Gaming! and Future Plans

Well I've been just a little busy here lately and haven't gotten around to posting anything on here. Between school for me and my 3 kids along with working and everything else I've been extremely distracted.

The evil campaign I've been running for the in-laws has been going well, and actually this weekend should be the last session with it again (they are level 23 now). After that the in-laws are wanting to test out the new D&D 5th edition game since my father-in-law bought the books that are available at the moment.
Looks like it could be fun at least, I'm not picky about the game I play as long as I can play. I've heard good and bad things about the new edition and honestly I don't care either way. A game is a game and until I play it I can't make an decision on whether or not I like it. Although being that it is a game I'm sure I will find something to enjoy about it regardless of anything else. I hope that rambling made sense as I didn't intend to start into that, oh well.

I've not had the time or concentration to work on my own game lately, but I still plan on putting more work into it at some point.

As far as updates, me and my wife have decided to go in on working on something creative together and are in the process of working on a Web-comic using 3d figures (I'll be making the panels/pages/images in DAZ Studio). Might turn out well, or might be horrible but either way we are giving it a go as a way for us to do something together, so should be fun either way.

With all three kids in school now it is nice but stressful at the same time as that means they are getting bigger and older. Our oldest daughter wants to play softball again when that comes around (not until spring at least), and the middle daughter is participating in the Youth Football group in our area as a cheerleader, the youngest is only in pre-k and hasn't wanted to get involved in anything yet.

Well enough of my ramblings for now I'll try to post something sooner without a huge break between them this time. Have a good one anyone who happens to read this. :)

Family/D&D/Etc...

So I am staying busy at the moment. Working full time, school is out for the summer at the moment at least, although I did sort of take on a second job. I was paid to build a website for the Doctor's office where my Mother works, and now I am also their IT guy (unless something major comes up). Not a full time job exactly but takes extra time on lunches and weekends when minor things happen.

The In-Laws are still playing the Evil campaign I am running. They are level 20 now and starting a war. And finally with the help of my brother-in-law (the war part is more for him as he really wanted to try a somewhat war like campaign), I have an idea on what to do with this war campaign that they will like!

I'm wanting to run a small campaign at my home as well but sadly I don't have enough people willing to come over and play. Oh well, maybe in the future.

So I've also been making pictures still with Daz-Studio, and I had an idea for a picture that got a little more initiative to get done with the help of my mother. She keeps picking on me about turning my children into "nerds" as she puts it, so I decided to go along with doing this picture for myself and so I could send it to her.

So my wife and daughters helped me make this by designing their own characters for me to setup.

Kim my wife's is the angel with white wings and blue outfit.
Barbara my 9 year old daughter is the red armored mage.
Izabel my 6 year old is the angel with blue/yellow/red wings (and mulan's dress).
Kira my 4 year old is the fairy.
Eric is me, and mine is the female with the spear and shield (character I'm planning out to play for the next time I get to play a game instead of run one)

I sent this to my mother as well just to make her laugh at me which was effective and amusing.

So yeah, more updates later and hopefully some new information on my Silver Divinity game (since this blog is supposed to be about that).

Funerals, Life, and Games

So yeah I've been meaning to post something on here but life always intervenes.

My Grandfather passed away on Wednesday June 11th at 5 A.M. he was 86. His funeral was Saturday and it went as well as a funeral can be expected. His obituary is here (mostly putting it here for myself I suppose) Willie A. (Bill) Fowler.

Father's day was good but depressing as can be expected considering we had a Funeral the day before it. My wife made me catfish and hush-puppies for Father's Day dinner, which is awesome (I rarely get to eat it at home as I'm the only one in the house that will eat it). Mostly I sat around Sunday and actually played Bioshock Infinite. I started it Saturday night after the funeral and spending time with family and I finished it Sunday night. I loved the game to be honest, the story was wonderful and the ending was great!

My oldest daughter is still playing softball and is super excited now as she finally hit the ball!

My Evil D&D campaign I'm running for the In-Laws is going well so far, they've gotten to level 20 now and are in the process of initiating a war. I'm hoping I can handle what I've setup and been working towards for them, but we shall see.

