7:30 AM - start work as normal
9:30 AM - storm hits, boss calls a 2-hour stand-down and everyone but me goes home. I live 35 minutes away from the shop, so I just sat in my work truck in the yard
11:30 AM - storm lets up, just as everyone arrives back at the shop
11:40 AM - storm #2 hits, boss calls a 2-hour stand-down and everyone but me goes home. I live 35 minutes away from the shop, so I just sat in my work truck in the yard
1:40 PM - storm #2 lets up, just as everyone arrives back at the shop
2:00 PM - storm #3 hits, everyone says "f$!* it" and goes home
Total time "at work": 6.5 hours
Total time on the clock for the day: 2 hours
At least where I work we stay punched in if we're waiting out a storm.
At least where I work we stay punched in if we're waiting out a storm.
We stay clocked in if it's something we can just wait out on site, but if there's a stand-down order (i.e. if there's heavy lightning, golf ball-sized hail, tornadoes, etc.) it's head back to the shop and clock out. It's just really annoying when you get multiple stand-downs in a row, rather than just "go home for the day."
Earlier in the season, my boss got some flak from clients for calling too many rain days just based on the forecast, and my hypothesis is that now he's over-correcting. Need to find that balance between "the news says there's a 25% chance of rain, better cancel for tomorrow" and "there's been a huge thunderstorm knocking down trees and power lines for the past four hours, but we might still be able to wait it out."
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We stay clocked in if it's something we can just wait out on site, but if there's a stand-down order (i.e. if there's heavy lightning, golf ball-sized hail, tornadoes, etc.) it's head back to the shop and clock out.
Weather like that anywhere in California outside the Sierras would result in an order of, "Get to church and pray for your soul because the apocalypse has come."
We stay clocked in if it's something we can just wait out on site, but if there's a stand-down order (i.e. if there's heavy lightning, golf ball-sized hail, tornadoes, etc.) it's head back to the shop and clock out.Weather like that anywhere in California outside the Sierras would result in an order of, "Get to church and pray for your soul because the apocalypse has come."
For you maybe, for us it's Tuesday.
Everyone imagines a swift apocalypse. Seems to me, it’s going to be a slow decline.
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For you maybe, for us it's Tuesday.]Weather like that anywhere in California outside the Sierras would result in an order of, "Get to church and pray for your soul because the apocalypse has come."
Literally.
One wonders, if the weather in California is so tranquil, why so many Californians have been moving out here...
Everyone imagines a swift apocalypse.Everyone thinks it's a great event if humanity dies out, ignoring all the other extinctions on the planet. Things will be fine, we'll be screwed.
Humans, cockroaches, rats, these will abide. Hummingbirds, butterflies, whales. Gone.
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Hmm, that's an unusual number of what I fervently hope are fingers.
Freehold could be an echidna. Science has never bothered to confirm nor deny.
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Humans, cockroaches, rats, these will abide. Hummingbirds, butterflies, whales. Gone.Everyone imagines a swift apocalypse.Everyone thinks it's a great event if humanity dies out, ignoring all the other extinctions on the planet. Things will be fine, we'll be screwed.
Also everything I've built for Alt's will survive.
For you maybe, for us it's Tuesday.]Weather like that anywhere in California outside the Sierras would result in an order of, "Get to church and pray for your soul because the apocalypse has come."
Literally.
One wonders, if the weather in California is so tranquil, why so many Californians have been moving out here...
It's called the Wild West for a reason.
It's as true today as it was then.
More specifically California "governance" is a colossal chaotic cluster f$@&.
Which also applies to Oregon and Washington and is more a symptom of the wild west mentality and not because of the liberal governments currently in charge.
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For you maybe, for us it's Tuesday.]Weather like that anywhere in California outside the Sierras would result in an order of, "Get to church and pray for your soul because the apocalypse has come."
Literally.
One wonders, if the weather in California is so tranquil, why so many Californians have been moving out here...
It's called the Wild West for a reason.
It's as true today as it was then.
More specifically California "governance" is a colossal chaotic cluster f#$+.
