Title 34

I find myself in a reflective mood today.

The reason for this is I mark another year of life today and still it baffles me that I am alive. I know that may strike you as a peculiar thing to write, but if you interview any number of my friends you will find that I had a pretty solid feeling that I would not live to be this old.

There is not a hard and fast reason for this logic, I did not survive some horrible accident and I am not overcoming some genetic illness. I have just known that I would not live past the age of thirty. Now that might give some of you a chuckle, or it might just seem fatalistic...but it is what it is...a rock hard belief that 31 was an unreachable age for me.

Now that I am passing the age of thirty four, I am at a bit of a crossroads. Knowing that you are destined for a short life makes you extremely reckless with your life. But now that certainty is gone and I am left wondering what it is I am supposed to be doing.

Give me back some attack Options, please.

Just to give you a little background, I played D&D when I was a kid. I am a survivor of 1st and 2nd editions. I am now entrenched in a couple of 4th edition games and find myself fascinated by the dichotomy of the mechanics. Long gone are the 5/4 attacks and the improvised attacks that required DM rulings. Considering how many things that are available in the game, it strikes me as odd that there are not more "Minor Action" attacks built in. I bring this up because there are many times in combat that I am wanting to deliver a primary attack and slip in a secondary or tertiary attack for minion sweeping or damage multiplying. I find that the required Standard/Move/Minor structure is useful, but even with the ability to downgrade "superior" actions there are few direct damage dealing attacks that are classed as minors.

My hope is that Essentials will resolve some of this issues. Some of the preview materials indicate a differing mechanic for the martial classes which seems to follow along the lines of the psionic augment powers. I am hopeful that this opens up unarmed secondary attacks and shield based bashing attacks. These changes will add a different flavor to the hack and slash types the some of the other classes. I realize that it may seem like an oversimplification of the rules, but I am confident that these new mechanics can be implemented as a build type as opposed to rewriting the entire attack matrix already in place. Of course I could be completely wrong about this and Essentials will turn 4th Edition on its ear. Only time will tell.

5/64

Ramblings and a Reboot.

So over the summer I had this brilliant idea to inspire my friend to reboot his fallow blog. He had some really insightful posts about all things gaming and comic books. His blog approached a nearly epic level as he closed in on a post a day for a month. And then the universe conspired against him and his blog is now only spotted by the rare post. So I proposed to him to write a blog a day for a month. Actually as we are both computer geeks, I picked the nice round number of 64 posts in 30 days. That was about 5 weeks ago and we had agreed to some ground rules. So in that vein, here we go with post number 1 of 64. We have until midnight on September 30 to get a combined total of 64 posts up.

Do you think we can do it? Keep watching to find out. For my part, I will be blogging about game racaps, character histories, interesting news stories, and a short feature I have entitled "The Divorce of Sense". I know that may not be terribly interesting to most folks out there, but that is the great thing about having a corner of the internet to spew diarrhea of the keyboard.

To wit...Check in on aherotwiceamonth.com as well and keep us honest!

Well that is a pretty sorry post, as it does not meet the minimum word count that was prescribed. Now on to the filler:

I have recently discovered a television show that I somehow missed. Well not really I think it originally aired on Showtime and I am not vested in the premium channels. Six Feet Under is an interesting black comedy about a family who owns and operates a funeral home in California. Now, I normally would have skipped by this show completely, if I had not seen the majority of its cast in other projects which I enjoy immensely. Peter Krause plays the eldest brother and is now on Parenthood. Michael C. Hall plays the middle child and is eerily similar to his role as Dexter the serial killer. And finally, quite a split from her current role as a single mom on Brothers and Sisters I find Rachel Griffiths portrayal of the sex driven intellectual very appealing.