Bjørn Røyrvik's page

I'm excited.

I follow the time-honored tradition of Hide Behind the Fighter.
Maybe shoot crossbows or slings.

Before you get lots of spells and items to you have to learn how to husband your resources and sometimes this means being pretty useless in combat, unless you want to risk your life giving someone a flanking partner. Out of combat you hope you come across situations that need your brains rather than magical brawn.

On the subject of Pegana, the 3e version of City-State of the Invincible Overlord has a number of blatant references to Dunsany's work, including a minor pantheon of the gods of Pegana (consisting of among others: Mana, Yood and Sushi (sic)), the beast of Mung, and the sword of Welleran.

I've only played with three couples in my 30+ years of gaming and never seen that sort of in-game coupling.

I really enjoy Dunsany. I hope you've read "Time and the Gods", which is the best of his works I have read.

The Tarzan stories were entertaining.

Started rereading Tanith Lee's The Birthgrave. I'm going to enjoy this one again.

I thought this season was rather weak.

Can't Stop - A fancy music video, nothing more.

Close Encounters of the Mini Kind - fine. I preferred the previous mini storyline more.

Spider Rose - OK. The one with the most potential for expanding on.

400 Boys - Fine, I guess. Again one I would have preferred a bit more meat to the story.

The Other Large Thing - Best one of the season. Very relatable.

Golgotha - OK. Kind of short. I'm not sure how they could have expanded on that particular story but it felt more like a synopsis than a proper story.

The Screaming of the Tyrannosaur - Decent, bordering on good.

How Zeke Got Religion - Entertaining. Definitely Heavy Metal vibes.

Smart Appliances, Stupid Owners - A pain to get through, frankly.

For He Can Creep - Fine, I guess.

And I thought 7-9 were the weakest of the entirety of Andor. Most of the important stuff had already been done, it was just tying in to Rogue One.

It did that well, by the way. We watched R1 after finishing Andor and the ties pretty seemlessly in and makes R1 work even better than it did on its own.

I mean that we have a couple of games where we take in turns acting as GM for the other, and since there is only two of us we can spend time doing exactly what we feel like and not have to worry about stealing the spotlight from other players, and we can be exactly as detailed as we want without triggering our social anxieties and embarrassment.

Currently reading ERB's Tarzan and the Castaways, which contains the title story and two others. It's Tarzan: some of the best pulp stories you can find, sadly racist to mar the experience.

Like Claxon, romance is not a heavy focus in our games. Most players aren't particularly interested in watching two other people spend a lot of time roleplaying the romance, taking up valuable game time. That sort of spotlight-hogging happens enough with plot-relevant issues.

When my fiancee and I play one-on-one games, OTOH...

Lesser forms of Cure Disease.

Disease is one of the big killers historically, yet you have to wait until 3rd level spells before getting something that can handle them. A suite of lower level spells to handle infections, fevers, minor parasites, etc. would be the absolute best for non-adventuring folks.

Thanks for the heads up. I'm off to watch it when I get home.

Least helpful input: I have run exactly one PFS scenario for a home game, "The Waking Rune" and I heavily upgraded the encounter with the Runelord to fit my game (along the lines of upping all DCs by 10 or more, making the RL actually scary, etc.).

My impression of it was basically the same as all other modules and adventures I have adapted for a home game - take the general idea and alter to fit your needs. Power up or down encounters as needed, add or remove treasure, add/alter/discard elements as needed.

I work best when I have something to work off of. Even if I spend many hours altering it, having a starting point makes things a lot easier for me than coming up with it wholecloth. PFS scenarios are no different in that regard than any other type of adventure.

I wish more east European SF was translated. However awesome Lem and the Strugatskys are, I'm sure there are a few more awsome ones that haven't gotten English-speaking exposure.

Currently reading Necromancer Games' 3e edition of "City-State of the Invincible Overlord", with the intention of reading more of the Wilderlands setting in the future.

My fiancee was not interested in a new Superman movie until she saw Krypto. Now she's fully on board. Hawk-Girl and Guy Gardner are a bonus.

"Winds of Fate" suffered a little from being the third book in a trilogy. Not much happened beyond downtime stuff except towards the end. Still, it was OK. On to Winds of Fury, the last book of the series. New villains, major developments.

The new season has been going for a few weeks and I have tried very little of it.

Your Forma is basically a mash-up of Asimov's Elijah Baley stories with Ghost in the Shell. The result is not as awesome as that sounds but it's good enough that I will finish the show and forget all about it after it's done.

Once upon a witch's death Generic anime teenage witch is going to die unless she makesa potion that requires her making a ton of people happy enough that they cry. Very generic but entertaining enough that I will probably finish it.

