GM Mikkel's homebrew Pathfinder campaign in a militarized magic setting Discussion

[Cel Runil]

Nope! Still made a mess on the floor :)

[GM Mikkel]

@Cel - I’m glad my lack of cat-like reflexes makes me largely immune to such injuries. Is it feeling any better?

Happy Valentine’s Day all, if you’re into that. (I think of it as ‘Discount Chocolate Eve’ myself.)

Mikkel’s Tuesday social justice tip: relationships:

In honor of Feb 14th, here’s an incomplete list of “legitimate” ways to have a love life:

• Not being in a relationship
  
• Being in a safe, consensual relationship that works however you mutually agree
  
• Not wanting kids
  
• Having kids via whatever method(s) you choose
  
• Not being sure what you want
  
• Being attracted to whatever range of the gender spectrum you are
  

If you’re doing one or more of these, you are totally nailing it. Well done you.

To anybody whose current or future family has single mom or LGBTQ+ components, we’re not going to let legalized discrimination happen (again). And lawmakers can’t legislate away somebody’s legitimacy as a person (although we see you, attempts to do just that).

I was going to offer this (published on a major news network in 20-f*cking-17) as an example of what *not* to do. I find male/female gender roles couched in language of dominance and control instead of partnership to be horrifyingly toxic myself, and that is certainly a prime example of sexist bullsh!t. But if traditional gender roles are your jam (and mutually agreed upon with freely-given consent) hey, whatever works.

Also, baby goats in pajamas.

[Dulae Toema]

Spoiler:

What gets me about that article is not the presence of gender roles, but rather their conflation with dominance/submission. If people want to assume gender roles, good for them. But the idea that assuming the standard feminine gender role means you have to be submissive? What century is this?
The article flat out states that no matter how successful your career outside the home may be your marriage will fail unless you let your husband tell you what to do and f+%~ at his pleasure. The article instills doubt; whenever some little thing goes wrong, you ask 'is the article really right? Maybe I should just be submissive.'

...

Gah!

In other news, there was enough snow (and a bit of ice) on top of my car when I cleared it off this evening to shatter the end of my ice scraper.

...

I can has California plz?

[GM Mikkel]

Spoiler:

You tell that patriarchy, Dulae.

Kinda reminds me of the tactics used by white supremacists back in the 1960s; paint the "natural state" of black people (or women) as submissive, then insist that everything is better for everyone when they are. We see the same kind of pushback now as we did 50 years ago against promoting equal rights; protestors are "creating conflict" and "fostering negativity".

Semi-relatedly, I've been re-reading MLK's Letter from Birmingham Jail, and he articulates the need for Black Lives Matter and other pro-active social justice waaaay better than I did (53 years ago too):

"The present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured."

Come visit, it's high 70s and sunny here and we have loads of science that needs doing.

[Dulae Toema]

Btw, does anyone mind that Dulae is calling out combat directions? I feel like its what she would do, being military, but I don't want to cramp anyone's style. Of course, its not like anyone needs to listen :P.

Also, while I know that I've needed a bot more than once before, how would people feel about moving back to the 24 hour post schedule? I feel like things are moving a tad bit slowly lately.

[Alaina 'Iron Wolf' Steele]

Sorry, that might be my fault. Got my machine back together, but now the OS is borked. Trying to get that fixed now.

[GM Mikkel]

I'd be amenable to moving back to a 24-hr combat schedule, but I'll need at least a couple more days to commit to that kind of turnaround again (this week has been a whirlwind). I think I can field botting up to two PCs at once, so we'd need a quorum of 4/6 PC posts in a day to trigger a combat bot. Is that agreeable?

Out of curiosity, which OS are you using Alaina?

[Dulae Toema]

@Alaina - No worries! I didn't mean to imply stess/guilt, just how I've been feeling about the game. I've certainly had weeks at a time when my posting has been erratic (and usually with less reasons than you :p). How is the new job going btw?

