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Lisamarlene, are your kids being good?Mostly! Valeros helped bake the last two dozen moon cakes for the school Autumn Moon Festival tomorrow.
(We're making twelve dozen homemade moon cakes in my classroom. I don't want to smell another moon cake again for a while.)I only saw Hermione at rehearsal this morning, but she had clearly been practicing her lines.
But Valeros threw a tantrum because he didn't like the school lunch. The cook is a very sweet elderly woman who has known him since he was a baby. I don't want him to hurt her feelings by complaining about the food.
THEN THERE WILL BE PICS
PM ME CONTACT INFO
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~shields my eyes~ No pics! PLEASE!!!
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NOT THOSE KIND OF PICS
I'M NOT A MONSTER
MY CAPS LOCK IS STUCK
Maybe you should totally pester Rick with questions - I'm sure he loves all-caps!
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Read the methodology towards the end of the article. "We asked a bunch of people who self-identified as believing that there was widespread voter fraud whether they thought voter fraud was an issue. They said, 'Yes.' We are alarmed by this."
It's a poorly-done alarmist article. I thought better of The Post.
Are you referring to this bit?
** spoiler omitted **
Because as I read it, that bit is within the context of the overall survey, which is every bit as alarming as it sounds:...** spoiler omitted **
In other words the way I read it, "We did a survey of self-identified R's, and found that an alarming number of them said they'd be totally cool with postponing. And not surprisingly, within the survey of R's polled, those with conspiracy theory beliefs are most likely to support postponement. Also those of high partisanship / low education / low age."No; it's interesting. I don't know whether they revised the article between this morning and now, or whether I just misread it the first time. My initial take was that they first selected self-identified Republicans, then screened them further based on whether or not they believed voter fraud was widespread, then hit them with the worrisome questions.
But you're right. On re-reading the methodology I don't see that. My major issue with the whole article is, "After a series of initial questions..."
Do you know how easy it is to get anyone to say anything based on creating a series of carefully-worded "initial questions?"
I'd really love to see the survey in its entirety to find out whether it's "real" or "baiting to generate headlines".
The trouble with online sources: Did it get revised, or did I misread the first time? Probably the latter...
I wouldn't at all mind seeing the precise methodology they used, 'cause yeah, it does make a difference.
Anyhow, I'm sure you have your perspective and your reasons as well, so c'est la vie!
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TS: you're still super cool!
Thanks, you're pretty rad too, wish we could meet and play a game sometime!
And oh, I didn't mean to group you into any particular political group in my massive spoiler-text. I don't know if it was, but a particular sentence I wrote could be interpreted that way. :)
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I'm at the Crestwood open house.
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While we are on the subject...
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Wow -- marketers have reached (if possible) a new low: "Clinically researched to do xxx".
In other words, "Yeah, we tried to show it did xxx, but we couldn't prove anything. But it sure sounds good!"
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...stuff...
I'm guessing... around 47%...
So it's more of "jaded beyond all belief" than "living in a rosy wonderland"...
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Sell em all for spice I say!
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The more I work on my "Eberrontech, but 60s and very American" Pathfinder setting, the more I realize I have an unbreakable mental association between Reggae, Hawaiian and Californian beach culture, and Druids.
This is not a bad thing.
I feel the need to reemphasize this lately.
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I'd position them as loonie survivalists out in the woods or vagrants, personally.
Perhaps, when Limey's '70s Britain Beigehawk setting is a thing, that's what I'll do.
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The kids found a giant dragonfly they thought was dead but was (and I'm quoting Wikipedia here) "trying to avoid the notice of males by pretending to be dead" or she could be pregnant.
Either way it elicited all sorts of screams when they tried to carefully move what they thought was dead only for it to wag it's tail at them.
This would elicit all sorts of screams for me too xD.
