Snippet: The Day of No Jackets

It's sad to see how many times I tried and failed at writing something. The more of these I read, the more I want to make this year the year I use all my D&D training as well as my knowledge of creative writing from college to write SOMEthing that has a beginning, middle, and end that I made all on my own. Anyway... This "attempt at an epic novel" was basically me rewriting my own life to be set in a fantasy universe. The worldbuilding was clearly meant to parallel my actual life, and while I get the idea of Ando being a linguist being a possibly interesting plot element, I had no idea where I was going with the conflict. I just wanted spring to come and to get started writing anything. They say write what you know, but in my case, that turned out to be really boring.

Snippet: Sonho Cinzenta

 Here's another snippet that's surprisingly not on this blog yet. Another attempt during the Great Writer's Block of the early 2010s, this time trying to invent a story of some kind out of Brazilian lore. I knew next to nothing about Brazilian mythology or some way to put a spin on a Brazilian setting (I assume, like all of my writing, this was going to be a fantasy story), so it fizzled pretty quickly. But the writing, as usual, is fun to read, and I especially like the first couple of paragraphs.

Snippet: "Beasts and Beauty"

 I'm glad I found this. I remember writing it in 2014 when I was in the height of my writer's block, desperate to find something to stick to writing about. So I decided to flip fairy tales on their heads and see how far I could go with that. As you can see with the shortness of the following snippet, I didn't get very far (blast my undiagnosed mild apathetic depression at the time!) but it's an inspiring snippet, and as with other snippets I've posted here on the blog, I wish I could learn more about this intriguing story. 

Poem: Looking Out a Window

 Merry Christmas, everyone. I've never liked free verse poetry much because I just utterly love rhymes, but this free verse poem I made in college in 2011 that I just stumbled upon evoked a very vivid picture that I distinctly remembered when I wrote it. That's poetry for sure. Man, I really need to write more. I miss it.

Doodles

Sometimes when I doodle something, a specific drawing just stands out for some reason. Maybe it's got a sort of perfect symmetry to it, or a beauty in a collection of its curved lines, or a humanoid figure looks particularly realistic in its form, or maybe it's just a well-detailed ink drawing with no mistakes in it. When that happens, I cut out the drawing and put it in an envelope called the "Envelope of Fame."

After many years, I accumulated quite a few of these precious drawings, and I realized how much I wanted to showcase them. At first I organized them into compilation PSDs, but just looking at a big mass wasn't a good way to appreciate the individual doodles. So I made this video. It was hard to come up with what music to play while the doodles were scrolling, but in the end I decided on the soundtrack from Goofy's Extremely Goofy Skateboarding (2001), which reminds me of the most carefree years of my life; and "Knight Gold" from Heroes of Might and Magic II Gold (1998), which I would like performed at my funeral, if at all possible.

I proudly present this compilation as a deep look into my artistic heart over the past 15 or so years. Enjoy.

Ask Dave Anything!

 I've had the privilege of being a close associate with David "DesignerDave" Fried ever since my Warcraft 3 Easter Eggs series took off. I even did an interview with him that was republished by Hive Workshop and beloved by many. This year, he and I decided to do an "Ask Me Anything" collaboration across our two channels, where he answers many questions sent in on our Discord servers.

It's been an honor to work with a former developer of one of my favorite PC games of all time and to get a bit of closure on why the franchise's "reforging" was so disappointing, among other interesting tidbits of information. Below are the first two videos. Enjoy!

Dubbing Differences: Mulan

  

Fixing (or at Least Improving) the Crafting Systems in D&D 5e

So you have a good idea for a magic item for your character. You approach your Dungeon Master about it, who flips through the downtime options in Dungeon Master's Guide and Xanathar's Guide to Everything and gives you guidelines on how to get started. The problem is, if you follow those rules exactly, you'll run into problems like the following:

• An arrow +2 will cost 1,000 gp, and an arrow +3 will cost 10,000 gp.
• Uncommon potions of healing cost TWICE as much to craft as simply buying them (which I seriously think is an error), based on the Adventurer's League prices.
• A Legendary single-use spell scroll (9th level) costs TWO AND A HALF TIMES as much to make as a Legendary item that has permanent enchantments.
• It can take you anywhere from half a year to FIVE YEARS to craft a Very Rare item that you could find much earlier while just leveling up and adventuring during that same time period.

