Yeah, I'm still here, and the Livejournal is still here, we just haven't seen each other in a quite a while. Here are a few updates.

I'm working on the last projects of the school semester. Finals are next week. This was a really rough semester and I am extremely glad it is almost over. I really don't think I would do three classes in a single semester again.

Lots of substituting, though I've had to turn down a few jobs so I could get homework projects done.

I have read the following books:

Seeker by Jack McDevitt (#24)

The Armour of Contempt by Dan Abnett (#25)

The Book of Three By Lloyd Alexander (#26)

Crispin at the Edge of the World by Avi (#27)

Red Moon at Sharpsburg by Rosemary Wells (#28)

The Black Cauldron by Lloyd Alexander (#29)

That's 29 books for the year so far. My goal was 24. A number of these are books for young readers, but I'm counting them anyway because most of them are very good. In addition, there was the Book Card project for my Children's Literature class. For that project we had to read 90 childrens' books from a variety of genres. Some of these novels for young readers were for that project.

That it all for now.

Book #23 for the year is chindi by Jack McDevitt.  It was fantastic.  I've probably said it before, but McDevitt's stories are exactly what I would want out of a science fiction roleplaying game.  Mystery, adventure, discovery, danger.  There is very little combat in his novels, and I do not have a problem with that.  I suppose in an RPG I'd prefer to have a bit more, but maybe not.  There are enough non-combat action sequences in his books that I think I'd be satisfied.

chindi is a Priscilla Hutchins novel, which is to say it is part of the same series as The Engines of God and Deepsix.  These are also known as The Academy series.  Again there are few ties between the novels beyond the main character.  The story puts Hutch in the pilot seat again, this time for a group civilians who are part of something called The Contact Society.  They hope to discover other intelligent life in our universe.  They get their wish, and some of them don't live to regret it. 

I am currently reading Seeker, from McDevitt's Alex Benedict series.  I like it, but the Academy books are far and away the better series.  I hightly recommend them.

Book #22:  A World Out of Time by Larry Niven.  I'm a big fan of Larry Niven, but for some reason I've let this book languish on my shelf for many years.  Last week I got an urge to read it, and I'm glad I did.  It starts out in the near future and ends up in the far, far future, with a healthy dose of post-apocalypse thrown in.  It was published in 1976, but most of the technology is still far beyond what we have now (the syringes used for injections are the only things that really seemed out of place to me). 

The main character, Corbell, is put into cryogenic sleep in the 1970's in the hope that he will one day be revived and there will be a cure for his cancer.  When he awakens 200 years later, his personality and knowledge has been put into a new body, because cryogenesis destroyed the cells of a human body.  He is trained to fly a starship that will seed other planets with life, but he hijacks that ship and flies it to the galactic core instead.  He discovers a massive black hole at the center of the universe, and while the trip takes him several hundred years (mostly spent in a hyper-sleep chamber), over 3,000,000 years have passed on Earth.

When he returns to our solar system he finds it unrecognizable.  The sun is hotter than it once was, and Earth has been moved to orbit Jupiter.  Almost all life on Earth is now located in Antarctica, now a temperate zone due to the heat.  Corbell spends the rest of the story trying to figure out how and why things were changed, and how the planet can be saved.  In doing so he also discovers the secret of immortality.

Add three more books to the list of what I've read this year:

Book #19:  False Gods by Graham McNeill - The second novel in the Horus Heresy series, revealing more of the history of the Warhammer 40,000 universe.  Excellent read, for what it is.  Here is where we really start to see some of the good guys turn bad.  I like a lot of the characters, even though I know they are doomed to either Chaos or death.

Book #20:  Galaxy in Flames by Ben Counter - Horus Heresy number three.  The first thing I noticed about this book is the significantly larger font it used compared to the previous two books.  While it has the same number of pages as those books, I'm guessing it is actually only half to two-thirds as long.  It was still enjoyable, though not as outstanding as the first and second entries in the series.  This novel concludes the opening trilogy of the Horus Heresy.  Future books continue the history, often telling the story of other individuals and groups involved in the Heresy.

