“…you enter the cavern and see the most vile beast imaginable - - - (more…)

Since I am a bit behind in my weekly posting of my GM Inspiration series, I decided to make this week’s post a “humdinger”. In fact, I will be including several sources of inspiration, all along a common thread. I hope you all find it useful in your devious machinations… (more…)

Yet another “crunch post” for those out there with a bent for non-fluff. Actually, this is a feat requested by one of my players - my eldest son, in fact, who plays Vaskesh, our lovable lizardman ranger!

OFFENSIVE SHIELD:
You are trained in the art of using your weapons to deflect the blows of your enemies.
Prerequisite: The ability to attack more than once a round, Dex 13+, Weapon Focus
Benefit: The character gains a +1 miscellanous bonus to AC for every two attacks he sacrifices. Any odd-numbered attacks can be taken as usual, however, the attacks sacrificed always come from the first avaliable attacks in a given round.

I ran across this site today and I must say that it broke my heart… It physically pains me to see God’s word picked apart with little regard to the context and meaning of it as a whole. It is obvious that Marshall Brain is an intelligent, skillful, and thoughtful author (that is not even in debate here, actually); it is rather his selective and out-of-context attacks on God’s word that are in question, in my mind.

Take for instance, his first scripture-based “point” in Chapter 0 wherein he quotes Leviticus 20:13:

“Knowing whether God is real or not is incredibly important. For example, in Leviticus 20:13 the Bible says that we should kill all homosexuals. If God exists, and if God is the all-powerful creator of the universe, and if God wrote the Bible, then we should do that. God has commanded it and we should obey. On the other hand, if God is imaginary, we should throw the Bible away because it is absurd. The idea of human beings killing other innocent human beings is abhorrent, and a book that promotes murder and hate crimes has no place in our society. “

In this passage of text, Mr. Brain and I do agree on one thing: knowing whether God is real or not is incredibly important - in fact, I could not agree more! Further, I do not argue Mr. Brain’s summation of the scripture; Leviticus 20:13 tells us:

” ‘If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.”

HOWEVER, what Mr. Brain fails to tell his internet readership is the following - like all texts, when we examine scripture, it must be done IN CONTEXT. Now, if you examine this passage of scripture in context (i.e. with its surrounding verses and chapters), you’ll find that homosexuals are not the only people that God is saying should be stoned! Those who lie with animals, those who lie with their father’s mothers, those who like threesomes, those who sleep with their daughter-in-laws, those that curse their mothers and fathers - the list goes on and on… Further, there’s not just stoning - there’s burning with fire, separations from families, dishonoring folks - there’s LOTS of bad things going on in this passage.

So one has to ask - what exactly is going on here?!? That’s where CONTEXT comes in…

If you look at this entire chapter, you find that God is speaking to Moses prior to entering the Promised Land. He is basically, saying, “Look, Moses - you tell those Israelites that I know they’ve seen, heard, and even done a fair amount of bad things in the past but once they get to Canaan, we ARE NOT going to have any of this nonsense anymore! Moses, you tell them that if they do these things, these are the “bad things” that are going to happen…”

(An Aside)…As a matter of fact, if you read through the book of Leviticus, there’s quite a lot of “bad things” going on; this is because this book is primarily a “list of DO’s and DO NOT’s for the Children of Israel after their departure from slavery and subsequent journey to the Promised Land).

So, basically, God sets out the ground rules, and THEN comes the long laundry list of the PUNISHMENTS for these SINFUL ACTS. These were essentially the conditions that would follow sinful behavior! Now, doesn’t that sound a bit more familiar? Sounds a bit like our death penalty today, ya? Now, I know that we do not send people to the gas chamber for having sexual relations with their mother, but most folks who consider themselves moral citizens do not condone such behavior. This is also where another nugget of Mr. Brain’s mindset gleams forth for us to see - in his own words, we find that he does, in truth, not consider homosexuality a sin. In his own words, he says:

“The idea of human beings killing other innocent human beings …”

I wonder if Mr. Brain would feel the same way about sin (and it’s subsequent punishment) if someone he loved dearly (himself included) was harmed in some manner…

I have no doubt that in the day and age of the Old Testament, there were people killed for these acts, and it was done in accordance with God’s word, HOWEVER, this where Mr. Brain again elects to leave out the CONTEXT of the entirety of God’s Holy Word. To prove this point, we will play a little game, ok? You can do this at home - just follow along with my instructions.

1. First, stand up and hop on one foot (go on, do it…)
2. Now, sit down (thank you).
3. Now, stand up and DO NOT HOP, but SAY that you hopped, and THINK about hopping

Ok - the game is over (you can sit down now…) - what does this prove? Well, first, I gave you some instructions to do something (which I’m assuming you did) and afterwards, we only admited that we did something and then concentrated on it.

In the same manner, this is how God has dealt with sin in our world. First, in the Old Testament (from which Leviticus comes), he told man TO DO SOMETHING. In this specific case, he told the Israelites to kill others that committed these sins. Then, after Christ came (we’re talking New Testament here), died on the cross for our sins and was resurrected, man no longer has to do anything but ADMIT that we sin and BELIEVE in Christ and that what He did has saved us from the penalty of those sins.