Luckily, Xanathar's Guide makes crafting a lot more viable, but the system still suffers from too broad of rarity ranges, a lack of specific rules for magic item attributes, and just a general lack of fun. I get that 5e's primary quality is simplicity and being streamlined, but if a player wants to craft a magic item, some complexity is required to make a balanced system. You can't just abstract everything about the process.

Making crafting too easy breaks the game and cheapens magic items; however, making crafting too hard discourages it from ever happening, which is a shame. How can we make a crafting system that is closely based on the existing rules, but fixes rarity ranges, ensures balance and viability, and gives balanced, reverse-engineerable rules for giving magic items attributes? Below is my suggested solution.

My 10 Favorite Creative D&D Tools

I've been a DM for just over 4 years now, and I've learned a lot during that time. Though I most of the time prefer "theater of the mind" for my games (it's a lot easier than you think!), I also enjoy a good game on Roll20. With the advent of Inkarnate battle maps and Hero Forge in color, there are a wealth of tools available to enrich your adventures. Here are my favorite creative tools when I'm preparing my games:

Poem: Heaven's Brushstrokes

Heaven's Brushstrokes

 by Austin Ballard

            What beautiful brushes have you, Lord,

            That paint across the azure skies.

            With strokes of white across your board

            Ignited pink with each sunrise.

            And after rain from tempest cries,

            Rainbow tears and golden sun

            Adorn the heavens and wet mine eyes,

            And leave the works of men outdone.

Dubbing Differences: The Lion King

Warcraft II Abel Voices Pack download!

A few months ago, I set about recreating all the timeless iconic voice lines from Warcraft II. When I realized how easy it was to set them as the actual sound effects on Warcraft II by simply replacing the files in the GameSFX folder, I realized that I had to complete the set and recreate not just the voices, but all the sound effects.

Unfortunately, the microphone I used to use doesn't work anymore, so the new sounds sound too high of quality to match the voice lines. And some of the sound effects were harder to make than others, but overall, it was a fun project to complete.

If you'd like to have me making all kinds of weird sound effects and imitating all the voices in your own Warcraft II game, simply download the sound files at the link below and follow the instructions in the readme file it contains!  

Click Here to Download the Pack!

Dubbing Differences: Disney's Aladdin

Relic Project: "Guide"/Legends of Mynn 1: Characters

Alright, something to know about me if you didn't already: I love games. I always have. I always grew up thinking I'd be a video game designer in the future, and I wasted no time in my childhood investing in that future. I would draw screenshots of games I was going to make, complete with UI. I would write Warcraft II-style manuals for games, describing units and abilities and everything without even designing the game first. And then, there were projects like this.

It's a .txt file simply called "Guide," and apparently it's a walkthrough / README for a game I was going to make someday. The date stamp of the file is 2006, which is unfortunate, because that must have been either when I accidentally updated it or moved it from one computer to another and the original date got overwritten, because I wrote it much earlier—I'm guessing around 2000 or 2001. Maybe earlier though.

I'm so glad it's survived up to this point, though. It's such an interesting look at my early child game designer mind. I remember picturing the characters in my head and how they would look (of course in pixely graphics because that's just what I thought computer graphics looked like by definition), but not so much how the game worked, as you'll see in its descriptions. I know it seems to have been inspired by some aspects of Lords of Magic, but the way combat is described in the walkthrough and moves list are confusing.

It's funny how thorough I am in every aspect of it, though I neglected to come up with an actual title for the game. Though some parts are impressive, it's clear that I had no idea how games were created. It's cute how I even came up with cheat codes for it and descriptions for how to use the "Level Editor." I always loved when games came with editors.

