First and foremost, I forgot to mention that my dad with with his girlfriend to Las Vegas for a week. It's their anniversary, so this is the first time he's gone this far away from home. That means that I'm here with my brother and his girlfriend for a few days to watch over the house. Unfortunately, my brother's girlfriend has the swine flu, so I have to be careful.

Also, I need to get back into writing...my first inspiration is to take requests in the form of a data sheet for a game I like to play. As some of you know already, it's the game DotA on Warcraft 3.

DotA has a simple story: Two sides proceed in an epic clash to eradicate each other for domination. These two sides are the Sentinel and the Scourge. The Sentinel is the good side, while the Scourge is the undead and evil side. There are also neutral characters that instead of fighting for a side, they fight for their own gain.

How it works: In the game of DotA, you get to choose a hero, and then pick one of three lanes. In the lanes, creeps, or soldiers to say, spawn at the end of each lane, then usually clash in the center. Usually, you'll be in competition with another hero to acquire gold, survive, and if you're lucky, score some kills. The objective is to strategically destroy the opposing towers in the lane, then the base, and lastly, the main building (Sentinel has the World Tree, Scourge has the Frozen Throne). The game is all about strategy, ganging up and killing certain heroes to keep them from getting items, and coming out on top in giant clashes. Hero selection is crucial , and teamwork is a necessity.

Hero selection: There are three attributes that each hero has: Strength, Agility, and Intelligence. One of these attributes is the hero's "main attribute". Strength is based around HP and usually more damage-sponging tactics. Agility gives you extra attack speed and armor, and they usually become the late gamebreaking heroes with their massive DPS. Intelligence is based around mana and spells.

A hero in detail: With each hero, you start at level 1, and you're allowed to pick one of three spells. As you level up, your stats increase, depending on your stat gain, and you can learn more spells, or level up a spell to increase its effectiveness. Most spells are damage-dealing spells, but there are various kinds. In fact, there are too many to truly mention. At level 6, you're allowed to skill your "ultimate" spell, which is a very powerful ability, but if it's not a passive spell, it usually has a longer cooldown before being usable again. Also, you can the Attribute bonus skill, which simply increases your stats. (Strength, Agility, and Intelligence). Special strategies with heroes usually require special skill builds, but most of the time, they're just straight-forward.

Types of Spells; the short list: single-target damage dealers, AoE (area of effect) damage, stuns (commonly combined in damage skills; makes a target unable to move, attack, or cast spells), slows (slows a target's movement or attack speed, or both), disables (something that, in a way, disables the target from moving, attacking, casting spells, or any combination), heals, supporting spells (such as a shield to protect from magical damage or to give some kind of buff in speed, attack, just something that is beneficial to a friendly ally. Supporting spells can also be used to cast "debuffs" on opponents, such as damage over time, armor reduction, etc.) Consult [link] and click on a hero to learn a little more about types of spells.

Orb effects: Orb effects are effects that can be added to standard attacks to do something unique to your attack. Common ones include lifesteal, which gives you back life for damage dealt, slows, armor reduction, and many more. Things that add a debuff on your opponents with each attack are called buff placers. Neither of these stack with one another, so you can't have lifesteal and a slow orb together. One will override the other. Buff placers are in the same category. Some come through certain hero spells, while others can come from items, explained shortly below.

To further increase the potential of heroes, there are many many items to choose from, starting with the simple stat boosters and healing items to the game-clinching DPS items and disabling items (Guinsoo, or as nicknamed, sheepstick: Turns a hero into a sheep for 3.5 seconds)

How a data sheet works: As I've seen from the site dotastrategy.com, people like to make custom hero ideas and post them so they can be rated, critiqued, and resolve balance issues. The format is simple, and I will post an example of how I do this via a deviation of one character I've worked on. (I have many, all based around my characters.)

If you want me to do one of a your characters in DotA form, all you have to do is say so and give me these simple requirements:

Actual name of the character, and a rough "species name"
Examples: Medusa - The Gorgon, or in my terms, EY - The ElectroYoshi

The side you wish to fight for: Sentinel, Scourge, or neutral (if you wish to go neutral, note what you're fighting for)

What you wish your role to be: A tank, DPS, nuker (chaining high-damage spells together to "nuke" weak heroes and kill them), ganker (hero that usually appears unexpectedly with an ally to gang up on a hero to kill it), support (using an array of spells to support the team, such as heals and friendly buffs) or a hybrid of any above (I made EY into an early decent nuker/decent DPS hybrid, so they're possible.)

(Optional) What your main attribute is wished to be: Strength (STR), Agility (AGI), or Intelligence (INT). Remember that Strength is for more tank, Agility is for late-gamebreakers, and Intelligence is for a lotta spells.

If you have any questions, just ask. Do remember that if you want extremely powerful spells or want a really high attribute gain, I will try to balance it out to where if you have a lot of this, you won't have a lot of that. If your hero uses a big chain of spells to create a devastating combo that wastes a ton of things with ease, I will make the attribute gain small.

I've been writing this for the past hour. Tomorrow, I'll update one of my yoshies and the data sheets to DA to give a general idea.