So I'm a blog reader. I forget where I found this link (mostly because I read a blog, which'll reference another one, which will reference another one, etc, until basically it's like wiki'ing Dakota Fanning and ending up at the Great Barrier Reef. Sure it made sense while following links but you've got no idea how you actually ended up there.)

Anyways, somebody was discussing their NaNoWriMo and how, ever since they found Write or Die, they've actually stayed on schedule for their daily word count. (NaNoWriMo, btw, is the Nation Novel Writing Month. Write 50,000 words of a story. Do it in less than thirty days. The last week in November is when the actual word counts start.)

So, Write or Die. It's negative reinforcement of not writing, rather than positive reinforcement. Keep writing or your computer will make nasty sounds effects and suchlike. Set the level high enough, your words will start disppearing as you continue to delay your typing. Masochist that I am, I wanted to try it out. I banged this out in half an hour and am considering giving it another go to see where the story leads. (I have gone back and checked for obvious typos, but otherwise it's unedited.)

( I always seem to default to Petra. I suppose it's because she's my most hashed-out character. )

So James the mechanic plays WoW. He's gotten Dad to try out the game, and I mentioned Carmen plays, and they ask "which server?" to which I can only blink and shrug. They're on Norigan, or something that begins with an N (which is, apparently, the only server that begins with N). So, Carmen, which server do you play on?

Dad apparently is having trouble playing because he wants to run around and fight stuff face-to-face and he's playing a rogue. All the more reason why I shouldn't play. I'd want to stand in one place and hit stuff too.

Have been obsessed with finishing KOTOR for the past week or so. Blame Liz. She's the one who took over my computer to play. (If I weren't at work when she was playing, I'd point and laugh as she yet again runs in tiny circles trying to get around minions who keep getting in the way.) Normally I wouldn't be so interested in finishing a game as fast as possible. (For example, I never managed to get out of chapter three or whatever of NWN. Sprawling place is good, annoying the gamer with far too many 'fetch' tasks is not.) But I got interested in playing Dark Side. (Pug mentioned it had a better ending and I wanted to see for myself. Personally, I liked the LS movie more than the Nazi-esque rally in worship of my Sith self. Though the idea of crushing the Republic in an iron grip is better than cheap jewelry, flowery words, and a 'get out of jail free' card for something I have no memory of.)

( Continued KOTOR babble )

Hey look, almost regular updating! ... Well, updates with less than a month between them, anyway.

And now for your news.

On the homefront, E. almost hit me when I snuck up behind her because she somehow didn't hear me drive up and come home, and mistook me for Mom. Am slightly amused. Also am hugged out. You'd think she hadn't seen me in months... Never mind.

Re:Washer and Dryer
Dad's coworker's son needs to get the stuff from the store before we get ours from Rick. Or something along those lines. Memory like a sieve, but I remember it making sense.

Had my geography final yesterday. I kicked its butt. Classmates were complaining about her overloading us with work, but hello, it's the final and about stuff we've been covering the entire semester! You've had the entire semester to study, so shut the hell up. Was slightly annoyed that I was the third person done. Was expecting to be the first. Don't know much about the girl who turned the test in after half an hour, but the other guy has been my opposition for top grade of the class the entire semester. I highly doubt anyone else in the class finished up the 200 question test in under an hour. But I didn't stick around to see either.

Cleaned up my room. Discovered my change purse missing. This wouldn't be a problem, except the entire reason I was looking for it was so I could roll change. It weighs easily four pounds, and is getting kinda full. If anyone sees a woven blue plastic change purse, kindly report to me. With my money still in the bag, thank you very much. =P

Had lots of fun creating my D&D character. Liz and I are debating our characters' knowledge of one another. Hers she created in Sheva's history- he's a pirate captain. And why isn't he on his ship now? Because he was hijacked by ninja in port one night. He's on a quest to beat up ninja and steal his ship back. (I made that up, but Liz seems to like it.) My character was found by mercenaries after the caravan she was traveling with got destroyed. They were going to kill her, but she creeped them out with sorcery, so they put her to use as 'you distract the guard while we make off with the loot.' After the band pissed off the wrong person and got caught on the wrong end of a trap, the group split up and is on the lam. They're supposed to meet back up, but she's decided to hell with them. So she's very jumpy- she keeps expecting assassins, or her former comrades, or some town gaurds to spot her and recognize her. Liz says her character was also raised by brigands, so we're debating whether or not it's the same group the two grew up with. She's also not too sure about what class he is- fighter, rogue, or ranger. She's leaning towards fighter, but who knows?

We finished up the campaign last night. Whoo! Bring on the loot!

Actually, Petra's overloaded with loot. She's now aristocracy! Kill evil noble sorceress, find deed to her castle, convince Queen of whatever country it is to give you the place ("I've got the deed right here!"), and poof! Instant title (for all that DM Katie is weird as hell and made every noble there an *earl*. Freaking English majors have to freaking have their freaking titles in freaking English, even though nobody else in the world, much less the fantasy world, uses the freaking title because it has no female equivalent, unlike it's counterpart in the rest of the world- count.) Petra can be gaming on a whole new level now- politics! Take for instance she helped kill three of the neighboring country's princes. One might've been heir to the throne. They're probably not happy with her, once they find out.

Of course, I prefer more roll to role-playing. Conversation is fun (and Petra loves threatening to cut off wizards' fingers), but backstab and fireball are cooler. Which is why, DM willing, Petra's taking the year off to clean up her new manor. Since, you know, the previous owner was an evil sorceress with a fetish for summoning devils and demons. We killed most everyone in the place, but that's a lot of bodies to pile up and torch. And then there's the washing...

