Week three! check out TheDustyWahl at http://thedustywahl.blogspot.com/
This week we are talking about pizza as the title says, It's something I have extensively discussed with my friend group, the Legendary 4. Now, before you jump to conclusions, I am not just going to tell you my favorite pizza and move on, I am going to us something called the pizza worth model or PWM for short. This is just something that I started to think about today again and I think its worth sharing.
The pizza worth model is in effect because in high school, the Legendary 4 always got $5 pizza and sat and ate it in the Dusty Wahl's car or at a park or when we played video games. Place doesn't matter. Anyways, one day we heard about a pizza place in Brooklyn Park called Jet's pizza. We drove the 10 minutes to the small store that was situated in a cramped strip mall. we looked at the menu and decided we would get a sausage and black olive pizza. The classic. However, we weren't so happy that we had to pool together quite a bit of money for a pizza that was half the size of our usual $5 pizza. I want to say it was around twenty bucks, but I could be wrong. we sat outside in an empty patio of a restaurant that wasn't open yet and opened the box to dig in. It wasn't much and I believe we were fighting over who gets the last piece quite quickly. We weren't fighting for ourselves, it was more of oh Calvin paid for most of it, he should get the last slice or Gary hasn't eaten much today, he should get it. The pizza was amazing, but whoever got the last slice was still unsatisfied. We all were. It was a small amazingly delicious pizza, but it cost way too much. This got us talking. We decided that the pizza actually sucked because of how much it cost. It wasn't worth the scraping of the bottom of our pockets for a pretty good pizza. Before I continue, I do want to say that all pizza is good, there is no such thing as bad pizza. Pizza is a food that everyone loves and everyone always will love, but sometimes, its not worth it's cost. This is were the PWM comes in. We agreed that $5 pizza is at the top of the model simply because even though it isn't the best pizza, it is cheap and you get a lot of it. Jet's however is close to the bottom. It is good pizza, but you don't get a lot and you pay too much for it. I work at a restaurant that has my favorite deep dish pizza and I would gladly pay $20 for a small sausage and black olive pizza. Seriously, if you ever are in White Bear Lake, MN, go to Donatelli's. You won't be let down.
Now the PWM isn't just for pizza, you can use it for a lot of things. I do find that it is more applicable to consumables rather than permanent things like tech or cars which have many more factors that come into play when buying, but it's just a fun thing I think about when I am eating my favorite slice.
Thank you for reading my thoughts and I would love to hear your comments,
BottleofGreen
Saturday, November 21, 2015
Saturday, November 14, 2015
Barbara Ann the Barbarian
Week two of TheDustywahl + BottleofGreen blogging contest! you can find his blog over at http://thedustywahl.blogspot.com/ Thank you for reading!
This week's post is going to be a little lighthearted and short. I am going to talk about a joke character I would love to play some day. It is also dedicated to my friend TheDustyWahl simply because he got me listening to the Beach Boys. Lets get started!
I would again be using the fifth edition Dungeons and Dragons rules, but I am sure you could transfer this idea to almost any system.
"BA BA BA. BA BARBARANN. BA BA BA. BA BARANN" She sings, introducing herself.
The party looks at her confused as she begins singing other Beach Boys songs to explain where she came from. She grabs her Greataxetar and begins playing a tune that you wouldn't expect to come from someone so strong and clumsy. When she is on stage, she has the entire crowd in the palm of her hands. As her performance goes on, the party finds themselves singing along with harmonies that they have never heard. This is no sorcery or magic, it is the power of Barbara Ann the Barbarian.
*Theme Music*
I would build this character as a human barbarian with the entertainer background. I might take a few levels in bard just to get the spell suggestion so I can force my enemies to harmonize with me, but ability scores would be pretty easy: High Charisma, High strength, high Constitution, Okay Dexterity and who needs intelligence or wisdom.
