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I'm willing to continue. I really want to see where this relationship between Cel and I go.
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*Rolls eyes* I suppose I'd better stick around as well. *Looks at Alaina* Just to keep an eye one you.
*Sticks tongue out at Dara*
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Yeah, I'm in! I will let you know that in the coming future I have 3 guaranteed times I'm out if we're talking 9-12 months. It'll have intermittent posting at PAX West, if any posting. Two days the following week of PAX for my wedding. Then I will be essentially off the grid for 3 and a half weeks while honeymooning all over New Zealand around Thanksgiving. Other than that I will continue with my usual posting.
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I'm absolutely in! There's definitely some more development to be had from EVERYONE in this party, I think.
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Mr. Snake and I are in, and buckled up. I want one familiar thing for college, and you people are all fun!
You'll have to give us the highlights of your trip after you are done Mikkel.
Congratulations on your wedding Cel. Your partner is very lucky. Also, be sure to try and visit Hobbiton while in New Zealand.
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Wooo, weddings!
In other news, I gave my talk, so the rest of the time in New Orleans will be vacation.
I'm in for another arc! I wonder what shocking revelations Dulae will be sharing with the party that all of the characters haven't already figured out...
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Oh, you just wait, you're not the only one with shocking reveals.
... I know we might be camping, but by Altien's Grace you and Cel better not be shagging in front of everyone. Get a tent! Ain't nobody want to see that. Except maybe Henri.
Henri's not afraid to jump in and get her feet wet.
buuut only as a casual thing, obvi. Neither of them are really relationship material to her ;)
Not fixing any coitus related injures, but as long as you don't wake Xizoh's snake, have at it. Anathema needs its beauty sleep, and Xizoh is just going to ignore any strange sounds he hears.
Congratulations Cel!
Awesome, I'm really glad everyone's willing to give round two a shot. I have other thoughts, but I'm not coherent enough to articulate them - more tomorrow.
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Oh we're doing Hobbiton, we're going Hobbit style with a giant feast!! We're also hitting a few of the south island filming spots, helicoptor ice climbing a glacier, lounging in hot springs, playing with kiwis and keas and penguins and all the wildlife! It's going to be a blast.
Not fixing any coitus related injures, but as long as you don't wake Xizoh's snake, have at it. Anathema needs its beauty sleep, and Xizoh is just going to ignore any strange sounds he hears.
Congratulations Cel!
:: Narrows eyes ::
That pun was on purpose, wasn't it?
#CurrentArc: I'm gonna throw it out there that badly injured Silo has more HP left than Dara and Xizoh combined, and some of you have heal sticks.
@Cel; all of that sounds amazing (congrats again). No worries - when you're off the grid in Hobbiton we'll have Cel be off doing something else for a bit. How goes the wedding planning?
@Xizoh: Is it too early to ask if you know what your plans are for next year? (No need to say where, but I'm curious if you're settled on a place and/or major.)
@Dulae: I'm pretty sure not everyone has figured out Dulae's secret, including the PC most likely to care.
(Also, Xizoh was too polite to acknowledge this comment, so I'm guessing no.)
#FutureArc: I will work on the next arc a bunch on the plane (I leave before dinnertime Friday and arrive Sunday morning so I should make progress). I have in mind the party will go north and see much more of Altiendel.
I'm comfortable dictating the plot if that's the group's preference, but I want to make sure you all have meaningful ownership of the story. If there's something you'd like to explore (places, themes, relationships, etc) or some element of this arc you'd rather avoid in the future, let me know.
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Done and paid for...it took us like a week. We're going guerrilla to get married! We're doing it in the Hoh National Forest (like wedding dress and hiking boots style). Only nuclear family allowed and her best friend is getting ordained to marry us. After the ceremony, everyone else can do whatever they want, we're done! The whole thing cost us about 6 grand and 90% of that was the photographers and the lodging for 2 nights. It's the best!
In terms of the story, I'm enjoying just going along for the ride and taking sub-plots of their own as they come up (i.e. Cel + Alaina sitting in a tree...)