I remember standing outside my high school waiting for my dad to turn up talking to the Headmistress (she was making sure year 7 kids didn't run out into the road) we were quite close, I did her hair and lent her some scarfs and such. My hand was resting on a tree went I felt something tickling my hand. I looked down to see a rather large moth walking around my hand (about 3 inches from head to tail).
My calm conversation with the headmistress about To Kill a Mockingbird quickly turned into me bouncing around flailing my arms wildly and screaming. Fortunately she just laughed rather than wondering if I was having some sort of a fit xD
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My younger brother has been running a game with 8 people for twenty years now.
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I feel like after 20 years the dynamic would be amazing.
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I've never actually played with them as they've been at capacity since I returned from my rpg hiatus, and I stopped asking when my kids were old enough to play.
Of course, now I'm the only one with Starfinder (even if I have to struggle to keep both copies from falling apart (fingers crossed that the third book they send won't fall apart).
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NH, tell Shiro that the appropriate beverage pairing at BK is the FROOT LOOPS shake, not the vanilla. Get it right. Sheesh.Oh, gosh. I forgot about those things. Yeah, okay, if he wants bad, that's it.
>.<
Also: lucky charms shake. *shudder*
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How bad were those things?
They sounded strange, but I never tried one...
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As someone pointed out, I didnt explain myself well above. Anyone who wants pics from the con, pm me contact info...not doing photobucket anymore or the other one after a bad experience.
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I wasn't intending to run for 7. It was going to be 5, with 1 only every other week and 1 who sometimes can't come because of family stuff. Then the wife of one of the players (the one whose house we play at) decided she wanted to join back in. Which was fine. Then the one we all thought had dropped showed back up. Which is annoying. But I'll make it work. We've usually managed to keep a decent amount of roleplaying in the past, at least those of us who actually do any roleplaying instead of sitting there staring into space or messing with their phones, so I'm not too concerned about that. But combat has already started to run slowly, and they're only 2nd level. Plus, I need to...Game went fairly well tonight, although the player we all thought had dropped out came back. So now we have 7 PCs. Whee. This means I need to toughen the encounters up even more than I already have, which means more work for me, and more pain for the PCs.One of the things I've concluded is that GMing for more than 4 people just isn't fun. There's far less of a PC-NPC dynamic, you have to beef up the encounters, and the combats are just endless cycles of, "Oh, is it finally my turn again? Let me review the situation and all my abilities and take a few minutes to figure out what's going on before I decide what to do..."
...leading to the combats taking much longer, leading to people stopping paying attention, leading to their turns taking longer when it is their turn, leading to the combats taking much longer...The games where I have 3-4 players are fantastic. The games where I have 6-7 players are a chore. And it has nothing to do with the players, is has to do with the massive drop in roleplaying and increase in combat time that occurs when you get that many players around a table.
And it's kind of scary that I'm running FOUR games right now: 3 players, 3 players, 6 players, and 7 players. All of them run this week. I'm tired!
As someone who's GM'd for very, very large parties - I recommend against higher levels.
- First, action economy is a real thing, and it will really kill those really high levels dead.
- - First-part-two: it's ever-more abilities for you to keep track of (especially if they're magic users) which means you're really... well, it's really hard. (This is even more true in PF than in 3.5, when I ran it.)
- - First-part-three: while having multiple individuals can also be very difficult, if you have themed groups, you won't have to worry about that so much. So, for example, if you have twelve dudes, half are fighters, half are rogues, and half are barbarians (I know what I just said) you don't have to memorize twelve stat-blocks: you only need three.
- Second, make sure to have a vague idea of what your people can do.
- - Second-part-two: ignore these when you create your challenges; when the challenges are constructed just make the thing as hard as it makes sense for it to be.
- - Second-part-three: if you can't come up with a way to overcome the challenge after-the-fact by use of their abilities, discard the challenge.
- Third, you're going to want to review your baddies and their tactics - a lot. I mean a lot a lot.
