Bjornybear's Cave

OK, I already mentioned the river trip I am going on.  Tomorrow at the crack of dawn we are heading out, and I will not be around any computers until next Saturday.   I just got back from getting packed up, and I’m ready to go.  Now the only trick is getting me up at 5:00 in the morning. . .  I better turn my alarm on loud. . .

And for your viewing enjoyment I got permission from my uncle to put this video up of the last trip.  I believe this is Joe Hutch Rapid Sorry this is not in a streaming format, I just copied the file.

OK to start of with my Uncle is crazy, but I guess I have to love him for it.  He just went on a river trip with most of his family and their kids down desolation canyon.  A 6 day trip.  They just got in on Friday, and I went over to Green River as part of the van caravan to pick them up.   The deal is that he is going to take us next week.  I will actually be posting some decent pictures and perhaps a short video camera allowing. 

Anyway while we where there I went down the last few miles on an tube.  I got dumped out once on the biggest rapid of that section, but other than that it was rather mild.  I did get friction burns on my upper arms where I was paddling and it rubbed against the tube.   It’s what I get for trying to keep up with oar boats on a tube.  I got some sun, and only very mild sunburns where my shirt didn’t quite meet my shorts.  (affectionately called the plumber-burn.)  They have been much worse in the past.

Anyway it was fun even though I spent most of the day driving, and or unpacking everybody elses boats.  I’m getting excited for the trip  because I have not done this full trip since I was a teenager.  We’ve gone camping at the bottom almost every year to where we where, but we never go all the way up and ride down for the entire distance.

It has also reminded me how tiring the whole ordeal is, It’s been 2 days, and I’m still a little sore from my hour or so floating on the tube.  Multiply one hour to 6 days. . . I’m gonna be tired.

Anyway I’ve been looking forward to playing Champions Online ever since it was announced.

For those of you who don’t know what that is check this site out!  http://champions-online.com/

This MMORPG is based on the Roleplaying game Champions, which is the most flexible gaming system I have yet seen.  (And therefor very high on my favorites list.)   Anyway for this project, Cryptic Studios bought the Intellectual Property for Champions, with the understanding that Hero Games would have the right to continue to use it to put out a new edition of the RPG in tandem with the MMO.  A brilliant move in my mind on both accounts, it give a lot of cross merchandisingability, and gives both companies exposure to the other’s fan base.

Here is where it gets tricky. . . a while back The project switched Distributors on account of Cryptic being bought by Atari.  Well Atari is simply the computer game division of Hasbro.  Hasbro also owns Wizards of the Coast, who publishes D&D.  They have had a long Track record of tanking gaming acquisitions trying to maintain the near monopoly of D&D in the Roleplaying industry.  So as far as I can tell Hasbro technically owns the Intellectual Property of Champions.

Now the contract with Cryptic for a 6th edition of Champions is still valid, but I worry.  . . Will it be the last?  or even potentially worse, will the next version of Champions be a mutated hybrid of D&D and our beloved RPG?

I suppose only time will tell.

Last week as we all know was the 4th of July.  (I know I really should have been writing this last week, but nobody ever accused me of not being a procrastinator. . .)   We celebrated it with my family on the 3rd.  Anyway as part of the festivities we had the usual. BBQ well my trigger lighter was borrowed, and then giving back to me, and I began to play with it. . . well I pointed it at the back of my cousin’s head  (who was about a foot away) and pulled the trigger.  Well 2 things happened at once, she stood up straight (she was leaning over the counter getting the lettuce ready if I remember correctly) Bringing her to about 5-6 inches away instead, and the lighter sent out a gush of flame that made the rest of the distance!  There was a gush of flame, the horrible smell, and some singed hair.   Luckily I was able to swat it out, and you could barely tell if you knew what to look for.  Still I must say she took it like a trooper.  If it was my sister she would have hit me. . . a LOT!  Not that she doesn’t do it anyway.  *

 Anyway the rest of the night I was banned from using the lighter.  Kinda a pain considering I had to light all of the fireworks.  Thank goodness for pucks! 