Which also applies to Oregon and Washington and is more a symptom of the wild west mentality and not because of the liberal governments currently in charge.
As much as everyone, especially conservative media, loves to bash California and say it's the liberal government that makes people leave, and they love to interview people willing to say that, I've never met such a person.
It's almost always money. It simply costs too much to live here.
Shiro? Money.
Lisamarlene? Money. (Unless she wants to correct me here)
Two other long-term friends who moved out of state? Money.
Brothers: Job offers in Seattle.
Long-time friends' parents: Money.
Long-time friend: Moved to be with his parents.
Mother: Money.
Father-in-law's planned move: Money.
People complain about our politics all the time. The only people I've met who've moved because of those politics have chosen emigration to other countries, not relocation to other states.
For you maybe, for us it's Tuesday.]Weather like that anywhere in California outside the Sierras would result in an order of, "Get to church and pray for your soul because the apocalypse has come."
Literally.
One wonders, if the weather in California is so tranquil, why so many Californians have been moving out here...
It's called the Wild West for a reason.
It's as true today as it was then.
More specifically California "governance" is a colossal chaotic cluster f#&@.
Which also applies to Oregon and Washington and is more a symptom of the wild west mentality and not because of the liberal governments currently in charge.
huh. Not the first time I have heard that arguement.
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We stay clocked in if it's something we can just wait out on site, but if there's a stand-down order (i.e. if there's heavy lightning, golf ball-sized hail, tornadoes, etc.) it's head back to the shop and clock out.Weather like that anywhere in California outside the Sierras would result in an order of, "Get to church and pray for your soul because the apocalypse has come."
...you have churches?
ow ow ow the scepter thing hurts ow ow ow ....
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We stay clocked in if it's something we can just wait out on site, but if there's a stand-down order (i.e. if there's heavy lightning, golf ball-sized hail, tornadoes, etc.) it's head back to the shop and clock out.Weather like that anywhere in California outside the Sierras would result in an order of, "Get to church and pray for your soul because the apocalypse has come."
...you have churches?
ow ow ow the scepter thing hurts ow ow ow ....
That one actually makes me laugh, because it's the overall impression of California as a lawless liberal hellscape that makes it so easy to bash.
By land area, we are actually massively conservative. Those of my acquaintances who have fled "liberal political persecution" simply relocated either eastwards or northwards and found places in California where they felt perfectly at home. Heck, 90 minutes either north or east of me is a conservative bastion.
We just have two hugely-populated liberal areas comprising more than half the state's entire population, so people think of California and they think of either San Francisco or L.A.
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People think of new york as one giant block of concrete city. They're surprised when the first day of hunting season is an unofficial state holiday north of albany or that you can see new york city from the park where I used to work (bear mountain/harriman) and it's chock full of bears beavers coyotes and snapping turtles.
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It's also funny how different people have different ideas of what, "Keep an eye on our house for us," means.
New neighbors are still off in Yosemite (as far as I know), but property manager has shown up and is doing work on the house.
I consider this worth a text. "Hey, the property manager is at the house doing work. Did you expect this?" I've known too many tenants who had a hate/hate relationship with their property managers to let a, "We're going to show up and work on your house while you're gone," slide unnoticed.
GothBard feels like it makes us seem overly nosy and intrusive. My response, "If they didn't want us to be nosy and intrusive, they shouldn't have asked us to keep an eye on their house."
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There are few constants in life, but I must say that literally every morning, I try to unlock the shop with the key to my mailbox, and literally every evening, I try to unlock my mailbox with the key to the gun safe.
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People think of new york as one giant block of concrete city. They're surprised when the first day of hunting season is an unofficial state holiday north of albany or that you can see new york city from the park where I used to work (bear mountain/harriman) and it's chock full of bears beavers coyotes and snapping turtles.
I've been to Bear Mountain State Park a bunch of times, though not since I was a kid. I think my cousin had a summer job there for a little while.
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I have 2 days to finish the patios that former coworker f##*ed up on his way out.
*Deep breath* Maximum effort.
Eerg. Speaking of selfishness...
