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Venture-Captain, Minnesota
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I’m 52 today. For my birthday I ran a great scenario last night (if slightly on the long side) at Dreamers: SFS 1-13 On the Trail of History! It’s such a lovely treat to run an excellent story and RP-rich scenario for a group of enthusiastic players!
I’m off to work today — couldn’t get it off — but will have a lovely dinner afterwards with my family. Hope everyone else is having a great day!
EDITED to ADD: @Ferious Thune: I adore Zathras! One of the best B5 characters ever! These little refererences can make all the difference in a story.
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I’m 52 today. For my birthday I ran a great scenario last night (if slightly on the long side) at Dreamers: SFS 1-13 On the Trail of History! It’s such a lovely treat to run an excellent story and RP-rich scenario for a group of enthusiastic players!
I’m off to work today — couldn’t get it off — but will have a lovely dinner afterwards with my family. Hope everyone else is having a great day!
EDITED to ADD: @Ferious Thune: I adore Zathras! One of the best B5 characters ever! These little refererences can make all the difference in a story.
sigh...
This makes me realize that when I started playing RPGs HMM was only 9 years old...no wait, make that 8.
Don't mind me, I'll just wheel myself back to the room, no need to call the nurse to help an old guy wandering the halls again...
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Iomedae protects!
Just finished playing a great 10-11 tier Core game with my Cleric of Iomedae and it was... great!
In the last fights, I was using Glory Domain's Divine Presence (Su) every turn to rob the enemies of the chance to hurt my party.
In classic PFS, the Glory domain is hardly pick by anyone. And if they do, they would often pick the heroic subdomain instead, thanks to the heroism aura. There are just so many other better options for most clerics to pick from.
But here in Core games, the Glory domain really shines! And its helped by the whole party winning initiative. (Improve Initiative is also very popular here in Core games. Feats that people usually couldn't be bother with in Classic.)
I just had to delay till after my party had made their attacks, before throwing up Divine Presence and seeing the enemies struggle to even land hits on my party. I'm not even a caster cleric with a way high wis to boot! But a melee combat cleric with 20 str.
Love the fact that in Core the party actually works better together. We have to rely more on each other to succeed!
Developer
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Ridiculously happy tonight.
I get to GM 2e at Gencon, which is going to be amazing. So much about it looks awesome and wonderful.
My home lodge is doing great! We are looking like we almost have enough members with enough free time to consistantly schedule to run two tables...dare I jinx it?!
Oh and I got to play my Devoted Muse at level 7! (Which is where they begin to use their coolest ability.) I'm really excited by her because of the interplay between her classes and story, and roleplaying her is a fulfilling challenge that keeps me on my toes! I also enjoy using 4 base classes and a prestige class on a level 7 character
I also got to save an allied PC with my Devoted Muse by giving my enemy a miss chance! It was seriously going to be a painful hit until I reminded the GM to roll that percentile die!
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Venture-Lieutenant, Minnesota—Minneapolis
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Happy to have survived playing SFS 1-11 In Pursuit of the Scoured Past! I wanted to get this in before bringing my character to the SFS special in PbP Gameday VII.
Although I didn’t like that cannon has now established such a library (tagged spoilers below), it did have a number of very interesting things going for it. I like the descriptions of the library and some of the rooms in it. My character hated some of the things he saw there.
The problem for our group came at the end battle. We had three people at the table playing pregens and the battle was one of the toughest I’ve hit so far. We had two people go down and everyone was low on hit points when it did end. With a different group, it might have been considerably easier.
I do think it is a fun scenario. On the other hand, my character would really like to go back sometime and renegotiate how the library operates.
I have not read the scenario yet. It is possible some of it was the way I interpreted what the GM presented. My character wouldn’t have liked it in any case, being he is chaotic good.
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Thanks to a a really great GM and a fun group of players I am nearing the end of my first pbp game!
As far as in person gaming goes I'm excited to have started GMing Rise of the Runelords for a great group that's had some really great RP moments that had the entire group nearly falling out of their seats from laughter.
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This close to GenCon, I figured we needed something to lighten the mood and bring out a couple laughs... so here's a Con Story.
At a Tier 1-2 table for a certain Special with a Really Big Dragon on the roof a building the PCs have to get into... the PCs are hiding around the corner of the building - peeking around and trying to get up the nerve to run across the courtyard to the buildings entrance and avoid notice by the Dragon on the Roof.
Judge: "The dragon roars again, shaking dust from the roof eves that you are hiding under."
Cleric: "Anyone speak Draconic? I wonder what she keeps yelling about? Anyway, we need a distraction - something to draw the dragons attention away from the door before the rest of us run for it."
Rogue reply's: "Well... I have a chicken."
other players look at Rogue player: "????"
Rogue: "yeah, I picked one up - it's on my equipment sheet - see?" Hold up ITS pointing at the chicken entry.
