You know… this LDC is wonderful…
I mean, seriously, the only thing it need to do is A) get teleported to Dhaka B) have Jacob, Brian, Max, Caleb, and all the 4him people living with me!
Last night was the night of blessings… IE a night were we prayed for blessings! It was good, Jan (pronounced yan… not Jan… he’s a guy!) told me that during a prayer time he and his group prayed for me… they said that they felt that I’m going back to the States as a missionary to America, and that this would be my field (the 1st World, that is) and that I’m being prepared for that time (the armor of God and all that), which is encouraging. The past two years I’ve begun to really, really, realize what my place is in this world. And it’s a cool place… I’m going to go and build nations! I’m going to transform communities, (maybe nations?) I know that I’m not supposed to do with a mission organization… meaning I won’t be an official “missionary” BUT I will be doing missionary works… I’ll be doing practical works, getting to know people through relationships, and then telling them about God and the Bible. I’ll be ready to deal with the toughest non-believers, and hold my own in any debate and debunk most misconceptions about Christianity.
Also, Moheb prayed for prophesied over me that night. It was really good, once again, more of what I know I’m going to do/already am doing… a teacher… a man of great knowledge. I’ll admit it, I’m a knowledge addict. I go onto Wikipedia and just read crap, I’ve read through the history of England and the UK when I was bored one day! It may sound weird, but I’ve realized that I’m already a teacher. I look at my friends, like Julius, Max, and Jacob, and I know that I know more about Christ and the Bible than they do. Jacob may be about on par with me… but I think I think about God more often than he does. When they have questions, they do come to me! It’s a bit scary… since I’m only 16 and Max and Jacob are actually like a year old than me (Jacob was born in 1990, in December… Max is like 17/18) and yet I’m telling them about the Bible, what God is like, and all that! Scary, no? And yet, at the same time, its such a blessing! From an early age I’m learning about how to mentor and teach others about my beliefs and the importance of them. Darn… I wish I was in the LDC (or a similar course) myself… I’d eat it all up!
You know, I’ve come to decide my favorite part of the Bible is James chapter 2, where James talks about faith and good works… Do you believe in God and the resurrection of Christ? James asks, Good! Even Satan believes this! What’s his point? Faith is useless without works to back it up and this is why Works are so important. Faith, without works, is dead. All this knowledge I’m gaining, all of it, I’ll be using, at some point in my life. Even if its random crap like the history of the Imperium of Man and the Horus Heresy (Warhammer 40,000 stuff) I’ll use it, if only to bring up a discussion of God (the Horus Heresy = Milton’s paradise lost for the 20th Century… hmm… wonder how I can relate this to God?) . It’s really great. When Moheb prophesied over me he told me to gain knowledge, science, he said, and knowledge, it’s great that God knows what you love and wants you to use it, no?
And do you know what the best part of this is? I can’t wait to get started! I WANT to go out there and fight for God. It might not look like the wars I read about/tell about, but they it’s a war, and I intend to win this war for my General, Jesus Christ, and my king, God the Father, and with my aide, the Holy Ghost, and with my army, the brotherhood of believers.
And now my May 25th Post
And now… since I seem to have nothing better to talk about, and haven’t talked about it enough in this blog, I shall tell ye of the wonderful world of RPGs… Roleplaying Games.
Ah yes, RPG, the word springs to mind DnD (Dungeons and Dragons), computer games, swords, orcs, elves, and magic… and yet, this is not RPGs at all.
First off, I hate DnD. I have never played DnD, but I know how the rules work and I understand some of the settings enough to know one thing: DnD is evil!
What is so bad about DnD you ask? First off, it is not an RPG. Call it what you will, but the current edition and the soon to be released edition of DnD is more akin to a skirmish game with little pieces of plastic and metal, I already have one, one with much better background and needing less players (though, admittedly, more money). Secondly, its bland. Orcs, elves, dwarves and the like are all good, but they are in every single fantasy story… we need something new for a change, and DnD gives none of this. Finally, it’s a powergamer game. The game, due to the LARGE amount of rules (stupid amount, I really should say) is prone to imbalance and players who care more about stats than character design and background. They don’t care if half-orc wizard are all but unheard of if the class race combination fits their desired stat bonuses. Not that all DnD players are power gamers, but still, you get a lot of them and the game seems to sell to powergamers.
However, I do roleplay, and the journey to this is an interesting one, its actually part of my geekiness history. You see, WAY BACK in 2004 this game called Dawn of War, a PC RTS game, came out. It rocked. It won several awards and it showed me this new Sci-fi land called Warhammer 40,000 (40k). 40k is a cool place, filled with space orks, space elves, space dwarves, space communists, daemons and lots of nasties. It has really cool background and I loved it. So, this world, 40k, was mainly built for a table top game called warhammer 40,000 where you controlled armies of small plastic and metal men who shot and chopped each other to death. I thought it sounded interesting. I thought about it for a LONG time, and finally said, “I’ll go for it.” I now have put well over $300 dollars into Warhammer 40,000, in rule books, paints, dice, minis, and various other stuff.
