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July 29, 2017

Two To Beam Up! (Star Trek Adventures)

Okay, so yesterday I posted a quasi-review of the Star Trek Adventures RPG.  So today's post, I'll be going through the character creation process for both a Main Character and a Supporting Character.

Starting off with the Main Character, I'm thinking of going with a Command-type, perhaps a youngish and not-as-seasoned version of Captain Kirk or Commander Riker.  And while I'm not intending for this PC to be the commanding officer of a starship, I figure he'll still be adept in a leadership role either sitting in the captain's chair or leading an away team on a mission.  I don't have a full name in mind, but I do have a first name in mind, that being Rafael, mostly as I'd been doing some reading up on Castille in the Nations of Theah Volume 1 for 7th Sea.  I'll come up with a surname later on.

So Step 1 is choosing a species for Rafael, which is going to be a Human.  I opt to put his three +1 modifiers into Daring, Insight, and Presence, putting those at 8 up from the base 7 that all attributes start at, and note the Human species trait for Rafael.  I also get to select a talent, and I take Bold for the Command Discipline since I see Rafael as being a daring leader willing to take risks.

Step 2 is Environment, or where my character is from.  I see Rafael as being from Earth, with the idea that he's of mixed racial heritage.  Opting to have him be a West Coast native, I'm now thinking a blend of both Hispanic and Oriental, and come up with the surname of Tashiro.  Back to making this character, I chose the Homeworld option which gives me a free +1 in one of the Attributes that is improved by my species bonus in Step 1.  Since being a Human gave three floating +1s to assign where I choose, I could probably put the +1 increase from this step wherever I wanted, but I'm opting to instead put it into Daring, making that a 9; this is a guy that definitely isn't adverse to taking risks.  I also get to increase one of Rafael's Disciplines (this game's name for skills) by one, which I'm going to put into Science, raising that to 2.  I also get to select a Value, which is a Trait that represents a core value for my character, for which I jot down "Fortune Favors the Bold."

We move to Step 3, which is Upbringing.  I don't have anything particular in mind, so I roll a d6 and get a 1, which is Starfleet.  I immediately get the idea of a character that comes from a long line of Starfleet brats, with multiple generations on both sides of the family tree having served in Starfleet since it's inception.  I get the choice of whether Rafael chose to accept or reject this upbringing; I go with accepting his upbringing and being proud that much of his family history is tied to Starfleet.  This gives Rafael a +2 to his Control and a +1 to his Fitness.  Being a Starfleet brat lets me increase one of his Disciplines, which I choose to put that point into Conn, giving him skill at flying ships and navigating the Starfleet bureaucracy.  I also get to select a Focus, which lets my character be even more successful when making checks that fall within its realm, for which I choose Starfleet Protocol to give Rafael a strong grasp of how Starfleet operates as an organization.  I also get a talent, and choose to take Mean Right Hook to make his unarmed attacks more effective, be it the classic Starfleet judo chop or the Kirk Hammer of TOS Trek.

Step 4 covers Rafael's time at Starfleet Academy.  His choice of which academy track to follow is pretty simple, that being the Command Track.  At this step, I chose to increase his Daring, Presence, and Reason by +1 each.  Since he's going to be in the Command branch, I take a +2 increase to his Command Discipline (now a 4) as well as a +1 to Conn (now a 3) and +1 to Security (now a 2) to give him a bit more of an intellectual angle.  I also get to select three more Focuses for Rafael, with at least one of them relating to his academy track, and choose Hand to Hand Combat (advanced combat training, which I opt to further refine as being trained in Wing Chun style of kung fu; blame my recent viewing of the Ip Man films), Helm Operations (knows quite a bit about controlling a starship), and Persuasion (being able to convince others to follow his lead).  I also get to select another Talent, taking Follow My Lead to account for his command training and aptitude for leading during hazardous situations.  And finally, I add another Value, for which I take "Know When to Bend the Rules Without Breaking Them."  Being willing to take risks or face danger means that you can't always go by established protocol, but at the same time a commanding officer has to abide by the general spirit of the rules and regulations.

Step 5 is Career Length, and while I don't see Rafael as being a fresh, still wet-behind-the-ears young officer, neither is he well-seasoned veteran officer, so I default to experienced officer, which provides me with another talent choice, taking Starship Expert to give Rafael a boost when picking out the strengths and weaknesses of other vessels.  I get a third value, which I decide to use to have Rafael be tied to another character in the group, selecting the female Vulcan medical officer T'leya, who is a very close friend from his days at the Academy.  As to how close, after a bit of talk with T'leya's player, we decide that they were very close, perhaps even intimately so, leading to the value "T'leya is My Closest and Most Beloved Friend."

Step 6 is Career Events, and since I don't really have anything in mind, I break out a d20 and roll twice.  The first result is a 5, which is "Required to Take Command."  Well, that's about perfect for Rafael as you can find, forcing him to take charge during a dangerous situation.  This gives him a +1 to his Daring (now an 11), a further +1 to Command (now a 5, which is the max you can have in a Discipline), and a Focus, for which I select Lead By Example to give him a "lead from the front" feel.

Now for Rafael's second Career Event, I roll again and get a 17 for "Special Commendation."  Since the rules suggest you can do it, I opt to combine the two events, and figure that Rafael got his commendation for saving the lives of his fellow officers when he was required to take command.  This gives him a +1 to his Fitness and a +1 to a Discipline of my choice, for which I select Security since I picture this as him having to take the lead against a threat to the ship he was stationed to.  I also get one last focus, which I choose to pick Athletics to figure that he'd need to be in good shape during high risk situations.

And we come to Step 7, the Finishing Touches.  Right now, Rafael has 54 points of Attributes, so he gets two further +1 bonuses, which I apply to Insight and Presence.  He's also got 14 points' worth of Disciplines, and receives two +1 boosts, which I apply to Engineering and Science, raising them up both to a 2 and making Rafael a little more well-rounded in his Disciplines, which is a good thing for a command officer.  I get one final Value, for which I take "Every Dilemma Has a Solution" to give him a spin on Kirk's classic "I don't believe in a no-win scenario" line from Wrath of Khan, but with not quite as much hubris.  I'm also at the point where I choose Rafael's rank, and while my initial idea was to probably have him be a Lieutenant, after his two Career Events I choose to give him the rank of Commander, making him something of a hotshot officer that's quickly climbed the ranks.  I also have to select what assignment on the group's ship this character has, and it quickly becomes clear that he's going to be the one sitting in the captain's chair, making his role on the ship that of the Commanding Officer.  Since he's a senior officer, Rafael has a Type 2 phaser, as well as possessing the Starfleet uniform, communicator, and tricorder that come standard for all Starfleet officers.

Commander Rafael Tashrio (Main Character)
Traits: Human
Values: Every Dilemma Has a Solution, Fortune Favors The Bold, Know When to Bend the Rules Without Breaking Them, T'leya is My Closest and Most Beloved Friend
Attributes: Control 9, Daring 11, Fitness 9, Insight 9, Presence 10, Reason 8
Disciplines: Command 4, Conn 3, Engineering 2, Security 4, Science 2, Medicine 1
Focuses: Athletics, Helm Operations, Lead By Example, Persuasion, Starfleet Protocol, Wing Chun
Talents: Bold (Command), Follow My Lead, Mean Right Hook, Starship Expert
Equipment: Type-2 phaser, communicator, Starfleet uniform, tricorder

And so we have a young starship commander.  Now, you may have noted that at no point do I make a distinction as to what century it is, so this character can work in either the 23rd or the 24th century.  Personally, I'm leaning more towards him being active in the 23rd century, but that's due to my being more familiar with TOS Trek than anything.  As for what sort of ship we're flying, that's yet to be determined, but odds are it'll be a Miranda-class, hopefully with the Multirole Explorer role.

Okay, so that was creating a Main Character, and now we go onto creating a Supporting Character.  For this one, I'm going to whip up an Andorian science/communications officer, choosing to make this character a young female Ensign, whose name I'll suss out later.

I start with a pool of values for her Attributes, along with a +1 bonus for her species to Control, Daring, and Presence.  I set her base values at Presence 10, Insight and Reason at 9, Control and Fitness at 8, and finally her Daring to 7.

Next are her Disciplines, which again have a pool of values to assign.  Being she's primarily a science officer, I set her Science to 4, followed by Conn at 3, a 2 in both Command and Medicine, and lastly her Engineering and Security are both 1s.

Up next are Focuses, for which I get three options, one of which has to relate to her role on the ship.  For these, I pick Computers, Linguistics, and Team Dynamics.

Last steps are her default equipment, that being a type-1 phaser, a communicator, a Starfleet uniform, and a tricorder.  Normally when a Supporting Character is first introduced they get a free boost to one of the above, be it a +1 to an Attribute, +1 to a Discipline, or an extra Focus, or a Value.  Given this is an example of building the character, I'll give her that introduction bonus right now, selecting a +1 to her Reason.  Finally, this young Andorian science officer needs a name, finally settling on Thralla Zynes.  Put all the above together, and here's what her stat block looks like:

Ensign Thrala Zynes (Supporting Character)

Attributes: Control 9, Daring 8, Fitness 8, Insight 9, Presence 11, Reason 10
Disciplines: Command 2, Conn 3, Engineering 1, Security 1, Science 4, Medicine 2
Focuses: Computers, Linguistics, Team Dynamics

Equipment: Type-1 phaser, communicator, Starfleet uniform, tricorder

As you can see, coming up with a Supporting Character is a fairly quick process, which makes sense as the intent is that the players will create these characters on an as-needed basis, for times when they might not be able to bring their Main Character on a mission, or there's only a couple of players and they could use some NPC support to shore up Disciplines that the Main Characters aren't quite so adept at.

