Bjørn Røyrvik's page

"Nightshades" was very good. I'm more familiar with Lee's long form fiction so it's good to see she mastered short stories as well.

Currently reading Life, the Universe, and Everything. I notice that I remember less of this than I did of RatEotU (and much less than the first book), so this makes it more enjoyable, at least so far.

Before the session begins the DM mentions that she leveled us to 4th ahead of when the AP intended us to do so, because the tower was a bit tough. She also said that the session would either be over quickly and we could get on to book 2 that evening, or we would spend most of the session and perhaps the next one faffing about with some potentially tricky parts.
I looked at her and said something to the effect of “you know which way it will go”. I was right.

We entered the tower and immediately got Aperture Science or VaultTec vibes from the art and infomercial stuff on the walls. The first room saw the PCs ambushed by a couple of skum, which went down without trouble. The second room looked fine but we fortunately noticed the tiny holes that dotted the walls, indicating something to look out for. Tibor, in what will be a running theme for the evening, puts his 18 Wisdom to work and cautiously steps out into the presumed Danger Zone. He quickly steps back after being pierced by several arrows. He pulls them out and licks his wounds.

The PCs determine that they can open the doors on either side without entering the confirmed Danger Zone, and do so. The first one opened on a pair of constructs that told us that the room was restricted access and we had to close the door (with us on the outside) or be eliminated. We chose the former, and tried the other door. That one opened on a couple of skum that were looting the base.
“Hold on,” we said. “We thought the skum were supposed to work for whoever is in this tower. Why are they looting it?”
At least that’s what we were about to think before the skum attacked Vår who, for reasons the rest of us cannot fathom, has a tendency to want to go first into dangerous places despite having the worst saves, AC and the fewest hit points of the group. Once combat is engaged Sylvia hits upon the brilliant idea of pulling the constructs into battle on the assumption that they can attack the skum and we can fall back while they kill each other. Of course what actually happens is that they attack us, so now we have twice as many enemies to fight. Tibor tells everyone else, especially Vår, to fall back and he will keep them busy. Needless to say Vår doesn’t even consider this option, electing instead to, over the course of several rounds, do minimal damage and take several attacks that threaten to fell her in a vain attempt to avoid provoking a couple attacks of opportunity while moving to actual safety.

Fortunately the encounter is not particularly difficult, just time-consuming. With more damage taken than would have been necessary due to poor judgement on several fronts, we confront the trapped hallway, which I correctly identify as the ‘either or’ obstacle the DM spoke of earlier, and we proceed, as I predicted, to faff about. Tibor elects to continue the trend of dumb ideas, picks up one of the dead skum (who, the PCs noticed, did not trigger the trap) and holds it in front of him in the hopes that he will register as a skum instead of a tortle. He does not.

Taking a bad idea and running with it, Tibor dashes across to the far end of the hall where the PCs had noticed a panel which they assumed would control the trap, holding the dead skum all the way. The GM was gracious and said that the corpse granted cover. Tibor still takes a few hits and is now at about half HP. On the far side he opens the panel and cannot make heads nor tails of the inner workings and decides on the Star Wars Solution, i.e. destroy any control panel you come across in hopes that that will do what you need it to do. It does not.

While Tibor meditates briefly on what exactly 18 Wisdom entails and how running into arrows unnecessarily isn’t that, the rest of the party check out the rooms off to the side. They take a couple of arrows each but manage to scout things out. One room is boring and empty, the other has corpses and body parts, which we assume come from the missing colonists. Tibor drinks a healing potion and runs back to the others, taking a few more hits. This is the point where the DM figured we would faff about, and faff about we do with lots of discussion about how to find the mechanism (no one has Disable Device, so that’s a no go), whether everyone should just run across and hope that the pain is spread evenly across the group, or wilder ideas. Then I hit upon the idea that we should just pull back and make a rough testudo from stuff around us and avoid the arrows that way. There are no convenient wooden tables or benches inside but there are trees outside. Most players think this sounds like a good idea. We’re running low on hit points anyway and want to top them up before facing whatever is up the stairs. Then a long discussion follows about how we should go about making our box. We do not have an axe, adze, nails, hammer or anything like that, just rope and a magic sword. Should we go back to the colony and get supplies? Should we send Aidu, who can fly? Should Sylvia go alone since she can travel faster without us hanging on? Should we try making a wicker weave basket and Metal Gear Solid our way across? After much talk Sylvia realizes she is a druid and can do other things than make healing potions, and so suggests she use Wood Shape which would make everything easier. Then there follows a discussion about how thick to make the box, what sort of wood to use, should we try to make wheels, etc.

All this takes well over an hour, and is exactly the sort of thing my old(ish) school self likes - creative answers to problems that aren’t just solved by a die roll. Bo-bi gets fed up with this dithering, takes charge, and nearly runs us into problems by charging us across the Danger Zone before the rest of the PCs and players say, “y’know, we’ll stick with the smart plan instead”. The Smart Plan is enacted and Sylvia casts Obscuring Mist in the hall as well, and we all make it across unscathed. We were, it turns out, triply protected as the Obscuring Mist obscured the targeting magic, the testudo box would have stopped any arrows, and boxes were not on the magical trap’s list of valid targets.