But, the company that sells Warhammer 40,000 (Games Workshop PLC) is smart, they don’t just sell warhammer 40,000, they also sell book set in warhammer 40,000 vast setting. This publishing house, the Black Library (named after a space elf (eldar) library that houses much knowledge on daemons) also had a small wing called Black Industries. Black Industries I had heard off a while back, and had even scanned their sight, but wasn’t really interested because all they sold at the time was a boring (to me) game called Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. However, I then began to hear rumors of a Warhammer 40,000 RPG… and this piqued my interest. I visited the Black Industries forums, and, since they were there, I walked over to the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (WFRP) boards every once and a while… then began to stay there are almost completely. It was a good community, good, smart, nice people, who, for the most part (a few trolls and idiots got banned from time-to-time). So… I gave in, I decided to buy some Warhammer Fantasy Role play books. After much thinking, and reading, and deciding how much money I was going to spend, I bought, via Amazon, the core rulebook, Sigmar’s Heirs, a guide to the Empire, the land of humanity and the main setting of WFRP, and the Tome of Corruption, which contains information on the biggest and most popular enemy of the players in Warhammer, Chaos.
But my story does not end there! I got the book (thank god for FedEx) and started playing with my friends (my sister, my brother, my friends Jacob and Julius) and enjoyed our games a lot, and yet, I still awaited Dark Heresy, the upcoming 40k RPG. Finally, Dark Heresy was released. It took a lot of looking and searching, but I got a copy off of Barnes and Nobles’ website and it arrived at my doorstep… how happy I was! The book is a beautiful work of art, and I don’t think I’ll ever regret buying it. I still think that WFRP has better story line options, and I like the setting, for roleplaying (40k has better background in general, but the Warhammer Fantasy world is really cool too) the Dark Heresy book is BEAUTIFUL! The only drawback is that it does have a limited scope as far as a campaign setting goes… the world is rather big and the PCs will probably be hoping from planet to planet, or spending a long time on planet. However, the artwork is amazing, the background it contains is cool, and do like the game from the perspective of a Player, not a Game Master (which is what I do for my group).
But! The tale does not stop there! I now own three RPGs and play/have played many more via a really cool form of roleplaying called Play by Post. First I shall tell you of my 3rd RPG, Fireborn.
You see, Games Workshop is not the most finically stable companies in the world… they have been having some problems for a few years now, and have had to raise prices and cut less profitable parts of their business in various forms and methods. One of these, sadly, was Black Industries. However, not all hope was lost, we WFRP fans and those who had just recently purchased Dark Heresy were willing and able to continue without official support. Still, this really depressed me, the people at Black Industries were great guys, especially the web master of Black Industries and the rest of the Black Library, Dave Allen. Sadly, many of the fans were extremely bitter and probably said things that they shouldn’t have. I don’t blame Games Workshop, but it is annoying the way the company acted (dropping WFRP and Dark Heresy, despite its many awards and great speed of selling) just like that… with no more comments. And yet, through all the darkness, the light of hope emerged. Both these games were bought by a Board Game and RPG company called Fantasy Flight Games, and we of the Black Industries board were quite happy. We have not yet seen the work of Fantasy Flight Games, but hope that they will be good works.
And so, Fantasy Flight Games, I looked through their RPG section, and only two of their games really caught my eye, Fireborn and Grim. I soon found grim not to my liking (not enough death and gore, and to much adventure… IMO) but Fireborn, Fireborn sounded cool.
To be brief, the year is 2004, the place London, the plot mechanism, Magic is back. The Players are scions, dragons reawakened in human form after thousands of years of hibernation. I thought it sounded good, so I did some research, and it all said that it was a good game. So I bought it, the Game Masters book, the Players Book, and a small booklet that contained an intro adventure for the game… all on amazon for like $40 dollars… pretty good, if I do say so myself. And so I got these three amazing books, and possibly the best RPG I have ever seen (though I’ve only played using… 4 rulesets… so that’s not a lot).
London is done amazingly well… its London, only darker and more messed up with a ton of weird cults and secret organizations dealing with magic in their own messed up way. Also, because the PCs are dragons, I easily see them quickly gaining power, and different groups using it in different ways. For instance, you could be the poor, but really smart, guys who go around busting up cults, or you could be the super rich guys who jet around the world acquiring money power, and magical items for your personal use. Or you could be a mix of both, or something completely different.
The combat system is amazing, and well… I just really like the feel the game has to it.
Okay, this thing is already HUGE… probably my biggest post yet, so I’ll stop with it for now. I’ll cover PBP RPing later.
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