cellio | Entries tagged with dnd

Is it just me, or does the design for the WTC replacement look like New York is giving someone the finger? That can't be completely unintentional, can it?

We saw Chicago Wednesday night with a group of friends. It was an interesting movie. (I have not seen the play.) It dragged for about the first third, I thought -- if it had been a TV show or a DVD rental I would have turned it off -- but then it picked up. The lawyer made the show, as far as I'm concerned. All in all, an ok movie with some very funny bits. I'm not sure why it's a candidate for "best picture", though I can't say what I would propose instead. I don't go to enough movies to have a good handle on the options.

But: "Roxie" was so not a babe -- was she supposed to be attractive and it just doesn't work for me, or was part of the point that she didn't have the required characteristics, particularly upper-body real estate, needed to be that kind of dancer?

Tonight the fifth-grade class is leading service at my synagogue. I've got to find some place else to be. Maybe New Light (Conservative), because they're friendly and a block away, or maybe Young People's (Orthodox) because they seem friendly, they explicitly welcome newcomers, and I've never been there. Oops, Young People's starts before candle-lighting time, and I'll probably need those extra few minutes to get dinner ready. Hmm. Maybe I'll visit there in the spring.

Last night's D&D game was very exciting. We spent most of the evening on scouting and strategy and it was getting late, but we didn't want to just leave it that way so we decided to play out the attack last night (or at least the first major phase of it). It was a late night, but a fun one with lots of cool effects. Ralph did a good job of playing the main bad guy intelligently. I did a so-so job of tracking my own state. (In particular, I lost track of the effects of one attack that was made against me. I should have been making concentration checks for each spell cast. The good news is that I fail such checks on a 1 or 2, but I forgot to make about three of them and that's bad.)

I think I will stop listening to spell-selection advice from Dani; I'm majorly regretting the last spell I let him talk me into, and he's made a number of other suggestions that I've rejected. I think he doesn't understand the difference between sorcerors and wizards. I'm carrying around a third-level spell that I have never cast, when I had planned to take one of two others that would be (1) more useful and (2) more cool. (Essentially, I let him talk me into postponing those.) But I don't get my next third-level spell until ninth or tenth level, and I'm seventh level now. Oops.

Today's "Friday five" looks like one I'll do, but likely not on Friday. Too busy. Sorry; you'll have to wait. :-)

I'm trying version two of the fake ham tonight. I tripled the amount of salt in the brine, increased the spices, and left the veal in the brine for 48 hours this time before roasting it last night. I also covered the outside with brown sugar (lightly) before roasting, to maybe evoke some of the right flavor. I failed to acquire beet juice for color. We'll have it for Shabbat dinner tonight, which I realized belatedly might be ironic.

The D&D game has been having some interesting story developments lately, both at the last session and via email since then. I'm looking forward to tomorrow's game, especially as we won't be constrained on time the way we are on weeknights.

The next few local SCA events have higher-than-usual site fees. I wonder what's going on; did I maybe miss a general increase in the cost of sites? (That's possible.) I think I probably won't go to war practice this year; $12 for a day-trip without food just doesn't strike me as worthwhile. One of my apprentices is in charge of an activity, so I feel like I should go and support him, but I don't think I'd enjoy the event.

Oh, and so I don't lose track of this: West Wing, Season 2 (1st half) on DVD, release date April 7, Region 2.

Embla is two for two with the attic renovations. Today I came home to find that the door to the attic was closed, with her on the other side of the door. And much of the floor freshly painted. I didn't explore for kitty footprints in the paint. (And this is after I told the contractor that the cats like to hide up there...)

Last night's D&D game was fun. It looked like it was going to be a "sideline" story, just a random adventure and excuse to play with some new toys, and it turned out to be part of the overall story. I thought that was nifty. It looked like Ralph meant for it to be a little more threatening than it turned out to be; calibrating adventures has got to be hard.

