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connorzaft · 7 years

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Night Strolls

I wrote out something real nice and then my computer died. (Thanks Apple...)

It’s too late. I have to go to bed. But I need to talk about Jeremy Corbyn. This is a first draft at what I’ll attack tomorrow night.

But tomorrow night I won’t get to say this:

Jeremy Corbyn won last night. No, Labour doesn’t have power yet, but in the face of the constant opposition, gain was made, The Conservative credibility was wrecked, and we could very well see a true socialist in 10 Downing Street come Fall.

I want to talk about Corbyn, about the left in its contemporary context, and about the future.

I want to talk about cynicism and holding people to their promises.

I want to talk about the clashes not just against conservatives and neoliberals, but within the far left itself. I want to talk about growing up in the anti-war movement in the mid-2000′s.

I want to talk about the future: about where we go from here. About what to do with this win, and about how waking up at 7am for me is god awful and for many of my friends it constituets sleeping in. I want to talk about how to get the world to sleep in.

But now I have to go to sleep.

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connorzaft · 8 years

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Done by Noel'le Longhaul at Charon Art in Turner’s Falls, MA.

http://laughingloone.tumblr.com

http://instagram.com/laughingloone

http://facebook.com/noellelonghaulart

http://loone.bandcamp.com

http://noellelonghaul.com

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connorzaft · 8 years

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How Louis C.K. Effectively Uses Non-Verbal Means to Communicate What’s Happening in a Scene

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connorzaft · 8 years

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“Bionicle commercial = Classic”- Steven Hawking

The Beatles: Not a single song in a Bionicle commercial

The All American Rejects: Has a song in a Bionicle commercial

pretty clear to me who comes out on top…

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connorzaft · 8 years

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Leilani Bustamante - Diabolica

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connorzaft · 8 years

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Missilemage's Player Corner: Character Concept

Hey folks, Missilemage here. Decided I would switch things up and speak from the player’s perspective for today and see how it goes.

Today we will be discussing Character Concept, which is something I hold very dear to heart. It determines a lot about character build, actions in game, alignment, interactions with other people, and battle tactics. So let’s get into it.

I’m going to add a disclaimer on this one and say there is no right or wrong way to create a character concept. Some people do it completely differently than I am about to show, and that’s awesome. I am merely putting together a toolset for players who want to use it. I’m now going to walk through a character creation process as I do it.

Step 1: General Idea This one sounds like the whole process, but what do you want to play? What role do you want to fill? Martial, Technical, Arcane, Divine. These words, or combinations of them, describe just about every character class in the game. Martial pretty well covers your fighters and barbarians. Technical are Rogues and other skilled classed. An example of combined types would be Arcane Technical, the Bard. Or Martial Divine, the Paladin or Warpriest. I want to play an Arcane Martial character, because magic and melee is awesome. Magus is the class that fits that best, so we go from there.

Step 2: Racial Considerations What species is this Magus? Well, we can sit and talk about optimum stats, racial boons, etc. But I like story. More specifically, I like an odd story. Elves are stereotypically magical and swordy. Humans can do anything, they’re known for it. Gnomes? Also known for wierd. But Dwarves… dwarven cultures shun the unusual. Dwarven Magus it is. Stat-wise, its not impossible to work. Gives good Con and Wis to supplement areas your stats wont focus on.

Step 3: WHY Now you know what you are playing. Let’s figure out why. We have a Dwarf. Who has been trained in wizardry to some extent. But also martial combat. How did this happen? Well, In my head, his parents sent him off to a reputable wizard tower in a nearby surface city, to train as an apprentice. Spending several years there, he learned the arcane arts from this wizard and gree to respect his power and teaching methods. Eventually, the gruff old wizard and the gruff young dwarf became good friends. Until one day, the apprentice was sent out for components. And when he returned, his master was dead, knife wound in his back.

He took what notes he could and fled, getting the local guards to investigate. But they would not give chase, citing too much danger in going after known assassins without the proper funding. So the young dwarf sought out a new teacher… a combat master within the city. One who could teach him the spear, an easy to master weapon, so he could hunt down his master’s killer himself. Combining this with his magic, he became a deadly Magus. And sought out adventuring work to work up the coin for the investigation.

