Hey there, you are one of the few proud (& probably lost) people who stumbled upon my web page. Congratulations, And welcome. If you're into Street Fighter, Role-Playing, or gaming in general, poke around, you're bound to find something bemusing.

5/3/2012 Small update. Just moving bookmarks around & such. Oddly, this appears to be something I do exactly every three years? Guess it takes me that long to get fed up & try to fix it? hehe.

6/22/2011 An update? Really? Yeah. Scroll down a bit. I played RIFT for a month, and felt like writing a bit about it.

9/9/2009 Okay, so largely I just updated today so I could cash in on the whole 999 thing. But I did have a slew of bookmark changes to make, so it's good to have an excuse to do that. :)

4/29/2009 - So today I heard that Geocities is going away. I'm not surprised, but it does sadden me a bit. Most of the work on this site was done under that name. I moved it all to Tripod sometime around 2002, as Geocities stopped supporting some tools (mainly ftp support) that I used to do my updates. Anyway, the news got me thinking, hey Tripod probably isn't long for this world either. So spent most of this afternoon backing up the site. Even though I don't update regularly anymore, it's something I'd like to have. Now of course the question becomes, where do I find free hosting for text based web pages? I could probably try & twist a social networking site into something similar, but I don't think they're supposed to work that way. Anyway, here's hoping Tripod sticks around for a while, cuz I'm in no itching hurry to search for a new home.

2/10/2009 - One of the neatest things about having a web page is that every once it a while the internet finds me. Today I had a friend send me this link, because sure enough, if you scroll down there's a link back to my page. So there's my 5 minutes of fame wasted. :P Anyway, congrats to all you Street Fighger RPG'ers out there. Scroll down to the very bottom of this page for the SF stuff. Oh, and thank you Matthew (Jarvis?) for the link.

And while I'm talking SF & links, the same week I receieved an e-mail from Luiz in Brazil, asking that I link his SF RPG page. There ya go man. I don't speak Portugese, but it looks like a fine page to me. :)

So, some of you may have heard of RIFT. It's a World of Warcraft clone. I don't say that to be mean. They've taken the WoW formula, listened a bit to player gripes, and done their best to fix these problems. My favorite fix by & far is the flightpoints are now instant teleports, rather than sitting & watching your character fly minutes on end. There's several little perks like that, which really minimize player downtime. Is it revolutionary? Hardly. But it is nice step in the right direction.

But I'm not here to talk about that. When I started the game, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what each of the mage classes do. There's 8 of them in total, and you get to pick three. The descriptions provided are far too general, and searches online only show 'uber' build trees. I was looking for something between the two. And since I couldn't find it, here I go:

Intro to RIFT Mages
Keep in mind, this is entirely my opinion after one month of play. I did minimal PVP and no raids, so all my experiences are based off of running around, exploring, & leveling. Let me start with repeating that there's 8 potential trees, of which you get to use 3. The game force-feeds you three during the first hour or so. The rest you unlock with quests in the capital city. You can also buy resets from any mage trainers, and you can change any tree for another as long as it still has zero points in it. You will also likely want to play with a talent tree (soul tree) calculator at some point, I found this one works pretty well.


Pyromancer
Do you like standing in place? Do you like waiting for quasi-random activations to trigger? Then this is the class for you! Starting spells are the traditional fireball (good) & an instant fireblast with a short cooldown (ok). A few points into the tree gets you a buff which you place on the ground, and standing on that spot grants you extra damage. You also get several abilities which can trigger or reset instant damage attacks. Gets an interesting ability which greatly reduces the mana cost on the next several spells, so once you get rolling you never run out of mana. Usual attack routine goes something like this: Slow cast spell, another one, another one, oh, the monster is on top of me, but hey, I now have like 3 instant firespells I can throw at him Blam Blam Blam dead monster.

Final Thoughts: There's no damage meter in RIFT, but I believe this is probably the best source of single target damage. It's likely meant for raiding. I had a lot of fun with this build, and it was my go-to build when I ended up in large groups.


