Thanks Michael. I spent 2 months on 'the Isles' touring England, Scotland and a dip into Wales. Then I spent 4 months on the continent from Zeebrugge up to Amsterdam, then from Berlin to Hamburg, from Cologne to Frankfurt to Basel. Then around Lake Geneva, then Nuremburg to Prague, and finally from Paris to Dieppe and Hastings to London. Has sculpted thighs like iron by the time I was done. Those were the days! By the way, I was your age when I did it! :-)
My biggest question is how? I mean, how did you finance it and get the spare time to do it? Having no time and money is my own favourite excuse for not doing a lot of stuff I really want to.
I used a combination of luck and courage. My company was offering a voluntary severance package. I jumped on it and used much of the payout to finance my trip. I gave up my apartment just before I left (it was a WG situation, so another friend just took over my half). I cut my expenses down in Europe, mostly staying in youth hostels, buying food in stores to cook it or make sandwiches, not drinking alcohol. Every so often I splurged with a room at a B&B and/or a dinner in a restaurant. Also, the round-trip transatlantic flight was a combo birthday/Christmas gift from my parents using their miles. At the end, I sold my bike to save the cost of flying it back. When I got back, I moved in with my best friend and immediately signed up at an office services temp agency I had worked at many years before. I had about $1500 saved. Right after the weekend, I was working again and then landed a good job about four months later. I 'put it out there' as some North Americans would say, and it all came together.
Not going to happen with my love for security, but still, admireable! Sure makes for a heck of a story!
Well, while we are all sharing :)
I'm Donald. I live in Texas (USA). Oddly enough, I have been to Germany. I went to Hasselbach (I think that is how it is spelled) and Schweinfurt. My wife's oma, opa, and ur-oma live in Hasselbach so we stayed a summer with them. It was our pre-moon you could say because we were getting married the following fall.
Right now, I'm a chemist for a municipal drinking water lab. I do the microbiology testing right now, and since our guy that does the metals is retiring, I'll be absorbing his position (because I am the only other person that knows how to work the machines). Currently, I'm working through loss of sleep; insomniac + new baby (3 months now and luckily just started sleeping through the night last week) = no sleep.
Congratulations on the new baby, Donald! I can imagine an online game is about all you have the time for these days. ;-)
That's fantastic, Jim. Glad to see the grand adventure worked out. :) And grats on the baby. That's wonderful.
Michael - I'll allow it.
Thanks guys!
And yes, don't have must time for RL sessions anymore. I've played 1 RL session when he was a couple weeks old. Since then, I've had to abandon my RL group for the time being.
I only have one RL round and we play Tuesdays evenings. Everyone pretty much directly comes from work, we eat together and then start. Since everyone needs to get up early we quit pretty early. All in all we have 2 hours each week.
Back in the days we had 10 hour long sessions on every second Saturday. Miss that sometimes, but only sometimes.
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I used to play RL games on fridays, but had to give it up when my contract changed. Then my contract changed again and I could play... but my group had decided to disband. :-\ *le sigh* That was not a happy day.
I'm running a RL Carrion Crown game on Thursday nights and playing Curse of the Crimson Throne on Monday nights. It's a lot, but it's a good social outlet. The Thursday night group includes guys I've been playing with for a decade. I took them through Shackled City back at the start. Then we did Red Hand of Doom. After that came a steampunk campaign, then the first two books of Skull & Shackles. Now we've got two women in the group and we've moved on to horror. In that time we've celebrated two babies, one wedding, new jobs, the loss of parents, and the umpteen trials and joys of living.
Wow. That is awesome. :)
... I miss my RL group.
I used to GM a CotCT game IRL.
Then the group had scheduling conflicts and real life come knocking.
Oh well...
I'm running RoTRL with an online group on whatever days of the week we can make time, and my wife is about to start a campaign of my favorite game system ever - Unknown Armies. So still livin' the dream. Or something.
Erm. by online I mean in-person. Christ. Stupid internets taking over my brain. We're almost done book 5!
I have a RL Rise of the Runelords Campaign (the one mentioned above) using the Fate Core rules, an online Hangouts Council of Thieves (with old buddies that runs VERY slow, also with Fate Core) every now and then, a relatively new Kingmaker over on Storium that works pretty well; everything GMing myself. And then I play this one, I hope for months to come.
Still, I'd love to have a good long RL RPG day every once in a while.