Step 4: Alignment The class we picked has no restrictions, so looking at his backstory, we can safely say he’s not evil. He doesn’t have a reason do be, and even his master’s death isn’t going to break a dwarfs willpower that far. Dwarves have a tendency towards Lawful, and he showed that by first going to the proper authorities of the land. But, he’s not neccessarily Good. He’s never shown a penchant for doing the morally superior thing, especially when it’s the harder thing to do. He’s trained by a wizard, who have stereotypically neutralist views of the universe. I’m gonna call him out at Lawful Neutral.

Step 5: Final Considerations The Dwarven Magus should select early level spells based on his training with the wizard, and all others based on finding, protection from and combating assasin types and humanoids. Skill selections should reflect information gathering and survival, perception being key. Feats are likely spent on things like arcane strike and other melee augments.

Well, that got out of hand. I was hoping to show you guys my creative process for making a character when I have no idea what to play. I came up with this character as I was writing this post, feel free to steal him for your own use either as a player character or as a hardened older NPC still trying to find the killer. However you see fit.

I hope you all enjoyed this foray into the Player side of things, if you liked it, leave a comment below and tell me if there’s something you’d like to see next week. Depending on how well this does I might do some more Player Corners in the future. Thnaks again for reading and as always, Happy Gaming!

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connorzaft · 8 years

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Hey I'm a starting pathfinder dm, I was wondering if you had any tips for preparation of a session. And any other useful things you've learned since you've started that can help everything run smoothly without having to stop to look something up.

First off, kudos for stepping up and becoming a Game Master. It’s a tough and often draining job, but it’s ultimately the most rewarding. In my honest opinion, it’s one of those anyone-can-do-it-but-no-one-wants-to roles for tabletop gaming, and the people that do step up on their own volition are the ones that make these games worthwhile. Good luck!

With that, here are some tips to make running a game more effective and fun, for yourself and for your players. These were gathered from my own personal experiences running games for the past few years, so your mileage may vary.

Know the Rules

This is fairly obvious, but it needs to be emphasized. Know how the basic rules of your system work, so you aren’t looking things up for every single action your players perform, or seemingly making it up as you go along.

The players are expected to know at least how their own characters work, so therefore as a GM you need to know how these various rules interact with one one another at an even higher level. The players, if they are new, will be asking you for clarifications as well, so be sure that you know more than the average player.

At an absolute bare minimum, understand how combat and skills work. The rest are fairly simple and intuitive, and often build upon those two.

Minimize the Clutter

You could have a copy of the Core Rulebook, Ultimate Combat, Ultimate Magic, Game Master Guide, NPC Codex, and all other sorts of references on your side of the table, but that’s only going to take up space at best and slow your game down to a crawl at worst.

So my first bit of advice is keep only what you need in front of you. If you don’t mind the ink cost, you could always print out some simplified reference documents for you to quickly skim over during interludes. I’d recommend a simple packet of 5-8 pages. At minimum, you need a basic plan for what this session will cover; have an idea for what will happen, why it happens, who is involved, and where and when it takes place.

The rest of these papers include, but are not limited to: maps of relevant areas; enemy, hazard, and NPC references for general encounters; and tables with pre-written character, place, and object names for when you need to stall, improvise, or embellish. If you are inexperienced with improvisation, some pre-generated flavor text and dialogue could be useful as well. And lastly, have some scratch paper to take notes, in order to track things like the passage of time, and other noteworthy events and information. If you are playing a heavily tactical game, it also helps to have graph paper on-hand.

Tools of the Trade

If I had to run a game with the fewest items possible, I would be able to “reduce” it to this set.

Pathfinder Game Master’s Shield

Pathfinder Combat Pad and Initiative Tracker

Chessex Matt Roleplaying Double-sided Battlemat (Large/Medium) and Wet Erase Markers

Pathfinder Pawns: Bestiary 1 Box

Aforementioned Notes Packet

Smartphone

For looking up specific rules and edge-cases

playing ambient music (Youtube, Pandora, or personal playlist)

My Dice (of course)

I go more in-depth with my extensive GM equipment in this post.

Alternatively, you could take the game online and get an account on Roll20, which has a digital version of everything I just mentioned and much, much more. It’s free for a simple subscription, but to unlock its true potential you could also pay a reasonable monthly/yearly fee.

Allow Yourself to Fail

Not every decision has to be perfect. No one is expecting you to have an eidetic memory and be able to recite a specific rule from literally hundreds of thousands of lines of text.