Stormcaller
This is the other 'normal' mage build, if you believe in such a thing, and I guess it's supposed to be the AoE build. It has something like 9 different AoE spells, but each of them have a different cooldown. So if you really want to play the AoE character, you need to keep all of them on your toolbars. I played with it a bit, and just didn't find it to be worth the effort. There's plenty of AoE in the other trees, and without the cooldown gimicks.

As a single target DPS, it's not a bad build. Starting spells are a slow cast lightning bolt (poor) and a channelled knockback lighting spell with a long cooldown (ok). It gets better though. You alternate between cold spells and electric spells, both of which cause a debuff. Cold spells make lighting spells do (slightly) more damage, and lightning spells make cold spells do more damage. So you spend a lot of time keeping your debuffs up, and straffing around the frozen/slowed monsters. This works fine in sparse zones, but there's a lot of busy zones where you simply end up triggering more monsters than it's worth. I'll note that you are limited to 3 lightning debuffs per mage, however that's PER mage. Each Stormcaller can add 3 debuffs to the stack, so in a large raid you can get a considerable damage bonus if everyone is keeping their debuffs up.

Final Thoughts: Hard to play well, and for all the extra effort I'm not convinced you really gain anything. If you like to solo AoE big groups, this could be okay. A lot of people like to combine this with the Elementalist (pet class), which may help your surviability & mana regen issues. Potentially a good raid build as well, provided every mage is playing a Stormcaller.


Warlock
This an amazing SECONDARY class. It does everything you'd ever want, except good damage. Fantastic mana & health regeneration options at the low end, and up to +10% crit and +20% damage to all spells at the higher end. In theory this is the DOT (damage over time) class. It does that role just fine mind you, but it's real strength is filling in all the weaknesses of the other roles. Especially while leveling, it's regeneration abilities reduce downtime to nearly zero. Starting spells are a slow cast damage spell (average) and a life draining DOT (good).

Final Thoughts: Highly recommend this as a support for just about any other tree. If you're below level 10, you might consider it as your primay tree, just to get the low level buffs.


Dominator
This is a support class, rather than a DPS one. It's job is to stun the monsters. In theory, it is fantastic at this, and maybe in raids or PVP this is really important. In reality, every time I was in a group & could use these abilities, there was someone else raining AoE damage & breaking all my stuns. So it ended up being pretty much useless. I still buy this class quite a bit for the two starting spells. With zero points, you get the ability to polymorph any creature (great). You also get a poor instant damage spell which I ignore.

Final Thoughts: This is a neat idea, but it just doesn't work for PVE. If you're looking for a challenge or a change of pace, give it a go. This may also be wildly overpowered in PVP. Useful as a zero point 3rd tree for it's polymorph ability.


Archon
Another support class. Its job is to buff your allies in exchange for nerfing yourself. It's not terrible, but none of the buffs I saw were really game breaking. I ran an entire dungeon with these buffs, and the group didn't even notice. It seems to have good synergies with the Pyromancer, so I thought it had potential as the second tree in Pyromancer builds. But it just isn't as good as the Warlock in that role.

Final Thoughts: If you're playing the Cholormancer (healer) and want to really go all out to support the team, this could be a neat tree. Nothing earth-shaking here though.


Chloromancer
A healing class as a mage. Really. If you've played a shadow priest in WoW, you pretty much know how this class plays. You deal damage, and a portion of that damage is returned to the party as healing. About halfway up the tree you get an ability that returns MUCH more health to a single player, at which point you can main heal the tank in a group. I believe this is one of the trees where the 48 & 51 points abilities really are necessary, as they give you channeled healing (both with long cooldowns), which you will likely need to keep the tank alive during those 'oh shit' moments.

Final Thoughts: You get to deal DPS and fill the healer role at the same time. I think it's a neat idea, and bought an extra role from the trainer just to carry it around. At the minimum, it's nice to have so I can swap to it & rez the healer after a bad pull. If you like soloing elite mobs, it also stacks well with the pet classes.


