Aw man bro happy birthday! You've only got one year until playing d&d starts being unadult, better use it wisely.
Bah, all this talk of moving things along and the chrome app on my phone picks today to get confused about new posts. I'll probably be able to field these in a few hours. Thanks for posting all!
Alaina: Batman is sad, and he won't be unsad until you move your marker. (Unless you are also on a trip, in which case I can do it for you. Temporarily.)
btw, thanks Henri. It's safe to say most of my life choices are unadult, so I'm not worried about it. (You should be able to count your age in base 12 if you go to grad school for more than 5 years. We should make that a thing.)
I finished DMotR today. What a brilliant idea for a parody of both D&D and LotR; I laughed a lot. You can definitely tell it's 10 years old though, there's some cringeworthy stuff that I'd like to think would never fly today (particularly the sexism and LGBT jokes).
Also, has anyone else been having trouble with Paizo servers today and yesterday?
I'll be happy to move the marker, if I knew how to move it from one map to the other.
Yeah, there's a lot of cringeworthy stuff from years ago that I still really like, I just tend to filter out some of the more tasteless jokes, I followed the author for a little while and he has changed, so I don't feel bad about liking his early work - again, a lot of the stuff from 5-10 years ago was funny, but a lot of those creators have wised up which is nice.
I had some problems with the servers, but paizo's servers have always been kinda unreliable, at least a few times a month I'll get the nostore page or a matinence page (I remember back when this rp first started there was a day that the site was just completely down for like, 3-5 hours)
@Alaina: Ah, okay, that makes sense. I moved your marker as you instructed in gameplay because I can't help myself. (Having the full set in place = contentment.)
Here's what I did:
1. Click on map #6 (currently slide 3)
2. Click on Alaina's marker
3. Go to Edit -> Copy (I use keyboard shortcuts because I am lazy)
4. Click on map #7 (currently slide 2)
5. Go to Edit -> Paste (it will appear somewhere on map 7)
6. Click and drag marker to the desired space
Let me know if you can't replicate that or if it's too much of a pain in the ass. We can always try a numbered system where PCs call out which square and I move them, or a much larger grid where we wouldn't need to switch maps as often.
@Henri: I'm very glad to hear they wised up, that's encouraging. And your experience with the servers matches mine, that's good to know.
With a name like Hells Canyon, I should hope it has an amazing view! Multiple hells worth, at least.
Sounds like you’re having a good trip Xizoh. I’ll be not too far from there (by west coast standards) in about a week. More or less between the Idaho/Oregon border and Portland, but a bit to the north in the Washington desert, because I don’t have enough desert in my life.
I may have time to swing by Mount Rainier on my way back to LA via Seattle, but otherwise I don’t expect to get out much, so vivid descriptions of nature are always welcome. (Also, today it was 105F and raining ash here. Is summer over yet?)
My bad on the floor thing, I think I knew what it was but I confused myself.
Oh there are so many great nature things on the west coast! I travelled the US a LOT in my youth but the pacific northwest has the coolest shit, I have to say. I'm always super happy that I can see mount hood from my house, and then mount saint helens from my parent's. If I ever went there.
No worries Henri.
I quite agree from what I've seen so far. I'm looking forward to the drive between Seattle and the tri-cities, it's been a long time since I've been through (or near) the Cascades. If you have any suggestions for a west coast bucket list, I am all ears.
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...Also, today it was 105F and raining ash here. Is summer over yet?
... Is the distopian hellscape you are living in inspiration for the campaign? Because I don't think Dulae packed shorts for the Helsinki winter...
Pants are really just future shorts if you have a good knife. (98% sure Dulae is sensible enough to ignore that terrible, terrible idea.)
You'll know I'm taking inspiration from LA if everything is on fire. (For the record, 'wet and warm' = very humid and about 65-70F in there.)
See, you gotta pack those zipper pants so that you can take off the bottom part when its warm and put them back on when its cold. I had those as a kid, they were badass.
Personally my two fav. locations are the mt. saint helens hike and crater lake. There was another one that I don't remember where it was but it was good too. Mount Hood is a classic xD There's also ruby beach if thats more your speed, great to walk along.