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Yeesh, that sounds rad as all hell, Cel. Guerrilla is definitely the way to go :D congrats and stuff!
In arc terms, I agree with Cel - we can take on sub-plots if/as they come up, but I def. trust you enough as a GM to deliver unto us more fun and engaging plots!!
@Dulae:I'm afraid innuendo is not my strong suit. That was pure innocent I swear!
@Mikkel: I'm actually pretty set as of this moment. I'm going to a university about an hour or two away due to the pretty snazzy scholarship they've offered. Hopefully I'll get my Bachelor's in biochem :D
Ah, I see. Well, to educate you slightly before you head off to college, I present This from Dc. Horrible's Sing-along-blog. Replace "Hammer" with "Snake" and you will see why we have found you startling all us ladies with it so amusing.
Good morning from Sunday, all. (The sun is just rising here.) I see Xizoh has taken an action that'll take me some time to resolve properly - chances are high that'll happen this morning Bangalore time (before the west coast night owls sleep).
@Xizoh: Glad to hear it - that's a good distance to balance autonomy with keeping your family close by. Biochem: interesting and lucrative. Nice. Good luck!
(Dr. Horrible is worth a watch)
I haven't watched that in forever. Why don't I own it?
Hm, same here. Google Play is listing it as 130 rupees (which is something like $1.25). I am torn between taking advantage of that and wanting to pay Joss Whedon more money so he makes more good things.
(Generally, things are dang cheap in India - I paid $0.50 for breakfast this morning that was so big I couldn't finish half.)
Progress on the second arc front - here's a draft of an expanded map (we're up to three kingdoms now). I added some companion text to the Common Knowledge doc; new stuff is highlighted in blue over a few sections.
Comments are welcome, as are requests to visit particular places. I'm still working on pretty much everything else, but it's coming along.
Happy Tuesday from the future.
On my way to the lab in Louisiana some weeks ago I heard a radio segment on the backlash to the Republican administration. One quote that stuck with me: “Protests are counter-productive. We don’t need all this divisiveness; race wars, gender wars.” The 'common Louisianan' (read: very likely white) felt inconvenienced, uncomfortable, and scared that people were protesting. They didn’t understand why we’re talking about race and other issues now when they’re used to not talking about them.
The irony being black people haven’t ever had the luxury of being able to choose to ignore race issues. Exposing and protesting racial inequality is a less divisive act than ignoring it.
It's somewhat astonishing there's a huge portion of the US population that doesn't realize (or maybe care) that black kids tend to have different experiences of childhood than their peers. Or that black Americans are more likely to be wrongfully convicted of violent crimes and drug offenses. Or that the police departments of 11 major US cities killed solely black people in 2016. (Granted, there is no official database on deaths caused by police (which is in itself troubling). This is based on crowdsourced data.) Or recently, trans women of color have been killed at a rather alarming rate with fairly minimal media coverage.
Obviously this is terrible, but it’s not new. It’s not coming out of nowhere. We all should have taken action before now (and I’m more guilty of that than anyone). But now is better than never to do the difficult, uncomfortable work of persuading fellow Americans to care about people of color, at least above apathetic indifference. (Saying “Oh that’s terrible” out loud after hearing about racially-driven tragedies like the Flint water crisis and then going about their business counts as apathetic indifference. Instead, they might call/write their reps to advocate for change and encourage others to do the same.)
This seems like a good resource for framing how to talk about racial issues with kids (and I can think of more than a few adults I know who might benefit from it too).
We don’t have ‘better battles’ to fight than this - as Ijeoma Oluo put it from the perspective of POC, “because we cannot be sure if it is the cops that will kill us, or the racist jokes at work fostering an environment where we are seen as unreliable and dispensable that will leave us unable to feed our families”. People of color can’t step away from ‘identity politics’ to focus exclusively on ICE raids or the Muslim travel ban or the plight of blue collar white workers. And even though (or maybe because) black people live through difficult challenges exclusive to their experience, they tend to show up for labor unions, fair pay, LGBTQ+, police brutality, women’s rights, and other causes that benefit others. It’s high time everyone else showed up for black people.