Her backstory would be that she comes from a family of performers. She was actually quite smart at one point and showed promise for becoming a wizard, but she took a deal with a devil and she was cursed. The deal she made was for unlimited power, but the devil wasn't strong enough to grant her that kind of power, so instead, he just made her kind of strong. Barbara Ann is cocky though and she didn't read the fine print before recklessly signing the contract. This deal sapped her of her intelligence and made it so that the only way she can communicate is through music that she already knew, thus sealing her fate as a musical dumb brute.
Thank you for reading! I would love to hear from you in the comments!
Good Night,
BottleofGreen
Sunday, November 8, 2015
Adventure!
This is the first post of a blogging contest I am having with TheDustyWahl! His blog is at http://thedustywahl.blogspot.com/. The contest is nothing intense, but it is incentive for us to write more and get content out. Thank you for reading.
Today, I have an Campaign idea that I have wanted to run for a long time. I would be using the Dungeons & Dragons 5e rules, but any setting would probably work. I will be talking mostly about the world, but I will also throw in a bit about the player characters and their interaction with the world. Enjoy! and let me know if you have any comments.
Setting
I like running high fantasy games simply because I want my PCs to feel like they are larger than life heroes who can do anything. It also means I can throw higher combat encounters at them. Now if I was using a grittier/darker system, I would try to be more realistic, but for this setting, I want magic and monsters coming out the wazoo. I also believe that high fantasy makes it easier to use cliches and tropes, which are awful in most movies, but in TTRPGs, I find them fun and necessary. (there is a reason they are used so much.)
Anyways, getting to my actual point... I want magic to be accessible to my party, but also their foes. I want refrigerators to be a common thing because all it would be is a stone or metal box with an everlasting cold spell cast on it. I want bicycles and communications and magic wagons and everything in between. Essentially I want magic to be what technology is for us today: convenience. Now this doesn't mean I want to hand out free wish spells at 1st level, but simple items that make everyday life easy would be a staple. Things like magic rope, speaking stones, darkvision goggles and magic ammunition would all be common adventuring gear, but it still wouldn't be cheap. Enough about the magic of the world, I would like to talk about the government of this world.
The world is more of a parliamentary system. You have a cabinet of people who all expertise in things like land ownership, taxes, bureaucracy, boring crap, etc., but the figure heads of the nation are adventurers. A small group of 3 to 5 adventurers travel the land diplomatically. They go from town to town fixing quarrels and disputes that politicians normally can't and won't have a say in. Say some giants are traveling through a town looking to trade, but the townsfolk are afraid and treat the giants with hostility. This is where the round table of adventurers would come in to settle the dispute however they see fit. Now they can kill the giants, which would quickly solve the problem but create mortal enemies, or they can try to show the people that the giants are just looking for useful goods. Now, I would throw in spiteful saboteurs who would try to convince the people that the giants are malicious, but it is up to the party to investigate. Ultimately, the party has the final say on any matter, but if they make enough people dislike them, there will be an uprising and war. This system has worked for so long that the party is treated like diplomats or friends of the town. Some towns might even despise them simply because of the legacy their predecessors left behind. I would now like to clear up a few clerical things such as how the adventurers get chosen and a how long they last.
The way the PCs get chosen actually plays along with the twists. (whats an adventure without twists) The adventurers choose their predecessors while adventuring. Once they find someone "worthy", they give them a letter and a memento that signifies that they are next in line. Now where the twist comes in, is the fact that the choosing process seems random. A cleric of Bahamut might choose a godless rogue as his predecessor or an orderly wizard may choose an insane warlock. Sometimes things will fall in line. sometimes there is a resemblance of order, but not always. How I want this to work is, once the PCs have been chosen, they would get a set of clues that magically appears when they are alone. These sets of clues would lead them to their predecessors and if they tried to give their memento to anybody but the person it is meant for the person, they might turn into a horrific beast, or die and begin spreading a plague. Essentially, if they got it wrong, bad things would happen. I also want to get into how long the heroes last "in office."