I love the Pathfinder Campaign Setting and APs, but the Rules aren't really my favourite. No worries, I'll not complain all the time.
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By the way, I'm almost done with character creation. Just need to write it down and get it onto this site.
It's still the witch, only the background and some skills have changed a bit. (I lost Stealth by the way)
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Dear GM,
I apologize for my endlessly long background story. Please still read it :-D
Seriously, I got a little carried away. I'll work on getting the crunch up soon.
Best Regards
Michael
90% of the chrunch is done. I only need to select my starting spells.
I can heartily recommend Ear-piercing scream as an offensive spell. It always does at least some damage, even on a save, and has a chance of dazing an opponent.
Hmm, I don't know the spell but it seems to fit the fact that he ditched stealth. :-)
Only the person it's cast on can hear the scream. ^^ It's 1d6 / 2 levels, I think, pure sonic damage.
I guessed having knowledge (planes) would be more helpful and more fitting to my character.
I'm not sure if I should take Trickery or Desception as patron. Any advice?
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I always go with Moon, myself. *shrug*
If you fear the game won't last long enough, Deception has the better lower level spells. If you want to hold out for hope, I'd go Trickery. They both get Time Stop, but I love Reverse Gravity.
Time is also an amazing Patron: Haste, Teleport, Disintegrate, and Time Stop. Threefold Aspect can also be useful (in a low magic campaign mostly when there are no or few enhancement items).
I plan to take item creation feats, so you needn't worry too much. ;) Just keep me alive and get me those resources...
Desception. And no, not because I don't think this game won't last, but because I really want Invisibility.
Dear Ragnar, the read is worth it. Great backstory - it gives me a lot to play with.
Knowledge planes will be useful in this game.
I'm finally all done. Feel free to read and comment everyone! Till the game starts, I might still take the liberty of altering some things, but I think this is how I want Ragnar to be.
Maybe NG would be more fitting, don't know. Any ideas for a god or belief? Haven't encompassed that at all until now.
Glad to hear it! And thank you.
Just waiting to get started... that's why I've been quiet.
Can't wait to start. And NG might help out with party dynamics more. Before it was looking like: CG, NG, N... N(leaning NE)... NE... NE...
I think True Neutral fits quite well. He is at a crossroads in his life. He comes from LN, but has left the path set before him by his parents. Now it is up to him and fate to decide what kind of person he will become. (I mean hey, he tricks people using his hexes just for the sake of getting better trade deals. That ain't NG!)
By now, I can't wait to get started!
Ditto. ^^
Well I have just successfully made my first map. So there's a start. A little bit more work and I'll have a few RL months of content and can get started in a week or so.
Awesome!
Good thing my vacation plans fell through. I have a week off of work and can spend it learning Gimp. Sigh.
I just use Google Docs. Works well.
Also you can use this in conjunction with it for battle maps.
There are alot of other things I use for various maps. And You can't forget about gozzy's when you need a quick dungeon or other map you forgot to make (or that the PCs decided to explore without your foresight).
As you can see I've finally named the campaign after tweaking with the core concept 20 or so times.
Hey, had no idea about gozzy's. Very handy! But I have a few locations I want properly mapped out to match ideas I have, which means makin' them myself. And I'll host the maps on google draw so you can move your tokens and whatnot.
If you have any good tutorials for map making with gimp especially, please share. I only know the basics at the moment.
So excited!
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I've got an army of them. I'll collect and link tomorrow. :) Cartographer's guild is the one stop shop for everything though.
Actually, this one forum post has most of what I'm using!
http://www.cartographersguild.com/tutorials-how/4276-quickstart-guide-fanta sy-mapping.html
Also, this roll20 guide is great.
https://wiki.roll20.net/Mapping_with_Gimp
Thanks, I'll check them out.
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Hey all, sorry I've been so slow in getting stuff up, I should get my phone back within a few days and my posting and writing of stuff will increase dramatically in consistency... can't wait to start!
Just a heads up that I'll be on vacation in Normandy August 8-24. Not sure what the wifi situation will be there but I'll mostly be out of commission during that time.
Thanks for the heads-up, and enjoy Normandy!
That reminds me how close France is to Trier and that I should spend a little quality time with my girlfrined as soon as my exams are through.
Have a nice vacation!
Ahhh, vive la France. Buttery croissants, wine-steamed mussels, baked camembert...