Someone described to me an easy sauce for salmon: take sour cream and dijon mustard in approximately equal quantities, mix, spread over salmon, bake. (I always bake salmon wrapped up in foil so it doesn't dry out.) We had this tonight and it was tasty.

According to fitday.com, I get more than the RDA of most vitamins (300% of Vitamin A this past month, 240% of Vitamin C, a few other high numbers, and most others in the 100-120% range). There are two exceptions: Vitamin D at 52% and Vitamin K (what the heck is that?) at 33%. They do not, however, provide the next step in useful feedback: what foods would change that.

(While I'm being statistical, over that same month I've averaged (daily) 80g of protein, 57g of fat, 210g carb, 19g fiber, with saturated, poly, and mono fats being pretty much evenly split. I don't know if this is actually good.)

I was a little disappointed by tonight's "West Wing". The topic of parental degeneration (Alzheimer's) is hard to do well in 43 minutes, but I've come to expect the nearly-impossible from this show and this time it didn't quite work. Oh well. (On a related note, we borrowed "Sports Night" tapes recently; I hope to sit down to watch several episodes in the next few days. Right after Shabbat, perhaps.)

I got some much-needed QA resources at work today, and this has done much to increase my confidence in a part of my work for this next release. Yay, QA!

the_never drew this picture of my D&D character based on this description. Thanks!

Gail and I decided not to go to the event in Buffalo, so I invited her for Shabbat lunch instead. (She would have joined me for services first if the person in the other half of her duplex hadn't been very loud for a very long time in the wee hours of the morning.) We had a pleasant meal and gab session. It's been too long since we just sat around and shot the breeze.

(I'll write more about Shabbat stuff later, separately.)

In the evening we went to Ralph and Lori's party, which was a lot of fun! It was a good crowd of people, and the food, as usual, was fantastic. (I loved the curried gouda.) At one point I picked up a cookie-like object and, after sampling, said to someone "I have no idea what I'm eating, but this is really good". (I know that I can trust Ralph and Lori with food, so it's safe to pick up random food and eat it.) Lori described the recipe to me later. It was the buttersctch-orange candy.

I had one surreal moment when someone walked up to me and said "Hi Monica - do you remember me?" (I hate it when people ask that. There's no diplomatic way to say "I have no clue who you are", so I don't try for diplomacy. :-) ) This person was a co-worker at CGI, the first company I worked for after college. I left there in 1988. I still don't know what she actually did there; she had such strong memories that I felt odd asking something that would demonstrate that I really didn't remember any of this. I know she was not an engineer (I think I remember all the engineers anyway) because she talked about "you engineers". She seemed like a friendly-enough person, and apparently she now lives across the street from Ralph and Lori so I'll probably see her in the future.

There was one guest who was quite clearly not safe to drive home, so Dani and I tried to give him a ride. (We could have each driven a car to his house, so his car wouldn't be stranded.) He was very firm in his refusal and we didn't want to make a scene, but I worried that ultimately the hosts were going to end up in a show-down with him. I've since heard that someone else prevailed and he accepted a ride, which is good.

Today after a leisurely brunch we mostly finished shopping for my relatives. (There's always something you can't do via mail.) We also bought a desk for me; we went back to the second-hand room at one of the stores and they had something perfectly reasonable that's already assembled, so I don't have to do the IKEA-esque thing. :-) (Well, I was going to cave in and pay someone to do it.) And it's not expensive. It's a little beat up, but it's perfectly functional and I don't need fancy. I just need a writing surface with drawers. It'll be delivered a week from Monday; with luck the contractor will be done in that room by then, and then I can start carrying stuff upstairs. Yay.

Ralph and Lori gave us a copy of the Dungeon Master's Guide as a Chanukah present, and while we were in Borders today we decided to complete the initial set and pick up a Monster Manual. This is strongly influenced by my character's plans for Polymorph Self; it's time to peruse some of the options. :-)

Tonight I baked cookies for the choir dinner tomorrow. I was trying something new (but safe-new, not completely-untested-new), and it came out pretty well. Of course I had to perform quality control. :-)

Tuesday night we had "D&D smackdown". I had a lot of fun. I don't know how much we learned, but it was fun. :-) Ralph wrote about the session, but I'm going to add some notes of my own.