I'm planning on posting more sometime soon to do with my Silver Divinity RPG project. We went to A-Kon and although I had a digital copy of the Savage Worlds book, I found a physical copy there that I bought. I prefer to have a physical book to look at when doing things.

Well I suppose that is enough updates for the moment, if you actually read through any of this then Thank You! And if you didn't then Thank You anyway!

Evil Campaign/A-Kon/Wife's Costume

So yeah busy as always.

Been playing our Evil campaign when we can which has been fun so far. They are getting into the military/way part of the story which is leading up to the end (which I'm still trying to figure out what exactly that is). Brother-in-law was in the army and went overseas a while back, and as such he has been asked/volunteered to help me get a handle on ideas for the war/military portion of this campaign. Which to be honest the main reason they are participating/starting a war is because he liked the idea of participating in a D&D campaign with a war in it, so I incorporated that into the campaign they were running. Should be interesting as they are now level 20. But hopefully I can handle it well enough for them to enjoy.

So A-Kon is going on in Dallas on June 6th - 8th, and my cousin also lives in Dallas. He has been down to visit a number of times but I've not gotten the chance to go visit him yet. Well the wife and I finally got a little money put back to make a trip up there to see him as well as attend A-Kon! My wife is super excited because she loves my cousin as do I. Me and him are similar in most things (most of our personality, and our sense of humor), although I prefer women and he prefers men, which makes for some amusing conversations.

Anyway, my wife decided she wanted to cosplay in essence. She dyed her hair the other day for it as well. Tonight she wanted to see how everything looked all together and so I took a picture for myself and for her to get an idea of what it all looked like as we don't have a full length mirror or anything in our house. She assumed I would post it on here and I figured why not as she seemed to like the idea. So here is my wonderful wife wearing her outfit for A-Kon.

My wife Kim in her outfit for A-Kon.

Evil Campaign and Other Ramblings

So yeah as always work and home life are keeping me busy, which is draining my mental energy which I keep trying to reserve so I can work on a post or on my Silver Divinity project. But alas I haven't been able to lately. But enough of that onto my ramblings!

On a side note, my oldest daughter (I have 3 daughters) turned 9 April 6th, and she started Softball practice that following Thursday, which her grandmother paid for as her Birthday gift. I'm not much of a sports person myself, well to be honest I like playing with family and that is it, I don't care to watch it either. But I am excited that my daughter is playing if only for the reason that she is excited herself. She has never really played a sport before so this should be fun, I can at least help some; I don't know a lot but I do at least have some experience, the rest of my family are all major sports fans so I did have to grow up with it.

OK, onto other ramblings! The Evil D&D Campaign has been going well and interesting so far. The party has officially reached level 20 as of Saturday. Their adventures in Limbo went better than I expected, although because of children (there are a total of 7-8 in the house with us which causes just a little bit of a distraction constantly) the puzzles didn't get handled as I intended. But it all worked out, I had to explain and answer a couple of the puzzles myself (this was a new experiment with the in-laws, we don't normally do puzzles like I put together for this session) but they still enjoyed it at least. The rest of the dungeon I didn't get to get finished so it was sort of randomized as far as what was going on which was fun, but eventually they got to where they were ready to escape limbo.

They found a nice old man at the end who silenced the Cleric with a gesture as she started mouthing off to him (the Cleric is my wife incidentally and she actually laughed and didn't get annoyed at me when he silenced her...). The old man was random and pointless and a last minute idea partially pulled from my brother-in-law. I was trying to figure out an appropriate treasure for them to find at the end of this randomness and he requested and really wanted a magic talking sword. For some reason I got stuck on the Chronicles of Amber books when he asked about this; I love those books! So I took Corwins Sword Grayswandir, and Brands Werewindle (he dual wields a longs word and short sword) and turned them into talking swords matching at least some of the descriptions from the books for them. I also took Frakir from the second set of books which belonged to Merlin (well as much as someone can possess a magic sentient object) and gave that to my father-in-law. And the last bit that I didn't explain and they never asked (the kids were acting up a bit at that point) but I did prepare and think out, was that the old man was a guardian between worlds and there was a gateway mentioned in the rooms description as well. This gateway was pointless and they never would have gone through, but I made it so that it was a gateway between realities/worlds/existences/ whatever you want to call it. The gateway actually lead to Amber from the books as well, pointless but mostly for my own amusement

My wife and I are thinking on working on another random project together and I won't go into detail yet as we aren't positive yet, but once we get it figured out more I will probably post something here about it.

