We do not have anything like that here in Spain. It often seems surprising for many countries, but after a Civil War and a 35 years military dictatorship soldiers, armed conflicts and the army in general is not very well regarded by most population. In most other countries they are praised as protectors, I know.
^That's understandable. Memorial Day/Weekend is also (unofficially) when a lot of people take time to simply remember loved ones that have passed as well and put flowers on graves and the like.
It also tends to be something of a marker for when summer starts (along with schools letting out). Around here we see a big increase in lake traffic from Memorial Day that usually runs all the way until Labor Day in September.
We just had Victoria day here last Monday...
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Hey folks, I'll be heading out of town to DieCon 18 from today through Monday the 11th. While I'll have my phone and Kindle with me, I don't anticipate having much time to catch up on posts so please bot Marigold as necessary!
Enjoy Lil' Miss :)
We had queens birthday on Monday.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Hey guys, just a quick check-in to say that DieCon was a blast and that normal operations should resume tomorrow afternoon/evening once I've gotten home and had a chance to get settled in :)
Hey all, just a heads up, will be leaving on a family vacation next week. Will not have access during the cruise to update, so from this Sunday until next Sunday I will have no access to internet, please bot as needed to progress.
Ooh, take me with you!?
*attempts to fit herself into a suitcase*
Seriously though, have a grand time :D
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
For anyone that's interested in reading about my convention experience:
So, DieCon 18 - my second DieCon to date - went great. My brother and I hit the road around 8:30 or so Thursday morning and, even with making a couple of stops to hit up a game shop, use the bathroom, and eat, we arrived in Collinsville, IL just after 4:00 pm. We met up with friends Chris (who lives a couple hours north) and Becca (who flew in from Las Vegas and was crashing at Chris' place), got checked in to the Super 8, and then loaded up and headed into downtown St. Louis, MO to have dinner at Blueberry Hill. While there we also met up with another guy that Becca & Chris know from their time in World of Warcraft. This was the second year I've met him and he's a rather odd duck, but nice enough. After dinner we went down the street to the Snow Factory for some Thai-style ice cream. While good and also a rather novel experience, I'm not sure it was worth $8. I'd have been just as happy to go across the street to Fitz's for shakes. After all this the hour was getting late so we headed back to the Super 8 to get some sleep.
Friday morning, we got up and headed to the nearby Denny's for breakfast before going over to the Gateway Convention Center to get ready to sign up for games! Normally registration and sign-ups open at noon but for some reason they started about a half-hour early. Since I'd already preregistered I was able to get my t-shirt and convention booklet and hop right into the registration line.
Event signups for DieCon are interesting in that, with the exception of Organized Play programs like PFS or DnD AL, you sign up in-person and the events tend to be something of a first-come, first-serve basis. You have a card and you write down three sessions that you really want to get in to (first choice) and then write down two alternates (second choice) and then go through the line. The people at the desk then look at your paper and go to see how many slots are still open for the events you want. They then give you stickers to place in your booklet for the events you're able to get into. One limitation they *do* impose for Saturday and Sunday events is that they only give out maybe half of the tickets for those on Friday and hold the rest in reserve for folks who can't get there to sign up until Saturday or Sunday. Luckily for me I was able to get into all of my first choices right away and for the PFS/SFS I'd signed up for, my tickets were held in reserve and waiting for me since I'd done my signing up via Warhorn.
After a quick walk over to the nearby Mexican place for a drink (no lunch since several of us had just eaten) we then filtered back over to the convention center for Session #1, which started at 2pm. My event for this was a board game called 'Mansions of Madness' - gameplay seemed somewhat similar to 'Betrayal at House on the Hill' except with a heckuva lot more Cthulhu creep factor. The rules were a little complex and took some getting used to but the game itself was quite enjoyable and it came right down to the wire on whether we, the players, would win or the GM! I enjoyed it enough that I would've shelled out money for my own copy but none of the vendors seemed to have one. Sadness :(
Each session has an hour-long break before the next session starts so those are good times to hit the restroom, grab a bite to eat, go smoke, wander around the convention hall, etc. I brought some of my own snacks and flavor packs for my bottled water (which I just kept refilling using the canteens placed around the hall) because the snack bar is crazy expensive.