Faffing about done with, we go up to the next floor and we almost immediately get into a fight with a slightly more powerful skum, who goes down brutally fast. We look around and Tibor gets a brief surge of joy as he sees the second floor is a library and then his heart is dashed when he sees nearly all the books are rotted away. There are a few remaining and Sylvia tries to read one, amusingly titled “I prepared Explosive Runes this morning”.

The surviving books are put safely in Tibor’s pack, away from careless readers and they look around. Apart from the normal bits one would expect in a library, there is a strange bust with a spindle-shaped depression in it. We quickly suss out the purpose andput the spindle-shaped crystals they looted on the floor below in it. Some interesting scenes recorded from just before the Great Rain of Fire play out, and after a brief discussion about them we turn our attention to the big set of double doors in the middle of the tower. It appears to be a ‘holding tank’, which purports to be full of water. We are at the lower observation point, so a sign says, and not wanting to take the chance of dumping a ton of water on us, we forgo opening it. It may be empty, there may be some force field holding the water in, there may be a ton of nasties in there waiting to be released. It can wait. We then go up to the third floor.

There are two humans here, who apart from looking rather inhuman with slimy, almost transparent skin, immediately raise suspicion when they claim to be prisoners. We expected prisoners but for some reason do not find it credible that said ‘prisoners are fully armed, not guarded nor locked up, and give off weird vibes. When one of them introduces himself as Rabio Arcturus, the DM is surprised and gratified to see one of her players actually remember a name introduced earlier and what it did: kill Silas, the poor priest who became a haunt. The other ‘prisoner’ is Vår’s missing friend Arlia. No one is fooled by the claims of the two ‘prisoners’ and combat is joined when Tibor asks Rabio about his ‘friend’ Silas and gets a muddled and factually weird answer. The PCs try to do non-lethal damage while the enemies try to kill the PCs. The fight is long and difficult. Sylvia and Vår are both reduced to negatives and Bo-bi takes some damage but Tibor is mostly fine due to high AC, lots of HP and being ignored for most of the fight. The PCs prevail and we bless the Immortals (DM) who thought the fight would be too tough for a 3rd level party and let us level early.
We end the session there, so wrap-up of Book 1 and the start of Book 2 will be next time.

While I will admit that 9th level spells should be nasty, and Meteor swarm as written is a bit underwhelming overall, but the potential to deal 40d6 to a single target (much less 160d6) seems a bit over the top.

Considering how nasty other 9th levels spells can be, this isn't particularly overwhelming, at least in our experience.

It is a free action to draw an item from a bandoleer when combined with a move action. Requirement BAB +1

I do this one too

I don't think scarecrows have death effects. Fear and fascination effect, sure, but not death effects. I'm AFB so I can't remember if the scarecrows in the AP were non-standard, but considering how Paizo doesn't like SOD, I doubt it.

In PF1e, once you reach precisely 0 hp you are staggered (can only take a single standard action or move action per round, fall unconscious if you take a standard action). Below 0 hp you have a number of negative HP equal to your Constitution score, so someone with Con 12 could suffer damage to bring them to -11 hp and still live, but dying when they reach -12.

From the Monstrous Cohort list, CR3 creatures are generally around Level 7.

I am going with CR3 because Harpies and certain common trolls are CR4, and you propose to count your Monstrous as 1 CR lower.

Level 7 + 2 class levels = Level 9, so i propose Level 9 as the most RAW answer. That said, the Monstrous Cohort level list is bad. Edit: i see 4 levels for the troll, so possibly 11, but would need to know what kind of troll to determine.

This is how I handled it in my game, at least. It worked for us.

Maul should have stayed dead after TPM.

Bjørn Røyrvik wrote:

- Meteor Swarm functions as it does in 5e

I like that! Word-for-word exactly as 5e, or just the save-once-damage-once aspect?

Dealing 40d6 points of damage per sphere rather than 8d6, primarily, but also the fact you can only be affected by one sphere per casting, however fun it would be to dump 160d6 damage on someone.

Over the course of several days Tibor scours the site of the recorded illusion for more information but finds little else of note. Other than this, life for the colony seems to be going well but there is the underlying tension from the fact that we still do not know what happened to the first wave of colonists.
Tibor spends his time split between farm life - farmers never lack chores - and spending a little time with Petillia to try to find clues to what happened to the missing colonists. Vår does minor chores around the colony, Sylvia makes potions and builds up a shop with Dora, and Bo-bi trains the militia.
Petillia notes that there are a couple missing pages in the log book, pages that were carefully excised to try to hide their lack. While interesting and almost certainly a lead to the mystery of the missing colonists, both assume that the missing pages were destroyed since we haven't found anything in the village and it makes sense for them to have been destroyed.

While Tibor and Petillia are going over documents, the other PCs are called down to the dock. There they spy some hunched fishmen that threaten one of the hapless villagers who was doing some fishing. Successful Knowledge checks indicate that Sylvia and Vår, as well as the rest of the women in the colony, are likely targets for 'reasons'. The battle is swift and in favor of the PCs though Vår took a few hits. Bo-bi suggests putting the heads of the skum on pole near the water's edge to warn off future attempts, and everyone agrees. Interestingly, the skum were carrying a map of the island with some landmarks hitherto unknown to the colony and some interesting writing that said 'Bring captives here'. If the skum were interested in - how to put it delicately? - getting to know the local women, they would probably not take them on land and far away from the water. This leads us to the conchat there is yet another party on the island that is powerufl enough to convince the skum to work for them and might be where our missing colonists have ended up. Ramona and the PCs decide that this is something that needs looking into sooner rather than later. The PCs decide to take a couple of days to prepare, then leave. Personally, I suspect the GM put this Very Obvious Clue to push her oblivious and passive players to going to the right place to advance the adventure.