And yeah I think this is one of my longest rambling posts so far, and I will end it here with,
Have a good day and thanks for reading.

9 Year Wedding Anniversary

So Sunday February 9th marked the 9 year wedding anniversary for my wife and I. We pretty much spent the entire weekend away from home and computers, which was great!

I did get a little behind with the D&D anniversary posts for this month, but I plan to get up to date with that today at some point.

Day 7 - D&D 40th Anniversary blog hop challenge!

First D&D product you ever bought. Do you still have it?

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The first product I ever bought myself was the 3.5 Players Handbook. No fancy story here or anything; my father-in-law was the only one who had one in our group of about 6 players, so I wanted to buy one for myself and so we would have an extra one to pass around. Luckily now there are more copies owned between us so it makes it easier during play. I still have it and use it quite a bit when we play D&D, or my wife uses it when I'm running the game.

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Holidays and the New Year

Well the holidays are almost over now. I know mine has been hectic as I am sure most peoples were. So yeah I am still here and working on my game when I get time.

I'm saddened as it seems nearly impossible for me to keep a game going at my house at the moment. One person rarely shows up and now another one is moving far enough away to where it is not worth the time and gas to drive down. which leaves me with just me, my wife, one friend unless I can convince my cousin to actually play more.

I'm trying to come up with some sort of weekly/bi-weekly posting to do starting in January, but I'm not sure yet. The only thing I can come up with at the moment is to create or just write some creatures for my Silver Divinity galaxy. I enjoyed doing that previously for a Halloween event and I'm thinking it might be fun to do some more.

Lastly I know its late already but Happy Holidays (or whatever you prefer) to everyone!

Games/Updates/Etc...

The holidays are upon us and it is that time of year when I am forced to exit my home to spend time with the family. Although my wife and I enjoy it, she enjoys it much more than I do as I tend to get drained quickly and would like to go home, while she would like to stay longer. We have been married for 8 years and have worked things out where both of us are happy at least so I'm not really complaining there.

The pathfinder game we were playing at the in-laws house has been cancelled for the time being, and we were going to start back playing the Evil campaign I was running for them before (they made it from level 1 to 14 in Eberron D&D 3.5 before we paused the game). That at the moment has been postponed due to the holidays and extended family having housing issues and needing assistance.

The corrupted game I started at my own house has been going well at least. We've only played twice so far, but they were fun games to say the least. This last one had a first time amusement for me either running or playing a game. I've started showing my 19 year old cousin how to play, and although she has had fun she is still 19 so it's hard to pin her down to play with us at times. But this last time we played (11/15/13) her Cleric decided to start flirting with one of the NPC's they encountered. There was a father and his three sons and she decided to start hitting on one of the sons. This was exceedingly amusing watching her try to role play this (which she did great with); she finally got fed up with him after a while and through various circumstances she finally found out that he was really a demon in disguise.
This was entertaining to play through and like I said I've never had anyone try to do something like this in a game I've participated in.

So yeah all in all I've been busy. I am still working on Converting what I have of my Silver Divinity setting to Savage Worlds, it is just taking a moment due to lack of good thinking time.

Day 5 - 30 Day D&D Challenge!

Day 5 - Your Favorite Set of Dice/Individual Dice

The dice I use now are just a random set that my Father-In-Law gave me whenever they first started teaching me to play. I like them and they are what I use when we are playing games still, but I don't have any major attachment or favorite amongst them. About the only thing with my dice that I am attached to is the dice bag my wife found for me the first time we went to the St Charles area of St Louis.

It is very pink, but I justify it by the fact that I am married and I have three daughters who I think helped pick it out. Regardless this is my favorite part of my gaming dice!

Not exactly a post about my dice but close enough I suppose.

Day 1 - Dungeons & Dragons 30 Day Challenge!