So, when you examine the Bible in CONTEXT, you find that in fact, God, in his infinite mercy, has made it so that we humans here on earth do not have to concern ourselves with the stoning of others as a punishment for their sin - we have a way to free our souls from the wages of sin, which is death (Romans 6:23).

When you examine the Bible, much like any other book, and do not maintain the frame of reference that is context you can generally glean pretty much whatever you want from the text. You have to look at the text with a discerning, unbiased and thoughtful eye or else the results of your examination will be without any doubt slanted and unfair. This, I feel, is what Mr. Brain has done with his treatise.

I will endeavor over the next several weeks to ferret out and examine each one of these unfair characterizations within his writing and lay them bare before your feet. You may then judge, with an open mind, in which light you wish to view the text. My fervent hope and prayer is that each of you will come to the conclusion that the Bible is the source of authoritative truth for our world and our souls, and that if you have not done so before now, you would at least examine it personally, for yourselves.

-Brannon

Talk about living the dream! This is just too tres cool!!! Why can’t MS hire these guys/gals?!?!?!

http://www.openbsd.org/

Is there anybody out there who actually has personal experience running this OS? If so, I’d love to hear from you in the comments section. Talk about groovy!

Hurm… I might have to get me one of those t-shirts…

Well, this is just about as spiffy as it gets, true believers! Blogging from the Blackberry is really a lot easier than I thought it would be ! You can expect a jump in the number of my posts now that I can blog from nearly anywhere!!! Woohoo!

For example, right now I’m sitting in my car in the driveway — TOO COOL!

Usually, when I say “hiking”, I really mean “backpacking”; the difference is really one of distance and intent. In my mind, when one goes hiking, it is normally a trip of short duration, miniscule distance and generally light loads - backpacking, however, is different. Backpacking is an extended duration (several days at once), long distance (10+ miles/day) and heavy loads. So, when I look back on my trip this past weekend, it was actually a hiking trip in the truest sense of the word…

Our group journeyed to the beautiful Sipsey Wilderness, a part of Bankhead National Forest, in northern Alabama. We only journeyed about a mile or so in and made camp beneath a massive rock overhang that sat just a bit off the trail - not so far as to be inconvient to the trail or to Sipsey Branch, but far enough off to remain unnoticed by anyone as they passed by on the trail below. Before we left, I had decided to set a base camp at a single location and then day hike out to the various sites that we intended to see (the fact that my 6 year old son was joining me on this, his first “hiking” trip was a large determinor in that decision - I knew that he simply would not be able to maintain our usual hiking rate at about 12 miles a day). Further, I knew that this would be a welcome change for the other “backpacking vets” who would be attending.

The Sipsey is a place of unparallelled beauty and diversity in Alabama (and, in fact, the entire south-east) and she did not disapoint, garbed in her glorious robes of fall coloration. The leaves would rain down on us like golden, fiery rain as we walked along the trail, our boots crunching in the ankle-deep, depleated foliage. The water was resplindant with them and they stood out in stark contrast to the deep blue, clear fall skies and the aged, pock-marked faces of the boulders. Filled with massive, monolithic-like rocks and gorgeous waterfalls (beautiful even during this dry time of the year), the Sipsey is a magical place that brims with hardwood river bottoms, squaw-wood filled ridges, and dark hemlock groves that enchant the imagination and relax the mind.

There is just something about this place that speaks to one’s soul. A wisdom that reaches down from heaven and instills peace deep in one’s core. I find myself drawn much closer to my Creator here, in this gorgeous natural place. I find myself wondering how much more stunning my Lord’s House will be… It seems that even the dogs (my true and faithful Wick and newcomer, Belle) truly enjoyed themselves and found some respite, too. Perhaps they sensed what I did?

All too soon, it was time to bid farewell to the lovely canyons and lonely sentinel rocks of the Sipsey, I knew that it would not be long before my boots drew me, as ever, back to those paths.

I look forward to that time…

To continue my ever-growing list of “crunch” posts, I now am happy to present the character sheet of none other than Karma Silverclaw (wemic druid extraordinaire…):

Just check out that JUMP bonus! WOW!

Enjoy!

This week’s GM Inspiration flows logically from last week’s post, but it moves out of the realm of fantasy and into the realm of reality. While it cannot be denied that fantasy pictures stir the soup of GM thought processes with a mighty +4 intellect-bearer spoon, there is also (at least for me) a fantastic source of inspiration to be found within photographs of our world, both past and present. One of the best sites in the world for this sort of inspiration, IMHO, is National Geographic. I am a long-time subscriber to the magazine and will likely be until I stop moving (possibly even after that event, depending on subscription runs… …) and have, since my childhood, been drawn to the brilliant stories and stunning photos within its pages.

But how, you might ask, could one use this in gaming? (more…)

The companions awoke and Vas cooked some breakfast. He so loves to do so but the tastes of a lizard man are … a bit exotic for most. Jekka however always seems to enjoy these morning meals. Then again Jekka seems comfortable eating most anything not nailed down, and on a few occasions she has even tried that. After breakfast the companions open the portal to the temple, each stepping through, this time not knowing if the key will return them or if they are in for a long swim back to Seafoam. (more…)