I'm not dead... yet

Ok just a quick "hullo".
Been a busy beaver the last couple of weeks and haven't gamed once.

However, got a game on Thursday with my so-called adult friends. :D
And then possibly a game on Sunday with my kids. It's my son's 14th birthday and I think he wants to play. (or rather... he's asked me, are we gonna play on my Birthday?)

So full game week. Yay.
A-Kon is coming up and I'm sure I'll have some nifty things to post about that.

Gaming with new players, in this case, my kids.

So I've started a bi-weekly 4e DnD game with my son (13) and my daughter (17).

They've been wanting to play for awhile, but their school schedules and my own work schedule has been conflict.
We started a couple of weeks ago, and I had invited a couple of my regular players to join. While teaching new players isn't all the hard, they can stay in their "shell" not knowing what is ok and what isn't. That's where an experienced player can help.
My friend Craig was the only one who could make it and I'm glad he did.

We had a blast.

I created characters for them based off of what they wanted to play. The reasoning was that while creating a character is not too terribly hard to do, they could play these characters and decide whether or not they truly enjoyed playing.
And you know what, they did. It was all they talked about the next week.
My daughter played a human fighter, Gwen and my son played a Dragonborn Warlord, Ximnar.
They both had moments where they felt in the spotlight and that is what it should be like.
We played Into the Shadowhaunt. It was, from what I am told, the module used at the first 4e DnDXP day.

I modified it to the core setting of the Nentir Vale, and off we went.
Couple of highlights: Ximnar used his breathweapon on the hobgoblins hiding behind the oil-filled coffins and blooding him. He also intimidated the necromancer Helvec off of his 10-foot high dais where he was casting an evil ritual.

Gwen cleaved an animated statue in-two, destroying it and prior to that she had been atop the dais fighting the necromancer. But when the animated statue arrived, she took a running leap off the dais to attack it.

Pretty sweet.

The paradigm of defender and leader worked great for this first adventure.
The second adventure... not so much. I ran them through the first adventure in the Dungeon Delve book, Coppernight Hold.

Alot of it had to do with my son not wanting or not understanding how to use his powers for most of the game. He stuck with basic attacks instead of using his powers to take on threats and positioning or amplifying Gwen. It was frustrating for me to watch. I continued to ask are you going to use a power, "no, just attack." I don't know how much of it was he was afraid to take the risk of his character, he's a Bravura Warlord. Which means he leads from the fight or in the middle of the fight, and often places himself in harms way to gain the advantage for his team.
So for two encounters he got the snot beat out of him and his sister because he didn't use his powers.

But in the final encounter when they faced a room full of kobolds and white dragon wyrmling.
At first it look bad for them. His breath weapon failed to kill most of the minions, and they initial attack of the minions had left both of them almost bloodied.
And the dragon hadn't even moved up to attack.
But it started working out as they took care of the minions, and faced the dragon.
By now both were bloodied, Gwen had been twice!
The dragon had hardly been hit. Then out of the blow, Gwen crits it almost blooding the beast.
It attacks and almost puts Ximnar out.

On the next turn, Gwen hurts it more beyond bloodied. It had about 38hp left at this point.
And finally. Finally, Ximnar started using his powers. He used his daily, an action point and an encounter power(don't remember off the top of my head),, and the encounter power set it up for its ultimate demise. The power was worded so that he granted the dragon combat advantage against him, but if the dragon attacked him both he and any ally that was adjacent to the target(dragon) could get a free opportunity attack. And that was all she wrote.
The dragon went last in the round lunging at Ximnar with a defiant snarl, only to hammered down by attack from Gwen and Ximnar in retaliation.

Very cool.

So all this week it has been, "I can't believe we killed a dragon. Are all dragons that easy, Dad?"
"Nope I replied. They are all dangerous."
"Good." he says with a smile. "I can't wait to fight another one."