Cleric to Rogue: "...and ... you're going to use it how?"
Rogue: "I'll throw it at the dragon. She wont be expecting that...."
Fighter: "...yeah, I sure wouldn't be expecting someone to pitch a chicken at me..."
Rogue: "yeah, I'll do that." Turning to judge: "So I run out to here in the courtyard and throw the chicken..."
At this moment the Overseer announces over the loudspeakers that "the Really Big Dragon on the Roof" flies away. (totally unrelated to events at the Tier 1-2 table, but great timing!)
Table judge rolls with it: "Seeing the chicken flying in her direction, the Dragon leaps from the roof and with a crash of her gigantic jaws, snatch's it from the air. Doing a Wing-Over maneuver and with a snap of her huge leathery wings, the giant beast speeds away over the cities rooftops..."
Rogue player sits back with big smile on her face.
Cleric player looks at the table judge, at the Rogue player, then at the other players and says... "Heck, it looks like the dragon just wanted chicken take-out, this would have gone so much faster if someone had been able to speak Draconic..."
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Note to self: my character needs to buy something ridiculous before starting at the tier 1-2 SFS special on Saturday!
My wife (the lady running the Rogue in the earlier story) actually does this with all her PCs.
Sometimes it can be very entertaining.
In one adventure the PCs find a prosthetic arm... so when we were playing this, and stumble upon this item (usable as a club) she points out she already had one of those, on that PC (a fighter of hers). And pulls out the ITS to show everyone where she bought it, and the fact that she has been lugging it along for a couple adventures so far...
This after all caused us to wonder - were they a Left and a Right arm? which was which?
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My family and I have been playing a bunch of scenarios to make sure our characters are leveled up for the specials after not playing them since last Gen Con (I bought our Thursday & Friday night tickets for tier 5-6, and we all finished last year at level 4). On Sunday, my wife ran a recent season scenario (in the spoiler below), and as a critical part of the mission, we had to break someone out of the local jail in a port town where we had been warned at the start not to let anyone know we were Pathfinders.
The party:
- Ruby Bullroarer, halfling unchained barbarian 5, wielding an earthbreaker from atop her riding dog mount and followed by her brand-new puppy animal companion (essentially, Scooby and Scrappy Doo), played by our 17yo daughter;
- Murgeath Bittersword, dwarf alchemist (grenadier), throwing all the bombs when he isn't imbuing his glaive-guisarme with them (our 14yo son)
- Kepli Lindenbrook, halfling jinx oracle of time 4, debuffer and angry librarian, played by yours truly ; and
- Merisiel, run by the group.
At the beginning of the scenario, the venture captain had given us an odd assortment of items that we might be able to use. For the first 2/3 of the scenario, we had no idea what they would be good for, but when we got to the jailbreak scene, we got a ridiculous idea...
Putting the rest in spoilers below.
- 5 potions of Invisibility;
- 3 infusions of Disguise Self; and
- 3 doses of oil of taggit.
We had information that there were 5 guards at the jail that evening: two outside the entrance, one at the front desk inside, one at the portcullis opening onto the cell block, and one commanding officer. We decided that the scenario was pushing us toward one - and only one - solution, and who were we to fight such an obvious railroad?
That's right: the only way to break our man out of the hoosegow would be to disguise ourselves as pastry chefs, talk our way past the guards outside, knock out the inside guards by getting them to eat eclairs dosed with oil of taggit, steal the keys to the cell, free our target, and make our escape.
And it all went almost completely according to plan.
We started with five eclairs. Where did we get the eclairs? Our GM decided that it was probably too late in the day to find a pastry shop open, but as nothing in the scenario said anything about it one way or the other, she decided that there were five eclairs left in the lodge kitchen from an earlier gathering (I think she wanted to see if we could pull it off as badly as we did). We dosed three, then packed all five carefully in a box arranged so that we knew which was which.
When we arrived at the jail, the PCs were all disguised as Taldan humans wearing something vaguely approximating chef's whites, and Merisiel had just taken one of our potions of invisibility. The two guards challenged us, but we improvised (with a lot of waving our hands in the air) a story about how we were recent immigrants from Taldor to their wonderful country and while we did not miss anything about Taldor there was one thing that their town lacked, which was a wonderful Taldan pastry shop! What's the name of our shop? Why, it's...
"THE VIVA LA REVOLUTIONES PASTRY SHOP!"
One massive diplomacy roll later, the guards were eating the un-poisoned eclairs (one guard tried to grab one of the poisoned pastries; Kepli slapped his hand away and asked if he had washed them before using a piece of wax paper to hand him one of the safe eclairs), and were walking inside (invisible Merisiel following closely behind Murgeath, who had taken a See Invisibility elixir so that at least one member of the party would know where she was).
