Chris Frederico

As someone who has had both great and awful teachers, the one thing I think is the most CRUCIAL thing to make a good teacher is patience. Patience, understanding, and informative, yet simplified lessons that can make a novice a well-informed person. Not everyone picks up on the information you give them when you just say it the ONE TIME. You need to say it, explain it, show it, and then do it again. I've had game design and photography teachers blow a fuse when I ask a question when I, someone who's had 0 years of this field needs clarification on how I'm supposed to do it properly. When you lash out at someone who's just trying to understand how it works instead of understanding that you are a master of the subject and the students in front of you are completely unaware of the details, they don't want to learn and it'll be harder for them and it'll make your job even more difficult.

Additionally, I think that a loose personality is also a good thing to have. Instead of an uptight, by the books "Call me sir or Mr. Anderson" you project a very normal causal persona that makes it more inviting for students to approach and message you. That way they don't feel intimidated by asking something stupid or asking too many questions.

Schoolwork has been a greater challenge than I thought it would be with the virus around. most of the time I don't wanna do anything and lay about. other times I forget all about it. some I just have no clue what to do. I, in the end, I'm able to pass all my classes okay and provide good work 

Aside from all my work on building my campaign, things have been very boring and uninteresting. Days go by and as each day passes, I just wonder when this outbreak will be over. I know it won't be soon, but I guess I'm just hoping for an impossible miracle. It sucks as since I'm not physically at Southern, I'm prone more to forgetting my current assignments and how I should be doing them. This outbreak is seriously not doing me or anyone any favors. But hey, at least this outbreak is giving me a 20% discount on a game I've been waiting 8 years for. In 5 hours, I'll finally be able to play Mount&Blade Warband 2: Bannerlord. So I guess there is a positive. That's all you can do when struck with tragedy, look for something mundane as a game to look at and smile about. I know too much about tragedy which is why I prefer to stay as positive as I can no matter what, but honestly... It's been getting harder and harder. I wonder when I can start being truly happy again. Maybe a year? 2 years? Or maybe it's just not feasible. Regardless, as long as I exist in this world, I'll keep going on until the end.

I've discovered during my world-building that there is a slight issue between the races of Man and Centaurs. In my world, the two races are allied with each other after banding together during the Greenskin Invasion where the Centaurs proved themselves to be excellent skirmishers and heavy calvary. After the war, the human king rewarded the nomadic people with a place to call their home and the eternal friendship of the empire. With some help from the Dwarves of the Forged Mountains and the Gnomes present within the empire, they managed to build a large city for the Centaurs to call home. The city is much larger than normal cities as it's more spread out and buildings take up more space and where stairs are needed, they are replaced with ramps and large elevators operated by pulleys and weights. Now the problem lies in that Centaurs are half man and half horse. The empire is well known for its Gryphon Knights. Knights that ride upon Gryphons which are half eagle and half lion. Gryphons favorite prey are horses. They descend from the skies and attack the horses by ripping its neck out and swarming upon them. Though the beasts are well tamed, wild Gryphons have been known to stalk the lands of the Centaur people and even some of the trained ones have been reported to attack Centaurs if their owner has not fed them in the morning. 

It's things like these that make me giddy and excited for when I'm finally able to put it all on the table and have my players learn and experience these things for themselves as I am by simply reading through paragraphs of these beasts from not just the current material, but even previous editions as well as discussion threads on Reddit and other places online.

Through more of my readings, I think I have a more solid world built with the relations of all the races. The world is about three times the size of Earth so there's a lot of ocean and a lot of land so there are dozens of continents throughout the world, but the main setting of this story takes place on a continent similar in size to Pangea with some differences. I tried using WorldAnvil to build my world, but I need to pay to access those tools and I am tight on money at the moment. So I plan to find another way to have my world visualized. But as for what I have learned recently, I have found that some of the monsters have very interesting backstories that tie into some of the dark aligned races like the Duergar, Dark Elves, Fire Giants, Hobgoblins, and a whole bunch more. One creature I found interesting is the Retriever. It's a construct built by the Dark Elves that goes into the Abyss and collects demons to bring back to the Material Plane for the Dark Elves to enslave or sacrifice. But it's CR (Challenge Rating) is a bit too high for my players to face so it's going to have to be a deterrent enemy for the moment until they can fight it. But that all depends on if they even encounter one in the first place or go to the land of the Dark Elves which Is a land void of light, a place where the sun only peaks through small cracks of the looming clouds overhead. No one knows why the sun cannot shine there, not even the natives. I shall continue my research of the monsters to creature cultures, traditions, and behaviors of all the kingdoms, empires, city-states, and the monsters that lurk within their borders

In the case study I am reading about. The author makes a D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) player sheet but finds it too messy and wants to find a way to make it more clean while keeping the traditional feel to it. The problem with this study is that what he is trying to do is essentially a paradox. As someone who has played D&D for a about 2 years, your sheet will always get messy if you're playing it with pen and paper. Roll20 is an online system for the game and can make things more clean but nothing beats the "at the table" feel of the game. You will encounter many things in your games, become afflicted with unknown diseases, gain new feats and powers, and a plethora of other things that I cannot list otherwise this post would become a 500 page essay on what could happen. That's the magic of the game. Literally, anything could happen. The DM (Dungeon Master) is the one who makes the rules and determines what'll happen next. He could have a fleet of Mind Flayer ships jump out of a portal above the the city you started the game in as the Githyanki come out of similar portals upon red dragons and battle over the city as the civilians run to cover and you and your party members decide what course of action you'll take. Or that cultists have opened up a portal that leads to the Abyss and now a never-ending horde of demons begin invading the realm and your group needs to figure out how to solve it. 

Point being: Anything can happen, things will change, your charchter will change throughout the game. Not enough space? Buy a notebook. or write on the back or go signup on Roll20.

Case study link:

https://www.catieleary.com/ux-case-study-dnd

I've conitued reading my sources and thinking of more and more backstories, histories, heros, villians, etc for my world to make it very action packed and exciting to be in. But sometimes I think I'm over doing it and should maybe calm down. Making charcther sheets for alot of the NPCs is a pain since the majority will never show up again after a 20 minute exchange. So all the writing and creation go not to total waste, but left behind. I've learned a lot from the books about certain monsters and possible origins on how they would come to be in this wolrd. Humaniod spider monsters, moaning flying manta rays that rip your will apart, a normal looking door that when touched reveal rows of sharp teeth that rip you apart and melt you with acid. There are many terrifying monsters in this world, and those three are nothing compared to the "big bads" that sit dormant throughout the land.

I've been sitting home trying to keep up with all the work I have before me. I feel a lot more responsible for my learning now than ever since college has shut down but the classes continue. It makes me very worried in fact. Sometimes I wake up in the night out of pure fear I've forgotten something and that mistake will cost me the class. I don't like responsiblity all that much, you have a lot to look up to and if you fail, you could be seen as an incompetent buffoon that cannot handle any task even if you simply forgot or made a small mistake. I live in a world of never ending paranoidness and anxitey. I just wish I could sit down and not have to worry about anything and let it all be calm. 

So far, I've been making notes and NPCs for the game and plotting out the history of the land. I've been reading: The Player's Handbook, Volo's Guide to Monsters, Xanathar's Guide to Everything, The Dungeon Master's Guide, Guide to Ravncia, Eberron: Rising From The Last War, Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, The Monster Manual, and some online sources for other things. it's a lot of things to consider and I'm still thinking of how everything is going to connect to each other and what the overall quest is going to be. But as of now, I've been building and thinking of the world and studying the monsters lore and abilities.