Witch Watch - yet another generic teenage witch lives with her familiar who happens to be a hot teenage boy and does slice of lifey- magic stuff. Maybe I'll finish it.

Lazarus Crazy scientist is going to kill the world with painkiller. It's by Watanabe Shinichiro - I want to like it. Sadly, it's pretty bland. Almost certainly dropped unless episode three is vastly better than the first two.

Andor is back and if I'm not convinced it's quite up to the very high bar set by season 1, it's pretty damn good so far (we've only seen four of the six episodes that have dropped).

I'm loving every minute.

I have had Hollowfaust and Relics and Rituals for years and liked them but never really got into the Scarred Lands as a whole. I am in the process of remedying that. I have to admit that Edge of Infinity didn't exactly wow me with lots of cool new ideas. Frankly, it was rather humdrum, nothing I hadn't seen before in terms of planar stuff. Maybe a few ideas for locales I coud steal but nothing that made we want to adventure there.

Anyway, I read Charlie Stross' Escape from Yokailand, originally titled Escape from Puroland, yesterday. It's a short little novella, exploring what woud happen if Hello Kitty were a Lovecraftian monster.
I felt it could have done with a bit more work but on the whole it was enjoyable.

Now reading Mercedes Lackey's Winds of Fate, second book of the Mage Winds trilogy.

For D&D and adjacent games, I like what PF1 did. It fixed some things from 3.5, failed to fix others, and introduced new issues, but on the whole I like it. My players are used to it and being comfortable with a system makes running it a lot easier. D&D-ish systems from 4e and on have failed spectacularly to interest me. From the D&DINO mechanics and royally messed up setting lore of 4e, 5e being unbrearably dull and minimalistic, or just doing most things in ways I don't like as PF2.

OSR is not of any interest because I have 2e and BECMI/RC already and can run those if I want. Older editions of the game are fun but I like the mechanical complexity of 3.x.

One of the easiest solutions is to just give more xp in the remaining encounters. Most players won't complain.

As for how to run Karzoug: I too increased him to 20th level. I didn't bother with Mythic rules per se but I did give him a quickened spell each round and a bunch of other free metamagic and extra high level spells. Most importantly, I made sure his spell list was primarily Transmutation spells; he is a master of Transmutation, after all. Many spells were from previous editions of the game, which was a nice hint that he knew forgotten or unique spells unknown to the PCs (often the players).

The Eye was honeycombed with small tunnels with peepholes so he could stay in Sand Form and rush around the Eye and snipe the PCs with spells and be almost impossible to target in return.

Some of the spells I used:

Disintegrate Flesh
(Transmutation)
Level: Sor/Wiz 9, witch 9
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Components: V, S, M
Range: long
Duration: Instantaneous
Area: 40' cube
Saving throw: Fortitude negates
Spell resistance: yes

You disintegrate all organic matter in the area. Inanimate or non-living organic matter is destroyed without a save, though magic items receive a save, as do things attended by a person, like worn clothes. Creatures that fail the saving throw take 2d6/level points of disintegration damage.
Material Components: a tuning fork of cold iron

Sand Form
(Transmutation) [polymorph]
Level: Sor/Wiz 9
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Components: V, S, M
Range: personal
Duration: 1 day/level (D)
Area: a body of sand

You create a body from sand that houses your mind similar to an astral body. The sand body has the same volume as you, but can spread out or clump together as you wish so long as the mass is contiguous. You move at your normal movement speed, and are still in full possession of your normal senses while using the sand form but your real body is paralyzed while the spell is in effect. You need not eat or drink for the duration. Your sand body suffers a -4 penalty on any roll requiring fine dexterity (e.g. disable device or playing instruments) but otherwise has your ability scores, saves, natural AC, etc. and can do anything you can. While in sand form you are immune to poison, physical ability damage or drain, precision damage and, like Dust Form, count as incorporeal and can shape your body . If exposed to heavy rain or submerged for ten rounds or more, the sand body crumbles. Otherwise the sand body has the same number of hit points. The sand body can only function within 100 miles of your original body. You can cast spells through the Sand Form, but must have the necessary components with it.
Material Components: a fistful of sand and some hair or skin from the caster.

