Tornado Warning Issued For Your Area!!!

This is not a gaming post, but I should try to find a way to turn it INTO one... hmmm...

We had storms go through the Atlanta area last night. Some pretty nasty ones too. I believe that an EF0 Tornado passed just to the northwest of where we live. I'll look into that, to see if it is confirmed by the National Weather Service. (UPDATE: Although storm-relative motion radar views did show rotation for this storm cell, a tornado was not confirmed by NWS. So, it is likely that the rotation within the cloud did not develop into a funnel touching down.)

In the mean time, I took some really cool pictures of the hail that fell. I went outside and used a small plastic bowl to scoop up a bunch of hail stones from this "drift" that had formed in front of our building.

Here are some nice ones from the top of the bowl.

A particularly nice example:

Some internal structure images:

This stuff is particularly relevant to me because I'm a meteorologist. Weather fascinates me.

Oh, I know how to relate this to gaming... last year, I ran an encounter that, personally, I deemed to be a failure. Granted, I had some high expectations of myself, but ultimately the effect I was going for failed... fell flat... whatever... and really only served to piss off one of the players, and I think the others were just unimpressed. That might not be the case, but that's how I read it from my end of the table.

The encounter itself was fairly normal... 4 hobgoblins and a bugbear are guarding a bridge that the PCs have to cross. Fight ensues.

But then I threw in this:

This is a natural tornado that was ripping through the area. As a little background info, the encounter took place in a ruined Dragonborn city that had a perpetual storm churning in the skies over it. So, it was constantly raining, and I thought I'd throw this in to make an encounter a bit more interesting.

The tornado's effects are all based on progressively-smaller auras. From 6 to 10 squares away from the tornado, anyone who entered that area or started their turn there would be subject to the Microburst attack, which was just a slide effect. I just noticed a typo in there too... I called the aura "gusting winds" in the Traits block, but "driving winds" in the power block. Oh well. heh. Anyway, as you got closer, you passed in to the Blasting Winds aura at 5 squares away, and then into the Shredding Winds aura at 2 squares away, each adding damage to the attack and a stronger slide effect.

This was an example of a "directional slide" too. A push effect wouldn't work, because a tornado wouldn't push you away from it. A pull effect wouldn't work, because a tornado doesn't pull you towards it. Only a slide worked, but it had to be in a specific direction only, as the winds would be swirling around the tornado in a counterclockwise direction. That's not ALWAYS the case in reality, but it is statistically the most likely.

The encounter fell short of expectations, and was deemed a failure (by me) because I was stressed, I didn't eat before the session (bad move since I'm hypoglycemic), and this all exacerbated my ADHD, causing me to forget some important details until it was too late to implement them. Only one character was affected by the tornado, and it only served to piss off the player, as the "slide" slid her character right off the bridge into the raging waters of the canal below. She was playing an Eladrin, though, so that was easily solved.

I still like the idea, though. I hope to use it again at some point.

Gaming whenever, wherever, however...

I have played rpgs over a variety of mediums.

I started off with tabletop, of course, because the internet didn't come around until 15 years after I started playing. I still played tabletop games, even after the internet was available, although that started me talking about roleplaying games with people online, introducing me to new people, sometimes a city away, sometimes a hemisphere of the planet away.

My first experience with online gaming, if I remember correctly, is when I moved to Ottawa, Ontario, in the fall of 1998. I had been running a Star Wars game for my friends up until that time, and I really saw no reason why that shouldn't continue. I had been chatting with people over IRC (Internet Relay Chat) for some time, and the mIRC program had some very nice features that would be useful for running a game. It even had a built-in die-rolling script. So, once a week, on Sunday nights, my friends from the Toronto area and I all got online, logged on to IRC (on the MagicStar server?).

