Warcraft Techno (The German Mixes)

I like techno a lot, but I really liked it back in 2007 when I first started college. Somewhere around that time, I found this song by "Mr. Tom & Got Show," whom I can't find much information about anywhere online. Since I've been playing Warcraft 2 lately, I was reminded of this song and now it's finally published for public consumption!

10 D&D Monster Templates

I've found that one of the best ways to breathe new life into the creativity of homebrew monster encounters in Dungeons & Dragons is through templates. Who could be more unique than encountering a fairy lich, a pack of zombie dogs, a half-dragon half-ogre, or a dire snail? I did some research and compared and compiled some stuff in the monster manual, and have for you some templates you can give to any monster. In order to apply one of these templates, simply change anything explained in the bullet points. Everything else (except the appearance of the monster, which is up to you to make unique!) remains the same.

The Scourge of Lordaeron Adventure, Chapter 1

I've long wanted to play a D&D campaign that takes place in the world of Azeroth. The Warcraft Roleplaying Game was what got me into 3rd edition D&D in the first place, and my first time ever playing D&D 5th edition was running an adventure that took place in Azeroth. In my spare time, I've compiled a starter adventure taken directly from Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos.

The Big Rock Candy Mountain: My Edition

I recently watched the film O Brother, Where Art Thou? and was reminded of how nice the song "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" is. It's fun to see the idea of paradise from the perspective of a 1920s hobo, who valued not getting caught by law enforcement, easy food and cigarettes, and other more universally paradisaical ideas, such as sunshine and lands that are "fair and bright." I decided it'd be fun to make my own version of this song based on what my idea of paradise would be.

Ways to Switch Up D&D Monsters

I've been having a blast reading Descent into Avernus, the first real D&D 5e book that I honest-to-goodness bought not just for access to new game mechanics, but to have as an actual adventure module to run. One thing I admire about Wizards of the Coast's published adventures is their ability to breathe life into combat so that it always feels new. They always seem to give great variety to the types of monsters you encounter in an adventure; for example, you don't just see devil after devil when you go to the Nine Hells; you also see a gang of wereboars, a night hag with a crew of fey redcaps and a pet flesh golem, and a chariot pulled by gorgons.

Even with the devils they do put into this adventure, they use simple twists to make each one seem unique from the standard picture shown in the Monster Manual. Below is a list I've compiled showing some techniques and twists you can put on monsters (along with examples) so that players who are already familiar with all the monsters in the game can encounter new challenges, and finding yet another group of orcs won't ever get burdensome.

My List of Rituals

I love rituals. I think it's important to celebrate holidays and hold formal traditions, so as to have things to look forward to and add stability and gratitude to yearly life. Being as today is the first of October when I begin my yearly ritual of eating a bag of candy corn and a bag of creme pumpkins by as quickly as I wish, I decided to make a list of the rituals and traditions I enjoy from year to year. I'm sure as time goes by I'll come back here and update it as I remember more and make more to fill it in. As you'll notice, a lot of it has to do with food, as well as rituals to commemorate events that happened on that day years before.

Farewell, Vermilius

This week I said goodbye to one of my closest friends, Vermilius. He's been a part of my life for nearly six and a half years, and now he's off living a new life, for however much time he has left. He was getting really slow towards the end of our time together, and to ease the pain of separation, I wiped his memories so he had less to miss.

A Weekend at the Utah Renaissance Faire

The other weekend I had the chance to go to Utah's Renaissance Faire! I'm not sure why I've never made the effort to go to a Renaissance faire before now. I guess I assumed it was more focused on the actual Renaissance than the dark ages and more "interesting" aspects of the Middle Ages. Regardless, last night when I found the Utah faire's website, I immediately resolved to buy a VIP ticket for the Queen's Feast the moment they were available and save enough money to where I could get anything I wanted, including food and drink on a whim—something I've never been able to enjoy before. In short, I wanted to treat myself and release my inner child. I absolutely love medieval stuff in any form, and this was finally my chance to experience something like this for myself.

Austin's Weekday Routine 2019

It was kind of fun to read my last article I did like this, so I thought it'd be a good idea to update it now that it's a little over two years later.

4 D&D Tables for Exploration Inspiration

Along with coming up with homebrew rules and features for Dungeons & Dragons 5e, I've also been compiling lists of just general ideas for elements to put into future campaigns. I figured I may as well share them here for your use in campaigns, if you wish. Especially since I'll probably keep accumulating ideas faster than I can implement them. Feel free to roll on a table if you need inspiration.

The Incredible Machine Song Lyrics

I remember the PC game The Incredible Machine with much fondness, and I miss it dearly—Its spiritual successor, Contraption Maker, just isn't the same, and it's the closest thing I can find to it nowadays. One thing I still enjoy from The Incredible Machine is its music. When I was a kid, I realized if I put the Incredible Machine CD into my mom's stereo, it played the music from the game! I ripped the songs onto my PC, and they've been juggled around from computer to computer ever since. And now my favorite ones are in my iTunes.