...as I mentioned, we've started in on Tomb of Annihilation, which is an old-school jungle exploring/ruin crawling/archaeological digging/trapfinding AP.
Choosing initial characters was incredibly important, because we're playing in 5e, where skills are almost impossible to come by once you've created your PC. (You get feats once per 4 levels, and the only way to gain skills is to give up on any of the significantly-better feats to add skills to your character.)
So the 3 players rolled up an INT-dumped ranger for the jungle exploration (??), an archeologist wizard for the ruin crawling, and a former pirate for any water-based lunacy that occurred (lots and LOTS of river travel). The GM created a grave cleric NPC with no applicable skills to avoid stepping on any PC's toes, and I inherited her.
Yes, we had no trapfinding in an AP infamous for deadly traps.
So, archaeologist wizard got eaten by velociraptors, as they do, and we all expected the player to bring in a trapfinding rogue or another archaeologist.
Instead, because 5e is so favorable towards fighting classes, he brought in... an INT-dumped barbarian.
My cleric with her INT of 11 is now the smartest character in the party, and we have no archaeological, trapfinding, or linguistic skills.
So we explored the first ruin, couldn't figure out any of the glyphs, barely identified any of the historical context (I managed to slip Knowledge: History onto the cleric, but with an INT of 11 it's not great), and it was basically a waste of time.
GM: Well, since you have no characters who have any relevant skills, this is pretty much how every ruin is going to go. You're not going to be able to figure anything out.
Player Who Brought In The Barbarian: Oh, well. I guess we just have to wait for someone else to die and bring in a better character!
EDIT: TL;DR version: If the GM says, "One of you needs to play a knowledge-based character" and you don't want to, don't volunteer.
I have 2 days to finish the patios that former coworker f%$&ed up on his way out.
*Deep breath* Maximum effort.
Update: approximately 10 minutes after posting this I found out the post installation has been delayed until the weekend so it's onward with building walls and installing steps.
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GM: Well, since you have no characters who have any relevant skills, this is pretty much how every ruin is going to go. You're not going to be able to figure anything out.
Player Who Brought In The Barbarian: Oh, well. I guess we just have to wait for someone else to die and bring in a better character!
I mean, that seems reasonable given his last character got killed in combat.
Not GREAT, but logical from their point of view.
GM: Well, since you have no characters who have any relevant skills, this is pretty much how every ruin is going to go. You're not going to be able to figure anything out.
Player Who Brought In The Barbarian: Oh, well. I guess we just have to wait for someone else to die and bring in a better character!I mean, that seems reasonable given his last character got killed in combat.
Not GREAT, but logical from their point of view.
So, *IF* he brought in a barbarian with one of the two needed skills (archaeology or trapfinding), I wouldn't complain. Sure, he'd be crap at it, but he'd be fulfilling the role he volunteered for. But the GM said, "You need this set of skills to succeed in this AP," each player took a skill, and when he built his second character he took -no- AP-related skills. That's the jerk move. I didn't care what class he played, as long as he played someone who had the skill we needed.
Yeah, sounds like that group just isn't working together.
Well, it's shades of playing with Whingey Wizard. "Oh, these skills are going to be important? Well, then I'm going to take them all so that I can do all the roleplaying of using them! So no one else needs to worry about it, OK?"
"Well, I didn't use any of those skills in the first 4 sessions and then I got killed, so I'm going to make someone who doesn't have any skills because all we're doing right now is fighting our way through the jungle."
But yeah, as a group there should have been a pre-campaign discussion: "Player #1: All of your characters will have these 2 skills. Player #2: All of your characters will have these 2 skills," so it got distributed. Instead one player took 3 of the 7 AP-critical skills, got killed, and dumped them, so overall as a group we only have 2 of the 7 skills, and we're about to be in a major fight with a powerful being who should have been an ally as a result.
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And that's it. Off work for another week and flying to visit Shiro and drive to a "Fallout 76" tour.
Are we staying at the Whitesprings Greenbriar? Of course we are!
Are we visiting the Mothman museum? Of course we are!
Are we going to that stupid giant teapot? Of course we are!
