Pelor, Lord of Time. Wait, wasn't that Cronus's title too?

Pelor is everyone's favorite deity, at least among humans. He's good, and he helps farmers and works with the sun, and great stuff like that. Just now, however, I came across a detail in the description of Pelor that I never noticed before. Apparently he also runs time. That strikes me as an opportunity to run a grittier DnD game, even within the Super-Heroic-Heroes-of-Good default setting.

The party, who are probably either unaligned or some sort of servant of Pelor (Paladin or Cleric), are contacted by the god and asked to do some more-unaligned-than-good deeds to keep the space-time continuum from coming apart (probably in more fantasy-ish terms, but you know what I mean). Maybe some normally good force, such as other Pelor-ites, is accidentally doing something damaging and won't see reason about stopping. Maybe one of the other gods is being a little more malicious than usual. Maybe the Far Realm is breaking through into reality, and driving people insane (and spawning Daemons and corrupting Space Marines? Wait, no, that's a different setting :P).

Active Defense!

I was reading through the Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 PHB the other day, and I noticed something that is oddly missing from 4th edition: active defenses.

So I decided to make some up. I decided that there should be a dodge for rogue-ish sort of characters, and block for fighter types.

Dodge is based on Acrobatics, and is more or less just a straight check with that skill with a DC based on the roll result that caused the hit. For instance, a character gets hit by a monster who rolled an 18 on the d20 and had a +6 bonus. His dodge check has to pass a DC of 24. If he succeeds, he shifts one space (getting out of the way) and avoids all effects of the attack. If he fails, he may still shift one space, but he still takes the damage and effects, in addition to being knocked prone.

Block is similar. It requires a shield, but the DC is figured the same way. On a success, the character is unaffected by the attack. On a failure, he is pushed back one space (this is forced movement) and still takes all the effects.

I've been trying to think up a way to do parrying, but my ideas are all mechanically similar to either dodge or block. Any ideas? (I'm pretending here that anyone actually reads this blog. Heh.)

I Fight for Glorious Union!

I got Red Alert 3 yesterday (if you can't tell by the title :P). So far, I'm really liking it, and the EA DRM doesn't seem to be interfering with anything.

So now I'm on the third mission in the Soviet campaign, and it's pretty easy (EDIT: Wow. I went on to mission 4, and it's anything but easy! Needs moar Tesla fish!), even on Medium difficulty - I my one complaint. I'm enjoying all the little Soviet/anti-capitalist jokes, though:
"Ugh. Smells of capitalism."
"Get on the floor and give up money, stinky capitalists!"

And the political ones:
"Neutrality? Heh. Switzerland please explain Allied military installation!"

And the simply silly little bits of dialogue:
"Shut up, it's HQ!"
"Conscript excited to fight!"
"They have any food in there?"

High School!

Heh, I suppose this is just a little late (>.>) but as of Monday, I'm in high school! (*gasp!*)

So in the last four days I've started to get used to the new school, new classmates, and new teachers. I like all three so far, particularly my Lit/Writ (Literature and Writing) teacher, Mr. McMahon. I might actually like English this year, even as impossible that sounds!

The downside, of course, is homework. Even now, on just the fourth day, I have two (albeit small) projects due tomorrow! Speaking of which, I should get working!

Games!

When I said I'd make another one of these sometime in June, I had no idea it would be June 2009!


5. Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Standard turn-based 4X. 
4. World of Warcraft: MMORPG. Still playing. I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to be more than level 56 by now, but I guess I've always sucked at levelling.
3. Garry's Mod: Source Engine sandbox construction. Pretty much Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, but you can build contraptions!
2. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: Dark Crusade: Sci-Fi RTS. A standard modern RTS, but excellently made to resemble the WH40K tabletop game!
1. Sins of a Solar Empire: 4X RTS Space Opera! (That's like three genres added together >.>) You start with a single planet and must eXplore the nearby galaxy (one or more star systems), eXpand to those planets, eXploit their resources, and eXterminate the enemy! All in real time! And with spaceships and explosions. Can't beat the spaceships and explosions.


Again, if you'd like to try WoW, email me so I can refer you >.>

Happy New Year!

I admit this is a good deal late, but Happy New Year!

My resolution... Haven't thought of one, sorry. Keep ya posted. ^.0

I told my WoW guild I'd post our guild photo here, so here it is:

SPOOOOOOOORE!

Spore, the long-awaited game of evolution from EA/Maxis, has arrived!

But (with EA there's always a but) it unfortunately has some nasty DRM called (you may have heard of it) SecuROM. It's nothing better than spyware. And in addition, you can only install the game 3 times!

Sign the petition to get rid of it!
http://www.petitiononline.com/140sp023/petition.html