One thing I've noticed is that I can't seem to find the lyrics to many of these songs anywhere online. So I thought I'd take it upon myself to listen to them as close as I can and transcribe them here for any other Incredible Machine fans to find. Listed below are all the songs in Incredible Machine that have lyrics to them.

10 Calvin & Hobbes Strips I Don't Understand

Bill Watterson is one of my dearest heroes. His adherence to the integrity of art over merchandise, his excellence in the execution of comic drawing, his sense of humor, and his reclusive nature as an author all resonate with me and have been key points of inspiration for Knight Guy. And being a dreamer myself, Calvin & Hobbes's topic material focus on imagination, childhood, and nostalgia have always brought me joy and made me feel like I'm a kid on summer vacation again.

I had all of the Calvin & Hobbes books (or at least all the cartoons—some were collections of two books) by the time I was about 15 years old, and I've made it a tradition to read through the entire series chronologically every other year or so. I'm amazed at how year after year I can find new strips to laugh aloud at and other ones that bring tears to my eyes as I read the same strips at different points in my lifetime.

Despite my lifelong love for Calvin & Hobbes, there are still some strips that—even after all these decades—I just don't get. Going through the series this time, I decided to compile all the strips I don't understand here with a request for anyone who knows* they understand a strip to explain the humor or punchline of it to me in the comments below.

3 Inspiring Game Design Tips I Learned from Hollow Knight

A few weeks ago I purchased the game Hollow Knight during the Steam Summer Sale, and I can not stop thinking about how perfectly it caters to the human mind's idea of fun, progression, mystery, and challenge. I spend a lot of time compiling resources for being a Dungeon Master for Dungeons & Dragons, and this game was so inspiring, I just have to write a blog post about it. I hope I can do justice to my thoughts about the game in picking apart exactly what is so awesome about it.

Heroes of Silvermoon, Final Chapter: A New Port of Kings

Contents:

1. The Cultist
2. Arena Games
3. Phoenix Sorcery
4. The Half-Moon Crucible
5. Castle Mistamere
6. Bringing Back the Dead
7. The Curse of House Lightwalker
8. Captured
9. Far from Home
10. Through the Underdark
11. A New Port of Kings

The Tale of the Heroes of Silvermoon

Chapter 11: A New Port of Kings

Heroes of Silvermoon, Chapter 10: Through the Underdark

Contents:

1. The Cultist
2. Arena Games
3. Phoenix Sorcery
4. The Half-Moon Crucible
5. Castle Mistamere
6. Bringing Back the Dead
7. The Curse of House Lightwalker
8. Captured
9. Far from Home
10. Through the Underdark
11. A New Port of Kings

The Tale of the Heroes of Silvermoon

Chapter 10: Through the Underdark

Heroes of Silvermoon, Chapter 9: Far from Home

Contents:

1. The Cultist
2. Arena Games
3. Phoenix Sorcery
4. The Half-Moon Crucible
5. Castle Mistamere
6. Bringing Back the Dead
7. The Curse of House Lightwalker
8. Captured
9. Far from Home
10. Through the Underdark
11. A New Port of Kings

The Tale of the Heroes of Silvermoon

Chapter 9: Far from Home

D&D Homebrew: 11 Custom Feats

I don't have a lot of experience homebrewing feats, but I personally thought these ones would be pretty fun to play with in a campaign.

16 D&D Carnival Games

Here are some carnival games you can put into your campaign between adventures or when the characters find a town that happens to be having a festival of some kind. The prizes should be mechanically worthless souvenirs that the party will enjoy roleplaying with but won't really gain any advantage with. This set of rules comes with a bonus rule on getting drunk!

D&D Homebrew: My 10 Favorite Homebrew Rules

Ever since I discovered Critical Role, I've been obsessed with Dungeons & Dragons 5e. No other medium or pastime has fully captured all of the aspects of creativity that I enjoy: worldbuilding, epic combat, monstrous creatures, and amazing unexpected story paths. Since then, I've compiled a myriad of lists of homebrew rules, riddles, magic items, custom spells, and random generators to help me with my preferred method of enjoying D&D: Dungeon Mastering.

I figured now that my YouTube channel, while more active than ever, isn't being focused on in Pretzel Lectern, I should use it to post more D&D content like other D&D blogs I've seen, my most favorite of which are theangrygm.com and blogofholding.com. Today I'll be looking at a few homebrew rules that enhance the D&D experience for me.

Poem: Time Never Ceases

I already published this poem on this blog under a different name, but I realized I had an updated version I revised in my creative writing class that made it more... poetic, I guess. It was kind of dumb in the original version for just being about food. This one adds some emotion into it by moving up the ladder of abstraction every once in a while and eliminating clichés.

Time Never Ceases

Drinks get warm

Food gets cold

Crackers get stale

Friends get annoying

Bread gets hard

Cereal gets soggy

Soda gets flat

Clothes tighten

Fruit spoils

Vegetables wilt

Ice cream melts

Children grow up

Gravy lumps

Cheese molds

Eyesight blurs

Milk sours

Hair grays

Meat rots 

Pets die

Time never ceases.

