Rowen Michael Prather

Professor Fenstermaker

English 103-08
 To the Sounds of Crashing Waves

Rowen Prather

Purpose: describe my home away from home

Audience: friends I want to bring up there sometime

Professor Fenstermaker

Profile essay
 Having sat in a ten-hour plus car ride, the immeasurable joy overwhelms me when we

reach the spiral descent into the rocky forest cliff into one of the many bays on Lake Ontario. As

the tree’s roll past on one side, the summer homes that populate the water’s edge roll by as well.

When the dark asphalt hill that leads down into a nice-looking house with a big garage is in

sight, a feeling of relief washed over me. It is always good to be back at my home away from

home. As the car descends from the higher road, the right side is all the trees planted by my great

grandfather and on the left is the garden that my great grandmother worked hard on for many

years. Both the house and the barn on the property were created by my great grandfather and

great grandmother for my grandmother and her seven other siblings.

After getting out of the car, I walk into the dusty garage where the paint is chipping of the

chalk colored, concrete floor. As you walk in, it smells of dust and dirt till the wind from the

shore rushes through the second garage entrance and sweeps it away. The garage is filled with

toys and work instruments that lay upon the dark green shelves filling the right wall from top to

bottom, and the dark green gator with bright yellow seats sits in the middle of the garage. The

back-entrance slopes down before the door because it is designed to store a boat. The door leads

to the giant, concrete boat ramp out back. As you enter on the left the trash is gathered for the

trash facility. After that, there are two doors; one leads into the basement, and the other goes to

the kitchen.

As you step up into the house, the door jingles as the white door opens. The laundry

machines lay behind the door, and past them is a bathroom. Taking a left through a doorway, the

kitchen opens into a large room where the walls are all cabinets of nice, glossy wood, and in the

middle lay the awkward L-shaped white counter. On the opposite wall from where you enter

from the garage is the double stack oven, black glass stove countertop, warming drawers, dual
sink with extendable water head, dishwasher, and wine rack. On the leftmost side of the room is

the chrome, industrial fridge and freezer. Many family meals have been prepared in that kitchen.

Since the family has expanded, there has not been a proper family reunion in some time. This is

due to my great grandmother being stressed out with all the smaller children running about.

Next to the fridge, there are two doorways. Turning left at the fridge leads right into the

library. The green carpet contrasts starkly against the light beige walls and brown cabinets

holding movies, books, and pictures of the family. The small chair with pillows upon it is where

Gigi (great grandma) sits when she does her puzzles or when she plays games with the

grandkids. Monopoly and bridge are her favorite games, but she has been losing lately to the

grandkids. She teaches them too well! On the same wall lies the antique leather couch.

As you walk into the library, there is another doorway to the right that leads to the front

door of the house. Continuing straight you will be in the living room. Like the library, it has a

strange color carpet that is a turquoise blue. This is where most of my late great grandfather’s

things are besides his old office. There are swords on the back-brick wall above the no longer

used fireplace, a piano by the sliding glass door that leads to the deck, and the dark old leather

furniture that is older than I am. Taking a left back out the doorway from the living room leads to

the dining room, but before that is the same colored carpet stairs that lead up to all the bedrooms.

There are rooms for each of my grandmothers’ siblings’ families and one for Gigi, but I do not

go up there often anymore because I usually spend my time sleeping over at my great

grandmother’s sister’s cottage.

In the dining room, the false tile floor with white walls houses fake plants, and the dining

table is centered in the room. The dark auburn wood. oval table has placemats and often is used
in the winter and to play card games. The one glass cabinet in the room holds Great Grandpas

wooden fowl, ducks and geese. Taking the sliding glass door leads out on to the deck.

The deck has changed over the years. It looks mostly a greyish brown from how old it is

and could use a paint job. The deck furniture is composed of cheaper plastic chairs, older,

wooden rocking chairs, and old, red picnic tables. Some plants get watered often on the deck

along with bird and bee feeders that are put up in the summer. I have read many books on the

deck laying in the sun because I’m not supposed to be inside during the day when at the lake

house.

The house isn't even the best part of the whole property; it is the lakefront. Walking down

towards the dock on the worn-in dirt path, no more than twenty feet from the house, is covered in

acorns and sticks from the surrounding trees at the edge of the yard. The concrete they put in

with the bricks is still there. They have black wire furniture and a fire pit for the chillier summer

nights. The dock is kept in all year round now. It is only three years old. The older dock had to

be put in and taken out every year. However, people were getting busier and had less time, so

they pitched in and got the new dock. Where the old dock used to start is still visible because

there is a square, concrete block that sticks out a foot that was where the stairs once were. The

new dock goes out about twenty feet and over in an L-shape. They put in a flagpole at the bend

that always has the American flag on it. The water is usually a blueish green with the wind

pushing it, lapping it onto the concrete shoreline. The water is usually chilly, but once you jump

in, you get used to it. However, one of the nastiest feelings is that of seaweed wrapping around

your feet. It feels about the same as putting slime on your foot.