@Computers!
It seems that whenever 1 thing goes wrong with a machine, it just starts a cascade.

My desktop failed to post the other day, then failed to load the OS... luckily it did start after a nap. I'll be backing up the data soon, but I'm looking to build a new one soon. (M.2 drives are sooooo sexy. It is a thing that will be happening.)

Also, hype for Zen and Ryzen? Eh? Eh??

[Cel Runil]

I'm fine with either 24 or 48 hours!

[Dulae Toema]

[silly]

I would like to issue a public apology to the M.2 drive community. It was wrong of me to objectify your data transfer rates, and I apologize if I have made any of your members uncomfortable by my desire to buy you and keep you locked in a small enclosure while you perform for me.

[/silly]

[Henrietta Coy]

I have no problem with 48/24 hours, personally!

@Dulae - Dulae can call out all the orders she wants, I mean talking IS a free action :P

[Xizoh Shadelock]

Either or is fine by me. Dulae, what is M.2?

Sidenote, I'm extremely happy for my high pain tolerance. Turns out one of my wisdom teeth had four roots compared to the normal two

[GM Mikkel]

@Xizoh: Ouch. Otherwise everything went smoothly?

[Alaina 'Iron Wolf' Steele]

Well, the saga continues. My coworker forgot to bring his install disc, but we came up with an alternate solution. Go to Microsoft, present the product key, get an ISO, burn to disc, then run repair. Simply right? Well, as luck would have it (and the luck is all bad), the only ISO available for my product key, is in Korean. Can I just get one break? Please?

[Dulae Toema]

* mouth gapes open and flaps uselessly *

lolwut

[Xizoh Shadelock]

@ Gm Mikkel-Aye. I'm basically fully functioning, but been told "No strenuous physical activity for 48-72 hours." So nothing but Pathfinder and for honor for me this weekend.

@ Alaina-When it rains it pours. I'm sorry, may your wizard skills overwhelm this foul fate.

[GM Mikkel]

@Alaina - I had no idea that is even a thing that could happen. Bad luck is kind of an understatement.

@Xizoh - speedy (and honorable?) convalescence to you. It seems I should really get you that prompt I promised.

In totally unrelated news: my mom is visiting from NY this weekend and I'm taking her to a march for immigrants in downtown L.A. tomorrow (her very first political activism).

[Dulae Toema]

I had a hankering for Mass Effect, so am playing through the first game again (slowly). Decided to see how the female Shepard voice acting was: really good, I like her voice inflections better. My go to squad is Ashley, Tali, and myself, Amalia Shepard. Shotguns all around!

[Xizoh Shadelock]

Mass Effect is an amazing series. How is Male Shepard's voice acting? Also, any interest in Andromeda?

[Dulae Toema]

Male Shepard is pretty good to, but I feel like it has less range (in particular he never seems that concerned, which is odd considering the circumstances).

I am very interested in Andromeda! Unfortunately I have no system/computer good enough to play it, so it will probs be a while before I have the chance.

[GM Mikkel]

==== GM travel advisory ====
Tomorrow I head to Louisiana to do some science. I should be able to post at least once a day while I'm there (evening central time) and I'll be heading back to L.A. on Friday.
=======================

We're back to a 48-hour non-combat autobot schedule for now, but it'd be useful to settle on a combat schedule before the next combat.

Here are the preferences thus far:
24 hr: Dulae, Mikkel
No preference: Cel, Henri, Xizoh

I should be ready to field bots on a 24-hr cycle for combat (at least while I'm on this side of the globe), but I want to hear from Alaina on this before it's decided.

[Alaina 'Iron Wolf' Steele]

For combat, just to move things along, go ahead and auto if needed.

[Dara Shadeshard]

Ditto.

[GM Mikkel]

Okay then, back to 24 hour combat bot schedule it is. (Combat rules in the last page of the combat map are updated.)