For the evening we boosted the characters who were close up to the next level, so this could be a predictor of things going forward. We had Larissa (7th-level sorceror), Prolix (7th-level wizard), Liandra (7th-level druid), Turok ("4th-level" half-dragon fighter; functionally 6th, through a mechanism I don't understand), and Kyle (6th-level mostly rogue (1 level of ranger, I think)). Larissa has an owl familiar and Liandra has a wolf animal companion, but neither figured into the fighting much. We ran three fights against this party.

( Read more... )

It's been a hectic week at work, due largely to our lack of committed, firm process for software releases -- or rather, the inability of the engineers (thus far) to prevent requests for a "quick and dirty snapshot -- just a beta" from going somewhere. We will discuss this next week. (I think I was finally able to impress on the right person, on Friday, that we are not just making accelerated progress -- we are doing stuff that we will have to undo later, and that has a cost.) The real answer here is to have frequent quasi-releases, where we go through the freeze/QA/archive process even if it never leaves the building. If we do this every month, then when someone nees the "latest and greatest" he is at most out of date by a couple weeks. Part of the problem this week was that it's been too long since the last release -- but until recently, the next release was not a priority.

Tuesday night was the D&D game. It was fun. My character is now in negotiations with an intelligent weapon, of all things. This should be fascinating. (Only two party members are even elligble to wield the weapon, due to size and class restrictions. The other one is not interested. In general, if my character, a sorceror, is in melee then something has gone horribly wrong, but if something goes horribly wrong there's something to be said for having a good weapon. But this might not be what the weapon had in mind.)

Wednesday night's West Wing was fun. I think a lot of the quality of that show is in the writing (as with B5); this show seems to be targetting more of a "thinking" crowd than many shows out there. Keep it up, guys.

I'm not sure how I feel about the "Rapture-esque" Twilight Zone this week.

Saturday night we went to a "wine and dessert" party hosted by Sharon and Eliot. It was a very pleasant evening and I got to see some people I don't see often, like Christine, Greg, and Jody. I also met some new people who were interesting to talk with. Ralph and Lori were there, too, as was my co-worker Jake (with his SO Erin -- not sure which of them is the connection to which of Sharon or Eliot). Sharon and Eliot have wide social circles.

Tuesday night's D&D game was a lot of fun. The story was exciting, and the player issues that had been problems last time were not present.

Ralph used "dirt cheap dungeons" instead of just drawing a map on paper, and I thought that added a lot. We also got a chance to use some of my painted miniatures, which I won't complain about. :-) (We've been using cardboard miniatures, for the most part -- printed ones, not ones we made. My ambition exceeds my artistic skill, so that's ok, but sometimes having something a little more three-dimensional is nice.)

The role-playing was good, and Ralph was really getting into it too. He did a good job of portraying the major character we interacted with. I wonder what he's got in store for the one we didn't get to.

The final fight of this session (and the end of the game day) was our fourth encounter that day. We were running pretty low on spells; Ralph had apparently intended for us to sleep first. We still did ok, though Ralph was also generous on some things. The undead whatever-it-was (spectre, I think) drained two levels from one of the other characters, though, and that's frustrating. (One was permanent, the other wasn't.) Level drains are different, and better-handled, in 3rd edition, but they're still unpleasant. One thing in particular is that the cost of the drain can vary widely. Consider: Kyle was 6th level, most of the way to 7th, and got bumped back to 5th, mid-way to 6th. Net cost in XP was about 6000. If, on the other hand, he had gotten zapped shortly after making the next level, he would have been bumped back to 6th, mid-way to 7th, for a cost of about 3000. That just seems weird to me somehow.

