DM Discretion

WARNING: The following post is entirely for my own benefit, I will not be stopping to define various insider terms.

I have an interesting problem. Gregory (Wiz: 3, Bard: 2, Fighter: 1, Warchanter (complete warrior) 1) is a GMPC who started out as a standard NE manipulative bastard wizard character. Through unforeseen consequences he became a GMPC in 'service' to the PCs, with the intent of using him as a betrayal trap. Then things conspired against me. A powergamer PC almost took a custom item of mine, "Potion of Reverse Personality." Note that this not only flips the characters alignment but is intended to be a true reversal, introverts become extroverts, schemers become helpful, etc. Since the powergamer character doesn't really have personality to be reversed (He's trying, but honestly it's not who he is. All of his characters are defined as Race, Class, Personality Flaw) I decided to intervene and have my GMPC take it. So he's no longer a betrayer.

The solution to this, being that my goal at the time was to kill off the GMPC, was a gradually growing madness because of his own transformation. I'd set it up pretty nicely too IMO. It would've taken place over the next few sessions, a gradual growing dependence on reassurances that he's "better" now that he's taken it, and either breaking down into a useless mass of conflicting emotions, or freaking out in a violent and magic assisted manner.

This got nuked too. The PC who was his leader got killed, the GMPC went into a frenzy and kicked everyones ass. The progression here, as I see it, is that his ambivalence towards his fallen leader dissolves, and he takes up his ideals, albeit with a bit more intelligence then the PC who had 10 less int then the GMPC.

This is all well and good, having a GMPC isn't horrible, but I have one issue. He's a bard/warchanter with a clear vision and purpose, and he has 18 charisma. In many ways my GMPC is a great leader character. Can a GMPC be the party leader? Isn't that a bit too much?

Keeping Track

Shlomo mentioned that I should keep track of my progress in some way, but I don't own any proper way of keeping track of these things.

That's why I'm using an improper way.

Recorded Wii Fitness ages, Week 1. 54, 29, 29, 31.

Average Age, week 1, 35.75

Gah.

Something weird is going on today. First of all its almost 80. It was highs in the 60s all last week.

Secondly, how are bugs that aren't gnats getting in here? I just made the mistake of crushing a stink bug in our living room. I didn't think we would get stink bugs. I'm also still holding out hope that a good freeze will kill off our gnats.

It's like summer came back for a day, and not in the good way.

Fighting It

There's a phrase I'd become attached to whenever we discussed health problems of any kind. It reflected the fact that I was in many ways screwed, so I didn't feel bad declaring my inevitable outcome in life to be "Diabeetus." (Die-uh-Bee-Tus)

Well things have changed. My outlook has changed, and in many ways my life is begining to change. Me and my new brain* aren't going to just sit here and die(abeetus) anymore. I've been pushing half heartedly to work more vegetables into my diet and less Kyoto Terriyaki take out, but I hadn't had much luck.

So I'm going on a variant of the subway diet known as the Safeway diet. The entire principle of the subway diet was that you have to walk to get food and after you walk there you get fairly healthy food. I live four-ish blocks from Safeway so it's not a major walk but I'm not making giant leaps here. I've already started stretching and doing 15 minutes of calisthenics every morning, at least every point beyond 6 a.m. at which I decide I'm going to stay awake, and I'd like to do more, and start eating breakfast regularly as well. The way I see it I'll get up, stretch, crunches etc, walk to Safeway buy fruit, walk back, eat fruit. I do intend to keep getting food on the go for lunch, but that's essentially always Subway food gotten in the middle of a long walk to class, so my plan of getting 500 subway points and getting my height in free sandwiches meshes nicely with my dietary concerns. My intention of eating my height in subway sandwiches in a single day isn't a healthy one, but that was never the point. After class it's a simple cross campus walk and a bus ride back up to a few blocks from Safeway, buy vegetable heavy dinner ingredients, and I'll solve the constant "What will we do for dinner" problem and the Diabeetus problem in one go.

I'd like to note that "What will we do for dinner" is usually more of a "What will Kevin and Adam do for Dinner." I need to setup some kind of system where we pool money for ingredients and I cook, but the nuances of my oddly housekeepery role will be discussed later. I'd like to think that the insincere strictly for the thrill of it bravado keeps me from actually being maternal but I'm not always so certain.

*Only James and I will understand this reference, don't worry.

Misc

-I've learned how to stop my sleep problems, but I need one solid night to work off my previous deprivations before I can really solve anything. I wish I'd worked this out closer to a Tuesday.

-Given my class schedule I should actually be going to bed and waking later then I am now. It's a problem that borders on being surreal. It's so far from what I'm used to that it feels like a trick of some kind.

-I have to decommission my velcro shoes, since apparently they're making my heels bleed. I'm shocked that they're doing that, but even more so by the fact that I wasn't the first one to notice that I had been cut up along my heel and was bleeding down my foot. Have I managed to numb my ankles or something?