After that, I got into Play-By-Post games, on internet forums. DnDAdventure.com was one site, and DrunkenDwarfInn.co.uk was another one. I also played in some "freeform" roleplaying games, such as the Xavier Institute game that was based out of Forumopolis.com (which was PvPForums.com at the time). Freeform was interesting. No rules set used, just a set of common rules of conduct. I guess they had their roots in the MUDs of the early days of the internet. I liked the storytelling aspect of the freeform games, but the D&D player in me always was a bit more interested in die-rolling mechanics to resolve things, rather than just a "whatever I think is best at the time". Too many players getting full of themselves and always wanting whatever was best for THEM, as opposed to what was best for the story.

I digress, though.

Play-by-post games are, by their very nature, slow. They are usually played by people in many different time-zones, sometimes on opposite sides of the planet, and sometimes people's lives get busy, and there can be times when days go by between posts. My ADHD compounded the problem at times, since if things slowed down at all, I'd usually lose interest fairly quickly, and I'd have to be prompted a few times before I got around to posting. In general, though, they usually went fairly well, but still slowly. I ran an experiment once, involving my D&D3.5e Dragonlance gaming group. I arranged for everyone, no matter where they lived, to sign on at a specific time one Sunday, and we all played together at the same time. There were some rules to keep things orderly, and it worked fairly well. In the end, we went through as many posts in that day... playing for about 4 hours... as we had gone through in the past 4 months of regular play-by-post gaming! That, unfortunately, was the death knell of that game. I was running them through the entire set of 16 Dragonlance modules, and they were in the middle of module #2 at the time. It had already taken us about a year and a half to get to that point, and I didn't want to still be playing this game 20 years from then, so I basically gave them an ultimatum. Either we continue to meet each week like this, with posting allowed in between, or the game was over. Noone could commit the time regularly, so that was that.

One thing I did like about play-by-post gaming was that it allowed me time to come up with good, well-thought-through posts. I could be rather impulsive when playing tabletop games, and it frequently got my characters into trouble, and sometimes caused some conflicts with other players as well. I didn't think very well "on my feet" either, so coming up with good plans wasn't exactly my strong suit. The story I wrote about Alron leading a band of elves to rescue prisoners from an army of orcs is a good example of that. I couldn't come up with anything right then, so I basically said "I'm sure I'll come up with something good when we get there". Steve's expression, showing the reaction of the elven leaders to that, is something I think I will always remember. heh. Playing in the Xavier Institute game held its challenges as well, since in that case, people usually were all online at the same time, so I had to think and post quickly. I caused some very angry reactions at times, because it took me awhile to write good responses, and I probably caused a couple of players to quit over it. I don't blame myself, honestly. I didn't know I had ADHD at the time, and they were pretty jerkish about it overall, so whatever.

I digress again, though. heh.

Okay, where am I leading to...

Last year, I started a D&D game. I was already playing in a weekly group on Saturday afternoons (run by my friend Craig), and running a 4eD&D conversion of the U-series "Saltmarsh" adventures on rpol.net, but I had some ideas for a tabletop D&D game. Most of all, I wanted my wife, Caroline, to be able to play. So, I got a small group together (Craig, Jennifer and Caroline to start), and we started playing on Sunday evenings.

Unfortunately, things started getting complicated due to Caroline's schedule. She works night shifts, and gets off of her last shift of the week on Sunday at 5am. Her ability to participate in the game was highly dependent on whether or not she was able to get enough sleep Sunday morning/afternoon. In addition to that, playing at our place meant that our dog, who is not fond of men (other than me), especially those who come into her territory (our apartment), would spend much of the night barkhowling and trying to dominate the man in question (Craig) into leaving. Playing elsewhere would limit our time, and switching to another night, like Monday, would also limit our time (since we couldn't start until around 8pm), so we looked for a compromise. The solution I came up with, which would also allow me to add a few new players, was to play online.

I looked into the various gaming platforms... GameTable, MapTools, etc, and started building the necessary library of pictures and the like that I would need to run the game to my satisfaction. However, there was some disappointment with this idea, since it would not allow me to use the miniatures and tiles I had bought, nor the 3D terrain that I had spent time building. So, instead, I figured we would try playing with Skype and a webcamera, and if that didn't work, we'd switch to something else, like GameTable, and go from there.

