A GM could take rules that he or she felt made a good game and expand on them as they wished.  With D20 if you take something out there is always a fear that the tower will go tumbling down.
     I prefer to play my games with a certain amount of give and you-can-mess-up-ness.  I like to get to a point where I can go. You know what my character is changing or hey we are in a different environment and I need this new skill.  So for me 2nd ed is the better choice for Dungeons and Dragons.  I really don't have a lot of fun with D20 systems.

*Munchkins are a term for players who try to make the "best" character in a competitive manner. Usually this involves downgrading certain traits to make others better (known as minmaxing). Many of these players think that one type of character is superior to others and are interested in "winning" a game that at its very core is a cooperative game.

Selena of Riverfork

After Persephone died I made a bard. She was OK. My GM is particularly adverse to sonic, song, and music attacks so I made a poet bard. She actually isn't dead I lost the character sheet and then found it again so I may play her again sometime.

This story refers to the game world that was created by our GM, Josh Sterns of Winter's Riddle. The Opallus was a macguffin that we were looking for and boy when we found it did we find it.
 
Selena of Riverfork
Selena crouched down next to a rare desert flower in the ruinous landscape.  She attempted a quick sketch and then gave up and plucked the flower, squashing it between two pages of her book.  It would not be the source of an epic poem but it may make an interesting piece for her group to listen to.  That is if she ever found a group. Bards did not do well travelling alone, especially in this wasteland.

“The Last Survivor,” that was the epic she was working on.  The title was deceptive, the story was not her own but that of her group and the search for the Opallus. Selena had been working on the piece one member at a time ending each section with their tragic end in this horrid land. Checking her notes Selena carefully put her book away and recited the last section she had written to herself.  “The brave Paladin Shola, had taken up her mighty spear/ and with her mighty battle cry drove it straight into the heart of Feyr.” It would be a living testament to their glorious battles.

The slight framed girl climbed over a rock and gazed into the distance. She had seen the tower from far away and was sure it must hold some secrets of the ancient Sloon.  Selena couldn’t wait to write all she found within the tower. The Opallus was the quest she had started on but the Chronicles of Ya were her true goal.  Looking up at the sky, Selena judged that she had at least a few hours before she needed to make camp.  She wasn’t sure if she could make it to the tower before then but she would definitely be there before nightfall tomorrow.  With that thought to push her on, Selena stepped off her rock and walked onward.

The Death of Persephone

This is an add on to the Persephone story Persephone died trying to save another party member from a fiery death. This character would be saved by other characters of mine and he was an ass. It became a theme for me to the point of the other player getting mad at me for saving him. I really liked this description of Persephone's parents.

A small demon ran against the winds of Pandemonium.  Cyrus the Liar should not be hard to find.  Soon the young servant of darkness saw the characteristic single green batlike wing of his mistresses first husband.  The tiefling thief turned around quickly, knife in hand.  The demon shrank miserably at the sight, Cyrus was not known for waiting for explanations before he started killing.

“I bring a message from my mistress Shir’tha of Hgrath.” He spat it out as quickly as he could. Bdus did not like his mistress, he had reason to suspect she had been cheating when she won him and took him away from his home in the Abyss. He would follow her orders though since she always knew when he did not and, though her wrath was sporadic it was often cruel and strange even to a native of the pits of hell.

Cyrus looked down at the small figure holding up a scroll defensively.  He laughed his signature laugh that caused the demon to shrink even further, this only caused more terrible mirth from the scarred and ragged figure. He took the scroll in one sharp movement. “You better scamper off to your mistress I hear she has developed a habit of feeding bad little demons to her newest husband.” Bdus did not disbelieve this at all even coming from the mouth of a liar. He quickly scampered off to find a portal back to Limbo.

Chuckling to himself, Cyrus unrolled the scroll and read its contents.

“Cyrus, I write to inform you of an amusing story that one of my contacts recently told me.  You should remember that our first daughter Persephone recently got herself banished to some prime plane after her attempts to teach the trees of arcadia to rebel against their Lawful masters. Well my friend who is a great source of information on the movement of souls has given me his word that she managed to get herself killed while trying to find a way back to some less friendly climate.
           
