Wednesday, July 22, 2009

What D&D Character Are You

129 questions later...

I Am A: Lawful Good GnomeWizard/Cleric (2nd/1st Level)


Ability Scores:

Strength-12

Dexterity-11

Constitution-12

Intelligence-16

Wisdom-11

Charisma-14


Alignment:
Lawful Good A lawful good character acts as a good person is expected or required to act. He combines a commitment to oppose evil with the discipline to fight relentlessly. He tells the truth, keeps his word, helps those in need, and speaks out against injustice. A lawful good character hates to see the guilty go unpunished. Lawful good is the best alignment you can be because it combines honor and compassion. However, lawful good can be a dangerous alignment because it restricts freedom and criminalizes self-interest.


Race:
Gnomes are in wide demand as alchemists, inventors, and technicians, though most prefer to remain among their own kind in simple comfort. Gnomes adore animals, gems, and jokes, especially pranks. They love to learn by personal experience, and are always trying new ways to build things. Gnomes stand 3 to 3.5 feet tall and live about 350 to 500 years.


Primary Class:
Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard's strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells.


Secondary Class:
Clerics act as intermediaries between the earthly and the divine (or infernal) worlds. A good cleric helps those in need, while an evil cleric seeks to spread his patron's vision of evil across the world. All clerics can heal wounds and bring people back from the brink of death, and powerful clerics can even raise the dead. Likewise, all clerics have authority over undead creatures, and they can turn away or even destroy these creatures. Clerics are trained in the use of simple weapons, and can use all forms of armor and shields without penalty, since armor does not interfere with the casting of divine spells. In addition to his normal complement of spells, every cleric chooses to focus on two of his deity's domains. These domains grants the cleric special powers, and give him access to spells that he might otherwise never learn. A cleric's Wisdom score should be high, since this determines the maximum spell level that he can cast.


Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)





Detailed Results:

Alignment:
Lawful Good ----- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (26)
Neutral Good ---- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (24)
Chaotic Good ---- XXXXXXXXXXXXXX (14)
Lawful Neutral -- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (20)
True Neutral ---- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (18)
Chaotic Neutral - XXXXXXXX (8)
Lawful Evil ----- XXXXXXXXXXXXX (13)
Neutral Evil ---- XXXXXXXXXXX (11)
Chaotic Evil ---- X (1)

Law & Chaos:
Law ----- XXXXXXXXXXXX (12)
Neutral - XXXXXXXXXX (10)
Chaos --- (0)

Good & Evil:
Good ---- XXXXXXXXXXXXXX (14)
Neutral - XXXXXXXX (8)
Evil ---- X (1)

Race:
Human ---- XXXXXXXXXXXXX (13)
Dwarf ---- XXXXXX (6)
Elf ------ XXXXXXXXXXXX (12)
Gnome ---- XXXXXXXXXXXXXX (14)
Halfling - XXXXXXXXXXXX (12)
Half-Elf - XXXXXXXXX (9)
Half-Orc - (0)

Class:
Barbarian - (-23)
Bard ------ (-19)
Cleric ---- XXXXXX (6)
Druid ----- (-21)
Fighter --- (-6)
Monk ------ XX (2)
Paladin --- (-2)
Ranger ---- XXXX (4)
Rogue ----- (-8)
Sorcerer -- (-2)

Wizard ---- XXXXXX (6)

    

Figure out your own D&D character by taking this survey.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Ghosts in the Machine

Two years ago, I lived in Japan for a summer. It was an incredibly vivid experience; itt felt like living in technicolor. After I returned, memories of Japan surrounded me so constantly a psychic would probably not have seen my aura as a color, he or she would have seen it as the smell of cement on a humid day, the sound of n approaching train, a travelling companion's smile, and a thousand other things that stuck in my head. It took me two weeks after returning to the home I had grown up in before I felt like it wasn't just a vacation spot. Although I was happy to back in the U.S., and to eat the brownies I had missed so dearly, and to hug my parents and siblings, I kept feeling that I needed to go "home" to apartment 203 and my little room, furnished only with my futon and the contents of my two suitcases.

After two more semesters of school, I had the opportunity during last year's summer break to spend a week in Germany. There were many wonderful and uniquely German things that I saw and experienced, but, to be honest, I spent a great deal of time in Germany surrounded by thoughts of Japan and the previous summer. The small streets and humidity made me feel like if I just ducked down the right side street or took the right train long enough, I would be at my apartment in Tokyo. I would climb the stairs, open my door, and my old roommates and companions would be there. I could climb up to the roof and feel the Tokyo breeze and I knew I'd be back where I belonged. I walked through Germany surrounded quite often by ghosts of Japan.