Session #2 was my first foray into playing Savage Worlds. What I didn't know, because the blurb for it didn't mention this part, is that we were going to be using the 'Pirates of the Spanish Main' setting for the game. So when I sat down and ended up being the only one at the table who hadn't played before, the GM grinned at me and said, 'Okay then, you're the captain' and tossed said character sheet my direction. Pretty sure I had an 'Oh god' look on my face but hey, it's good to try new things right? And actually, it turned out pretty good! I mean yeah, we narrowly escaped being executed only to have a rival run off with our ship (after having 'repaid' me by helping to bust us free) and had no navigator and like 5 NPC crew and no money or supplies but we did manage to take a merchant ship (using our persuasive smooth-talk and the one sword we had between 6 characters) and made it to what amounted to Tortuga. The session ended right as we'd finished negotiating a deal for our cargo and making some preparations to buy supplies and start tracking down leads on where to find some cannons...but the rest will be detailed further down for I'd also signed up to play the second part of this little adventure during the middle Saturday session! I also received a copy of the Deluxe Explorer's Edition of Savage Worlds - hooray for free swag!
After a decent night's sleep, we all got up early Saturday morning and trooped back over to the convention center for moar gaming! Session #3 was a game of 'Call of Scooby Doo' using a game system called 'FAST' that was developed by brothers Larry and Woody Babb. Larry himself ran our game and the best way to describe the experience is like a standard Scooby Doo mystery (including special guest stars as playable characters) mixed with puzzle solving and some Cthulhu-style horror. I played this last year, where the scenario was called 'Wednesday Mourning' and featured Wednesday Addams as the special guest star. This year's scenario was called 'Cereal Killer' and featured Count Chocula (or his daughter, the Countess Chocula) as the special guest star. I played Velma, same as last year, while my brother and another con-friend reprised their usual roles as Scooby and Shaggy. The player of Shaggy even brings Scooby Snacks to the game each year! Much fun was had by all and we solved the mystery and defeated the crazed Sonny the Cuckoo Bird, who was the villain for this year's scenario.
Session #4 saw the continuation of Friday's Savage Worlds game and most of the same players returned, including myself. For those of us who played both sessions, we actually got to 'level up' our characters before getting started, which was nice. More pirate hijinks were had wherein our fence wound up murdered and our money stolen...along with someone's daughter? I suspect that said daughter was originally supposed to be my character's daughter but see, I hadn't paid close attention to my character sheet during the earlier session and had given my captain a female name and gender...which in the real world setting and time period the game was set in, would've been really unusual. Oops. But it did lead to some amusing comments from the rest of my crew. At any rate, we raced off to Haiti to try and rescue our money (and the girl, I guess) from the clutches of Baron Samedi and encountered storms, hostile locals, and a bloodthirsty shark along the way. Unfortunately we kinda ran out of time after the shark encounter and the GM had to narrate the rest of the adventure and conclusion but I had a surprisingly good time with the whole thing and would definitely play with this GM again at future DieCons.
Session #5 is where I finally sat down and played my first ever game of Starfinder! Starting with the very first published scenario, Claim to Salvation, which is run using 4th level pregen iconics. Most of the other players had about as much experience as I did, which was none, so it was nice to be more or less on a level playing field with everyone else. I also saw a familiar face at this table, a kid (probably 14-15ish) who was at all of my PFS tables at last year's DieCon. He seemed to have grown up a little in that this time he didn't try to go all murderhobo right off the bat and also didn't keep interrupting the GM as they were trying to talk. All of the other players, as well as the GM, were super friendly and helpful and we all had a great time playing through the scenario. While I think Pathfinder will remain my main squeeze, I definitely enjoyed Starfinder enough that I plan to make my own character for SFS play.