I am going to leave this short and probably keep it to a cliche. I do want to explain that the predecessors do not start until the hero either dies, leaves or disappears. I don't know how to explain what happens if they die before they find their predecessors, but I will eventually come up with something. The cliche is that every time a group of heroes survive for a certain number of years, they just disappear and their predecessors take place. This disappearance only takes place if all heroes found their next-in-line and the land is at peace. Now I just want to leave the rest a mystery for certain reasons. The largest being that I don't know the rest.
Thanks for reading and if you have any comments, let me know. Also let me know if you want me to talk about anything. I enjoy some research and i need something to write about every week, so let me know!
Thanks Again,
BottleofGreen
Today, I have an Campaign idea that I have wanted to run for a long time. I would be using the Dungeons & Dragons 5e rules, but any setting would probably work. I will be talking mostly about the world, but I will also throw in a bit about the player characters and their interaction with the world. Enjoy! and let me know if you have any comments.
Setting
I like running high fantasy games simply because I want my PCs to feel like they are larger than life heroes who can do anything. It also means I can throw higher combat encounters at them. Now if I was using a grittier/darker system, I would try to be more realistic, but for this setting, I want magic and monsters coming out the wazoo. I also believe that high fantasy makes it easier to use cliches and tropes, which are awful in most movies, but in TTRPGs, I find them fun and necessary. (there is a reason they are used so much.)
Anyways, getting to my actual point... I want magic to be accessible to my party, but also their foes. I want refrigerators to be a common thing because all it would be is a stone or metal box with an everlasting cold spell cast on it. I want bicycles and communications and magic wagons and everything in between. Essentially I want magic to be what technology is for us today: convenience. Now this doesn't mean I want to hand out free wish spells at 1st level, but simple items that make everyday life easy would be a staple. Things like magic rope, speaking stones, darkvision goggles and magic ammunition would all be common adventuring gear, but it still wouldn't be cheap. Enough about the magic of the world, I would like to talk about the government of this world.
The world is more of a parliamentary system. You have a cabinet of people who all expertise in things like land ownership, taxes, bureaucracy, boring crap, etc., but the figure heads of the nation are adventurers. A small group of 3 to 5 adventurers travel the land diplomatically. They go from town to town fixing quarrels and disputes that politicians normally can't and won't have a say in. Say some giants are traveling through a town looking to trade, but the townsfolk are afraid and treat the giants with hostility. This is where the round table of adventurers would come in to settle the dispute however they see fit. Now they can kill the giants, which would quickly solve the problem but create mortal enemies, or they can try to show the people that the giants are just looking for useful goods. Now, I would throw in spiteful saboteurs who would try to convince the people that the giants are malicious, but it is up to the party to investigate. Ultimately, the party has the final say on any matter, but if they make enough people dislike them, there will be an uprising and war. This system has worked for so long that the party is treated like diplomats or friends of the town. Some towns might even despise them simply because of the legacy their predecessors left behind. I would now like to clear up a few clerical things such as how the adventurers get chosen and a how long they last.
The way the PCs get chosen actually plays along with the twists. (whats an adventure without twists) The adventurers choose their predecessors while adventuring. Once they find someone "worthy", they give them a letter and a memento that signifies that they are next in line. Now where the twist comes in, is the fact that the choosing process seems random. A cleric of Bahamut might choose a godless rogue as his predecessor or an orderly wizard may choose an insane warlock. Sometimes things will fall in line. sometimes there is a resemblance of order, but not always. How I want this to work is, once the PCs have been chosen, they would get a set of clues that magically appears when they are alone. These sets of clues would lead them to their predecessors and if they tried to give their memento to anybody but the person it is meant for the person, they might turn into a horrific beast, or die and begin spreading a plague. Essentially, if they got it wrong, bad things would happen. I also want to get into how long the heroes last "in office."
I am going to leave this short and probably keep it to a cliche. I do want to explain that the predecessors do not start until the hero either dies, leaves or disappears. I don't know how to explain what happens if they die before they find their predecessors, but I will eventually come up with something. The cliche is that every time a group of heroes survive for a certain number of years, they just disappear and their predecessors take place. This disappearance only takes place if all heroes found their next-in-line and the land is at peace. Now I just want to leave the rest a mystery for certain reasons. The largest being that I don't know the rest.
