Technical Foul

So I play Magic the Gathering. Have for a while and love the game. They started doing these prebuilt decks years ago, and they are great. Wonderfull little windows into the mechanic of the block and usually a solid deck you could mod and have fun with. they also used to come with their own box.

a few blocks ago the decks started coming in a larger, marketing friendly box that included a booster pack… but no box. Instead the cards come in a little plastic Tray

However, I figured out a quick and easy way to make new deck boxes that look like this:

Step 1: Put the deck back in (Still in its wrapper) and snip the box a bit above the height of the deck:

Step 2: cut along the sides at angle, and then trim across the top (Usually right at the top of the box

Step 3: Cut across and then along the long part all the way down to a little past the deck.

Step 4: This one is a bit hard to see, but you need to score the flaps. Take a pair if scissors and a straight edge of some sort (The deck or a ruler) and score the large flap twice. Once right at thes ame point as your cuts, and once about the with of the deck (Still wrapped in the wrapper. Next Score the side flaps ate the same level as the large flap.

Step 5:  Trim the large flap a bit, so it is angled to be a little narrowe then the opnening and try to close the box. YOu might have to trim the side flaps a bit, or trim up the back flat a bit, but it should close AOK with only a little extra nip tuck.

Step Five: Stack it!

Here is a Picture by picture look at how:

On this day where everyone seems to be diving headfirst into talk of the 5E DnD, I thought I would take a moment to reflect on D20. I did play 2nd, and 1st and thats all well and good, but 3rd Ed, and its reincarnations 3.5 hold a couple of special places on my shelf.

I played in one of those classic home spun game, with a homeade map and everything. We started at 1st and went to 18th lvl. We ended before 20th, cause we defeated the archlich tha thad been plaging us for years and that was that. We all got our narrative endings. In hind sight it seems perfect. In a lot of ways it kinda was, because it was the first time we saw the rules unfold. Each of us was, essentially, the signature character by which 3.0 was to measured.

And then we played again, and again, and again. Different storytellers, different worlds, Different lengths of time. Trends emerged. Certain builds were just better and you were forced to make the choice of Character vs Stats or run the risk of being another fighter who wears full plate (but this full plate is stylized like a dragon, unlike Joes old character that was stylized like a Ram only gets you so far). You could go for a different, unique build but it was not as robustly supported. They started putting out feats, and pretige classes, and it seemed to get better… except it kind of got worse.

Two things happened that I want to touch on. The first is “The Build”

The Build goes by many names, minmaxing, twinking, etc. Its the act of getting the most out of your character by mixing and matching classes, feats, weapons, rules explots and the like. This started out as something of a Fringe thing. People joking about their Half Dragon Troll Barbarian, or the figter with the Crit range of 10-20. But it started permeating the system and becoming the norm. Classes like the Mystic Theurge (A divine caster and a Arcane caster combined) just seemed to show they had stopped trying (It got worse, they made scarier classes). The build became the character, and that made me sorta sad.

The second was that prestige classes are, conceptually, pretty cool but sorta fail in being what they are supposed to be. See the idea of a fighter who learns the ways of a secret order, giving up some of their fighter abilities to pick up some other abilities that fit the character is awesome. Its most awesome when the prestige class fits like a glove, and when this happens Wow. Its perfect.

But more often then not its a Near fit. Its a Mashing of your character concept to become a Red Wizard, Or a War Wizard or whatever because at the end of the day Prestige classes became the defacto class. Nobody stayed Wizard for 20 Levels, there was just no reason to. Instead they would find a prestige class and cookie cutter their concept to fit into that presige class.

And that is where it failed. I made some prestige classes, some of them were even pretty balanced… but i seldom if ever used them because it felt weird. But that I think is where prestige classes Failed. There was no Robust mechanism to build your own, despite efforts in the optional rules of Arcana Unearthed (Or the other way around, I never remember).

I enjoyed 3E I really did. It shine for me when I barely noticed the levels, or the feats or the prestige classes. It makes me want to slam my head into a wall when I think about how often I (And yes I was as guilty as the rest, though I often went for the weird build.) talked about the perfect build.

The idea of Secret Rolls comes in and out of vogue pretty frequently. For me, I am referring to the concept of asking your players to preemptively make a series of rolls, which I can refer to rather then asking for them to make a roll. The Classic use is in D&D for the secret doors. Have your Rogue or whatnot make a series of roles and then reference them when they walk by one to just see if they notice. Of course now with Passive perception in 4e, its somewhat moot but still.

When I moved on to other games, other story tellers had charts and graphs and whatnot, some of which I have stolen verbatim and others I have cherry picked. The end result is I often create a table with 10 Slots and have the players roll Eight of whatever the challenges is. The two extra slots? One Auto Fail (Not a botch, just a fail) and one Auto Success. I find this rounds things out nicely and gives even a character with a Crappy <Enter the roll> a chance. Who notices the Pick picket? Who’s subtly drawn in by the faint music in the club? Who’s the first to spot the Werewolf change forms? Roll a d10, check the chart, and you can know easy.

I tend to aim towards one roll for the Evening. I default to a perception/notice/cognition roll, but sometimes mix it up.

This idea of keeping your eye on the prize, planning ahead, making a goal and getting there! You’ve heard I am sure. I think it’s a trap.

Its not a bad idea mind you. Goal oriented thinking is hugely important, but its counterpart of living in the Now is often over looked.

A wiser man then me once said “What are you doing today to make tomorrow better? This Week? This Month? This Year?” The idea being if you answer Nothing to the first its not a huge deal but if you answer that way all week and that’s your answer for the second, it’s a yellow flag. If you say nothing to the third? Red flag. Etc.

I like this model, but its especially hard to implement especially when today might be just as shitty as tomorrow in your eyes.

Recently I was unemployed. I found myself applying for Jobs as fast as they came on the market, but perpetually I would find myself waiting for time to pass. Be it waiting for a response, waiting for a new job, waiting for my friends to get out of work. I became very good at seeing waiting as doing something productive, which is the first part of the trap.

I could have cleaned my house, but I was waiting for a reply. I could have made a cool present for my GF, but I was waiting for a new job to post. The list goes on.

Now its easy to say ‘but waiting, that’s not doing anything’ but that the easy out. When you have nothing to do, like when you are unemployed, the things you do have to do become big things. The big thing for me was trying to get a job, and all things tied to that process took precedence. And so I would look ahead. I would sit on the couch and tweak my resume waiting for the call and willing time to pass.

Oddly enough it did.

And that’s where the trap snapped closed on me. My life became a series of moments that were always focused on the future because the now was really a shitty place to be. Or so I thought.

The Now is the part I missed. The life I was living slipped by in the moments I was waiting for life to start back up again. As I look back I can see my poor girlfriend at the time not knowing how to handle it, or my friends not really getting it, or even the games I was running suffering.

I pulled out of it, and I thank a lot of people. My family, my ex, my friends, but at the end of the day it was the shocking realization of “Do I want my life to be a series of waiting or a series of doings” and I haven’t looked back except to ponder it ever since.

Another wise man once said “When in doubt, Do something”