During this time a cargo ship from Davania docks and people can buy some stuff. Ramona arranges some credit for the PCs, which they end up donating to Sylvia for 'supplies' and Sylvia can do some crafting for the group. She makes two Cloaks of Resistance +1, and promises to work on Bracers of Armor for Tibor when she has time. The PCs tell Ramona to expect them back within ten days, and to assume the worst if they are gone for more than fourteen.

The trip to the mysterious tower is interesting. They see signs of something that makes them think of a swarm of little things that tramped a nice big path through the jungle. This is what we call 'foreshadowing'.
Before reaching the tower, the PCs find a ruined glade with signs of overgrown pavement leading up to a circle of divine images. Tibor's player recognizes nearly all of the Immortals in their persona as Azcan gods, but Tibor himself does not roll well enough on the K. (religion) roll to do the same. When the two celadons animate and try to talk to the PCs we get a little nervous. Ramona had seen fit to give the party a potion of Tongues and two scrolls of Comprehend Languages. Again, I suspect divine GM intervention to make the adventure easier. Vår uses Comprehend Languages and manages to strike up a conversation with the constructs. The party quickly learns that someone else is active on the island and was here 'not long ago'. More importantly and interestingly, they learn the ruins here come from the time of the Great Rain of Fire (also known as the 'Blackmoor's Big Oopsie'). When the constructs indicate that they wish the PCs to stay here and learn, Tibor is elated though the others are less enthusiastic. They bring up things like 'we're on a mission' and 'duty to the colony', and 'I don't wanna be stuck here the rest of my life' and silly things like that. Vår manages to convince the celadons to make a compromise: the party will stay with the constructs and accept their tutelage for two days, then be on their way and come back 'soon'. The party gets an intensive and divinely augment course in the Azcan tongue, which is suspiciously similar to what another world would call 'Nahuatl'.
The party levels to 4th and Vår, again oblivious to any suggestions or foreshadowing, chooses Scorching Ray as her 2nd level spell. After all, she has Point Blank Shot.

When the party reaches the tower and see the warden jack swarm, they get that shocked Pikachu face and wonder how they could have ever predicted they'd meet a swarm.
The fact that it moves faster than Tibor is a problem, but fortunately Vår remembered she had a wand of Flaming Sphere, and the swarm was taken out with only a few hit points lost. We end the session here.

Not nearly as many as I am tempted to, because at some point it would be less a few house rules and more a rewrite of the game.

Some of the more noteworthy are
- all classes with 2+Int skill points are increased to 3+ (considering bumping them to 4+)
- Meteor Swarm functions as it does in 5e
- Protection From [alignment] does not shut down an entire school of magic
- Chains of Light is Evocation with SR, as it always should have been
- Crafting does not require a Item Creation Feat, but you cannot ignore all other requirements. Crafting without ICFs increases base DC by 10, and you cannot enhance any item you haven't created.

"Through wolf's eyes" was entertaining, to the point that next time I'm at the used bookstore I bought the it I will keep an eye out for the sequel, possibly more by the author.

Currently reading Tanith Lee's [b]Nightshades - thirteen journeys into darkness[/url]. The first story is the title - Nightshade - and is a novella with, as best as I can see, no magic or science at all. It's still a great story, one she wrote rather early in her career, I believe.

Visited my parents on Saturday and made them Chef John's red lentil soup. My mother was recovering from a fever and very phlegmy coughs that had lasted for over a week, and my Dad had a bit of a cough as well. Dad took care of Mom as best he could but, as my mother said, he was very willing to do the cooking but not terribly good at it.

She was very pleased with the soup.

I found and tried the Fazer Salmiakki from Finland.

Weirdly, I think I'm hooked. One piece is sufficient, though. The strange, salty, almost medicinal flavor resonates with my general mood.

*muttermutterfreakofnaturemuttermutter*

More seriously, I'm glad you like it.

He may have been a dick but there are few individuals I would wish cancer on, and he was not one of them.

RIP

Here

If you want the least offensive, you can go for Tyrkisk Peber [Turkish pepper]. I'm not familiar with any other products here because A) I don't like the stuff, and B) it's Danish.
I'll be nice and assume it's not as bad as the Swedish or Finnish stuff.

If you want the really nasty stuff you can get the stuff called 'salmiakk' here, if they ship to your neck of the woods.

'Salmiakk' is the common name for household ammonia, and the name is well chosen.

For those who haven't tried Nordic salt licorice, imagine ammonia in candy form, with extra salt on top. It's the most vile excuse for candy I've come across.

I've tried licorice in teas and even that's too much for me.

I love licorice.

Are you one of those freaks that likes salt licorice? Or just the sweet kind?

The only kind of licorice I like is the red stuff that tastes nothing like real licorice, or the Bassets All-sorts type of thing that sandwiches the licorice between tastier substances to the point where you can mostly ignore the licorice flavor.

Fist of the North Star: Elegy for Ken-Oh's army grunts is a series of short animations about what it's like to be one of the many nameless mooks Kenshiro kills throughout the series.
The episodes are short, and the animation is barely worth being called animation. It looks like it's just a step or two up from If the Emperor Had a TTS Device. Still, I'm amused. I suspect this is just a way to ease people into the s&~+ animation that the series will be subjected to in its upcoming new incarnation.