Here’s a humorous take on the ‘newness’ of these issues.
[Sub-spoiler; did you notice what everyone shown has in common up until the last 10 seconds? I did not, even though I’d like to think I’m pretty aware of these things. (Re-training the brain on what the human default looks like is hard.) ]
We're fast approaching GM travel phase II: Mikkel adventures into rural India. It's unlikely you'll hear from me more than once a day as of Thursday evening US time, and there's a nonzero chance I won't be able to post again until Wednesday 3/29, but I will post if/when I can.
Anyone here managed to snag themselves a copy of Mass Effect Andromeda? I've play the trial and am wondering if it's worth the money.
@Xizoh: Dulae is planning to get Andromenda eventually.
I’m headed back to the US today; very tired, somewhat bruised, still a little sick from the water (which is way better than the very sick of a few days ago, thanks immune system) and altogether really glad I came. I saw beautiful things, learned important history, and met wonderful people. I highly recommend visiting India if you have the opportunity.
I should preface this by sharing that in my (pretty limited) experience, people in Bangalore and elsewhere in India tend to be welcoming and so, so kind. (We had more than a few strangers go out of their way to help us when we were looking very lost.) Scientists (at least astrophysicists) here are top-notch, and the food is amazing.
There are some extremely nice and beautiful places in Bangalore. Well-dressed people, fancy restaurants, clubs, shops, and hotels, and green golf courses with flowers and palm trees. And on the other side of the barbed wire, guards, and/or iron bars is the most extreme poverty I’ve seen.
Coming from the workshop in Bangalore (which was excellent) to watching people bathe in and collect water from a polluted river (not in Bangalore) made me think of the Stephen Jay Gould quote: “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”
I found confronting that kind of squalor and apparent indifference to it (including my own to some extent) overwhelming; I don’t even know where to begin. I'm happy to share what I have, but I doubt this is the kind of problem solved by throwing money at it. It seems wrapped up in a complicated tangle of class, race, religion, and gender. My instinct says we should try to empower everyone with enough resources to have roof over their head, enough food and water to live, and access to education, but I’ve no idea how to actually distribute resources directly to those who would most benefit from them (or how to encourage them to accept them). Stopping there, with the thought, feels like nowhere near enough. (My discomfort with that will ideally drive me to devote more energy to it.)
At the very least this visit made me thoroughly appreciate shared resources and regulations in the US; clean air, clean water, safe food and medicine, car and traffic safety, waste disposal, building standards, animal control, public subsidization of housing and food, free universal secondary education. (Plus much more that I enjoy: parks, public media like PBS, funding for science and the arts.) I definitely take this for granted every day. When I file my taxes this year my attitude will be more like ‘take my money and more of this please’.
== GM travel delay ==
Sorry all, another 24 hours at least until we're back to regular posting - I'm in London overnight.
In the meantime, I posted a prototype of an upgraded combat map to the first slide of the campaign map doc. It fixes the bug that the squares were either too large to really move around during combat or too small to denote or move easily. It also makes edges square, which might take away from the setting some, but it should make judging movement and ranged shots easier.
Comments welcome/encouraged.
I like the square character markers, though I'm not too sure whats happening in the right pane.
Also, welcome back.
Hah, those are trees in snow. (Pixel trees.) Clear enough with description or should I think on that some more?
Thanks! I'm currently trusting my phone completely in terms of what day/time it is. And I'll give an extra 24 hours for the autobot clock since the unexpected extra leg of my adventure held things up.
I got a bunch more done for the next arc on the plane back: new NPCs sketched out, new maps about 30% done. Progress, and I'll keep at it, but I might need an extra week to finish up after we wrap up this arc.
Holy crap the implied backstory of that comb is dark! Is it bad that imo thats the creepiest thing about this whole adventure so far?
Is it bad that imo thats the creepiest thing about this whole adventure so far?
It's certainly interesting. Good to know.
==== GM travel advisory ====
I leave tonight (Saturday) for that job interview on the east cost. I expect I should be able to post once a day, but it's a pretty grueling process - apologies in advance if I need to skip a day. I'll be back in L.A. by Wednesday and back to regular posting for awhile.
