Asmor's Geek Blog

Key
[Spec (if required)] Class (Spell, Duration in seconds, additional notes)
CD: Cooldown, if any, in seconds.
Fear effect: Causes the target to run around randomly, potentially aggroing other mobs. Use carefully.

Any
Hunter (Freezing Trap, 60s, CD:30, *)
SV Hunter (Wyvern Sting, 30s, CD:60)
Warlock (Fear, 20s, Fear effect, ***)

Beast
Druid (Hibernate, 40s)
Hunter (Scare Beast, 20s, Fear effect)
Mage (Polymorph, 50s)
Rogue (Sap, 60s, **)
Shaman (Hex, 60s, CD:45)

Demon
Ret Paladin (Repentance, 60s, CD:60)
Rogue (Sap, 60s, **)
Warlock (Banish, 20s)

Dragonkin
Druid (Hibernate)
Ret Paladin (Repentance, 60s, CD:60)
Rogue (Sap, 60s, **)

Elemental
Shaman (Bind Elemental, 50s)
Warlock (Banish, 20s)

Giant
Ret Paladin (Repentance, 60s, CD:60)

Humanoid
Mage (Polymorph, 50s)
Ret Paladin (Repentance, 60s, CD:60)
Priest (Mind Control, 30s)
Rogue (Sap, 60s, **)
Shaman (Hex, 60s, CD:45)
Warlock (Seduction, 30s, Requires Succubus pet)

Undead
Ret Paladin (Repentance, 60s, CD:60)
Priest (Shackle Undead, 50s)

*Freezing Trap: Can be tricky to use in combat. Hunter should freeze before all other CC except Sap. Hunter can freeze a second target when cooldown is up. Also, distracting shot can be used in tandem to more reliably CC things post-pull.
**Sap: Can only be used out of combat; rogue should sap before all CC. Recommended
***Fear: All undead NPCs are immune to fear. If warlock has fear glyphed, target will stand in place rather than running away.

Quick note on verbiage: Not all gamers are male. That said, I’ll be using masculine pronouns, because English is a shitty language and the dearth of gender-neutral singular pronouns forces sacrifices. Similarly, any time I use a term like “game master,” translate that into whatever the equivalent is of whatever game you play.

1. There are exceptions to all of these rules. You’re probably not qualified to identify them. Assume there are no exceptions to these rules.
2. Outside of an actual game session, nobody, not even another gamer, wants to hear about your character, your campaign world, or your game. Most people will politely listen to your anecdote, but behind the fake smile they’re thinking, “SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP.”
3. Respect the game master. His job is a lot harder than yours. If he does a good job, thank him.
4. Respect the host. If you’re playing at a game store, be considerate to other patrons and don’t do anything that might discourage sales or patronage. If playing at someone’s house, pick up after yourself, bring some drinks or snacks, and thank the host at the end of the night.
5. Respect the other players. Allow them to play their characters the way they want to. Whether a player has made suboptimal choices or not, that’s their decision.
6. Hygeine: It’s not just a good idea, it’s the law. Well, not really, but it should be.
7. Put some thought into your snack choices. RPGs are nice in that there are relatively few shared, expensive components (compared to boardgames and cardgames), so greasy snacks like chips aren’t an automatic no. That said, avoid the really grimy stuff (anything that leaves your fingers orange), buy bottles with resealable caps, leave a couple inches to the brim of your cup, use a napkin or a coaster, and make sure your hands aren’t greasy before handling someone else’s books.
8. Don’t touch someone else’s dice without asking. In general, don’t touch anything belonging to someone else without permission, but in particular dice sometimes feel “shared” and, at the same time, many gamers are superstitious about their dice.
9. Be prepared for a game session. Have your character sheet, dice, and a writing implement ready. If you can, bring extras for other players in case they forget theirs.
10. If you agree to a game, give that social obligation the respect it deserves. “I didn’t feel like it,” isn’t a valid excuse, and neither is, “something better came up.”
11. If you can’t make a game, let the GM know as soon as possible. If you are the GM (or the host), let everyone else know that the game is canceled as soon as possible.
12. Last, and perhaps most importantly, don’t begrudge someone who breaks these rules. Nobody’s perfect, least of all you.

I’d like to share two little tiny programs whose sole purpose in life is to sit unassumingly in your system tray and make your life a little bit more convenient.

Quick caveat: I’m using both of these programs, and I’ve scanned them for viruses at some point. As always, use your own judgment, and scan them yourself using up to date virus software immediately after you download and before you install.