I'm playing a sorceror in Ralph's D&D game. ( What's that? )

Because I have so few spell slots, it would be silly to waste slots on redundant spells or ones that get superseded quickly. (I've already made one mistake along this line, and do not want to make another.) So I'm trying to plan the next few levels' worth of spells now, to reduce the odds of this happening.

( about the character )

( spells )
So that's my current thinking. Feedback from other D&D players, including the people in this campaign, is welcome.

D&D Tuesday night was exciting. We ended up in a fight where it looked like the big baddie could have easily splattered any one of us in just a couple swings. And he (or rather, his intelligent weapon) had a special grudge against humans. Guess who is now playing the only human in the party? :-) (We also have two half-humans.)

The character who got killed last time ended up reincarnating as what appears to be a humanoid lizard. (The players were told "half-dragon". The other half is human.) This should be entertaining. The character is currently kind of cranky and stand-offish, and more aggressive than he used to be; I hope some of this mellows out over time. It fits with what the character has just been through; I just hope the character can eventually reconcile himself with what happened.

Last night's D&D game was a little awkward. Ralph had dropped a hint that he was a little worried about the encounter he had planned (that it might kill the party), but he kept it because we've surprised him in the past. So most of us knew going in that something was up.

( life, death, and continuity )

D&D last night was interesting. We learned some things that sound like they're going to be important, accompanied by new questions and mysteries. Ralph described part of it as "a visit from the exposition fairy", but he's too hard on himself. I liked the way this stuff was revealed to us. It's not the first time the DM has used actual props, either, and I think it works well.

Having an encounter in the middle of the night where we had to run somewhere else was interesting. A couple times I found myself thinking "I'll use my... oops, I don't have that here right now". I'm glad that for the most part I've been fairly detailed on my character sheet about what I carry where; it saves having to guess in situations where I would be motivated to be generous. And, in keeping with recent tradition, the fighter had yet another fight with no armor. Maybe he should try to buy some potions of Mage Armor or something.

(This encounter also led to some entertaining role-playing. There were three relevant NPCs at one point, so Ralph distributed a couple parts to players along with general instructions. That worked better than him trying to do conversations.)

I am really behind in my character's journal entries.

Annoyance: the player who chews up significant chunks of time with speculation and argument about how some spells work, when those decisions aren't going to affect what we do, is not in a position to complain about other players spending time with questions that do matter, like whether certain special equipment is available before we leave town. This is not the first time this player had done this sort of thing, and it's rude. (I handle my random spell-philosophy-and-mechanics issues between games, unless they really do matter right then.)

D&D last night was quite a bit of fun. I was visualizing the settings better than I usually do, and I credit Ralph (the GM) for that. I think the challenge level was about right, too; the first encounter we had came at the end of the day, so we were down a bunch of spells because there'd been stuff earlier. I, at least, used up magic in the fight (charges on items).

It's always fun to watch the GM (and the players) when players come up with unusual solutions to problems. Prolix's reduction of the attacking bugbear to gnome-size was amusing. (Pity I didn't get to whap him on the head. I was standing right next to him, but I was busy and then someone killed him.) And a stunt we're planning in order to cross a broken bridge will be highly amusing. (It'll play out in the next session, so I'm not going to write about it until then.) It was obvious that the GM did not see even the hints of this plan coming. :-) I will be interested to learn, later, what we are "supposed" to do.

Current Mood: amused

I have a doc deadline today at work (SDK release). Some of my coworkers seem to think I should be frazzled. I've learned over the years how to plan for these things, so I'm right on schedule -- including some planned-in last-minute emergencies. :-) (That is, I allocated time to then-unknown tasks that I suspected someone would come up with.) I'm running what I think will be the final build now.

There are things I want to say about the pledge-of-allegiance thing, but I know I don't have time right now so it'll have to wait.