By Tri-Cities do you mean Richland, Kennewick, and Pasco?
@Henri, I too owned zipper pants circa 15 years ago. Handy, those. And I have never been to any of those places and they all look incredible. (I just googled Ruby Beach. Whaaat.)
@Cel, yes indeed. A bustling hot spot for physics in eastern Washington. (Not sarcasm - actually true.)
Well then, you HAVE to "Float the Yak" as they say. It's definitely best if you have friends/co-workers, though. It's effectively a lazy river thing where you rent tubes, bring a cooler full of beer and drift down a river. I hate to say it, though, you're screwed on the weather. That part of the state isn't going to be any better than LA. A second option would be actually doing the white water rafting in the region as well. That doesn't require a group so much as you're placed in one. The rapids aren't crazy, so you won't have to worry too much about skill if it's something you haven't done before. I guess floating the Yak doesn't require friends either, but it seems less lonely than just you and a cooler.
The Yakima and Columbia are both quite close to the lab, although I doubt I'll have the time this trip. And as you say, it can get even hotter there than here during the height of summer. (Fun fact: our lab is a pretty decent tumbleweed fire barrier.)
It's fairly certain I'll be making the pilgrimage there at least a few times a year for some years. Longer than I'll be based in California anyway. I know some folks up there who I think would be into it too, thanks for the suggestion!
Xizoh - I'm assuming that moving markers of your own accord means you're back safely from your travels. Welcome back and it sounds like you had a good (or at least very pretty) trip.
Speaking of markers, if anybody is still having trouble moving them please holler at me until I fix it. Any abandoned markers will result in further batman memes.
EDIT: sweet, thanks everybody. That makes things easy for me. Appreciated.
Also, Dulae will probably be taking a break from posting for a little while. I'll be filling in with an auto-bot as needed.
I saw the new Star Trek a couple nights ago - it was quite good, far better than the last one. (Ghostbusters was better all-around imho, but it’s certainly worth a watch.)
Relatedly, soundtracks are usually pretty good coding music, so I put Star Trek Beyond’s on since I was in that mindset and found that the track names are mostly delightfully ridiculous puns. Someone had fun with that.
Btw, has anybody heard anything about Stranger Things on Netflix?
I saw the Star Trek track list a little bit ago, it's great. I love video game soundtracks myself, but since I listen to a lot of techno/electronic music it's usually not that different lol. Most of the time I use soundtracks for ambiance when I'm DMing.
Stranger things is fantastic, I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it and wants to, but I love how it's a combination of stuff like ET and SCP (which is probably one of my favorite things on the internet!) I liked pretty much all of the characters and its also noticeable for making me actually like the sheriff, a gruff white guy with a ~past~. Mostly because he was so Chaotic Good and punched people a lot.
After tomorrow, travel season has arrived. Next week is eastern Washington: I’ll be in the air Sunday, working/busy from 07:00-22:00 Monday-Friday, and in the air the following Saturday. I’ll post when I can - I expect it to be once a day at least, probably at night.
I talked my way out of Barcelona, so after next week that just leaves Massachusetts and the UK/France in August. Not as busy as I’d feared. September dates are still evolving, but I expect another 3 trips then, and a couple more in October.
I should probably also give advance warning that our experiment will be starting again in the fall (I reckon October) and I might get a bat signal any time of day or night that there's urgent science to be done. This hopefully doesn't mean anything post-rate-wise except there's a nonzero chance I might disappear for a day or two without notice (I'll try to at least say 'brb' if I can).
@Henri: Sounds intriguing. I will very likely give it a shot when I next get some downtime!
And I'm back! Sorry to everyone for dropping out this past week - I have joined the 'insane work' and stress club. I should be good to post again now though. A big thanks to Mikkel for botting me - I'm shocked I wasn't eaten by something with big, nasty, teeth though. ;)
It was tempting. Glad to have you back, Dulae.
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Dulae scowls.
Honestly, I could barely tell the difference between you!
=D That pretty much made my day.