For example. Our (weird) DM put in a completely mundane library- no cool books anywhere- and then made them freaking attack books! "Oh look, you took a step. A book flies out from across the room and explodes upon impacting with your head. Roll reflex please." Fear the rogue, even if the wizard only made his half the time. You can't touch the spiffy, dex'o'th'gods elven rogue. Not unless you've got a spell DC greater than 30. Then maybe you might hit something. And then she'll improved evasion your whiny sorceress butt. Took care of library by tossing off a fireball and cone of cold. Books burn (some actually go off...) and then are a soggy mess of charred paper. Fahrenheit 451 ain't got nothin' on Nadrak and Petra.

Anyways, Petra's got plans for that place (ie- stash loot, free place to rest, get income, have title to add to disguises...). Which means that if next DM allows, I can bring in a different character (quite possibly the box of bandaids if Liz still wants to play Sheva. Maybe make a cleric of Olidamara... I like playing rogues.) If not, Petra's stuck dishing out silver and gold to contractors. And I know from experience how bad they can be if you don't keep a close eye on them.

Lady Petra Moonhawk, wizard for hire, Earl of Merade. Will the economy ever be the same?

An interesting topic came up on LoN earlier today- the big difference between guy gamers and girl gamers. One of the LoN-ers came up with the fact that most girls can’t stand to lose their characters. Girls put more work into their characters- guys will draw up character after character, not worrying too much about their histories, or their futures, but girls want their character to have a thought out history, even if it’s in the works as they campaign. We want our characters to be part of a huge epic, so long as they don’t end up dying because the DM got a critical hit, or we rolled a critical miss to evade the deadly pit trap. We don’t want to leave the fate of our characters to the roll of the dice. That’s why I prefer playing higher level characters- chances are, I’ll be with a cleric who knows Raise Dead and the like. With computer games, it’s slightly less of a problem because you can go back to a saved game, or get resurrected on the spot with some XP and gold loss.

I’m not saying girls won’t let their characters die. We just don’t want ignominous deaths of “squished by rampaging dragon.” We want death of “mortal combat vs. Boss Creature.” And even then, only if the Boss Creature ends up dead also or we can make a new character to chase that bastard down and beat the shit out of him for killing a character we played for years who finally got killed because Boss Creature had a vorpal sword and we weren’t wearing armor of fortification. (Vorpal weapons are only cool if the PC has them.)

I won’t say that this is true for everybody- after all, I’ve drawn up characters solely for the purpose of running in a campaign and I had no interest in seeing the character afterwards. (It helped she died dueling an owlbear and I could stuff her character sheet in a back page of my D&D binder and forget about her.) But most of my characters, all *ticks characters off fingers* 5 or 6 of them (the main ones) were drawn up with histories in mind. Let’s see if I can actually name them all…

Petra (Rogue/Wizard) was the niece of a character I played with my sisters and father before 3rd Edition came out. I had actually created her (though I hadn’t drawn up stats and the like) before a friend approached me, asking if I was interested in trying out 3rd Edition D&D.

Anastrianna (Rogue/Thief Acrobat) was born with the Song and Silence book. Before I was even finished rolling her stats and stuff, I had written her history up to the point where she started in the prestige class. (Well, not written. I haven’t even started writing it. But it’s created and has some notes saved on my computer somewhere). I’m writing a story where she shows up, so her back story will probably work itself into that.

Sarechira (Bard/Arcane Archer/Deepwood Sniper) came with the Epic Level Handbook and the ranger book. I like playing characters who use ranged weapons and I drew Chira up specifically as an archer- taught by Petra, no less. I’ve actually got a story about it in the works, so I’m not going any further into it.

Rathianna (Diviner/Loremaster) started with Syl wanting me to play a wizard in a PbP. I’m neither experienced with play by posts nor experienced in writing spell effects. Hence the fact that Rathi is a Diviner with Illusion as her forbidden class. That gets rid of tons of flashy spells. So that became the beginning point in her personality. After Petra, she’s probably the most fleshed-out characters I have, personality-wise.

Anaril (Ranger/Rogue, one of my few non-elven characters, and even she’s a half-elf) started out interesting, but with the disappearance of the DM of the PbP she was created for, she’s been put on the backburner. Her history’s rather interesting (half-celestials, as a rule, must have interesting histories, if only because they’re half-breeds), but it isn’t as high up on the priority list of “already thought up, still must write” as my other ones.

The one character I’m hesitant to add to my list of “dear characters who will not die or heads will roll” is Valanthe (Rogue). She’s the character I drew up for a friend’s campaign of… rescue the dojo? I think he thought it up on the spot, but hey, it was fun. She’s also the only character of mine who’s died and never been brought back- mostly because it was a stupid death (fell into a pit and got ripped to shreds by an owlbear) and I haven’t had a reason to bring back a low-level rogue. She’s similar in personality to Petra (except crankier and stupider) so I usually just bring in a lower-level Petra for those stories I write in need of a rogue. But she’s one of the few characters I have played, so I figure she should be put here. (Tria and Chira have been played with some of Carmen’s characters, but not in an actual campaign. Ril’s campaign died, and Rathi’s has only just started. Val’s claim to fame is her campaign actually ended, even if it’s because she died and all the other characters wandered off to beat each other up and get married. It was a very silly campaign.)