You always hate to leave after you arrive at the lake house. So many memories have been

made with my cousins. Like when grandma hid treasure in the garden and my cousin Nolan and I
created a treasure map from the front of the house to the back where the garden was, or when it

was pouring out and I chased my older cousin Lauren around the yard. but as I got older, it lost

its glamour with age. This last year I spent most my time inside working on paperwork. How

time flies while you’re having fun.

Bound to those who came before us

purpose is to vent my frustration

Audience is family and close friends

Rowen M. Prather

Professor Fenstermaker

Personal essay
 Who should be the most responsible and caring between the father and the oldest child in

a household, providing structure and money for the household? Well, of course the father should

be, right? Now a days many families don’t have good parental figures to guide them. Luckily,

for, me I had my mother and grandmother. However, I originally grew up without a father. I

knew my biological father. He was an absolute asshole, but I had no fatherly connection to him.

Then came along a couple years later a man my mother knew before I was even born, and I was

happy that Mother found someone to truly love. This happiness for me and Mother wouldn’t last.

It began a long time ago when he first met my mother, but he was not the man he once

was. When I first met him, he seemed reasonably chill. However, I was such a young age and

couldn’t comprehend what was truly going on between him and Mother, only that he played

video games and had a very fluffy dog. He and Mother got married. Cool, good for Mother, yet

the happiness wouldn’t last long. Something along the way changed-how he decided to deal with

the world around him and how he saw it. As I got older, he decided that it was okay to yell and

curse at his children whether they were his by blood or bond. I put up with it for Mother’s sake.

She works so hard and does almost everything for the him and the kids, and how did he repay the

family? By sitting on his ass for three years and constantly yelling at them about the petty things

they did or didn’t do around the house. No, that can’t be it. What about you vaping or smoking

pot in front of the kids? It just doesn't add up with me. He acts like the “man” of the house

because his name is “on the papers”, but if comparing what he and I did over the four-year

period of my high school career, it’s daunting. I went to school every day, worked three times a

week, hung out with friends daily, and did chores daily. What did he do in that time? Oh, that’s

right he stopped working in the first year and picked up random jobs the last year. He decided

that doing chores around the house was above him and sat on the computer all day. Oh also, he
picked up kids, which isn't a chore but required by the government. He cooked dinner for them,

which he partially stopped doing because he had to work. He tried to push that shit on to me like

it's my job to work and provide for this household I was birthed into, not of my own accord.

This is just some of the misdeeds he has done. A very potent one that still sticks with me

is the day that Tippy, his dog, was put down. We had known as a family she was getting old, and

he was heated at me and yelled at me earlier in the day about simple chores. When you had asked

everyone if they had wanted to say their last goodbyes, I was doing dishes. I said I was good, this

being that I coupe very differently than everybody else in the house, and to my face yell, “You

heartless bastard”! I don't know what causes him to yell and curse at his kids, but he has left a

horrible lasting impression on them.

Let's talk about a more recent one where he decided that chores are for everyone else but

himself. He was upset about how the kitchen looked and wanted me to do dishes and clean the

kitchen after I got off work with homework to do. With the buildup of the constant yelling and

cursing, I told him off. He got angry, and I told him since he sat on his ass and its “his” house to

do something about it. He just couldn't consider that cleaning the house daily, let alone weekly,

was everyone's job.

How about we change subject to one where he saw fit to kick anyone out of the house no

matter what their situation was unless it benefited him. Raymond, a friend of mine from high

school, was basically torn apart because his mother died and none of his other family members

really wanted to take him in. We took him in and kept him for most of the summer. I know after

a while I was done with his drama since I was doing summer school and working a summer job,

but he decided to be an asshole to Raymond as much as Raymond was to him if not more. Yes,

Raymond wasn't smart about putting the one hit K.O. thing out there, but the “bigger man”
doesn’t act out irrationally. How about when Dante, a good friend since kindergarten, was

staying with us because his mother was constantly verbally attacking him and throwing his shit

on the curb every other day. He decided going ballistic on Dante in a store was the proper thing

to do. He really fucked with Dante and got himself permanently banned from the card store

because he couldn’t communicate what he wanted done for chore.

