Highmoon's Ponderings

It was one of my Gaming Resolutions for 2010 and I am getting to it with just a couple days to spare, but finally it is done. I am talking about playing Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, which I finally got to do last night thanks to Wizards’ D&D Encounters program.

I went down to one of our local game store, Sunshine Adventure Gaming, where I knew the Encounters program was running. There was only one table of Encounters running and they had space for this new player. I used a pre-generated character one of the guys had, a level 2 Dragonborn Cleric named Suntor Robe. I’ve never played a cleric and of the new 4e races, the Dragonborn always called my attention, so it was certainly a night of firsts all around. Dice in hand, Coke at my side, we set off to play the storyarc of The Keep on the Borderlands.

There were three players in addition to myself, including a father and his 7-year-old son; it was just awesome seeing this kid playing alongside the grown-ups and getting right into the game with the aid of his father. Makes me very happy and hopeful for the future of our hobby. The party consisted of my cleric, a knight, a rogue and a ranger; not a bad mix at all. During tonight’s encounter we explored a cave behind a waterfall, battled some pesky little kobolds, investigated what seemed to be some sort of temple, then faced off against more kobolds alongside another dragonborn and a wyrmling dragon. After the second fight, we stopped for the night, the whole thing taking up about 2 1/2 hours, give or take.

So, what did I think of it?

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Since playing Dragon Age last week, I’ve been wanting to do it more, but my GM, Enrique, is out of town for the holidays. I was sitting at home, very bored, on Saturday night, eating Chinese food (National Jews Eat Chinese Food Day) when I decided to run an impromptu game of Dragon Age online. I got a few takers but having never hosted an online virtual tabletop, I eventually decided to move it to Sunday night. Sunday during the day I sent out invites to a few people who had expressed an interest, and managed to get four players. At 11 PM EST (and with players literally all across the US), we got on Skype to play The Dalish Curse, the introductory adventure included in the Dragon Age Game Master’s Guide (no spoilers below).

As I mentioned, I have never hosted a game via an online virtual tabletop (VTT); I have played in games that have used MapTool, but someone else has done all the heavy lifting and I simply connected and played. I spent a good chunk of Sunday downloading both MapTool and Gametable, and fiddling with all their infinite nifty features — and there are a ton of them, nifties that would’ve made the game very attractive visually — but eventually realized that I’d been wasting hours trying to set up something that was way more complicated than what I needed it to be for a one-shot game. So eventually I scrapped the VTT idea and decided to use good ole Skype coupled with Google Docs for maps and info reference. I pulled the maps from the PDF copy of the GM’s Guide I have, pasted them onto individual Google Docs, and put together a Stunts reference sheet for the players, then shared the folder with everyone. For dice , we used an online dice rolled found at Catch Your Hare, which is especially neat as it displays the dice results graphically and by die, as opposed to the sum of all dice rolled. Each player picks a color for their dice, and I ruled that the middle die is always the Dragon Die, making it easy to see how many Stunt Points were generated on a roll of doubles. Easy peasy.

My four players were Tamara Deeny, Thomas Deeny, Ryan Macklin and Brennen Reece, and all four signed up for the game via my post on Twitter. We used When Is Good? to figure out a time when we could all play, and jumped on Skype at the appointed time for some dark fantasy adventuring. To save time, I had the players choose from the pre-generated characters available on the Dragon Age RPG website. The party consisted of Masarian, a Dalish Elf apostate mage (Ryan); Ackley, a Ferelden Freeman rogue (Thomas); Kedwalla, a Surface Dwarf warrior (Tamara); and Shinasha, a City Elf rogue (Brennen). We played using the rules in Set 1, though I added the Exploration and Roleplaying Stunts available on the Set 2 Playtest document so we could take them out for a spin.

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Last night I finally had the chance to play a roleplaying game since coming back from Gen Con and the game on tap was Dragon Age from Green Ronin. Running the game was my friend Enrique and joining us was his usual gaming group, plus me.

