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I have to add that while English words and not phonetically pronounced, there are generally very detailed (and usually sensical) rules that dictate how a word should be pronounced. The problem is that we aren't taught the rules and instead are simply taught "No don't say it that way, instead say it like this ..." for 12 years of English classes.
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True story: Just before Monday's game, I was saying something disparaging about the French, and one of the kids (in a "Berkeley kids" way) said, "You can't say that! That's racist!"I replied, "Oh, they're nothing but a bunch of feelthy, steenking, surrender-monkeys!" just as Kwai Chang's player walked in the front door (Mr. Stereotype's dad).
"Oh, talking about the French, are we?" was all he needed to ask! :-P
I use the "That's Racist" card MAKING FUN of at Berkeley Kids.
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Wasn't French's army basically really intimidating & scary until the fateful battle then they got that reputation in English speaking countries? :P
Seriously though, I don't get French jokes. Heard they are great lovers or something(or was that Spanish, I don't know stereotypes)? Now jokes related to USA and Sweden... Though really, I'm not very patriotic person to my own country, so I don't really like joking about other nations(joking about Finland though, that different matter :D) :P Never bought into nationalism
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I don't get English pronounciation <_< I mean, how do you make lich sound like leech?
"ee" is a long "i" so they are nearly the same. In fact until know I expected leech to rhyme both with lich and witch. It might have something to do that I normally mispronounce leech as lich instead of extending the middle sound it as apparently it should be.
Seriously, how do you guys deal with that your language isn't written phonetically? xD It sounds so confusing to hear you guys explain how words are pronounced in written form
Saxon barbarians. How do you expect them to use Latin alphabet with any degree of correctness?
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But hey, at least we're not Polish~!
*rimshot, while looking straight at our Polish friends on this forum and probably reading this right nooooowwwwwwwwww~!*
(No, but seriously, Eastern Europe is awesome.)
*cough* We use phonetic spelling/pronunciation closer to actual Latin than English do. Well, aside for a few combinations that are used to denote sounds that are outside of regular Latin set anyway and one or two legacy combinations that no longer work differently than already existing sounds but no one rid of them yet ("ch" which currently is the same sound as "h" but was a different one in the past). It's your own fault that you picked wrong combinations to write down "cz" and "sz".
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Hah!
I have to say... while parkour is really cool (and it really, really is), it doesn't help the unfortunate French stereotype that, while most peoples develop martial arts useful to fight back against unwanted violence, the French develop one to run away...
*cough* Savate
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Yes! The American Swine will smell the pungent foot of French justice grinding their yeasty disgusting bread into their faces!
I don't get English pronounciation <_< I mean, how do you make lich sound like leech?
"ee" is a long "i" so they are nearly the same. In fact until know I expected leech to rhyme both with lich and witch. It might have something to do that I normally mispronounce leech as lich instead of extending the middle sound it as apparently it should be.
Aaaaaaaaaactually, at least for our (American) English, it's... not normally so, although in certain circumstances, it can be.
I really have no idea how to describe it more than that, other than to say that a long "i" usually sounds like, uh... "I" as in "I am"... ooh! or, "eye" as in "you have blue eyes" - whereas, in most constructions, "i" requires clear and obvious other vowels to create the "ee" sound as in "wee" or "hee-hee" (most usually, the letter "e").
Seriously, how do you guys deal with that your language isn't written phonetically? xD It sounds so confusing to hear you guys explain how words are pronounced in written form
Saxon barbarians. How do you expect them to use Latin alphabet with any degree of correctness?
Hah!
But hey, at least we're not Polish~!
*rimshot, while looking straight at our Polish friends on this forum and probably reading this right nooooowwwwwwwwww~!*
(No, but seriously, Eastern Europe is awesome.)
*cough* We use phonetic spelling/pronunciation closer to actual Latin than English do. Well, aside for a few combinations that are used to denote sounds that are outside of regular Latin set anyway and one or two legacy combinations that no longer work differently than already existing sounds but no one rid of them yet ("ch" which currently is the same sound as "h" but was a different one in the past). It's your own fault that you picked wrong combinations to write down "cz" and "sz".
Hah~!
Hah!
I have to say... while parkour is really cool (and it really, really is), it doesn't help the unfortunate French stereotype that, while most peoples develop martial arts useful to fight back against unwanted violence, the French develop one to run away...