Solidify Air
(Transmutation) [air]
Level: Sor/Wiz 9
Casting Time: 1 round
Components: V, S, M
Range: medium
Duration: 1 round/3 levels
Area: 10' cube
Saving throw: Reflex partial
Spell resistance: yes

You cause the air around the target to become as hard and unyielding as stone, trapping them inside. On a failed saving throw, the target is also incapable of speech and breath, and begins to suffocate. On a successful save the target is still immobilized but can breathe, speak and make minor movements of extremities, though not enough to permit somatic components for spellcasting. The solidified air prevents any physical or energy damage from going into or through the area, though light effects are not hindered. Creatures larger than the area of effect can be partially trapped by it, and the spell will prevent the movement and effect of many effects, such as harmful gases and clouds. Creatures can walk on the surface of the area without trouble, and it can function as a short-lived wall, floor, roof support or similar. Creatures of elemental air are not held by the spell but merely slowed for the duration on a failed save and slowed for only one round on a successful save
Material Components: a cube-shaped diamond worth 1000 gp

Spell-lash
(Transmutation)
Level: Sor/Wiz 9
Casting Time: 1 immediate action
Components: V, S
Range: personal
Duration: Instantaneous
Area: 25' radius
Saving throw: Reflex half
Spell resistance: yes

This spell completely destroys your body and deals 25d10 points of damage to all creatures and items in the area.
[I know this seems like it should be an Evocation spell, but it was originally listed as Alteration, so I kept it that way]

I'm glad I picked up the entire Mage Wind trilogy in one go since the first book was enjoyable and I want to finish the series. I might very pick up more Lackey books if the flea market I found them at last year still has them this year.

Thank you all.

There's really no reason you couldn't make blunt arrows with metal heads. It would cost more and be harder to make but there really isn't a good reason it wouldn't work.

Are you strictly limited to stuff in official books? If not you could ask your GM if you could buy/make trick arrows like Green Arrow.

Congratulations, Orthos.

On the subject of marriage, my girlfriend of twenty years has graciously allowed me to become her husband. It will be a simple affair of signing a document at the town hall followed by a small gathering of immediate family at a place near where we live.

I'd like to say I'm deliriously happy but in truth it's more like slight annoyance at all the extra hassle we have to go through to make official what we've been doing for twenty years.

Bjørn Røyrvik wrote:

Pluto was a good show but I was a bit annoyed at the utter wrongness of the bit supposedly set in Norway. Not that we don't have some landscape like that, but not in the area depicted in the show. The castle also looked far more German than anything we have here.

It was supposed to be after a massive war, nothing looks the same

To put it in American terms, it was portraying the most mountainous bits of the Rockies and claiming it's northern Illinois.

Half a normal working day in the middle of Easter vacation. Would have loved to be at the cabin with the rest of the family but no go.

Pluto was a good show but I was a bit annoyed at the utter wrongness of the bit supposedly set in Norway. Not that we don't have some landscape like that, but not in the area depicted in the show. The castle also looked far more German than anything we have here.

Deck of Many Things is a campaign ender.

I really need to write down my stock answer to this somewhere so I don't have to keep rewriting it.

DoMT is perfectly fine as it is. My players love it and similar items. One campaign saw my first PC let all noobs (1st level PCs) pick from it and most picks ended in awesome story seeds.
Soul trapped? Cool adventure to save your friend, or you are trapped in a dream world and have to find your way out. Great adventures both times.
Enmity between you and an outsider? Major plot points for later in the campaign.
Major magic weapon? Congratualtions, you have been chosen by the God of Heroes for a Great Destiny (IOW: you are going to have to show you're worthy of the weapon).
Lose 10000 xp? You are now a 0th level character: try not to bring shame on the family now that you are utterly useless and firmly in the public eye.
Betrayed by a friend, enmity with an outsider, lose all wealth, -2 to all saves? Best frick'n baskstory ever!

Seriously, with just a little creativity the DoMT is an amazing campaign enabler. Just go a little beyond the mere minimalist text given. It's powerful, sure, and with all powerful things you have to be careful when handing it out to low level characters but there it won't end campaigns unless you try to make it happen.

Just started on Mercedes Lackey's The Winds of Fate, first of the Mage Winds trilogy. I found the series at a flea market last fall along with a bunch more of her stuff and chose this series pretty much at random . I haven't read much (if any) of Lackey's previous works so I wasn't aware beforehand just how many books are set in the Valdemar setting and how many books had come before this particular trilogy. I briefly considered letting this lie on my shelf unread in hopes that the same flea market will still have the rest of Lackey books come summer and buy the preceding series but decided against that.

It turns out that the book "A conventional boy" contains not only the title story but also two previous Laundry short stories, Overtime and Down On the Farm, making ACB a mere 130 page, very short for Stross. I don't want to say he was phoning it in on this one because I still enjoyed it but it was definitely not his best work.

"Hel's Eight" was decent. I might just pick up the third book in the series.

On to Charlie Stross' A conventional boy, a Laundry story but independent of the main storyline or the New Management. This one is sort of like 40-year-old virgin meets the Laundry, starring Derek the DM, a supporting character from one of the previous books. It's short for a Stross book, 200 pages in hardcover, with a ton of D&D references. Some possible continuity errors from previous installments, since he now runs 1e AD&D rather than 0D&D (though given timeline this change makes sense).
It is also seriously meta with him running what is basically the Laundry Files RPG using D&D, with metaknowledge about future. I assume this will be explained in a sensible rather than being a cheap joke. So far I'm enjoying it quite a bit, as expected.