Yep. Basing a weeklong vacation on a video game. Should either be hilarious or a nightmare.
I'll let you know so you can try it in California, Drejk!
And that's it. Off work for another week and flying to visit Shiro and drive to a "Fallout 76" tour.
Are we staying at the
WhitespringsGreenbriar? Of course we are!
Are we visiting the Mothman museum? Of course we are!
Are we going to that stupid giant teapot? Of course we are!Yep. Basing a weeklong vacation on a video game. Should either be hilarious or a nightmare.
I'll let you know so you can try it in California, Drejk!
Isn't Fallout 76 set in the Appalachias.
Or you going out east?
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And that's it. Off work for another week and flying to visit Shiro and drive to a "Fallout 76" tour.
Are we staying at the
WhitespringsGreenbriar? Of course we are!
Are we visiting the Mothman museum? Of course we are!
Are we going to that stupid giant teapot? Of course we are!Yep. Basing a weeklong vacation on a video game. Should either be hilarious or a nightmare.
I'll let you know so you can try it in California, Drejk!
Isn't Fallout 76 set in the Appalachias.
Or you going out east?
West Virginia, to be precise. Even Southerners find it amusing that I say it's going to be my first time in the South, because I don't count Florida nor Texas as "Southern". "Real" Southerners respond with, "I guess that's fair."
EDIT: And before everyone screams, "West Virginia isn't the South!", we're also hitting Kentucky.
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And that's it. Off work for another week and flying to visit Shiro and drive to a "Fallout 76" tour.
Are we staying at the
WhitespringsGreenbriar? Of course we are!
Are we visiting the Mothman museum? Of course we are!
Are we going to that stupid giant teapot? Of course we are!Yep. Basing a weeklong vacation on a video game. Should either be hilarious or a nightmare.
I'll let you know so you can try it in California, Drejk!
Isn't Fallout 76 set in the Appalachias.
Or you going out east?
West Virginia, to be precise. Even Southerners find it amusing that I say it's going to be my first time in the South, because I don't count Florida nor Texas as "Southern". "Real" Southerners respond with, "I guess that's fair."
EDIT: And before everyone screams, "West Virginia isn't the South!", we're also hitting Kentucky.
I live in Wisconsin, it's all south to me.
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And that's it. Off work for another week and flying to visit Shiro and drive to a "Fallout 76" tour.
Are we staying at the
WhitespringsGreenbriar? Of course we are!
Are we visiting the Mothman museum? Of course we are!
Are we going to that stupid giant teapot? Of course we are!Yep. Basing a weeklong vacation on a video game. Should either be hilarious or a nightmare.
I'll let you know so you can try it in California, Drejk!
Isn't Fallout 76 set in the Appalachias.
Or you going out east?
West Virginia, to be precise. Even Southerners find it amusing that I say it's going to be my first time in the South, because I don't count Florida nor Texas as "Southern". "Real" Southerners respond with, "I guess that's fair."
EDIT: And before everyone screams, "West Virginia isn't the South!", we're also hitting Kentucky.
It depends on what part of Florida or Texas. Having gone to high school in a rural section of the gulf coast where we regularly saw KKK graffiti on the school corridors and Klan rallies on the courthouse lawn in the county seat, well, it seemed pretty "South" to me.
And don't even get me started on the sheer number of flagpoles you see in people's front yards with confederate flags flying once you break the orbit of the big cities here in Texas.
And that's it. Off work for another week and flying to visit Shiro and drive to a "Fallout 76" tour.
Are we staying at the
WhitespringsGreenbriar? Of course we are!
Are we visiting the Mothman museum? Of course we are!
Are we going to that stupid giant teapot? Of course we are!Yep. Basing a weeklong vacation on a video game. Should either be hilarious or a nightmare.
I'll let you know so you can try it in California, Drejk!
Isn't Fallout 76 set in the Appalachias.
Or you going out east?
West Virginia, to be precise. Even Southerners find it amusing that I say it's going to be my first time in the South, because I don't count Florida nor Texas as "Southern". "Real" Southerners respond with, "I guess that's fair."