Well, that's the two Star Trek Adventures characters I promised in yesterday's blog post.  Honestly, I'd love a chance to get Rafael into a game to see just how well he works out as a ship's captain; as written he certainly does have that feel of a younger version of Kirk or Riker, or perhaps a slightly more seasoned version of NuTrek's Kirk, having lost much of the cockiness but still having the nerve to go with unconventional solutions to the current dilemma.

Until then, live long and prosper *performs Vulcan salute*

July 28, 2017

To Boldy Go...

And now for something completely different...

So a couple weeks ago, I opted to pick up the PDF of Modiphus Entertainment's latest RPG, Star Trek Adventures, mostly at the urging, subtle and otherwise, of a couple members of my usual Skype group.  Bear in mind that in the never-ending Wars vs. Trek debate, I generally land on the side of Star Wars.  That's not to say I dislike Star Trek in general, but of the two franchises I prefer the one set in a galaxy far, far away.

The PDF cost me just under $16 from the DriveThruRPG, and I'll admit it's pretty snazzy looking.  Now it's worth mentioning that the general look draws from the Next Generation era of Trek, as does the majority of the artwork.  Now, maybe I've been spoiled by the amazing artwork that FFG has used for the entirety of their Star Wars RPG line, but the artwork in Star Trek Adventures generally just isn't all that amazing.  There's a couple of decent images of starship combat, but the rest of it tends to hover around acceptable for me.

Now it's worth noting that Star Trek Adventures uses a streamlined version of the 2d20 system that Jay Little (father of the narrative dice system used in Star Wars and Genesys) created for the Modiphus' Mutant Chronicles RPG.  The 2d20 system doesn't quite have the multiple axis of success/failure, instead going for a bit more of a binary pass/fail method, though the better you do on a task, the more impressive your success becomes due to the concept of Momentum.  Also interesting in that you generally want to roll under your target number, which itself is determined by how good you are at a task.  I'm still not 100% sold on the system, but I'd probably need to play it at least once.  Then again, I wasn't completely sold on FFG Star Wars' narrative dice system at first, and now it's probably one of my favorite RPGs on the market.

One element really do like is that use of Traits, which bear a lot of similarity to FATE's Aspects.  For instance, the game effects of your character's race is primarily tied into a Trait, which doesn't offer any discrete mechanical advantages or drawbacks, but can be invoked to give scene-appropriate bonuses or penalties.  This alleviates a recurring problem with races/species in many RPGs where some are just flat-out better at certain roles/classes/careers than others.  So it's quite possible to build an Andorian Science Officer that's just as capable as a Vulcan or a Human would be, or conversely build a Vulcan Command Officer that's not inherently handicapped at being a leader in comparison to a Human or a Betazoid.

Character creation looks a lot more daunting than it really is, since the standard creation method pretty much walks you through the process each step of the way, delivering each element in bite size chunks and offer a decent variety of options to choose from.  As I said earlier, the book pretty much focuses on the 24th century, so almost have the races available are from that era, with the number of available races dwindling the further back you go in the Trekverse's history.  I should mention that there is zero mention of the Abramsverse films, so for those purists that dislike the direction the reboot films take, you can rest easy that your classic Trek timeline remains intact.

I do like that all PCs start with the same value in attributes (7) and skills (1 rank), and that as you go through the character creation process, you simply add modifiers based upon which background options you selected.  You also get to add Values (pretty much identical to Traits) at specific steps along the way, as well as Talents which offer a minor (but handy) benefit in certain situations. It's worth noting that the game runs on the default that the PCs are all Starfleet Officers that have graduated from the Academy, as has been the case with the majority of Star Trek media.

Now I've not delved all that much into the combat chapter, but at first pass it doesn't look all that complicated, at least for personal combat, which isn't super deadly but unless your a Main Character it's quite possible to be taken out with a single lucky shot. Starship combat however is another matter, as it seems is often the case with RPGs that delve into such matters.  Since a PC group are by default all bridge/senior officers aboard their starship, there's a lot of options available depending on what station your PC is currently manning.

I think it bears mention that while the PCs, or Main Characters as the book calls them, are all bridge officers and thus the ones generally in charge of the ship, there is the option of what the book calls Supporting Characters.  These are generally pulled from the list of no-name rank and file crew, given a name and run through an abbreviated version of the full character creation process that's pretty quick, and a minor bonus if this is the first time they show up in the current adventure.  That way, you can avoid running into the classic problem of the original Trek series where the senior officers were beaming down into dangerous situations.  There is a limit to how many Supporting Characters a group can pull into the adventure, generally based upon the size of the ship the players are in charge of.

The options provided for starships are fairly broad, but again are centered on the 24th century with a few throwbacks to the 23rd century, with the famous Constitution-class being the oldest starship model available to players in the core book.  One nice touch that can help keep older ships viable is the idea of refits; in short for every 10 years past the ship class' launch date that the campaign is set in, the PCs ship gets a small boost to reflect the minor upgrades and refits the vessel would have undergone to keep it in service.  Another nice touch is that each Starfleet vessel gets the option of choosing a role for the ship, from a Pathfinder/Recon to Tactical/Patrol to Science to the Multirole Explorer (the game text notes that Kirk's Enterprise was of this type), with the role providing a set value of ship skills and a Talent to reflect the role it plays in Starfleet.

Overall, I have to say I like Star Trek Adventures, and am kind of eager to give the game a whirl.  There's been talk amidst my Skype group of trying at least a one shot or two, but right now our focus is on completing the Curse of Strahd adventure module (we're now at 9th level and still no PC deaths, though our Dragonborn Bard has had a couple close calls) before we really start seriously talking about doing one-shots for other systems.

Still, that hasn't stopped me from coming up with a crop of pre-gens, done so that I can get a slightly better feel for the system and how various numbers might work.  I'll probably do a later post walking through the character creation process for a couple of different characters, just to give a demo of how it works.

So, if you're a Star Trek fan looking for an RPG to let you game in the Final Frontier, then Star Trek Adventures is definitely worth checking out.

July 4, 2017

May the Fourth (of July) Be With You!

Okay, it's a stretch for the pun, but it's a pun and that makes it worth it.

If you're a resident of the United States, then you're probably at least aware of this being our Independence Day, or as some have called it Brexit 1776, if not out actively celebrating it.

Frankly, I'm not sure there's a whole lot to celebrate. We have a belligerent man-child sitting the Oval Office, a post turtle that's been put into a position he is not even remotely qualified for, and a large portion of our duly elected leaders seem hell bent on screwing over the people that they're supposed to represent.  Yes, the "wealth care" bill that the GOP has been trying (and thus far failing) to ramrod through has stalled out yet again, but I'm dreading that this bill may well pass; it may not impact me directly, but it's going to literally be the death of several people I know and count as friends, and will make things that much harder on friends of mine that are struggling with both health issues and to make ends meet.

On the other hand, I count myself fortunate to live in a blue state, where the bulk of our senators and congresspeople are concerned with the well-being of their constituents, even if with a few of them it's only to ensure that they can continue to be re-elected.  I'm also in an area where the bigotry and hatred that keeps cropping up since the cheeto-faced man-baby took office is not nearly as pronounced as it is on other parts of the country; I won't say it's not present, because I've seen it but I've also seen (and been counted among) good people standing up and against that sort of narrow-minded discrimination that racists and bigots are more open about now that one of their own has (in my view) stolen the election due to meddling by a foreign power.

But, I digress, as there's enough gloom and doom going around as it is.

As I'm sure many of you know, Fantasy Flight Games has announced Genesys, a generic version of the narrative dice system (NaDS?) used in their Star Wars RPG.  The response I've seen has been generally positive, with a number of folks suggesting possible theme books both official and fan-created for a variety of ideas, ranging from FFG properties such as Legend of the Five Rings (almost a given I would think) and Midnight to odd-ball ideas such as professional wrestling.  Me personally, I'd like to see FFG revisit their old Horizons product line, which was a series of "one and done" splats for 3rd edition d20, with the one I would especially love for them to redo being Mechamorphosis, which was essentially Transformers: The RPG with the serial numbers filed off and a different backstory for why the 'mechs were on Earth.

I only got to play Mechamophosis for a few sessions, with the GM having largely put the serial numbers back on, but I had fun playing Charger, a brash yet well-meaning young(ish) Autobot whose alt-mode was a ridiculously souped-up muscle car whose crowning moment was an impromptu demolition derby against a pack of Not!Dreadnoks.  In retrospect, I abused the hell out of the system, namely that by 'bot had DR10 versus anything that wasn't Cybertronian tech in origin and that damage from human-based tech was dropped by 10, meaning I could get into collisions all day long and suffer little more than a scratched paint job.

For those that participated in the open beta for Fantasy Flight Games' Force and Destiny, some of those who were on the FFG forums might recall that during that process, I had proposed some alternate layouts for five of the six the Lightsaber Form specs; at the time I felt that Niman Disciple was the only one that really didn't need any work, and it's a view I still hold today.  Granted, a large part of the layout changes was to accommodate a proposed change to how the damage reduction values for Parry and Reflect were calculated, which obviously FFG didn't go for.