Sunday morning rolls around after another night of adequate sleep and this is the day where my brother and I are in all of the same events together. Session #6, our first of the day, was a PFS game playing the scenario 'Scourge of the Farheavens'. We only had four people for this and had a really weird level split with one 5th level character and everyone else being 1st level because most of said players either only had those characters to play (the 5th level shaman and the 1st level fighter) or just really wanted to play a particular character (my brother and his 1st level druid). I can't say a lot about the particulars of the scenario itself as I want to avoid spoilers but it was highly amusing and surprisingly challenging in certain parts. It was also pretty straightforward and we finished with an hour to spare so it'd probably be an easy one to run for anyone contemplating GMing PFS scenarios.
Since we got done with plenty of time to spare, my brother and I actually hit up the nearby steakhouse for lunch and had the first proper meal we'd had since Friday morning. Afterwards, we went to Session #7 which was a homebrew game of Deadlands titled 'Large Trouble, Small China' wherein we had to solve some issues with gang violence occurring in San Francisco's Chinatown. Oh, did I mention we had to fight an evil wizard and his nigh-invincible henchmen? That was a thing. I've played Deadlands before and would actually like to play it more in the future, if our home group can ever finish some of our Pathfinder campaigns.
Last but not least, our last game of the convention was Session #8, where we played another PFS scenario titled 'Beyond the Halflight Path'. This one is a 3-7 evergreen with multiple story arcs that can be played and it was my first time playing it. The beginning has plenty of social stuff happening and then the latter part was more dungeon-crawl than anything, but that's okay. Once again, we just had 4 PCs but at least this time there wasn't quite as much of a level gap. We won and survived, but man we had one or two tough fights! Our ectoplasmist spiritualist was the MVP of the scenario and I'm positive that without his assistance we would've wiped on at least one of the encounters. On the other hand...what's up with characters not having any ranks in any knowledge skills? Some classes that are skill-starved I can understand but otherwise, I mean...really? Especially when you're 5th or 6th level? I've seen this several times now with live play but I don't know that I've ever seen it in a PbP game. I try not to tell people how to play but sometimes some decisions leave me shaking my head a bit. Ah well.
Anyhoo, that's pretty much the tale of my experiences at DieCon 18! Had lots of fun, picked up a little swag, and managed to survive through all of my games. I'm totally looking forward to next year :)
Also, apologies to those of you who will see this posted across several games!
Hi, All!
Just a heads up in case my posts are a bit tardy the next 4-5 weeks. It's FIFA world cup time.
Therefore, I'll be watching lots of ([u]real[/u]) football on telly until it's over.
The World Cup only amuses me when I know people who have their favorite teams chasing the dream- who here is a Footballer Fan (of course Juraan), and which teams are you rooting for?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Like most the world over I'm a neutral, since Canada's not in the World Cup. As usual.
I did enjoy the 5-0 win of Russia over the Saudis. Russia was pretty pumped over that win, of course.
Despite being an own goal by Morocco in added time, Iran's 1-0 win was fun to watch.
France would probably be my first choice. Even though they didn't look all that good beating Australia.
Anyway, still lots of interesting group stage games to go!
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
NZ didn't make it in either. Was a medic at the All Blacks vs France rugby last night though. Pity about the early red card, without that I think the way the French were playing they would have won.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I don't know enough about soccer to keep up with it properly in a game,
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
We Europeans are crazy about this, it is comparable to the Olimpic Games I think.
My wife is working in the tournament and I will be visiting her for three weeks (I have no idea to what extend that will hamper my PbP).
I of course go for Spain, and I will attend the Spain-Morrocco and the England-Belgium games!
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I'm an anomaly in that I'm a Scotsman whose not a soccer fan - prefer rugby and American football (legacies of playing both when I was younger).
Can't escape the coverage here - so if I have to watch will likely root for the underdog in any given match (in true Scot's fashion) but honestly not that bothered on who wins (as long as its not England) :)
Mexico beating Germany was a huge upset today!
