Precisely that ^ It also will provide a constantly-present point of comparison that any future alteration to the OGL will be instantly weighed against.
My main takeaway is that even people who are vociferous about the behaviour of WotC are all too ready to forgive given enough concessions are made and “go back to playing beloved DnD” because this is all too stressful. This is definitely the impression I got with some of the conversations I had about this on the D&D Reddit. There are a lot of people who are already to say this "doesn't matter", this "doesn't affect players/customers", that any opposition like the ORC "won't go anywhere", and that WOTC is "perfectly within their rights", this is "all going to fly", and "the complainers will get bored in a month and everything will go back to normal".
I'm actually curious as well. Paizo has never stopped offering PDFs of their PF1 material, both rules and APs, so I think unless they intend to shelve those after all these years there'll need to be some way to cover them under the ORC going forward. Ditto to any publisher that's still selling PF1 content, be it older publications or new releases.
I certainly hope paizo is playing a long strategy. I would enjoy if starfinder 2e would be a OGL free game. This is likely to be just the beginning of the legal wrangling that will come out of Hasbro. Paizo will likely want to keep some kind of OGL system, if only because they work so well with 3rd-party publishers and they need some kind of OGL to publish PF/SF-related works. Even if they move away from the WOTC OGL, they'll still want to have some kind of system in place to coordinate such works.
...Orthos and I had a team up? FFVI is basically the thing we agree on.
You are absolutely most welcome, and I'm glad you found a story you could enjoy. Now try Chrono Trigger if you haven't. =D
Savage Tide happened this weekend! <fanfare!> Savage Tide Chapter 7: Party bid farewell to the lizardfolk and started delving into the ruins of Mantru, looking for any signs of Noltus Innersol or information about the curse of the taboo area or the Empty Ones the lizardfolk spoke of. They found a building that seemed to make Tlanextli (the will-o-wisp from an earlier chapter, now the cohort of the party Oracle/Warlock) unwilling to approach, and signs buried under years of decay, weathering, and overgrowth that the village was lost to violence before it was lost to time and nature.
As the group poked around the ruins, the sounds of approaching figures from the northwest - the route leading to the late within which the taboo temple was situated - heralded the arrival of Noltus, his dog Brogan, and four lizardfolk recruits. The excitable priest was happy to speak with the party, though he likewise avoided the building Tlanextli didn't like, and his dog didn't care for the Warlock's cat-shoggoth familiar. He regaled the party with a fuller retelling of the legends of Thanaclan and its fall, and the party caught on quickly to the mention of an enormous black pearl at the heart of its eventual destruction - insisting that they needed to join Noltus in returning into the taboo temple to not only deal with the vampires he somehow didn't encounter, but also to find and destroy any remnants of the ancient shadow pearl. The group decided they wanted to investigate the weird northernly house that Tlanextli and Noltus wouldn't go near, and - with some magical aid - found a ghost lurking there who spoke in strained, cryptic messages in a language no one in the party knew, though the Warlock was able to translate with tongues. The spirit revealed she was keeping "the hunger" and "the stalker" at bay, and that was why Noltus couldn't approach - she claimed he was "wearing the face" of the priest, which the group deduced meant some kind of disguise or shapeshifting. The Warlock attempted to dispel the disguise with a touch, only to remove a completely different spell he had on - and initiate hostilities. Noltus shed his disguise to reveal himself as a maurezhi or ghoul demon, and his dog bloated in size to become a horrible ape-wolf hybrid julajimus. The party moved to combat the two, which were soon joined by the four lizardfolk - vampires protected with a protection from sunlight spell - as hostilities ensued. The battle was rough, with the party's other Oracle(/Harbinger) taking a few nasty hits from the maurezhi and getting paralyzed and nearly dying as a result, but they were able to take him, the julajimus, and two of the four lizardfolk vampires out before they had to close ranks to help the Oracle not die, which allowed the two other remaining vampires to flee. They're planning to get answers out of the ghost now that they're dealt with and everyone's still alive and healthy.
I didn't learn how to drive until I was 26 >.> From 18-25 I lived in the Phoenix, Arizona metro-complex which has a fairly robust, if not all-encompassing, public transit system. I couldn't have afforded a car at the time anyway. At 26 I had to move back in with my family due to the economy dying in the early 2010s and employment drying up, and Tennessee doesn't have public transit easily available (except maybe in Nashville and Memphis, but I was on the other end of the state) so it was impossible to work and thus survive without it. I bought my first car for stupidly cheap from my parents, and drove it essentially until it died. At 16 I was a nerdy, video-game-playing, book-reading loner who was stuck on the edge of a rural south-Texas town with less than 3000 people living there, where everything was literally within an hour or two walking distance, half that by bike. I didn't like football, I didn't like rodeo or other rural pasttimes, and I could count my friends on one hand including my brother. I had nowhere to drive and no desire to learn how as a result.