This was a completely new way of playing for me, so I was excited. When the next session rolled around, I set up my tiles, terrain, and minis for the first encounter, and started up Skype and the webcamera from my laptop. The first snag we discovered is that you can't send video to multiple recipients using Skype. At least not with the older versions or even the Beta version we were using. A quick setup of a U-Stream account solved that problem, but it was a tad unsatisfactory, since the view was rather small, and the webcam was pretty old, so the view wasn't very good. Further still, switching between encounters took a long time. After the first encounter, the group took a completely different direction than I'd hoped, and I was basically scrambling to come up with an alternate encounter. In the end, I took too long, and by the time I had the encounter set up, it was time to call it a night.

We hit a further snag when, the week before the next session, Craig admitted to me that playing over the web wasn't for him. It caused too much of a disconnect from the game for him, and removed the more social aspect of the game as well. I totally understand his position on that. There is a definite disconnect, especially for someone who isn't used to playing online. I almost canceled the game then, since I was finding that running the game was very stressful, and I wasn't spending the proper amount of prep-time, but he convinced me to hold off on that.

Taking a step back to examine the situation, then moving forward again, I purchased a new webcam, got a few new players, and one of the players suggested using the Mikogo interface. It is a free desktop-sharing service, which allowed me to run the webcam software, giving me more options to adjust to get the best resolution and clarity possible, and we used Skype to talk. With this new group and setup, I started a Sunday night Encounters game, which also eliminated the need to switch between encounters, and we only play for 2 hours, so it keeps things from getting boring.

What my players see in their browser is this:

Now, I will say right now that image in the webcam view is not the real image they saw in the webcam view that night. It turns out I didn't take any images of that fight with the webcam, I only streamed video. That picture is from my Canon Powershot, copied and pasted into the image to give the proper view of that encounter.

The webcam view is still a little grainy for my tastes, as it sometimes makes it hard to see the map/tile grid, and there is some confusion at times about which miniature is which, but I think we're getting better. I think it is a lighting issue, so it's something I can work on for future sessions. I've been toying with the idea of using the zoom on the camera more too... perhaps zooming in on a particular character when it is their turn, zooming out to show the whole map when needed. I picked up some correction-fluid pens the other day and marked the miniatures with numbers, so they're more easily identified, and I'm going to make or get something to put around miniatures or miniature bases to denote them being marked, quarried, bloodied, etc. I have Post-It tags that might work for that, with different colors denoting different things (and writing on them any extra info, if needed). The only issue I can see with that is that some miniatures don't lend themselves easily to sticking tape to them. I'll give it a try tonight, and see how it works. If it doesn't, maybe something with different colored clay would work better...

Gamma World

No pictures from last week's game. I forgot to bring my camera to the session. Too bad too, because I showcased more of my miniature "proxies" in this session. More on that, further down.

I think the game went really well again. I'm enjoying it. My players seem to enjoy it as well. They seem quite well invested in the wackiness.

There are times, though, when my brain kind of takes a step back from the game, while I'm running it, and points out how dull it seems... or how dull I'm making it... going around the table, each person taking their turns... the monsters taking their turn... ho hum. Then the moment passes. Or sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it lingers on for awhile, which causes part of my brain to start thinking "Why am I doing this? I'm clearly horrible at this."

I'm left wondering if this happens to "Neuro-Typical" DMs (if there is such a thing. ha ha). In this case, "Neuro-Typical" being those without ADHD. It's a simple matter of the dopamine response, really, but I am curious.

When I plan out the adventures, I have a lot of fun with the creative process. I laugh at the little puns or in-jokes that I insert into the encounters. I have one coming up in the next session that I've called "There's Yur Problem!", which the players will understand once they're into the encounter. heh.

It's just when I'm actually running it that this problem comes out. I wonder if I'm being boring. If everyone is just sitting there, just waiting for their turn so that they can get it over with and the whole ordeal will just be over and done with that much quicker.

I highly doubt that they actually ARE thinking that, by the way. At least in the Gamma World game, they're laughing and having fun, so I have to take something positive from that. Right?