My new computer arrived last night. Yay! I haven't done much to it yet (took a while to get it to see the network, and that was an important first step), but after Shabbat I'll begin the frenzy of installing software and the like. I also saw my USB external hard drive just zip along, which is pleasant. (The drive is USB 2.0, backward-compatable to 1.0. My old computer was 1.0; this one is 2.0. The difference in data-transfer rate is 40 times. That is not a typo.)

Eventually, I want to partition the drive and put Linux on it (dual-boot). But the 10 minutes I spent last night reading Red Hat documentation were insufficient, so that'll wait. Partitioning the drive from the start would be easier, but it contains dire warnings about interactions with NT and I don't have time to figure them out right now. (The OS is Win2000, which is based on NT.)

I also got a delivery from the beer co-op this week. Looks like an interesting assortment. There are two beers in the mix that I don't personally like, but I have friends who do. (The beer co-op is a method of sampling lesser-known beers in a state that requires that you buy beer by the case.)

Ralph's D&D game was Wednesday night. It was fun as usual. I think we need to come up with a heuristic for communicating what is important and what's not without giving things away, though. We were about to embark on a journey that would take a week and a half to two weeks. We spent a while discussing travel arrangements, how much gear we were carrying, where supply points were along the way, etc. As a player, I expected encounters along the way and possibly even some "weather hazards" (it's getting on toward winter). Ralph had planned to get us to our destination that night, though, without encounters along the way. But he couldn't just say to the players "this doesn't matter", or that would have given this away. On the other hand, we could have saved half an hour of preparations.

Last night before getting the computer I went to services and ended up leading them. (The rest of the people there voted me most likely to succeed, or something.) I really wish the associate rabbi would call or something if he's not going to show up to lead, rather than leaving us to figure this out. This is the second time this has happened recently. (The senior rabbi is out of town; normally he does this one.) I almost didn't show up, but the store was open late enough that I could so I did. (I usually go.)

Speaking of leading services, I'll be doing that again next Friday at Tree of Life.

Sunday afternoon we are going up to Cooper's Lake to paint the Pennsic house, assuming it doesn't rain. We're just doing the exterior, so this shouldn't take that long. I don't have the carved bits for the interior done yet. (Actually, they're not even drawn yet.) I hope to make and apply those in July sometime. (The house is a re-creation of a building in Cordova around the year 950 CE. They did lots of decoratively-carved stucco. I can fake that. :-) )

I think my doc build is done now.

Last night we went to Ralph and Lori's for "Sunday" dinner. (They had other plans last Sunday, and this Sunday they'll be celebrating their first wedding anniversary.) We had very tasty grilled onion-burgers. I'm starting to think that it's time for Dani and me to get a grill, and patio furniture, and whatnot. I feel so domestic sometimes. :-)

Last night I also, finally, started to catch up on my D&D character's in-character "diary" entries over in

ralph_dnd. I still have one or two more to go. I enjoy this aspect of the game; it helps fill in character back-story and make the whole world feel more three-dimensional for me.

Tomorrow is an SCA event. It should be lots of fun; I hope it's not too hot and miserable out. Aside from a choir performance and judging an arts-and-sciences competition, I have no specific plans for the day. Whee! I can make it up as I go along. (Some events are very scheduled...) This also means that I can attend morning Shabbat services first, unlike the last event where in theory I had to be there at 10am and "there" was near Butler.

Drivers of school buses should set better examples. A couple days ago I watched a school bus be the third vehicle in a line of traffic that was running a red light. Sheesh. (In case you're wondering, no I was not at the head of that line. I was at the head of the line of traffic that had a green light but couldn't safely move.)

Last night was Temple Sinai's annual meeting. Doing back-to-back meetings for two different congregations led to exercises in comparative anthropology. Tree didn't really give a "state of the congregation" talk; Sinai did but they painted a picture that's a tad more optimistic than the facts really support. (Nothing untoward, mind -- just PR spin.) I wonder which is worse -- no info or sanitized info.

This Shabbat it's my turn to bake for the kiddush. I wimped out; you can get these "instant cookies" that you just break apart and stick on ungreased cookie sheets. I'm not usually that much of a slug.