Apparently a companion of hers managed to light a cursed object that caused a denizen of the Plane of Fire to leap forth.  While many of her companions (mostly primes) left her and her friend to play with the object she stayed in some silly attempt to defend him from whatever came forth from it. At least this is what my contact managed to glean from her he is a master of speaking with souls in transition.  I personally suspect she stayed in hopes of speaking with the elemental, you remember her obsession with that particular inner plane.
           
Anyway apparently she did not even die at the hands of her attacker but was left to bleed and according to her was almost saved by her travelling companions. Knowing our daughter I’m not sure how hard they were trying she often was a little hard on Primes.
           
I do not know if anyone is interested in resurrecting her at this time but I certainly hope she has learned something about the worlds if she is.

Your favorite wife
Shir’tha”

Cyrus’ acid tears burned his face as his howls of laughter caused several nearby rodents to flee in terror.  Oh, Persephone, he thought. He was sure Shir’tha was in fact proud of her daughter, her side of the family tended to have a bit of a noble streak in them.  He was sure his younger daughter Florentine would not have been so foolish.  Then again he had not heard anything of her in a while, she was probably in prison somewhere like Sigil, she always had lacked his finesse though she tried to follow in his footsteps.  Ah well, he skewered a nearby rat to stupid to run away.  Thus was the nature of the Planes.

Wormhole Making Aliens

Aliens who appear out of nowhere and could accidentally take you back to their home plane of existence in the blink of an eye are not to be trifled with. Let me back up. In Sunday's game one of our troops got a psych evaluation. Everyone who was there got a chance to ask questions so did the base computer. The computer mostly asked questions from the turing test and determined that the character was not a sentient being. We have yet to hear back about the results.

Anyway the alien menace of the week appeared out of nowhere somewhere in France. Three Mountains performed her stealthy tasks admirably and managed to hit one of the aliens with a grenade but then the alien picked her up and started messing with her head, literally. Actually all of the modifications were upgrades, in a sense. Three mountains now has a much improved research skill and her conditioning is much reduced with a nice boost to her willpower. Unfortunately she also seems to remember a little of her life from before she joined the Com.

This particular race of aliens had a unique feature. When they were hurt in a certain way they created a wormhole back to their home planet/dimension (we really never figured it out). One of Three Mountain's teamates managed to do enough damage to the alien who attacked Mountains. Unfortunately Mountains was still being held by the alien and got sucked into the wormhole. Well, that was almost the end of Three Mountains. The GM had my character sheet in his hand. But I brought up that I could possibly find one of those aliens and hitch a ride back to earth. And I pulled it off!

So now my character has a psych eval scheduled and will probably be spending the next few weeks trying to heal. I still got some cool stats out of it. I'm pretty sure I won.

Roll Dice to Splode Aliens.

     Currently I am playing in a game that is a sort of modified World Of Darkness. This game is based on the computer game X-Com which is a game I know very little about as I have never actually played it. However that does not stop me from enjoying the pen and paper version that my friend created (look at the end for a link to his story blog which is worth checking out). However I promised myself that I would not talk about friends too much in this blog at least not in a way that they would know that I'm talking about them (we will see how long I keep my resolve on this) so I will instead talk about my characters specifically.

     From what my friends tell me X-Com has troops dying all the time and I have stayed true to form. My first character, Blue Astronaut, had no firearms skill but was supposed to be very sneaky (she was a recon agent). Unfortunately, in our first mission Astronaut had to directly confront a Grey and while she survived her botched grenade throwing attempt she ended up getting mind controlled by the Grey and tried to kill her fellow com members. Fortunately for them her firearms skill did not suddenly become amazing and the only shot that actually hit its target was unfortunately Blue Astronaut's suicide shot. I like to think that Blue Astronaut single handedly took out the threat of the mind controlled agent who could have easily taken out the whole group but either way she was dead. So I had to make a new character.