WizMouse

WizMouse makes your scroll wheel work in any application, even when you’re not focusing on the window. It’s always been a minor annoyance to me that most programs require you to focus on them to scroll. It also has a setting to simulate moving the scroll bar, so that you can scroll in applications that don’t natively support scrolling (or don’t support it well).

Always On Top

Always On Top has been hugely convenient for me. It allows you toggle any window’s “always on top” flag on or off by pressing control+space. I use it, for example, to keep a tiny notepad window on top of something I need to copy and paste lots of snippets from. You can also use it to prevent a window from being always on top, as some inconsiderate software does.

This kid has some crazy talent!

Thundermaster, my intelligent Thunderstone randomizer, has been updated. Upgrades include…

• Dragonspire cards added
• Interface streamlined
• Performance/startup time dramatically improved
• Fixed issue with Blind being chosen when someone who can destroy diseases is needed

Thundermaster is designed to work well on… pretty much everything. It will run on…

• Computers (tested in FireFox, Safari, Chrome and Opera… sorry, Internet Explorer not supported)
• iOS devices (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad)
• Android phones
• Windows Mobile phones (using Opera Mobile)
• Amazon’s Kindle 3rd Generation
• Almost anything with a Javascript-capable browser!

It’ll automatically resize to be a good fit for your screen.

If you play Thunderstone, I highly recommend giving this a try. I won’t play Thunderstone without it, and I’ve had several people on BoardGameGeek tell me the same. It’s completely free and easy to use… so give it a try!

http://asmor.com/scripts/tsrand/

I thought about posting these on Encounter-a-Day, but I’ve pretty much abandoned that blog and only leave it up for posterity… Rather not get people into the habit of checking it.

Goblins in the setting I’m working on worship The Great Machine, a titanic contraption of indeterminate purpose. Every few years, Goblins living out in the world feel a pull to return to their island home of Splockengrack and work on the machine, adding to it or fixing things as whim dictates.

Goblins do not reproduce like most races; rather, they are spontaneously generated within The Great Machine. This isn’t to say that the machine creates them, however; rather, Goblins simply appear, fully formed, through spontaneous generation.

The purpose of the machine, if indeed it has one, is unknown. The goblins believe it to have been created by an entity named Anaximander, who some revere as a god and others simply believe to be the first to begin work on the machine.

There is some evidence that the machine serves a greater purpose. Hundreds of years ago, the fey and the prime material planes mingled freely, and various fey creatures could come to and leave the prime material as they wished. The Shan’torathos, an immensely powerful Elvish empire, actually invaded the prime material and controlled it for generations.

During this time, the Shan’torathos systematically exterminated goblins where ever they could be found. Goblins are magically neutral, unable to wield but also unable to be affected directly by magic, and for this reason the elves saw the goblins as a threat.

Over the years, the prime material and the fey were plagued with natural disasters, steadily increasing in both frequency and intensity. It culminated with The Sundering, where the fey actually ceased to exist.

The loss of the fey was catastrophic to the elves; not only was it their home, but it sustained them as well. The elves became arcanovores, feeding on arcane energy to live. To this day, all elves must learn at least some modicrum of arcane magic simply to keep themselves alive.

With the decline of the Shan’torathos, the goblin population was able to return to its previous healthy levels and, coincidentally, the natural disasters tapered off. This has lead some scholars to posit that The Great Machine is somehow vital to the very health of the world.

Just a quickie… E.ggtimer.com is a very simple site that does one thing: it lets you make timers with alarms quickly and easily.

You can start a timer from the homepage, but the real beauty is that you can just type the time into the address in a very simple, intuitive fashion. Here are some examples:

• http://e.ggtimer.com/15minutes
• http://e.ggtimer.com/1hour30minutes15seconds
• http://e.ggtimer.com/2years10months
• http://e.ggtimer.com/30 (defaults to seconds)

I use this site at least a few times a week. Whenever I have to do laundry or I’m cooking some food in the toaster oven, I just pop open a new tab and set a timer.

I was at Staples today and saw the Omnitech Mini-Speaker on one of the tables full of last minute gifts. For $9.99, I decided to give it a try.

I just plugged it into my phone, and I’m absolutely blown away. This speaker’s about the size of a golf ball, and it’s astoundingly loud. It also expands a little bit accordion style, giving it pretty decent bass for such a tiny package.

It’s a powered speaker, and the cord it comes with doubles as a recharging cable (via USB) and the audio connector (via standard TRS connector).

There are really only two things I can find to fault it with. First, it’s probably not feasible to replace the cord (the speaker connection is mini-usb, so you’d need a mini-usb to TRS cord, and a separate cord for charging). But at $10, you might as well just buy a new one if you lose the cord. Would be nice if it had a clip or something to wrap the cord around when not in use.