Much to my annoyance, I learned today that the java compiler isn't as smart as I thought it was. Suppose your class has a method that returns an instance of your class. Suppose you subclass that and want to override this method to return an instance of the subclass. If Base.fn() returns a Base and Derived.fn() returns a Derived, you would think that the compiler would be able to tell, given code such as "Derived d = Derived.fn()", that it should use the overload that returns a Derived and not try to return a Base, right? You'd think so, and I'm told the spec says so (though I haven't checked), but apparently you'd be wrong. Bah.

We watched the season finale for "West Wing" tonight. Some interesting developments, some disappointments. The end of the CJ story was particularly annoying to me. But overall, I'm enjoying this show. We've only been watching it for a couple months. (We encountered it for the first time over Pesach.) I haven't gotten around to the season finale of "Enterprise" yet.

Dani is talking semi-seriously about buying the first season of "West Wing" on DVD. This must mean he's thinknig about getting a DVD player -- which must mean that he's inclined toward that TV upgrade. The (new) TV room is currently under some construction, but that should be done soon. Then we can do furniture.

Our D&D party (in Ralph's game) has some down time between now and the next session. Real Soon Now I need to figure out how my character is spending it. I'm really enjoying being in a D&D campaign again; it had been a long, long time (12 years or so). I like to think that I'm a better player now than I was then, just due to general maturity, though I don't actually know that.

Last night was Ralph's D&D game. I, err, had a blast. (My character had different kinds of blasts. Several of them.)

We have gone back to Larissa's home town to fight off an invasion of "slime monsters". (One of the players at the last session said something about an "oozemaster". Neither I nor my character know about those, but I'm assuming there's a Big Nasty Something at the end of this trail.) Last game we parked at the entrance to the caves and made an initial foray in, fighting off a couple different kinds of slime-based critters. We found that edged weapons don't work so well, but crushing weapons are fine and fire kicks butt. (Unfortunately, we mostly don't use crushing weapons.)

Last night we went back in. The first encounter was a lot rougher on us than I think Ralph intended; it was a single ooze-infested poisonous giant spider, but it took two nasty bites out of our fighter and knocked him down to 2HP. It also kept dodging my flame sphere, so while we were keeping it at bay somewhat, we weren't doing damage. Eventually a combination of magic missiles, physical missiles, flame blade from the druid, and old-fashioned melee did it in. But we left to lick our wounds after that.

The next morning we went back in (yeah, overnight every night we have to thwap some critters, but we have the advantage). This time our first encounter was with a couple of "ooze dire weasels", which Hrolf (acting as scout) spotted for us. (Hrolf is Larissa's owl familiar. He described them as "two large food".) It turns out that the gnome can, as a racial ability, talk to weasels. So much for Ralph's plan to reduce moral ambiguity by giving us non-sentient opponents. Prolix eventually convinced one of them to leave us alone. The other was trying to kill our rogue, Kyle, so we killed it. Prolix also managed to get some basic information from the surviving weasel (a poisoned stream causes the ooze infestation, and it's that-a-way). This was all very entertaining.

Kyle was badly hurt in this fight but everyone else was fine, so we pressed on. We came to a room with a bunch of slime monsters, and Larissa let loose with a pair of flame spheres. Sometimes they dodged, but 6-foot-diameter balls of fire did still serve to route them a bit. She supplemented this with magic missiles (once the first sphere burned out), and others fought them in their usual ways. I wasn't tracking it, but I think Larissa did at least half the total damage to them in that fight, which made me feel really good. Usually I'm not nearly that effective, especially compared to Turok (the fighter). It's the half-damage-from-edged-weapons effect. (It's not a competition thing for me; fighters are supposed to do lots of damage, and I do have non-damage spells. But every now and then it's gratifying to be really, really effective.)

One of the townsfolk was with us (an apprentice cleric), so I have hopes that this show will lead to an increase in Larissa's reputation in particular. (She's the only local in the party.) I have some hopes of this sending a message of "leave me/my family alone or else" to certain other folks in town, all without Larissa having to say a word.

