Mermaids Revisited: A PC Playable Race for D&D’s 5th Edition (Ver. 2.0)

We've been using these rules in our home game for months, but I've only just gotten around to writing them up for you. We see that you've been reading our original Mermaid article, so hopefully you'll like the revision.

Mermaids from ancient myth...

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.

Pics from Round Pond and Army vs. Tulane

It's been a week.  I know.  But better late than never, right?

Before we get started with these, let me stipulate that I definitely need to read more about how and why we edit photographs, especially with filters.  I've read a few Internet articles, but that's not the same as understanding of the process.  I've learned a few things, but I like to understand why things work.  I need more theory.  I did most of these based solely on "feel," and in a lot of cases, that means that I know something's wrong, but I can't put my finger on what or how to fix it.

I took about half of these.  My wife took the ones from Michie Stadium and of the game.  She also, obviously, took the one of me.  I took the landscapes from Round Pond.

Technical note: to see full screen versions, click any picture.  You can even scroll through from that view.

Ready?

Let's get it on.

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.

The Mermaid: A PC Race Design for D&D

We have a rule at our house.  Everyone in our family has to make a Christmas gift for everyone else in the family.  My daughter Hannah has been clamoring to play D&D as a mermaid for months now, so this design for a Mermaid Player-Character race was my made-gift to her.

It's pretty simple, but she was delighted with it, immediately launching into a deep discussion of the four sub-races of mermaids--arctic, tropical, river, and deep--and their shared history, theology, and lineage.

We may publish an update with the four sub-races.  Who knows?

#SBRLLR: Building a Life (Part 2)

My wife fell pregnant about a week after we got back from our honeymoon, and we decided that she should take some time off from teaching once the school year ended.  This wasn’t meant to be permanent, but the way things worked out, she never made it back into the classroom.  

I was on out one night working on a hit utility pole in the North Bronx when Sally called me hysterically to tell me that she was bleeding.  I rushed home, thankful for once that my boss had been on the scene with me.  I held my wife in my arms and wondered helplessly what I could do.

Quick Thoughts: Army Stands Tall Against Mighty Hawaii

I’m writing this on my phone as the church band practices this morning, but I probably won’t get a chance to post it until later this afternoon. My daughter Hannah is part of the Worship Team as, like, the Junior Singer. She sings a lot of backup, but they usually build at least one song around her, too. Alas, today she was just backup.  Anyway, she gets to sing, and that matters.  She’s not quite an elite talent, but she can usually get the congregation on its feet. That counts.

Army had a good game yesterday. I didn’t realize how well QB Kelvin Hopkins had played until I looked at the stats. He was 6/10 passing with a couple of critical downfield conversions and no interceptions. Notably, he threw the ball away when it wasn’t there, and he didn’t take a sack. I thought the pass blocking looked pretty good for the most part, even on obvious passing downs. That’s a big improvement for this Army team.

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.”

Crunch: Hitting Our First Milestone

I was on the train home from work last Thursday night when my daughter texted me.

Thursday's texts

This was something of a milestone.  It was the first time that Hannah had ever pushed me to go to the gym.  After weeks of my pushing her, it seemed that we’d finally started a self-sustaining reaction.  She wanted to be there.  She actually wanted to get stronger.

Weekend Workout Notes: 4000 Yards Swimming + Weight Room Work

Publishing this weekend's workout schedule in case you're looking for some inspiration, either in the pool or in the weight room.

Crunch: New Year’s Resolutionaries

Hannah and I went to the gym together this week—for the first time in a very long time.  I’ve been trying to get her to go with me for the past several months now, and I’m glad that she finally agreed.  Spoiler alert: my eldest could use a little more exercise.  She does gymnastics once per week, and she does basic calisthenic conditioning a little more often, but her routine is not quite a lifestyle.  It’s fine as far as it goes, but it’s not necessarily enough to ensure her long term health, nor is she consistently building the habits that will make her a lifelong athlete as an adult.  Her timing was extremely fortuitous.  Crunch has been running a deal for high schoolers ($100 for a year with student ID), and this month in particular, the sign-up fee is just $1—not just for high schoolers, but for everyone.

That is awesome.

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.

5 Things on a Friday: Don’t Beat the Fluffy!

Keeping it short this week.  We've had a lot going on at our house, and anyway, the actual news remains as depressing as ever.

5 Things on a Friday: Trolling Tebow

Ran a little long this week.  Sorry in advance.

Yankee Stadium

My daughter Hannah and I went to the Yankee game on Sunday, the one where Aaron Judge hit the 496 foot home run that’s been playing on repeat on ESPN ever since.  I still don’t think of myself as an expert on the stadium or anything, but I’ve now been there a handful of times, both for baseball games and in 2014 to see Army football’s upset win over UConn during Coach Jeff Monken’s inaugural season.  I like Yankees Stadium, and for once I think I actually took enough pictures to tell a useful story about the place.

Hannah on the walk up to the stadium, aka The Cathedral of Baseball,
from Metro North.

Saturday Workout: Swim/Run Brick

Hannah and I are headed to tomorrow's Yankee game, the finale of their series against the Baltimore Orioles and, in a larger sense, of the Yanks' long home-and-away series against their AL East rivals.  The Yankees are in first place in their division, and they won last night, so tomorrow's game will see the Bombers either looking to take the rubber match or else going for the sweep.  It should be an exciting game, especially since the Yankees have decided to rest their purported--but struggling--ace Masahiro Tanaka.

Who's going to pitch, and how are the Yankees going to handle Tanaka going forward?  We have no idea, but we should start to see some of these answers tomorrow.

More importantly, at least for the purposes of this post, tomorrow has turned into an unexpected Rest Day.  Indeed, since this has been the last week of my typical three-week training cycle, next week is a Rest Week.  That meant that I needed to get both a swim and a run in this morning, and also that I didn't have to worry about overworking since I'm already headed into a scheduled rest cycle.

Quick Thoughts: Army Men's Lacrosse vs. Notre Dame

Yesterday's Army Men's Lacrosse finale was one of the most exciting games I've ever attended at Michie Stadium.  I took my daughter Hannah and her friend Ciara up to yesterday's game, and as you may imagine, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

With the girls at American Burrito just outside Thayer Gate yesterday before the game.

National Anthem Tryout

Hannah tried out to sing the National Anthem for the Bridgeport Bluefish this morning.  The tryout was out in from of Macy's at the Connecticut Post Mall in Milford.  They just set up the mike and let contestants sing, for better or worse.

Saturday Workout with Hannah

I've been working this week to get back into the gym with my daughter Hannah.  This is something of a switch.  Hannah is a dancer and a gymnast while I am a swimmer and a triathlete.  We spent a lot of time earlier in the year working out together to help Hannah improve in gymnastics, but because of school and work pressures, we haven't been working out together as much lately.  Hannah had to put more focus on her schoolwork and on ballet while I decided to double-down on swimming.