The Last of Us is Nightmare Fuel

My daughter Emma and I started watching The Last of Us late last week -- about the time the Giants were getting blown out by the Eagles in the NFC Divisional Round -- and I gotta say that although I am very much enjoying the show, man, it is pure nightmare fuel.

Like, I had a literal nightmare after that first episode.

Pics from Jacksonville, Florida, & AEW Dynamite

I took Emma to Jacksonville, Florida, yesterday to see AEW Dynamite in person.  It's her 16th birthday, and she's been asking to go forever, so we finally went.  We had a lot of fun.  I finally got a chance to got through and edit some of the pics from the trip on the plane this afternoon, and here we are.

Some Quick Thoughts on Baldur's Gate 3

I bought Larian's new D&D computer game, Baldur's Gate III, via the Google Stadia this week.  

I am not a gamer.  I like tabletop D&D quite a bit and have played the previous iterations of various D&D computer games like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and Neverwinter Nights, but those are absolutely the only computer games that I ever play.  Really,I don't give two shits about computer gaming.  I just happen to like Dungeons & Dragons despite having no easy way to play much anymore nor overmuch time to spend sitting around a table.

Your first sidekick is kind of a badass.  This was a great storytelling choice.

These are my thoughts.  Take them for whatever they are worth.

D&D: Race to the Temple of Storms

Race to the Temple of Storms is a short Dungeons & Dragons adventure balanced for a party of four PCs of fourth level.  I ran it for my kids on Friday last week in a little over ninety minutes.

Race to the Temple of Storms (PDF)

Merry Christmas from Mount Snow

Merry Christmas, friends.

The girls and I are up at Mount Snow today, staying for a few days at the Sterling Ski Club’s Mount Snow Lodge.  

Sally and I both sometimes get a little depressed at Christmas.  My family has all passed save for my wife and kids, and Sally’s family has never been anyone’s ideal.  But we are truly blessed to have found each other, to have the mutual strength to break the cycles in each of our families’ lives, and to have the opportunity to spend the holidays in the mountains in Vermont.  Whatever else happens, I will always be grateful for the love, strength, and support to meet challenges head on.

It’s been an interesting year at Casa Cabeza -- in a good way.  I’ll spare you the stories, but we have a lot for which we are thankful.  We hope that you and yours are richly blessed in the year to come as well.

Digital Camera Experiments Revisited

The more you learn, the less you know.  I really need to get down to the library to get a couple of books on photography, but I just haven't had time.  That hasn't stopped me from taking pictures.

I took this on the drive into the office during the heat wave last week.
It's heavily filtered, obviously.

#SBRLLR: Building a Life (Part 3)

My mom came up for ten days right after we brought Hannah home from the hospital.  I don’t know why I thought this would be a good idea.  She second-guessed our every move, tried to undermine Sally’s confidence as a mother by insisting that Hannah liked my mother more than she liked Sally, complained endlessly when we made her go out onto the fire escape to smoke her cigarettes, and generally drove us as crazy as she possibly could.  She refused to cook, got inexplicably angry when we tried to eat healthy, natural foods instead of pre-processed crap out of cans, and complained constantly about having to walk up the three flights of stairs to get to our apartment.  By the time she left, Sally made me promise that we wouldn’t have to see her again for a good, long while.  I had little choice but to agree.

Crunch: Entry-Level Weight-Lifting Concepts (Part 1)

Talking to my buddy the other day, I mentioned that I’d started taking my daughters to the gym again recently, and he got surprisingly interested.  He and his son met us on Tuesday, and when I showed him what we were doing, he said, “Oh wow.  You have, like, a plan and everything.  I always just come here and do maybe half an hour on the treadmill and then hit some of the machines.  I’ve never, like, tried to hit multiple muscle groups on purpose or anything.”

His son followed up with, “I always just do five sets on the leg-press machine and a bunch of arms.  This is cool.”

D&D with Kids: “The Sunless Citadel” Play Report

We were up in Maine last week, and as we have been wont to do while on vacation, the girls and I sat down for a few sessions of D&D while we were there.  We all enjoy D&D, but we never seem to play as much as we want when we’re at home, owing to the busy nature of our Real Lives.  Life’s a little different up in Maine, however, and this time in particular, I went up with a goal.  I wanted the kids to come away with a legitimate understanding of how to play their characters to their fullest potential.

I wanted them to “get” the game, not just the basics of combat mechanics.

I decided to run The Sunless Citadel out of the recently released Tales from the Yawning Portal.  The adventure’s intro notes that it was designed in part to help teach the game, and in this it performed flawlessly.  It was also relatively short.  We got through it over the course of our week away, totally maybe eight hours of actual play.  This included character set-up and level-ups along with one wholly unrelated side-quest written and run by my older daughter Hannah.

D&D: Dhampyr Homebrew (Part 2)

Eek!  A vampire!

Last week, we laid out a case for creating vampire PCs.  We started this project because my ten-year-old daughter Emma wanted a way to play a vampire PC in our home game, and I didn’t want to disappoint her.  However, lots of folks seemed interested in the project, so I decided to spend some time this week expanding the concept with a pair of vampiric PC subclasses.

Most of last week’s commenters liked the idea of vampiric PCs only to the extent that we made an effort to support truly horrific, monstrous archetypes.  Many readers pointed out that vampires are supposed to be hideous and terrifying, that vampirism should be viewed as a curse and not a superpower.  This is doubly important because of the way that so much of today’s Young Adult fantasy has neutered the modern conception of vampires.

I’m trying to oblige.

D&D: Dhampyr Homebrew (Part 1)

Eek!  A vampire!

My daughter Emma surprised me this weekend by telling me that she wants to play a vampire in our next game.  