And hey wow, I missed that we passed 2k posts in gameplay. Go team.

Also, I'm looking forward to observing Dulae play Andromeda. (Getting a machine capable of playing games sounds... dangerous. But if I ever did Mass Effect would be at the top of my list.)

[GM Mikkel]

Gods I have missed Louisiana. Highly recommend visiting to anyone who hasn't been.

Healing status inquiries:
Xizoh - I'm assuming all is healing up well.
Cel - how are your injuries faring?

[Cel Runil]

Not bad, down to the phase where the muscles are starting to fire semi-normally again. That also means that the atrophy has made it so they can't always keep the elbow stable so I get these lovely bone grinding sounds accompanied with shots of pain! It's okay though, because this phase doesn't last too long before I can start strengthening again.

[Dulae Toema]

Reminds me of the first time I dislocated a shoulder. Fun physical therapy times after a few months of no moving it.

[Xizoh Shadelock]

It's all good on my end. I've got minor pain, but that's pretty much inconsequential given my pain tolerance. Otherwise, life is good and gum is chewy :D

Also I've been meaning to ask this Mikkel. Why is Tuesday social justice spotlight day and Batman day?

[GM Mikkel]

@Cel ...Good, I think? You sound optimistic, so I won't worry.

@Dulae, Hey, I remember that. You should've called Cel.

@Xizoh, Glad to hear it. You'll be back to eating crunchy things in no time. (I think I remember that's a thing you can't do for awhile.)

Batman Tuesdays started as something silly/positive to mark Dulae's otherwise sh!tty Tuesdays (when he has group meeting and often works 14-16 hours). They evolved into Supernatural Tuesdays in homage to the apt episode in which the characters are stuck in a loop of Tuesdays that never ends well. Then Nov 8th happened and I lost track of them, and social justice Tuesdays eventually replaced them.

If anyone else has a particularly noteworthy day in their week, we can make a new Batman/other day if you like. We'll keep social justice Tuesdays in honor of Dulae. (How was lab meeting btw?)

Mikkel's Tuesday social justice tip:

Here's an example of our gender culture. Some non-trivial number of people looked at this shirt (I imagine for a big company like The Children's Place, that means design team, product manager(s), sales manager(s), and whichever executive(s) approved it) and decided it was representative of some substantial subset of girls. Probably not all girls, but at least enough to sell a lot of T-shirts.

This shirt illustrates pretty much the same attitude that drives well-meaning teachers to tell a boy with a mediocre math test score, "That's okay, here's what to work on to improve," and tell a girl with a similar score, "That's okay, you have other strengths." Sometimes without us realizing it, boys get math coaching where girls get pushed in another direction.

One T-shirt and one teacher are usually not a huge deal, but over time teachers, comments, shirts, and media representation add up and erode the confidence of those affected. Eventually we see grown women who tend to say, "I can't do math." And really believe that.

We see this effect dramatically in college intro physics and calculus courses. Women tend to underestimate their performance by about a letter grade, unless they have an instructor or present role model they can identify with (i.e., another lady) [paper]. (It's worth noting that even though a substantial number of women grew discouraged enough to drop out of STEM majors, women actually tended to outperform men in these classes by a bit, and men tended to not underestimate their own performance regardless of the instructor.)

It all starts by growing up in a culture where some adults think that a T-shirt with that message represents girls well enough to make money. (To be fair, to my knowledge they did pull this shirt from stores in the end.)

We also see similar confidence erosion for other groups underrepresented in STEM where stereotype threat exists (i.e. Native American, Hispanic, black, pacific islander). And LGBT physicists face different challenges, but that's maybe another tip for another day.

[Dulae Toema]

Lab meeting was good! Only 3 hours.

ALSO: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/22/science/trappist-1-exoplanets-nasa.html?

This star system is incredible! Its a dwarf star, much dimmer/cooler/OLDER than the sun, with 7 planets closer than mercury is in our system. They are resonantly locked, with 3 in the calculated habitable zone!