Book #21:  My Year by Roald Dahl - You might know of Dahl as the writer of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, among other books.  My Year is a simple book in which Dahl talks about his favorite things throughout the year.  Each month gets a chapter, and he discusses things such as the weather, the flowers, the birds, and favorite childhood memories.

Thanks to my Children's Literature class, I am caught up on my reading.  I've read three more books since my last post here, putting me at 18 for the year.  If I can squeeze at least one more in by the end of September, I'll be ahead again.  Okay, two of the books I read in the past three weeks are children's books, but they are both Newbery Award-winning books, so I think that makes up for it.  Here they are:

#16:  Up a Road Slowly by Irene Hunt-  I really enjoyed this story of a young girl growing up.  It's odd, because nothing earth-shattering occurs in it, but I found it just as compelling as any other book I've read this year.  This novel won the Newbery Medal the year I was born.

#17:  Thimble Summer by Elizabeth Enright-  This is also the story of a young girl and her adventures over the course of one summer.  It was interesting, but not nearly so much as Up a Road Slowly.  Definitely for younger readers than that book.  It won the Newbery Medal for the year my parents were born.

#18:  Jamie the Red by Gordon R. Dickson with Roland Green-  I picked this up over 20 years ago and never read it until now.  I could have waited longer.  Dickson has won a number of Hugo and Nebula Awards for his writing, but it wasn't for this.  It's a sword and sorcery tale set in late medieval Europe (with a little magic added), but it really doesn't go anywhere.  I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

That's all for now.

I've read 15 novels so far this year, plus a couple of short stories and a number of comic book trade paperbacks.  I'm behind on the novels, as I have only 4 months to read 9 more books to reach 24 for the year.  Prior to this, I was reading at a rate of 2 books per month, and I'm not sure my school work load will let me do a lot of casual reading.  However, one of my classes might actually help with the reading load, as after just one session I've been assigned a book to read.  I hope it helps, because I was sort of stalled out on what to read.  I had tried to start Lord Foul's Bane by Stephen Donaldson, something I haven't read since high school, but it didn't hold my interest.  I wasn't sure where to go from there.

I'll be starting Up A Road Slowly by Irene Hunt this week.

I've been pretty lax about posting this summer, so I'm going to do a big update right now.  (Not that more than two people read this anyway.)

Reading:  I finished two more books earlier this summer.  I was ahead on my goal of 24 novels for the year, but now I am behind.  I haven't done much reading since Pennsic.

A Secret History of Time to Come by Robie MacAulie:  An odd but interesting post-apocalyptic tale set in the area between Pittsburgh and Chicago, with a little trip down the Mississippi River.  This book just happened into my possession by chance, and since I love post-apoc stories I decided to read it.  I wouldn't highly recommend it to anyone, but it was a decent diversion.

A Talent for War by Jack McDevitt:  Outstanding science fiction tale, as usual from McDevitt.  The first of the Alex Benedict novels, the story follows the trail of a legend to a huge secret that some people don't want revealed.  I've read a later Benedict novel already, Polaris, and Talent is definitely better.  It has just about everything I love about sci-fi stories.  

SCA:  Since Blackstone Raids I've attended a number of other melee events, and the quality of the fighting has slowly gone downhill.  There was AEthelmearc War Practice, then Northern Oaken War Maneuvers in the Midrealm, followed by Pax Interruptus, and finally Pennsic.  Pennsic is the exception, as the fighting there was excellent.  The fighting was all at least good until Pax.  Not sure I'll go back for that one or not.  At Pennsic I was able to fight as an alternate on the AE 15-man unbelted melee team, which was great.  Fighting on the Queen's Guard was a lot of fun and it seemed to get me noticed by more people.  I received more complements on my fighting, from people in our kingdom and from other kingdoms, than ever before.

Gaming:  I didn't get as much gaming in as I'd hoped this summer.  I played Carcassone for the first time and really liked it.  I finally ran an All Flesh Must Be Eaten game.  I think everyone enjoyed it, even though only one PC made it out alive and uninfected.  I ran a session of the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons, and decided it really wasn't for me.  I might try running it again sometime, just to make sure, but really it solidified my desire to stick with (and modify) the 3.5 version of the game (and to try out Pathfinder).  And finally, I got to play in a Mouse Guard one-shot.  It's a fun game, and I look forward to playing it again. 