They've been trying to recruit a few of my daughters High School friends, with not much luck. One made the remark, "I watch a game before, it seemed boring."
The keyword I told him was watch. Had you played you would have a much different experience.
Anywho... rambling now.
So this is a win-win for me.
One, I get to play the hobby I love with my kids.
Two, they love it.
Three, this version of DnD allows me to do something I hadn't in the past. Be spontaneous with encounters and be able to play the next time they hit me up with, "Dad can we play tonight?" Which usually meant, right now. With just about any other game we've tried, I've had to plan and research. But with this, I can just pick it up and go.
I look forward to the near future where I can add a couple of other games to that list of pick up games.

BASH, Mouse Guard, Savage Worlds and anything with FATE; I'm look at those to teach my kids over the summer so we can start having more fun.

Allergies and Benadryl

So the last couple of weeks have been brutal for my allergies. And up until a couple of days ago, I just dealt with it.
Watched what I ate, tried to keep hydrated and waited for rain.

But my wife convinced me to take some benadryl before bed to help me sleep.
I have and it's been great, however... my dreams are often, clear and just plain bizarre.

Case in point, last night I had a very brutal nightmare. I say brutal because it involved the death of my son. I didn't see it(in the dream), but as dreams go, I knew it.

I was in another room, I heard shots(which in real world terms-turns out to be thunder) ran into the room he was and in, found a gun and knew he had shot himself. The sheer amount of grief I felt is still felt as I write this, and he's sitting on the couch right now playing the Wii. Trying to figure out the meaning behind it or if it's just some perverse worry I have about him. I don't even own a hand gun and my ammunition for my rifles are locked up.
But the vividness of my dreams, and the fact that I've been remembering them because of the benadryl makes me think that I'm not sleeping well prior to taking this.
Not saying I want to continue taking this beyond the help with allergies, but man... the trade off: good sleep vs. bizarro dreams.

Anywho... it's Saturday(yahoo) and we've got a ultra-non-planned day. Should be good, at least better than my dreams.

Designing Video Game Club Flyers...

Ok, one of the benefits of having teenagers is doing cool things for them.

Last year I created 24 posters(11x17) for my daughter's HS anime club.
Had alot of fun with them. I think my ego got a really big boost from the fact, that after the first day, more than half of the posters were missing. Not thrown away, stolen. LOL. So I sent another couple of sets to the club. Same thing. 3rd time helped(plus a notice about not stealing signs from the principal).

So now I was asked to do video game flyers for their video game club.
meh... it was fun to do. But I'm so so about the outcome.
Take a look and see what you think.(just a note: I created 20 flyers, these are just my two favorites)

Google keeps stuff I forget about.

The original header designs.
In using Google/gmail I forget that I have stuff stored. Such as... graphics.

The last 2 were meant to be part of animation I had thought of starting. Start out dark, then blurry and finally clear.
Considering the frequency of my posts, it's probably better that I've kept it just plain. :D

Working from home and the constant discipline of self

So my current job allows me to work remotely, i.e. from home.
I love it.

Love it, love it, love it.
It allows me the flexibility to work my hours as soon as I get up until I get stuff done.
Granted I do pull some late hours and weekend work, but the trade off is nice. I can pick my kids of from school, take time to go to the Dr when needed for them and still meet my deadlines and get my daily/weekly hours in and then some.

But keeping focus is struggle.
Too many tempting things pop up during the day(see blog and other shtuff) that contend with my attention.

I can so easily take a break to surf the web or watch the news and all of a sudden a 5-minute break has become 20-30 minutes. It doesn't happen often, but when things are slow, that's when it is hardest to stay sharp and keep focused on what I should be doing.

It's a constant struggle and hopefully... something I can keep up and even get better at. :D

And many months later

It's funny how you go through spurts of creativity. 

Or maybe that's just me.

So blogging a design post without designs is not cool. Blogging for many months without designs is an offense is some countries.

So here is a place holder until I can get some sleep and post more.

Oh, and by the way, I updated the correct link in the upper right hand portion of the site.

Weird how that changed to carbonmode and not carbonmade... it used to work.

Anywho... it works now. :D