EDIT: And before everyone screams, "West Virginia isn't the South!", we're also hitting Kentucky.
It depends on what part of Florida or Texas. Having gone to high school in a rural section of the gulf coast where we regularly saw KKK graffiti on the school corridors and Klan rallies on the courthouse lawn in the county seat, well, it seemed pretty "South" to me.
And don't even get me started on the sheer number of flagpoles you see in people's front yards with confederate flags flying once you break the orbit of the big cities here in Texas.
Yeah, Dallas, Houston, and Tampa. Not exactly rural areas.
West Virginia, to be precise. Even Southerners find it amusing that I say it's going to be my first time in the South, because I don't count Florida nor Texas as "Southern". "Real" Southerners respond with, "I guess that's fair."
EDIT: And before everyone screams, "West Virginia isn't the South!", we're also hitting Kentucky.
I've heard some people refer to the northern end of Appalachia (encompassing all of West Virginia, western Pennsylvania, New York's Southern Tier region, eastern and south-central Ohio, and eastern Kentucky) as the "Greater Pennsyltucky Region." From personal experience, I'd say the name fits pretty well.
Dallas, Houston, and Tampa. Not exactly rural areas.
The 9th, 4th, and 49th largest cities in the nation, as a matter of fact.
Freehold, you have a message.
And that's it. Off work for another week and flying to visit Shiro and drive to a "Fallout 76" tour.
Are we staying at the
WhitespringsGreenbriar? Of course we are!
Are we visiting the Mothman museum? Of course we are!
Are we going to that stupid giant teapot? Of course we are!Yep. Basing a weeklong vacation on a video game. Should either be hilarious or a nightmare.
I'll let you know so you can try it in California, Drejk!
Isn't Fallout 76 set in the Appalachias.
Or you going out east?
West Virginia, to be precise. Even Southerners find it amusing that I say it's going to be my first time in the South, because I don't count Florida nor Texas as "Southern". "Real" Southerners respond with, "I guess that's fair."
EDIT: And before everyone screams, "West Virginia isn't the South!", we're also hitting Kentucky.
It depends on what part of Florida or Texas. Having gone to high school in a rural section of the gulf coast where we regularly saw KKK graffiti on the school corridors and Klan rallies on the courthouse lawn in the county seat, well, it seemed pretty "South" to me.
And don't even get me started on the sheer number of flagpoles you see in people's front yards with confederate flags flying once you break the orbit of the big cities here in Texas.
Dealt with that in PA all the time in the early 90s.
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I've heard some people refer to the northern end of Appalachia (encompassing all of West Virginia, western Pennsylvania, New York's Southern Tier region, eastern and south-central Ohio, and eastern Kentucky) as the "Greater Pennsyltucky Region." From personal experience, I'd say the name fits pretty well.West Virginia, to be precise. Even Southerners find it amusing that I say it's going to be my first time in the South, because I don't count Florida nor Texas as "Southern". "Real" Southerners respond with, "I guess that's fair."
EDIT: And before everyone screams, "West Virginia isn't the South!", we're also hitting Kentucky.
My experiences in PA outside of race encourage this mindset.
Yeah, Dallas, Houston, and Tampa. Not exactly rural areas.And that's it. Off work for another week and flying to visit Shiro and drive to a "Fallout 76" tour.
Are we staying at the
WhitespringsGreenbriar? Of course we are!
Are we visiting the Mothman museum? Of course we are!
Are we going to that stupid giant teapot? Of course we are!Yep. Basing a weeklong vacation on a video game. Should either be hilarious or a nightmare.
I'll let you know so you can try it in California, Drejk!
Isn't Fallout 76 set in the Appalachias.
Or you going out east?
West Virginia, to be precise. Even Southerners find it amusing that I say it's going to be my first time in the South, because I don't count Florida nor Texas as "Southern". "Real" Southerners respond with, "I guess that's fair."
EDIT: And before everyone screams, "West Virginia isn't the South!", we're also hitting Kentucky.
It depends on what part of Florida or Texas. Having gone to high school in a rural section of the gulf coast where we regularly saw KKK graffiti on the school corridors and Klan rallies on the courthouse lawn in the county seat, well, it seemed pretty "South" to me.
