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Good point. My campaign settings tend towards the visually dramatic - titanic mountain ranges, endless forests, huge glaciers and rivers, and lakes and seas so deep nobody knows what the dark deeps hold, and, for idiosyncratic reasons, they tend to happen in harsh northern climates. However, I've never been good with creating truly powerful NPCs; I tend to make odd monsters or singular outsiders instead. So some inscrutable outsider was the first thing that popped into my mind when thinking about the Five.
As an added bonus, deserts are always intriguing. Just lose the halflings, and this is a near-perfect starting point.
There must be half-orcs!!! I don't care what anyone says. They make sense. Oh, yess.....they make perfect sense.
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The Five are a big campaign secret (slightly telegraphed, but there you go). And I understand that half-orcs and gnomes will arrive in the PHB 2 early next year, but obviously I don't have it yet. The idea is that the guys will start off in the Hinterlands but gravitate fairly quickly to the City.
I'm not sure what triggered the desert setting - a trip to Las Vegas a few years ago partly (so I know what a desert actually looks like, unlike a lot of English guys) and possibly the influence of Prax (we are finishing up an RQ campaign, so it might be more of the same, but hey!). In any case, they will be travelling quite a lot more broadly so the desert thing will not be omnipresent.
And yes, I was really tempted to ditch the halflings and just leave the goblins (with exactly the same stats) but decided not to restrict the players' choices if they wanted one (which, frankly, they probably don't - I'm the only one with a small characters festish, as far as I know).
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Dragonmann, I'm noticing that your posting is tailing off again. I know you have real world issues work-wise but it is a given in these games that you should be able to post most days, and you seem to be having problems with that. While I sympathise, this is making the game go at a snail's pace. We have discussed this before but the situation doesn't seem to change, and I have a game to run. This seems connected with the new(-sh) job you took last year and as such I can't see how we can get round this problem. I obviously don't want to lose you but, frankly, given your sporadic posting and the fairly cursory posts you manage now it feels like we lost you from the game months ago.
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No it's all different. I had to learn a whole new set of things other than a few breakfast pastries (croissant and danish items).
Right now melomakarona, kourabiedes, and diples are the big thing and we make a ridiculous amount of them. Because this place is sort of geared towards people with too much money most of these things are very tiny and sold by the plate.
Diples are very thin, flat fried dough bow-ties drizzled with honey walnuts and cinnamon.
Melomakarona are lightly christmas spiced little cookies made with a star chaped pastry bag tip, soaked (lightly) in honey and sprinkled with walnuts.
Kourabides are like tiny little Russian tea cookies, but made with almonds and scotch- then rolled in powdered sugar.
Actually they have two items that make me laugh. American cake and Texas cake. I'm not sure yet if the American cake is brownies or this other ultra-dense fruit and nut cake. Either way- it ain't American cake.
The Texas cake is baked to hell in a ring mold so it has a bit of a burned chocolate thing going on then they cover it with melted chocolate and crushed walnuts. What do you say about that Heathy?
Really though- now that I have typed all of that- yeah we do have sweet that overlap- ice cream, chocolates, lemon meringue pie, the tiny tarlets with a single strawberry or somesuch on top. This place tries to go for an international eclectic set up though so they have more non-greek items.
EDIT: Jo tells me the shapes I describe for the items above are not traditional. They are just that way at the place I work to make them seem more dainty than the typical Greek items which are much more simple/humble in appearance.
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Nothing from Dragonmann, so I am assuming we have lost him. Stunty tends to be quieter anyway so I will await his call signal.
And yeah, rioting in Greece - kep safe, Ithers.
It's getting to the holidays and it seems like everyone's workload and personal life are adding more work to them. I see a lot of people talking about how hard it is to find time to keep up with posting in the other PBPs I am in. I'm able to keep up with my 4 or 5 PBPs but only just barely. I can't wait until the holiday season and end of year business pushes are settled down. Maybe they are running into that type of issue also.
Keep safe also, Ithers.
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I'm a bit thin in pbp-land at the moment, but I think I'll be fine again in January.
As for the riots- yeah. That's our neighborhood. We went out for dinner with a couple of friends Saturday night and it blew up while we were out. We had to struggle to find a route back to our apt that wasn't blocked by police, rioters, or burning dumpsters. At one point we drove down through an intersection with riot police on one side and people throwing bricks on the other. They were nice enough (or we were just lucky enough) not to brick us as we drove through.