At this year's GamerNationCon (a blast as always), I got to talking a bit with Will aka Taigia Reilly about a few different topics, one of which was that he liked the alternate layouts that I had proposed for the Ataru Striker during the Force and Destiny Beta.  Which after the con got me to thinking about what other tweaks I would make the remaining Lightsaber Form specializations?

So, over the past several weeks I've been playing around a bit with some of the Lightsaber Form specializations, seeing what worked with regards to the alterations and what didn't.  Overall, the versions that FFG published in Force and Destiny are pretty solid.  Now, if you've been following this blog in any way, shape, or form, then you're probably aware that I have what could be called a fundamental difference of opinion on the Shii-Cho Knight specialization, mostly centered around how FFG gave it zero ranks of Reflect and thus no protection against ranged attacks.  To be clear, I'm not saying that Sam or whomever wrote up the spec did it wrong, just that the author and I came to different conclusions from the same source material.  For easiness' sake, I'll be including what is probably my final take on a revised Shii-Cho Knight in this post, as well as discussing later on why I made the changes I did.

For the specializations where I changed the layout or talent selection, I've placed a hyperlink to an image of the revised spec's talent tree, which is stored on my Dropbox account.  Kudos go to OggDude, as the talent tree images were created using his Character Generator program; if you don't have that program and you're using a computer that runs Windows, do yourself a favor and grab this program as it incredibly useful and makes storing and sharing characters so much easier.

Ataru Striker
Overall, this is a solid spec, capturing the core idea that Ataru is physically demanding and not well-suited for facing multiple foes at once.  So really, the only alteration I made was to drop the third rank of Parry and replace it with the Improved Reflect talent, since a large part of Ataru's development came from the thought that Soresu was far too passive but still incorporating some of Form III's defensive elements.  With this change, I also severed the connection between Row 4 and Row 5 in the first column, so if your Ataru Striker wants to get Improved Reflect, they'll need Dedication to accomplish it (see what I did there?)  I had considered removing the connection between Row 4 and Row 5 in the second column as well, but I didn't care for the idea of forcing the PC to have to go through Saber Throw in order to get Dedication, especially since if the PC wants to get the most mileage out of Improved Reflect, they're going to be burning strain for both their Dodge and Reflect talents.

Makashi Duelist
The layout of the specialization is by and large perfect, capturing Form II's feel as a duelist-orientated style.  However, that doesn't mean it's without something I perceive as a problem, one that got high-lighted during the Force and Destiny Beta campaign that I ran for some friends.  One of the characters was a Nautolan Mystic/Makashi Duelist, infamous for his giant grin (one PC even seriously considering painting an image of the Nautolan's grinning mug on the front of the ship).  Overall, the character did really well, even making good use of a double-bladed lightsaber until the weapon got updated to have Unwieldy 3 instead of Unwieldy 2.  However, the issue came up that his primary means of defense against melee attacks was the Feint talent, which looks great on paper, but does you no good if you continue to hit your opponent, which in turn means the player has spent XP on talents they can't really use.

So, my proposed alteration for Makashi Duelist is instead for the Feint talent, namely to allow the character to spend 3 advantage or a Triumph from a Brawl, Lightsaber, or Melee combat check regardless of whether they hit or miss.  It does mean that in a melee fight, the Makashi Duelist is going to be very difficult to score a solid attack against, and that if you do hit there's a good chance they'll be able to use Improved Parry to score a hit in return, but really that's the Makashi Duelist's thing, is to be a very daunting opponent in a one-on-one duel, and that a true master of Form II is a tough nut to crack when it comes to crossing blades.

Niman Disciple
Sticking to my guns here, and I'll say that Niman Disciple is picture-perfect as far as the Lightsaber Form specs go with regards to talent layout, talent selection, talent mechanics, and bonus non-career skills.  So no revisions from me on this one.

Shien Expert
Another specialization that's got zero issues with regards to what talents it offers, how those talents work, and the bonus career skills the spec offers.  I could see some contention with the Counterstrike talent, as it requires your target to miss you, but that's strongly mitigated once you get Disruptive Strike, which if you've got a Force die (or two) available as well as Sense's defensive control upgrade running and have used Defensive Stance, you should have little trouble forcing your opponent to miss on their attacks, setting up Counterstrike for a free upgrade every round and saving you some pain both in terms of suffering wounds and spending strain.

About the only tweak I'd make with regards to Shien Expert is more to the Sentinel career, with that change being to remove Knowledge (Core Worlds) and instead add Streetwise to their list of beginning career skills.  The Sentinel, to me at least, has always been about walking the dark places that no others would enter, skulking around the shadier parts of the galaxy in an effort to find and defeat their foes.  Yes, I know that Shien Expert gets the Street Smarts talent, and that Shadow has Streetwise as a bonus career skill, but Knowledge (Core Worlds) still feels like the odd duck out in what is generally a very rogue-like/investigative career, and Streetwise makes more sense as it's a means to gather information from the locals.

Shii-Cho Knight
Okay, so this is a specialization that I've been tinkering with for a while, mostly to find space to incorporate two ranks of Reflect so that the PC has some measure of protection against ranged attacks, to account for the blast-deflect training that is an integral part of the more modern Shii-Cho curriculum.  Now, I suppose that one could just design a brand new spec and call it something like Shii-Cho Champion or Shii-Cho Crusader, but I didn't want to redesign the entire car when it was the tires that were a problem.

The first change was that I swapped out the rank of Parry in Row 1 of Column 1 for a rank of Reflect, letting the PC grab both Parry and Reflect very early on.  However, contrary to earlier takes on a revised Shii-Cho Knight, I put the second rank of Reflect all the way up on Row 5, replacing the rank of Durable and also severing the Row 5 connection between Column 1 and Column 2.  Given that Form I Shii-Cho is supposed to be the fundamentals of lightsaber combat that all the other Forms are built upon, I didn't want this spec to be too good melee protection, so I wound up dropping out the rank of Parry that's found in Row 5 of Column 4 and putting that second rank of Durable in its place, while also severing the Row 5 connection between Column 3 and Column 4 and adding a connection between Row 4 and Row 5 in Column 4, so that it's liked to Sum Djem instead of Dedication.

This is probably the one revised Lightsaber Form specialization that I've done the most playtesting with, given that my long-time friend Linda Whitson was gracious enough to let me play a Shii-Cho Knight in her Age of Rebellion campaign (where none of the active PCs were built using AoR careers).  The character in question, Kyren Stryder, has worked out pretty well, though amusingly he didn't get an opportunity to really make use of a lot of his talents until long after he'd gotten them, as he didn't draw his lightsaber (which none of the other players even knew he had!) until about halfway into Linda's running of the Dead in the Water adventure from the AoR GM Kit.

Soresu Defender
Again, overall this specialization is generally solid.  There's a few quirks, namely how Defensive Circle can be kinda underwhelming if most of your party already has a defense rating, such as from wearing armor or being behind cover or using weapons with the Defensive and/or Deflection qualities, which is compounded if your dice rolls tend not to generate much in the way of advantage, which more often than not a Soresu Defender will likely need to help recover strain during a fight.

Really the only that struck me as being "off" about the specialization was how the ranks in Reflect simply felt clustered too close together, especially towards the top while the half the ranks of Parry the spec offers are planted in the first row.  So what I did here was replace the rank in Parry located in Row 1 of Column 2 with a rank in Reflect, and then changing the rank in Reflect from Row 2 in the same column to a rank of Parry, which I think makes a nice synergy with the fact that Improved Parry is now most easily accessible after buying Parry as opposed to buying Reflect.  I also swapped out the Row 3 rank of Parry that was in Column 4 for a rank of Reflect while replacing the Row 4 rank of Reflect in Column 2 for a rank of Parry; this does have the effect of placing two ranks of Parry right next to each other, which could be solved by swapping its location in the tree with Confidence, but at the time I wasn't overly crazy about pushing Confidence up to Row 4, though with having Discipline as a bonus career skill and most likely having a high Willpower to bolster your strain threshold, having to wait a bit longer to purchase Confidence isn't that big of a drawback, and I may just wind up doing that.

The last notable change I made to Soresu Defender was to swap out the Defensive Stance talent in Row 4 of Column 4 for a single rank of Side Step, kind of taking a page from Shien Expert's playbook, which makes a degree of sense given that Form V grew out of Form III's defensive elements; plus, much like Shien Expert having that rank of Side Step gives a Soresu Defender PC a better chance of getting Improved Reflect to trigger without necessarily having to invest XP into the Sense power for the defensive control upgrade.

One of the players in my current Force and Destiny campaign did make the suggestion of dropping Supreme Parry in favor of Supreme Reflect, but I honestly think that's going a bit too far, and that such a degree of expertise at deflecting blaster fire is Shien's hat, where Soresu is more of the "I can Parry all day!" given its a direct transition from Form II.

So, there you have it, my proposed revisions for the six Lighsaber Form specs from the Force and Destiny core rulebook.  To re-iterate, there's nothing wrong with any of the specializations as they exist in the book, as each of them does a very good job at what they're intended to do.  I'm simply offering these up as possible alternatives for a player of such characters to consider or GMs to perhaps ponder implementing in their own campaigns.