You would have thought that they learned after FotBS: Regenesis that no one liked the animation.

The holy grail of Eris A young lady finds herself the target of aristocratic plotting and as her life and reputation crumble from the false accusations she begs anyone to save her. And a Ghost agrees to do so. Handily crushing her rivals with the wiles of one who is an expert at courtly games the ghost allows the young lady to leave with her reputation intact and her nemesis now the target of malice.

The young lady awakens to find she is now expected to uphold her end of the bargain, and aid the ghost in her revenge against those who executed her.

A new Scarlet ready to deal out justice. Though this one is less into fisticuffs and more the a mastery of vicious social manoeuvring. Looks like fun

We gave it a shot and before the first episode was over the wife told me to turn it off and put on Berserk. It wasn't so much the lack of violence that turned her off but the, according to her, terrible dress choices and how the people all acted as though they were dumb middle schoolers.

"The Metamorphosis" was OK, though perhaps I'm too literal to get much of the deeper meanings literati and philosophers go on about. Yes, it was farcical but frankly I don't think I would have . I have a problem that I often take works of fiction at face value and like them more than I do once I find out what's really going on in the story. Charlotte Gilman's "The Yellow Wall-paper" was a perfect example of this.

Currently reading Albertus Magnus' Egyptian Secrets. Found this one kicking around in long-unused folders on my computer, downloaded ages ago and forgotten. With my recently revived interest in the occult, I started reading it. It's a scan of someone's copy and there are occasional brief notes in the margins. I hope I am reading too much into things when I interpret the notes as someone actually commenting on the efficacy of the remedies.
I have a feeling I will skim through it rather than read in detail. It seems a strange mix of the type of magical formulae we might expect ("eye of newt, toe of frog" type of thing), short stories about someone, usually Jesus, healing a similar affliction, and straight up "the power of Christ compels you to go away, [insert affliction]" type incantation. I'm sure someone might (and probably has) try to see if there are any underlying theories that determine what sort of cure is applied to an affliction

For fiction with a story, I'm reading Jane Lindskiold's Through wolf's eyes.

After City of Delights, which was fine, I started Kafka's The Metamorphosis on the bus to work today, and am nearly done with it. It's a short little thing, under 100 pages, so I can pat myself on the back that I'm making good headway on my ever increasing To Read pil. Counting in units of books rather than pages, obviously.

After a couple of days of hard work but no adventures, one of the colonists reports being attacked by a horrid creature that tried to choke her. The PCs do some snooping and find tracks that lead to the well just outside their new home. They descend and find a tunnel. Entering they encounter a few chokers. The PCs engage and some questionable choices occur. Vår forgets she is a spellcaster and moves so she can get a clear shot with her crossbow, gets charged and is quickly reduced to negatives by a choker.
Tibor decides to increase his damage by letting the chokers hit him and hope they impale themselves on his spiky hide. They do but don't care and deal a lot of damage in the process before going down. The PCs fell two and the third runs off. Fortunately we had a good amount of healing so we could heal up before heading further in. It turns out we had been fighting young chokers and the parents were nastier. Fortunately the dice were more in our favor this fight and despite taking some damage, we prevailed without too much difficulty.

Once the chokers are killed, the rest of the 'dungeon' is easily cleared. The crysmals are not obviously dangerous and seem concerned with protecting the precious crystals rather than outright murder, so Tibor convinces the others to avoid killing things merely protecting what he conceives may be their eggs. Fortunately, they agree. Possibly influenced by the fact that healing is running out and they don't want to tempt fate.
The last arm of the cave sees a couple of darkmantles attack. Tibor again allows them to attach themselves to Tibor, take damage, and this time it has the desired effect of making the creatures disengage and run off. Once their darkness effect runs out they are picked off by ranged attacks.

The PCs exit the cave through the back passage, hide it, and decide to not tell anyone about this place. They are sure that if word gets out there are valuable crystals down there, some greedy person will go down, bug the crystal creatures, and probably get themselves killed. They return to the villlage and report that they killed the monsters and everyone is safe now. They tell the whole story to Ramona and she agrees that keeping the crystals secret is a good idea.

This done the PCs hope they can get back to being good little colonizers. This lasts another day or so before Ramona asks them to do some scouting. There are other colonists scouting the area but she wants a more complete picture of the island than she has. The PCs agree and just before they head out a breathless scout comes running to inform the village that her partner is stuck in quicksand. The PCs run headlong all the way, only barely getting stuck themselves in their haste to save their acquaintance-they-totally-knew-before-he-was-introduced-for-this-adventure- segment. Bo-bi had the best plan: tie a rope to his horse and send Aidu to fly out with and drop the end on the poor guy. Milo had conveniently waited until the PCs were there before failing his checks to stay afloat, and so cannot grab the rope. Sylvia and Tibor jump into the quicksand to try to help but Sylvia has the better potions to help and Tibor waddles back onto safe ground and grabs the rope. Sylvia manages to grab hold of Milo and the rope and drag him up enough for him to get some air and grab hold of the rope. Getting him out after this is easy. When it becomes known that Milo makes fermented beverages, three of the PCs are extra glad they saved him. Tibor never acquired a taste for rotten vegetable juice, so he's only regularly glad to have saved Milo.

