Spring

The topic for today’s discussion is spring. And, while I’m not sure if cupcake meant for the conversation to hover over the season, bed springs, or the leaf springs one might find in the back of a truck. I am, however, certain that this conversation will leave out my favorite type of spring, the slinky. Why am I sure of this? Because I believe if she had wanted me to talk about a slinky she would have said a slinky. So, instead we’ll talk about spring.

And, taking a dart and throwing it at a random topic (OW! Oops, sorry Erik) I’m going to go with the season. Spring is the time of year when the earth quite literally comes back to life. The fall and winter are the slow death of the earth. Think about it, everything is shutting down. The leaves are falling off the trees. The grass stops growing. Many mammals go south for warmer climes, and many others curl up in nice cozy caves and sleep through the winter.

Spring is a period of awakening. Hibernating animals wake up, things begin to grow and migrating animals move back in this direction (like ducks… oh god how I loathe ducks).

Spring also kind of refers to Daylight Savings Time. This is an America only thing (I think. Google would tell you for sure.) and spring refers to springing forward one hour (yay time travel) so that we would have more daylight in the evening hours then we would in the mornings. Mother Nature sort of does this herself as well.

The earth as it rotates around the sun also spins on its axis, and that cockeyed, meaning the earth is angled, and at any one point in the year the earth could be pointed towards or away from the sun. As things are rolling around to spring in the northern hemisphere (our hemisphere) is pointing towards the sun. This means that more of the northern hemisphere is lit up and lit up longer than it is during the winter. This makes summers at the North Pole extremely interesting, seeing as the sun never sets.

In the context of something I understand a little better than science, spring exists in Dungeons and Dragons just as it does on earth. I don’t know why it wouldn’t, unless the DM has you playing on a planet that greatly resembles Hoth. And, even Hoth would have a period of spring like weather. It’s probably more like spring in Antarctica than it is around the center of the earth.

And, yes, there are rules as to how things apply to the world as there are with weather. Take a muddy road for instance. It’s just rained for a day and a half, everything is soaked, and the streets (which are little more than packed dirt) are muddy. People have trouble walking and running in it, thus reducing travel speed, and it sucks down and holds tight to wagon wheels, increasing travel time. And, remember the runner I mentioned, he’s going to have to make balance checks every ten to twenty feet to see if he slides in the muck. If he fails that check he has to make a reflex save to avoid falling, and depending on how the save goes he might have to roll for damage as well.

Then there are allergies. I still haven’t looked to see if there are rules for allergies or not. Meh.

And, yes, all of that does sound extremely tedious, and I’m not the sort of dungeon master who’s going to demand those checks whenever a PC moves ten feet. Nope, the only time that would matter is during a combat encounter, or some other strenuous event where the rolling of the dice is important.

Anywho, that’s all from me for the day.

Beware the Dire Squirrel.

Ryan

3-22-14

Crazy Weather

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Is it me? Or has Mother Nature suddenly developed bi-polar disorder? I’m going to think it’s that, instead of the possibility that Mother Nature is going through puberty again.

I mean, don’t you see it? The constant hormonal shifts (hot, cold, hot, cold) and the temper tantrums (the days when all of the continental United States had a temperature below freezing and the snow that fell stopped the world from running). I mean, seriously, something is out of whack with her.

Or maybe teachers everywhere cried out and offered up their candy as sacrifice for a few snow days.

Thanks teachers… >.>

I had a long stretch there, though, during the bad days when I didn’t have to get out of the house for anything at all. Except maybe the need for cigarettes, but I do longer walks then the trip to Canada’s Cash Store and back every day. It’s something I happen to be proud of.

Oh, and I’m thinking about competing in a half marathon. It’s the Beat the Blerch 10K, Half Marathon, and Marathon. It takes place in Carnation, Washington on September 21^st. Setting this as a goal for me is a huge step (as will be finding the money for plane tickets and a spot in the race). A half marathon is 13 miles, and that’s not walking, that’s running. Right now I do 2.5 miles a day walking. I’m going to have to look into an intensive exercise program to get even close to being able to do it.

Maybe.

I don’t know, that would depend on the weather too, and Washington is a really rainy state. And, I’m afraid to set any funds towards doing it as I often really get into wanting to do these things. Then I flake out, and I’ve wasted my money for no GD reason.

I’d get about a week into the training and be like this is too hard for me, and rage quit and there goes that money.

What’s worse is the participation tickets go up for sale on the 24^th, and it’s likely that they’ll have been bought out by the time I make a decision.

And, I don’t like where this is going. Instead we’ll get back to the weather.

To put it simply the DM/GM is god when it comes to their world. They control every aspect of that world, including the weather.

Since I’m the DM, if I wanted to create the weather we’ve been having recently, I can have an Epic level NPC spellcaster cast the spell Dire Winter. This creates a 1000 foot vortex like a hurricane or a tornado that deals 2d6 cold damage for 20 hours.

Or I could…

That list would go on forever, and that’s just the spells I could use to affect the weather. It doesn’t touch what the rules say about how the weather and the world of Dungeons and Dragons coexist. I need to refresh my memory on that chapter.