And don't even get me started on the sheer number of flagpoles you see in people's front yards with confederate flags flying once you break the orbit of the big cities here in Texas.
Freehold, you have a message.
I do?
Freehold, you have a message.I do?
I do!
I wish I had more messages.
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I swear. It would be bad enough if every d**ned company did nothing worse than to make you install an app to use their services. But every such app:
(1) Tries to Hoover up every iota of personal information on your phone. "Can this app access your location services? Can this app access your contacts? Can this app review your complete medical records?"
(2) Is written by the lowest-paid, least-competent coders imaginable so it's slow, clunky, and crashes all the time.
So I've managed to get my parking pass and boarding passes onto my phone, but the amount of crapware I had to install to get that to work was truly astonishing. And I'm just going to have to uninstall it all after the trip.
Dallas, Houston, and Tampa. Not exactly rural areas.The 9th, 4th, and 49th largest cities in the nation, as a matter of fact.
I fundamentally couldn't believe that Houston was 4th. What about Los Angeles, New York City, and Washington, D.C.? There must be dozens bigger than Houston!
So I looked it up.
And of course David is 100% correct. New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston. Washington D.C. is way down at #21.
(Though for the record I feel these lists are inherently silly: Los Angeles incorporated all the other cities around it to become one giant behemoth, so its 2.76 million in 2023 comprised 21.4% of the population of the greater L.A. area. With a bay in the way, San Francisco didn't incorporate the other cities, so in a similar area it comprises only 10% of the population. So S.F. ranks #17 because it didn't eat its neighbors.)
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Going back to gaming for a moment before I spend the day prepping for the trip, it is a bit strange just how poorly games I play in go. You start to wonder, "Is it something I'm doing?"
'Cause we started playing fantasy RPGs again way back in 2008, and since then I've successfully run several full APs, and the games that I've run that have died off did so naturally due to a lack of interest or time conflicts; I've never lost a game to player bickering or anti-social play.
Yet this guy's antics mark the sixth campaign I'm in where we're likely to lose either the campaign (more likely) or the player (very unlikely) due to someone's unwillingness to play nice with others.
I'll admit, I think a lot of it has to do with Shiro's GM'ing style and players' expectations. He runs what I consider fantastic games because he shows no player favoritism and your actions have consequences: If you're in an area full of assassins trying to kill the party and you run off alone, you're going to get killed. He kills more PCs than any other GM I know. You have to not do dumb things, which to me makes it a more fun game. He's not an, "I love to kill PCs," GM, but he is an, "If I warn you that doing something is stupid and will get you killed, and you do it anyway, then I have no remorse about killing you," GM.
But three players have rage quit from his campaigns, and he's GM'ing this campaign where he told us the skills we needed, said nothing when people chose not to take those skills, and now the campaign is falling apart because we didn't take them. Basically, "I'm going to warn you about what you need to do, but since you didn't do it I'm not going to take you by the hand and help."
The other three campaigns were the same player rage quitting two other campaigns (we won't even socialize with her any more. She has rage issues), and the GM quitting because she wasn't enjoying running the campaign at all because of player issues.
My experiences in PA outside of race encourage this mindset.
Its Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, with Arkansas in the middle.
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Eerg. Speaking of selfishness...
...as I mentioned, we've started in on Tomb of Annihilation, which is an old-school jungle exploring/ruin crawling/archaeological digging/trapfinding AP.
Choosing initial characters was incredibly important, because we're playing in 5e, where skills are almost impossible to come by once you've created your PC. (You get feats once per 4 levels, and the only way to gain skills is to give up on any of the significantly-better feats to add skills to your character.)
So the 3 players rolled up an INT-dumped ranger for the jungle exploration (??), an archeologist wizard for the ruin crawling, and a former pirate for any water-based lunacy that occurred (lots and LOTS of river travel). The GM created a grave cleric NPC with no applicable skills to avoid stepping on any PC's toes, and I inherited her.
Yes, we had no trapfinding in an AP infamous for deadly traps.
