Posted my condolences in another game already, but it's got to be tough losing a friend, especially at this time of the year. Still have you in my thoughts.
In more upbeat news, we just hit 5,000 posts.
My condolences Regeris
"So we wait until after midnight and then bring people to one of the other spots?" Nebbin asks, trying to make sure he understands the plan. "Maybe just a few at a time, so we can sneak everyone out more easily?"
OK, here's what I think we should do.
1. Get rooms at an inn near the Temple of Aroden. That way we'll be nearby in the morning when the Queen's physicians and Gray Maidens cross the bridge into Old Korvosa. We might also want to discreetly send any supplicants arriving at the temple looking for healing to the temporary hospice (assuming we find one; see #2 below).
I'm assuming the folks Kayleigh and Ishan have been treating head back to their homes afterwards and there isn't a 24-hour camp outside the temple. I'm also assuming that we're going to see if the physicians try to remove anyone who shows no symptoms of the blood veil there...and step in if they try. I'm not sure that everyone's on board with that plan (especially the second part), but Kayleigh won't stand for anyone threatening the priests of Aroden or the Lambs.
2. Check out at least one, probably both, of the 'safe' locations the dragons found, avoiding the one with the 'dead taint' for now (though maybe we should at least find out if it's the same alley where bodies were dumped previously).
3. Return to the inn near the temple, rest, and see what happens in the morning.
Thoughts?
I'm not sure why we want to be in an inn instead of the temple. If we're going to step in if the physicians try to arrest the priests/ex-Lambs, wouldn't it make sense to just be there in the first place?
If we think we have time to check on the "safe" locations, I'm fine with that. I'm assuming the idea would be we would move to one of them if we have to confront the physicians, but otherwise we know they're there but wouldn't be doing anything with them immediately.
I'm not sure why we want to be in an inn instead of the temple. If we're going to step in if the physicians try to arrest the priests/ex-Lambs, wouldn't it make sense to just be there in the first place?
My thinking is that by not being in the temple ourselves, we might get a better feel for whether the visit of the physicians to the temple is simply one of convenience (it's one of the first buildings across the bridge) or if it's more politically motivated (the guards across the bridge saw Kayleigh, Regeris, and Ishan treating the sick and want to send a message).
If we think we have time to check on the "safe" locations, I'm fine with that. I'm assuming the idea would be we would move to one of them if we have to confront the physicians, but otherwise we know they're there but wouldn't be doing anything with them immediately.
Pretty much. I think the plan for the hospice is to have a hidden place where Ishan (full-time) and Kayleigh (part-time, when we're not out on another mission) can treat the sick and then send them back home. Maybe keep the sickest in-house, if there's enough room.
Thank you so much everyone I really appreciate it.
Back and in business. I'll catch up and reanimate my hollow vessel in the game.
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Of course, Regeris. You can see we've been pretty slow posting through the holiday so far.
Merry Christmas to everyone. Personally, I should only have to work a little this week and should otherwise be able to post. As an aside, if you want the most peaceful possible work holiday as a people-manager, what you do is you tell everyone that the only work-thing you have to do over the coming vacation is work on their performance appraisals. ;)
I'll post us along this morning.
So of course work calls and I end up working this morning rather than posting.
I deserved that.
So of course work calls and I end up working this morning rather than posting.
I deserved that.
Duh! 2020's not quite over yet. ;)
I want to like Kayleigh's last post for its appropriateness, but dislike it because it's true and we have to make it through three more days.
So, we're doing the relocation now? Or are we scouting someplace out? I've kinda lost track.
We're checking out the other sites right now. I think we're still planning to wait at the church to see what the physicians plan to do, but are getting ready to run if we have to.
Happy New Year guys! Not going to apologize for my holidays sluggishness. I'm just going to hope everyone's holiday has been as safe and restful as ours. Between my son adding VR to his system and us adding a gaming table to our house we've at least been pleasantly occupied while secluded. My old-man shoulder aches from swinging virtual swords!
I'm excited about this year and the end of chapter two of the campaign. There are good encounters and hopefully some nice plot twists coming into scope for 2021. And despite my disappearance this past week, I hope to sustain a higher posting rate. 'The proof of the pudding is in the eating' they used to say, before they shortened it to something that makes no sense. We shall see.