Anyway, presenting "Guide," or "Legends of Mynn" or whatever it might have ended up to be. I've restructured things for easier reading here to get a better idea of how I intended it to be red, but I've preserved the wording for the most part. Today I'll just highlight the characters in the game.

Dubbing Differences: The Little Mermaid

 

Calories Must Die! The Warmage Workout

I've been wanting to get into shape for some time, especially with being stuck working from home because of COVID, so I bought a couple of 10-pound weights and started following a workout video on YouTube. The video was great for beginners, and it followed a great balance of working out each muscle group. The problem was, the video got old. I'm not interested in hollow encouragement and banter, and I could only stand hearing the coach crack the same joke so many times before getting in shape just wasn't worth it. So I got an idea.

What does interest me? Video games. What gets my blood pumping? The video game Orcs Must Die! Whose voice don't I get tired of? The main character on the game, the Warmage, as he goes through killing orcs! So I spent way too many hours rotoscoping the coach of that workout video into the Warmage, adding exciting, blood-pumping music and the Warmage's banter to the video, and pronto! An almost too-perfect video for myself to work out to on a consistent basis. Seriously, how perfect is it that the songs have ending stings so I could customize the length of each workout, and that each sound effect has a place in the video?

I'm also fairly impressed with how I doctored the logo and stuff with special effects, if I do say so myself. Anyway, I do this workout three times a week, and it's mainly made for my own use, but feel free to follow it as well! I was hoping Robot Entertainment would get a kick out of it, since it almost seems like something they would actually make, but no dice. Oh well. It was fun to make and it does its job well!

Dubbing Differences: Disney's Hercules

Welcome to a new series, Dubbing Differences, where I watch classic films in Portuguese and highlight their most interesting and funny differences in translation. It's fascinating to me how much effort it must take to find translated lines that get the idea across, that are spoken in more or less the same period of time on screen, that are voiced by actors who have reasonably similar vocal timbre to the originals, and to go the extra mile that fit the lip syncing of the character pretty close. And don't even get me started on translating entire songs that rhyme... Those deserve much more attention than these smaller articles.

Hero Forge Final Quest Heroes

What can I say? Ever since Hero Forge got color, it's been exploding in utility for recreation. Below are the heroes of my JRPG, Final Quest, which I'm tempted to see if I can get back into working on at some point. It has some good potential. I also realized I've never really done a deep dive into this game's mechanics before, so I thought I'd give you some more information on each of the characters and how they work while I'm at it. I wish the game development was farther along so I could give more details.

Relic Short Story: The Castle on the Hill

My mom recently found an old box of memories, and I was really surprised to find them. The box had been packed away in some corner of our last couple houses, and unlike my existing tablets and things that I had organized and review out of nostalgia every few years, I hadn't laid eyes on any of these documents and drawings for decades. Among them was this short story, dated June 2001, that I must have written as a creative writing assignment. I'm fairly impressed. For a story written by a 12-year-old, it's not half-bad. At least compared to some of my other jokes of attempts at creative prose.

Recipe: Brazilian Black Feijoada

It's been just shy of 8 years since I wrote this recipe I invented which was my early attempt at making a simple, easy Brazilian feijoada dish. Looking back on it, I'm super embarrassed at how lazy I was. Well, since then, I have made feijoada dozens and dozens of times for my family meals and it's gotten better and better. I think just in the past few months I've finally perfected it. For years, I didn't think it was possible for a non-Brazilian to manage to make this dish—its specific flavor was so elusive, especially without authentic Brazilian Sazon packets—but now I think I finally figured it out. And if blue-eyed, white-skinned, Idahoan me managed to cook it, you can too, no matter where you're from!

Brazilian Black Feijoada

"Uma delicia auténtica!"