That was even more surprising than the Swiss tying Brazil.
Of course, if these events were predictable, they'd be a lot less interesting1
Lotsa fun!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
hurricane of skeleton arms
^This made me imagine something like Sharknado except with skeleton arms. Thus ensued a fit of giggling :3
Hahaha, yep, that can turn strangely funny :D
Hi, All!
I've updated the loot sheet if anyone wants to check my maths or lay claim to anything...
Woohoo - loads of money! :D
JJ would grab one of the rings of protection +2 and throw his +1 ring back into the pot.
If that +1 light mace has nobody else looking after it, then he'd be happy to grab that for the moment too, especially if there are more skeletons around.
Am good with the wand - spells on the scroll are too powerful for Maxim to ever access, so better we sell it.
With regards the art objects we'd be wise to try and sell them to Lord Aslaxin. He tried to gain Maxim as an employee during the Demonskar Ball and deals in art rare and exotic. At the very least he'd be able to tell us more of their natures/stories (at best I might be able to broker a better price :)
EDIT: Maxim will take at least one of the Potions of Cure Moderate Wounds (to replace the one he imbibed).
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
@ JJ: right!
I updated the sheet to put your Ring of Protection +1 into the current loot as a swap.
And marked the last Hags' Ring of Protection +2 as claimed by you.
The +1 Light Mace probably is best with you, as a DEX-based fighter. So, I'll put that as claimed by yourself too.
I think the two potions of Cure Serious Wounds would probably be best to go with JJ and Kikinnin.
One each, since they usually take the most lumps and bumps in combat.
That sounds good. I'll add them to my sheet.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
@ JJ: done!
@ Kikinnin: I've assigned one potion of Cure Moderate Wounds on the loot sheet to you.
Like JJ, you're quite likely to need a quick fix in the front line.
@ Maxim, Ryan, and Marigold: we have four potions of Cure Moderate Wounds.
Should we divvy them up so Maxim, Ryan, Marigold and Juraan have one each?
Healing will doubtless be needed while we're still in this complex.
On the subject of unwanted items - remember the Wand of Mage Armour that Maxim is ditching.
Re: Healing potions - That works for me, Juraan. I'll add it to MG's sheet and I'll try to look through the loot list shortly as well :)
Potion added to MG's sheet! Does anyone like Juraan or Maxim need/want JJ's old Ring of Protection +1? If not, MG might snag it.
@ Maxim & Marigold: Got it ... and ... got it!
Potion added to MG's sheet! Does anyone like Juraan or Maxim need/want JJ's old Ring of Protection +1? If not, MG might snag it.
Maxim already has a Ring of Protection +1 Lil' Miss so all good from my stand point :)
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
And level up to 9 please! ;D
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Wh...really!? Bweeeee!
This game now features my second-highest level character in PbP :D
Nice, congrats all!
Last Level February 12, 2018 :)
Level 9- Paladin
HP: +9 (+6 Ave+1, +2 Con, +1 Favored Class)
BAB: +1
Ref +1
Feat:Improved Critical(Dwarven Greataxe)
+1 Lvl 1 Spell/Day
New Mercy
Skills
Diplomacy +1
Sense Motive +1
Profession(Ratcatcher) +1
Lore(Malachite) +1
+1 Hero Point
9th. Nice. Not quite my highest PBP character. I have a PFS seeker(13th), and another at 11, and one more at 9th. But JJ is certainly getting there.
Another level in horrizon walker I think,and feat time, yummy.
I'm currently in a Mummy's Mask game where the party just hit 10th level. This game is second and then the Carrion Crown game I'm in is third since we just recently hit 8th level :)
I'm wondering a bit about feats. I'm thinking of great fortitude. The second save against nasty effects is pretty nice. Any other thoughts more more useful ones? Toughness I don't think I've grabbed yet either for that matter, but the bonus hp are not quite so essential.