And I still am working, slow but sure, on a homebrew set in Mwangi. There are still hitches in the meta-plot for me to work out and some resources to complete before I start anything. And also, frankly, some cultural-appropriation issues I have to work out in my head before starting such a thread. Having anthro in my own academic background and with so many social justice themes prominent in the news now (as ever), I have this specter of ethical paranoia I have to slay. Maybe a set of guidelines that I need to come up with or something that I use to examine my own plotlines and npcs?
This is where professional writers trust their editors, right? Here we have an hour to consider our posts before they're part of this little corner of the internet. Anyway, it led to an interesting conversation with my two college-age or thereabouts children, who are of course more woke than my old ass.
You guys run games of your own here. Any thoughts on this?
Brain not functioning yet...too early. I will point out that a Big-Ass 2E Mwangi Book is now on the horizon. I'm pretty sure some of your concerns might be addressed therein, and likely in the book's Forward.
So that's the danger of working over the horizon. Thanks for the pointer. I see the upcoming AP now as well. We'll see how much of my plot is still workable once all that material is released. And 2e to boot, of course.
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Cultural appropriation is a very tough and dicey subject for sure. If you have any thoughts or ideas or questions you want to bounce off me Luke, feel free to at any time. I'm a former anthro prof for what it's worth (probably not much), so I've at least wrestled with a lot of associated questions for a long time.
You want to talk about uncomfortable? How about teaching a course titled 'Introduction to North American Indians' in which quite a few of the students are Native American. Yep, I had to do that more than once.
Anyway, the real problem that upsets and scares so many people when the subject comes up is that there is no single simple answer to what cultural appropriation is exactly. It's a case-by-case, nuanced issue that requires thinking in specifics over and over again rather than relying on an easy generally applied rule or rules.
There's also a lot of hysteria about it and the media often hasn't helped.
Anyone recall the 'Oberlin College incident' a few years back? The college newspaper reported than an Asian student at the college had demanded the (American) cafeteria not offer Asian dishes? It was picked up and reported by the media and everyone went berserk?
Well that's not what happened actually. Going back to the source, the student complained the cafeteria offered gross American takes on Thai (if I remember correctly) food that weren't anything like Thai food while calling it Thai food. The real complaint wasn't 'an American cafeteria shouldn't offer Thai food', it was more akin to 'please offer good, authentic Thai food'. It was a sensible and reasonable complaint. This is also what was in fact reported in the Oberlin newspaper. It was completely distorted into something else when it went national.
Anyhoo, it's very often about his sort of thing, maybe about what is used, but more about how it's used and the intent behind the use.
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Well and beyond intent there's the question of harm and what it means.
Cultural appropriation is a problem because there's serious real-world implications for the erasure of someone's identity and replacement with some kind of cartoonish stereotype in terms of how they're treated but also sense of self and the trauma that comes from that. Talk to any Indigenous person and you'll get an earful about that.
One thing I like about Pathfinder is it gets the concepts of empire, power dynamics, and at least some stabs at colonialism. I'm running Age of Ashes which has an entire chapter with Mwangi based around Indigenous elves there and they like... have a society that's interesting and there's a British explorer who is a ludicrous villain. It's clumsy but well-meaning and felt too fantasy to be exploitative although I'm not exactly the expert.
Honestly the big thing I do is identify and steer away from well-identified and harmful tropes, ensure the NPC locals have agency and identity, and focus on concepts of power that aren't uh... solely mystical or exotic but instead very human and flawed and relatable. Get rid of the othering, but your anthro background should help a lot with that.
These are both great responses and give me alot of food for thought. One thing I'm sure of is it is not enough to simply project yourself into another's shoes. That's a fictional exercise born of ego. Generally speaking humans are terrible at this. We rationalize, we don't relate.
Very similar in my mind to the position Rick describes himself in teaching a Native American culture class to Native Americans. One answer in that case could be to incorporate those student's perspectives directly into the curriculum - let them help tell that tale - but I think in this case that's not alot of help.
In particular if one of you guys does NOT end up playing in that thread, I might ask you to look over the plotline for danger points. But I do think the guidelines thingy is probably necessary. I can see a need to periodically check myself and intentionally read the thread for this kind of theme and story degradation. Spidey's point about falling into tropes is a good way of expressing my exact source of anxiety.