*cough* Savate
HAH~!
No, but really, it's like I said: it's a stereotype, rather than a truth.
(There can be truth in stereotypes, but they are not inherently the same thing, and usually differ in a few key ways.)
That said... martial arts. XD
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What level is the party now?
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After the battle with the lich, and a particularly exhausting field trip chaperoning 116 high schoolers through Disneyland, I'm going to spend tomorrow night helping them level up to 10 and get their character sheets and items in order.
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So you'll be tied up for the week then. :-)
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So you'll be tied up for the week then. :-)
Oh, the trip's over, but I got a total of 12 hours' sleep over the last 3 nights (or 18 over 4 nights if you count Wednesday), plus walked about 15 miles yesterday.
So slightly fatigued. I do not believe I could rage. Malek I am not.
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I meant it would take a week to recover and level up. :-)
Got a busy week ahead for myself, Pea Bear is in all four performances of Cinderella, and I've been volunteered for stage assembly. :-)
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Hey, I am French, and of Polish ancestors. So I am doubly insulted, and ready to spank anyone! ^^
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Hey, I am French, and of Polish ancestors. So I am doubly insulted, and ready to spank anyone! ^^
Woo hoo!
Woah, now, everyone, just... just hold on there... this is just going too far.
>.>
... after all, that's what the drow game is for.
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Metagaming to the max... and... what?
You know how sometimes you're running a game and the players become SOOOOO obsessed with a bit of minutiae that, as a GM, you want to yell, "It doesn't MATTER!! Can we PLEASE move on?!?!?", but you don't want to be heavy-handed with your players so you just let it play out? It usually happens with my adult groups, especially my Crimson Throne game. Rarely do the kids have such unbridled focus. But last night they chose to spend over an hour of session time trying to decide how to transport the lich's experimental vials back to the Muse. It was both amazing and frustrating to watch them work with such focus on something overall so trivial. I'm going to credit it to excellent, excellent roleplaying. They figured their characters wouldn't want the vials to fall into the wrong hands, so they'd be determined to get them out of there.
On the other hand, even though the maximum Knowledge: Religion roll in the party was only a 16, so they couldn't even identify what the lich was, they spent a HUGE amount of time searching every room of the cave with Detect Magic and Detect Evil, then searched the entire mountainside looking for "other caves or hiding spots". For what, exactly?!?!? They kept saying, "Well, we don't know that there's a phylactery," and yet they continued their fruitless search for it. Finally, Templari even went so far as to carry the lich's body with her, because they KNEW he was going to come back, even though their characters didn't. Comparing this to the, "We rolled a 00 on the encounter table, so I'm NOT going to go investigate that noise" event, I think this one was far worse. I spoke to them afterwards about it.
Anyway, considering they spent over an hour dealing with loot, and another half hour searching the mountain, not a lot happened:
This in spite of her whopping what? 13 on her Knowledge: Religion roll to identify him as a lich?
It got worse and worse. Irwin, now determined to die for whatever reason (Deady McDeaddead's whim is like a terminal disease: Slow, painful, and invariably fatal), ran around the corner and spotted the meteorite. Athelya promptly declared, "I walk around the corner and cast Detect Magic on the meteorite!"
"So wait. In spite of the fact that you cannot see it, and in spite of the fact that Irwin explicitly did not say anything, you somehow sense this miraculous apparition, run around the corner, and cast Detect Magic on it?"
"Yes."
Even worse, once SHE did it, Templari followed suit with a Detect Evil, even after my implicit warning about the metagaming that was going on.
It was just THAT kind of a night.
This created NobodysHome's nightmare, as the group spent the next REAL HOUR discussing ways to get the meteorite and all the vials safely back to the Muse. (The racks were like a bachelor's spice racks: Just scrap wood with holes drilled in it to hold the vials, then nailed into the wall.) They DID learn that the meteorite radiated strong Transformation magic, and both Irwin and Templari had to make Fortitude saves when they touched it. There were bits on the floor, so Athelya took some time to cast Mending on two pieces Irwin broke apart for her so she could see whether mending fixed the crystal (it did, but the Muse later revealed it had lost most of its magical properties in the process).
The discussion was so involved it even got into whether or not Malek's mucus could be used as a temporary glue.