Anyway, the session went pretty well. I still forgot a few things, but that was from the fact that I grabbed the encounter locales from the rulebook, and didn't read up on them sufficiently beforehand. Had I written everything myself, the details would have stuck in my mind better (hopefully).

Still, it was fun.

Now, to relate this to the purpose for the blog, I had snagged some Warhammer 40k Tau Drone miniatures off eBay.

I paid $8.50 for the lot (17 of them) plus $5 for priority shipping, when sets of 4 typically retail for $10. As you can see, they are mostly pre-painted, and they have these tiny little magnets on the bottoms of the drones, and the tops of the flight bases, so that you can transport them easier and then just pop them onto their bases when you need them. Very cool! These only had three bases with magnets, but I bought some more of the "rare earth" magnets off the internet, so I can now complete the other ones. I'll probably end up selling most of them, as I don't need that many. heh.

My players thought they were pretty cool. It's also remarkable how much these match the look of the various Gamma World robots that are stat'd up. Sentrybots and Laserbots, especially.

A while ago, I'd bought some "Rocket Raccoon" Heroclix figures on the cheap (about 25 cents each), and I'd won an eBay auction of mixed miniatures, which included these Heroscape "Airborne Elite" soldier figures. Some quick head, tail and helmet transplants, and I came up with these Dabbers (raccoon men):

They were similarly impressed with these. Craig, our usual DM, said "Well, I can't DM you guys anymore!" He better not carry through with that threat. I like DMing, but I don't want to take over his game. :)

ADHD Follow-up

I'm not going to turn this into an ADHD blog, but I want to follow-up on something.

ADHD can be a very difficult condition and a very difficult struggle to live with for a lot of people, especially if you don't know you have it. It causes, as a bi-product, a lot of self-esteem issues. However, as a condition, it is not all negative.

I have no idea what I would be like without ADHD, but by all indications of the trends of the condition, I would not be half as creative as I am. That doesn't always help me in my work, but it has let me come up with some fairly novel solutions to problems I've encountered in my job. It also helps with my gaming too, of course.

Who knows if I'd have stuck with gaming all this time if I didn't have ADHD. I've gotten a lot of enjoyment out of games over the years, and I've met a lot of great people and had great experiences due to gaming. Based on my previous post, it kept me out of a lot of trouble too, contrary to the fears my mother had back in the day, that playing D&D was condemning my soul to eternal hellfire.

So, my previous post on this topic had a lot of negativity in it. I will admit that I have some bitterness about how long it took to get diagnosed and treated. I was 39 when I was diagnosed. I suffered through a lot of crap over the years, and that could have gone a lot better... school... work... relationships...

However, if I had the chance to go back and tell my younger self one thing, it would not be "get diagnosed before college". If I told my younger self that, I'd probably be in a completely different place, and quite frankly, I kinda like where I am right now. Having more money in the bank would certainly be nice, but I have a beautiful, smart, funny wife who keeps me grounded and loves me for who I am. I have a good job, with good benefits. I have good friends. I'm not really close to my family (geographically or socially), and I've always felt a little disconnected from them, but even that has served its purpose, as I'm very independent and can take care of myself (for the most part). If I went back to say something to my younger self, it would probably be "Keep your Star Wars figures", or "in 2004, put in an application to Yale too", or "on Nov 7, 2009, stay on the highway."

So, yeah, ADHD is a pain in the butt to deal with, but I've never given up on something I wanted. I graduated with a degree in physical sciences, specializing in physics, and went on to get a degree in meteorology after that. I've been successful at the three career-path jobs I've worked at. I've stuck with gaming for over 31 years. I've been married to a wonderful woman for almost 10 years. Sure, there have been problems, but I can't complain that much, and I wouldn't really want to change anything (well, except for having more money... or I'd settle for less debt).