This real-world syncretism that games like Pathfinder practice (ie Galt = France) enable the writers to rely on the presence of real-world cultural attributes to imply more flesh in their creations than they actually create, but also really invites the gamers to fall into the trap of role-playing their real-world prejudices. I mean does anyone honestly doubt the quality of the bread in Galt? It's a free association that GMs can make when they're ad-lib role playing. But there are certainly some not-so-harmless stereotypes you could run out about the french in a Galt thread that would be downright offensive.
I've stumbled a couple times in lurker mode upon games being run on this site that are painfully filled with this stuff. On the one hand I suppose everyone's having fun, very few people are ever going to read it other than the actual players, and (damnit!) it's fantasy role-playing. I just don't want to be guilty of running such a thread, in any potential readers eyes.
On the subject of masks, here in the FL I'm stunned by the number of people not wearing masks. We're overrun by folks in denial down here, of alot of things really. But today my wife had to go into a convenience store and none of the employees were wearing masks. Maybe they've given up?
I just stumbled onto this post while trying to find out for sure if the bridge connecting Old Korvosa and Northpoint (where the execution is to be held) has fully become a checkpoint, with every person trying to cross stopped and questioned. (I never found my answer, Luke, so if you could clarify I'd appreciate it.)
Anyhow, the post made me check the MSN Covid-19 Dashboard. One piece of data jumped out and stunned me. Of the 22+ million cases of covid-19 in the U.S. over the course of the 10+-month pandemic, more than half are current/active cases.
And this is (maybe) before the newer, more contagious version has become widespread??!! Don't let your guard down and stay safe, my friends!
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Back to game-related stuff, if you take a look at the City Map Luke provided, you can see that the Temple of Aroden (the first building across the bridge) isn't that far from the Longacre Building (the left of the two larger white buildings several blocks southeast of the bridge). If checkpoints aren't an issue, it might be possible to deal with both the physicians' arrival and witness the execution. Maybe.
Just wow. What a stunning 72 hours in the real world. Just speaking for myself here, but if I never see history made again, I think I'll be ok. I've been turning to Lovecraft Country in the evenings just to escape the horror...
Of the 22+ million cases of covid-19 in the U.S. over the course of the 10+-month pandemic, more than half are current/active cases.
Yeah, amazingly lost in the political b%*!~@~~ of the day, the Blood Veil is tearing thru America like never before. My dad's in genetic medicine - engineers viruses to be the delivery mechanism for genetic therapies. Dude tracks the subject of virology very closely. Apparently in our state, we now have cases in each of the variants of the disease, along with a new one that might be unique just to us.
I've definitely grown tired of all this winning.
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Yes, according to the rumors Emi heard, no one crosses the bridge just south of the temple without enduring an inspection by the Queen's Physicians. Traffic isn't closed, its just slowed to a crawl. Using private bridges over the Narrows might still be possible, but you'll need to investigate these if you plan to sneak into Korvosa proper. You haven't explored lower Bridgefront, so you have no knowledge of the condition of the bridge into the Heights on the far west end of the island.
In fact, you expect that the Physician's forecasted push into Old Dock will come straight over that same bridge (south of the temple) in the morning. You'd be trying to cross over in the face of that push.
Re:Covid-19: After calming down, I realized that half the total U.S. cases being active isn't because the virus is more prevalent in a community, necessarily; it's because at this time it's not just raging in certain pockets of the country...it's raging pretty much everywhere it got a foothold previously.
Not sure that's particularly comforting, though.
Ugh, sorry posting is kinda slow. What a week it's been.
Apologies guys, I haven't been able to log into the site in a couple of days. I figured out this evening that if I try in chrome incognito mode I could still sign in. I don't know if anyone else is having issues... All of my old favorited URLs direct me to an old sign-in that doesn't seem to work. :(
Anyway, I'll get a post in tonight.
Secret is to manually clear your Paizo cookies. A few people I know had to do it multiple times.
I guess the bad cookie was really old. Once I extended the period to All Time it seemed to do the trick. Something in that old cookie the site doesn't support anymore I guess.
FINALLY back in. Christ.
As a heads-up I'm going to be closing down all the games I'm GMing in save one because of capacity issues with my gig as a union president. I am going to try to keep at it with this game and the other one I play in because I love it and it's a lot easier to be a player than it is a GM. We'll see how it goes!