It might be time for the skies to rain brimstone.

Enter maniacal laughter here.

Ryan

3-19-14 

Allergies

It’s such a wonderful thing that 99% of the Earth’s population has them; that’s right boys and girls, allergies. Who knows why some people are allergic to penicillin? Or is there a reason as to why people are allergic to certain foods or fauna? There probably is, and it is probably just a Google search away. But, I’m having one of those lazy days where I feel like I shouldn’t do anything, but since it’s not F*** it Friday there’s no excuse for me not to do these things.

So, why won’t I do a Google search? The reason is I don’t care enough about the answer to pursue it. Put forth the effort to find it. However you want to say it. So, instead of worrying about the answer to the question, I’m just going to talk about how allergies affect me and mine.

Allergies hate our family, me and Cupcake, and they hate us in the way mosquitoes hate us. I’m like a walking all you can eat buffet when it comes to mosquitoes, and for allergies I’m allergic to pretty much every type of pollen. If the pollen count is high, my nose is running, my eyes are burning, and I’ll have sneezing spasms with up to 20 or more sneezes. Yes, it’s possible, and yes, it hurts like hell.

Now, Cupcake has a lot of allergies, but hers affect her in a different way. She has near constant sinus infections. Her lungs are always full of gunk and she’s sneezing and coughing and really has the whole I’m miserable sick sort of thing going on. I try to pamper her during these weeks long infections, but sometimes it gets really icky. (Love you Cupcake!) Anyway, filled with sinus problems or not, she’s my Cupcake and I love her.

I also like to make fun of her other major allergy. Cupcake is lactose intolerant. She can’t drink milk, eat cheese, drink anything with the word cream in it, and even milk chocolate bars give her problems. But, guess what… She eats these things anyway. Lol. I’m not sure if she just loves dairy products, or if she’s some kind of masochist.

Who knows?

How do allergies affect my game world; I would have to say I don’t know. I’ve never cared enough to think that much about it. It really seems to be one of those things you can just gloss over, unless you’ve got a character that has allergies. But, still, that’s more of a character trait then something to do with world building. I dunno.

I could incorporate magical allergies into the game. It would be like character xyz has an allergy to polymorph spells. Polymorph spells cast on this character are subject to a d% failure/success chart, and the effect on the character is subject to a randomized effect, plus 1d3 points of constitution damage or something like that.

Who knows?

There are probably rules for it somewhere, but I’m not going to go digging for them.

And, I’m going to call it there.

Later kids.

Ryan

3-11-14

Snow

So, I still haven’t come up with a list of random topics to write about, and I didn’t want to talk about anything serious today. So, I used Mel as a random topic generator and she gave me snow as a topic… I don’t know what to write about snow…

Damn it.

Well, I guess I can just start going, and let the writing come the way it usually does.

Snow is the white fluffy stuff that falls from the sky when it’s really friggin’ cold outside. It’s pretty, but it’s kind of a double edged sword. Snow, and its close cousin ice, is dangerous when it accumulates on roads. This is why I’ve always (since I started driving anyway) said I’d love snow if it didn’t fall on the road.

However, Mel wouldn’t like that development much. If snow didn’t fall on the roads then there would be no reason to call off school. And, the way she puts it, snow days are the reason she became a teacher. I thought it was because she really had a passion for passing knowledge on to the generation of tomorrow. If not that, I thought it would at least be June, July, and August. Although, those reasons might be disappearing soon; I’ve heard talk of year round schooling. :P

As for other things about snow, you can build snowmen, and snowball fights hurt a lot less than rock fights. And, it’s always entertaining to introduce somebody who’s never seen snow to that type of weather. Plus the entertainment value of seeing states like North Carolina overreact to an inch of snow. There’s also the people up north who think we overreact when it comes to snow. Then there are the people from northern Canada and Alaska who are like “we drive on lakes, what’s this putting down salt thing you’re talking about?”

And, I had more entertaining references to people who live in cold climates, but there really aren’t enough people living in Antarctica to make funny references about. Though you have to wonder, is it possible that a tribe of humans evolved and became suited to living under the ice and through tunnels in the glaciers. Homo Coldasballsus perhaps? I guess there are possibilities, but it sounds more like a good idea for a horror novel.

I’ll have to pack that one away and see if anything comes out of it.

There was something else I’d thought about, but it went away.

Yetis maybe…

Now we’re travelling down a slippery slope that would lead us straight to a bad Sci Fi movie. Or it might lead us to a wampa layer where we’ll find a mummified wampa with only one arm. Who knows?

I think my favorite fictional snow dwelling creature-ish thing is the Arctic Dwarves. Those little buggers (seriously, they’re only two feet tall) come out of the Forgotten Realms campaign setting for Dungeons and Dragons. They’re not much like other dwarves though. They live in tribes instead of clans (big difference there lol) and lean more towards a barbaric nature (if I’m not mistaken their favored class is barbarian) and their crafts obviously lean more towards skins and beads and ice working rather than masonry and metal work. Think miniature Eskimos, lol.

And, I think I’ll end this here. I’ve been inspired to go and make a winter based dwarven race for my own campaign setting. Later folks.

Ryan

1-21-14