The sun on one of those planets would be 3-4 times bigger in the sky than us, but has so much light in the infrared that the color would be... weird. Salmon like? Light would be 1-2% what we get on earth during the day (brighter than a full moon).

I'm going to read the nature paper later, but the blurb makes it look really cool because the system is such that we can study the atmospheric composition of the planets.

Oh, and its only 40 LY away.

[Henrietta Coy]

@Star System - To borrow from the thread on reddit, strap me on a rocket with a single Civ game and I'll make that ~160,000y journey and still not be done. Sign me the heck up, it's gotta be better than this planet.

And bright, pink moonlight? Can't beat that aesthetic.

On T-Shirts:

I feel like I have a lot to say about that shirt and the design committee that came up with it but honestly I feel less and less articulate the more I look at it.

[GM Mikkel]

Exoplanets are f@+$ing cool.

Henrietta Coy wrote:

Sign me the heck up, it's gotta be better than this planet.

Whaat? This planet is awesome. We have mountains and valleys and deserts and oceans and forests and f*cking volcanoes and sh!t. (Volcanoes! And we can climb on them!) And these planets may have those too, plus a rosier sunset apparently. But do they have fireflies?

I guess we could probably hike or hang a hammock in the breeze pretty much anywhere warm-ish if the air is breathable, but I'd miss human-related Earth things. If you mean that we seem to be doing our damnedest to make this planet uninhabitable as quickly as possible... yeah, fair enough. Nearly time for plan(et) B unless we turn things around.

T-shirts:

I'm interested to hear your thoughts if articulation returns.

[Xizoh Shadelock]

This planet may be awesome, but so is the rest of the galaxy. It's simply less friendly :) A younger female friend of mine was inspired by this discovery, and started asking me how we could reach other planets as well as terraform mars. It was an excellent night filled with enlightenment and hypotheses.

I would have no issue with such a trip. The relative lack of humans is a bonus for me.

T-Shirts:

This deserves a proper discussion. Give me some time to organize my thought process and I will gladly contribute.

[Henrietta Coy]

Yes, mostly the fact that as a species we seem determined to turn earth into Mustafar or something, and that the species itself isn't too hot, either. A few cool crewmates and a bunch of rpg sourcebooks is all I need (and maybe a few DVDs to binge-watch).

T-Shirts:

I guess the first thing I'd want to talk about is how s#$!ty of a T-Shirt that is from a DESIGN perspective (and disclaimer - I am not one of those people that despises graphic shirts, as 99% of the shirts I own are video game or movie based [which, double sidebar, may be directly related to why I can find a new job {though admittedly I do have collared shirts and stuff so maybe not <it's more of a personality/work history/etc. thing but I digress>}]), first we've got like 4 incongruous colors on a purple background, which is a bold and dangerous canvas to use to begin with, and then two seperate fonts. On fonts - you can use two fonts sparingly and can make some really cool effects, but in this case you've got a blocky font and a wavy font - but both of them are coded to more "fun, silly" style and fight for attention in that emotion. The hearts are unnecessary at best, basically looking like stickers somebody put on their 4th-grade trapper keeper (which, to be fair, could have been what they were going for). The checks are also strange and their slant is a little irritating, but it at least is congruous with the asymmetrical nature of the words. Plus as a slogan it's a bit hard to read - a lot of shirts make it a joke when they have a bunch of text on them, but the last "well, nobody's perfect" guides attention A: Towards the wearer's crotch, which, ew. And B: is small enough that you'd probably have to get close or have to stare to comprehend it, which is also pretty creepy. I mean this is just my opinion, obvi, but its an ugly frackin' shirt.

[GM Mikkel]

Point taken, Xizoh. (Check out this poster.) Glad to hear she was inspired and I hope you are encouraging her to find out for herself; we could do with more women in physics and astronomy.