Sometimes, you need to make a decision quickly, even if it’s not strictly by the book. As long as it makes sense and it is fair, it’s better off just to wing it and move on. If later on, you realize that it was a terrible decision, make it clear to your players and either ret-con or reestablish the proper ruling from henceforth. And if you make mistakes, it’s not the end of the world. As long as you learn from them, and improve your craft, you’ll eventually get the hang of it. And in time, you will develop your own style that will surely enrapture the players at your table.

I hope that your first couple of games are a blast! ;) And if you found this helpful, and would like to know more, let me know! GAME ON!

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connorzaft · 8 years

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Finishes an episode of Jessica Jones

*smashes glass*

ANOTHER

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connorzaft · 8 years

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Working with teenagers...

me thinking I’ve made a breakthrough…

them…

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connorzaft · 8 years

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1964 Archival Footage of British Soldiers Under the Effects of LSD Losing the Ability to Properly Function

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connorzaft · 9 years

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Titus Andronicus at The Crocodile, Seattle WA

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connorzaft · 9 years

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Israeli soldiers intentionally fired at civilians during the attack on Gaza

The July offensive perpetrated by the Israeli Defence Forces on Gaza, also known as Operation “Protective Edge”, was responsible for the death of nearly 2220 Gazans over the course of 48 days, with almost 70%-75% having been civilians, and a majority of the civilian deaths being children.

10 months after the conflict, a 237 page report has been released by Breaking the Silence, an Israel-based NGO dedicated to attaining and utilizing the testimonies of Israeli soldiers to document cases of abuse, misconduct and crime.

The 237 page report details recounts of IDF soldiers in which they were ordered to ‘fire at every person you see’. The report elaborates that civilian areas were purposely targeted with weapons known to be lacking accuracy.

The report spans over the course of 8 months following the offensive, and includes testimonies from over 60 soldiers occupying navy, ground servicemen, and airforce major ranks.

The report asserts soldiers were expected to kill any person they could see in the combat zone.

One testimony explains that the only instructions given to the IDF forces was to not fire at IDF personnel. “From the very start they told us, ‘Shoot to kill.’ As far as the IDF was concerned, there wasn’t supposed to be any civilian population there.”

The report also details the falsified claims of the IDF regarding the “missile-drop” policy. The missile-drop policy is a “warning” given by the IDF that consists of dropping a small missile into a building that is being targeted so that civilians can leave the building in a timely fashion. Israeli military claims that this policy ensures that civilian deaths are minimized, but testimony from a solider explains that there is rarely enough time given for civilians to get away from the building. When asked how much time, the soldier replied: “Not enough time for everyone to leave. Somewhere between 30 seconds and one minute.”

The release of this report paints an entirely different narrative from the one explained by the IDF. The offence on Gaza was described by Israeli officials as a careful mission to ensure civilian casualties were avoided, and that only combatants were targeted. This report, and the testimonies from soldiers that perpetrated this offensive mission, contradicts this claim.

For the full report click HERE For more sources of information, as well as a timeline of the Op Protective Edge: [1] [2] [3] [4]

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connorzaft · 9 years

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The weapons and equipment of British warriors down the ages, from top to bottom;

Huscarl, 1066

Crusader knight, 1244

Longbowman, 1415

Yorkist Man-at-Arms, 1485

New Model Army musketeer 1645

Private, 1709

Corporal, 1815

Private, 1916

Lance Corporal, 1944

Private, 2014

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connorzaft · 9 years

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I hope the next sneeze kills me I can’t live this way

After 5 hours in front of a computer casting a show from nothing but headshots while simultaneously suffering from allergies... I feel this... all to well...

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connorzaft · 9 years

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Improv Everywhere Stages a Surprise Musical About Beer at a New York City Beer Hall

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connorzaft · 9 years

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Sooooo..... If I punched you in the face for saying something really obnoxious, illogical, and misogynistic, would it be your fault or mine?

Feminists say that if they walk around naked and get raped, it’s not their fault. Let me ask you this, if you owned a bank and left the doors wide open with no security and you got robbed in the middle of the night, is it the robbers fault or yours?

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connorzaft · 9 years

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NOOOOOOO

Here we go again...

AB-InBev approaches Cigar City Brewing about a buyout.

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