So, anyone do anything fun this weekend? Yesterday was my day of sloth, which consisted of far too much Archer and Kerbal Space Program. It was glorious.
May I introduce, the Archer Space Program.
Hah! That is brilliant.
@Cel, your state is beautiful, but it appears to be mostly on fire. (Like the rest of the west coast. Do kids try to find shapes in smoke plumes instead of clouds out here?)
It's pretty frequently on fire during the summer months. It kind of sucks, because it blocks the Perseid meteor shower anywhere that doesn't have some kind of light pollution! Hooray climate change!
Unfortunately my IRL Iron Gods game has fallen apart so now we have to find new players before we can continue -_-;. That being said I did play 7 Wonders for a bit and that was really fun, even if I did only lose because we changed the War Rules so the war player could get a BUNCH more points.
May I introduce, the Archer Space Program.
... Wat.
I love 7 wonders! Haven't played it in a while though. I recommend the leaders expansion - its a nice addition and makes it viable for more than one player to go science without automatically losing.
@West coast.
What do you mean water doesn't fall out of the sky?
Yeah, this is a weird state...temperate rain forest, desert, plains, mountains, beaches all within 2 hours drive of each other. Eastern Washington gets super hot and it's not very humid even in the not-desert area, so when some idiot throws a cigarette on the ground it starts a forest fire that burns for months. Happens every summer!
@Henri, best of luck with recruitment! 7 Wonders is amazing. It is really nice to have concurrent turns in a strategy game and it scales so well for a bigger group. If you ever have the occasion, don't sit next to Dulae. He's a warhawk. (This strategy has led me to past victories, even when he's ditched science cards.)
Has anyone tried Sentinels of the Multiverse?
@Cel, Dulae, I believe it. We've seen lots of fires come and go, mostly small-ish (you know, just a few thousand acres) and from a distance. It seems to be particularly bad this year in number and size of fires. I put a picture of the view from the lab last night in the map.
There's a sign on the road to the lab that lists the current fire weather warning. I've only ever seen it go from 'Very high' to 'EXTREME', which I think is one shade below 'Everything is on fire! You are on fire!'
It's a fun game to play on the drive from town to see what it'll be that day, when we're not amusing ourselves either dodging or attempting to hit the radioactive tumbleweeds.
All in all a friendly and welcoming place. Full of science. (And wine.) You should visit!
Radioactive tumble weeds! Man you guy get all the good stuff. I just watched a mountain a mile or so from me burn, nothing that fun.
That's a pretty awesome picture! Also, I know you do physics stuff, something with teaching (my assumption is collegiate)...what the hell do you do that requires so much travel if you're also teaching?!
@Xizoh - we've got a wide variety of radioactive flora and fauna nearby. (Only a little bit radioactive, not alarmingly.) Google the Manhattan Project if you're curious about why.
That picture makes the fire look a lot closer than it was since a good portion of the mountain went up at once. It was at least 6 miles away at that point. One mile sounds much more exciting.
@Cel - I teach pretty rarely. I give lectures here and there if I'm invited someplace and I'll cover the odd class at my home institution if somebody asks, but I just do research mainly. It's probably best for the students of the world. I'm still working on the patience thing.
About once a month I do outreach, where the goal is to share the wealth of knowledge in our ivory towers with the community. It's semi-mandatory, but it's always a good time. The middle-school-aged kids are especially fun as they're not too self-conscious to show interest yet. And I do astrophysics, so I get to show pretty movies/pictures of black holes and supernovae or have them play with the kiddie pool of science and they ooo and ahhh. (This seldom fails to convince me I'm 10x cooler than I actually am.)
Some of the heavy travel schedule is a product of big physics experiments. Collaborations range from dozens to tens of thousands of physicists around the world, and every once in awhile we meet up to get sh!t done. For me, a lot of it is going to the labs of the experiment I work on on either coast, and sometimes it's a meeting/conference.
Travel also follows the academic calendar; I'm giving a bunch of colloquia/seminars around the US after the fall semester starts.
