About this blog

Welcome to my little corner of the internet.

So what's this blog all about? It's my attempt to create a blog of things that are of interest to me and, hopefully, to some others. I've tried my hands at a hardcore political blog and while I'm a political junkie, wading into various culture wars as a primary focus got to be a bit on the painful side. I'm also a huge gaming, science fiction, and fantasy geek.

So how to tie this all together? Well, looking at the title there's an obvious reference to Dungeons & Dragons and other roleplaying game - "I'm a 19th level elven wizard with +5 against orcs so don't mess with me!" Needless to say this blog will spend a fair amount of time discussing tabletop gaming.

Then getting a little too clever by half we've got a reference to Stephen King's Dark Tower series. Without going into spoilers, that number takes on a significance in that series of novels. I was introduced to Stephen King's writing back in the long ago period of my being in high school back in the 80s. A friend of mine lent me her copy of King's first Dark Tower novel The Gunslinger and I was totally hooked. I also plan on spending some time discussing fantasy and science fiction literature, film, television, etc.

I've also some other interests that I'm going to cover on this blog - hopefully they can be made to somehow fit together. As a software engineer and techie I'm going to be covering technological topics - I work for a big company and I work in storage virtualization but I think that's way too techie - rather I'll be talking about the side of technology that I think will be of interest to other people besides me - how it impacts our lives, the gadgets we like to use, the human cost of those gadgets, what we gain and what we lose. This is something I think will fit in well with the other topics of interest. I now do most of my reading on a Kindle Fire or on my Samsung Galaxy Tab. Heck most of my gaming collection is in the form of PDFs - I'm trying to get rid of the clutter of books in my house! I read comic books now using the Comixology Android App. We're big users of streaming video in our household.

Finally, I am going to talk about real-world issues. Politics will be a biggie, though I'll also be talking about human rights issues, religion, etc. as well. With that in mind it's best you know a little bit about me. Once a Libertarian-leaning Republican I've drifted into being an unapologetic Liberal Democrat. I'd never particularly cared for the social battles of the Republican party, taking a live and let live approach. That part of me has not changed, but on economic matters I have definitely grown to favor a larger role of government in our lives. I'm also a Catholic, albeit what most would consider a cafeteria one. I've grown used to that label. To understand where I am in the cafeteria, I'm a huge believer in the church's social justice stances including what is referred to as advocating a preferential option for the poor. On the other hand, when it comes to "pelvic issues" I am not in agreement with the doctrines of the church. I support same-sex marriage equality. I'm ok with contraception. And I think there's a lot of people high up in the hierarchy of the church who belong in prison for enabling the molestation of children by the clergy.

If the other areas of my blog sound way interesting but the social aspects do not I will not be offended in the least if you choose to ignore those issues.On the other hand, I tend to respect people who are well-informed and passionate, even if they disagree with me. We all are of different backgrounds and our life experiences take us different places and leave us with different opinions. Therefore it would be shocking to me if everyone held the same views as me.


With all this in mind, one thing I've learned about blogging is some degree of predictability is a good thing. Therefore I'm considering something of a schedule to the way I'll be posting. What I'm going to be shooting for to start is an average of four posts per week on a Monday-Wednesday-Friday-Saturday schedule.

  • Monday - gaming-related topics
  • Wednesday - science-fiction/fantasy topics
  • Friday - techie topics
  • Saturday - social topics
This is certainly subject to change and the blog may certainly evolve in directions I've not anticipated.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jules Verne Translations That Don't Stink

Image
Shortly after I graduated from college R. Talsorian published their fantasy steampunk RPG,  Castle Falkenstein. Having missed out on Space: 1889  when it first came out this was my first steampunk RPG, though I had been exposed to the genre by Gibson and Sterling's novel The Difference Engine (a novel which, though I though I found the setting compelling, I did not particularly care for - must reread some day). Jules Verne was one of the authors in the inspirational reading section of Castle Falkenstein.  Heck, the game also made him into France's scientific advisor, having him responsible for their massive Verne Cannons  which formed a sort of nuclear deterrent.  With that in mind, one Sunday afternoon I was at a Barnes & Noble bookstore my new girlfriend (now my wife of nearly 16 years!).  On a whim I decided to pick up a Jules Verne novel. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea . That night I started reading it, never having read any of his works before but having vagu
Keep reading