I could even get another extra LoH as JJ is a bit of a damage sponge at the moment.
I certainly know the language that JJ has picked up this level! Giantish!
+9 HP (5 + 4 Con)
+1 Fort
+1 Reflex
+1 Hero Point
+6 Skill Points (Heal, Kn. Arcana x2, Kn. Planes, Perception, Sense Motive)
+2 Background Skill Points (Kn. History, Linguistics)
FCB: +1 Skill Point
Learned Language: Elven
Gained Feat: Warrior Priest (+1 to initative, +2 to CL checks when grappled or casting defensively)
Learned Spells: Shatter (2nd), Stone Shape (3rd), Spiritual Ally (4th)
Level up - sweet :)
HP: +7 (4+1+2 CON)
Saves: +1 FORT & +1 WILL
BAB: +1
CLASS FEATURES
Danger Sense (+1)
Finesse Training (Shortsword: DEX mod to damage in lieu of STR)
Sneak Attack: +2D6
ADVENTURING SKILLS (10): +1 Rank in Acrobatics; Bluff; Diplomacy; Disable Device; Escape Artist; Intimidate; Perception; Sleight of Hand; Stealth & Swim
BACKGROUND SKILLS (2): +1 Rank in Appraise & Craft (Weapons)
ADVANCEMENT FEAT: Dodge
HERO POINTS: +1
JJ - Level 9
New level : Horrizon Walker (3)
HP: +7 (6 class, 1 CON)
BAB +1
Saves +1 Fort
Class feature: Terrain dominance (abyss) - attacks count as good aligned. May use favored terrain bonus (abyss) as favored enemy bonus against natives of the abyss.
Feat: Improved great fortitude
Skills (6+1): Acrobatics; Perception; Stealth; Survival; know(geography); Linguistics (2)
Background: Know(planes); Linguistics;
Bonus language: Giantish
HP: 5 + 2(Con) = 7 + 61 = 68hp total
BAB: no change +6/+1 (Base)
Saves: +1 Ref +10 Fort/+6 Ref/+12 Will (Base)
Channel Energy: +1 die 5d6 5 channel/day (Base)
Spells: additional lvl 2 and lvl 5 spell, plus gain access to level 5 domain spell TBD on all three,
Feat: Extra Channel +2 channel/day 7 total
Skills (6 total):
Diplomacy, Fly, Kn:Religion, Sense Motive
Appraise, Craft(Jewelry)
Huzzah for Level 9!
I'll take care of the levelling up stuff before the day is out.
Avatar and Profile Updated!
I decided to dip into Eldritch Knight; just because.
The only down side will be the lower spells per level for being a crossblooded sorcerer.
The Cunning Plan will be to get 2 more levels as a sorcerer too, in order to get a 9th level bloodline power.
Changes Made for Level 9:
• Class: 1 level of Eldritch Knight (no FCB therefore)
• HP: 6+1 (new max is 51)
• Eldritch Knight bonus feat: Arcane Strike (+2)
• Level 9 Feat: Precise Shot
• Background Skills (1 each): Craft (alchemy), Know (nobles)
• Adventuring Skills (1 each): Know (dungeon), Know (planes), Perception, Spellcraft, and Use Magic Device
I also updated the race, class and gender boxes to have a posting header more in line with what most people use.
@ GM Rusteg: feel free to let me know if I made any typos or other errors.
Interesting with the PrC class dips - Maxim is looking to focus on Arcane Trickster in a level or two.
Great minds and all that :)
First time I've tried doing that with a character, actually.
It'll be interesting to see how it turns out...
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Aren't we are prestigious bunch!
Maybe....
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Independence Day has arrived this year for us USers- already bitten by bugs and entertained by bursts of fire cannons, while suppressing our dogs' present traumatic stress disorder.
Apologies to the un-USers among us for the unsightly un-American activity over here. Here's hoping things will unravel for some, and we'll begin to undo several unbelievably bad agendas currently corrupting our blood pressures and waterways...
Rant over.