The one really clever thing they did was to melt down a bunch of candles Athelya was carrying into stoppers for the unstoppered vials.
There was ALSO a lot of discussion about leaving crystals around for the mining skeletons and zombies to pick up to see whether they put them anywhere special, but eventually that idea (which I actually thought was a pretty good one) was abandoned because everyone was getting really sick and tired of nothing happening, and an entirely new discussion on, "How do we get a crystal close enough for a zombie to notice, without making it obvious we threw it, and without getting attacked?"
I have to admit, THAT discussion probably would have taken the remainder of the session.
100% guaranteed to be accurate with Circle of Death and Cloudkill being dropped on low-level NPCs, and about the best I could do, considering they didn't know anything about liches, so why on Golarion would they go anywhere other than the Pathfinders' camp?
So we ended the night with the group having to discuss how they're going to approach dealing with the lich's return: The Muse suggested his phylactery was most likely somewhere on the mountain, but they'd already searched it. She suggested that more powerful liches would place their phylacteries in sealed underground chambers and then teleport themselves out once they'd regrown. So the last plan was to hide on the mountain, wait for the lich to make his inevitable journey to the Muse, then tear the mountain apart the moment the Muse killed him.
But that has flaws even I can see, so we'll see what else they come up with...
Step One: Read up on China, Dealing with air pollution, and so on.
Step Two: Imitate the Chinese.
Step Three: ???
Step Four: Profit!
... certainly nothing could ever go wrong... ;p
EDIT: For linkage!
I honestly don't remember this whole lich thing. Is it written up as an encounter, or just a set of side notes/quest in the book?
I honestly don't remember this whole lich thing. Is it written up as an encounter, or just a set of side notes/quest in the book?
EDIT: Though now that I've sent some PMs, he could declare my correctness or inaccuracy here on the forum as just a sliiiiight bit of more taunting for his players.
Why are you kids reading this anyway? You stinkers! ;p
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I already told the kids that I was designing "personal" items for each of them, and the Muse's quests tied in to several of them.
Hooken's "personal" quest was the meteorite. It needed a guardian, and a lich was the ideal CR and personality. The fact that they didn't find his phylactery so I get to play "what would the lich do?" is just gravy.
Unfortunately, sounds like the Muse is just going to nuke the living carp out of him for his next incarnation, but he'll figure out to avoid her quickly enough and focus on the PCs.
EDIT: And in case you're wondering: Voren's "item" is his tail; it will grow in power as he levels. Templari's "item" is her sword. It's pretty good now, but depending on her behavior it may eventually transform into a Holy Avenger. Hooken's "item" will be his bow.
I know my plans for Malek and Kwai Chang (with a big "Thank You" to TacticsLion for that one!). Athelya and Irwin are harder, but I'll figure something out...
NYAHAHAHAHAHAH~! 90%! >:D
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*walks into the thread, smoldering*
TL, I must speak with you about your No PCs post.
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I honestly don't remember this whole lich thing. Is it written up as an encounter, or just a set of side notes/quest in the book?** spoiler omitted **
** spoiler omitted **
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Try Necromancy.
Or so I've been told.
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It's pretty good now, but depending on her behavior it may eventually transform into a Holy Avenger
What can I do so that this may happen, O' gracious overlord?
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Not Fall.
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Not Fall.
So she gotta invest in DEX, now?
But what if she's got a feather fall?
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*fireballs Vlaeros*
And people wonder why GMs go homicidal. Tsk.
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Well, since I can get away with it, I'm going to play the name-n-shame game.
As I mentioned, I asked the group to level up, and they had plenty of time to do it: It was Spring break for the school, so the kids sat around all week with very little to do. (I happen to know they were in town, because I saw many of them.)
Even with a Remote Desktop Connection set up, *only* Kwai Chang's player did his level-up (unsurprising, since he's the only adult in the group). Voren's player e-mailed me and said the machine wouldn't accept the password. (Unsurprising, since it's Impus Major's machine and he's usually logged on to it when it's on. So they had instructions to CALL FIRST before trying to log on.)
So anyway, given the choice between running another session with them at 9th level because they didn't bother to level up, or forcing them to "waste" a session doing level-ups, I'm leaning strongly towards the latter, as "punishment" for failing to do one requested task during their week off.