One a side note, I was working on revising and updating the three Lightsaber Style specializations that Phil "DarthGM" Maiaweski had created as part of his Edge of the Jedi fan supplement back before Force and Destiny was published.  However, the main problem I kept running into was they consistently failed the "why would my character NOT take one of these specializations?" and frequently looked more a like a grab-bag of "good talents" with a theme than actually being a viable specialization in its own right.  Then again, I did already sort of a "lightsaber generalist" specialization in the form of the Jedi Initiate universal specialization that was part of the final release of my Ways of the Force fan supplement, and that itself was enough of a bear to turn it into a viable specialization that wasn't simply a talent grab-bag.

I am tempted to put together a "Saber Rake"-themed specialization, based upon the dueling culture of the same name that was first introduced in WEG's Lords of the Expanse box set for their Star Wars game.  I'm hoping we get official stats on lightfoils in the Mystic sourcebook (which to me would be a good place for dueling-themed weapon given it's the parent career of the Makashi Duelist), but we'll have to wait and see.

If you've made it all the way down here, thanks for reading, and if you're a citizen of the United States, be you proud, dismayed, concerned, native-born, naturalized, or otherwise, then I hope you have an enjoyable holiday, and may the Fourth be with you :D
see what I did there? ;)


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The 1 Training You Never Want to Use

Imagine for a second that your training over your entire career was for one event, or one competition. Many may train for a marathon or a Triathlon, to say they have completed one of these in their lifetime. Now imagine this training for the one event or one competition was training you hoped you never had to use, such is the training of a Secret Service Agent. Their training consists of preparing to protect the life of the President of the United States. They train for an event, an assassination attempt on the President, however they hope they never have to use this training.

In the current environment of technology, most of the work of the Secret Service can be done through leads and securing areas ahead of time. This was not the case in 1981, when President Ronald Reagan was leaving the Washington Hilton and shots were fired. Immediately upon hearing these shots, Secret Service Agent Jerry Parr pushed President Reagan into the waiting limousine and jumped on top of President Reagan. Mr. Parr was performing and acting for the one event he had trained his entire career for. Mr. Parr passed away this week at the age of 85. The New York Times in an article announcing his passing used this quote from him, “I sort of knew what they (gunshots) were, and I’d been waiting for them all of my career, in a way. That’s what every agent waits for, is that.”

The Heart of the Competitor trains their skills everyday for events and competitions where they will use their skills, where they will compete. You are part of that community, part of that group who will perform at their peak. Just as Mr. Parr performed in a life and death scenario that he had trained for, you as a competitor have trained for every situation that you encounter. You have prepared your heart to compete.

When you perform and compete in such a way, you build your legacy and that is what Agent Parr did in 1981, he built his legacy and it is summed up in Nancy Reagan’s quote about him, “Jerry was not only one of the finest Secret Service agents to ever serve this country, but one of the most decent human beings I’ve ever known. He was humble but strong, reserved but confident, and blessed with a great sense of humor.

Live your life to be a humble and strong competitor, exhibiting the confidence to perform when called upon.

Enjoy the week and build your Heart of a Competitor.

P.S. Look for our next video in building your Heart of a Competitor and the 4 Heartsets that will come later this week.

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It’s not the How, it’s the Why!

Last week, we noted a small change that could make a big difference and allowing that small change to be present and impactful when utilized over an extended period of time.  Our society has evolved into a fast-food, immediate results driven world, however anything that is worth building requires persistence over an extended period of time.  So when making our small changes, we must commit to sticking with these small changes to allow them to have an impact in our lives.

For me, the small change for me was the planning and preparation that goes into selecting clothes that I will wear for school.  Last year, I committed to planning the clothes I would wear for the week and my closet looked like this:

Every Saturday, I would plan out my outfits for the week.  This simple step would save me time throughout the week, so I never needed to make a decision in the morning and waste time figuring out what I would wear.  This small change saved me time each morning for the entire school year.  This was a small change that led to big results over a long period of time.

Which leads me to this school year.  My closet now looks like this:

Instead of spending time each Saturday planning out the clothes for the week, I have created 16 sets of outfits that can be rotated throughout the first month of the school year.  This will allow me to be even more efficient and move down through these combinations and eliminate the weekly decision-making that was previously required.  This is yet another small change when implemented over the long period of time will save time and allow for big results.

What goals do you have that you could use a little more time to accomplish?

Commit to making the small change over a long period of time and you will achieve big results.

The Community of Competitors Newsletter is not about telling you how to go about living your life, but it is about the WHY in your life.  Those with the Heart of a Competitor have a WHY.  The WHY for me in adapting my closet is to provide the time for me to have an impact on your life, so I can share the energy and enthusiasm with you.  This Community of Competitors will only grow when I share the energy and enthusiasm with you, so I am asking this week that you make one small change and share this email with one person that think can benefit from the Heart of a Competitor’s message.

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Small Changes Get Big Results

As we near the end of the summer and many parents, athletes, and coaches are preparing for a new school year we can evaluate our goals and determine what changes we would like to make to achieve at our highest level. Many people see the word CHANGE and cringe; they lack the foresight and mental toughness to know that change is continuous and leads to improvement.

Do you know what is great about the changes that occur in our life?

The smallest changes can make the biggest difference. About 15 months ago, I made a small change to my before bed routine, this small change added on average 34 seconds to my bedtime routine.

What was this one small change?

I began flossing. That’s right, I started to floss each evening and it takes about 34 seconds for me to do this. There was very little change in the dentist appointment that I had six months after starting to floss, however, the big change that occurred was this past week at my usual nine month teeth cleaning, the entire appointment from the time I walked in the door until the time I left, lasted a whopping 34 minutes and my dentist informed me that I had a great set of teeth.

Why is it important that you care about my dental hygiene?

The truth is, you should not care about my dental hygiene, but you should care about the small things you can do that will make a big difference for you. It is the small things that we do over and over, that do not seem to matter when we are doing them, that lead to the big results and payoffs in our life.

The truth is most people will not do the small things that are seemingly insignificant but will lead to success.

How do we know this? According to the American Dental Association, 50% of Americans DO NOT floss daily. That means that 50% of the people refuse to do a little thing that leads to greater health.

Those that perform at their best on a daily basis, the Champions of Competition, commit to do the small things that do not seem to matter, and they commit to doing them with uncommon focus and energy.

What is a small thing that you can change, add, or adapt in your life as we prepare for a new school year?

Share your one small change with me, by simply commenting on this post.

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Our Minds are NOT Machines

This past week, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to be part of an awesome team. It was a team of volunteers and workers that were tasked with getting the Golf course at Lancaster Country Club prepared each day for the United States Women’s Open. Preparing the course each day is a major undertaking, which consists of basically mowing every single blade of grass in the playing area on an over 6,400 yard golf course. Our team included over 100 volunteers and workers and countless pieces of equipment, including over 10 fairway mowers, and numerous mowers designated to mow the greens, tees, and the treacherous rough. The entire process is nothing short of amazing.

Fortunately, I was assigned to work with a team of individuals that would mow greens. The greens mowers were set to cut the grass on the greens to 1/10 of an inch; these are finely tuned machines, calibrated each day and night. If we got to a green and the mower was not cutting properly, it was returned to the maintenance building and a new mower was brought out to use. On Friday morning, on the greens mowing crew I was with, we changed our greens mower three times because it was not cutting the grass properly.

These machines were not performing to the proper expectations and were discarded at that time for a new machine. This sounds a lot like our mindset at times. When we face adversity, we want to discard our current approach and look for a new one. We however, are not machines and cannot just go out and find something that is supposed to function better. We are humans and we must develop our mental toughness to endure any situation and perform to the best of our abilities. Performing our best includes developing the confidence we have in ourselves, with an optimistic mindset with positive energy to mindfully live in the present moment.

This week, stick to your process, not discarding it. Focus on your process of development, not discarding it for a new machine quickly when adversity hits.

Enjoy the week and grow every day.

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Your Actions = Your Signature

As we wrap up the Independence Day weekend and embark on a new week, I wanted to let you in on a little tidbit of information I learned this past weekend.  On July 4th, I decided to read the Declaration of Independence with my family.  (It was longer than I expected, and with the ages of my children, after about 1 minute I was the only one listening.)  As I neared the end of the Declaration of Independence, I noticed the names of the individuals that signed this document were listed.  There are a total of 56 signatures on the Declaration of Independence.  Not surprisingly, the list of individuals that signed the Declaration of Independence is a Who’s Who’s of names engrained in our country’s lineage:

Benjamin Franklin
Thomas Jefferson
John Adams

The one name that is glaringly omitted from the signatures…George Washington.

This struck me, here is George Washington, noted as a great leader, the man responsible for winning a number of battles in the Revolutionary War, the first President of the United States of America and his signature is not on the document that established this country’s independence.

This is yet another reminder that we do not have to be the first to be recognized as an integral part of a revolution.  George Washington is known for being a great leader as the first President of the United States, however there were many things that led to this first and it was based on his body of work, and established ability to lead, not a signature he placed on a document.  George Washington’s actions were his signature, and while his actions were not perfect, they were carried out with conviction, belief.

This week, focus on your actions, and forget the notion of perfection, and focus on conviction, for your actions are your signature.

Click on this link to check out Doug Conant’s Blog Post on 3 Leadership Lessons Learned from George Washington

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2 Ways to Prepare for Pressure

Our family spent the last week on a much anticipated and well-deserved vacation.  We spent the week in Avalon, New Jersey, a beautiful little town on the Jersey Shore.  We have been to portions of the Jersey Shore before at various times during past summers.  This past week was NOT the peak of summer tourism, as a matter of fact, many Jersey schools had just finished their school year, so the summer buzz was starting, but overall it was quiet compared to previous visits we took during the months of July and August.

