So I turned 25 the other day, on the 19th. It was a pretty good birthday; my family came by and my girlfriend had made us turkey. It was yummy. I also got a few nice presents, including a nice jacket from my g/f.
I handed in a take home exam on the 18th and found out that I got into yet another business law class, so I'm finally at original goal. When I first started studying my idea was to take business law so I could take the IT-law class as a complement to my primary System developer education. So if all else fails, at least I came thus far.
Also started a class on distributed systems, so I'll be taking .Net and C#. Later part of the class will cover J2EE, so bound to be very interesting.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Monday, January 15, 2007
A roleplaying dilemma
Since I last wrote we've had two Call of Cthulhu sessions and in the last one something dawned upon me. Recently the story has taken a much more action-oriented turn and I'm basically left to watch how my character has less and less impact on matters. The physical die-hard characters are eating up more and more of the momentum, to the point where my character is like one of those healer NPCs you bring out to heal the heroes after the combat.
Obviously I was displeased about this turn of events since CoC is supposed to favor characters with mental and social abilities, not vice versa. Even cops and soldiers in the game are very limited in their ability to pick combat oriented skills. After bringing this up to the keeper he promised some reforms however, so I hope it'll balance it out more. I like action as much as the next guy, but there should be something for us non-brutes too.
This provoked me to see a pattern however that I for some reason have just dismissed as seperate incidients previously, maybe because I have been the storyteller for ages. I don't know if I myself have fallen to the issue I am about to describe, but I like to think I havn't as much since my bias for social and mental characters hopefully play out to the players' benefit when I storytell.
When I play however I've noticed that mental and socially oriented characters are very much disadvantaged when compared to physical characters. My hypothesis regarding this is that most storytellers leave mental challenges and social events to the roleplaying ability of the players, so the players themselves are more on trial than the actual character they are supposed to be portraying. Probably because storytellers find it dull to resolve such situations with a roll; letting the player solve a puzzle with an intelligence roll or convince someone with the persuasion roll. But then out comes the action and then all of a sudden, everything is judged by the skills of your character and the dice. So player with a combat-oriented physical character benefits both from his character's skills but also from his own intelligence, wit and charisma since these things are rarely checked. Simply stated he can use what he deducts out of character since a storyteller wont ask him to roll his intelligence to see if his character actually grasped the clue presented.
Sure, you probably can't balance it as much as it is possible in computer roleplaying games, but maybe at least a step in the right direction can be taken. Perhaps this is just a local problem to my group. I recall one time though where a storyteller actually rolled my character's intelligence to see if he remebered something vital, that I as a player would forget, but my character probably wouldn't have. That is about what I am asking for. That the social and mental checks perhaps doesn't give instant success in every instance, but at least provides some good aid or insight as opposed to not being used at all by the storyteller.
Obviously I was displeased about this turn of events since CoC is supposed to favor characters with mental and social abilities, not vice versa. Even cops and soldiers in the game are very limited in their ability to pick combat oriented skills. After bringing this up to the keeper he promised some reforms however, so I hope it'll balance it out more. I like action as much as the next guy, but there should be something for us non-brutes too.
This provoked me to see a pattern however that I for some reason have just dismissed as seperate incidients previously, maybe because I have been the storyteller for ages. I don't know if I myself have fallen to the issue I am about to describe, but I like to think I havn't as much since my bias for social and mental characters hopefully play out to the players' benefit when I storytell.
When I play however I've noticed that mental and socially oriented characters are very much disadvantaged when compared to physical characters. My hypothesis regarding this is that most storytellers leave mental challenges and social events to the roleplaying ability of the players, so the players themselves are more on trial than the actual character they are supposed to be portraying. Probably because storytellers find it dull to resolve such situations with a roll; letting the player solve a puzzle with an intelligence roll or convince someone with the persuasion roll. But then out comes the action and then all of a sudden, everything is judged by the skills of your character and the dice. So player with a combat-oriented physical character benefits both from his character's skills but also from his own intelligence, wit and charisma since these things are rarely checked. Simply stated he can use what he deducts out of character since a storyteller wont ask him to roll his intelligence to see if his character actually grasped the clue presented.
Sure, you probably can't balance it as much as it is possible in computer roleplaying games, but maybe at least a step in the right direction can be taken. Perhaps this is just a local problem to my group. I recall one time though where a storyteller actually rolled my character's intelligence to see if he remebered something vital, that I as a player would forget, but my character probably wouldn't have. That is about what I am asking for. That the social and mental checks perhaps doesn't give instant success in every instance, but at least provides some good aid or insight as opposed to not being used at all by the storyteller.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Cthulhu at last!
Yesterday my friend called and announced a session for today! At last... I knew their resolve not to play would weaken!
Monday, January 01, 2007
The new year
The new year celebration passed without too much problems; worst problem being that there wasn't any good music on the music channels.
We enjoyed some good dinner and drink, then watched some tv before the launch. Then the launching of the fireworks commenced, which was a pretty short launch. The launch program has suffered severe budget cuts this year.
I saw some of the end of Dr. Strangelove. Hilarious. Also watched a show called After Dark which was hilarous as well.
On a sadder note my parket fine appeal was dismissed by the local police, so now my option is to appeal it to court. I double checked my law book and I should be right, but I am probably missing something. The police didn't quite motivate why they dismissed it, just that my grounds were not enough. As a result I'm left hanging a bit in what regard they aren't enough. If they would've just pointed me to the paragraph that says I am wrong it would be easier for me.
Now I'm trying to see though if my appeal has any merit to establish if it is worth taking further.
I talked to my Call of Cthulhu storyteller yesterday, but he avoided saying anything about that we were suppoed to play during the Holidays and he didn't say anything about when we were going to play instead. Maybe he considers it such great an evil that if he doesn't talk about it maybe it will just go away!
We enjoyed some good dinner and drink, then watched some tv before the launch. Then the launching of the fireworks commenced, which was a pretty short launch. The launch program has suffered severe budget cuts this year.
I saw some of the end of Dr. Strangelove. Hilarious. Also watched a show called After Dark which was hilarous as well.
On a sadder note my parket fine appeal was dismissed by the local police, so now my option is to appeal it to court. I double checked my law book and I should be right, but I am probably missing something. The police didn't quite motivate why they dismissed it, just that my grounds were not enough. As a result I'm left hanging a bit in what regard they aren't enough. If they would've just pointed me to the paragraph that says I am wrong it would be easier for me.
Now I'm trying to see though if my appeal has any merit to establish if it is worth taking further.
I talked to my Call of Cthulhu storyteller yesterday, but he avoided saying anything about that we were suppoed to play during the Holidays and he didn't say anything about when we were going to play instead. Maybe he considers it such great an evil that if he doesn't talk about it maybe it will just go away!
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