Regardless of what I think, my father needs to come to terms with his actions. He must

decide that he wants to change his behavior and be the man of the house. I understand that being

the man of the house somedays can be hard and grueling because the kids aren’t helping, but

that’s due to how he as a parent interacts with them. Neither me nor any of the other kids in the

house should have to put up with his bullshit, but hopefully without me being there he can feel

less threatened by me being there and be the man of the house.

 How to Start Playing Dungeons and Dragons

Informative paper

Audience: inexperienced new players to DnD

Purpose: to help new players through the process of making a character

Professor Fenstermaker
 A group of mercenaries are hired to kill the local ogre problem that’s been eating the

livestock. The mercenaries consisting of a small, stocky, hooded dwarf with a crossbow, a toned,

lengthy elf sporting a great sword, and a clean robed human clutching a holy symbol. They check

their equipment and head towards the fields to stalk their quarry. This is one of many groups of

characters on an adventure in a fantasy role playing game called Dungeons & Dragons, or DnD

for short. Fantasy role playing games refer to a game with players playing heroes in a fantasy

setting (Laycock 16). There are many things that go into making a character in DnD. There are

many steps required to create an epic character including choosing a class, race, background,

alignment, and rolling stats.

After finding a dungeons and dragons group, one must create a character. The first thing

that the player’s handbook, or PHB, suggests is choose race and class of the character. The most

common races as Mearls and his team describes in the DND fifth edition are human, elf, dwarf,

halflings (17). The person running the game called a DM, or dungeon master, gets to choose how

the races interact within the world the elves from on campaign could be the ruling society with

riches, and in another the elves have been mostly wiped out and those that still live are slaves.

However, in the PHB most of the information on races or religion is from a fantasy world called

Forgotten Realms, yet the elves and dwarfs are extremely close to how they act in the Lord of the

Ring’s trilogy. Halflings are just renamed hobbits as the first renditions of the game was coming

out, they were sued for using the word hobbits and thus changed it. The uncommon races in

DND are dragonborn, gnomes, half-elves, half orcs, and Tieflings (Mearls 11). Each race has

different subraces, which in turn give different bonus and features to the character. These

bonuses including a +2 to one ability score and a +1 to another, different languages,

proficiencies, and more. The race of the character is important because it helps establish a
common look for the character and what kind of culture and customs the character might believe

or partake in.

Next is to choose a class. Classes give the character benefits and different features

associated with the specific class. Each class has different roles in a party, and some are oriented

towards combat or social encounters. Here is a brief one sentence on each class. Barbarian is a

fierce primitive warrior that flies into a rage. Bard is a magician who cast powerful spells

through music. Cleric is a champion of a higher divine power wielding magic given to them.

Druid is a wielder of nature magic and able to change into animals of any form. Fighter is skilled

in combat with many weapons and armors. Monk is a martial fighter focusing on self-perfection.

Paladin is a warrior given strength by the oath that they uphold. Ranger is a hunter who protects

the outskirts of cities using martial and nature magic abilities. Rogue is a sneaky precise tricky

fighter. Sorcerer is a spell caster who draws power from their bloodline. Warlock is a spell caster

who gets their magic from an extra planer entity. Wizard is a spell caster that studies the arcane

to wield it through books and scrolls (Mearls 45). If making a character over second level, there

are archetypes that let the classes specialize in different things. Sometimes the DM will allow

character to multiclass into a different class than the starting one.

Now that the character’s race and class have been chosen, it’s time to roll. There are tons

of ways that groups can roll up their characters. I will give four main examples that are the most

common ways to roll up characters. The most common way that gives the higher average is to

take four six-sided dice and roll them. Then take the biggest three and add them together and

record it. After rolling six times, this would give six scores that than can be put into the

attributes. The attributes are in order: strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom, and

charisma. Each ability score has a corresponding ability modifier. The modifier gets added to
certain skill checks when asked to roll for that skill. The average ability score is 10-11, This is

equivalent to a normal everyday average joe. Certain ability scores need to be higher for certain

classes as their abilities work from two of the scores. There are also different ways to generate

ability scores. One other common one is called point buy. With a point pool set by the DM,

average being 27 points. For different amount of points, a score can be raised up to 15 or lower,

giving extra points, to eight. This is generally weaker since the average of each score is 12. The

point buy also has a standard array that is 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8.

The next thing that needs to be selected is the background. There is a huge difference

between a background and a backstory. A background is how your character interacted within

the world. It is what the character did before becoming an adventurer. The background provides

an identity within the fantasy world. The background provides bonuses and even a plot hook that

could be used further the game. A backstory is why the character decided to become an

adventurer, and/or what they did before adventuring. Between the backstory and background,

this should give enough material that the DM can use the plot hooks provided by the player to

infuse the character and the character’s story into the campaign. A warning, the backstory

doesn’t need to be super long because the character is just starting their adventure if the character

is low level. If they have done everything before the campaign starts, the character has no room

to grow within the time of the game.