I guess that's not a bad summer for gaming- I got to play 4 games I'd never played before.  Plus, as I previously posted, Lily played her first miniatures game.

The Girls:  Lily just started school this week.  She loves it, which makes me very happy.  Katrina learned to walk at Pennsic, on sloped, uneven ground.  Both had a great, fun summer.

I'm not sure there's much more to update.  No good summer TV (though we just watched the first episode of Glee, and I think we'll keep watching), no school, no work.

I just finished playing a game of The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game with my four-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Lily.  It was her first-ever wargame.  Earlier in the summer I had taken her with me when I stopped by Gateway Games, and she loved the look of the tables with the (as she called them) broken buildings on them.  She's been bugging me ever since to play the game.  Yesterday I told her we would play today, and gave her the option of a game with guns or a game with swords.  Given that for all her life she's watched me fight in the SCA, she chose swords.  Then she said she wanted to be a princess with a horse, so I chose the LotR SBG, since I've got a mounted version of Eowyn.  I also threw in Arwen just to max out the "princess" options.

I simplified the rules, of course.  I kept the turn sequence and the movement and to hit/to wound rolls, but left out most of the fiddly bits.  I didn't even use point values in choosing the forces (Rohan + Elves vs. Orcs), but rather just picked out some fun things, balanced in her favor.  I helped her with movement, but she handled the die rolls herself, and only once asked to reroll when she had rolled poorly.  We had a lot of fun, but she started to get a little bored after the hour-and-a-half mark.  Luckily, the battle was just about over at that point.  I took quite a few pictures (40+), but I'll just put a couple of them here.  I'll warn you though, there are no painted models involved.  The terrain looks pretty good, other than the lack of a green cloth underneath it all.








Hopefully it was a fun introduction to the hobby, even though I don't really have time to pursue it these days.

I know there is a lot of talk about how poorly the gaming industry is doing overall...but I really think right now is a good time to be a gamer.  Unfortunately, it's a bad time to be a gamer with no extra cash, and even worse to be a gamer with very little free time.  There are sooooo many games I'd like to buy.  Things that look cool to me:

Right now my friends are going nuts over Mouse Guard.  I'm not as tempted by that game, but I am interested in the system on which it is based, Burning Wheel, and even more in Christopher Moeller's Iron Empires comic book setting done up in Burning Empires.

I've always wanted to play a Mormon in the Old West, so thank God there is Dogs in the Vineyard.  Okay, maybe it hasn't been always, but I do now.

Then there is John Wick's take on a Call of Cthulhu adventure, called Curse of the Yellow Sign:  Digging for a Dead God.  It sounds very different than most traditional Call of Cthulhu scenarios.

Spirit of the Century still sounds great for some pulpy fun, as does Hollow Earth Expedition.

I like the Victorian era as well, so how about Victoriana or The Imperial Age?

How about something a little less about history and more about WTF????:  The Day After Ragnarok.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, the lesser known games.  It doesn't even take into account more popular stuff like D&D and Pathfinder.  And whatever else I might get into my head to desire.  Take a look around Indie Press Revolution and I'm sure you'll see something I want to play.

I've been working on my own fantasy setting for a number of years now.  I should say that I work on it occasionally, I suppose.  I don't put a lot of serious effort into it.  I was thinking about the races recently, and how I might give them some extra flavor.  I thought that maybe each race and culture (because my setting has two elf cultures, three human cultures, etc.) could have four racial feats (assuming I'm using D&D) from which a player would choose one feat at 1st level.  These four feats would be qualities each race is commonly known for, though they aren't necessarily found in every member of that race.

Inspired by some racial abilities from D&D 4e, I thought that each race/culture could have one feat that is a "reroll" feat.  Once per day the feat could be used to allow a reroll in a specific situation.  Here are a few examples:

Dwarven Determination:  Once per day the character may reroll a failed Will save.

Elven Accuracy:  Once per day the character may reroll a failed ranged attack.

Halfling Luck:  Once per day, when struck by an attack, the character may force the attacker to reroll the attack.

Admittedly, two of those are taken almost directly from D&D 4e, though in those rules they are usable once per encounter rather than once per day.