We had an On the Mark practice this afternoon. I think we're in good shape for the con in two weeks. Now as soon as they tell us whether we're doing one long concert or two shorter ones, I can finalize the set list.

Soon we have to actually have a discussion with our prospective new members, and I have to photocopy music and stuff for them.

Dani is a sweetie. He had already agreed (a while back) to pick me up at the airport Sunday afternoon/evening when my plane gets in from the con. Tonight I asked him if he would take me to the airport Friday morning before he goes to work, and he agreed. That saves me either $45 or a lot of time mucking with public transit. (My plane leaves at 10:30, which means I'm supposed to be there at 8:30.)

Passover is in a few weeks, which means we'll be in Toronto for several days. I wonder if Dani's relatives have figured out who's doing the seders yet. I need to remember to contact my cat-sitter.

I really enjoyed Ralph's D&D game on Wednesday. It started off light and kind of silly but ended with Plot Development that involves my character's home town. I've commented on this game in Ralph's journal because he wrote about it, but I hadn't gotten around to mentioning it here yet. I still have to produce the Larissa's-eye view of recent events for the game log.

The observation (from Ralph) that characters can cooperate in creating magic items has opened up all sorts of possibilities. I wasn't going to take item-creation feats; as a sorceress I don't get that many spells, so these feats seem limited. But if someone else can supply the spell... so I took Craft Wondrous Item and am now trying to figure out what things are useful, available, and affordable with my current level and resources. Aside from my familiar's mage-armor gadget, which was my top priority.

Next weekend Seth and Karen come to visit. Yay! I am looking forward to this.

I belong to an SCA household whose main function in life is to hold roughly-monthly potluck dinners. Last night Dani and I hosted. It had been a while since we did one, so we announced that the theme was "round tuits". This produced lots of round food. Dani even got brussels sprouts out of the deal. :-) (I can't stand them, so this was a rare opportunity for him.) I made lots and lots of meatballs, from a recipe in Drizzle of Honey (reconstructions of expulsion-era Spanish Jewish recipes). Cilantro makes all the difference. :-)

We began the tax returns. This started with Dani opening the TurboTax box and discovering an empty sleeve where the CD should be. Fortunately, he still had the receipt and was able to replace it. We're still in the midst of data entry, so we don't know how bad the hit will be yet. (How could mutual funds that did so poorly overall have such high capital gains? Ugh -- we lost money and we're going to pay taxes for the privilege.)

Saturday was an On the Mark practice. I think we're in pretty good shape for Galacticon next month.

Friday night was another of the "class services" (5th grade this time). I try to schedule my cantor stints against these when I know (I have philosophical/halachic problems with some stuff that happens at these), but it didn't work out this time. Oh well. They just updated the calendar so I know when the 4th-grade service is in April, so I'll try to make that one a ToL night.

Because of Purim, the Torah-study group studied Zachor (the verses about blotting out Amalek) instead of our usual progression through Vayikra.

After Wednesday's D&D game I borrowed Ralph's Monster Manual so I could look up the creatures that I could theoretically summon with a Summon Monster spell. I'm still trying to decide on my (single) second-level spell; it's going to be either Summon Monster or Flame Sphere. Both can provide for interesting distractions in combat; in both cases I'm more interested in the distraction/routing effect than the damage effect.

Levitate is also second level. The spell only gives you vertical control (it's not Fly), which raises the question of how much force is necessary to propel a willing levitating creatures horizontally. Is it like zero-g, where you don't need much? Can a Mage Hand push you along? :-)

After work it's off to Silver Spring to visit Seth & Karen and Yaakov & Rivka for Purim. Yay! Should be lots of fun!

I've been thinking about Larissa's next spell, and it has raised a question that I'd like feedback on. Recall that I haven't really played mages before, excluding those early munchkin days where factors like role-playing and deep ethical musings and stuff were just Not Issues. Maybe there is a well-undertstood answer, or maybe there isn't.