 Ingredients

• 3 slices bacon, chopped
• 4 oz. pork, cubed
• 3 beef hot dogs, 2 brats, or 1 smoked sausage, sliced
• ¾ large onion, chopped and divided
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 cans black beans, drained*
• ½ tsp cumin
• 1 tsp. smoked paprika
• ½ tsp cracked pepper
• ¼ tsp. ground coriander
• 2 bay leaves
• cilantro, chopped

Directions

1. Brown the bacon, pork, and hot dogs in a cooking pot over medium high heat.
2. Set aside meats and sauté the garlic and half of the chopped onions in the bacon fat.
3. Add beans, seasonings, the rest of the onions, and 2 cups of water to the pot* and bring to a boil.
4. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 10 minutes, then add the meat and simmer for another 15 minutes or until the flavors are combined and the pork is stained from the black beans. Stir occasionally. Add more water if it starts to get too thick, or uncover if it's too thin for you.
5. Add salt, pepper, and water to taste and to the desired thickness, and add desired amount of cilantro (or Italian parsley if you don't like cilantro)—I usually go with a half a bundle or so.
6. Serve with hot sauce, farofa pronta, Brazilian vinagrete salsa, sliced bananas, mashed potatoes, pão de queijo, steak, chicken, or whatever else you want, on a bed of Brazilian rice. Click the links for good recipes for each of those.
7. Enjoy!

*If you'd like to do it with dry beans in a pressure cooker, instead use ½ pound (1 cup) dry black beans soaked for an hour or so, 2 teaspoons of salt, ¼ teaspoon of baking soda, and 2½ cups of water. Pressure cook all the ingredients together (except cilantro) for 35 minutes with a natural release.

YIELD: About 5–8 servings.

Washes down well with...  Guaraná, Sprite, or fresh mango, guava, or passion fruit juice.

____

*Found at some Latin food markets

Eden: Argaenothruzil Re-imagined

Have I got a crazy story for you.

Remember this map that I posted on here two years ago after making it? I forgot that I did this, but I posted that map online on the Inkarnate database just for other people to see it. Little did I know that this map would be the inspiration for an alternate reality of Argaenothruzil born in the head of a completely different person!

A guy named Nitsuj (presumably Justin, which is an oddly similar name to mine as well) wanted to create a homebrew D&D world but lacked the skills to make a world map, so he looked around online. He stumbled upon my map on a Pinterest board and decided to use it as a base to craft his world, "Eden," around. He made up backstories and lore for each location on the map and build a large group of people (West Marches style) on his Discord channel.

He eventually deep-searched me looking for the creator of the map and showed me his work. It was crazy to introduce myself to his players as the original creator of the map they all played D&D on, and weirder still to hear the stories he came up with for each location. Below are the locations and the differences between them in this shadow-world of his:

Adventures in Coding, Part 2

It's been a couple of years now since I made this post about my coding accomplishments helping facilitate being a Dungeon Master, and I think it's high time I gave an update on those projects and a couple new ones I made. After all, my coding course and externship are long behind me, and now I actually have a coding job! It's been a long journey, and though coding isn't my first career choice, I feel blessed to have it.

Recreating the Voice Lines from Warcraft II

I was listening to the album Legend of the Boar Knight by Careless Juja over the past week or two (really awesome and recommended, by the way—the type of thing I'd love to make myself some day), and in an intermission track in the middle, the narrator imitated the voices from Warcraft 2, and it made me want to try my hand at it.

Relic Speech/Essay: Zerzo Seewok

This is a speech I wrote in my speech class way back in 2005. The prompt was to create "Zerzo Seewok," which could be anything. It was a imaginative exercise where basically anything goes, and you would explain what Zerzo Seewok was, how you found it, its characteristics, and so forth. The delivery of this speech didn't go so well, and the prose definitely hasn't aged well (this was back when I thought that talking like an 1800s poet sounded cool) but it was fun to write. I'm also tempted to someday adapt it to an SCP Foundation entry someday.

365 Memories of 2020

At the end of 2019, I decided I would do a year-long project by writing a single line of memories each day in the coming year. That way I would have an entire year's worth of miniscule journal entries to look back on. I had no idea of all the hard things that would crop up in 2020. But looking back, it was fun to see how many good times I had amid all the trials of the pandemic and quarantine. Below is an image with all of the text of those 365 memories with a picture I took of the sunset. I think it represents the fires of last year, but also the closing of a long day looking forward to a brighter tomorrow.