How you got started - Day 1

Honestly I didn't get to play games as a kid, especially not table top games. Whenever my wife and I got married her and her family introduced me to D&D 3.5. I loved it and have gotten extremely interested in learning whatever tabletop game I can get my hands on.
We started playing in Eberron which is my favorite D&D setting at the moment.

Short post but here is Day 1.

Father's Day and Pokemon

So for Father's day this year I wanted to do something different with my children, well mostly with the oldest as the other two aren't quite old enough to sit down and try to play a game with yet.

My oldest daughter really enjoys Pokemon, and a while back I found a Pokemon Tabletop game that a group of people have put together. I thought she would enjoy it if we tried it out this weekend.

I cut out a few of the more complicated parts of it, while leaving the major portions of the game intact. We just got done playing it a little while ago, and although I now know that I need to do more prep work before we play again, she enjoyed it immensely. My wife enjoyed it also which is great!

Now that we have figured the basics of it out I think we are going to try to turn playing this with our oldest daughter a more frequent thing.

We didn't get super far, although technically we weren't really shooting for anything specifically besides leveling up and catching new Pokemon.

Barbara (my oldest daughter) started out with a lvl 5 Meowth, and when we stopped she had captured/befriended a lvl 2 Weedle, a lvl 3 Krabby (which has already jumped to level 6), and a level 5 Scyther.

Kim (my wife) started out with a lvl 5 Evee (which is now a level 6 Leafon), and captured a lvl 2 Weedle (which she released) and befriended a lvl 5 Bulbasaur.

All in all it was an amusing game that had some interesting elements, especially the befriending Pokemon instead of battling against them. We will have to see how far we can go with it now, but regardless at least it is a fun game I can now play with my children.

New Sword and Shield

This isn't game related necessarily but I wanted to share anyway.

Saturday February 9th was the 8 year anniversary for my wife and I. We went up to walk around Hot Springs for awhile, and while walking around my wife found what she wanted to buy me for our anniversary.



Master Sword & Hyrule Shield
8th Anniversary gift from wife


She talked the lady down to $150 for both together (they were originally $100 apiece). Although I'm not sure of the exact weight of the shield, it is actually made of metal and is fairly heavy. The sword is well made also and the hilt and blade are actually connected really well unlock a lot of display swords I've seen. I would have liked if the shield and sword hilt were blue, but it still looks great with the black.

After we got home and picked up our kids from their Grandparents house I wanted to test something with them. We have 3 daughters they are 7, 4, & 2. I showed the older two the sword alone and asked if they could figure out what it was from. Our 4 year old instantly yelled out Zelda, which made me laugh. The older two liked it a lot which means I'm going to have to put the sword up where they can't reach it, and don't know where its at, but the shield I'm going to try to hang on the wall, luckily they both already have mounting supplies with them.

New Year's Game

So we are having some friends and family over at our house tonight for new years eve. My wife is trying to find things to do with them, and asked me to put together a quick one night game for us to possibly play with everybody.

I decided to make a short game set in my Silver Divinity game. I'm working on some characters for them to choose from, and much to my wife's amusement I decided to start them out as patients in an asylum of sorts. They are going to start with only a gown to wear and nothing else, as well as being in completely different rooms. They are all going to be under the effects of basically a drug induced amnesia, although because of some outside circumstances their memories are slowly returning (they only remember their name and vaguely what they are capable of, but don't remember anything about their pasts at the moment).

I think they should have fun with this, or at least I hope they do. I'll probably post a follow up to this as long as we actually play the game.

Happy New Year to everyone.

Gaming with the kids

This is a story me, Kim and the girls made while playing a game we bought for them awhile back. It is a silly game, but is quite fun. It is actually meant for higher age groups, but it is fairly easy to get it ready to play for younger ages.

 DO: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple is the name of the game.

This is the letter that we answered, which is what the pilgrims are supposed to do.

Dear Pilgrims of the flying temple,

Hi how are you! My name is Melanie. I come from a very small planet.

There is me, my house, my cat, and two trees.
I am not so good, because my planet has been eaten by a whale.
It is a very small planet. I woke up and I was inside a whale. I don’t want to get (more) eaten.
Please help!
your friend
Melanie (age 8)
P.S. I will make you cookies.