Then Sunday we had a Baptism for Jo's twin nephews, riots in our neighborhood on the way home, and then we set up our Christmas tree. A full day :) I walked around and took a few pictures but the teargas was a bit much to bear.
Anyways- public transport to our area is a problem right now, but other than that all is well.
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Uhh- whoa. Shit is out of control tonight. Weapon stores have been robbed. Rioters are occupying a main square in the city. They are burning buildings and not letting fire engines in to put out the flames.
Word from witnesses is that there was no mob when the boy was shot. Supposedly the 15 year old boy was with a group of friends and he cursed out the 2 cops as they cruised by in a car. The cops circled back and one of them shot him dead. Maybe he was just trying to scare the shit out of the kid I don't know, but this particular cop was special forces from the borders of the country (where they can be lethal) and the other police called him "Rambo" for his general attitude. Anyways- people have lost their minds, but luckily it's not that close to us tonight.
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Life is crushing me. I've barely had time to sleep. This is the first time in weeks I've done more online than check email. Hopefully, this will clear after the holidays, but until then, I'm pretty much unavailable.
Of course, things aren't as bad for me as for those of us in Greece.
Keep safe...
Sounds busy. Hope things calm down soon.
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Life is crushing me. I've barely had time to sleep. This is the first time in weeks I've done more online than check email. Hopefully, this will clear after the holidays, but until then, I'm pretty much unavailable.
Of course, things aren't as bad for me as for those of us in Greece.
Keep safe...
Sure, Stunty - thanks for checking in and letting us know. We can run Larken until things quieten down for you.
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Evidently things havent quietened down. Hope you're keeping safe man.Whoa man. That looks bad.
I heard on the news last night that things seemed to be quieting down now - is that right?
Well- you know. You got this cop who did the shooting refusing to apologize. You've got his jackass lawyer saying the shooting was "an act of god." You got tons of witnesses to the shooting now and it's pretty apparent that it was in cold blood. You've got this cop saying his idols are Rambo and Dirty Harry who has a history of pushing for aggression against the residents of Exarchia (my neighborhood). With time it turned out there was no mob. He was cruising through Exarchia which is a pretty hands-off cop zone with the exception of posts the police maintain. Some highschool kids cursed at him and threw a bottle and he apparently parked the car and walked back and pretty much shot the kid right away. Then he and his buddy just left the scene! They didn't call medics or anything! This part was captured on video. Then you have him in the media saying he had fired a warning shot downwards which ricocheted up to hit the kid... until the ballistics test proved the bullet came from a slight upward angle. So yesterday he changed his story to "Oh, did I say downwards? I meant that I fired in the air. It must have hit something above."
So yeah... intermittent flare ups every day. Also you have a thing here where whenever anarchists are fighting with the police gangs of uber-nationalists come out just to fight anarchists. The carry greek flags and actually have knives and such and fight alongside the police. Throw into the mix- you have some police who do their shift acting as they should in uniform, then switch to street clothes and mix in with the nationalists for a little more personal revenge. There were apparently more molotov attacks going on while I was at work today, but the huge part of it is past.
Now... if that cop gets a not-guilty or possibly even if he gets manslaughter instead of murder- then we'll see what happens.
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I've never been brave enough to try the chicken feet. They have them in Arkansas in the grocery as well as chittlins, but it wasn't on the family menu. I'm a fairly adventurous eater, but even the steaming chicken feet at dim sum places are beyond me. Kudos to you Mothman!
Things are fine. Even the street cart vendors are back in my neighborhood and the buses are running again. Occasionally a little something is going on, but it's off our personal radar. This past Saturday night we went over to where Alexi was shot (it's like 4 blocks from our front door) and observed a little memorial. Then we had a beer in the square and watched burning dumpsters spring up in all directions blocking the roads into the area. Kids and troublemakers were rushing around potentially scuffling with cops, but it wasn't any big deal. Mostly they were just throwing rocks. Still it's so different from the US. If you throw rocks at cops just about anywhere in the US... you are going to have a very unpleasant night to say the least. Hell- they'll knock the crap out of you for not protesting where they agreed to give you a permit to protest. Very different.
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Yes, travelled business class, so at least it was vaguely tolerable. I think Vatters is right, I righted my body clock pretty sharpish after the trip back, but was totally poleaxed while I was out there (not too much useful work done, I fear). I think I'm lucky I was only there for two nights, so I never really did adjust and could come back quite easily.
Merry Christmas!