Elementalist
A pet class. Let me say I tried this class on three separate occasions, and I could never make it do anything worthwhile. But I do see Elementalist/Chloromancers & Elementalist/Stomrcallers running around, so this may just be me. Starting spells are tanking pet (ok) & a slow cast damage bolt (ok). Requires a significant investment in points to keep the pet on par with equal level monsters.

Final Thoughts: I think this class blows, but it seems to be popular. If you like pet classes, give it a try.


Necromancer
A pet class. I should probably say THE pet class, because it seems so much more powerful than the Elementalist. I suspect the actual pets are about the same between the two, but your spells support the pet so much better here. In particular, you get a fantastic spell later that deals damage and heals the pet. Once you get into the habbit of finishing monsters with it you really have zero downtime after pulls. I stopped floating around after about level 40 & stuck with a Necro/Warlock build, because for leveling I couldn't find anything that could match this combo. 3 mobs at once is completely reasonable, as is soloing most group quests. Starting spells are a slow cast bolt (weak) and a pet. In fact, most of the spells in this tree kind of suck, but there are a few gems that stand out.

Final Thoughts: If you're going to use a pet, this is probably the class you want. The "soul purge" ability reduces downtime to zero. The rest of the class is pretty weak though, so I recommend adding damage elsewhere. Personally I like using Warlock for DoTs & their nice bonuses, but anything would work.

4/30/2008 - Cooking 99!

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That's right. Some 4 years after starting, I have finally reached the maximum cooking level in Runescape. Course, might have helped if I didn't play WoW for nearly 3 years non-stop. I'm glad that I went back & 'finished' this. Not that a MMORPG is ever 'done' of course. RS was the first MMORPG I ever played long enough to actually like, so every time I finish one game, I keep coming back to this & chipping away at it some. I'm glad to finally be done. It was a long time coming.

Actually, let me expand on that for a second. One of the most amazing features of RuneScape is it's active economy. All the vendors work off a supply & demand system, where prices fluxuate based on how much supply they have. Now, couple with that any high level crafting requires huge amount of common materials. You end up with an actual in game economy, where small players can actually offer something of value to a large player. More importantly, it meant that a small player could build up enough cash to actually afford the cool 'end game' items. For me, it was the single biggest draw to RuneScape.

They broke it.

I'm not sure when exactly, but sometime in the last year they disabled everthing I just said I loved about the economy. Now vendors sell at a fixed price, and players can not trade more than a few gold with each other. These seem like such simple changes, but it completely removes any reason for a large toon to interact with a smaller one. And with that, any form of player economy.

So it's with a sad sigh that I realize last Monday will likely be the last time I ever log into RuneScape. It certainly never was for the graphics or sound. Now that the part I loved most about the world is gone, I just can't see a point to returning. What infuriates me the most is that these changes were implemented to 'stop the gold farming'. Yet another sad lesson of a few people abusing the rules & all of us being punished for it.


-PTC

Runescape
RuneScape

For those of you who have never heard of Runescape before, I can't say I blame ya. Although it's be around for a while, My brother introduced it to me right before World of Warcraft was released. Honestly, I probably owe several hunderd dollars in thanks for that, as it has saved me from the expense of a new computer, as well as the monthly fee associated with WOW, which I would surely be addicted to right now, were I not already shoulder deep in Runescape. Runescape a web based MMORPG, which is free to play. Of course, being free, it's not nearly as nice as some of the other MMORPGs out there, but for me it is more than adequate to satitate my level grinding fixation.

Being free, it also attracts a much younger crowd than a game that requires a credit card to play. And along with a younger crowd comes a... let's just say that these players can be naive. Which makes it an easy environment for scammers to run their bs. I present what I consider a must read for every novice who is about to play a MMORPG for the first time:

PTC's FIVE BIGGEST SCAMS IN RUNESCAPE

#5 - "I need help in the wild"
In case you didn't know, the wild is the only place where another player can kill you. Also known as a Player vs. Player (PVP) zone, it can be a fun place to go if you bring a buddy or three for protection. However, this guy isn't looking for a buddy, he's looking for a sucker. He's going to lead you to a place where his other friends are waiting, and then they are all going to attack & kill you. When you die, they get your stuff.

