Sporadic Updates: COMMENCE.

No real schedule here, I'll just be updating when I feel I have something to say. At least once a week, for sure, but whenever something noteworthy happens.

So: I got the radio job. At least, I'm 99.9% of the way towards getting it. I made a demo tape, which Harry decided he liked the sound of, so he gave me a multiple choice: Did I want to start Saturday, Sunday, Monday, or today? Of course, I chose today. This is why, after I write this, I'm going to take a nap. I only got five or so hours of sleep, and I do not want to fall asleep in the middle of my first shift. Even if it is just a sort of mock-shift, this is important.

Harry said I needed to inject more enthusiasm into my voice, which is probably true. He did add, though, that in all other aspects I was doing quite well, and that in the actual studio (as opposed to merely the recording room, which is boring) the odds were pretty good that I would be inspired to greater heights of, er, enthusiasm. I hate to repeat a word, but "fervor" doesn't really apply and I'm too lazy and tired to go to thesaurus.com. That seems kind of like cheating, anyway.

My first shift will only be an hour, from 2:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m., and there'll be another DJ (jock) in the studio with me. Sorry, but to the best of my knowledge there is no online simulcast through which the folks in Wellington might listen. I looked all over the website ( http://www.rock104.com if you want to try yourself), and found nothing. But it's not going to be that interesting, anyway. I'll only speak on-air twice or three times total, and those times are generally just going to be me promoting the next song we're playing or reminding everyone that yes, they're still listening to Rock 104, in case they thought their radios had gone schizophrenic on them and randomly switched them to NPR when they weren't watching. I'll probably stumble through all of them. But hey, that's why I'm doing this at 2 in the morning - not that many people to hear me screw it up.

Rachel informed me that she just wants to be friends. I get the feeling that, though she gave me what even my jaded mind considers to be a fairly good reason, it was my personality. Oh well. Plenty of fish in the sea and all that sort of thing. I'd be more bummed, but we hadn't even been going out for two freaking weeks yet. So no big downer there. I'm just glad she came to this realization now and not, say, three months from now after emotional investments had already been dug in deep. Saved both of us a lot of trouble.

I'm going to make a new D&D campaign, to the approximately one of you out there I haven't told this to yet. It's going to put the players, 6th level, inside a massive castle that formerly belonged to an ally of theirs but has since been taken over by an evil king, his crazy powerful bodyguard, and his legions of cannon-fodder troops. Stealth and subterfuge will be the order of the day. Though the guards will mostly be 1st-2nd level mooks who drop like flies to any kind of attack from the main characters, there will be higher-level sergeants and captains to put the hurt on...and if the players get too uppity, the king's bodyguard, a 19th-level monk, will put a stop to that nonsense.

Here are the tricks that will make this better than any dungeon I've ever run:

- I'm mapping out the whole dungeon. Six floors and a basement, and I'll detail every room, every floor, every secret passage, every everything. With the help of the Dungeon Master's Guide and the Stronghold Builder's Guide that I serendipitously purchased on a whim some years back, I will construct an epic castle of awesome, drawing it all out on engineering paper and making detailed blueprints. The players will have access to these, it being mostly their home turf - the enemies will not, they having just taken the place and not found everything yet.
- But the enemies are not stupid. If, say, the PCs decide to book it and run into a secret passage, and an enemy watches them go, all of a sudden, that secret passage ain't so secret anymore. I plan to draw an enemy version of the blueprints, much more sparse than the main one, and update it as we play whenever the enemy finds out a secret that they previously had not. And they might anyway, because...
- I'm keeping track of days, and time of day. The first time the enemy figures out something is going on, sees a dead body or whatnot, a timer will start, and a certain number of days later, reinforcements will arrive in the castle. These may or may not include more soldiers, enemy rogues and spies, nonhuman assailants, etc. Also, in terms of secret passages, there will be a very, very small but slowly increasing chance of the soldiers accidentally finding the secret passages independently of the players. (They are combing the place, you know, looking for the players.) Keeping track of days will be additionally important, because...
- I'm also keeping track of supplies. Creating water is no problem, as long as the party has a cleric (hint: they'd better have a cleric), but I'm ruling that magically created food doesn't nourish. They'll have to go on supply runs from the various storerooms located throughout the castle, or suffer successively increasing penalties to their, well, everything, due to hunger pangs. This won't be too hard, but it'll be something they have to consider. I'm ignoring bathroom breaks, though. There is such a thing as too much realism, and that's about where it starts.
- I'm not using pre-generated stats and creatures from the Monster Manual for the soldiers. I'm rolling them up manually. That's right, I'm sending PCs at you. Mwahahaha. Taste of your own medicine, chumps. I'm not going to roll up each and every soldier, but there'll be a "mook" template, "slightly better mook" template, "sergeant" template, "captain" template, and so on and so forth. This is just one of those reasons why open combat is somewhat discouraged in this particular campaign.