Thanks for reading and if you have any comments, let me know. Also let me know if you want me to talk about anything. I enjoy some research and i need something to write about every week, so let me know!
Thanks Again,
BottleofGreen
Friday, August 28, 2015
EFG (Everyday Film and Gaming) INTRO
Hello, My name is Sam. I am 19 years old and I have a lot of ideas whirling around my head. I have a passion for TTRPGs and a love of film. This is just going to be a place to lock ideas into a permanent place. I do not have the best grammar, nor is this going to be a formal blog. What I am saying is, don't expect any grand novels or proper research articles. I will try my best to site sources, but most of what I will put up here is going to be firsthand experience. So let us get to my first post!
Everyday
I just started school on Monday in the Cyber Security program at Century college and I gotta say, it's not the most enjoyable thing. I am currently attending community college so that I am not wasting money at a university while I try to figure out what I want to do. I think next semester, I am going to move into Mass Comm and try my hand at radio broadcasting, but I still don't know if that is actually going to work for me. I might just get into theater again and pursue that for a while.
I am moving soon, and I am nervous and excited at the same time. it will be 7 guys in a house next to dinkytown. Money is going to be tight for a while, but I will meet new people and gain some experience of living on my own.
Film
SPY MOVIES....... FUCK YES. That's all for this segment.
No, but seriously, I am so glad that spy movies are coming back. The new Bond movies aren't really spy movies, they just feel like gritty action movies. Yes, they involve a lot of espionage, but there is just something about them that doesn't feel like a spy movie. I am not going to spend too much time bashing the Bond movies, I actually enjoy them, but they lack the lightheartedness of older Spy films or films like the Kingsman. They are dark and tense through the whole movie and there is nothing wrong with this, but I like my spies strapped to a metal slab, dangling over a pool of hungry sharks with guns strapped to them while a laser slowly moves between his legs. Now that's way over the top and unnecessary, but it has humor. It has life. It has fun. Personally, I think spy movies should be just a little over the top. Spy movies are supposed to have action in there, but nothing should stop it from enjoying itself while it blows shit up. This could probably be fixed by adding some unrealistic gadgets, strange villains, interesting sidekick/love interest/friend/mentor/team, or even just a main character that says more than 20 words throughout the whole movie. Again, I do enjoy the new Bond films, I just feel like they are more of a drama.
Some movies to look out for.
If you have anything to add or argue about, or if you just want to call me a unintelligent prick, leave it in the comments. I would love to hear from you.
Gaming
On the 27th of August, I played Star wars: Force and Destiny for the first time, and it is now my favorite system. I ran the lure of the lost free adventure for a group of 5 people at my local game shop and everyone loved it. I know that I skipped the beginner adventure, and it was a little strange jumping into the middle of the story, but we figured it out and made it through. The reason I started at the lure of the lost adventure was because the beginner game has a lot of training wheel rules. I was playing with many experienced edge of the empire players, so it felt better to jump straight into the game. The only confusing part of the system is morality. I understand why morality is in place, but I have a hard time putting it into a game without it feeling forced. Maybe I don't understand the rules for it very well, but I read the rules 3 times and I thought I had it down. Anyways, I am actually going to switch off with being the game master with a few other people, so I did actually make a character. My Edge of the Empire character was a prototype R6 unit that specialized in mechanics, computers and weaponry, so I wanted to make another fixer character. I was going to go with an Artisan mechanic, but one of the other players already had a Jawa Artisan that he is going to spec into a soresu defender (specialization that focuses on guarding you and your allies while using your intelligence for your lightsaber skill). I didn't want to have 2 mechanics so I looked through the book again and I was fond of the healer tree, but then I saw that seeker pathfinders basically get an animal companion and my mind was made up. Soon, my character will have a pet vornskr or tusk cat that she can ride. This may just sound like me rambling, but I do really want to get across that this system has so many choices, and you never stop getting stronger. You could play with the same character for your entire life, and there will still be different trees that you can pick up or upgrade, or new skills that you can train into. There is a limit on your base attributes, but there is no reason that you can't pick up more abilities and skills. The possibilities are endless.