Here were our names:

Pilgrim Stubborn Earth – Eric (me)
Pilgrim Pretty Fairy – Izabel (5 year old daughter)
Pilgrim Quiet Beast – Barbara (7 year old daughter)
Pilgrim Kind Flower – Kim (my wife)

Pilgrim Stubborn Earth, Pretty Fairy, and Kind Flower went to the planet while Pilgrim Quiet Beast stayed outside of the whale.

Pilgrim stubborn earth tries to help by throwing dirt in the whale to make it cough the planet up. Melanie tries to tell him that the whale just ate a bunch of dirt and it won’t work.
Pilgrim pretty fairy tries to steal a cookie. She gets caught and decides to give the cookie back.
Pilgrim quiet beast tries to talk to the whale to get it to let the planet out. The whale doesn’t hear her though because she is too quiet.
Pilgrim kind flower makes the trees grow really tall to tickle the whale’s stomach, so it will throw the planet up. If the trees grow too tall though, they will break her house, so she can’t make them big enough to help.
Pilgrim stubborn earth tries to move all the dirt from the planet outside instead. But Melanie stops him as he would destroy her home if he did that.
Pilgrim pretty fairy tries to steal Melanie’s pretty cat this time. But decides not too when Melanie notices.
Pilgrim quiet beast is so quiet that the whale doesn’t notice her and runs over her.
Pilgrim kind flower tries to grow the grass instead of the trees. But all the grass is gone because pilgrim stubborn earth is moving all the dirt.
Pilgrim stubborn earth stops moving the last of the dirt so he doesn’t destroy Melanie’s planet and home. He eats one of her cookies before finishing helping though.
Pilgrim Stubborn Earth made the planet a different shape by moving the dirt, giving Melanie more room to live.
The cat decided to go with Pilgrim Pretty Fairy because it liked her.
The whale noticed Pilgrim Quiet Beast when it hit her and stopped to listen and let the planet out.
Pilgrim Kind Flower found some hidden seeds, and made them grow; covering Melanie’s planet in fresh grass.

THE END

Monstorous Monday - Zombie Cow

I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do for this Monday, and my wife recommended an undead cow, so here is my Zombie Cow, enjoy.

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Picture from zone.aintitcool.com



Zombie Cow

Rank: 5

Physical Competence: 6

Mental Competence: 0

Health: 24

Armor: 4

Talents:

Ageless: You never age, and are not subject to diseases of any kind.

Immunity Bludgeoning Weapons: You are immune to bludgeoning damage.

Immunity Mind Affecting abilities: You are immune to mind affecting abilities and spells.

Complications:

Vulnerability to Fire: You take a -2 penalty against attacks of this nature.

Mindless: Mental competence is automatically 0. Any skill associated with mental competence automatically fails.

Hunger for Fresh Cow meat: If you do not feed on fresh cow meat at least once every 2 days you lose 1 point from your physical competence every 2 days that cannot be recovered until you have satisfied your hunger.

Combat Abilities:

Slam/Gore:         Attack 12             Damage 8d6 Plus an Athletics check against the rolled successes to avoid falling prone.

Trample:              Attack 12 (target takes -4 penalty for being prone)           Damage 6d6

(trample can only be used on prone targets)

Zombie cows are a product of bored and lazy Necromancers. When there is a lack of more humanoid subjects to animate, and they don't feel like searching for more; some sad necromancers will turn to testing their death spells on animals, before reanimating them to see what amusement they can offer in the joy (or curse) of un-death. After they are created the necromancer usually abandons them, as their extreme lack of intelligence makes them ill- suited for anything besides roaming around to feed.

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Wife's game request

So in the middle of working on my game, working, taking care of 3 kids, and going to school, my wife has made a request for another game project.

She really likes the Harry Potter books and somehow we got on the topic of a Harry Potter RPG game. I know there are fan made games around, and I will probably look at a few of them, but she wants me to see if I can make one myself for her to play with a couple of other people.

So I'm taking on this challenge for her, and sadly my first major step is going to be actually sitting down and reading the books as I have never actually read them myself.