I am a cruel, cruel GM.
Doo eet~! >:D
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It was a pretty sweet week, but still I'd probably do that too. Plus everyone needs a breather session at that level to sort things out. :-)
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Doo eet~! >:D
Well, it's funny, because just yesterday in our Skull & Shackles game one of the players had forgotten to level up, and GothBard just said, "Oh, well, you're all going to have to fight through the next few encounters at 4th level instead of 5th. If you get TPK'ed, it's not my fault..."
I thought it was an elegant solution to the whole, "We can't possibly take time out of OUR busy lives to level up! YOU just GM! WE have lives!" thing.
Oh, am I bitter much? Just because 2 of my 3 groups absolutely REFUSE to do level-ups outside of hard-to-come-by session time?
Naaaaaaah...
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That's why I level them up myself when they're asleep the last night before our session.
If they don't like my choices, they have six days to make their own.
Note: this works best if you live with them. Or you're a Cat burglar gone straight. Or Ant-Man.
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Huh. I run into this as well. Of course, seeing it's a Skype game I usually plaster people with e-mails and keep at it. But some people have gone into games without being leveled up... for two or more games. ^^;;
Perhaps for the tabletop game I'll just handle the leveling up for a game session.
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Wait, people refuse to level up? .-. I thought people just forget to
Toe-MAY-toe, toe-MAH-toe.
As a GM, I just find it frustrating that in the adults' game, I say, "OK. End of session. Please be leveled up by next session," and SIX WEEKS LATER when we next play, I get, "Oh, I didn't level up. I'm going to do it now. What?!?!? You're starting?!?!? Oh, gods! Can you repeat that? Can you stop for a while? I can't possibly take notes while I'm trying to focus on leveling up!"
Basically, one man's "convenience" destroys an entire session for everyone else in the group, and at a once-a-month session, that's a Big Deal. Yes, that one Pisses Me Off No End (TM).
The kids' game is better in that we have a pretty reliable weekly session, but still, with only 2.5 hours per session and almost all of the kids complaining that they want longer sessions or more play time, having ALL of them flake on leveling up is... vexing.
So I figure "punishing" them by taking away session time is a better solution than letting them run under-leveled.
We'll see how they react tonight.
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So far I've had only one session where someone forgot to level up, and they didn't take much time with that(or at least didn't disrupt the group while they were leveling up) .-. On the other hand, I don't mind much if someone does because its easy way for me to keep up with "What they can do now?" xD
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Lord Garaub, Round 2
Long story short, several of the kids ended up coming over early to do their level-ups, so we were able to start just before 8:00 pm. However, I did chastise them for their procrastination, and told them I'd be implementing a pre-game locked-door policy henceforth. (We live in a ludicrously safe area and only lock our doors at night or when we're out, so usually the kids can just show up and let themselves in.)
After a bit of tactics-ing, they sent Kwai Chang to get a scrying mirror and a scroll of Teleport from the Pathfinders, while Hooken and Malek erased their tracks within Saventh-Yhi, and the rest of the party stayed in the Artisan District to help the Muse. Templari helped her train her people, Voren crafted a potion of Cure Moderate Wounds, and, in perhaps my best line of the night, I said, "Well, Athelya, you don't have any skills or spells useful to the Muse, so you sit around uselessly. Congratulations! You're Irwin!"
The most disturbing part was that Deady McDeaddead found this hilarious.
Continuing her Irwinitudity, Athelya tried to scry Lord Garaub and failed. She cast a few Divinations trying to force me to reveal the precise location of the phylactery, but to me, "a useful piece of advice in reply to a question concerning a specific goal, event, or activity that is to occur within 1 week" does not equal, "I can find anything I want, any time, for 25 gold."
They learned that the phylactery was under the mountain, along with Lord Garaub's spare spellbook.
So the intrepid party set off across the plains, back to the mountain, to search for his phylactery.
My absolute favorite part of this session was watching their timing. I'd rolled a 4 on his number of days to come back. By spending an extra day in Saventh-Yhi, they arrived at the mountain on 8-Kuthon, EXACTLY THE DATE the lich came back.
So I figured he'd woken up, prepped a set of spells based on the previous combat, and gone to his cave to assess the damage. His roll of 40 on his Perception check allowed him to hear them coming.