I would like to hear what you have to say about the system, or if you have any recommendations for other systems. Leave a comment if you want to share your ideas. I will try my hardest to respond.
Thanks for reading,
BottleofGreen
Everyday
I just started school on Monday in the Cyber Security program at Century college and I gotta say, it's not the most enjoyable thing. I am currently attending community college so that I am not wasting money at a university while I try to figure out what I want to do. I think next semester, I am going to move into Mass Comm and try my hand at radio broadcasting, but I still don't know if that is actually going to work for me. I might just get into theater again and pursue that for a while.
I am moving soon, and I am nervous and excited at the same time. it will be 7 guys in a house next to dinkytown. Money is going to be tight for a while, but I will meet new people and gain some experience of living on my own.
Film
SPY MOVIES....... FUCK YES. That's all for this segment.
No, but seriously, I am so glad that spy movies are coming back. The new Bond movies aren't really spy movies, they just feel like gritty action movies. Yes, they involve a lot of espionage, but there is just something about them that doesn't feel like a spy movie. I am not going to spend too much time bashing the Bond movies, I actually enjoy them, but they lack the lightheartedness of older Spy films or films like the Kingsman. They are dark and tense through the whole movie and there is nothing wrong with this, but I like my spies strapped to a metal slab, dangling over a pool of hungry sharks with guns strapped to them while a laser slowly moves between his legs. Now that's way over the top and unnecessary, but it has humor. It has life. It has fun. Personally, I think spy movies should be just a little over the top. Spy movies are supposed to have action in there, but nothing should stop it from enjoying itself while it blows shit up. This could probably be fixed by adding some unrealistic gadgets, strange villains, interesting sidekick/love interest/friend/mentor/team, or even just a main character that says more than 20 words throughout the whole movie. Again, I do enjoy the new Bond films, I just feel like they are more of a drama.
Some movies to look out for.
- The Man From U.N.C.L.E
- Kingsman: Secret Service
If you have anything to add or argue about, or if you just want to call me a unintelligent prick, leave it in the comments. I would love to hear from you.
Gaming
On the 27th of August, I played Star wars: Force and Destiny for the first time, and it is now my favorite system. I ran the lure of the lost free adventure for a group of 5 people at my local game shop and everyone loved it. I know that I skipped the beginner adventure, and it was a little strange jumping into the middle of the story, but we figured it out and made it through. The reason I started at the lure of the lost adventure was because the beginner game has a lot of training wheel rules. I was playing with many experienced edge of the empire players, so it felt better to jump straight into the game. The only confusing part of the system is morality. I understand why morality is in place, but I have a hard time putting it into a game without it feeling forced. Maybe I don't understand the rules for it very well, but I read the rules 3 times and I thought I had it down. Anyways, I am actually going to switch off with being the game master with a few other people, so I did actually make a character. My Edge of the Empire character was a prototype R6 unit that specialized in mechanics, computers and weaponry, so I wanted to make another fixer character. I was going to go with an Artisan mechanic, but one of the other players already had a Jawa Artisan that he is going to spec into a soresu defender (specialization that focuses on guarding you and your allies while using your intelligence for your lightsaber skill). I didn't want to have 2 mechanics so I looked through the book again and I was fond of the healer tree, but then I saw that seeker pathfinders basically get an animal companion and my mind was made up. Soon, my character will have a pet vornskr or tusk cat that she can ride. This may just sound like me rambling, but I do really want to get across that this system has so many choices, and you never stop getting stronger. You could play with the same character for your entire life, and there will still be different trees that you can pick up or upgrade, or new skills that you can train into. There is a limit on your base attributes, but there is no reason that you can't pick up more abilities and skills. The possibilities are endless.
I would like to hear what you have to say about the system, or if you have any recommendations for other systems. Leave a comment if you want to share your ideas. I will try my hardest to respond.
Thanks for reading,
BottleofGreen
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