So, archaeologist wizard got eaten by velociraptors, as they do, and we all expected the player to bring in a trapfinding rogue or another archaeologist.
Instead, because 5e is so favorable towards fighting classes, he brought in... an INT-dumped barbarian.
My cleric with her INT of 11 is now the smartest character in the party, and we have no archaeological, trapfinding, or linguistic skills.
So we explored the first ruin, couldn't figure out any of the glyphs, barely identified any of the historical context (I managed to slip Knowledge: History onto the cleric, but with an INT of 11 it's not great), and it was basically a waste of time.
GM: Well, since you have no characters who have any relevant skills, this is pretty much how every ruin is going to go. You're not going to be able to figure anything out.
Player Who Brought In The Barbarian: Oh, well. I guess we just have to wait for someone else to die and bring in a better character!EDIT: TL;DR version: If the GM says, "One of you needs to play a knowledge-based character" and you don't want...
In this scenario, I would (as a massive fail safe) create an archaeologist NPC - with high INT stat, as well as trap finding and linguistic skills - that has hired the party to protect them as they decipher ancient texts and disarm deadly traps.
...gaming stuff...In this scenario, I would (as a massive fail safe) create an archaeologist NPC - with high INT stat, as well as trap finding and linguistic skills - that has hired the party to protect them as they decipher ancient texts and disarm deadly traps.
Not only is this a fantastic idea, but it's what GothBard and I decided we're going to need to do to press this campaign forward (assuming we survive the current (unnecessary) encounter). But it's a good callback to Shiro's GM'ing style: *He* won't do it, nor will he suggest it. But if *we* come up with the idea, he'll roll with it.
...Eerg. Speaking of selfishness...
...as I mentioned, we've started in on Tomb of Annihilation, which is an old-school jungle exploring/ruin crawling/archaeological digging/trapfinding AP.
Choosing initial characters was incredibly important, because we're playing in 5e, where skills are almost impossible to come by once you've created your PC. (You get feats once per 4 levels, and the only way to gain skills is to give up on any of the significantly-better feats to add skills to your character.)
So the 3 players rolled up an INT-dumped ranger for the jungle exploration (??), an archeologist wizard for the ruin crawling, and a former pirate for any water-based lunacy that occurred (lots and LOTS of river travel). The GM created a grave cleric NPC with no applicable skills to avoid stepping on any PC's toes, and I inherited her.
Yes, we had no trapfinding in an AP infamous for deadly traps.
So, archaeologist wizard got eaten by velociraptors, as they do, and we all expected the player to bring in a trapfinding rogue or another archaeologist.
Instead, because 5e is so favorable towards fighting classes, he brought in... an INT-dumped barbarian.
My cleric with her INT of 11 is now the smartest character in the party, and we have no archaeological, trapfinding, or linguistic skills.
So we explored the first ruin, couldn't figure out any of the glyphs, barely identified any of the historical context (I managed to slip Knowledge: History onto the cleric, but with an INT of 11 it's not great), and it was basically a waste of time.
GM: Well, since you have no characters who have any relevant skills, this is pretty much how every ruin is going to go. You're not going to be able to figure anything out.
Player Who Brought In The Barbarian: Oh, well. I guess we just have to wait for someone else to die and bring in a better character!EDIT: TL;DR version: If the GM says, "One of you needs to play a knowledge-based
Personally speaking, I would just hire it out. I used to be VERY much against this mindset but I played in a game with a group that pushed in favor of it, and also the Dragons Crown Rannie idea works well.
Speaking of being old(er), back when I was in college/teaching college, the pricing scale for our public colleges was pretty straightforward: University = 3 x State School = 12 x Community College. So a community college might be $150 per semester, a state school would be $600 per semester, and a U.C. school would be $1800 per semester.
I knew prices had skyrocketed, so since I was paying $500 for community college for the kids, I was ready for a $2000 tuition at the state school. Nope. $3800. Per semester. Ouch. No wonder most kids have to take out student loans -- even our publicly-funded state schools are out of the price range of the majority of families in the state.
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It's gone past ugly. It's getting outright unaffordable.