That's all. On with the gaming posts! :)

A-ADHD-PI D&D

Without further ado, I am now kicking off this new version of Always a Gamer. To do so, I will tell a long, convoluted story, which will eventually reach the conclusion I want it to... I promise. Bear with me. Alright? Here we go. :)


As of August of 2009, I was officially diagnosed with Adult Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder - Primarily Inattentive. AADHD-PI. Quite the initialism, huh? :)

There are some that classify it by ADD/ADHD, though, with ADD being for the inattentive types and ADHD being for the hyperactive types. I would fall into ADD, then, because I do not exhibit many hyperactivity traits.

Exactly what causes ADHD is still up for debate. It may be a problem with neurotransmitter deficiencies or neuroreceptor sensitivities. It might be due to thinner than normal tissues in the frontal lobe of the brain. There is most certainly a genetic component to it, as family studies have shown that it is highly heritable. In my family alone, my father and my younger brother most definitely have it. My mother might have some as well, and my older brother definitely has the creative aspects, but I don't believe that he suffers much from the negative aspects. There have been studies that have found possible links to pesticides, food additives, lead, smoking/drinking during pregnancy, but none have been entirely conclusive, I believe. These factors may simply exacerbate the situation, causing the ADHD symptoms to be worse or for the genetic factors to express themselves stronger.

The vast majority of my issues are about attention, concentration, and procrastination. I find it very difficult to pay attention and concentrate, unless what I'm doing is extremely interesting (due to this extreme interest causing my brain to flood with neurotransmitters). Any time any kind of routine or boredom comes into play, and the levels of those neurotransmitters drop, either to normal levels (if my receptors are the problem) or to deficient levels (if production is the problem), I suffer problems with attention span and concentration. It's not that I don't WANT to pay attention, it's that I am physically incapable of doing so. My brain will start looking for other stimuli to increase the neurotransmitter levels again, and this will be at the expense of listening to my mother, or my teacher or professor, or my boss... or reading a textbook, or a test, or lab instructions, or an essay or article.

When I was in school, I used to study in front of the TV, or have the radio going, or be playing a tape... something to keep my brain busy. I didn't know I had ADHD at the time. I just knew that I needed some kind of background noise going on so that I could study. I told people that there was part of my brain that just wouldn't sit still unless I gave it a distraction to focus on. Then the rest of my brain could focus on studying. Sure, they thought I was weird, but hey, I've always been weird, so what of it? *shrug*

Procrastination has been a HUGE problem in my life, even for things that I am really interested in. Things that I'm not so interested in simply get pushed aside into the "I can do it later" category, until I finally realize the impending doom if I don't finish it, and then I would drive myself to finish whatever it was. Often times, in the case of schoolwork, this would end up with me finishing things late, resulting in a reduced mark, typically at a 10%/day penalty, if memory serves. My grades came out fairly mediocre from high school and later in university, due to this exact thing. I would get a total grade on assignments in the B+ to A- range, but late penalties would drop that into the D+ to B- range.

The more insidious side of this is when dealing with things that I'm actually quite interested in. Projects, games, whatever. In these cases, I would get very innovative and creative ideas, but having no clue how to implement them right away, my brain would slowly lose interest in the fine details, and I would end up in the same situation as above... driving myself to finish at the last minute, and turning in or presenting something far less grand than I originally planned.

Coupled with this is how stress effects people who have ADHD. I'm not exactly sure why, since dopamine levels are supposed to increase due to addition of stress, and dopamine is a precursor to norepinephrine, so stress should actually be good for an ADHD person, but the stress of tests and exams always left me very unfocused and I had a lot of trouble concentrating. I was really lucky that the physics professors at my university allowed us to bring in a "cheat sheet" filled with equations and proofs. We could put pretty much whatever we wanted to write on it, 1-side of the page for the midterm, both sides (or all 6 sides if you're being a smartass) for the final. This probably saved me, academically. Having that page as a prompt was a big help.