After escorting the two exhausted NPC scouts the PCs do some scouting of their own. They come across some ruins which are only partially covered with vegetation. Tibor gets very excited at what little is shown and runs ahead of the rest of the party to find more architecture. As they approach what appears to be a stage of some sort ringed with pillars, they activate a magical effect. An illusion of a human appears and says something in a language unknown to the PCs, though Tibor wonders if it is related to Minean. The player spend some time ribbing Vår's player for not having Comprehend Languages. When leveling up he had asked for recommendations for his 1st level spell, and had been given CL. He was just about settled on that spell when he saw Snowball and chose that instead.

At the sight of the illlusions, Tibor's excitement dies a little. He had hoped this would be tortle ruins but it appears to be human. Still, it's somewhat exciting. The PCs do not have much time to poke around before they notice a small group of monkey goblins approaching. They try to hide but are noticed. Tibor steps forth, spreads his hands and tries to sound calm and non-threatening. They attack anyway. The battle is pretty easy though Vår is again reduced to negatives. When leveling Vår's player had asked for tips on what feat to take, and Toughness was mentioned. He chose Point Blank Shot instead, and the GM had to point out that if he had chosen Toughness he would have still been standing by the end of the combat. Cue some more ribbing of Vår's player.
He gripes a bit about feeling useless at compared to the martials and we tell him to just let us have this because in a few levels' time he will be outclassing us easily. Thus mollified the PCs check out the rest of the area. Tibor makes rubbings of all the writing he can find, does some sketches of the area, and makes a bunch of notes.

They return to Ramona, and she accompanies them the next day to look at the place and translate the languages. The recording turns out to be some form of proclamation about how everything is fine and people should just get on with their lives. The scene from the Naked Gun about how there is nothing to see comes to mind, just replace the exploding building with the Great Rain of Fire.

With our first real Clue to the AP's plot in hand, we end the session.

An unexpected sequel to a guilty pleasure: the reluctant yuri harem There's no freaking way I'll be your lover! Unless... is back.

Kaya-chan isn't scary is about a young girl who can see ghosts and punch them. The ghosts are pretty nasty, similar to what we see in Mieruko-chan.

Wash it all away is a slice of life story about a girl who likes cleaning. Goodness knows why, but it's a relaxing story.

I read The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century, the third LoEG book by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill. Good, but I think the first two were better. This one was more like a Hellblazer story than the previous ones. Now I love me some Hellblazer but it didn't feel quite like the first two stories.
I'm nearly done with City of Delights, an al-Qadim supplement. I'm slowly making my way through the setting.

After this, probably the newest issue of Threshold, the Mystara fanzine. It's always good.

Good to see people appreciating Tasting History.

In a tradition from my grandmother's semi-Southernish roots, I had hoppin' john for breakfast yesterday (my wife does not understand the appeal; more for me). Dinner was shepard's pie.
Today will be something vegetable heavy, possibly Thai green curry.
Tomorrow will be mashawa, an Afghan soup with a bajillion different recipes. The one I use is the one from the Kabul restaurant in Madison.

First game of the new year slated for Sunday. The wife's group will by playing tomorrow.

RIP.

Oooh. I'm envious.

I did indeed read HHGttG, and RatEotU. The experience was, sadly, what I expected. I remember the first time I read it I was giggling and laughing non-stop. This time around I mostly just smiled a bit and gave a little puff of enjoyment on occasion. Part of it is that I remembered just about everything that was said in HHGttG, and jokes are rarely as good the second time around, much less several more times. RatEotU surprised me by how much I had forgotten of it.

Nearly done with Tanith Lee's Eva Fairdeath. Not her best but I'm enjoying it. Some times I wonder what would happen if I read books without knowing who wrote them; would I like them as much on their own merit than tied to a name I have decided I like? I'm not sure I want to answer that question.

How is Oliver's cookbook? I've been largely unimpressed by his cooking videos on Youtube.

Ditto, though I confess to being influenced by Uncle Roger.

Chef John from FoodWishes is my go-to for ideas and recipes.

Work today, then vacation until just after Christmas. Will spend at least one day just chilling with Ruins of Azcan (Azlant) planned in the evening, the rest of the time spent helping my mother with cooking and cleaning for the big day, last minute shopping, heading to Bergen for a few days to see my sister and her kids, seeing the wife's family, etc.

It's not just the personality, it's the visual design.

Gloval
Nemo

"False Value" was another entry in the series. With the first BBEG taken care of they need a new direction, and this one had a whiff of the Laundry Files, for better and worse.

Maybe I'll reread HHGTTG for my next book. Or one of the two remaining Lee books I got this year before the Christmas haul arrives. I can thank one of the members here, I'm too lazy to go back in the thread and find out exactly who, for introducing me to Thriftbooks. It has an extensive collection of Lee, which means my wife has an cheap(ish) and easy source of presents for me for years to come.

In addition to what I listed above I've watched Dusk Beyond the End of the World. It's fine.
We tried watching OPM season 3 but gave up after two episodes. I really do not understand companies that have a popular name and decide to shoot it in the legs by not spending enough money on it to make it even average quality.

Apart from this season's stuff I've been making my way through Nadia, The Secret of Blue Water. Bit of a kids story, a supporting character who is so close to SDF Macross' Admiral Global that I'm surprised the studio wasn't sued, and aliens and supertech. I'm a bit annoyed at the pacing, coming as it is from the pre-seasonal format, but it's good enough that I'm going to finish it.