While the number of visitors like myself was lower, the intensity of the lifeguards on the beach was higher than I have ever seen.  In other words, they were preparing for the busy times that lie ahead.  On our second day there, right as the lifeguards came on the beach at 10 AM, there were many whistles being blown and a number of lifeguards running up and down the beach.  The first thing that popped into my mind was the concern for those they had to rescue at other locations, when in reality they were training themselves to work as a team and prepare to save a person life.  There was a lead lifeguard right in front of us that would blow his whistle at random times and the neighboring guards would jump out of their chairs, grab their buoy and run down the beach to the next station.  It was impressive to watch.  They were always on watch, expecting the unexpected.  Thus, when something out of the ordinary occurred, they hopped into motion without hesitation.

Then an amazing challenge occurred, right in front of us, a “rescue.”  The lifeguard whistles blew and they hopped into action swimming out to save a “person” that had gotten caught about 50 yards out from the shore line.  As the crowd gathered, the lifeguards swam out to the person in distress, and quickly brought them back to shore.  While the other lifeguards cleared an area, the practice dummy was brought to shore and given CPR.  These lifeguards were practicing experiencing pressure.

These lifeguards were building habits, so that at some point this summer, when they are called upon to save a life, they have prepared by expecting the unexpected and practicing under pressure.  The challenge to the Community of Competitors is to in our lives, expect the unexpected and practice experiencing pressure.  We learn these from great performers in athletic events to the daily jobs that many of us engage in every single day.

Following the completion of this challenge and practicing saving the life of the “practice swimmer,” the lifeguards debriefed on the beach.  This was just another example that we are all COMPETITORS in life.

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5 Books for Your Summer Reading

5 Books for Your Summer Reading List

Summer School is in. It is a time to focus on continually developing ourselves and those that we come in contact with. Here are five books to add to your summer reading list.

  1. The Hard Hat by Jon Gordon

Jon tells the story of George Boiardi, a Cornell Lacrosse player that died on the field during the season of 2004. Over time, many stories have been told of how George was a great teammate. After telling George’s story, Mr. Gordon outlines 21 ways to be a great teammate and how George exemplified each and every single one of them. This book is a powerful and compact read.

  1. Performing Under Pressure by Hendrie Weisinger and J.P. Pawliw-Fry

The first quote I noted from this book is as follows: “Pressure is the enemy of success: It undermines performance and helps us fail.” This piece goes on to outline how our performance suffers during pressure packed events, however, we can learn to manage pressure and that the strategies to live and perform under pressure can allow us to “unleash our creative and intellectual potential.”

This book contains countless simple to implement strategies for handling pressure. These strategies are broken down into quick fixes and long-term strategies by developing our COTE of Armor.

  1. How to Think Like A Freak by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

The authors of this book are well known for their work in economics and searching for different ways to approach economical questions. This piece is a fascinating read that discusses how they have approached the problems they have been asked to consult on. The first two quotes that I captured from this book are as follows:

  1. Until you can admit what you don’t yet know, it’s virtually impossible to learn what you need to.
  2. The key to learning is feedback. It is nearly impossible to learn anything without it.

Key Point: There is an endless supply of fascinating questions to be answered.

  1. The Confidence Code by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman

This powerful piece written by two women focuses on the development of confidence in females. The authors outline the history and DNA behind a female’s confidence, and most importantly, the reader is provided with a number of strategies to develop confidence. If you are a female, coach females, teach females, or have a daughter, this is a must read for you. An essential quote from the beginning of this book is:

“Success correlates more closely with confidence than it does with competence.”

  1. The Legacy Builder by Rod Olson

This book provides five key points to leadership in a fable format, rather than merely outlining them in a dry leadership book. These five key leadership “secrets” are “taught” to a struggling CEO from his high school football coach. It is a great way to be reminded of the impact that a coach has on the players they are entrusted with to coach. A key reminder in this work is as follows:

“Remember things that are built to last are not built fast.”

The Community of Competitors is being built to last. The group of people receiving this newsletter is growing on a weekly basis. This is a result of the sharing that you, the Competitors have done. Please continue to share these weekly messages with everyone you feel is competing to become the best they can become. This Community of Competitors is growing and is built to last. If you can think of one person that may enjoy this newsletter, please forward it to them and encourage them to sign-up.

Sign-Up for the Community of Competitors Newsletter

Bonus Book:

Specifically for baseball and softball coaches and players, check out the programs from Mental Game VIP.  This is a great resource for those serious about learning form some of the best minds related to baseball and softball peak performance.

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The Value in Being Alone

“In order to be open to creativity, one must have the capacity for constructive use of solitude. One must overcome the fear of being alone.”

― Rollo May, Author of Love and Will

The Heart of the Competitor beats on its own, engaged in the current activity, driven to be successful with an awareness of what is occurring around them in every action that is taken.

Creating quietness is essential to the process of development.  Quietness occurs when we are engaged in our activity with an intense focus and awareness of every action, sensation, and feeling associated with our work.  When we begin this process of creating quietness in our life, of being mindful of our actions, it can appear to be immensely lonely.  However, the Heart of the Competitor develops an understanding that the focus and engagement that results from our mindful actions is best for our performance and ultimately the team’s performance.

In today’s quote, author Rollo May noted that in order to be creative, in order for him to write, he had to “overcome the fear of being alone.”  This is true for the greatest of competitors, to create the performance that is desired, the Heart of the Competitor must overcome the fear of being in the arena of competition alone.

Establishing mindfulness of our actions in every activity creates the comfort level in what can be the silent pursuit of success.  This moves the Heart of the Competitor from fearing being alone and focusing on the task at hand, to enjoying being alone and focusing on the task at hand, whether that is rehearsing a skill or competing in a game situation.

Question of the Day:

Find one activity that you typically do alone and engage in this activity.  Enjoy the engagement and solitude.  Send me an email sharing your experience.

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Go With Your Heart

As you give more of your heart, you get more in return.

As you give more of your heart, your influence expands.

As you give more of your heart, you are called to give more.

As you give more of your heart, you develop strength.

As you give more of your heart, you have the courage to COMPETE.

Competing takes courage. The courage to test your limits. The courage to step outside of your comfort zone and place your abilities to the test. The courage to fight the societal pressure of wins and losses. The courage to compete with yourself instead of comparing yourself to others.

The Heart of the Competitor is a courageously driven machine to become the best it can become. You have the Heart of a Competitor and are driven to create and use every possible situation as a learning opportunity.

In his book Choke, Sian Beilock details the need to prepare for performance in stressful moments by training with stressful situations. Police officers that are trained to be able to shoot and hit a target while being fired upon are much more successful than those that have only ever practiced without return fire. This is a must for the Heart of a Competitor, training in mentally and physically stressful situations. For the Heart of a Competitor, the number one way to create stressful situations in practice is to keep track of your progress in an area and that is done by keeping score. If you want to get better at something in a competitive situation, keep score of it in a practice situation and hold yourself accountable.

As you give more of your heart and focus in practice, you will get more of your heart and focus in a competition.

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Trusting Relationships = Winning

This past weekend, I shared a short time with members of the 2005 Franklin and Marshall Baseball team as they celebrated the 10-year anniversary of our conference championship. I have had a number of opportunities to be on coaching staffs of teams that have been successful, but the group of players on this team always sticks out as an example of what it takes to function as a unit. The members of this team have moved on to successful careers in medicine, law, investments, and real estate, to name a few. This close-knit group had success on the baseball field and enjoyed many memories off the field as well and I asked them to reflect on their experience ten years later, by pondering this question:

Did the winning lead to the relationships or did the relationships lead to winning?

The discussion around these questions ended up being a circular argument, with no definitive answer. However there was agreement from the players that their relationships were strong and the success they achieved as a group provided relationships that have lasted.

Strong relationships of trust among a team are essential because so many things happen over the course of a game, a season, and a career that are out of our control and the strength of a team’s relationships provides the needed support system to achieve the wins and championships. In sports and life, there are many factors that influence winning, which leaves much of it out of our control. The one thing we control is our self and our relationships on a team. Building the relationships on the team will produce a strong environment for individuals and the team to thrive.

The discussions that took place this weekend among the members of the 2005 Franklin and Marshall College Baseball Team were all focused on their experiences as a member of a team. Their memories were based on the experiences they shared and the relationships they built, rarely mentioning single wins or achievements of an individual. If this is what is remembered 10 years later, then as a coach, we called to create an environment where these relationships are paramount.

For those players reading this, build relationships based on trust throughout your team and great memories will be made.


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Thursday, September 26, 2013

104:120 History of US Vol. 10: All the People by Joy Hakim

Middle School US History covering 1945-2009.  I learned a lot from this one.  I've heard about the Vietnam War and Korean War but never had any inkling as to what they were really about.  It's nice to at least have a basic understanding of them now and to have a better grasp on who the presidents were between Roosevelt and Kennedy and then Carter who is the first president I remember.  It was even more interesting reading her take on the times of my childhood and now my adulthood.  I thought that while fairly simplistic, she did a decent job of trying to present a rounded perspective.  It's definitely been opening some dialog in my house and that is never a bad thing.