Let me cut to the point right away: I had a ton of fun. A metric ton. Part of it was because the guys in the group were a fun bunch to hang out with and they welcomed me in immediately as one of their own, but also because the Dragon Age RPG simply rocks. I would dare say that, yes, it rocks you like a hurricane. We played for just shy of 5 hours and not once did I hear anyone complain about the game, not once, and as the night progressed, the praises for it simply heaped up. The system was easy to grasp, quick to resolve and engaging for all at the table, especially during combat when the Doubles Watch went into full effect, everyone just chomping for a chance to yell out Doubles! and spend those Stunt Points for cool effects. Through the banter, the catching-up, the food and drinks, and the barrage of comments/taunts/insults in Spanglish, the game held our attention and interest, and delivered some solid old-school RPG fun.

This is where I get wordy, as I wanna talk about the adventure we played and why this game left me with a smile on my face.

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After not gaming since Gen Con, I am pee-in-my-pants excited about the Dragon Age game my friend Enrique (aka NewbieDM) will be running this coming Wednesday (12/22) night. I know absolutely nothing of the Dragon Age brand as I’ve never played the computer game, but the pen-n-paper RPG published by Green Ronin is just absolutely evocative in its retro-style to “old-school” roleplaying games and its simple treatment of the world of Dragon Age, which is all I need to get into it.

Enrique said to go ahead and build my character so after reading the Dragon Age RPG Player’s Guide, I came up with the following player character for the game. I’m sure once I sit down at the table and meet the rest of the players/party there will be tweaks, but this is my PC as it stands now. Without further ado, I give you Gwydion Ar Calennar O Stormhold.

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Geez, has it been a semester already? I feel like it was one of those paradoxes, where time flew yet stood still. But, with the posting of final grades today that means the Fall semester is officially over, and with it, my first year back in school. I’ll tackle that milestone in a separate blog post; this one is all about the semester that just ended. To start, let’s look at what my grades looked like when all was said and done:

• Introduction to Microbiology: B
• Introduction to Microbiology Lab: B
• Principles of Nutrition: A
• Introduction to Statistics: C

First of all, let me say WOOHOO, I PASSED STATS!!! That out of my system, this is how this semester went down.

Frankly, this was a lot tougher a semester than I thought it would be when I registered for it. Though it was only 3 classes and a lab, it somehow drained a lot of my time: between learning 8-9 chapters of information per Microbiology exam, doing the near-endless stream of inane projects for Nutrition, and slamming my head against any and every hard surface I came across due to Statistics, I was challenged constantly to change my ways when it comes to learning and studying. In many ways, I was still relying on the techniques I learned while I did my English degree–things like mnemonics, batch memorization, association of general concepts in order to deduce the respective details from those later on–and while this certainly worked in some classes (well, really, only in Nutrition), it proved only of partial help in Microbiology and of no help in Statistics. Which means I had to re-learn how to study as well as dust off that ancient mystic art of crammin’.

On a personal level as well, this was a challenging semester, which added pressure and stress to my already heavy load. Midterms week, for example, was just bad all over, resulting in my worst Midterm’s performance ever, and I mean ever, including the years oh-so-long-ago when I went to school to eat shit. Thankfully I was able to recover from it and ended up with grades that I am actually happy with.

In Microbiology, it took the professor curving the grades a bit, but a B is a great grade, especially when Ds abounded in the 300+ class. This was the first time I have filled an entire spiralbound notebook cover to cover with class notes. Seriously, the entire notebook. I have classmates that actually used one-and-a-half notebooks! It was insane. It was this class that made me understand why doctors have such horrible handwriting. I don’t have much to add about Lab, except we got to see up-close a whole lot of microbes and I learned a bit too much about the lifeforms that live in various parts of my body. I’m gonna start charging them rent, is all I’m saying.

Nutrition was an okay class, but honestly, it was a wasted opportunity. The professor never made it more than just the slides she read from (badly, I might add), and by mid-semester she had just lost the class. Seriously, people went there to be present, but paid little attention. She just lost us, and never fully regained us as an audience. Whatever I learned there I learned on my own, and it sucks that I paid a couple hundred dollars simply to have a grade added to my transcript. It’s a shame, there was some info I really could have used now that I am taking better care of my body and doing exercise.

