19th Level

While my blog has avoided going into hiatus, it has gone from double-digit posts per month to just a few. Suffice to say, the past few months have not been boring. Last September and October weren't too bad for the blog - a little bit of a slowdown but not too bad. Then on October 31st my younger daughter was hospitalized. As any parent no doubt knows, there's nothing so horrible as a threat to one of your kids.  I've also been busy with grad school. I've been pursuing my master's degree in strategic analytics since September 2005. It's been a long slog - while the material hasn't gotten more difficult, I've found keeping at it more and more difficult as time goes on. I've managed to do so though and have just begun my 10th and final class. If all goes well, I will finish the program in the end of September.  My professional life was upended this summer, as I was laid off from my job in mid-June. I'd first joined EMC all the way...

As the years went by, we drifted apart When I heard that he was gone I felt a shadow cross my heart - Rush, "Nobody's Hero" My first ever gaming group was in the 1980s. In the summer between 5th and 6th grade I posted an ad in the local library looking for a gaming group. I was terrified as it was my first time DM-ing for a group - all the other gaming I'd done had been with one friend here, maybe two others. Some members of that group became my closest friends in middle school and into high school. Jim was one of them. When I see the show Stranger Things  I think of that game of friends. I'd suddenly found a gang of geeky people to hang out with. I remember being over Jim's house many times - his family had a VCR long before mine did - and we watched tons of science fiction and fantasy films. The Last Unicorn , Star Trek II , etc. Halloween parties at his house. He always managed to find new games - he introduced me to Top Secret , Tunnels ...

I've put this blog on a brief hiatus. We had a bit of a health scare with one of our daughters at the end of October, requiring a hospital stay. We're past the immediate crisis. I'm playing catch-up in my life, including a research paper that I need to book some solid time on. Hoping to resume posting in another week or two, we'll see.

Some RPGs, such as Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying , have a mechanism by which you can improve skills by a program of study, costing both time and money. Similarly, in some versions of D&D some training is required to move up a level. As a kid I must admit I thought that was a pretty easy way to get improvements. The main caveat is such characters cannot be involved in other activities during that period. As I near the end of the fifth class in my Master of Science in Strategic Analytics, something I am doing while maintaining a full-time job, being a husband and dad, gaming, and blogging, I've got a real appreciation for just how difficult accomplishing that is. I've a side blog dedicated to politics that I've needed to put in stasis as I work on keeping up with all of this - not for lack of ideas, but for lack of time. Now that I think of it, there are a few games or supplements that actually take place at a school. I remember Last Unicorn Games has a Starflee...

Most RPGs have aging tables, typically for long campaigns, where a character's ability scores over time. Often there's a bit of a balancing act where older characters tend to have more experience and influence, at the cost of diminishing ability scores. In games like Pendragon , your first character is pretty much doomed to die - even if he survives every battle, the length of a Pendragon campaign spans multiple generations. One of your first goals in Pendragon is to have a son and heir who will take over upon the death or retirement of your first character. I've had a few rude surprises over the past few years as I've entered my mid-40s. As my optometrist predicted a few years back, my improving distance vision was not a good sign but rather one that my near vision would begin declining. I'd reached the point where I'd find myself removing my glasses to read really small print. I'm now wearing progressive eyeglasses which improve my reading visio...

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that F**k Anxiety  was actually a book title. I checked it out last week, it's actually rather well done, especially the audiobook version read by the author, Robert Duff. I've dealt with Generalized Anxiety Disorder for the past 12 or 13 years. I've not had a horrible case of it - even when it's at its worse I manage to still perform well at work, maintain hobbies, etc. Every once in a while it decides it wants to take another try at kicking my ass and over the past month or so it's decided to make another run at making my life miserable. While I managed to juggle the misery of worrying about everything with my job, family, and schoolwork, I noticed that I missed my October 31 blog posting. For those who haven't noticed, I have an odd fetish for making blog updates on prime numbered days. It's not an OCD issue (something I've learned quite a bit about) - I've made posts on other days as well, I came up with ...

I'd planned on writing some more about Call of Cthulhu  this evening but a combination of family and homework have occupied my evening and necessitate a bit of a brief post tonight. And it's homework that got me thinking about statistics and RPGs. Currently I'm taking a Statistics class as part of my Strategic Analytics Master's program at Brandeis University. I'm diving deep into data science. My current statistics course is less focused with performing various statistical operations (though that is part of it) but rather with how best to present them.  The diagram I show above is a simple comparison of a bell curve and a linear distribution from the 1st edition of the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide.  I seem to recall picking it up in 5th grade or maybe the summer before 6th grade. And the curve was a bit of a mystery to me. It seems obvious now, but a probability curve was some heavy math for an 11-year old. After some heavy duty analysis (for an 11-y...

After my depressing last post, something a bit easier to digest. I don't do much in the way of pure advertising for a game, but I see that Icons is available at Bundle of Holding for the next two weeks (until June 28 if my math is right). I'm currently having a lot of fun running an Icons game, which makes it the first superhero RPG I've had last more than two sessions in ages. Ten percent of the money made (subtracting payment gateway fees) go to  The Trevor Project , a group providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention for LGBT youth. I'd encourage you to give directly if you can.

I've tried to keep my blog reasonably nonpolitical and in a way I find it sad that commenting on an act of murder and terror is a political act. Forty nine people were murdered early Sunday morning at the Pulse nightclub. The Pulse being a gay nightclub, they were almost certainly targeted due to their sexual identities. I don't know what to call it - an act of hate, an act of terror. I don't think it really matters what you call it. Forty nine lives were ended and their loved ones are left dealing with the horror of what happened. I've been wrestling with my own thoughts. They're layered but for what it's worth, this is what they are... As far as guns are concerned... As a nation, we're not going to do a damn thing. Twenty 6 and 7-year old children were killed in Sandy Hook, along with school personnel and the killer's mother. We didn't do anything then. When we decided nothing was the right course of action for dead children, we accepted that...

It's pretty clear that this is an out of the ordinary post for this blog. I talk about all sorts of geeky stuff on this blog - Dungeons & Dragons, Stephen King, Call of Cthulhu, etc. This post is a lot more personal. I've a hunch the audience for this posting is very different from the normal audience for my blog - but this is my corner of the internet and this is far too long a posting for Twitter or Facebook. It also explains why I've not been particularly active on this blog of late. When I first began this blog my wife was dealing with partial employment, working as a long-term sub when possible. In fall of 2012 she secured a full time job at Spirit of Knowledge Charter School in Worcester, MA and began her second year there this fall. [Note - this the remainder of this blog posting represents my understanding of a situation. If I have any factual errors I will most certainly acknowledge them and correct them. i.e. no slander or libel is present here. And wh...

After the first fatality in our Adventurer Conqueror King System game the player of our sadly departed thief asked if there was any way he could play a necromancer. I did some experimenting with the ACKS Player's Companion and came up with the following class. It's balanced per the class creation rule but with only one session so far I can't yet vouch for how well it works in play, though we had no issues in that session. The Zaharan Necromancer has some inspiration from the Death Master of Dragon Magazine 76. by Lenard Lakofka. I might try an alternate version more alchemical in nature as was that class.  The background for this class is from the version of Zaharans I'm using in our game and differs slightly from the official Autarch version. Zaharan Necromancer Class Summary Image credit: katalinks / 123RF Stock Photo Prime Requisite: INT Requirements: INT 9 Hit Dice: 1d4 Maximum Level: 11 (can continue advancing to 14 HD if becomes undead) ...