I'm guessing the madness is everywhere. Our application (work) suffered a 100% outage over the last 24 hours. Total CF.
C'mon 2021. You're supposed to be better than this.
Meet the New Year...Same as the Old Year!
I'm self-quarantining again.
25% off online pizza code was my Achilles' heel this time. Called Sis and mentioned it, saying I'd been hankering pizza. She'd been occasionally hanging out with a friend in her small bubble to watch TV/DVDs, so I figured maybe if I paid for a pizza for her & her friend, I could get Sis to stop and drop one off for me en route. Her friend was busy but Sis was craving pizza too, so we decided to split one while watching some inauguration stuff Wednesday night. She got the notification that she'd been exposed to someone with covid at work the next morning.
Her test results are due either later today or tomorrow. Can't let your guard down for even a minute!
Anyone get the vaccine shot(s) yet?
Not yet, but hopefully soon.
Sorry to hear that. Here's hoping you're alright.
Thanks. Sis feels fine, I feel fine so far.
Pizza was pretty good, for what it's worth....
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Quick turnaround on the test this time--another negative.
Congrats on passing the test! My sister, dad, and one of my employees have had the vaccine. All three had side effects. My dad and my employee both said the first shot was worse, despite most folks saying the opposite. My dad was under the weather for about 4 days. My sister, on the other hand had her upper arm swell up like a grapefruit after the second shot, but the docs actually said that's a sign of a very successful reaction to the vaccine, so I guess that's good?
I think I get to wait until all seniors in Florida have the vaccine, which probably places me around December 2022.
Yeah I read a lot on the mechanism of the vaccine and the fact that it trains your body to replicate the 'spear protein' covid uses, which your immune system then has to battle and clear out is wild. But like any vaccine your immune system goes into overdrive battling the target dummies. Makes sense the swelling is normal but sounds unpleasant as hell.
I doubt I'm going to see a vaccine until fall since I'm an office worker and have no particular health issues. Which is fine, any reasonable measure would put me at the back of the queue.
Good news Kayleigh! I'm glad that test was negative!
Yeah, I doubt I'll be getting the vaccine any time soon. The only thing I can think of to change that would be if there was a drive to get schools reopened. If there was push to get kids and their families vaccinated as part of something like that, it might speed things up.
My wife had a bad reaction to it. She's fine, but was definitely scared. And isn't looking forward to doing it again next year.
Not sure when I'll be in line. I'm technically an essential worker, and do have a health risk, so I think before gen pop, but still probably the last phase of it. I'm eager, but also fully aware I am able to largely stay in my house, so don't want to go before more at-risk folks.
Agreed on all points. I have no co-morbidities and have been working 100% remote since the beginning of this thing, so I'm happy to wait until all the most vulnerable in the community are vaccinated. With my youngest graduating and likely moving out this year to go to college, we wouldn't even get swept up in something connected to re-opening schools. He might, but not us.
Ugh, I had meant to get a post of this sort up yesterday evening but didn't have time. Probably too late now.
Nebbin doesn't plan to stay here if we have to fight. He still thinks we should try to trick the physicians (and see if they've got ulterior motives), but if everyone else wants to try to run before they get here, he'll accept that. He's not letting them take Kayleigh or any of the kids, though.
The problem with waiting to see if they're going to take anyone to decide is it's too late at that point. We'd be trying to pull off two things at once. Holding off the Gray Maidens and associates while at the same time evacuating a bunch of kids who need to be kept together as a group and moved some distance through crowds, and potentially hostiles.
We'd also have to hope we can remove ourselves from direct contact at some point while moving. Otherwise we're just bringing the enemy along with us to any hideout, which doesn't help us at all. Even if we did, they'd still know we exist to be found and what our direction of travel was.
If anyone has watched The Expanse, this is our "Critical Mass" - "Leviathan Wakes" episodes moment. ;)
If anyone has watched The Expanse, this is our "Critical Mass" - "Leviathan Wakes" episodes moment. ;)
Never seen it. I have been re-watching my old NCIS: New Orleans seasons 1 & 2 DVDs, though. Hey...what do you mean I'll never be one of the cool kids??!!