I've come up with several other (non-reroll) feats, but I've decided to scrap a few of them.  They were too obviously useful for specific classes.  For example, the Battle Sorcerer feat for high elves, which negates a part of armor's Spell Failure chance, is clearly more useful for spellcasters than it is for fighters.  I think these background feats should actually be useful for any character, not just representatives of specific classes.  The Magical Heritage feat, again for high elves, gives the character access to one or two 1st level sorcerer spells, which could be useful even for fighters or rogues.

Now let's see- there are two elf, two dwarf, one halfling, three human, one orc, and one hobgoblin culture in the setting, plus maybe a few more.  That's at least 40 background feats I have to come up with.  That really might be more than I want to deal with.

Reading the 4th edition D&D Player's Handbook has inspired me to go back and take another look at version 3.5 of the D&D rules.  I was happy to find that looking through that version of the rules still holds my interest far more than 4e does.  But one of the things it inspired me to do was to continue my quest to build a better 3e/3.5 fighter class.

I think one of the biggest problems with the 3rd edition fighter is that the class offers no way to scale damage up as the levels increase beyond that of iterative attacks.  All other classes have ways to increase their damage, including the other combat classes.  Barbarian rage gets better as levels increase, the paladin's smite gets better, and rangers get better damage bonuses against their chosen targets.  The only thing available to fighters is the Weapon Specialization feat, with maxes out at a whopping +4 damage at 12th level, and even then only when the fighter is wielding a specific weapon type.

The first thing I am considering is making two feats- Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization- into class abilities rather than feats.  Weapon Focus could still be available as a feat for all other classes, but as a fighter class ability it would work a little differently (and probably be renamed).  It would kick in at 1st, 5th, 10th, and 15th levels, and would give the fighter a +1/+2/+3/+4 to attack rolls with a chosen weapon group.  Each time it increases, the fighter would also choose another weapon group with which to get a lower attack bonus.  At 15th level, the fighter would get +4 to hit with the first group, +3 to hit with the second, +2 with the third, and +1 with the fourth.

Weapon Specialization would scale in a similar way.  It would be granted at 4th, 8th, 12th, and 16th levels.  At 4th level, the fighter would be granted +1d4 damage with the chosen weapon group.  This damage would increase by +1d4 each time it is granted, and would affect secondary groups the same way the Weapon Focus ability does.  At 16th level the fighter would have +4d4 damage for the first weapon group, +3d4 for the second, +2d4 to the third, and +1d4 for the fourth.  I am also considering making this d4 a d6 instead.

Note that I've changed both feats/abilities to work for groups of weapons (to be defined later) rather than on a single weapon.  I believe fighter abilities should make the fighter good with a variety of weapons, with personal feat choices allowing specialization in specific weapons.

I'm looking at a lot of other possible feats for fighters, taking some ideas from the 4e fighter class abilities and exploits in the process.  I do think some of the things in 4e make the classes better at what they do, so stealing them for what I want makes perfect sense.  I like the 4e fighter's Combat Superiority, which allows them stop enemies in their tracks if they hit them with an attack of opportunity.  The marking ability is interesting, but I'm not sure yet if I'd want to port it over.

Another option for making the 3.5 fighter better (and making combat more dynamic overall) is to change the way iterative attacks work.  Instead of requiring the full attack action to use iterative attacks, make it a standard action.  That way a character can move and still get all their possible attacks.  This improves things for more than just the fighter, but that's okay.  I like the idea of more movement in combat.  I'm not sure how well this would work with the changes to Weapon Specialization, though.  Combining them might allow the fighter to dish out too much damage.  Not sure yet, so it still needs some work.

I really want to like 4th edition D&D.  I've been reading through the Player's Handbook and I see quite a few things that I like.  And I see a lot of things that bug me.  One thing I find very interesting is that there are very few penalties imposed on PCs- meaning very few negative modifiers.  Instead there are many positive modifiers.  For example, if you are not proficient with a longsword, you can still use it with your normal attack bonus.  If you are proficient in longsword, you get a +3 to your attack bonus when wielding one.

I like:

Your attack bonus is based on half your level.  Your defense bonus is also based on half your level.  Yes, this means your Armor Class increases as you go up in level.  I think that is an excellent change. 