- - Third-part-two: make sure you know your daggum world. Whatever it is. You may not need written or drawn maps (maybe you do, I'm not sure what your style is), but know the layout of the place. The reason? So you know where your dudes and their dudes are at all times. Prep work doesn't need to be extensive, but you need to be able to consistently and accurately visualize the area in your mind.
- - Third-part-three: unless there is a good reason for them to know the specifics, the tactics your bad guys have need to be extremely generic. You need to know them - as characters (even if only in a broad outline) - so that you can make decisions on the fly and quickly. Making decisions on the fly, quickly, is important.
- Fourth, if you're doing a published adventure, don't feel beholden to how it's written - in fact, changing it on the fly is really important.
Now, none of that really helps with your PCs being dead-weight. But it helps when you run things for groups that large.
For the dead-weight players, there are lots of possible options. Are you establishing anything in particular to help?
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How bad were those things?
They sounded strange, but I never tried one...
... bad.
I delight in Lucky Charms cereal, enjoy Fruit Loops cereal, and love vanilla milkshakes.
Blending vanilla milkshakes with either of those two things is just... awful.
You know how those cereals can be unpleasantly overwhelming when either they're too sugary, or they're stale? Or that overwhelming effect when milkshakes get a little "off" either with milk or other stuff?
Both of those milkshakes have all of the above problems at the same time. It's so overbearingly heavy and painfully sweet and disturbingly stale and blech.
There are mildly pleasant flavors associated - it's not the worst experience of my life, by any means; and, fortunately, it's not saccharine. But it's a hard experience to get through. It's just so much harshness for so little enjoyment. Like, two sips, and I was done. And then left with this huge cup. Even my kids didn't enjoy too much of it. Even now, just thinking about getting one is... not pleasant.
Some may well like it. It's just... not great.
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I wasn't intending to run for 7. It was going to be 5, with 1 only every other week and 1 who sometimes can't come because of family stuff. Then the wife of one of the players (the one whose house we play at) decided she wanted to join back in. Which was fine. Then the one we all thought had dropped showed back up. Which is annoying. But I'll make it work. We've usually managed to keep a decent amount of roleplaying in the past, at least those of us who actually do any roleplaying instead of sitting there staring into space or messing with their phones, so I'm not too concerned about that. But combat has already started to run slowly, and they're only 2nd level. Plus, I need to...Game went fairly well tonight, although the player we all thought had dropped out came back. So now we have 7 PCs. Whee. This means I need to toughen the encounters up even more than I already have, which means more work for me, and more pain for the PCs.One of the things I've concluded is that GMing for more than 4 people just isn't fun. There's far less of a PC-NPC dynamic, you have to beef up the encounters, and the combats are just endless cycles of, "Oh, is it finally my turn again? Let me review the situation and all my abilities and take a few minutes to figure out what's going on before I decide what to do..."
...leading to the combats taking much longer, leading to people stopping paying attention, leading to their turns taking longer when it is their turn, leading to the combats taking much longer...The games where I have 3-4 players are fantastic. The games where I have 6-7 players are a chore. And it has nothing to do with the players, is has to do with the massive drop in roleplaying and increase in combat time that occurs when you get that many players around a table.
And it's kind of scary that I'm running FOUR games right now: 3 players, 3 players, 6 players, and 7 players. All of them run this week. I'm tired!
LOL. Pretty much a description of my life.
"OK. I'm running a game for 4 players."
"But if YYY is there, XXX HAS to be there..."
...and soon you're playing with 7
I was using max HP monsters because we had non-optimized groups and that worked well. Once the groups hit level 11, I had to start adding the advanced template as well. Now that they're 14-15, I'm going to need to increase the number of bad guys as well.
As levels go up, so do the adjustments...
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How bad were those things?
They sounded strange, but I never tried one...... bad.
I delight in Lucky Charms cereal, enjoy Fruit Loops cereal, and love vanilla milkshakes.
Blending vanilla milkshakes with either of those two things is just... awful.