In BECMI/AD&D Hollow World we had a pacifist cleric at one point. He healed people and helped out with non-combat things, but did nothing to directly hurt or aid in hurting opponents, and always tried to find a diplomatic solution. The character was fine, just a bad fit when everyone else was pretty much a stereotypical borderline insane murderhobo.

In d20 games we've definitely had some characters that do not directly deal damage but are great at helping others either deal or avoid damage.

"Crier's War" was OK. Magic robot uprising, robots make slaves of humans, human girl meets robot girl and sparks fly.
It's obviously the first book in a series but I doubt I'll pick up the rest. Unfairly, I keep comparing it to Tanith Lee's "Metallic Love", which is unfair because a) they really aren't the same story apart from featuring robot uprisings and love across species barrier, and b) not everyone can write like Lee.

On to Ben Aaronovich's False Value, another of the Rivers of London series. I really should have reread HHGTTG before starting this one because the references (pop-cultural references being a core of the protagonist's POV) are thick to the point where I can barely recognize some of them.

Thys yule, a collection of medieval and early modern English Christmas carols. It's been a staple of Christmas music in my family for over thirty years.

Other than googling for solutions, nothing, I'm afraid.

I liked that movie. Much better than John Wick.

"When the lights go out" was a really good urban fantasy story. Two more books by Lee in the To Read pile out of the 8 I got after the better part ten years since my last purchase of one of her books. It's been a good year in that regard.

On to Crier's War by Nina Varela. It is a very pretty hardcover edition.

The trip to the secondary landing site was mostly smooth, if slow and unpleasant. We encountered a couple of wild pigs, of which we killed one and got some fresh meat. On the coast we met a strange thing - a dead man piloted by an oversized nautilus. The fight was mostly fairly easy except that Bo-bi got grabbed by the thing and it attempted to stick its tentacles into his brain. The GM was very nice and allowed a save against the poison. The player complained about SoD poison at second level and asked me to get the GM stop putting that sort of thing in the game. I told him he was asking the wrong person because I approve of the occasional SoD effect in a game, at every level.

We meet up with the rest of the second wave and almost immediately get embroiled in what appears to be brewing trouble. Several of the colonists are arguing vociferously for returning to Davania because they don't feel safe here. Ramona, the leader of the trip, again turns to the PCs to help smooth things over in the hopes that fellow colonists will find it easier to talk the dissenters down than she has. The other PCs do well but Tibor flubs his roll. He tried to comfort Petilia (?) the scribe but she is not reassured by his observations that every new settlement faces difficulty and success is not given and they will succeed, and must just try the best they can to make things work. Vår, who is (as is expected of this player) specc'ed for Diplomacy, swoops in and fixes the issue after calming down her first target.

We then are asked to fix the issue of the super slow ship. This is easily handled by Aidu and Tibor, primarily, since they can swim. Sylvia and Vår make minor contributions to the fight and Bo-bi spends the combat trying to rid himself of his armor so he can jump in and help. The fight is over well before he is. They do however spot some more grindylows watching the ship. Ramona again asks the party to take care of this things before the ship departs. Tibor decides to swim out to meet them, assuming he can either handle them if they attack, considering how he handled two in the first session, or can flee if they prove too much to handle. The grindylow flee but he manages to track them back to what he assumes is their lair. He returns to the rest of the colonists and informs them of his findings.

Ramona wants the PCs to 'handle' the issue to prevent further attacks and show the nervous members that things are being Taken Care Of. A brief discussion follows where we try to decide whether we should wait a night, in which case the ship would return to Thincol's Jewel and we would again need to trek cross country, or we should handle things now, in which case the ship will wait for us, considering it needs a few hours to get things ready in any case. We decide on the latter and head out, chooing to rappel down the small cliff rather than risk being caught in a boat on the open water. Clearing out the cave is mostly pretty easy, with only Salttooth proving dangerous, reducing Sylvia to 0 hp and wounding Vår. Tibor was a good tank, thanks to his AC being high enough they needed a natural 20 to hit, but poor rolls meant he was not as dangerous as he should be: he had a better than 50% chance to hit on paper but hit at best 30% of the time, and half the times he did hit he rolled 1s for damage. I got the feeling Vår again did more damage with crossbows and attack roll cantrips into melee but that may just be me being grumpy.

Despite this opposition the PCs prevail and Salttooth begged for mercy in broken Minean. Tibor, the only speaker of Minean, stops attacking and informs the party. There followed a brief discussion about what to do but the final decision was put off until next session since it was well past my bedtime.

I suspect Thanksgiving will be put off until next year some time, and at least until next week considering I work late this week, depending on what my mother feels like doing. I volunteer to do most of the work but she's set on doing at least some of it herself.

"A stroke of the pen" was generally decent. Humorous but didn't make me do more than smile or vaguely chuckle but that may be more a me problem than the quality of the writing. You can tell it's early works: some polishing is needed, and I think Pratchett worked best in long form. Still worth picking up if you like Pratchett.

On to Tanith Lee's When the lights go out.

With most of the front-liners low on HP the party decides to spend the night in what they consider the most defensible part of town they have explored so far. Nothing attacks the party during the night and the next day they explore the rest of the town after some healing.