So yeah—ugh.  

But she’s ten.  What can you do?

We’ve been talking about playing D&D quite a bit lately, and the topic of vampires came up because I really want to play through the Curse of Strahd in our home campaign, but full disclosure, our lives have been majorly busy of late, and as a result, we’ve not actually played in quite a long time.  We’ve just been talking about playing.  

Nevertheless, this vampire thing gives us something to talk about, and it’s been a while since we did any D&D on the blog.  Also: if Emma wants to play a vampire, there’s not actually a reason not to let her.  We just need to put something together, so she can do her thing.

Choose Your Side!

This is what happens when you watch Jurrassic World and Star Wars in the same weekend.

15 Reasons to be Thankful this Thanksgiving

1.  We’ve all got our health.
This was not a given.  I found myself in the hospital in August after a spider bite.  The back of my leg became infected with an antibiotic-resistant form of the streptococcus bacteria, and it took several rounds of antibiotics and four full days as an in-patient to clear it up.  Not fun.  But I’m better now, and I’ve been slowly but surely working my way back into form in anticipation of the coming triathlon season.

Sally and I are both over 40, and we’re both in good shape.  This puts us markedly ahead of where my parents were at our age, and I don’t take that lightly.

Family Pics: The American Museum of Natural History

After the race yesterday, Sally and I took the kids to the American Museum of Natural History.

I'm not sure exactly what role Theodore Roosevelt had in the museum's creation, but he has his own rotunda inside, as well as Theodore Roosevelt Park immediately outside, and what has to be the nation's single greatest equestrian statue at the museum's front.

An equestrian statue with two Native Americans accompanying.  Wow.

If the measure of a man is that they don't just put up a statue for him, they put up an equestrian statue, then TR went to the next level.  It fits the man, I suppose.

Hannah & Gabe "Shake It Off"

As promised, here's the video from the weekend's performance.  Our daughter Emma is the one who keeps photobombing the shot.

Duke Wallace Foghorn IV & Rainmaker

Duke Wallace Foghorn IV
Duke Wallace is a lithe, athletic man in his early thirties.  Though not a professional adventurer, he is trained to use the sword, the lance, the dueling blade (rapier), and the longbow, and he is reputed to be the finest horseman in the entire Kingdom of the Western Isles.  Before Wallace III’s untimely death, the current Duke Wallace commanded the Blueblood Regiment of the Royal Heavy Cavalry Brigade.  He saw action in several skirmishes in the hinterlands north of Wanderhaven as well as one major deployment to coastal Frankonia where he fought Sentralian forces from the Legion of the Red Lord.  By all accounts, Wallace handled himself well at every turn.
The duke typically hunts astride his warhorse Thunderclap wearing loose green combat leathers (studded leather armor) with either a longbow or a spear.  For a military campaign, however, he will wear the breastplate from the Foghorn House Platemail (breastplate +1), and he will carry a tower shield alongside his full wartime armament.  This includes a lance, longbow and quiver with 40 arrows, dueling blade +1, dagger, and his House Sword, Rainmaker.  

Wanderhaven & the Ten "Honest Houses"

Wanderhaven is the capital city and primary port of the Kingdom of the Western Isles, which is itself a sub-continental archipelago northeast of the continent of Sentralia.  The city was founded in ancient days by continental traders seeking a safe port from storms on their way to what were once far-flung destinations around the rest of the continent.  Wanderhaven has a large natural harbor called Great Island Bay, and in time what was once a way-station became a trading metropolis.  

Legend has it that life in the city was once lawless, brutal, and deadly.  Before the founding of the city proper, pirates operated freely in the hinterlands of the Isles, plaguing honest merchants and making travel along the future Kingdom’s best trade routes dangerous in the extreme.  The ten Honest Houses put a stop to that by banding together to incorporate the city, establish the rule of law, and -- eventually -- found the Kingdom of the Western Isles.  

Peace and prosperity have reigned ever since.

Wanderhaven Sourcebook: The Fire-Breathing Elephant

My daughter Emma drew me a picture while I was in the hospital.  Now that I'm out, I feel like that picture needs stats*.

The Fire-Breathing Elephant
Huge Magical Beast, Unaligned

The Fire-Breathing Elephant

Five Things on a Friday: Super Changes with Superheroes!

Happy Friday!  

It’s supposed to be gorgeous this weekend, and I don’t mind telling you that I cannot wait.

1. Thor is a girl

The gender-switching plot is a common
trope for comics.  Stephanie Brown's
"Girl Robin" is my favorite version of it.

The thing about making Thor a girl is that it’s been done before.  In one of the ancient stories (Prose Edda?  I can’t remember), Thor loses his hammer to a frost giant, and Loki turns him into a woman, so that he can woo it back.  In female form, Thor agrees to marry the king of the frost giants, who then throws an enormous feast in his new bride’s honor.  But the giant cannot impress his new bride with anything under the sun, until he finally brings out Mjolnir, which is his greatest treasure.  Thor grasps the weapon, and his female form is dispelled, after which he and Loki slay the frost giants.

My point in all of this is not that Marvel shouldn’t have run this particular story—that Thor becomes unworthy to wield the hammer, that Odin then assigns it to someone new, and that this new someone is a woman.  That may well work, and if it does, that’s great.  I’m all for new storytelling as long as its good.    

Sunday's Stray Thoughts

Wasn't planning to do a post this morning, but then I saw this presumably homemade Red Sonja Lego minifig, and well, this is how posts are born.

“@ivygirl851: @GailSimone pic.twitter.com/kB4ec0kUah” Red Lego Sonja!
— Gail Thorkenstonen (@GailSimone) February 23, 2014