So we ended the night when the party approached the cave, only to hear the lich's unmistakable voice call out a spell, and the entrance to the cave became engulfed in darkness...
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Of course now I have an image of Nobodyshome stepping out of the shower to a group of kids holding their character sheets and smiling hopefully.
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Of course now I have an image of Nobodyshome stepping out of the shower to a group of kids holding their character sheets and smiling hopefully.
LOL. Fortunately, I shower in the morning. But it's come close. Kids coming over while I'm in the bathroom, calling out, "Is anyone home?"
Yes, I have learned that if I'm going to use the facilities, I have to lock the FRONT door...
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Wait, people refuse to level up? .-. I thought people just forget toAs a GM, I just find it frustrating that in the adults' game, I say, "OK. End of session. Please be leveled up by next session," and SIX WEEKS LATER when we next play, I get, "Oh, I didn't level up. I'm going to do it now. What?!?!? You're starting?!?!? Oh, gods! Can you repeat that? Can you stop for a while? I can't possibly take notes while I'm trying to focus on leveling up!"
Basically, one man's "convenience" destroys an entire session for everyone else in the group, and at a once-a-month session, that's a Big Deal. Yes, that one Pisses Me Off No End (TM). [...]
Oh man, this is sooo aggravating. Happens in my game, too. Often. What leaves me dumbfunded is when people ask: So, what are my class features again? *wanders off, fuming*
Sorry for the derailment.
Ruyan.
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Oh, you're just going to get me going OFF.
The kids are at least good-natured about things; there's a reason when I took a 1-month hiatus from GMing, it was, "Except for the kids." They have a GREAT attitude in terms of, if I say, "This is my ruling on that," they just say, "OK, seems fair."
Too many adult gamers have the attitude that the GM exists for their convenience and enjoyment, and all rulings should go in their favor, all research including their own PCs' abilities is the GM's job, and all sessions and level-ups should be done at times convenient to them and them alone.
I was a wee bit less bitter before the last time one of the guys who begged me to run a game for him couldn't be bothered to level up during a 4-week break, told me to "go ahead and run" while he leveled up, took OVER TWO HOURS to level up, and the whole time was whining and snapping at the other players that the whole thing "wasn't fair" because he "couldn't pay attention" because he was busy leveling up.
Experiences like that kill off any and all sympathy you may have for such players...
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Should it worry me that there's a thread in the Advice section titled, "101 Kid-friendly encounters" while I'm running a game where (14-year-old) Impus Major as Malek says things like, "Thank you, friendly topless lady"??
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All of my kids encounters end with "can we eat them?"
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At least you have regular games and don't have to pester people to participate in the game. :(
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I think I should probably say something like "Huh, where are you getting those experiences?" then I remember stories I've heard from fellow Finnish players when they have played over online with peoples from abroad ._.;
Like umm, is there some kind of huge cultural difference between players in different countries or something? Players from over there sound so rude. At least here even new players never ask me for their class features even when they forget what they were <_<;
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Should it worry me that there's a thread in the Advice section titled, "101 Kid-friendly encounters" while I'm running a game where (14-year-old) Impus Major as Malek says things like, "Thank you, friendly topless lady"??
From what I remember from my own time as 14 year old, other 14 year olds made much more cruder statements as joke all the time :P So not really.
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I think I should probably say something like "Huh, where are you getting those experiences?" then I remember stories I've heard from fellow Finnish players when they have played over online with peoples from abroad ._.;
Like umm, is there some kind of huge cultural difference between players in different countries or something? Players from over there sound so rude. At least here even new players never ask me for their class features even when they forget what they were <_<;
Well, remember the classic posting bias: People don't post GOOD stories; they post their nightmare tales. So you're seeing the worst behavior.
Since I resurrected my GM'ing career 4 years ago I've run through over two dozen books with 17 different players, and I've had exactly *ONE* 'constant problem' player and *ONE* 'constant absentee' player. And they're married. Go figure.
But you hear complaints about them because they're the ones who cause lasting memories when something goes wrong. You don't tend to say, "Oh, that went really well. Remember in that other session when things went really well?"
Human nature, I'd guess...
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Hey, NH, do you remember that one session where things went really well, and Betty "Boop" Bradley was able to be super-useful to everyone, because she's basically the best? No? Because it never happened.
>:I