     For my next character I decided to get some points with flaws. There were six possibilities for the kind of agent we could make so I decided to roll a d6 to randomly chose which this new character would be. Wouldn't you know it I got another recon op. Well I decided to stick with my flaw plan but what flaws to take? I thought the idea of a silent recon op was interesting so I took "mute" and "shy." In the game we all can take for free a DEI which is a computer that was put directly in our brain that takes the place of some of our frontal lobe. (there are more specific terms in game but I never really bothered to remember it, what I know is this is the part of the brain that deals with morals). Despite the fact that Blue Astronaut's DEI may have made it easier for the Greys to control her mind, I figured that the ease of communication with others through their personal devices (be they DEI or hand held) out weighed the risk. So my new op, 3 Mountains, is mute but can still communicate… in a way. Well 3 Mountains seems to be doing well, at least she hasn't died yet. She also has helped blow up some aliens with an experimental weapon which is pretty much what this game is all about, in a very good way.

     My other big contribution so far is the addition of a shark tank in our compound. Others may not have liked the idea but now we have sharks who have actually played an important role in the story and are awesome.

    In other news this post was written entirely from my iPhone which I find pretty awesome. Oh and that link I promised you to my friend's story blog is Winter's Riddle and you should definitely check it out.

    I hope to be writing more posts in the near future, the fact that I can type and save drafts of my blog whenever should greatly help this as usually my down time is either when I am too tired to write or for 30 minutes or less at a time.

2nd post?

So, I decided I should just start writing in this blog like I said I would half a year ago. I have had a lot of thoughts about what could fill these pages. I have decided to use bits of all of them. So onto teh blogging.

My Life At Present
Right now I am still working at the pool I was working at when I started this blog. I actually quite enjoy this work. I am teaching a lot and because of a recent rash of snow days have been spending a little more time doing that than guarding. That will all change tonight as I will be working both my normal afternoon shift and a special late night event that will keep my Friday night work filled until midnight. For working this late I will of course be reimbursed with my normal rate and an extra $20 dollars which actually is more than normal overtime would be if we actually got overtime. (not a complaint they just like to keep part time workers at less than full time and therefore we don't ever get overtime)
     In other news my current RPG exploits include some 2nd ed Planescape. I am playing a tiefling priest of chaos. I think I may devote an entire post to her so that's all I will say on this subject.
     I think that is all I have to say about anything right now.

First Post!!!!11!!!@@2

So you start a blog cause all your friends do it and you go. "Hey I can do that." Then you face the problem what is interesting enough in your life to write about. I mean the point is to eventually have other people read this so what do you do?

Well you do what I do which is to just write what you know and hope it eventually gets interesting. So what do I know about? Lots of things. Let us explore these things for a moment.

• Aquatics: I am a lifeguard. I have been for 6 years (that's 4 actual years of experience.) What does this mean I know? On the base line it means I have to know how to swim (this should be obvious to people but isn't always especially to kids.) I also have to know CPR (that's cardiopulmonary resuscitation), AED (automatic external defibrillator), first aid, and how to pull someone out of the water (ie. Lifesaving). Those are the certificates I have to have to lifeguard. What I also know is how to blow a whistle, how to say "Pools closed" so that a full pool can hear me.  I know in general what rules should be standard at every pool and why those rules exist. I can also spot when someone is having trouble swimming when there about a hundred other people in said pool. I also happen to be a swim teacher so I know how to get a kid to float, kick, and paddle, and usually have fun doing it.  I love the water and I think I am a pretty darn good lifeguard and a pretty good teacher. Thus the Aqua in this blog title. There will be a certain amount of talk about my job.
• Gaming, I have about as many years experience gaming as I do lifeguarding. when I say gaming I mean real pen and paper RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons, Call of Cthullu, and GURPS. I love roleplaying games and the people I play them with however those are the people who I think may be the first to read this blog so there will be less talk about day to day activities though I may talk about it more when I run my own games.
• Webcomics, I love webcomics and have been reading them longer than I have been doing the past two things (except swimming I have been swimming my whole life.) Expect reviews from time to time of especially good comics.
• Webshows, I have a bit less experience with this than Webcomics but pretty much the same comments about that.
• Life, I actually only have so-so knowledge about life in general as I hardly have one but what I do I will talk about.

So that's it I hope everyone who reads this considers it a good investment of their time and continues to read.