Stepping Away and a New Beginning

Image
After maintaining this blog for nearly seven years (an eternity in internet time), I've decided to step away from it. When I first began I wasn't 100% certain what it would be about. For a while I thought it would be a blog related to OSR type RPGs but I found my own tastes not firmly rooted there. Looking at the history of the blog, I see a lot of Call of Cthulhu which is hardly surprising. However, some lack of consistency definitely made it tough for me find a defined niche and over the past few months I've been giving some thought to starting a new, more narrowly focused blog. The imminent end of Google+ played a part in these thoughts, with much of my traffic coming from that site. I write because I enjoy writing, but I do enjoy growing an audience. My plan to start a narrowly-focused blog took a turn when I had the opportunity to join the  Rolling Boxcars  blog. Talking with the contributors (one of whom I game with on Discord already) and going through thei
Keep reading

Developing Boston for 1920s Call of Cthulhu

Image
While Chaosium has produced sourcebooks for many locations in Lovecraft Country (Kingsport, Arkham, and Innsmouth) as well as non-fictional cities of the 1920s (such as New York City and New Orleans), the nearby city of Boston, while being featured in many adventures, has never received its own full sourcebook. The most common era for my Call of Cthulhu  games has been in the 1920s - some campaigns have been in New York City while others have been in Lovecraft country. For those in Lovecraft Country, many adventures have been in nearby Boston. Over the years I've slowly been building up some expertise in the area and I thought it might be of interest to others gaming in the same setting - whether with Mythos horrors or a purely mundane game. First, let us investigate those official sources. While Boston has found its way into many adventures, I can think of two sources where it has been given a fair amount of detail. First, The Unspeakable Oath  double issue 16/17 has a ref
Keep reading

Using the Force in D6 Star Wars

Image
Defending yourself with just 1D in Sense is not easy, as Luke discovers when training with a remote. My previous post discussed the proto-D6 System as found in the Ghostbusters RPG. For those unfamiliar with the D6 System and the way it does the Force (or for a brief review) the essentials are: You roll a bunch of six sided dice against a target number, typically ranging from 5-ish (easy) to 20 or even higher. Your rating is listed as something like 2D+2 which means roll 2d6+2. By default, most normal/non-heroic people have 2D in most stats.  Starting heroes will might have their best skill be at 5D or a touch higher. You can take as many actions as you want in a round. However, taking two actions in a round reduces all dice codes by 1D, taking three reduces all by 2D, etc. Starting with Force skills will lower a characters starting attributes. Unlike most skills they start off at 1D. There are three Force skills - control, sense, and alter. Control lets you control t
Keep reading

Balancing Classes in Swords and Wizardry

Image
DM: "The box is the size of a small trunk; it is latched but not locked."  Dougal: "I'm looking for traps on the box."  DM (rolling for Dougal's "find traps" ability. The roll indicates that Dougal has failed to find the poisoned needle in the latch.) "You don't find a trap."  Morgan (the group's leader): "Black Dougal will open the box."  DM: "Black Dougal, you find out that you missed a tiny discolored needle in the latch. Roll a saving throw vs. Poison, please!"  Dougal (rolling): "Missed it!"  DM: "Black Dougal gasps 'Poison!' and falls to the floor. He looks dead."  Fredrik: "I'm grabbing his pack to carry treasure in." Game balance. It's a tricky concept in RPGs. D&D 3rd and 4th editions made a very strong effort to balance the character classes with one another as well as to balance encounters. For my purposes, they went too far. A
Keep reading