-Several clothing related objectives have built up. 1. Find and go to post office to collect new shoes, 2. Head downtown to big & tall shop for a general resupply of everything but T-shirts. Thursday and... I guess I'll have to wait until Tuesday for the actual clothes shopping.

-Having weekend days free is amazingly useful, everything is open on weekdays, you can get so much more done.

-I need to read more to compensate for the general uselessness of my chem lectures.

-I gave Adam's friend my e-mail address because they needed CSE help, that was a week ago and I haven't heard a thing from them.

-Never GM two Table Top games at the same time ever again. GMing takes to much behind the scenes work, and between my schoolwork, my D&D campaign, and the D20 Modern thing I'm running the only free day I have left is Tuesday, which is gradually being filled with all of my side tasks.

-Both as a GM and as a player I'm getting increasingly fed up with powergamers. All of my best Table top RPG sessions have been about creative roleplay not getting significant numbers.

-Making your alignment Neutral Evil and then just being a dick does not count as roleplaying.

-I have a Chem test a week from today, time to begin studying.

Alpha / Beyond Good And Evil

I went through an interesting philosophical perspective shift almost exactly a week ago. Due to the complex series of metaphors that I use to describe myself, only Kevin could properly understand it if I phrased it the way that comes naturally to me, but I'm fairly certain I'll be able to get the point across, even if the exact nuance is lost on people who haven't been subjected to my introspective(narcissistic) philosophical discussions(rants) It all starts in the time between Wednesday night and Thursday morning, when I was thinking about where I am, who I am, and the complex metaphor that is my trinity of personality fragments.

I realized something very important. Sulfuras (Hereafter referred to as Good) and Nihel (Hereafter referred to as Evil) are the same person. They're both avatars of their core belief which they cling to blindly. They're both arrogant fanatic devotees, one to the ideology of power, and one to the ideal of benevolence. They served a key purpose, they gave some form of structure to a complex man looking to understand himself, but I've finally moved beyond the idea that those to ideologies are mutually exclusive. This particular revelation happened slowly over the last week, but the trigger point is the same.

So now I've finally cast off the idea of the trinity of self, and with the removal of the other two I finally understood what Slyz is. The fragment known as Slyz, used be called my Chaotic aspect, a reference to the D&D alignment system, which is why I'm removing that tag. That system is nice, and can convey a lot, but it's just part of the greater limitation that was the idea of the trinity.

I looked back on a lot of things and I thought about when I was happiest, when I felt most alive, and in a way when I felt most myself, and despite its now defunct status it's easiest to describe those moments as being times when my mind was "Slyz Dominant." I had more energy, I was more motivated, and I generally got more done, and I think I know why.

Slyz is an Alpha Male.

It's hard for me to use that term seriously, I've rarely used it outside of the the phrase "frathole alpha male bullshit," and I fully intend to keep using that phrase, but it really is the right term. I've never discussed this in any serious way, but I spent a lot of time learning how to stop myself from exerting my dominant aspect. I would only let it go to produce what I used to refer to as my "leadership aura" something that I honed the use of in scouts, but for some reason or another I felt bad exerting that on others. I can say with only a touch of ego that I am predisposed to leadership. I can say that without prefacing it with the classic "I feel arrogant saying this but," because my confidence in that isn't based on some view of myself as being a bold visionary. I'm not going to say outright that I never said anything about the quality of my leadership. The reasons I think I'm predisposed to this role is because it's been going on all my life without me thinking about it. It was something I fell into, not something I seized, and I regret the fact that I never properly embraced it.

Leadership is only part of it though, the bigger thing, and the revelation that allowed me to break through my preconceived notions, is the internal discussion about Dominance.

I had a series of dreams leading up to this key shifting point. The details of them aren't important, what matters is that they covered all kinds of imagined roles and scenarios, and they all ended with the same general image. In the end of each of them I had caught and beaten back the archetypal foe I was facing, and I grabbed their throat in one hand, held them up against the wall, and finished them. It sounds twisted, but the same action can take the form of revenge and murder, but it also took the form of retribution, and triumph. Each time I'd wake up and have the few seconds of phantom sensation that I always have upon waking as the imagined self washes out and my mind reconnects to my body, and in that moment I always tasted the intoxicating feeling of dominance over my opponent.

I think it's because of it's euphoric, vaguely narcotic nature that I had written it off as evil. Such a closed minded view I know, but it all stemmed from the misconception that the ideology of power was evil, and mutually exclusive with the ideal of benevolence. All of this spirals down into the repression I'm breaking out of now. Power is evil, and dominance is evil, then leadership is corrupting, the force of ones personality must be held in check. Taking power even when it isn't directly handed to you becomes a vile act, without considering the need for someone to be in power, and those who have the initiative to take control are judged before there are any actions to judge them by. The nature of their existence doomed them. It was profoundly stupid of me to think that way, but I did.

And I don't any more. I've embraced what I am when I'm Slyz and there's already been a marked improvement. I've feel better, I've gotten more done, and I'm actually starting on the nearly infinite number of things on my list of stuff that I really intend to do someday. I admit that I lose hold of this sometimes, but I'm working on that, and thats' how I know that this is more then just another fleeting moment of inspiration. This is something real, and I'm not letting it slide through my fingers.