I remember going into one math exam, sitting down, flipping over the exam, reading through all the questions, one-by-one, not finding a lick of sense in any of them, having absolutely no place to begin on any of them at all, standing up, picking up my exam and my bag, walking over to the invigilator's desk, dropping the exam in front of him, walking out, going straight to the registrar's office and dropping the course. I had already been having a little bit of a problem in that class, since it was one I HAD to take, and I wasn't very interested in it. I had studied for the exam. I was nervous about the exam, as I always am about exams, but even going into the room I felt okay about it. The stress hit me, though, and it got worse as I read through the questions, and I just couldn't make sense of anything, and it was completely hopeless. Perhaps if I'd taken a moment or two to calm down I could have focused, but it felt like there was absolutely no way, and I was doing so badly in the course so far that there wasn't any point to it. I took a different version of the course the next semester, and did far better then, but I was out a few hundred dollars due to dropping the course on the last possible day to drop it.

Anyway, through all this, as I have said, I had no idea it was due to ADHD. I just thought I was stupid, or lazy, or screwed up, or whatever. Most people who have ADHD and don't know it end up self-medicating. They can do this in one or more of several ways. A very common one is turning to drugs and alcohol. Drugs such as speed, heroine, and cocaine are stimulants. Rather than make an ADHD sufferer high, they allow them to focus, acting in the same way as ADHD medication does. They increase the amount of dopamine produced, thus regardless of the exact issue (production or reception), the ADHD sufferer can act "normally". Alcohol and marijuana are depressants and basically act to "quiet" the mind, essentially relieving any hyperactivity symptoms. People can also turn to extreme sports, gambling, etc... whatever it takes to get that extra dopamine.

I didn't do any of that, though. I had no interest in drugs or alcohol. It was an academic thing for me. I'd never tried any of it. I just saw it all as a colossal waste of time and money. I played sports for awhile, but I was a pipsqueak compared to the other players by age 13, so I quit before I ended up with broken bones.

I turned to gaming. D&D was my "drug" of choice to give me the dopamine I needed. The creativity, excitement and "action" of the game did what drugs did for other ADHD sufferers... it focused me. Granted, I thought a lot more about D&D than I did anything else those days, but that's the mind of an ADHD sufferer. It sought out what was exciting. School wasn't exciting. School was extremely boring. Being a hero and slaying dragons, even if it wasn't real, was exciting.

In the early days it was easy. Even DMing. My players really only wanted dungeons to crawl through, slaying monsters and getting stuff. Story wasn't necessary. But as I matured and the players I played with did the same, story became more important. Details became more important. What all my problems hammered into me was that I just wasn't good enough. I had some good ideas, but I could never follow through with anything. I've had lots of great ideas for games over the years, but the lack of confidence always hampered the development or execution of my plans. I did run a few games, but even those always seemed to fall flat, at least to me. I had grand ideas for stories and encounters, and it all just seemed to flop. I'm sure that part of it is the dopamine/norepinephrine issue, since with lower levels of those being produced/absorbed in my brain, I can't take quite as much joy out of things as someone else might. Also, though, was the constant voice of criticism in my head, saying how much more fun it was when other people ran the game, since their adventures were far more creative and interesting, and always ran smoother and better than mine.

Even since I've been diagnosed this has still been a problem. I'll leave encounter planning to the last minute. I'll forget to implement certain details at the right time. I'll get flustered as things start to go "wrong" in the encounter (ie: it doesn't live up to my expectations, due to leaving it to the last minute and leaving out details), and it just ends up being bad for me. My players probably don't see this. They probably had a great time. I just see how this went wrong, or that could have been done better, and "Oh, you guys should have seen how the encounter was SUPPOSED to have gone."

Now, I'm sure that anyone reading this will just say "Well, if the encounter didn't go exactly as you planned, and the players still had fun, it's a success! Stop beating yourself up!", and they'd have a point. It'd be nice if I could come away with that feeling, though. I really need to fight to get to that point, and my opponent is a Solo Brute that is 4 levels higher than I am.

So, that's when I come around to my point, and the new purpose of this blog. This will be a place for me to organize my thoughts, and keep myself motivated. The content will be anything but consistent. Ideas, encounter planning, crafts, terrain building, miniatures, organizational tips and tricks... pretty much whatever I think of for my games, that I think or hope will be interesting for people to read about, and possibly even help other people who have similar issues.