Poem: "A Seasoned Part of the Country"

I normally hate free verse poetry, but I forgot I wrote this and how decently written it is, theme-wise and in terms of diction, metaphors, and flow.

A Seasoned Part of the Country

by Austin Ballard

It’s a fact in anyone’s book

That iced roads can swipe an unwary tire

And direct its path to a ditch

(The place every driver dreads).

I have furrowed a disgruntled brow, too,

When the thick, heavy flakes

Pile up like bricks on a wall

To blockade my shoveled driveway once more.

And yes, even when winter is over,

The trickling, drippy brown water

May seep and soak the dead grass,

Forming flat heaps that linger to the last.

All this while we stay inside,

With wet gloves, sick of hot cocoa

And weary of making snowmen,

Bored, and longing for the color green.

Such are the common laments in this town,

And they are valid.

But yet my address stays the same, and I imagine the pitiful opposite.

In other places, to the south or southeast,

—What a pity—the children know not the color white.

Just ice in iceboxes, snow on the old T.V. screen,

And water trickling out as sweat,

With nothing but sweltering more or less to look forward to.

At least I, in my chilly basement,

Can look forward to a change greater than mere temperature:

A revolving wheel of colors, smells, and pastimes;

Rather than just dripping with sweat or pool water day in and day out.

Heroes of Silvermoon, Chapter 1: The Cultist & Chapter 2: Arena Games

I recently switched jobs (from editing to coding! Woo hoo!), and possibly my only disappointment in doing so is leaving the first D&D group I was a part of, the weekly group I started with my coworkers about a year and a half ago. It was a slow storyline, since we only played for one hour a week during a lunch break, except for half a handful of outside-work home sessions. The campaign itself was extremely dynamic, since after each story arc, we switched the DM. It allowed the story to grow organically (albeit disjointedly), while giving each of us a chance to learn both DMing and PCing skills.

To preserve the story for my own enjoyment (and hopefully yours as well), below is a summary of the entire campaign of the Heroes of Silvermoon, from start to finish. I should note that I began the campaign in a Warcraft setting, and we later changed it back to a generic D&D setting since later DMs didn't know Warcraft lore, so there are some elements based on Warcraft names that stuck before the change and were kept in the story.

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 1: The Cultist

The Princess Bride Hearthstone Cards

I noticed no one had ever done this, so I figured I might as well give it a shot. I'm no great player, so I imagine the balance on the cards is pretty bad, both for being overpowered and underpowered. I mostly just tried to cover a range of Hearthstone effects while staying true to the characters in the movie. Feel free to mouse over the cards to hear my reasoning behind the card's design.

The World of Hearth

With the start of my very first and very amazing weekly D&D group, I decided to make a new world for it to take place in. This is mainly because a) I have very little knowledge of and interest in the geography of the Forgotten Realms (which D&D canonically takes place in), b) Argaenothruzil is dated and unrealistic, c) the World of Warcraft would be a bit too limiting on creativity (and I want to use the creatures found in the Monster Manual without having to reskin them), and d) I wanted to exercise the techniques explained in the worldbuilding chapters of the 5th edition of the Dungeon Master's Guide. As I started to create a world from the ground up, I came up with a few key goals for my new world:

1. To make a unique, open, explorable world with endless adventure potential for future games
2. To base the framework of my world off of one I was already familiar with (in this case, Azeroth) to propel my creativity foreward
3. To make a simple and memorable world that didn't require too much "name inventing" on my part that was easy for players not too well versed in fantasy to feel comfortable in
4. To make a world that feels unlike earth in as many ways as possible without making the world too confusing

4 Random Mini-Projects from the Past (and a Surge of Unexpected Nostalgic Gratitude)

What a rough year. So little free time, so much stress about finances, and so much hinging on my success in this coding certification. Luckily, the course is going good for the most part (I seem to learn by osmosis—even on days I don't pay attention I seem to soak in the knowledge and remember it later), we have WIC, and I just started a D&D group with my wife, my brother, and his wife. A weekly group! I couldn't be happier. Having something like that to look forward to each Wednesday night is a real buzz. Maybe I'll summarize their adventures on the blog every few weeks. It could be a fun thing to showcase, since I'm going to be doing a lot of worldbuilding for it.

Anyway, today I want to just dig up a few old projects from my past to showcase them for you. I found them while looking through old tablet boxes at my parents' house, and I gotta tell ya, those blasts from the past feel real nice. Honestly, one of the things that just keeps me going in life is seeing all the stuff I came up with as a kid. It gives me hope of having continual creativity in years to come.

Knight Guy 5e

Hey, I just for kicks and giggles felt like adapting Knight Guy to D&D 5e. I tend to resort to spending free time adding to my D&D 5e Tables project, and after I finally resumed Knight Guy, this was a natural consequence. I may add to this in the future.

Adventures in Coding

Well, I've made it through 1/4 of my web development and coding course this year. Two more quarters to go, and then I have an externship at the company who started the program and where my instructors are from for the rest of the year. As usual, time goes by at a breakneck speed no matter what because I'm an adult, but I'll be honest—the hours of the day crawl by agonizingly.