I just finished my third straight day of 12-18 hours of non-stop human interaction (plus I had to go to the Baton Rouge DMV this morning) so I feel that need for space pretty keenly now myself. But it won't last long. Socialization is like a vitamin for me; too much can be poisonous (particularly the wrong type) but I need at least a little bit consistently to keep me going. Plus humans are pretty cool on the whole. They tell stories, dance, make music, art, and food, and build cool sh!t, like telescopes and spaceships. Go team human.

Question: what would be on your DVD binge list for a very (very) long trip?

T-shirts:

@Xizoh: you are welcome to contribute anything you like, anytime you like.

@Henri: I defer to your design expertise, Sifu Henri. *takes notes*
(Graphic T-shirts, jeans, and sneakers are pretty much my uniform in the lab. Need to up my shirt design game, it seems.)

[Alaina 'Iron Wolf' Steele]

*** Personal notification ***

Hey everyone, I'm still alive. Just been in a hefty battle trying to get my computer back up. It looks like I need to do a complete re-format of the drives and re-install windows from scratch. At least I'm able to get it booted up and my important data saved on an external drive. So progress.

[Dara Shadeshard]

Speaking of binge watches, my wife and I are on our last leg of our movie marathon. Longest one yet I think. It's similar to 7-steps to Kevin Bacon, but with movies only.

Example:

Go from The Hobbit: Battle of five armies > Tomb Raider

Hobbit > Cate Blanchett > Indiana Jones: Kingdom of the Crystal Skull > Harrison Ford > Star Wars: The Force Awakens > Daniel Craig > Tomb Raider.

Then from Tomb Raider, you pick another film and map it from there.

I'll post the complete list when we finish with Deadpool and get it typed up.

[GM Mikkel]

Hey Alaina! Very glad you're both alive and making progress. Looking forward to your list. (Deadpool is a national treasure.)

[Henrietta Coy]

Hmmm on DVDs, there's quite a few shows that I binge-watch regularly, but they're usually for background noise - Always Sunny, Parks and Rec, and 30 Rock are all decently long shows that I can always get some enjoyment out of. Buffy and Angel are more active and fantastic shows, but having marathoned both at the same time, they do start to get a little overlong - probably something that would need a little breaking up with other activities. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (extended editions) is a must-have for me, I watch it at least once a year, and I wouldn't mind having Tarintino's body of work on hand (even if I'm not as into it as I once was), and maybe the Harry Potter movies as well. And, of course, Alien, Star Wars, and Mad Max boxed sets.

Now, if we're talking about hard limits... that's a much more difficult question xD Cause I could go on and on with this.

Glad you're making that computer work for you, Alaina. SHOW IT WHO'S BOSS.

[GM Mikkel]

I keep hearing Parks and Rec is good, I should give that a chance. Burn Notice is still one of my favorites to have on in the background (the first 4 seasons anyway).

+1 to everything Joss Whedon, LoTR, Tarantino (I went through a similar arc where I *loved* Tarantino in high school, then grew out of it a bit), HP (the earlier movies are nostalgic as sh!t if not as good), Alien, SW, and Mad Max (I could probably watch Mad Max IV at least once a month for many years).

Let's say you have a vast library you can pack.

[GM Mikkel]

You guys you guys, I made a three-person shortlist for a permanent job at a big US university! *dies of overexcitement*

[Alaina 'Iron Wolf' Steele]

Wow, congrats. Now just beat out the other two and you'll be solid.

[Xizoh Shadelock]

I'm actually really bad at watching movies and tv shows. Me and my short attention span get distracted and wander off, then get irritated that we missed something. Now in terms of books, you've got me. Tamora Pierce's books would be good, as well as most of Orsen Scott Card's works. The Eragon series would probably be on their as well with Dune and the Pit Dragon Trilogy. And now I'm off to read.

Congratulations Mikkel! East or West coast?