Seriously, though, I'll go along with any semi-feasible plan at this point. I still don't see who's going to watch after the Lambs while we're adventuring if we move them out of the Temple of Aroden, though.
As a side note, Kayleigh's still got all of her restorative touch charges left, if needed to combat fatigue from a short night's sleep. I'm pretty sure it can't be used to get Tassira a fresh batch of spells, though.
The Expanse is really good! It leans more hard science fiction than fantasy sci-fi, and is set in the nearer rather than farther future. Confined to the solar system since there are no warp drives, FTL travel, etc.
Lots of world building and many characters and plot lines that intertwine. It's Earth vs Mars (an ex-earth colony) vs the Belters, a proletarian population who work as miners, etc. and live on stations built in the asteroid belt.
I should check the Expanse, but have so much other calls for my time.
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As for the kids, my feeling is we can fight through what I assume would be just a few people and then escape if we have to. But if everyone appears to be healthy, my hope is we don't have to and we can just stay where we are and be comfortable that we're relatively safe here. But if they have specific nefarious intent against us, I think it would be good to know that.
Okay, so... what's the plan for getting the kids out of here without the Physicians seeing them?
I think we should all vote so we don't spend too much time going back and forth, which is easy to do in PBP. Majority rules for the group's decision, though of course one of us could choose to go off on our own after that. :)
Nebbin thinks we should leave the children here. If we were planning to never let the physicians see them, we should have moved them the previous night. He prefers to stay himself with anyone healthy to oversee what happens, but is willing to be led away if the entire party wants to hide.
I vote everybody leaves for the 3rd building we looked at if it's still possible. Obviously the Arodenite priests will refuse to go. But everyone else does. I guess it comes down to how much trust one wants to put in the Queen's people. Emi has zero trust in them. Obviously she could be wrong, but her point is it's better not to test their trustworthiness because we don't get a do-over.
Emi may very well round up the kids and take them on her own if it comes to that. She could be forcibly stopped I suppose.
Of course it could be it's simply not possible to get out anymore. But I'm having a hard time understanding how Emi's position could seem new and sudden at this point.
Let's not metagame the situation. For the Gray Maidens, doctors, and allies to carry out their plans, which involves controlling a large, desperate population while almost certainly using force if needed to round up the infected and separate them from friends and family, they will need to arrive in substantial force and be happy to use it. They may also have a beef with us and take advantage of the opportunity.
If we set aside our being the heroes of the adventure who get to win (hypothetically), this is not a situation in which resistance can be successful. Even if it did work initially, that success can't be allowed to stand so they will be back again in greater force. Fighting them at the temple means we have to abandon the temple afterward, if things go really well.
Kayleigh and Regeris have to get out of the temple before the physicians and Gray Maidens arrive. We don't know yet if just those showing signs of infection or entire households where it's detected will be carted off to the hospice(s).
I vote for leaving the Lambs (if asymptomatic) at the temple, but if Emi's insistent they leave, Kayleigh will go along with that. What's the long-term plan for them, though? Return them to the temple once it's been inspected? Have them dwell unsupervised at an illegal hospice where the diseased are coming and going all day? This needs to be addressed.
Fighting's out. Unless I misread, Tassira hasn't yet gotten enough rest to regain spells, and Kayleigh hasn't been able to pray for her new spells. I suggest the whole party leaves the temple, watches the proceedings, finishes resting/praying, and then deals with whatever aftermath there is.
I owe you guys a good post, but work's kicked my ever-loving ass this week. I'll get it in tomorrow (during the day) when I have the energy to do it justice.
But as for the Expanse - if you like sci-fi you gotta check it out. The books are (of course) better than the show, but both are worth the time. The last of the books comes out in October and I've been steadily working my way back through the first eight so it's all fresh when book 9 drops. The authors are close friends with GRRM, and I've been paranoid they were going to duplicate his betrayal by letting the show catch and then spoil the end. I'll never forgive GRRM, or engage in anything having to do with GOT ever again. Won't watch the show and could care less if he ever finishes his books now.
No comment on the rest of the conversation (until tomorrow). :D
Pfft. That went well. I promise to get a post in during the day and then get slapped with a 15 hour marathon. No matter, the show must go on...
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Take a break Luke. It can wait. Everybody needs to be able to take a break when they need one. It's the times we're in.