The other fault comes from the manual: it warns you that if the battery is overcharged, it may affect sound quality temporarily, and you should monitor the speaker and unplug it as soon as the light turns blue. Would be nice if it would stop charging on its own, but no biggie.

It’s also available in a variety of colors. I got red, but there was also blue, black, green, pink… maybe purple?

If you’re interested in a tiny portable speaker, give this thing a shot. You’ll be floored.

I’ve been thinking about ressurection lately. In general, when I run a game I don’t allow ressurection of any kind, because I feel it just causes too many issues.

For example, I feel resurrection removes one of the most important tools a GM has to provide challenge: the threat of death as a consequence of failure. I also worry that it leads to in-game problems; a king has little to worry from assassins when he can simply be resurrected.

I think I’ve come up with a framework for resurrection which addresses both of my main issues, and perhaps even opens up new space.

1. People are resurrected at the same age they were when they died. In other words, if you die of old age, resurrection can’t bring you back.
2. When someone is resurrected, their new body is whole, healthy (with the exception of the ravages of aging), and unscarred.
3. A portion of the body is required for resurrection. The rule of thumb is bone, blood and flesh. If you’ve got that, you can resurrect them. It should be noted that the “sample” must actually be from the corpse. You can’t cut off a finger and leave it behind just in case.
4. Consent is required. Someone has to be willing to be resurrected.
5. That said, the deceased doesn’t know who is performing the resurrection or under what circumstances.
6. Resurrection requires a sacrifice–a soul for a soul. The soul must be relatively similar to that of the deceased; elves, orcs, humans, dwarves, etc are interchangable. A wolf’s soul would not work to resurrect a human, though, and a human’s would not work to resurrect a dragon.

Analyzing this, I reach the following conclusions.

First and foremost, the requirement of bone, blood and flesh means that it’s slightly more difficult, but still completely feasible, to kill someone permanently. If their body can’t be recovered, either because it’s lost or destroyed, there’s nothing to be done. This alone solves almost all my problems with resurrection.

An idea I had related to this is that kingdoms might “save” their greatest heroes by euthanizing them and then magically preserving a part of their body. Picture a reliquary in the heart of a great cathedral where the remains of the greatest paladins in history are stored, ready to be called upon when a great evil arises.

The source of souls for resurrection raises some issues as well. If we’re going to assume that resurrection is a common and accepted part of life, then that leads to the implication that even good societies integrate this soul sacrifice into their culture. I see the ‘good’ societies having institutions where elderly or terminally ill poor can offer themselves for sacrifice, and in return their families are given considerable compensation. On the flipside, a fascist state might use prisoners and dissidents to power resurrection, perhaps even using it as a form of execution. And of course, there are always going to be evil folk who happily kill anyone they like.

Tangentially, I like the idea of vampirism and lichdom as corruptions of resurrection magic. Vampires are practitioners of blood magic. They drink the blood of their victims as a proxy for the victim’s soul. Anyone can become a vampire, it’s literally as simple as just drinking a lot of blood (with the same stipulation that the ‘soul’ needs to be of similar calibre). They heal faster and becomes stronger and faster, but don’t gain any ‘special effects’ for lack of a better term. They can’t fly or transform or charm people.

Liches, on the other hand, steal their victims’ souls directly. Lichdom requires a great deal of arcane prowess, and so liches are quite rare and powerful.

In both cases, they don’t actually cheat the age restriction on resurrection magic. Both liches and vampires are undead. Death is part of the ritual one uses to become a lich. It’s a bit more nuanced for vampires, though. Technically a vampire isn’t a vampire until they “die.” Until that point, they’re a blood mage. At some point, whether from physical trauma, old age, suffocation, etc, a blood mage will die. They might not even notice at the time, for when they die their unlife as a vampire begins immediately and seamlessly. As a blood mage, they can sustain themselves on blood but also can sustain themselves on food and water like any other of their race.

I think I’ve finally made the last random generator I will ever make… OmniGen.

OmniGen is an engine which makes it fast and easy to create random tables which can reference each other and lead to some really cool results.

Give it a try. I’ve got a few presets to show what it’s capable of, and you can even create your own custom ones.

To create a custom generator, you just create a sentence like “My milkshake brings all the [Sex]s to the yard.”

See how [Sex] is in brackets? That means it’s going to lookup on the Sex table, which has two entries; “Male” and “Female”

You could also use [sex], which would do the same thing except force it to lower case.

When you click custom, it’ll show you a list of the tables currently available, and you can click on any of them to quickly add it to your generator.

If you have any ideas for new tables or generators, let me know!