I can't say socialization is important to me. If I was on the ride to Trappist and had access to humanity's work but no other people, it'd be all cool by me.

[Henrietta Coy]

Holy crap that is fantastic Mikkel :D I'll be rooting for you!

[GM Mikkel]

@Xizoh - east coast (though I wouldn't be opposed to the west coast, provided my spouse moves out here eventually).

It's pretty unlikely - the US graduates something like 1,800 physics PhDs a year, and there are maybe a couple dozen tenure-track professor positions at R1 schools that open every year, so that's something like a 1% chance. Plus getting hired at an R1 before you're 30 is very rare - I haven't had my degree in my hand for even a year and a half, and I'm undoubtedly up against physicists with much more experience.

But, it's suuper nice to be asked to interview, and it'll be really useful for me to go through the process before I need to (my postdoc ends summer 2018). They're flying me out in early April, probably.

Fellow bookworms unite:

I too have much stronger opinions about books than any other media. (I read literally almost every waking moment until I was a bit younger than you are now, Xizoh.)

Off the top of my head here are some I'd be sure to bring:
Garth Nix’s Abhorsen series, particularly Sabriel (still one of my absolute favorites)
LoTR + The Hobbit + The Silmarillion
Harry Potter (still re-read them every so often)
The Dresden series - Jim Butcher
The entire compilation of Sherlock Holmes - A.C. Doyle
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
The Alloy of Law - Brandon Sanderson (soooo much fun - you’ll only get 90% as much out of it if you haven’t read the Mistborn trilogy, but the characters in is arc are way better)
The Gentleman Bastards series - Scott Lynch
Leviathan trilogy - Scott Westerfeld
The Hunt for Red October - Tom Clancy (this would be on Dulae’s movie list as well)
The Name of the Wind and sequel(s) - Patrick Rothfuss

(Re-reading this I see the vast majority of my formative books were shaped by a particularly un-diverse set of authors (and also main characters). I'll have to work on that.)

[Henrietta Coy]

Still, gotta look for that 1%! I mean it definitely seems rad and at least a LITTLE validating just to be seriously considered.

BOOKS.:

I used to read a bunch of different books, and now I do not, which is sad. I would like to mention, though, that I am pretty sure I'm the only bookworm kid IN THE WORLD that completely missed Abhorsen, something I pay for every day. What makes it worse is that I seriously loved his other series, the Seventh Tower series in particular when I was a youngster.

I don't know exactly what books I'd take, but I'd definitely want to grab the complete Animorphs series for nostalgia's sake. My recent move has basically divested me of 90% of my collection for space purposes, so most of my stuff now is like Frost and Poe and Lovecraft and other edgy authors that I want to reference. I lost all of my Deltora Quest books and am still sad about it. I do still have Calvin and Hobbes, though (I have the entire series, but not the cool hardback 100$ version, I just have it spread across collections). I should reread those sometime.

[Cel Runil]

That's super awesome to hear!! Congratulations!

[GM Mikkel]

Definitely, my head is so inflated just from getting this far it's hard for me to fit through doors now.

Books!:

@Henri; it's not too late - you can read them now. Hell, I will lend you my copies. (Those made it to California, though most of our joint collection is back east.)

I never did read the Seventh Tower or Deltora Quest. I'll have to look into that on the next free rainy day.

Not books (at least not in the form I intend to reference):
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
Sherlock
Hot Fuzz
Boston Legal
The West Wing
Frequency
New: Get Out (so f*cking good)

Things I keep remembering that could be useful for Henri to know: we now have a roster of NPCs in campaign info that should hopefully be helpful to reference. Also, we upgraded to GM Mikkel 2.0 to help tune up the pacing: #822.

[Alaina 'Iron Wolf' Steele]

Sorry, still having computer troubles, now it looks like the original HDD I have seems to have died and has become unusable.

[GM Mikkel]

What in the hells did you do to piss the computer gods off so much? Keep us posted and good luck!