This was my second time taking Statistics, and frankly, as much as I hated the subject with a passion, I have to give kudos to my professor because he truly taught me and made me change my perceptions. Yeah, I could actually see myself liking statistics at some point. In the future. Maybe. But the possibility is there. He was also a funny professor to have, a non-nonsense, sarcastic German with a thick accent and a dry sense of humor that I found completely hilarious. I wouldn’t say I did great in the class, however this is one of those cases where grade achieved does not equal actual learning: I actually learned a lot more than my grade would suggest, I just had problems with the examinations (damned binomial distribution!!!). After the final I was not sure I would score high enough to pass the class, and have spent since last Friday agonizing over the possibility of having to repeat the class a third time. Thankfully I managed to get the C I needed to pass the class, so I’m done with math for the time being!

I’m glad it’s over. I was mentally exhausted coming back from Thanksgiving; I’m not entirely sure how I plowed through those last couple of weeks. I did a lot of prioritizing of assignments, even leaving some undone because I needed the time to work on something else that would be more influential in my final grade. It all paid off.

Next semester’s classes are already chosen and as soon as I can find one more class to make up the 12 credits I need for full-time status, I’ll be enrolled in the last semester of my Pre-Nursing phase. Bring it.

At 1:00 PM today, October 12, I turned 36 years old; I know it will take a bit for that to sink it, just as it did when I turned 35 (and 34, 33, 32, etc).

This past year has been, and I don’t think I exaggerate, probably the hardest one in my life. Whereas the year prior to last was taxing because I spent most of it traveling a lot and taking care of Mom, plus eventually burying her and saying goodbye, last year was hard because I had to live with that reality, and the effects it brought on me and those around.

I looked at my journal entry from a year ago and I spent the entire day enclosed in my house, speaking over the phone with just a few people. I did not have, nor did I want, a birthday party, not even a small one; we just went out to eat sushi and then went home. It was almost a non-event. As time went on, I sunk into a deep depression that affected me, my marriage, and pretty much anything related to me in any way. I did start my Nursing studies in January, but even for that first semester it was a struggle to remain afloat.

Eventually I started seeing a therapist (thank you FIU for providing this service to the student population – seriously, thank you) and she helped me to deal with a few key issues I had been repressing hardcore for a long time. My mom’s death was a big part of my mental trauma, but there were more basic problems that went deeper. She forced me to challenge myself to climb out of the hole I had dug and lain in to let life pass me by. It took more than a few proverbial tumbles, falls and brawls with people close and important to me for me to realize some errors I had been making and how these were affecting others, but in the end that served to improve me, to make me stronger.

Am I well now? Hardly. My last session with my therapist was just last week; but I am better, and improving. F0r over two years I had been hovering around the 340-350 lbs mark, and this was affecting me physically and emotionally. When classes started, 7 weeks ago, I started going to the gym at school and have continued to go almost daily since then. Yesterday I weighed myself and was at 325 lbs, the first time in at least 2 years ( maybe more) that I have been under 330 and able to use the Wii Fit that was my birthday gift 2 years ago. I just punched the third makeshift hole in my belt. This is huge, cause I never though this would happen. This change in my life alone has given me a new energy, a new desire to live, a new passion for what the world has to offer.

To some 36 may seem like a lot; let’s not kid ourselves, it IS the mid-30s. But I don’t see it as a lot. At least the new-Me doesn’t. I see 36 as the start of a new chapter, especially coupled with the changes I have gone through thanks to therapy. I don’t see myself as 36, but instead as twice-18. When I was 18, I was naive, shy to a fault and afraid to see and experience what the world had to offer. This time around I can be 18 but tempered by the extra 18 years of experience I have on that version of Me. I can be 18 but banish that naivete, exile that shyness, dispel that fear that left me paralyzed for over a decade of my life.

That is my gift to myself on my 36 birthday: to become a Me that is twice-18 who experiences life knowing well what he likes and doesn’t, but unafraid to live beyond that as well; who enjoys the awesome that the world has to offer without paralyzing fear; and who is true to himself first and foremost, because when one is true to oneself first and foremost, only then can one be true to others as well. This is my new manifesto. I’m not saying I’ll live up to it every single day henceforth, but it will certainly color my life from here on.

Bring it on, 36. Bring it on.