Savage Tide cancelled today due to surprise family visit for one of the players. Oh well.
Fantasy NPC: Dame Sungazer. A desert roaming kyton. There was no kyton in a long time. Minor typo: "desert grab" should be "desert garb".
Getting close to the Chapter 1 Finale events for my server plot!I don't know what this means, but hooray! (I can actually figure out the basics, but acting like I'm dense is funnier.) I actually haven't elaborated much on my current NWN plot here IIRC. TLDR: our NWN server is set in Forgotten Realms and the plot is about the dead god Moander (possibly) returning to life. Chapter 1 focused on two sub-plots being controlled/directed by the dead god's current champion - one a forest blight of fiendishly-hybridized Yellow Musk Creepers created by a Blight Druid of Talona the goddess of poison and plague, and the other a trade city plunged into a pandemic by the influence and machinations of a gibrileth Cancer Mage/Fiend of Possession. The chapter is going to come to a head in a couple of weeks with the Druid leading his army of demons, corrupted plants, poisonous animals and magical beasts, vile insects, and villainous druids and rangers to attack one of the primary goodly druidic shrines on the server, and the gibrileth being forced out into the open by the groups investigating the plague in the city having determined if not its full identity at least that of the influential local militia's paper-pusher it was possessing to get access to everything it needed. Actual Spoiler if by some random chance one of CD's players happens to be on this forum!: The truth is that said champion is being manipulated by a Fungus Queen in service to Zuggtmoy, the Demon Queen of Fungi and Rot, who also has stolen Moander's corpse from the Astral Plane and is working on seizing control of its layer of the Abyss, which is neighbor to hers. The last thing she needs is the final remaining spark of Moander's divinity - which is sealed within an ancient elven ruin that's now swarming with demons. The Fungus Queen and Moander's champion are going to spend Chapter 2 getting that seal open, then the champion and a bunch of fiends and corrupt creatures and evil plants will hold off the attacking adventurers while the Fungus Queen enters the sealed city, finds and absconds with the divine shard, and returns to the Abyss to give it to Zuggtmoy - who, as a fungus, can consume/fuse with Moander's rotten remains (where most other kinds of beings would be overwhelmed with the corruption and decay inherent to the dead god) and ascend to godhood.
Then the players have to deal with the ensuing fallout, including the eventual resurrection of the champion as a Treerazer-like demon.
Apologies for my near-complete absence except for the occasional C&C update, I've been busy on an array of projects for my NWN server as well as burying myself in playing Xenoblade 3.
Savage Tide returns! We finally had a successful full session this past Saturday. We've begun City of Broken Idols in earnest and broken the curse that has brought this campaign to an end at the beginning of this chapter (or end of the last) every time I've attempted to run it. Savage Tide - City of Broken Idols spoilers: The group got enough info from Lavinia and Jakara to find their way to the central plateau of the Isle of Dread and wind walked their way there in a day and a half, then spent that day walking around the fog-riddled plateau looking for signs of activity. They found an old, highly-degraded but still clearly made by intelligent creatures road and followed that, had an encounter with a couple of nesting Rocs that they ended up running from rather than killing, and met with the lizardfolk that dwell in the swamp adjacent to the cursed city of Mantru and the lake that surrounds it.
The lizardfolk leader Rissashtak described how anyone who goes into the city against their warnings becomes "empty" and returns, then spreads that "emptiness" through the tribe in a way that had the two divine casters in my three-person party going "Vampire"; they spent the night making holy water and stakes. The swashbuckler just really doesn't want to be here at all, but helped with the stakes because what else is she going to do.
Muckle darmned Nazis, need a good solid thwhackin'.
Been a while since I've posted our videos so going to drop a whole bunch at once here. ^^ --- Conspiracies abound, in the real world and the fictional. --- ---
Yep. I'm a convert to masking and shunning to avoid illness. It's not for COVID. It's for general quality of life. This, this, this, this, this. And probably for the rest of my life, until the point that businesses start banning masks in stores - so the CCTV can see your face - in greater volumes than I can say "I'll just go to a different store then" to.
I HUNGER.
Game did not happen this weekend, unsurprisingly. Scint and I decided to put up an ad at our FLGS for 2-4 people looking for online play. Since unfortunately to be blunt one of our players is just notoriously unreliable and we'd like to be able to play again.