You know how those cereals can be unpleasantly overwhelming when either they're too sugary, or they're stale? Or that overwhelming effect when milkshakes get a little "off" either with milk or other stuff?
Both of those milkshakes have all of the above problems at the same time. It's so overbearingly heavy and painfully sweet and disturbingly stale and blech.
There are mildly pleasant flavors associated - it's not the worst experience of my life, by any means; and, fortunately, it's not saccharine. But it's a hard experience to get through. It's just so much harshness for so little enjoyment. Like, two sips, and I was done. And then left with this huge cup. Even my kids didn't enjoy too much of it. Even now, just thinking about getting one is... not pleasant.
Some may well like it. It's just... not great.
...which is why Shiro needs one.
It's what he gets for saying, "Hey, let's go see Troy!"| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
As someone pointed out, I didnt explain myself well above. Anyone who wants pics from the con, pm me contact info...not doing photobucket anymore or the other one after a bad experience.
They are some great pics. :-)
I didn't break everything, i swear!
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I liked Troy. Eregon on the other hand... *shudders* Good book, bad movie.
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Hey, LM!
Since Paizo has decided to misbehave, I just sent you *gasp* a real live e-mail!
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I liked Troy. Eregon on the other hand... *shudders* Good book, bad movie.
I like The Golden Compass, disney-fied as it is, and am disappointed that the second and third books will never be translated to film.
The books are so very much not Disney. ;)
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*rises from the grave* Paaaiiiiiizoooooooooooo......
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Please make a TriOmegaZabaglione alias.
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O well. I'm sure the Captain will get around to it, given time.
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You can never have the correct number of aliases.
Unless the correct number is MORE.
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Hey, LM!
Since Paizo has decided to misbehave, I just sent you *gasp* a real live e-mail!
Just answered. I'm on it!
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I liked Troy. Eregon on the other hand... *shudders* Good book, bad movie.
Troy was a fine movie if you've never read the Iliad.
Honestly, I think it bore about as much resemblance to the text that Braveheart did to, oh, history.| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
"That's okay! Here in the TOZ community we're glad to help! Everybody dance!"
Impus Major's plan to make millions?
Arm Roombas with robot arms and daggers and film the results...
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Just answered. I'm on it!Hey, LM!
Since Paizo has decided to misbehave, I just sent you *gasp* a real live e-mail!
Awesome, thanks! I was going to call in favors from the gaming parents:
"I've watched your kids every Wednesday night for 2+ years now. Time to pay the piper!| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Why NobodysHome isn't a professional chef:
Today over my lunch break I had to cut, trim, rinse, rub, arrange, and baste a dozen racks of ribs. It took around 40 minutes, but it was remarkably tiring. the notion of doing that for 4-5 hours, then spending another 4-5 hours cooking and serving it all on-demand is... daunting...
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It's started to mist, and it was already chilly with wind.
I have put on a hat.
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Why NobodysHome isn't a professional chef:
Today over my lunch break I had to cut, trim, rinse, rub, arrange, and baste a dozen racks of ribs. It took around 40 minutes, but it was remarkably tiring. the notion of doing that for 4-5 hours, then spending another 4-5 hours cooking and serving it all on-demand is... daunting...
It's not hard once you've done it for awhile.
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It's started to mist, and it was already chilly with wind.
I have put on a hat.
I buttoned the lining back into the parka yesterday. As a result, I look less like a hairy skeleton when walking about town.
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Well, it's "official".
This morning I drove by my parents' house and it remains empty, marking 4 months since the property managers took over, and 3 months of stark vacancy. I ran the numbers, and even if it rents tomorrow it will take more than an entire year just to make up for the money lost by booting my tenants and firing me.
Nice job, family?
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Impus Major, in a deadpan voice: Dad, you know you could tell me when you plan on filling the bathtub with meat.
I just loved that he treated it like such a common, everyday occurrence. I'm proud.
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It loses it's luster when you gotta help with the butchering every fall.