Page count: 281p/27,890p ytd/172,290p lifetime

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Fatal Fixer-Upper

Inheriting her aunt’s old Maine cottage has led Avery Baker down a new career path—home renovation. Finding a property’s hidden potential has rewards and challenges—not to mention certain unanticipated dangers. Like murder…

To Avery, the idea ofmain_FFU preparing her aunt’s crumbling and cluttered home for sale is overwhelming. So when someone offers to buy the place as-is, Avery’s relieved. Until she learns it’s worth more than she thought – that is, with a few repairs here and there…

With help from hunky handyman Derek Ellis, Avery starts learning the ABCs of DIY. But when the designer-turned-renovator finds clues that lead to a missing professor and then her own life is threatened, Avery wonders if she can finish the house – without getting finished off in the process…

The letter from Aunt Inga arrived, as the saying goes, a day late and a dollar short. Or not a whole dollar, exactly, but Aunt Inga must have missed a few of the recent postal increases, because the stamp was short by several cents, and that was probably why it had taken the letter almost two weeks to get from Maine to New York City.

The mailman arrived just as I was putting the finishing touches on the hand-printed and hand-sewn upholstery I had created for a reproduction Gustavian loveseat I was getting ready to put in the display window of Aubert Designs on Madison Avenue in New York City. (The Swedish king Gustav III reigned from 1771 until 1792, FYI, and Gustavian furniture is a sort of simplified, Scandinavian rococo. I mention it for the benefit of those of you who have never heard of Gustav or the furniture trend he inspired.)

I’m resident textile designer for Aubert Designs. Philippe Aubert designs furniture – high end, hand-crafted, reproduction furniture. My job is to enhance Philippe’s creations with my own custom-designed fabrics. He’s been on something of a Gustavian kick lately, and the piece I was working on had the distinctive arched and scrolled backrest and carved giltwood frame. My fabric, by contrast, was hip and modern, with a pattern of overlapping lipstick kisses in three shades of pink. Gustav was probably rotating in his grave, and Philippe hadn’t been too positive to the idea either, when I’d first pitched it to him. I was happy to see that the lipstick kisses looked just as good with the curved giltwood as I had hoped.

Just as I was putting in the last few stitches, the door opened, and the mailman walked in. He looked from me to the stack of mail in his hand. “You Avery Marie Baker?”

I jabbed the needle into the underside of the loveseat, where the mark it made wouldn’t be noticed, and got to my feet. “I am. What have you got?”

He extended the other grubby hand. “Postage due. There’s only a 37¢ stamp on this letter.”

“Oh. Sure.” I dug in the pocket of my jeans and came up with a dime. “Keep the change.”

“Too kind.” He pocketed the dime and shuffled out, after handing over the stack of mail. I dumped the rest on Tara’s desk – she’s the receptionist – and sat down on the lipstick-upholstered loveseat to open my letter.

The envelope was ecru, and thick; it looked like it came from the kind of old-fashioned correspondence set people used back in the days before telephones and email took over the world. The letter seemed to have originated somewhere in the state of Maine, and my name and address was written in a shaky, elegant hand with what looked like real ink. The kind that comes out of a fountain pen. I slit the envelope open with a pair of upholstery shears. Philippe would have objected had he seen my cavalier use of his tools, but he’d gone to lunch (without me) so I did it anyway. It beat getting up to look for a letter opener; especially on Tara’s desk, which looked like a whirlwind had blown past it. Whatever else Tara had going for her – as if I didn’t know – she wasn’t much of an office manager.

There was only a single sheet of writing paper inside the envelope, also thick and ecru in color. The message was short, dated two weeks ago, and written in the same shaky hand as the outside of the envelope:

My dear niece,

I trust this finds you well, and that you are happy in your life in New York.

You may be surprised to hear from me after all this time. That is, if you even remember visiting me when you were a child.

I am writing in the hope that you might be able to find the time to come to Waterfield to see me sometime soon? As I attempt to put my affairs in order before my life draws to a close, there are things I feel compelled to share with you. It is time for secrets to be told, for the truth to come out, and wrongs to be put right.

Your affectionate Aunt,

Inga Marie Morton

43 Bayberry Lane

Waterfield, ME

I was still sitting on the loveseat ten minutes later, lost in thought, when the door from the street opened, letting in the aroma and miasma typical of New York City, no matter the time or season. Along with it came Philippe Aubert, resident genius, and my boss and boyfriend.

Philippe, as you’ve probably gathered, is French. Aggressively so. He keeps his wavy brown hair long enough to pull back into an artistic ponytail when he’s working, and when he’s not, and when the weather permits, he keeps it confined by that most French of French headgear, a beret. Today, he was dressed in skintight leather pants and a black leather blazer, with a flowing white poet shirt, open halfway down his muscular chest. On anyone else, the get-up would have looked ridiculous. Philippe looked good enough to eat, like he had stepped off the cover of a romance novel, and I resisted the temptation to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.

“Hello, chérie.” He sauntered over and bent down to greet me. His lips tasted of wine and he smelled of musky aftershave. I was just a touch breathless by the time he straightened up and looked around. “Where is everybody?”

It took me a second to get my voice to cooperate. “Tara went to lunch. Just after you. And Kevin is delivering the checkered fainting couch.”

“Ah.” Philippe grimaced. The checkered fainting couch was a sore subject.

# # #


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Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Top 10 reasons every woman should take it all off and start again:

10. it takes so little shampoo and really no conditioner when it's only half an inch long. It also makes for very short showers!

9. hair dries in about 30 seconds with the hair dryer so you're ready in a flash

8. you can't mess it up

7. you'll love how it feels when you run your hand through it - so soft

6. your kids or your honey will love how soft it is too

5. it helps you realize who you are and how much you hide behind your hair

4. it's a great thing to do for the health of your hair

3. you'll have fun coming up with silly comments when asked "why did you do that?!"

2. you get to see what shape your head is (hmm, I guess a tight bun would take care of this one.)

and the number one reason:

1. it will help you understand your hair pattern, your hair's pros, cons and how it grows

I never knew that my hair grows forward toward the middle. Each of my kids had this pattern as they grew from their newborn baby down hair to their more mature locks, and I kept wondering where they got it? Must be from Josh's side. And I would examine his head when I cut his hair. They also have double cowlicks in the back of their heads. Every one of them. Where in the world did they get those?! Or the nasty one up in front where the girls could have had bangs but for that half swirl. Yep. From me. Never knew that until recently.

It goes very easily into the new hot faux -hawk style!

And now the real reason for my shearing.

I think I'll keep you guessing.

It's only hair. It'll grow back!

Jayme said...

Cute post! You have me convinced...but, then there's Scott who would disown me ;o)

jodyfoznot said...

Jeny, I'm getting caught up with you here today. And missing you, too.

Your hair looks adorable on you! You have such beautiful features that you can pull off any style with ease. I really like the color, too!

It's funny that you wrote a hair post, because I'm formulating one of my own. And a girl doesn't usually want to write a hair post if she is having perfect hair. Or even good hair. Unless she's made a drastic change, as is true in your case. :o)

Elizabeth said...

Just a few more inches until I can donate, then I'll be right there with you!


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Monday, August 07, 2006

Many extra doctors and nurses are needed at the hospitals these days. The doctors can't leave the kids at home as missiles are landing on them. So they set up a camp in the basement of the hospital.

Anonymous Shir-Yaakov said...

that girl in the orange dress is not too sure about you, my friend.

2:22 PM

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Saturday, September 09, 2006

Me, I'm Afraid of Heights

My cousin the rapper recommended that I watch the 2004 BBC documentary The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear.

My cousin the rapper was right. I watched it and it was excellent.

It's a very adequate three-part explanation of the the American neoconservative movement's dependence on invented enemies and phantom threats. Most importantly, it seeks to drive home what I feel is one of the most important ideas of our day: that our current administration has re-labeled paranoia as "vigilance" and cowardice as "strength."

Each part is one hour long. Please find time to watch all three. Then tell your friends to watch all three. People need to realize that constant, irrational fear of terrorism went out of style with fluorescent pink Trapper Keepers and the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A Home Computer.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

drew said...

Thanks for posting this for everyone. It needs to leave our circles and climb into the hands of the sheeple!

- Cousin Rapper

Freewayblogger said...

freewayblogger confirms the power of the power of nightmares. might even make a good sign for the freeways... peace.


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Sunday, June 26, 2016

More Overwatch videos

One month on from its release, Overwatch continues to be my game of choice for the foreseeable future. It has kept me from getting any Street Fighter V practice in, stopped me from making Watch Dogs gameplay videos for a while and effectively put the last nail in The Division's coffin.

Here are some more videos!