Ability scores are given equal time.  A fighter's exploits are usually based on Strength, a cleric's prayers are based on Wisdom, and a wizard's spells are based on Intelligence.  The attack bonus is calculated by adding half the character's level (rounded down) + relevant ability bonus + miscellaneous modifiers such as weapon proficiency. 

There are no skill points.  Characters choose a number of skills (usually 3-5) in which to be trained.  Untrained skills can still be used.  Skill rolls are calculated similar to attack rolls:  Half character's level + relevant ability bonus.  If you are trained in a skill, you get an additional +5 to your skill bonus.

I dislike:

The focus on "game".  There are powers and feats that are there just because of the cool thing they can do in the game, but make no sense in a "real world" way.  I know, I shouldn't really be looking for reality in a game, but I like my games to make sense to me.

It seems they really went for balance in this edition, and I'm not sure if they achieved it or not.  If you read any D&D Internet message boards the answer seems to be "not".  I think it goes beyond balance, to the point of making decisions strictly for how the game plays, rather than how things make sense.  For example, there are two categories of armor- light or heavy.  If you are wearing light or no armor, you can add your Dex or Int bonus to your Armor Class.  If you are wearing heavy armor, you can't.  The fighting classes (ranger, rogue) that only get light armor proficiency tend to focus on high Dex anyway...so light armor + high Dex bonus comes pretty close to equaling heavy armor + no Dex bonus.  Adding a shield can make a difference, but it comes down to a difference of a few points of AC.  Then again, it appears that +1 and +2 bonuses seem to make a much bigger difference in this edition than in the previous edition.

Powers.  Still not sold on these beyond making for a cool tactical miniatures game. 

I generated a couple of 1st-level PCs just to give it a try.  So far I've done a human cleric, a human fighter, and I'm halfway through an Eladrin warlord.  Generating 1st-level PCs is just as easy in 4th edition as it has been in any previous edition.  I might try to do a 10th level character next.  I suspect it will be much easier to do than it has been before.

So why do I even care about D&D 4e?  I really don't know.  I'm still watching Pathfinder as well, and that will be released in August.  I ask myself why I care about any of it...why not move on to a different game entirely?

Grr.

Edit:  Wolfgang Bauer of Open Design writes for both D&D 3.5 and D&D 4e.  He says that 4e plays completely differently than it reads.  That's one of the reasons I really, really want to give it a try.  He also says the published 4e adventures are garbage.  He didn't enjoy 4e until he created his own adventures for it.  I can understand this, because WotC's 4e design seems to be geared toward creating cool combat encounters without much thought toward the overall adventure.  To me this is totally backwards.

Yes, I finished His Last Command by Dan Abnett just a few days ago.  It is a novel set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe and part of the Gaunt's Ghosts series Abnett is famous for.  It was an enjoyable read, though there was nothing really new or surprising about it.  But what can one expect from the 9th book in the series?

It seems I've only been posting here regarding my reading habits.  I'm not sure why, as I've had plenty of SCA fighting I could write about.  Not a lot of gaming, unfortunately.  There just hasn't been time for it.

Two books to report, since I haven't bothered to post in a while:

Book #11:  A Meeting at Corvallis by S. M. Stirling.  This was the third book in the first series of the Change.  It was about as good as The Protector's War, but Dies the Fire was easily the best of the three by far.  This one had the same post-apocalyptic medieval stuff, and was set just after the second book.  I find myself wishing Stirling hadn't advanced the timeline those 8 or 9 years after Dies the Fire.  I would like to have seen more about the immediate aftermath of the Change.  But still, this was enjoyable and fun.  I don't think I'll move on to the next Change novels for some time.  I've had my fill for now.

Book #12:  Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper.  This novel is for ages 9-13 and is the first book in Cooper's The Dark is Rising Sequence.  A couple of the books in this series have one recognition by the Newberry Awards, though not this particular title.  The story involves three young siblings and their search for the Holy Grail in a little town in 1960's Wales.  They are aided by an old archaeologist and opposed by a number of sinister folks who want the Grail for their own dark reasons.  I had some trouble getting through this book, but I don't know if it is because it wasn't written well or if I just wasn't excited about it.  I should have been able to get through it in less than a week but I really didn't set any time aside to read it, so it ended up taking almost three weeks.  I'll move on to the next book eventually, but for now I have a number of other books I'd rather read.