I didn't actually answer your question in terms of what experiment I work on or what my role is, but:
1) from past experience there's about a 50% chance that people aren't generally interested in the details, which is fair enough. (Astrophysics you say? Cool story bro.)
2) it's fairly identifying. (For the record, I am lying about my name. And one other thing.)
Oh yeah, totally fair! Internet strangers indentifying can suck for sure. Hell, I don't even want non-strangers knowing where I live. I'm relatively certain it will result in them banging on my door asking me to fix them in the middle of the night.
I happen to be part of the 50% who's super ultra interested. I love astrophysics! I just always need really smart people to explain it in really dumb ways (a la Netflix shows on the subject).
Mikkel Madsenn, BFD.
@Henri, best of luck with recruitment! 7 Wonders is amazing. It is really nice to have concurrent turns in a strategy game and it scales so well for a bigger group. If you ever have the occasion, don't sit next to Dulae. He's a warhawk. (This strategy has led me to past victories, even when he's ditched science cards.)
Its one of the few things in the game where you can really keep track of what your neighbors can do, and build juuuuust a little more military than them. The passing direction switching between rounds is a really nice mechanic in that respect, as you can try to outmaneuver both sides.
(I like 7 wonders a little too much. I think I'm in withdrawal, its been months!)
@Cel: Awesome. If you love astrophysics, you've probably heard of something I've worked on along with many others. Your tax dollars at work! (Please keep funding me. I will do the best science, I promise.)
I'm guessing you've seen Cosmos then. NdGT does a phenomenal job explaining things simply and clearly while still keeping what he says generally true and correct (which is really f*cking hard). Sagan is worth a watch too.
@Dulae: Bidirectional forwarding detection? =D
(I do see what you did there.)
If you need a fix, is there an online version of 7 Wonders? Or am I thinking of Dominion and/or Catan?
Yeah, I've watched them both and more! I mean, I'm only a marginal dolt (funny how much people trust me with their lives!), so I anything made publicly available for watching I've always understood. However, I'm also quite familiar with physics just from all the classes I had to take for PT school (and sucked at them, mind you). What those kinds of TV shows give me is explanation, but it also reminds me how overwhelmingly hard the math part is. And, YAY SCIENCE! Do more best! I want answers damnit...
I’ll be on my way back to LA tomorrow (Saturday), and a more frequent GM post schedule will resume Sunday. (I’m taking a trip to Massachusetts at the end of the week, but I should have some time during the day for that trip.)
@Cel: This got away from me before (12-14 hour days sans much downtime always wear me out after a few days). But a question has been raised and I demand an answer. Who is your first favorite villain?
@Henri: After I got back from the lab today I watched the first episode of Stranger Things. (Then the second. Then the third. Then it was 'Okay, I should write up a post now'. But barely.)
I’m glad I asked, because the promo I saw screamed 'hysterical woman and/or helpless child in need give masculine antihero the moral authority to perform violent acts'. (That kind of stereotypical bullsh!t is the actual worst.) But it’s quite f*cking good. Probably the best writing/characterization I’ve seen in awhile.
Oh right, I suppose I shouldn't have left you hanging...without question it's Jubal Early from Firefly. So well played to be not only terrible, but lovable at the same time. Very weird to find that kind of villain lovable, I know, but I couldn't help but love and hate him. I SOOOO wish season 2 would have been made since I've heard it was going to focus on his story. I'll put in an honorable mention for Tom Wait's playing the devil in "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" too. He was great!
I'm pretty sure Early showed up in one of the comics at one point... though it's been a while since I read them.
Gooooood. Give in to the Stranger Things. It is definitely very subversive in a lot of the tropes it utilizes, but it also does a great job of exemplifying those tropes when it needs to (plus, you know, any show with D&D in it gets a few extra points in it, even if those kids are playing combat way too fast and loose. They're kids. I'll cut them some slack).
Interesting! (Time to take off, more later.)