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I am a former Liberty Student who happened to attend Liberty when Jesse was ambushed. I am currently a youth pastor and have been for several years. Today as I was studying for a lesson on prayer, I ran across a note that I had made to myself years ago in Francis Chan's "Crazy Love." Chan writes "We've elevated safety to the neglect of whatever God's best is." In the margin, I referenced Jesse as being a man who was more concerned about Christ's glory than his safety. May the Church follow Jesse's example to love Christ through all of life's trials. May we not choose safety over Jesus. Thank you Jesse for your great example of loving Christ more than life itself.
posted by David Flannery, United States
Oct 21st, 2014 at 6:56AM

I didn't get to write yesterday but had Jesse on my mind. Thankful for his testimony and love for the Lord. Always had a smile in dorm 9. Thank for his life and the sacrifice he made. Praying for his family.
posted by Tom speel, Allentown , PA
May 27th, 2014 at 7:48PM

I never met you, but heard all about you at Liberty. We share the same birthday. You are exactly 4 years older than I. Thank you for your service. I know you are in heaven now.
posted by Ashley Churchil, Redding, CA
May 26th, 2014 at 5:53PM

Thinking of Jesse during this Memorial Day. This was the first year that our young kids started asking questions of what Memorial Day stood for. It gave us an opportunity to share about Jesse and the sacrifice that he made for our freedom and the freedom of others. Zac's response to our sharing was that one day he wants to be a soldier too...one that teaches other soldiers about Jesus...
posted by Joe Butler, Rochester, NY
May 26th, 2014 at 5:04PM

Thank you will never be enough.
posted by Melinda, California
May 26th, 2014 at 4:49PM

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Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Meshugena Floridian Cause of Riotous Killings

Nadene Goldfoot
One very irreverent Florida pastor caused a tidal wave of trouble including 4 deaths in Libya yesterday by his egotistical actions.  He is that same pastor who in 2010 threatened to burn copies of the Koran and did in fact burn one in his own church.  This caused deadly rioting in Afghanistan.  This man probably has a following of 5 people but was able to gain this notoriety by his actions.

This undocumented pastor, who rose from an assistant hotel manager to pastor without real higher educational schooling is the pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center, a small fundamentalist Christian church, with more chutzpa than smarts, is also running as an independent candidate for US President.  I think he might get a vote of one.  .

Again he caused more rioting by proclaiming September 11th "International Judge Mohammad Day" and promoted a new video which mocks Islam's founding prophet.  If you want respect, you don't mock others.  He hasn't learned the Golden Rule of "Treat others like you want to be treated."  This is the infamous Rev. Terry Jones of Gainesville, Florida.  He mentioned that the film was an American production that shows the destructive ideology of Islam and that it reveals the life of Mohammad in a satirical fashion.  He has called Islam "a total deception."   If you're going to tear down another religion, using satire is like adding fire to oil.  It's kicking someone while they're down.  The man's a shlemiel turning out to be a shmuck.

The attack of Muslims on the USA first came in Cairo to the USA Embassy in the act of taking down our American flag which hung outside the building.  The next attack has resulted in 4 deaths in Libya which includes the Ambassador Christopher Stevens and Sean Smith and 2 others!  The attack came from a small but savage group of Libyans who somehow got through the armed guards with grenades and set fire to the building.  Other Libyans tried to protect the staff and did help in getting the deceased Ambassador to the hospital.  The Ambassador was a much loved person in Libya, having helped in their liberation.

We in North America have something called "freedom of speech."  We don't police people about what they say, but if it's a lie, people can be sued by the injured party.  We're used to speaking freely without fear of prison or death.  Those in other parts of the world do not have this practice in their culture and can't understand how it works.  Unfortunately, those who speak out today with the help of internet, TV, radio, newspapers are not always wise or respectful of others.  We try to teach such skills in our schools, but it does start at home.  Why this pastor feels so free to tear apart a religion in such a maligning way is beyond understanding.  He has no saichel.

We should all learn that as long as there are other people in the world and that we are not alone and isolated there will be other expressions of faith.  We don't all think alike.  It's what is practiced that really counts in a world of people.  That people are decent, do not roam about killing others, actually follow the 10 commandments, or at least 7 of them, or seem to have some inborn natural instinct of decent behavior is what counts.  This is what people should think about; actions are what counts, not what they profess to believe and don't follow anyway.  Terry Jones's actions were not helpful and caused 4 good Americans to die.  All Terry does is get negative attention and cause many Muslims to become even more defensive.

The people of the outer realm of the world from the USA should know that he is alone in his actions.  He's not an important man, and I think he's a little meshugena,  and the whole thing should have been ignored.  Just like the USA will most likely not take out all of Libya for a group's manic actions, so they could have ignored this "unusual" pastor.  Going crazy and rioting over one man's actions of disrespect is not an endearing behavior to others who are not Muslims.  You don't gain respect that way.  To take a life is despicable.  Those that did will be brought to justice in an orderly fashion.

Resource:  Oregonian Newspaper 9/12/12 US Embassy breached in Egypt in film protest by David D. Kirkpatrick, NY Times

1 comment:

  1. The Floridian film maker is an unmitigated idiot. The Libyan Al Qaeda are responsible for the riots and killings. from Michelle


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FOOD FOR THOUGHT - BITE! The Food Festival

May 17, 2017

Sonepat, Haryana. The holy grail of commercial food. NOT. From the ‘How I Met Your Mother’ Marshall Eriksen’s beautiful description of the first burger bite, to every single food advert we’ve ever seen, the delicious exotic food that we’ve always wanted has arrived here at JGU – the Biswamil food festival BITE! But in sullen contrast to the buzz of the evening, there are a few questions that arrive at casual introspection.

JGU Banner3


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Games, drumming, juggling, home improvements, cooking, comics, dogs, macs, music, etc.

Squall - probably of Scandinavian origin; akin to Old Norse skval: useless chatter (Merriam-Webster)
It's my goal to have the LONGEST blog pages around. Kind of.

Friday, April 4, 2008

First Post & GameStorm 10!

Games, drumming, juggling, home improvements, cooking, comics, dogs, macs, etc. What else do I do / like? it's likely to be talked about here.. I will rant, rave, ramble and hopefully not get in a rut.

My first topic will be GameStorm 10 - I attended Mar 28-30 in Vancouver, WA. For the first time, I dedicated an entire weekend to a gaming con; last weekend. I mean full on; I spent all three days there, not just one random day wondering around the con like a normally do. And, I was there most of the day, 10-12 hours Friday and Saturday, 8 hours Sunday. I decided to host a few games to guarantee certain games got to be played, and so that I had somewhat of a schedule. So what did I do / play? Actually, after running down the list, I played less games than I expected, but 3 of them were 4+ hours, so, I spent a lot of time gaming.

Munchkin Cthulu (
Munchkin card game, probably my 2nd favorite in the genre (Munchkin Fu being first).

Dragon Dice ( - this event I was hosting. We got two 3-player games in, rather than a 6 person game. After that, we ran off for a quick lunch, and I hit the game room looking for something to play, nothing planned.

War of the Ring (
My friend Dave (from a game group I regularly attend) was sitting in the back of the big game room patiently waiting an opponent. I had played it a year or so earlier, liked it, but hadn't felt I had the time to commit required to play it again. So, I figured it was a perfect opportunity to play again. I played Sauron's forces, and Dave managed to detroy the ring. I did take a few military victory points, but didn't always dedicate any hunt die, and lost the ring relatively quickly.

Power Grid - Benelux Expansion (
My friend Todd and I decided to put up a Power Grid game, and see who wanted to play, we got two players (a father and son pair) and played this version. I didn't do so well. After that, I went home - after day 1 of the con.

Panel on game design and life balance. The panel was not real informative, but it was amusing. I was mostly killing time until the Serenty RPG game.

Serenity RPG (
An adventure where I played the first-mate of a Firefly class ship . It was a rescue mission that went badly. But, we ended up saving the boy.

Formula De - Sepang (Circuit #32) (
We had a total of 4 players, 2 cars each, 2 lap race. One guy had to drop out 1/2 way through the 2nd lap. It was a good race.

There was a room playing Rock Band, and I was gonna go in, but we wanted to check out the room party first. I ended up not returning to play Rock Band.

Room Party! I went to a room party with the guys who wrote Never When - a d20 module to cross-over all the d20 Genres. (

Titan! (
This was another of my hosted events. I blocked 4 hours for the game, and we ended up playing 6 1/2 hours. I played with Dave (from War of the Ring) and Travis. 3 Player game, I ended up being eliminated first, but I did have superior growth. They both hit my Titan stack, and weakened it. That's how the game is played.

Anyway, there's my report of my experience at GameStorm. Hope you enjoyed it.


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Music Again!

Mon 12 January 2009 by Jim Purbrick

Since moving to Brighton 18 months ago I’ve been pretty busy finding my feet, moving house twice, sorting out schools and setting up Linden Lab Brighton, so I haven’t had as much time to make music as I’d have liked. It hasn’t helped that my brother Roo, who collaborated with me on Vanishing Trick has gone from being a medical student to an opthalmologist, so has been pretty busy too.

I’ve still been reading create digital music though, so couldn’t resist buying Luke a copy of Korg DS-10 for his birthday just before Christmas. It’s a great piece of software that reminds me a lot of ReBirth (which is now free!) — the same infectious acid sounds and a fun interface that you can’t resist tweaking. Within hours Luke was coming up with screaming synth noises that would have made the Chemical Brothers proud, so I told him that when he had a track finished we could record it on to the computer, add some more sounds and make a CD.

30 minutes later I had Luke to thank for finally convincing me to unpack my bag of midi and audio cables for the first time since we rolled up in Brighton. While adding bits to Lukes DS-10 and Electroplankton creations, I took the opportunity to finally play around with Ableton Live properly and was completely bowled over. It’s one of those pieces of software that as a software engineer you can’t help admiring. It makes you want to use it and turns the complex process of sequencing and producing music in to joyful fun. I’d been a Cubase user for 10 years, but I’m not going back.