Hopefully a mild case. :-)Thanks! My first time with it was just five weeks of nonstop fever and general icky feeling. Hopefully this will be about the same. Rest well and hopefully get well soon!
<repeatedly fails save vs. fear from fireworks, flees down into basement>
<repeatedly fails save vs. fear from fireworks, flees down into basement>
If Drejk doesn't want this one, I could take a crack at it >.>
*things*It's dps fault. It's always dps fault. This concurs with my experience tanking in WoW. If something goes wrong, it's always because the DPS either attacked when they weren't supposed to, didn't attack when they were supposed to, didn't kill things fast enough (so many bosses with rage timers), or pulled an enemy that wasn't properly aggro'd because they got impatient and ran ahead/threw spells ahead of the tank(s). The only exception I've run into is "Tank was too low-level to hold aggro off the healers or too undergeared to not be crit and the healers couldn't keep up". Admittedly, that's WoW. I don't know how the mechanics differ in FF.
We know. It's useful information to have.
As I've mentioned, GothBard is at the point that if we could emigrate today with no repercussions we'd be gone. Family and finances keep us here for the moment. And let's be blunt: California's legislature does an amazing job of stupid, but when it comes to personal decisions it bends over backwards to let you make those decisions, for better or for worse. Scint and I are already in the process. A kind gaming friend from Australia happens to be involved in emigration work, and is giving us a hand.
And we're back to Harry Potter with book four: Goblet of Fire! Strap in, this recap is a long one.
I've gone that route it's a fun drive! Super weird places all over Oregon! Which is why Gravity Falls is set there. You don't know the half of it! I got weird falling out of my ears here! And your ears too!
We should be restarting Savage Tide at long last tomorrow. NWN thing on Sunday, hunting down some cultists.
Pretty much everything written by Brandon Sanderson. Start with the Mistborn series - starting with The Final Empire - if you're new to his stuff, then work your way through his other stuff; once you're sure you enjoy his style, his Stormlight Archive series - begins with The Way of Kings - is his current magnum opus, though it's still in the works. Everything with Terry Pratchett's name on it. I personally prefer starting his Discworld books with the Witches or City Watch series - Equal Rites or Guards! Guards! first respectively - but pretty much any book is good.
Yesterday was the first official day of summer vacation. I say this because yesterday was the first day I didn't get the school district's automated covid screening email. We're trying, but the qualifications you have to have to get in are high as heck. Canada just wants us to have a ton of money squirreled away, which is just as bad, if a little less frustrating.
Hummus and pita chips has become my go-to snack the past year. Helps me cut down on less-healthy stuff like chocolate and candy and such.
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"38 with no kids is so much younger than 26 with 3 kids." I just turned 37 yesterday, I'm feeling this :D
One that works. Most people will just ignore the emails - myself included, I check my email maybe once every other week, if that - and carry on using the product uninhibited. Most people don't consider the irritation of constant spam to be enough to drive them away from the product.
No PnP today, but 2/3 NWN events for the weekend done. TLDR, I'm running a major server plot for the community, with the aid of Scint and a few other DMs as helpers. The crux of the plot involves the dead god of rot and decay apparently coming back to life, but it's actually a scheme by the demon lord of fungi to seize its former divine portfolio by absorbing its last remaining divine spark which is sealed away in a lost elven city. However, phase 1 of the plot just involves a pair of plagues going on in the two opposite ends of the community server, so the various different groups of PCs have been working on investigating those, trying to find treatments/cures, and tracking down the sources of the plagues - one is a variant Yellow Musk Creeper hybrid that spreads by spores, the other is dealing with a filth demon hiding in the city by possession as its viral agent makes its way through the population. Friday's group was a team of elves sent to find a Warforged Druid, who can study the plague without being affected by it, and present him with a potent healing artifact that had been recovered in another plot I ran yeeeeeears ago. They'll be assisting him going forward in trying to find a cure. Tonight's group was hired by the local Lord of the Dale to make their way along a major river and cull the monster populations in the area, to make the area safer for the various investigative crews. Simple hack and slash event, but the group enjoyed it. Tomorrow's group is set in the city on the other end of the server. There's a cult to the dead god beneath the city, and they'll be sent to investigate its activity and see if there are any clues as to what precisely they're doing or any hints as to their involvement with the plague.
No idea what our plans are here as far as PnP. Have NWN stuff tonight, tomorrow night, and Sunday night though. So those should be interesting.
yeah that's fair
I somewhat envy people who have the self-confidence to ramble about politics or social subjects in public with strangers. I can't imagine being able to just talk about stuff like that with someone you don't know at all. Heck I barely do it with people I know well, not unless I know them well enough to know exactly what kind of response I'm going to get.
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