The rest of the looti-, er, exploration goes smoothly with me shaking his old school head at the amount of magic items we get right off the bat. This day Sylvia has prepared Detect Magic and has a rank in Spellcraft so we can actually identify the items we find. A few things we find strike us as odd. Well, odder than the Roanoke-ing of the colony. The colony's charter was found hidden away in the house of the governor pro tem, and a bunch of names were stricken from the list. The logs found in the council house were stuffed in a bag for later perusal. Aidu notices a strange metal spider thingy and utterly fails to catch it, and is full of sour grapes about it and does not bother to properly inform the party about it. Fortunately we heard his little attempt and managed to get some information of him.

The food storehouse is full of cockroaches and Tibor leads the retreat since no one has anything that can handle them. Outside Sylvia casts a bunch of Light spells on the PCs and their equipment, and this prevents the roaches from being too bothersome on the second attempt. The party recovers fair amount of food and packs it up. The colony full explored, we collate our findings and set out to meet up with the ship at the secondary anchorage. We take with us such things as we can carry and would find useful, primarily food. Sylvia is weirdly fixated on the blacksmith's anvil and wants to bring it along. The rest of us think that if it was undisturbed for a month or more, it will likely remain undisturbed for a few more days and no one wants to lug a freaking anvil cross country. We level up and leave the abandoned village.

During the trip the party comes across an ankheg, which resulted in a surprisingly long fight since both sides spend most of the time missing. In fact, the PC that hit most often was Vår, who ignored poor Dexterity bonus and melee penalties and hit every round. Tibor, on the other hand, missed every attack for three rounds straight and did minimum damage on the one attack he did hit with. Still, the ankheg rolled equally poorly so it wasn't a difficult fight.

We end the session there.

We watched it this weekend and enjoyed it. Visually excellent - very Gothic.

"Dragonshadow" was good. Scarier than the first book, more worldbuilding, and some very Slaaneshi demons. Looking forward to next book in the series.

Currently reading A stroke of the pen, a collection of older stories by Terry Pratchett, some of them under a pseudonym. So far I'm enjoying them. A lot of them are Christmas-related, for some reason.

True, but even so I have players who have expressed interest in trying the MT in PF1.

My one experience with MT is from 3.5 and it was a great support character. He always had spells available, even when the primary casters were running on empty. He always had something useful for any situation. He didn't offend the enemy to the same degree as the full wizard, nor did he heal or buff as well as the full clerics, but he was a jack of all trades and that was useful.
The Practised Spellcaster feat does feel like a bit of a tax but it does really help, and I allow it in PF.

Not as good as a full caster but fun and flavorful and useful.

My GM burnout has lasted longer than I expected, so Otheriel’s penultimate stage on her quest for Immortality is put on hold some more. After the better part of a year of WanG the GM of that story wanted a break and my wife has stepped up to run Ruins of Azlant for the group, adapted to Mystara. The new group has nothing to do with the old one, and no one is allowed to worship the two who have become Immortal since RoA takes place before they have ascended.

The starting island is in the Thanegioth archipelago in the Sea of Dread, not far from the infamous Isle of Dread. Thyatis, expansionist as it is, has started encroaching on the Sea of Dread from its colonies on Davania and one of the newest is a small island called Thincol’s Jewel.

Dramatis Personae

Tibor
Tortle monk from Zul (the ‘civilized’ tortles). A young, quiet farmer bit by wanderlust who signed up with a Thyatian expedition to the settlement of Thincol’s Jewel for free travel to an area he wanted to explore. He has an interest in tortle history, especially the idea that there was an ancient advanced civilization of tortles. He has an old artefact he is convinced is from this supposed civilization, and he thinks the Sea of Dread might hold more signs of this civilization. As he is from the Savage Coast he suffers from the Red Curse, mutating him and giving his shell and hide a scarlet tinge and spiky growths that need regular trimming. I made this character simply so I could play a teenage mutant ninja tortle.

April Mai, called Vår (“spring”)
Gnome unicorn sorcerer with no Spellcraft or Knowledges because the player is physically incapable of making characters who don’t max Charisma, Diplomacy and Bluff, and heard we were going to need Swim in this AP and so went out of his way to get Swim as a class skill. Bit of an airhead. A good friend of hers came on the first wave of settlers to Thincol’s Jewel and she wanted to follow, planning on selling her magical knowledge to the other settlers.

Bo-bi Nuar and Aidu
Human Cavalier. Bo-bi is from the Pearl Islands, a fairly recent Thyatian conquest and the type of person that adapts to the new regime almost entirely, ignoring many ancestral traditions. When he was young he found a water drake egg which he took home and cared for until it hatched. Aidu is a dumb, vain, cowardly lizard who at present is more trouble than he’s worth.

Sylvia
Human druid (herbalist). Came to explore new lands and plants, and offer her services as an apothecary to the colony. Fairly happy-go-lucky.

Session 1

The trip to Thincol’s Jewel was uneventful, though stories of the rough storms in the Sea of Dread and aquatic monsters were constant worries among the passengers and crew.
Tibor spent most of the time on deck out of the way of the crew, meditating and watching the waves. Bo-bi spent most of his time entertaining his warhorse and his drake, neither of whom liked being stuck on a boat for weeks, while Sylvia and Vår socialized.

Upon arriving at Thincol’s Jewel the PCs were annoyed at being called upon to investigate the apparently deserted settlement while the ship took everyone else to the back-up port. The players did not make too much of a stink about this because it was obvious where the rails of the adventure went and we wanted to get on with it. Tibor put his belongings in the ship’s boat and jumped into the water as he outmasses everyone else put together (tortles are chonky). He easily solos the grindylow who show up to attack the PCs.