Over Christmas I put together a Live rig that lets me use my ancient Yamaha MFC05 MIDI controller to switch between drum beats, record guitar loops and automatically switch between effects settings without touching the computer. With some tweaking I’m going to get it to do the same for my Nord Modular and switch patches on both the Nord and my POD allowing me to quickly record, compose, arrange and perform music from 5 foot pedals. I’ve also got ITM set up on my iPhone which I’m planning to mount on my guitar giving me a wireless X/Y touchpad that can control any number of Ableton parameters.

I also finally got round to playing around with circuit bending for the first time. Last Christmas Roo got me a reissue Stylophone, which is a fun toy, but whenever I read about circuit bending online I kept thinking it would be fun to try connecting the headphone output of the stylophone to the MP3 input. In the end it only took an hour or so of poking around inside the Stylophone while telling Luke about electronics to find some bend points that turn the mild mannered Stylophone in to a wailing banshee of feedback distortion that’s more Hendrix than Harris. The modded Stylophone is shown below and I’ve added annotations to a picture of the opened up Stylophone on Flickr that shows the points that I connected. If you’d like to hear the evil sounds it makes there are a selection of Creative Commons licensed samples on Freesound, but I advise turning the volume down and using headphones if you give them a listen.

Bent Stylophone

It’s great to be having fun making music again. Thanks Luke and Roo!

[Bent Stylophone]: “Bent Stylophone by Jim Purbrick, on Flickr”

Fork me on GitHub


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That ‘vagrant’ is an award-winning journalist

BuzzFeed’s Benny Johnson did a piece this week that included a photo of a man identified as a “vagrant lurker.” Johnson didn’t know that his vagrant was longtime Denver journalist Mike Littwin. After getting that news, the BuzzFeed writer changed his headline to “3. Make sure the reporter in the shot looks the part.”

I asked Littwin how he reacted to the error. “I told them they would hear from my public defender,” the onetime Denver Post columnist jokes. “Benny was apologetic.” A correction was added to the end of the piece this morning.

* “He’s not a vagrant lurker. He’s a journalist, which is American for badly dressed, semi-shaven, overly educated, poorly paid, observant… lurker” (
* BuzzFeed goes too far in calling Littwin a vagrant (


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Saturday, October 25, 2014

M3 - Pediatrics and Med-Peds

loved love Pediatrics.

After 8 weeks in Pediatrics (4 inpatient at the children's hospital, 4 in specialty/outpatient settings), I can safely say that I love pediatrics. Kids are awesome to take care of; they are (for the most part) really resilient, and are tons of fun to interact with when you can distract them from the reason they're at the visit / in the hospital. I love teaching, and (as I've said a million times when explaining to people the myriad reasons why I like Peds) nobody wants to know more details about a medical condition than the patient's parents. So far, I've found that (with very few exceptions) as long as you communicate well and efficiently, most parents are awesome to interact with. Sure, most parents have done everything they can to educate themselves, and sometimes this results in preconceptions that aren't entirely on base, for the most part the parents are incredibly appreciative of the fact that you are there to help their child.

I liked both inpatient (ie admitted to the hospital) and outpatient (pediatric clinic) settings. It seems really cool to be able to establish relationships with kids right from the time they're 2 days old and 8lbs heavy all the way to their 18th birthday. It's also awesome to see a kid come in to the hospital as sick as he's ever been, then see him walk home with his parents four days later because of the care he received from your team. Plus, I get to help a team of people solve problems! Sometimes they're more complex than other times, and thus sometimes easy, sometimes hard. Regardless, it's interesting; no two patients are the same, regardless how easy or hard their management is. You need to use different communication styles, different familial considerations, etc.

I wasn't expecting Peds to wow me like it did. I was expecting to enjoy it, but that's simply because I hadn't had any experience in Peds before. I wasn't expecting to love it because I didn't really know what Peds was. After 8 weeks, I don't really know how I could pursue a career that doesn't involve taking care of kids. Not to mention the fact that it would be cool to always know what's going on with my own, future kids... That would be cool too.

The thing is, I can tell that a lot of what I've enjoyed about Peds (longitudinal relationships, seeing a sick patient go home healthy, educating people about medical conditions, changing my communication and interaction to fit the needs of each patient situation) will translate to Internal Medicine (IM), which is my next rotation. Over the next 8 weeks, I will be assessing whether or not I enjoy IM as much as I've enjoyed Peds. I will need to decide whether or not I will need to take care of adults as well as kids in my future career. If I can't part with either...

Enter Med-Peds. According to the joking comments of a few Peds and IM residents I've talked to, it's the specialty for "people who couldn't make their mind up, so decided to do everything." Normally, IM and Peds residencies are a total of 3 years. With Med-Peds (a relatively new specialty), you have a 4-year residency in which you have two years each of Pediatrics and Internal Medicine. You rotate through alternating 3-month segments of Internal Medicine and Pediatrics so that at the end of 4 years, half your time was in Peds and half was in IM. This means that you essentially have 1 less year in each specialty to learn what you'll need to know to practice. You also get double-board certified at the end, sitting for the licensing exams for both Internal Medicine and Pediatrics. Despite the decreased time, you learn both IM and Peds in-depth. As one resident put it, they're the people you go to "if you want to know anything." The thing is, I love learning the details; it helps things stick in my head if I know the "why" behind the "what." I was always the person in second year as we began truly learning about pathophysiology who was constantly wondering, "Yeah, but what's the mechanism?" then going home, looking it up, and learning it to help me remember the particular condition or association at hand. That type of mentality is fostered in Med-Peds.

And so, that's the update for my current thoughts on a future career. There's still a lot of figuring out to do, but it's much more defined than back when I thought I wanted to do Emergency Medicine. Third year is definitely serving its purpose for me. I think I could be happy doing many different jobs in healthcare, but I've been learning that happiness is not all there is to the equation. It's also about what I and my individual skills can bring to the team - how I can best serve my patients - as well as how well the specialty fits you and you fit the specialty. Personal satisfaction plays a huge role in this decision-making process (how can I best help my patient if I'm not engaged enough to be sufficiently  up on their care?), but personal "fit" plays a huge part as well.

All right, it's currently my Saturday off (took the Peds shelf exam yesterday), and half-time is now over for the Michigan State University vs. University of Michigan football game. So, time to go.

Wish me luck over the next several weeks in Internal Med!

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dandee designs

Tuesday, April 19, 2011
have you heard of dandee??
her blog makes my "top ten most amazing blogs" list
and she is one of the sweetest, prettiest, craftiest ladies. ever.
plus, she is wonder woman with
her five adorable little kiddo's.

so, to say that i am incredibly excited about today's trade
would be an understatement.

danyelle is trading her miniature memory game
{retail $10.00}
with you lovely trading post readers!!
how awesome is that?!?

this mini memory game can be tucked safely away in your purse
and quickly pulled out when quick entertainment is needed!
{think: doctor's appointments, airplane/car rides, etc...}

plus, just as dandee says,
"everything is more fun when it comes in a teeny tiny version!"

to trade with danyelle of dandee designs,
all you need to do is leave a comment here, at the trading post,
with the following: {it's as easy as 123!}

1.  your name and email address
2. a link to your etsy shop or blog
**if you love to craft but don't have a "professional" shop open,
remember you are still eligible to trade!  just take a picture of your
creation and put it on your blog.  if you don't blog, email me the pic.**
3. details of your item that you wish to trade

**remember, trading is now open for ONE week! hooray!**
at the end of tuesday, april 26th,
danyelle will go through each of your comments
and choose who she would like to trade with.
i will be in touch with those who are chosen! :)

happy trading!!

p.s. you can still trade with
carrie of the big brown house here--last day!!
and erin of plush studio here!

theolivetree said...

christina. www.theolivetreeboutique.etsy.com
We can trade for cost value of your choice :) p.s. my shop is bare now but I will have a TON of new headbands & styles by the end of the week


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Wednesday, 26 December 2012

Punjab Roadyways Recruitment Notifications 2013 -Conductor / Driver |online Apply |

Punjab Roadyways Recruitment Notification 2013 - online Apply

Official Site :- Application Form 2013

PUNBUS Application Form For Conductor / Driver jobs 2013

Name of Post :- Punjab Roadyways Govt jobs 2013

1. Conductor

2. Roadways Driver

Online Apply :- If Perfect For your Education and wanna to Apply online Application Form For this Exam/jobs. Please Read Full Advertisement and
Notification About the Exam. Then If you r agree and Perfect For you so visit below online Apply link and Apply For the online job/Exam. B Carefare don't do mistake..!!  Gud Luck :)

Punjab Roadyways Invites Application Form for various Post 2013

Notification About:-  Punjab Roadyways Govt jobs 2013 !!!!

How to Apply Offline :- For More Detail please visit below link and downlaod Advertisement of Punjab Roadyways Mohali, Punjab From Official site of Punjab Roadyways Mohali, Punjab and Submit your online Application form and Document carefully.

To Apply for this post Before last date 20 january 2013

Punjab Roadyways Recruitment 2013 of Conductor / Driver jobs

Age Limit :- B/w 19 to 34 years

Education :- 10th ,12th / permanent License

Total No. of Post :- 1000 vacancy / 500 Each

last Date :- 20 january 2013

Fees :- INR Rs draft

Salary :- INR Rs - 14200 with grade pay

More Sarkari Jobs 2013 :-  GO Find here !!!!

Selection process :- Exam /Interview
For Conductor Apply :-
For Driver Apply :-