Saturday, May 16, 2020

The Tek - April 2020

There are a couple of months that are really bad for me. Usually they are May and November. This is owing to my finals at school. Typically, finals are pushed in to mid-May and pull back to late November. The administration is dancing the issues of Easter and Christmas, without actually using those names.


April 2020 Downloads via DriveThruRPG:
AD&D Character Sheet For Use with Unearthed Arcana - 3
Compass Rose Inn Minisetting - 1
Kobold Folly Minisetting - 3
Zero to Hero: Uncommon Commoners - 7
Swashbucklers Character Class - 2

I want to share my all time download stats as of May, because I did this last month.
AD&D Character Sheet For Use with Unearthed Arcana - 96
Compass Rose Inn Minisetting - 138
Kobold Folly Minisetting - 128
Zero to Hero: Uncommon Commoners - 255
Swashbucklers Character Class - 93

I'm really happy with those numbers. I am less happy with my April webstats as I pretty much stopped publishing content for half a month.



Google Analytics Pageviews - 957
Google Analytics Sessions - 669
Pageviews per Session - 1.43

Additionally, I started publishing a podcast called: "That's Not New". I probably shouldn't have made my first post on April Fool's Day, but that's what happened. I am still searching for my voice and my place, so these are pretty rough episodes. I intend for these to be biweekly podcast with a duration of 7-15 minutes. We shall see how that goes. I could really use some feedback.

Friday, May 15, 2020

Pre-Generated Characters - 2nd Level Monks 002


This is my second group of monks. Decima, Seneca the Swift and Segria are fairly typical monks for my campaign. They have temporal tasks, which takes them away from their homes in the monastery. They have a lot of money for monks, which probably indicates they are either transferring funds from one location to another or have taken in a donation Segria has small diamonds flecks, which are important to her order.

Each of these characters has probably been on an adventure or three. I like to give my pregenerated characters some flavor with their equipment. Each character has something either secular like an instrument or spiritual like intense or a book. One of them has a wooden sword, which could be an interesting reveal, sort of like Book's ability to use a shotgun on Firefly. 

If there is a call for it in the comments, I will make DOCX and Google Doc file available as I have the PDFs. The reason I have not done this from the get go is that I created every character of a class in one document and print each page as a PDF.

Wednesday, May 13, 2020

Pre-Generated Characters - 1st Level Assassins 002


This is my last batch of Assassin for a while. I meant to generate level 2 Assassins, but somehow reverted back to level 1. Oops. Anyway, Elvina, Arrius and Linus are more in line with classic AD&D assassins than the assassins in my campaign.

Each of these characters has probably been on an adventure or three. I like to give my pregenerated characters some flavor with their equipment. One of these assassins has a lute and two of them have books which touch on ethics which is an interesting spin on assassins.

If there is a call for it in the comments, I will make DOCX and Google Doc file available as I have the PDFs. The reason I have not done this from the get go is that I created every character of a class in one document and print each page as a PDF.

Episode 002 - I Chose Poorly and De Ut Des

This episode has a format change base on feedback I've received. I have a new sponsor, Anchor.FM and the format now supports the concept of sponsors. I also have some new music so let's all give thanks to Kevin MacLeod at incompetech.com for the following tracks:

Evening Fall (Piano) and
Starry
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

In this episode, I reminisce about 4 games: D&D, Star Frontiers, Gemstone IV and Traveller.  I cover 35+ years of gaming experiences in one podcast. Part of the reason I have been offline for so long was a mash up of getting my lesson plans online for students, my classes at Buffalo State suddenly switching to an online format and the associate PITA from taking finals online.

I hope this format works better than Episode 001 and 000's. It was a pain to record, mostly owing to my new Podcat, Shinobu. She's cute even as she climbs the cables.

Now on to the episode!






Tuesday, May 12, 2020

Pre-Generated Characters - 2 Monks and Terry


These 1st level characters are monks, Miles and Laelia. Terry is a joke character. Click the link to download the PDF file. These characters are almost ready to go. In generating ability scores, I made sure the range was acceptable in both D&D and AD&D. To convert these characters to straight AD&D, simply add or subtract the racial modifiers and class abilities.

Terry is comic relief. As you read through his character sheet, you'll realize that he is every person you've met in a costume at a renaissance fair. I normally don't do joke characters on my blog, but Terry is exactly the type of shenanigans I engage in at the table.

If there is a call for it in the comments, I will make DOCX and Google Doc file available as I have the PDFs. The reason I have not done this from the get go is that I created every character of a class in one document and print each page as a PDF.

Monday, May 11, 2020

A Little Bit of Everything

This week, I plan to have at least one post a day on topics that cover every aspect of my nerdiness. The last post was on AD&D assassins, the next will be on models.

Anyway, Star Wars has become a large part of Disney World and while I can't quite wrap my head around Disney and Star Wars living under the same roof, I do love it. 

In 2016, Star Wars was plastered all over Hollywood Studios. My son Nathan and I picked up some little metal toys. I selected new X-Wing while Nathan went with the New Order's TIE. I keep mine on my desk while he has his on his dresser. My wife won't let me keep mine in the bedroom...

Anyway, I can't wait to get back there, except I can wait for this pandemic to cool down. It's a weird feeling. One of my favorite things to do in Disney is to take in the little museum like setups they do to absorb the crowds. It works and usually it's a relief to get out of the heat.  They had a whole area in Hollywood Studios for Star Wars.



I loved it!

I would be remiss if I didn't plug our most excellent travel planner, Jaime Nowicki. Her services are free and she does more than Disney packages. You can also follow her on Facebook.