Roll your toon! All of it!

Earlier this year a good friend of mine was in town for a visit, so we had to RP cause he only visits so often from out of state and his time is often monopolized by his slew of friends & family.
Because we didn't have the entire crew from a different gaming group, and none of us really wanted to start lvl 1 chars out of nowhere, we decided to make randomized characters.
I jotted out a roll chart for classes, struck out some that I really didn't want to deal with, as was communally agreed upon by the other players (but they're still on the list if you want to use them).
We then realized to speed things up we should randomize race & alignment. And then there's more, but here are the tables as we developed them . . ..

Roll a d20 for class
1 Magus
2 alchemist
3 oracle
4 inquisitor
5 cavalier
6 summoner
7 sorcerer
8 rogue
9 ranger
10 paladin
11 monk
12 fighter
13 druid
14 cleric
15 bard
16 barbarian
17 gunslinger
18 samurai
19 ninja
20 witch
20 wizard
20 roll twice
(Strike through denotes we did not use them for that game, roll twice was for dual classing as I think we were running lvl 8's? and I don't know how we forgot the Wizard, or if we chose not to use it)

Race!  We had 3 charts associated w/ race, lets see if I can make them make sense . . .

Roll a D10
1 gnome (nobody wanted to play a gnome) orc
2 halfling
3 human
4 elf
5 1/2 elf
6 1/2 orc
7 dwarf
8,9 or 10 roll on "Next Chart"

Next Chart d10 alternative races
1 aklo
2 tengu
3 earth (elemental race, don't remember the name, not going to look it up)
4 wind ( " " )
5 fire ( " " )
6 water ( " " )
7 (Not "Heart") goblin
8 kobold - Roll on "Color Chart" below
9 Assemir
10 teifling
(there was a general agreement to not have damphires)

 I've developed some tentative alternative racial rules for Kobold sin the games I play/run that there are  different colored Kobolds, just like the dragons they emulate giving slightly different racial perks &  flaws.
Color Chart: D10
1 red
2 blue
3 green
4 black
5 white
6 brass
7 silver
8 copper
9 bronze
10 gold
I'm even looking to expand it to the alternative dragon "colors" later on.

Then you roll on your alignment chart which has been modified to only those allowed in this particular campaign.

Alignmet Chart: D10
1 or 6 Lawful Good
2 or 7 Chaotic Good
3 or 8 Neutral Good
4 or 9 Chaotic Neutral
5 or 10 Lawful Neutral


Oh yeah, these tables are intended for use with Pathfinder, but I'm sure the equivs can be translated to other system.
Now, I know these charts exist already in several incarnations, many of them inside the very source books we use, but, like many things in this ultimately customizable universe we all play in, sometimes you want something a little more tailored to your needs, so here's one for my groups and groups like mine.

Enjoy h47ites, see you later Space Cowboys!

Got Your Ticket?

It's time to ride my train of thought again! Hold on, even I don't know if it's a one way or a circuitous clover leaf of madness. Caution, Do Not Read! Contains heavy content as well as flippant. feel free to skip to parts that take your interest. You have been warned.


"Feelings . . . thing about . . . uninspired inspiration."
I was having trouble trying to develop a coherent post for you guys. And, after consuming some new and old art (i.e. music, shows) I was reminded of a mind set I have often spoken in theatre. "To hell with the audience, this is for us." Now don't get me wrong, as of right now and from the start, I love you guys. As far as I can tell the bulk of you guys are friends or people who found me interesting and stuck around, I very much appreciate that and hold that interest close to my heart, thank you. But before I get all mushy, I'm going to get to my point. Wait, no I'm not. I say "from the start until now" because I wait with bated breath for my first trolls and critiques, and though I may not like them, I am . . . preparing myself, for brutal opinions and criticism.
Now for the point. As with many things in life, dominantly art, but also in science, labor and spirituality. It's best, most powerful. when you do it for yourself. When the goal is fulfillment, enrichment, or plain honest work.
Hence the crazy dense random post. I'm writing because I want this blog to be excellent because it's an outlet for me and I wish to share the amalgamation that is my brain, because I like to tell stories, share my brain AND it would seem many people have expressed a desire to receive that. So, to the lovers and the haters, thanks for reading, thanks for thinking. Oh, and PLEASE don't stop thinking.

Other thing I wanted to gab about.