On shore Aidu is attacked by the fuath and fails his Reflex save against the clingy water, but AIdu can breath water so isn’t in any danger. He screams like a scared chicken anyway. Bo-bi dispatches it easily with his sword and the PCs successfully make their required skill rolls to notice the sabotaged canoe. They make their way into the seemingly abandoned settlement. They look around and notice how everything seems to have been devoid of the inhabitants for weeks. All the fields are overgrown with weeds and one of them seems to be infested with dire moles. They first enter the smithy and handle the monkey goblins with ease, making note of things to loot recover for later use by the new colonists. They then enter the chapel. The signs of death and the smell of decay are unnerving but Bo-bi’s eyes are immediately drawn to a fancy longbow hanging on the wall and he resolves to ‘recover’ it. Tibor thinks that stealing stuff from the house of the Immortals is probably a bad idea and says so. The others say nothing but try to figure out what happened here. It seems obvious that someone was wounded or killed and then dragged from one end of the chapel to the other. I wonder how there is any sign left of the blood, considering the tropical environment and the time that has elapsed from the killing til now, but am told not to think too much about it. The PCs find the priesthole pretty quickly and the poltergeist emerges and frightens everyone away. This has the happy benefit of stopping Bo-bi from stealing the pretty longbow on the wall. Outside the gang recover their wits and wonder what they should do. Tibor says he wants to try something and goes back inside.

Inside he sits down in the middle of the room and places a piece of chalk in front of him and waits. When the poltergeist starts acting up again, Tibor masks his fear and says “O restless spirit of the unjustly slain [Tibor made some assumptions], I wish to talk. If you cannot speak, please write,” and gestures to the chalk. The poltergeist takes him up on this offer thanks to Tibor being able to use his Constitution modifier in place of his Charisma modifier once per day, and a brief conversation follows where Tibor politely asks the name of the haunt, who killed him, which Immortal’s he paid homage to, and if he will allow Tibor to bury him. The haunt, Silas, answers and Tibor moves to the corpse. Trying not to think about the smell and the liquids pouring down his arms, Tibor wraps Silas’ remains in his blanket, takes him outside and buries him with the fancy bow. Not knowing much of anything of Silas’ patron Zirchev aside from name and basic interests, Tibor prays to Zirchev and asks Him to grant His follower the peace of death currently denied. After this he performs the traditional tortle death dance since he has no idea what sort of rituals Zirchev’s clerics practice and figures something is better than nothing. Once this is done the dirt of the grave starts moving as something pushes its way out. A brief moment of panic at the thought that Silas’ body may have become undead as well as his spirit passes through the PCs, but what emerges is actually the bow. Tibor assumes this means Zirchev accepts the death rites, and he takes the bow and promises to pass the bow on to another worshipper of Zirchev. Then he goes down to the beach to wash off the rotten corpse juices all over him. The PCs then investigate a couple more places until they find some fairly fresh tracks of something heavy being rolled from one house to a farmhouse on the outskirts of ‘town’. Sylvia easily follows the trail, puzzling at the strange footprints left by the being rolling the presumed barrel. The PCs enter the house at the end of the trail and force their way through the warped entry door, causing it to creak loudly. Inside they find hints that something has been here fairly recently and Sylvia spots something hiding in a corner outside and calls to the other PCs. Tibor gets there first and is attacked by a drunk choker, who quickly chokes out the hapless tortle. The other PCs fell it quickly and Sylvia and Vår set about healing the poor reptile. During their investigation they find a plum tree, which had me wondering how they grew in a tropical environment. I was told not to worry my pretty little head about that. Near the base of the tree the PCs found a Clue - a brief missive hinting at power struggles in the little colony. We dutifully note down all names.

Once this is done Sylvia sits down to make some more potions while Vår and Bo-bi want to explore some more. Careful comments about splitting the party from the DM fall on deaf ears. Tibor elects to stay with Sylvia in case something comes upon her. Sylvia protests that such caution is unnecessary but Tibor does not pay any attention to her. Vår and Bo-bi check out the strange-looking fields. By lucky dice rolls the bloody maize does nothing to them and they handle it fairly easily. Then they go to the dire molehills and find out they were actually ankheg hills. Being a veteran of Baldur’s Gate that’s what I feared but hoped it was dire moles. The good news was they were tiny ankehgs and Vår, Aidu and Bo-bi manage to survive and run away and we end the session there.

"The Return of Robin Hood" also ties into the Shakespeare episode of nuWho. On the whole, a decent enough core story dragged down to disappointment by unnecessary ties to nuWho stuff, some dropped plot points, and the inexplicable presence of potatoes in 12/13th century England.

I then read Voices by leGuin, one of the Annals of the Western Shore. I am reading these in the wrong order but it does not seem to matter much. AS you might expect, it was good. I have the first of the series, "Gifts", sitting in the To Read pile.

Currently reading Dragonshadow by Barbara Hambly, the second Winterlands book. I really liked the first and bought the rest not long ago. Dragonshadow is good so far.

"Carson of Venus" was typical ERB: pulpy fun, though it gets a bit same-y after a while.

Currently reading The Return of Robin Hood by Paul Magrs, a 4th Doctor novel with Sarah and Harry as companions, immediately preceding "The Loch Ness Monster". It's also a sequel to the Capaldi-era Robin Hood story.