Note that so long as you haven't killed anyone yourself (skull over your head) you hang on to your best 3 items when you die. A clever variation on this scam it to put a very low level character in front of you first, which you will kill easily. They do this intentionally to put a skull over your head. This way, when they kill you, they get all your items.

The other variation on this scam is someone says they are building a clan. What you don't know is that the 5 people in the clan are all friends already, and they make their money by convincing people to join their clan, taking them to the wild, & killing them for their gear. Sadly it works, because who would expect their own clan to turn on them? Fortunately not all clans are like this, but be suspicious of any clan that wants to go the wild right after you join them.

#4 - "Free Armor Trimming"
Runescape is unique in that it has both free to play servers (f2p) and pay to play servers (members). Trimmed Armor is a special bonus quest for high level members. (It adds a colored stripe to the armor) It's very hard for members to get, and it takes a long time. Go read a faq on it if you're interested. The important part to realize is that the level 30 dude you are talking to isn't high enough level to do this himself, and even if he was, he wouldn't be able to do it while playing on the free servers. Plus, he would be a fool if he really was doing it for free, as trimmed armor is worth roughly 10 times more than the normal version. All he's trying to do is get a free set of armor from you.

If he's really persistant, offer to trade him your armor for a set that he's already trimmed. Just don't trade him your armor for nothing, because he will not be giving it back.

#3 - "Free Item Copying" or "Free Item Duping"
This is very similar to #4. Okay, think about this for a second. If this guy really knew how to duplicate stuff, then he would already have multiple copies of every item in the game. Why on earth would he be talking to you? The answer: He doesn't have a dupication trick, and he wants your stuff. Typically, the way this works is he'll ask you to drop all your stuff on the ground, then press Alt+F4. Alt+F4 is the hotkey in windows to close a program. So all your stuff will be sitting on the ground, and you just shut runescape off. By the time you restart your web browser, reload runescape & log back in, he will have all your stuff & be long gone.

There are of course, even less clever variations on this, where he simply asks you to give him your stuff so he can copy it, and presumably return it. Rather than returning it, he simply logs out with your stuff, leaving you empty handed.

#2 - "Selling Rune thing for (half price)"
This is not always a scam, sometimes people really don't know what rune items are worth. However, usually you'll go to trade with this guy, & he'll show you the rune item he prommised. Then, right when you both go for the accept button, he'll quickly replace it with a Mithral item of the same type. (Mithral looks similar to Rune, but is worth about 1/8 as much). The easy way to catch this is at the 2nd trade screen, look at the text. Make sure it still says "Rune" before you click on the final accept button.

#1 - "Jagex hides your password. Look, my password is ******."
Okay, I don't know how anyone could possibly fall for this. He didn't just type his password, he just typed in 6 astericks at the end of the sentance. Runecape does not hide your passwords. Don't ever be tricked into giving yours out to someone else. I see someone trying this scam at least once a day, which sadly means someone falling for it. Don't be that person!



That's all for now. Hope this helps you avoid being scammed. Play safe out there!
-PTC

Runescape
RuneScape

The Street Fighter RPG is really the only RPG that still holds my interest. It uses the often cartoony Storyteller's system to try to tell the epic struggle of good versus the overwhelming evil of Bison's army. Hm.. actually replace Bison with "Wyrm" or "Technocracy" or whatever, & it sounds much like every other White Wolf game.... hm....

Anyway, for some reason it just happens to work well in the world of Street Fighting. It gives enough flexiblity to for some truely unreal outcomes, while providing enough stablity for a believeable world. I love it. If you can still find a copy at your local store & you play the video game, do yourself a favor & pick it up.

House Rules
creation.txt
rules.txt
styles.txt
maneuver.txt
King of Fighters
SNK Maneuvers

Character Sheets
sheet.txt
sheet.htm
newbie.rtf
generic.rtf
advanced.rtf