Category: D&D

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Corona – Day 12 – Murphy’s Law

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Feedback on the video has been good! I only shared it with a couple of students, and I’m not claiming I’ve hit the YouTube jackpot, but one could say the video went a bit viral. 🙂

That being said, work on Episode Two has officially begun. I’m aiming for that 10-minute mark. I’ll probably record some more band reactions, and I’ve got a few ideas for “Anonymous Reporting.”

One thing I might have to introduce, though: “RANT!” Guess what—the video got copyright flagged for the short Corona Song clip. I’m probably not going to dispute the claim since there’s no money in it, but doing a segment on copyright could be an interesting idea.

On another note, I’m toying with the idea of making the next video really educational. If something besides Corona comes up over the weekend, I’m seriously going to consider it.

Another idea: I could base a video on one of the topics my students are working on, like the Revolution of 1848 or WWII, and make it both educational and fun. WWII with jokes—what could possibly go wrong?

I’m taking a blog break this weekend. I have to get started on some grading—apparently, if you let your students do work, you eventually have to correct it. Who knew?

Besides that, I need to get my new D&D campaign up and running. I’ve outlined the first few sessions and know where I want the campaign to go, but I’ll need to adapt to the new circumstances. It’s going to be a bit of “trial and error,” but by now, I’m used to that.

If it works out, I might even try to join an online D&D game myself.

Murphy s law

WWII with jokes—what could go wrong?

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Corona – Day 6 & 7 – One week down

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So, it’s Sunday evening. The first week is over, and what a week it has been. I just finished updating tasks for my students—they should be busy for the next couple of days. I’m really curious to see how they handle the assignments I shared. Ideally, some of these could be useful once regular school resumes.

The goal for next week is to plan a face-to-face lesson with at least one class. I’ll probably start with my own class, set a date, and see how well the video conference feature works. Speaking of video, my proper webcam should arrive tomorrow, so I might start test recordings for my “show” as soon as it’s here. I’ve got a few ideas for the first episode—I’m aiming for a 10-minute version of Last Week Tonight. It’ll be more of a “proof of concept” than anything else. I’m not sure if I have the broadcast energy to pull off what I have in mind. It’ll probably be very embarrassing, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make for the greater good. 🙂

Another thing I looked into this weekend is Dungeons & Dragons. We have a pretty solid group, and we’ve decided to keep playing through the crisis by switching to online. I’ve been exploring roll20, and it seems pretty good—manageable without too much hassle. I still prefer sitting around a table, but this is definitely better than not playing at all.

I’m also in the middle of learning Premiere, so stay tuned for next week’s adventure in homeschooling!

To close the day, here’s a German video that explains quite well why you should stay put.

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Progress Report – Six Pack

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Let’s do a quick “State of the Union”. #ProjectMomentum is going strong. The page count could be better of course but compared to last year Orlindo and I are at least working on our projects. I hope we’ll get better at this but I’m quite happy with it so far. Strangely, the blogging has become one of my favorite parts of the process and as I mentioned before writing about writing helped (and helps) me a lot to clarify things about my story. I also have to admit that writing prose like this is getting easier week by week and it’s a great feeling, even my typing is improving.

But there’s one thing I fear. I like the 1/2/7/7 thing we’re doing but blogging about it feels like a chore I do and usually after doing chores, you go back to the couch. I do that a lot and I’m not talking about blogging instead of writing, I’m talking about writing up the numbers instead of writing about something I truly care about. So I decided to mix the format up a bit. I will keep the numbers of course (they are an important part of #ProjectMomentum) but I’m going to focus more in content than on the numbers. I realized that the last posts had barely any insight so I want to change that. The most interesting post I wrote so far was “Three Time’s the Charm”, the one about Before Sunrise. I wrote more about one thing instead of a few lines about many things. So that’s where I want to go.

Instead of writing a bit a bit about many topics I’m going to focus on one topic in each post. If I want to write a Deadpool review I’m going to do that, If I feel like writing about how great a writer Neil Gaiman is, I’ll do that and if I want to write about that D&D book I just read, guess what…I’ll write about that.

Ok, let’s do this.

One book/screenplay: Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide a D&D campaign sourcebook.
Two movies: Deadpool for fun, Ken Branagh’s Hamlet for work.
Seven pages: working on the pub-crawl scene, reminded me of some great times
seven hours: Orlindo tool a Berlinale break so I focused on something completely different…..

D+d+typical+first+session+stereotypes+if+you+ve+watched+promotional+sessions 312eba 5448828

I’m the one in the striped shirt.

…an now for something completely different, let’s talk some D&D1. I have to admit, I’m really late to that party. D&D is something I always wanted to get into but there were always obstacles in ma way. Last fall I decided to give it another shot. I decided to buy the Starter Set for the newest edition (5th Edition) of D&D. That starter set included some basic rules and a campaign.

I started reading and took in the pictures and I immediately fell in love. The only word that comes to mind is immersive but that’s only half the truth. You have to put a lot of effort into it but, and that’s the beauty of it, your effort is rewarded. It didn’t take long and I bought everything I could find. I have the Player’s Handbook2, the Dungeon Masters’s Guide3, the Monster Manual4 and the afore mentioned Sword Coats Adventurer’s Guide. This is a really strange book, it’s not about rules and it’s not a campaign, it’s a book that’s supposed to inform and inspire your adventures.

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D&D 5th Edition

What I love about D&D and I feel comfortable about using the word love after one game as a DM is that the rules are there to elicit creativity and not to bog you down. It’s a lot like telling a story. There are rules of storytelling (like the rules of the game) and the rest s creativity.

So together with some friends we started to play the starter set campaign and we had a great time. We are currently figuring out a way to continue the game and I hope to find a way to make this a regular thing. I’m secretly (well, I guess not anymore) working on my own campaign. I have some ideas on how to make the game my own and I think it’s a really good storytelling exercise. It’s not just about monsters and encounters it’s also about guiding your adventurer’s through a world you created (or adapted) and letting them tell their own story inside your world. It’s like writing a movie but the characters decide themselves what they want to do.

So yeah, if you haven’t played D&D yet, I highly recommend it. The Starter Set is a good starting point, just get some friends together and you’re in for a great time.

So that’s it for the first installment of my new kind of progress report but to try to keep up with another little tradition, now playing: Jon Batiste & Stay Human – Humanism5

  1. For the uninitiated, D&D is short for Dungeons & Dragons, a pen and paper roleplaying game. ↩
  2. The D&D Player’s Handbook contains the rules of the game and character creation ↩
  3. The Dungeon Masters’s Guide contains everything you need to run a game ↩
  4. The Monster Manual is all about….yes, the monsters. ↩
  5. As heard on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert ↩