It is an interesting world now. I still think Nihel was right. Life can be summed up as a giant exchange of power, all of society can be reduced to systems of exchanging and creating power, but that's not the entire story. The idea that power corrupts is ancient and largely unquestioned, and I'm ashamed that I missed that one when I was questioning all the other ancient unquestioned things. See the system of power, step up, take your power and then use it to further the ideal of benevolence. In accepting Nihels perspective I didn't cast of Sulfuras's burden. My moral code remains as strong as ever, perhaps even stronger because now I'm going to actually be able to do something with it. There's a lot ahead of me, and I'm not sure how all of it will go, but I feel as though I've taken another critical step on the path.

Bioshock

I was thinking as I was playing bioshock yesterday that it would certainly have to be in my top 5. I went from there to thinking about what my top 5 would be, and I was tempted to say that bioshock would be #1. It went up against some pretty tough competition too, but I was willing to say outright that bioshock was at least on par with such games as

-Deus Ex
-World of Warcraft
-Doom 3
-Final Fantasy Tactics
-GTA San Andreas.
-Super Smash Brothers

Remember that I was rating in overall quality, so the genre blending was perfectly fine. I was willing to say all that, and let my exact top 5 remain ethereal, confident that the game was worth almost double it's sale price.

Then I experienced the single greatest scene in video gaming that I've ever seen.

Ever.

I thought about this too, I even youtubed a lot of my old top contenders. Sephiroths walking through the fire, the opening to half life 1, The reveal at the end of the first Metroid, Everything, I went through it all. Nothing, NOTHING, topped this one scene. I'm not going to say what happened, it's a massive spoiler, but anyone with no intent to play the game can contact me personally for details. For those of you who have I'm referring to the scene in which you meet Andrew Ryan face to face, and would you kindly not post any spoiler comments? I'll be watching for those to strike them down.

Anyone who is considering it Buy Bioshock. It's my #1 game to date.

The continued rantings of a man amidst his shattered ideas

I can't use methods that call a value.

I can't use If then statements.

All I have is for loops.

This assignment is madness

A Long Road Ahead

I've made a lot of progress since completing project Exodus, but being back in school has shown me that I'm still carrying a lot of my old problems. Procrastination, and minimalism are still issues that I have, but I no longer feel ambivalent about what I'm doing. I have direction, and I can see the problems and why they need to be fixed now. I've taken the first step, but I've got a long road ahead.

Now if you'll excuse me I have to go back to figuring out how anyone would solve this weeks CSE homework without using methods that inherent a value. Why in the world someone would want to try this without such an intrinsic function of Java I don't know, but they haven't been taught it yet so I'm not allowed to use it.

Quote Dump

I'm dumping my Facebook quote list again. I question sometimes why I feel the need to preserve these, but blogger is free and I never promised my blog would be well thought out.

"And watch as special guest Garrison Keeler wrestles his own soothing voice in a steel cage"
-homestarrunner.com

"She had what we now call Alzheimer's and what we then called 'God's Will'"
-Sarah Vow

"D.M. Digression, your character dies and goes to hell"
-Max Willson

"The only way to combat global warming is to elect Hillary Clinton, because that is one cold bitch."
-Dana Carvey

"You can't sue me because the official position of Savage love Industries is that you shouldn't put anything in your vagina Ever."
-Dan Savage

"A warning to sensitive listeners he's going to be describing the legislative process of the United States of America"
-Ira Glass

"You can't stop insane people from doing insane things by passing insane laws. That's Insane."
-Penn Jilette

"Gay nerds love holofoil cock"
-Max Willson

"Nobody puts casual gaming in the corner!"
-1up.com speaking about the Dirty Dancing Game

"The Dirty Dancing game is just DOA Xtreme meets DDR"
-ArcaneInsane

"Hugging Hannelore Heralds Heavy Hyperventilation! It's a simple mnemonic, Use it!"
-QuestionableContent.net

"I find it helps if you pretend the pigs are Nazis"
-Shin Chan

"You have no idea how much I despise you. Coming here was your first mistake, and it will also be Your LAST!!!"
-Max Willson (talking to a roach)

"Adult Swim Video, where free time comes to die"
-www.adultswim.com

"I argue with myself a lot. I know it sounds bad, but the make up sex is amazing"
-Max Willson

Killing Kittens Productions

I need a printer for class. My chem lectures have printouts that go with them, and I have to have them, it's become abundantly clear.

And it was only $20 more for a machine that's also a scanner and a copier.

Killing Kittens Productions is in business. This is by no means a finished piece, more of me toying around, but remember kids;

STAB THE VOTE


In 2008 I plan to put that on T-shirts and sell them on the Ave.

The Official Version

A while ago I compiled a collection of Dethklok songs out of mp3s of ripped from WMAs of the shows themselves. I named my creation "Dethalbum: Bootleg Edition"

Dethalbum (Deluxe Edition) has hit the shelves.


METAL!