I'll be giving the players objectives they can follow, rescue the captured royalty and secure weapons caches and suchlike, but they can feel free to ignore that and see if they can boot out the invading army without my help. It'll be tougher, but I won't discount ingenious plans. Obviously, killing the enemy king will be a free pass to win the campaign, but with his bodyguard, that will take some insane amount of doing. Be aware, though, that if you do things right, you'll never have to fight the bodyguard...(No more hints.)

Oh, and we were having this conversation: I accept and understand the use of Bluff checks to get past the guards. The mooks aren't going to be very bright. If you encounter a door and a surly guard points a spear at you and says "Who goes there?", there's the perfect time to use Bluff. If a bunch of guards, hurrying towards a strange noise, runs smack into your group, a quick "They went that way! Hurry, they're getting away!" is what Bluff was made for. But as soon as an enemy actually draws his weapon and attacks you, Bluff checks go bye-bye. I don't care what the rules say. No soldier in the world is going to be listening to what his enemy says as he is charging at said enemy at swordpoint. You can Intimidate until the cows come home, but when combat begins, Bluff checks end. To disprove this, name me one single thing you can say to an attacking soldier, who knows that you are in fact the enemy, that will successfully bluff him into not attacking you. I'll wait.

Remember that play I wrote? After a bunch of minor edits, I performed it in class, and my teacher thought it was such a hit, he wanted me to go on stage and perform it in front of an actual audience at an actual theater, after his presentation of "An Evening with Harold Pinter." Hoo boy. Kind of nervous, but really really excited. It'll be on Sunday, March 22, for anyone who wants to come and watch it. I haven't thought of a name for it...maybe y'all can inspire me?

So that's it. The Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day is...um...it's around here somewhere...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2491LucLa1g That'll do. Mitch Hedberg always gets laughs. Always. Watch him and be hilarity-ized.

REPLIES.

Mike: Why did I decide on a schedule? Because otherwise I wouldn't have started doing it with any regularity. And I know about the whole "things fall apart" mental thing, trust me, that's most of my mental processes right there.

Steve: I'm working on a new schedule. Monday nights are tricky, as I have 7:00-10:00 class and then the gym right afterwards. I'm really not interested in that list, but I can't stop you (plus you've already posted it), so whatever.

Mom: I think I can work something out. I'll have some kind of schedule, never fear, even if it is a random and chaotic one. As for the play, well, I already answered that.

Steve: I don't see any meat there. Where is the meat? I can't live without meat. I am not a vegetarian. I demand meat every single day. Red meat. Dripping with meaty goodness. If that'll give me a heart attack when I'm forty, so be it, because I don't want to live an extra twenty years if all I have to look forward to is bran and hemp milk.

And what's the hubbub about being organic? Every kind of food is organic. If you eat it, I'm pretty sure it's organic. I rarely find myself eating inorganic material. The time does not often roll around where I munch on the plastic wrapping instead of the Doritos, or forsake a turkey sandwich to gnaw on some pebbles.

Karen: 300 words is about half a page, single-spaced. I was writing three, four, even five-page entries, three times a week. I can hack 300 words on pretty much any subject I have even the vaguest idea about, but 3,000? Difficult. I realize there's more interesting in my life than I think there is, but not a lot inspires me to write, and me trying to write when I don't feel I have anything good to write about is like me trying to jog through an Olympic swimming pool filled with peanut butter. I could probably, eventually, technically make it, but it would take way too much effort and I would be exhausted at the end. And like Dad said, there's a difference between my job, which is central in importance, and my hobby, which shares space with all my other hobbies. I realize I am sounding whiny. I often do this. It is a trait of my personality, at times.

Steve: Einstein? I don't get it.

Dad: Pretty much. Running is getting easier...I plan to try three miles tomorrow. See how that goes. I think I can do it - I made two miles without even getting seriously winded. This is getting easier all the time. And it sounds kind of silly when you put it that way...

Da Ann'd.