Then, this spring, I nearly got a job that would have moved me to Japan for at least a year. Since I got back from Japan, I have thought a lot about how it would feel to return to Japan after two long years. I used believe that I just couldn't do it without my old travelling companion. After about a year, I figured I could go back by myself and enjoy it, but pictured myself nearly drowning in memories and nostalgia when visiting old favorite places.


Well, the day finally came. Strong-arming my suitcases up and down escalators as I left the airport didn't give me much time for reflection, but as I sat on the train and looked around, listening to the same woman's voice warn passengers that the doors were closing, there was a sense of coming home, of picking up where I had left off. Today I visited nearly several of my favorite parts of Tokyo in one day. I spent a lot of time staring through the leaves of my favorite Japanese maples in Meiji Jingu, I sifted through the clearance racks of at least a dozen stores in Harajuku, and I walked through Yoyogi park.



Finally, I took the train to my "home" station. As I left the station, I didn't need to look where I was going, I knew the way. There was the sushi restaurant, the King Kong Pachinko parlor, the store that sells a hundred little wrestling figurines. I ducked inside the grocery store we were once so proud of discovering (it was an extra ten minute walk from our aparments, but it was at least 10 yen cheaper for everything) and bought myself some of my favorite dessert. Nearer and nearer to the old apartments I came, stepping into stores I had once visited nearly daily.

Finally, I see it. Just past the recyle shop, down a side path, and then climb the stairs. They're steep. There's more dust than I remember. I stop outside the door to my old apartment long enough to whisper "I'm home." Except I didn't feel anything. No rush of nostalgia, no yearning for past experiences. I climbed up two more flights to the apartment where the rest of our party had lived and where I'd spent the majority of my time. This, for sure would take me back. But still, just simple curiousity that was quickly satisfied with a quick look at the red door was all I felt. One last flight up to the top of the stairs, and I was opening the door to the roof. It looked smaller than I remembered. I stepped to the railing and looked out over the street like I used to do nearly every morning. The breeze felt familiar, and all the shops were where I remembered them, and bicycles still sped past below me, but there was no tug at my heart strings, no desire to stay.

It was odd, because that roof had been my sanctuary, my retreat. I had spent hours upon hours up there. Talking, reading, thinking. But now it was empty. Not even a ghost rose to greet me.

I suppose that's the thing about ghosts: you can't predict them. I guess I hadn't realized just how many of those ghosts that used to haunt my steps I have laid to rest over the past two years. I have a million connections to Japan, and I felt many of them reactivate today. Meiji Jingu is heart-rendingly gorgeous and still one of my favorite places on this good Earth. Takeshita Dori is still a blast, but the connections I expected to feel the most were oddly silent. As I sat on the roof I found myself thinking, "I don't need to stand here and wait for nostalgia to hit me. I have a million memories of this place, I don't need one so disconnected from the rest." I honestly feel no need to relive the past. Living it once was enough.

So, I'm ready for new memories of Japan. Somewhere over the last year or so, I stopped wanted to come to Japan to recover the life I lived that brief summer and began wanting to come to Japan simply because I like so many things about being here. What I think this very long blog is trying to say is that I came back to Japan and found it very much alive and demanding to be recognized in the present, not confined to the past and populated with ghosts. Goodness knows, the 12 million living people here are more than enough.

So, hello Japan. I'm back, and you're still Awesome.

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Crouched at the Starting Line

Tomorrow morning at a very early hour, about 4:30 a.m., I will begin another epic journey. First I will be driven to the airport by an unfortunate saint who volunteered to get up that early on a Sunday morning. From Salt Lake City I will fly to Seattle, where I will wait five hours before boarding another plane. This flight will be long, probably boring, and supposedly "overnight." It must be overnight, because I when I finally remove my now-seat-shaped rear from the cushion, I will have arrived at the next day. Oh, and another continent. Because I'm headed to Japan. I'll be gone for almost exactly three weeks.

While words cannot express how excited I am to be in Tokyo again, this trip have challenges that my last one did not. Last time, I had what I believed to be a remarkable amount of disposable income to simply throw around and travel. This time, I'm completely two-dimensionally broke.

But I am, nevertheless, going to return to old haunts, find new sights to see, and breathe air resplendent with both humidity and pollution.

But at this instant, I find myself slightly over prepared. My suitcases are packed, the items going into my carry-on are carefully strewn about the living room. I've packed up all my clothes and music, and I'm waiting until I hit the airport to start reading the books I've packed. All I can do at this point, is wait. Wait for the clock to tick off a few more hours until bed time. I suppose I'll go clean anything that will go bad in three weeks' time out of the fridge and record a new answering machine message informing people that I am off on adventuring once more.

Yeah, I think I'll do that. It beats going over my train schedule for the fifth time.