Poem: Craving

I made this in a creative writing class my second year of college, back when I was still having withdrawals from Brazil. Not a huge fan of it because it don't rhyme none, but from what I can tell from other free-verse poetry, I think it's not half-bad the way it talks about simplicity and nostalgia vs. fanciness.

Craving

I have tasted succulent steaks,

Seasoned with pepper and sauce and cooked just a little bit pink.

Sandwiches and hamburgers,

Some so tall you have to pin them together with a toothpick.

Salads so fresh,

Every half-moon of lettuce, cucumber, and celery would crunch.

Breadsticks dripping with butter—

Literally dripping. And all rough and salty with garlic on top.

I have sampled soups and broths,

Whose robust aroma warms the kitchen for half the evening.

Restaurants have their specialties, and the melting pot of America

Also happens to be bubbling with a dozen different cultural sauces.

But oh, how I long for a simple Brazilian coxinha,

Golden and fried, made from a common chicken

Cooked in a plywood stall, by a tattered gentleman

Feeding strangers so his family can eat.

Poem: Dragon Eggs

So here's the story about this poem that I dug up this past weekend at my parents' house: In fifth grade there was a city poetry contest put on by the chamber of commerce or something... one of the chambers. Anyway, it covered all the school districts and age groups in Madison county. I decided to enter this poem, and I ended up winning an honorable mention and got to recite it in front of a lot people at a city presentation at the Rexburg Tabernacle. It's nonsensical and really kind of cheesy and pretentious in a childlike, innocent way, but I do have to admire my rhyming meter and syllabification. I've always had an amazing ear for making poetry sound perfectly organized. It goes with my editor nature, of course, but it's kind of interesting that I had that gift even twenty years ago just leaving elementary school.

I have no idea what a two-decker egg is or what an egg does when it's "crooking," but my rhymes were on point, at least—thinking about the odd topic I chose for this poem, I'd bet anything the first line just popped into my head one day and I just kept repeating it to myself till it was polished, long beyond the point of having any sense to it anymore. It's also noteworthy that the poem can be sung to a pirate song on an old Felix the Cat cartoon called "The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg." As much as I was tempted to fix the grammar and punctuation, I decided to just preserve it.

Dragon Eggs

Oh, the eggs in my wagon are those of a Dragon,

they're different. Yes, it is true.

For there's green ones and black ones and small, slightly cracked ones,

there's even some shades of bright blue.

There're eggs with spots and eggs with dots and eggs with red-and-white checkers.

Some eggs are weird-looking like ones that are crooking,

and bumpy and, strangely, two-decker!

So, if you see me pulling eggs and you see

that the eggs in the cart are real funny,

Then don't forget that the eggs that sit

in my wagon are worth lots of money.

The eggs in my wagon are those of a Dragon,

they're wonderful...

Yes, it is true.

Streaming

I decided I'm going to start streaming! My friend ClassicJoog has given me some pointers, and provided I can get my internet to be a bit faster, it may be a fun supplemental thing to do when it comes to gaming and making Warcraft content. Mainly I'm doing this out of necessity, since a perk I promised my YouTube members involves a monthly stream, but I'm gonna do it right, with custom borders and badges and whatnot. Here's my first creation: a gif that appears when I get a new subscriber or donation!

Warcraft 3 Easter Eggs: Spells and Icons, Part 2:

Due to the volume of videos I've made on my channel, I've decided to make this my last video I share on this blog. If you want to see the rest, follow my channel. This is a good one to end on, too, since it basically closes up the entire series I've worked on up to this point, and it's my longest video to date.

I CAN NOT believe how big the channel has gotten. As of this writing, I have almost 10,000 subscribers, 10 members or patrons, 91 videos, and I've made about $500 off of ad revenue! I can't believe this! It's incredible that I happened to stumble on these secrets almost exactly three years ago, and turn them into an amazing way for me to share my love of Warcraft to the internet. I met a Blizzard developer, I get most of my viewers from Recommended videos on YouTube, and now I'm going to get into streaming! It's a dream come true. My only hope now is that someday I'll run into someone in real life who says "Hey! You're Abelhawk!"

Warcraft 3

I got some fun tips for animating and decided to put them to use with Warcraft III quotes. I thought this one turned out pretty good! It's amazing how it can take four and a half hours to animate 3 seconds.

Hourly Comic Day 2019

I did it a day late, but knowingly (because a Friday at work was less interesting than a Saturday at home).

Warcraft 3 Unused Icons and Spells

It's been a long time coming! After doing the research probably a year and a half ago and recording the audio last Fourth of July, I'm finally done with Part 1. I can't tell you how amazing it is to finally have free time again.

Der Prinz mit Drei Ohren

I wrote this fairy tale in my German II class back in 2012 and really enjoyed reading it again now that I'm cleaning out my computer folders. Its German is simple enough that it can be understood by lower-level students learning it. I won't spoil my work with a translation. Ask someone who speaks German to tell you the story or use Google Translate. :D