Pathfinder/D&D character build.
(Warning: I'm just going to blab about a build or two I'm cooking up and most likely not going to explain too much or link to anything, I'm just going to assume you know exactly what the hell I'm blathering about OR, you can look it up yourself.)
I'm cooking up a build for a roguish, rakish, dual wielding, dashing, snarky bastard only out for himself. He's a Dansin, which means he needs to be able to detect magic, because all Dansin's interact with the arcane through olfactory senses. In 3.5 I could always burn my human feat on Insightful to give me detect magic, read magic &/or mage hand. However, as of this posting I can't find any feats that give me this sort of thing. I did think that perhaps I could take Minor Magic rogue talent, but, you don't get rogue talents till level 2. So, seeing as there are no restrictions on multiclassing, I thought maybe taking my first level in Bard. Why bard and not sorcerer or something, because I also had the idea that since he's a brash jerk he might take Dazzling Display to intimidate his opponents.
More specifically, I have this vision of him standing over dandies who challenged him to single combat whom he then destroyed, wooing women along the way. Glorious, right (slight sarcasm, but tell me if the concept doesn't have some . . . romance)?
But! Then I also kind of wanted to take Weapon Specialist variant because I intend for him to dual wield a Brace (or 'Case')" of rapiers. I would have to take 4 levels of  Wep. Spec. to get to the first perk, then 2 more levels of Two weapon fighter, THEN, 2-5 levels of Rogue with Rake variant, ON TOP of a level in Bard to get my Dansin traits. Pathfinder Society play only goes up to level 12. Ive almost maxed out levels just trying to get to the full build of my awesome character concept. Is it to broken?
AND, there are no rules anywhere, so far, for a Brace of Rapiers AANNDD I kind of want it to be a trick set where you can actually carry it on one side and without a good perception check most people will think it's a single rapier. So, I'll have to convince my DM's to use special rules I've been cooking up using the Dual Katana Staff, Rapier, cane sword, and weapon damage charts to come up with a good presentation.
Baring that, I may have to keep two sets of gold tallies if a DM says No, and I have to go traditional Two rapiers, or Rapier & short sword, or some such.
And as a note, I WORE two rapiers just last Sunday, it's not that uncomfortable, so I could totally do that, I don't actually think it looked that goofy.

I had another build or two planned, maybe even confess I FINALLY watched Firefly all the way through, but then again maybe not. should be able to cook up some sort of 3rd for th3 nerd before the end of the month. now it's just rambling, less rant/idea sharing. I'll call it now, as it's been 12 hours since I started this post and I think I'm good. Hopefully things will continue to not get worse. Wish me a swift recovery as I AM sick as of the writing of this post. Night, H47ites!

A Queue From Porn

I have mentioned Playing D&D With Porn Stars before and was kinda waffling on what to post about, but thankfully the half-bald-bad-ass, Zak, gave me a couple great ideas.

First, a table that promotes RP while allowing some laziness in RP at the same time.
100 ways pc's know each other. I am SO using this in my next campaign, whether I'm GMing or Playing, word to my players, be aware.

Then! there was
"Roll on this table on what to Blog about."
So, I busted out the d10 AND . . . .

5--Write up a monster/trap combination. Neither the monster nor the trap must be original, but the combo must be interesting.

Alright then, my favorite trap, is more of a puzzle, it's an invisible wall of force that bisects a room, that STARTS two feet off the ground, and stops at six feet off the ground. The trick is that you have to describe it to the group correctly to lead them into thinking its a solid, floor to roof, wall while not blatantly lying to them. Perhaps, asking for high DC Int checks to notice they hit their shins but didn't stub their toes if they start to get stumped.

One of the creatures that most amuse me is the Cockatrice, since -I- first encountered it in the epic nine month campaign where this blog's namesake took place.

SO, the combo I have, is to have a room in a dungeon/castle/twisted-Femme-Mastermind-with-strange-tastes' Estate, where the characters enter it, and:

See - The room is divided in half by a low (3 ft high) fence made of sturdy wood & chicken wire. On the opposite side of the room, behind the fencing is a disgusting looking rooster which glares at you menacingly.

And of course, the above mentioned wall is right in front of the fence, between the chicken pen and the players.

Hilarity ensues.

I think in the future I might use this table again as it has multiple uses and I often feel I have a hard time finding segues into table Top RPG posts, Thank you Zak.

What's In a Character Name!? Forsaken

How do you name your characters?

This segment will deal with naming conventions in various gaming situations.

This installment will go over WoW, Forsaken characters specifically.So, over the last sixish years I've named several undead Forsaken characters, as well as "justified" character names for others I know when using them in fan-fic situations.

My main guideline involves, when the corpse re-animates, or gains sentient will, the first utterance from its lips is it's name. Of course there are exceptions to the rule, many Forsaken keep the names they had in life, but many of them never left the lands of their pre-unliving experience, where many "adventuring" undead have much more obscure and unique monikers. EXAMPLES!

Rah'Tin: My Forsaken Forest Troll from the d20 system table-top RPG. Our DM at the time was my buddy Jubblea sand he allowed me to be very creative with this particular creation. My idea was that it would be a nice joke to have his name sound like "rotten" but when the "corpsetenders" dug him up, his lifeless lips breathed the sound and his first friend in unlife agreed "yes, you really are, aren't you?" So the name stuck.

Termenus: my mage main, you might have met him in the past. It comes from a weak push of breath with the tongue pressed to the upper teeth with the air moving the tongue out of the way and the mouth closing "Term." Then air through the nostrils (he was moving his new undead peices about, having been a caster in life, this was his focus) and continuing, produced a hissing sound (vital for many incantations and spells [draconic languages, D&D nerds anyone?] ) which gave him "en" and "oos."