Can a good character use summoning spells?

The answer would seem to depend on how summoning works. Is Summon Monster, as the name implies, really a summoning spell -- plucking a creature out of its natural habitat and teleporting it here to fight for you? Or is it a cojuration, a fabrication that is formed out of the ether and will dissipate a few rounds later when the spell runs out?

If it is a summoning, then does the creature have its normal level of free will that is being surpressed by the spell, or is it a mindless automiton? As the description is written, the creature will fight for you without question -- but if it's a summoned creature, is that achieved through coercion?

Other issues come up if it is a summoning and not a conjuration. Is it right to send a summoned creature into a situation that will very likely be fatal to it? Does one have an obligation to heal one's summoned servants? (I would argue that if the spell is a cojuration and not a summoning, the answers are yes and no, respectively.)

And what is one to make of the fact that the bulk of the creatures that can be summoned, at least at low levels, are of evil alignment?

(For those LJers who are in the game, I also sent this question to the mailing list.)

I am enjoying playing in Ralph's D&D game, and I'm especially pleased that Ralph is getting into the "extra-game story" aspects. I decided when we started playing a few months ago that my character (a young human girl from the boondocks) would keep a diary, and that I would actually write those diary entries as sort of meta-game entertainment, and to help me develop the character. I know this makes Ralph happy. Last night Ralph wrote a letter that my character just received, which I like to think was maybe inspired by the diary stuff. I think these sorts of things make the game more fun; Ralph could have just told us "you got a letter that said such-and-such" but he didn't. Nifty. Yes, of course doing this stuff is lots more work, so I don't expect it'll happen all the time, but it's still neat when it does.

Current Mood: pleased

You can find anything on the web.

I'm in a D&D game that Ralph is running, and my character (a sorceress) just got a familiar, an owl. So Ralph asked me "how big do you want your owl to be?". Um, err, I'm a city kid; I don't actually know much about owls. Not to worry; Ralph found the owl site for me. Check out the species list for more owl types than I thought existed...

Current Mood: amused

It doesn't take that much effort to get software to the 90%-usable stage. I wish the publishers of the D&D character generator had tried. :-(

It's not hard to figure out how to use (which is good, as there are no menus and not much help -- it's a pure click interface). The character sheet that it eventually generates is pretty painful, though -- grayed out text that actually did matter, poor contrast on the reverse-video bits, etc. And they include all sorts of info that I don't need (like spells I don't have), which probably motivated them to make everything small so it would fit in only 4 pages. Sigh.

Now if I could write a script that would take this file and transform it into a plain text file, I'd be quite happy. Sadly, I think I lack the relevant skills. Hmm, maybe if I take the character file, send it over to a Unix box, and run "strings" on it? Gotta try that. (It'll probably give me disembodied numbers without the names of the stats, but we'll see.)

Current Mood: disappointed
Current Music: The Ballad of the CSS Hunley, Clam Chowder

This is a pointer to Ralph's D&D journal.

We played our first game last night. I had a lot of fun. I'm playing a sorceress who has a particular interest in, as I'm calling it, "applied physics". She's the sort of person who really did climb up onto the roof with a feather and a rock to see which would hit the ground first -- except that she got inconsistent results because she found herself rooting for the feather and inadvertantly manipulating events. (The spell that looks the most intriguing to me right now -- that I'm elligible for -- is Magic Hand, which is small-scale TK.) Ralph actually let me take a knowledge skill in this area (physics or the like, I mean); we need to refine the definition over time.

I'm playing a high-charisma character. This is so unlike me that I'm finding it a challenge. Does this mean that I should be trying to take on some sort of leadership role? (I don't think so, really.) Does it mean that I should be trying to be (or at least project) "likability" to eeryone around me? The character is a little on the introverted side right now, but that's because I am.

It'll be fun to see what develops.

Current Mood: satisfied

Monica

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