Willow and I saw the new Star Trek movie yesterday.  Willow loved it, but that's not saying much, because she absolutely loathes the original series.  She thinks Kirk is creepy.

I liked it a lot.  I liked it so much it left me wanting more.  It wasn't perfect, of course.  But still, it was certainly better than Star Wars Episodes I, II, or III.  Here are some highlights:

Karl Urban as Bones was fantastic.  I knew he was McCoy the moment I heard him speak.  I think he did a great job of playing the character as well as being the Bones we know and love from the original.  Zach Quinto was also excellent as Spock.  I saw no sign of Sylar.  The only difference I saw in Spock was that Nemoy's face always seemed rather impassive, no matter what was going on.  With Quinto you could tell he was trying to suppress his emotions.  Of course, this is a younger Spock, so maybe he just hasn't learned the impassive trick yet.

Chris Pine's Kirk is not The Shat's Kirk.  I'm sure this is a good thing for some people and a bad thing for others.  My thought is that The Shat's Kirk is sleezy while Pine's Kirk was only obnoxious.

I like the alternate reality explanation.  It's simple and it works.

The movie was not a science fiction movie.  It was an action/adventure movie with sci-fi trappings.  I miss the science fiction of the original series, and I miss some of the just-plain-great stories as well.  But I don't think we'll ever get those things from modern-day movies, and I'm fairly happy with the story we got.

I liked that a lot of the secondary characters got more screen time than those characters did in the older movies.  I liked how they brought things from the series and earlier movies forward- Sulu's fencing (wow, fencing sure changes a lot in the next couple hundred years), Chekov's inability to pronounce the letter V....

Not sure about the gun turrets all over the Enterprise's (or the Kelvin's, for that matter) saucer.  Was that really necessary?

The gunfights were more like Star Wars and less like Star Trek.  I haven't decided if I'm happy with that or not.

Yeah, I liked the movie.  Now why isn't it licensed out to someone for a roleplaying game?

Back to the hard science fiction.  Jupiter is another book in Ben Bova's "planets" series.  I have previously read Venus, and Saturn is sitting on a bookshelf in my library (Mercury is still out there somewhere).  These novels actually have no relationship to one another beyond being about on of the planets in our solar system and having matching cover styles.  They do not use the same characters and no story line continues from one to another.  You can read any one of thes novels without needing any knowledge of the others.

Jupiter is the story of Grant Archer, a grad student sent by the New Morality to serve his mandatory public service on a scientific space station orbiting the our system's largest planet.  Archer is also ordered to act as a spy for the New Morality, reporting on any activites that might be connected to finding intelligent life on Jupiter.

The New Morality is, more or less, the Moral Majority taken to an extreme and put into political power.  It is ultra-Christian and is terrified of anything that might prove the Scriptures wrong.  Archer is a Believer, but he's also a scientist- he is able to resolve these two halves of himself, something most of the NM refuses to do.

Jupiter was published in 2004, in the middle of George Bush's time as President.  I can't help but think the New Morality is inspired by him and the right-wing Christian conservatives that supported him.  They certainly drove me nuts in the same way.

We're only behind by two books now, or one after I write this.  Little House in the Big Woods was written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and published around 1932.  I"m not going to write a lot about this one, just a few comments.  I had decided to read a few books off my daughters' bookshelf so I would have an idea of what they would be reading someday.  This was the first book I picked up.

This story was very easy to read.  I finished it in just a few days.  It is the story of a little girl- Laura Ingalls- and her family, living in the forests of 1870's Wisconsin.  It seems a bit more like a diary, though it is not written in first person.  Each chapter is like a mini-story.  The novel itself doesn't have a climax.  Instead it paints a picture of what a year of life is like for this little girl and her family.

Reading this sort of put me in the mood to watch some Little House on the Prairie reruns, a task in which my wife would gladly join me.  I might even hunt down further books in this series.  (After I read some more sci-fi, of course.)

Bye, Zelda.