Doohoohoohoom: A warlock name I have saved on a few servers should I ever decide to stack dots & more dots. This one is actually a result of his loss of lower jaw (at least on the original avatar I used) and because he has less verbal control expels more air than necessary when speaking.


You might have also noticed by know, a second, and even more important element of naming Forsaken WoW characters, a cool, dark, multi-level-meaning, name. My friend Jubble's character was named Necrus, an obvious allusion to "necro" or death. Termenus was derived from "terminal" or "terminus" meaning "the end." As well as with Doohoohoohoom, I have often taken a long breath to pronounce DOOOOOOOooooommmmm!!!! upon enemies in other gaming situations. This leads me to another example of names used, perhaps allusions to HOW these characters came into their un-living state.

Bellamuerte: My fiance's mage, obviously a romance language is great for unique and provocative names, but in RP terms, in one of the stories I have not yet confirmed with her (so it's not 'canon' so to speak) is that her character's cousin, Termenus, saw her in her newly returned state and proclaimed, "beautiful death, my cousin." And her freshly re-awakened mind took a liking to it and used an obscure language she knew to keep the moniker.

Gruetouched & Gruette: Warriors, this is an obvious nod to RPG's of old, where wandering about in the dark without a light source meant certain death. And so is the case with this name. The story is that these two were wandering about in the dark and SOMETHING, killed them to allow The Plague to take over OR even affected their change. So when asked of their origins by other undead, they chose to keep the honorific as their identifiers.



Finally: Something I haven't been able to do too much in "normal WoW" that I miss, is the REAL RP. Most Likely in the future I will bore you all with the Most elaborate RP never RP'ed in World of Warcraft. A glimpse of it is actually one Rogue and one Hunter Pet.

BillyBones: my Rogue who is under 40 and GM of my family guild, partly named for the "old Captain" from Treasure Island, but also, in life his name was William Schreckwind, brother to Asthemus (who would die and return as Necrus) and Twin to Maxwell (who would also die and become BlackMax, a rogue that Jubbles rolled).
also,
Blackmax: my hunter Ribeyejack's pet cat (Humar the Pridelord) named after the fore mentioned rogue.


And so, yet another peak into my H47, with RP, WoW, and The Forsaken in mind. I would also say these similar rules might be applied to some DeathKnights, but even as I type, I think there would be other factors to consider, so don't quote me.
as always, see you around Thw Warcrafting World, and Dark Lady Watch Over You!

The Mercutio Complex

Why awesome secondary characters have to die.

Now I'm sure there are studies for this sort of thing in scholarly journals and maybe even classes on it, but I've never seen them or taken them, so here is my rambling theory and B.S. explanation.

From a young age I have enjoyed, gravitated towards, and enjoyed, the supporting characters.

As far back as grade school I can recall other kids emulating the main characters from movies, comic books, cartoons and video games. Me, however. I liked the friend better. I might blame Star Wars as the source of this. Han Solo being the cool dude who only got tortured and frozen in carbonite, compared to Luke who had to watch his entire assault force die (minus Wedge) then blow up a DeathStar, face his father (a bad mofo Sith Lord) alone after (stupidly) not completing his jedi training and getting his hand cut off, not to mention getting raped by a Wampa (the cave yeti thing) on Hoth . . . you know the rest.

I started to emulate the "other" heroes, even begin to create my own, in the same time lines but with their own stories. (Somewhere I have like 3 SW fan fics of a force sensitive rogue fleet commander as part of a special forces unit of the Rebel Alliance. Maybe I should dig those out?)

These other dudes that hang out with the main character have a sweet gig. Until I was exposed to further media. In the Matrix, you get this whole crew of badasses, then "oops" one dude is a D-bag and they all drop, never to return for an entire 4 part saga (I include Animatrix, which was badass.) Even in comedies, Old School, they kill Blue. Even more recently, in a certain Disney movie, one of the characters passes. Lord Of The Rings, they "kill" Gandalf and then Boromir. In Dune, they pop most of the house Atreides. In Gurren Laggan one of the main characters meets an untimely end, I cried. (Has my g33k cred been cemented yet?)

The Obvious answer is that these secondary leads, these "other heroes" are necessary to build a sense of family and give comrades to the Main. Then, when these well fleshed out pillars of awesome tumble, we feel the emotional tug, which pulls us farther into the world of the story, and it also gives the Lead another hook to fight on and appear more epic. Martyrs FTW!

My brain clicked around just now and thought "Man, there should be a movie where just bad ass supporting characters get together and accomplish great feats." But then I realized these are ensemble films OR all of the members have their shit together, there is no conflict and everyone succeeds at what they're doing. Great, but not much fun to watch. Hrrmm .. . maybe not. I will have to think about that one more. For some reason the "Ocean's" movies come to mind. Another story that I liked that was a "main character is a supporting Character" were the "Shadow's of The Empire" book and Game for the N64, Dash Rendarr was abad mofo, and I STILL beleive he made it out of the Skyhook.