One of the many things that helps the player figure out how their character interacts with

a world and the people in it is their character’s alignment. Alignment is two things, one is what

the character morals are between good, neutral, or evil. The other is how the character attitude

towards society whether lawful, neutral, or chaotic (Mearls 222). However, the character’s

alignment isn’t the whole story behind the character’s personality, but it gives a rough estimate
to the character’s place in the world and how the character sees the world. This is a simple way

to identify the values of characters yet should two characters have the same alignment they can

have different opinions (Cogburn 18). There are different meanings behind the nine different

combinations of alignments. The difference between good, neutral, and evil is that good people

have concern for the wellbeing of others. Neutral characters show only self-concern and evil tend

to go out of the way to hurt other people. The difference between lawful, neutral, and chaotic is

that lawful characters usually follow the laws of the land. Neutral characters follow the rules to

the extent that its advantages to them or the fear of being caught is to great. Last, chaotic

characters actively seek to disrupt the rules or promote social change (Robichaud 27). The

alignment is truly as important as the player makes it.

After figuring out the outline of the character and how it interacts with the world,

depending on what was selected for the character gives different preset of items, or the DM can

let the players purchase their gear. If the character is a spell caster, there are components that the

spell needs to be casted. The DM may allow the characters to cast their most spells besides the

ones that require the more expensive materials. The equipment of a character will change over

the course of the game as money and magic items are acquired.

Here is a basic character going through all the steps. Let’s make a basic character that can

be built in less than 30 minutes. First is to decided race and class let’s make this character a half-

elf Paladin named Rastagen. Now let’s role stats, but since we are doing a quick character, let’s

do the weaker standard point buy, giving me 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8. So since being a Paladin the

two main scores are strength and charisma. This is how the stats are assigned: strength 15,

dexterity 12, constitution 13, intelligence 10, wisdom 8, and charisma 14. Now since Rastagen is

a half-elf, he gets a +2 to charisma making it a 16 and two +1 to two other stats the best would be
to bring strength up to a 16 and make constitution 14. After stats next would be to choose the

alignment and background. Since Rastagen is half-elf, he is shunned where he lives because he is

seen as a mix blood, so Rastagen is chaotic neutral as he looks out for himself and his friends,

and has a Urchin background as he grew up on the streets fighting day in and day out for food

and shelter.

There are so many different characters that can be made with some imagination and a

little thinking. However, if it’s in Dungeons and Dragons character, it must have a race, class,

attributes, background, backstory, and an alignment. There are also different role-playing games

out there that don’t have these things, but I think that if people find playing Dungeons and

Dragons fun, they should find other RPG games to play.

 Work cited

Cogburn, Jon, and Mark Silcox. Dungeons and Dragons and Philosophy: Raiding the Temple of

Wisdom. Open Court Pub., 2012.

Laycock, Joseph. Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says

about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds. University of California Press, 2015.

Mearls, Mike. Player's Handbook. 5th ed., Wizards of the Coast LLC, 2014.

Robichaud, Christopher. Dungeons & Dragons and Philosophy: Read and Gain Advantage on

All Wisdom Checks. Wiley-Blackwell, 2014.

 Through the writing of these essays the writing process worked during the pre-

writing phase. It helps me brainstorm ideas for each of the topics the essays were on. I have a

hard time with an intro and conclusion so I would state the thesis with one other sentence and

take off on the main body of the paper and then come back after most of the paper was already

written.

The topics I picked for the essays show that I love friends, family, and games. Also

shows that I’ve had a long rough patch in my life with a parent. These are also some of the things

I think about most as I go through my day and what I think has molded me into who I am today.

I believe that the essays themselves are done well, but also some of the stories and

experience are well worded to give a clean message to what I experienced.

I am not very satisfied with the personal essay as I have a crap ton of pent up feelings on

the issue. However, I was willing to open and talk about the experiences given enough time. I

also wish my word choice was better, but that’s something I can improve on in my free time.

I have learned through my writing that I need to work on my grammar, but I really didn’t

learn much about writing. I rediscovered the things I liked and were good at through writing the

essays. I guess one could say I relearned the formatting of MLA papers and the problems that

come with writing a paper into two and a half days. Also, that my tame management sucks when

it comes to homework including writing.

I am always asked, “How do you see yourself as a writer?” The answer is that I don’t see

myself as a writer because I dislike writing, but more as a storyteller since I can weave stories

together with non-fiction events and experiences to spin them into looking like a fantasy novel.