* Note this does not have anything to do with her inherent violence, (of which I shall not make a comment), but rather that I am known as a very hittable guy.  It’s like there is a target on my gut that says HIT ME!  It might have something to do with my bratty tendencies.

I was doing a bit of reading, and want to make a correction. . .

penalties do stack, but only so long as it is not from the same source or power.  So only one mask would come into effect, and while it is very nice, that takes the cheese away.

I just had the most horrifyingly evil idea, as I was coming up with ideas for my character going through Dragonlance.   We’re playing in 4th edition D&D, and my character is a Control Wizard who just leveled up to 10′th level.  My character implement mastery is the Orb of Imposition.  I also have a skull Mask, and have recently traded in most of my loot for Arcane Components.  ( about 8000 steel’s (gold) worth).

So what is the point of all this?  I was going to retrain on level up my Mordenkainen’s sword for Fire wall on account of being underwhelmed by it’s lack of effectiveness.  I was looking through my options, and saw Face of Death though another level 9 daily power.  I had passed it up earlier, but some things just sunk in to me.

1)  It immobilized save end regardless of if I hit or miss.

2) if I hit and they miss the first save they are helpless.  This means autocrit for everybody, and no fighting back from the bad guys.

3) my orb tags on a -4 to save penalty to an effect once per encounter.

4) the skull mask tags on another -2 to save vs fear to any enemy who can see me.

5)  that’s -6 to save soon to be -8 when I level up again, on account of my next feat I am choosing.

6) you need to roll a 10 or better to save, so at that the enemy will need a 16 to save ( soon to be an 18)

7) the skull mask costs 1000 gold/steel worth of arcane components to make a new one.

8)  I can make 5 more easily.

9) I can give them to my party for a net -10 more to the save.

10) It will then require a natural 20 to save against the effect.  -16 to save, target 10 on a d20  20 -16 = 4 even solo’s with a +4 to save will only have the chance of getting an 8.  Fortunately for them a natural 20 always saves.

11) Any monster I hit with that power is a goner, any I miss isn’t going anywhere for a while anyway.

12) Anybody not familiar with 4th edition D&D is likely to wonder what the heck the point of all this is.  I’ll tell you:  Twinkies, and Cheese with a side of Munchkin.

Back in December for Christmas I was struggling on what to get my father for christmas.  He’s already got pretty much everything.  I eventually decided to get him a nice scuplture of a pig.  The catch was I was going to make it myself, and that I was not going to be able to get it done by christmas.  So I made a quick proof, and that was cute, so I started making the whole sculpture, with the idea that it would be done for his birthday. . .  Well his birthday is here, and this is as far as I’ve gotten:

As you can see It ain’t bronze yet like I had hoped. . . but it is comming along nicely now that I’ve got a fire on me to get it done.  Oh well happy belated birtday and Christmas Dad.

Looks like I had my first comment.  It appears that the post that was suppedly just kidding, was in fact correct. . . that’s why we call him the waydinado.

Anyway work today was kinda frustrating on account of  people piling up things for me to email them back about, then getting a long call at the end of my shift.  So I had like 20 minutes of emails to write after I finally got of the phones.  On the bright side there was almost an hour of overtime, and 2 days off.

For those who don’t know I work tech support for a webhosting company.  In all honesty half the reason I have this blog is I keep having to support people putting this program on their websites, and I thought it would be helpfull to know more about it.  So far it’s been pretty fun, but not a lot of visitors as of yet.

Welcome to my blog, as you can see this is the first real post, no pictures yet.  A little about myself.  My name is Bjorn my name means bear, so the domain bjornybear is as me-centric as I can get without just registering a domain matching my exact name.

Anyway I registered this domain today, and set up this blog pretty much for the fun of it.  Down the road I’ll be posting pictures of a river trip I’ll be going on, post a few bits of journal, and whatever else that this blog evolves to.  Untill then welcome to the wide open expanse that is my cave.