I want to preface this with me NOT trying to be argumentative, power gamer, negotiating, or any of the other things we gamers have a tendancy to do. For one, I like intellectual exercises, and this discussion seems like one of those to me. Secondly, I am playing Cel for Cel, I'm not playing Cel for the Kineticist. Third, as I've always believed, this game is for everyone's fun including the GM. Whatever you decide in terms of what the class is or is not allowed to do is 100% okay with me! Typing often does not convey tone or intent, how many times have we gotten an email or text that seems angry or accusatory when it really isn't? I just want to make sure you're not looking at this post as one of those!
I just want to put some food for thought in your head as you're thinking on your response. With a 6 burn limit per day, it means that right now I can only accept 1 burn per round allowing for 6 episodes of Elemental Overflow. However, when I reach level 6 I can accept 2 burn per round (and by the time you can take 2 burn per round you will need to in order to keep up escalating challenge level of opponents), that means I only get 3 episodes of Elemental Overflow. At level 9 it's two episodes, and so on. While the effectiveness of Elemental Overflow increases with amount of burn taken it is diminishing returns in frequency making it appear like a nuke (i.e. a level 7 magical spell) without the actual increase in attack/damage to equate to a typical nuke damage. Granted, the amount of burn per day would increase with each Con Mod every 8 levels +/- magical gear found. However, I can tell you this, all leveling ability modifiers will be going to Dex for + to hit to keep up with the AC of opponents. This is all combined with the fact that Kineticists never get iterative attacks. From level 1 to 20 they get one attack per round.
EDIT: For clarity, I'm referring to the Elemental Overflow thinking, not the 6 burn per day. Totally cool with 6 per day.
@Cel: After reading the rules over again I concede that I was wrong. With elemental overflow you do get the +1 attack/+2 damage bonus for having at least one point of burn without spending further burn (as you would in order to use extended range, which you didn't need). Thanks for your patience, I'm sorted now.
And I see you added 1/6 burn to your header - that's helpful, thanks.
Sounds good, I hope I'm not being a nuisance but I also trust you'll keep me in line!
Hah, same to you. Thinking quickly in an airport increases the chance of mistakes and I hope you'll continue to keep me honest when that happens.
Back to TV-land: yes, Jubal Early is an interesting villain. I'm pretty partial to the twisted-logic-type villains too; utterly loathsome and still fun to watch. The decisions he makes are satisfying in that you can watch him logic through a situation given what he knows, his goals, and what he's willing to do, yet it still feels unpredictable because it's so disjointed from our own moral code. Really nice writing.
@Henri: I have one more episode left for Stranger Things - I think I'm going to finish it tonight because apparently I have no self-control. (This is why I shouldn't take up computer games.)
Those kids are f*cking awesome. (And that sheriff has a charisma of like 18 or something. How did they even do that?)
The last two episodes are definitely some of the best, plus some good setups for season 2. I was seriously surprised how much I liked the sheriff by the end - he's really cool and every time he punches someone in the face it gives me chills.
The kids are great, would definitely rank El as one of my fav. characters. Though Barb was my absolute favorite, I was sad that she got so little screen time :(
@Cel: by the way, I saw most of the Washington climates you'd mentioned on the way back to SeaTac, minus beaches. It is indeed a pretty damn epic journey for a 3 hour drive. Mt Rainier still blows my mind. (Train of thought is more or less: Holy f*ck, that is a volcano. That is a giant-ass, 10,000 ft tall volcano.)
I'm not sure how anyone close to it gets anything done; I'd want to climb on it every day. (Granted, from the traffic/parking I'm very sure about ten thousand other people had the same idea as me on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon.)
@Henri: I finally finished Stranger Things last night after an inexplicable bout of self control Sunday.
Barb was wonderful, agreed. She had some grade-A sass, applied as needed with an excellent 'are you f*cking kidding me right now' expression. And also quite reasonable, which she'd need to be. With great power and all.
I enjoyed that mouth-breather cop #2's wild-ass guess of what the lab was used for was probably the closest to RL. (Space lasers!!)
I'd be keen to hear your thoughts on the monster and other horror elements.
Just letting everyone know I'm still alive. Mikkel, I'm going to just say go ahead and bot for today. I'm dealing with some personal issues right now and can't really give this game the required focus. But I'll still be paying attention as best I can.