Hey all, my apologies for the recent reduction in quantity and even quality of posts. The aforementioned busy-ness has taken a bit of a turn into a short-term extension. My company has decided to close the doors on my clinc to repurpose the space. This has turned into a bit of an issue for me in that they want to keep me on, but it would mean going back to a two and a half hour commute by bus every day to and from work. I'm not highly on board with that concept, so I've decided to explore my options. This means that my limited free time during the week has just been filled with job hunting and interviewing while still pretending to manage the clinic during the day. There is an end point in site, the clinic closes at the end of this month, so it would be a temporary continuance of my lack-luster posting. I just wanted to give everyone a heads up!
Well isn't that fun. Sorry you have to go through that. Best of luck to you though.
No problem Cel - I'm happy to bot as often as you need if that's helpful.
A two and a half hour commute sounds miserable - I hope you find a good fit close by. Let us know how your search goes.
No worries, take all the time you need Cel. Ugh, I don't even want to think of a two and half hour bus ride.
I feel you on that, Cel, sorry you have to deal with that 0_0; I do an hour and a half bus commute and if I had to spend even one more second commuting I'd burst haha. Good luck!
Also @Mikkel good luck, I'm rooting for ya :P
Thanks Henri - I'll keep that in mind Monday night when my brain is broken and I have to do it again on Tuesday.
Also, you have an hour and a half bus commute? Dang that's a lot of yearly hours. You could probably learn a whole language or something. Somebody just told me about a really good history podcast series on major US wars that are something like 25 hours each if you're interested. (Btw, is your job search still ongoing or did that work out?)
Thanks all, and good luck to you as well GM! It's a nuissance that is completely unnecessary, but not all change is bad and it forces my hand into expanding what I am actually doing with my life instead of allowing me to just be comfortable with being a PT. Busy, but almost innevitably bright horizons coming. I imagine the same applies to you, GM!
Yep, OR you could listen to a buncha podcasts!
I kid, though, I actually do a fair amount of pathfinder prep and other various writings on tha bus.
Currently I am still job-hunting, even though my current job is fairly stable, I would very much like my own place and the ability to get a cat so I'm just doing the "send out at least 10 applications a week" thing.
Dulae and I listened to some of the early seasons of Writing Excuses. It was fun!
Best of luck in your search. What kind of job net are you casting?
~15 hrs/week for pathfinder prep and writing things, you say. Hm. Do you have any interest in running a PbP game? (I'll note I spend way less than 15 hrs/week once things are set up.)
I've been listening to the backlog of The Adventure Zone, the McElroy shows are so hot right now xD I don't usually go for real play stuff but they do a really good job of keeping it entertaining.
Uhhh pretty much everywhere. Primarily Helpdesk, and writing/editing jobs since I have the most experience with those, but I'm also looking into design and video production stuff. I need something that pays enough for me to get a cat xD
I can't say it hasn't crossed my mind before. I ran one a while back but it only REALLY got to the end of the first encounter before it died. With the right group, though... it would be fun xD
Indeed, I am starting to appreciate the internet miracle of encountering this particular group of fine souls pretty much by chance. (Thanks for playing, all.)
Yeah, if you were to look at my PbP history, a lot of flame outs pretty early on.
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Agreed. It was nice to find a good group to actually play a game with, especially for as long as we have (nearly a year actually now that I think about it).
Oh yeah, remember that time I said it'd take 6 months to play out this arc? =D
Social justice is hard and I can't brain anymore, so you get kittens this week. This one's for Dulae and Henri and any other appreciators of cats. Happy Tuesday. May we all make it through.
Holy crap kittens! :: Melts ::
@Cel
Sounds rough buddy :(. Good luck on the job hunt!
@Game still going
I'm still having a lot of fun, though there are weeks where I am more and less active :/. I'm super glad that Henri is back, I missed your character! When you were gone we made you a muffin. :D
@Henri - if that seems very out of context.... yep.
Sorry all, I have survived Tuesday, but I am completely braindead. Bad timing story-wise; I will try to post from the airport tomorrow bright and early.