And because I prefer reading dead tree rather than screens where most of my RPG reading is done, I'm reading Hel's Eight by Stark Holborn, sequel to "Ten Low", alongside EoI. The world is sort of a mix between Firefly and Mad Max, or possibly Blood Meridian (based on what I've heard of that book).

Short and bitter-sweet. Quite good.

On to Edge of Infinity: the Scarred Planes, a manual of the planes for the Scarred Lands setting.

"Blue Mars" was a bit of a slog. It's been too many years since I read Red Mars and Green Mars so I had forgotten most of the characters, and just reading synopses, though it helped, wasn't enough to put me squarely back into things. I might have liked BM better if I had read the first two recently.
Without going back and rereading everything back to back to get a more complete and fair impression, an effort that does not seem worth it to me now, I recommend reading the first book (possibly the second) and just ignoring the third.

On to le Guin's The Word for World is Forest. Very obviously her Vietnam War protest book. I came across a guy who didn't like le Guin because she was 'so damn preachy'. That opinion never really made sense to me until I started reading this book. Our first POV character is almost a caricature of a baddie. The only thing saving it is the knowledge that there actually are people as bad as he, or nearly so. In short, the style of this book is more akin to Sheri Tepper than le Guin.
Not that that's a bad thing, just more in your face than I'm used to from le Guin.

It's been years since I read those books (technically, had them read to me) so I should probably give it a shot.

Against all odds, two people said they could take extra shifts on short notice. That's probably all the luck this place has used up for the next six months or so.

Horny sow hunting men.

For those unable to read Norwegian, a mini sow in heat named Strømpa ran away from her farm and terrorized human males in the area by running after and trying to mate with them. When asked if Strømpa had a particular type, the owner answered the little swine prefers fit young men.

Work today. Three people called in sick. Out of TWELVE. And things are busier than they have been for a while.

Bleh.

Concurrently with the 'proper' books I've been reading, I've also been reading the GazF series, i.e. fan produced series detailing nations on Brun in the vein of the classic Known World Gazetteer series.
Good stuff.

WOOHOO! Now I can drink heavily and not have to worry about cirrhosis.

Good job, Cal!

I can see that working.

True to form, my "will read" pile increases at a greater rate than my "have read" pile. One bookstore, not my favorite nerd one, but a 'proper' big name commercial one, had a surprising amount and variety of SF&F and manga that I wanted (and not stuff I had no interest in or already owned) when I happened to drop by to look for something, so I bought a bunch of stuff, including "The Margarets" by Sheri Tepper and the final volume of Knights of Sidonia.

"Foxglove Summer" was another good entry in the series, and I definitely will be picking up the next few books in the not too distant future.

Currently about 150 page into Kim Stanley Robinson's Blue Mars. It's been a few years since I read Red Mars and Green Mars, so I had to look up a few synopses of those books to remind myself of who was who and what had happened. So far so good. Good stories, but not so great if you don't like (fairly) hard science and a ton of politics.

Crap, I meant to post those quotes in the Quotes thread.

Slightly less grim, the 3-year old brother of the aforementioned niece:

*Nephew making loud (pretend) distressed noises in public when Lego fell out of the toy dump truck*
Dad: Use your inside voice in here, otherwise people will think you're really sad and will take Daddy away for not taking care of you.
Nephew: That's OK!
Dad: Oh, but who would cook your fishsticks?
New: Mummy can do it
Dad: Mummy's still on the plane, mate, you'd have to wait a very long time for dinner
Nephew: I am very patient

"If we die, what's the point of living?"
- My 5 year old niece.

Lean into the person being strongly opposed to disorder. Order is good, disorder is undesirable and unpleasant. One may or may not like the various laws, rules, societal expectations, norms etc. but one should follow them or at least make changes in accordance with certain guidelines. Society is bigger than the individual, though individuals can take on positions of power in the system. Being reliable, working well with others, not making a fuss or at least making a fuss within socially acceptable limits, expecting others to follow the same standards.
Even without being evil or particularly heartless you can come off as callous.
"I get that taxes here are harsh and a better system would be preferable, but the right answer isn't to stop paying taxes or starting a rebellion. Civil wars make things worse for everyone. Try to work within the system and things will be better all around. Even if the odd individual suffers a bit, that's preferable to everyone just doing their own things. We'd be in a right mess if everyone did whatever they liked without tthinking about the consequences."

Honor =/= Good. Honor is esteem in the eyes of others or rigorously following a code of behavior, regardless of what an individual or the objective ethical framework of the multiverse thinks. There are plenty of examples of codes of honor not aligning with what various other people consider Good.