As they entered, Kepli attempted to jinx the front desk guard to lower his save against the poison but failed. Once again, we told the story of the VIVA LA REVOLUTIONES PASTRY SHOP, opening next week, and this time we added in our hope that if the commanding officer liked our eclairs, she would give us a contract to supply the guard's mess at the prison. We pointed out that we had three eclairs in the box, surely his CO could not eat all three...
We were just convincing enough that the guard took one of the poisoned eclairs, but the guy must have been the toughest city guard in the NPC Codex - he made his DC 15 Fortitude save and refused to let us through the locked door into the jail itself.
So Ruby pulled out her earthbreaker and bashed him in the head, Meri stabbed him in the back, and he dropped like a sack of potatoes. I wish I could remember what Ruby said when she pulled out her earthbreaker from under her white jacket - something like "Wanna see how we flatten the dough?" - but it had us all giggling.
Kepli stabilized the guard with a heal check, Merisiel snatched the key to the entry door and drank another invisibility potion, and we were in.
Unfortunately, the walk down the hallway towards the guard by the portcullis took too long, and he got suspicious. While we were still babbling about THE VIVA LA REVOLUTIONES PASTRY SHOP and contracts and Taldor, he called the CO out of her office and we had to deal with both of them. The CO was a tough customer, but another ridiculous diplomacy roll - after successful aid another checks from Murgeath and Ruby (not usually the most diplomatic of PCs) - and she admitted she had a bit of a sweet tooth. She and the other guard ate the remaining poisoned eclairs and they both failed their saves. After a minute of discussion about the possible mess hall contract, they dropped to the floor. We searched them and tossed the CO's office until we found the keys, got the portcullis opened, and sent invisible Merisiel in to free our target. She took another invisibility potion and gave one to our target, and on her way out tossed the cell key to one of the other prisoners, telling him "We need two minutes before you try anything, but then you should open all the doors and get out any way you can."
We walked right out, telling the guards at the entrance that the CO said she would let us know about the contract in a few days, so we would be back soon with more eclairs. They thanked us as we left.
As an aside, Ruby is our party's only Liberty's Edge member, and her speech (entirely in character) after we found out who was behind the kidnappings - speculating about the reasons why he would have done it and why it might be justified - was brilliant.
This was without a doubt one of the best times we've ever had playing a PFS scenario. It could only have been better if we had been able to figure out how to dress Ruby's dogs up like pastry chefs too, and get them to stand upright and nod along with everything we said, but instead they had to stay back at the PFS Lodge while we went to the jail.
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Ok, at a game table today, as we are setting up one of the players was a last minute drop in. They don’t have their PCs with them, but they have a “copy” on their phone (the judge is ok with this). So they ask if anyone has a “scrap piece of paper” for them to keep notes on (HP and stuff)...
So I say “I’ve got a tablet you can use...”
To which they reply: “no, I actually need something physical to write on.”
So I say: “Ah - a tablet like as in a pad of paper - you know, like from last century...”
Everyone at the table stops to look at me - then realize that I’m the guy at the table with the flip phone...
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Ok, at a game table today, as we are setting up one of the players was a last minute drop in. They don’t have their PCs with them, but they have a “copy” on their phone (the judge is ok with this). So they ask if anyone has a “scrap piece of paper” for them to keep notes on (HP and stuff)...
So I say “I’ve got a tablet you can use...”
To which they reply: “no, I actually need something physical to write on.”
So I say: “Ah - a tablet like as in a pad of paper - you know, like from last century...”
Everyone at the table stops to look at me - then realize that I’m the guy at the table with the flip phone...
Hey, you're not alone.
I prefer the sleek non-encumbered flip-phone over the horribly problematic modern distraction technologies!
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Venture-Captain, Special Projects
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I'm super excited! I get to start the branch of PFS for the city I'm attending school in this weekend. I loved being part of that community when I was back home, and so I'm really excited to get to introduce it to this part of the state.
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I've taken a volunteer gig to teach some middle schoolers in my area how to play Pathfinder [and other table tops] during their lunch break. Downside- it's half an hour to teach them; upside- it's three full tables.
I'm running them through the beginner box stuff first, then through the quests. i'll see about teaching them how to build characters, if i can find a quick guide.
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Thanks to Upaynao for a great job GMing Eyes of the Ten which a group of us finished yesterday.
Dame Candi had a most Calistrian adventure.
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My 14yo son just signed up for his first PbP game, to start this week, and has registered for one of the Retrocon slots. He has played a fair amount of Pathfinder (Society and home APs) - we started playing as a family when he was 9 and our daughter was 12 - and he GMed club games last year in 8th grade, but after listening to me blather on about PbP for the past couple of years he decided to jump in. I’m looking forward to hearing how it goes!
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So, the group of kids i've been teaching how to play PAthfinder? well, they've grown quite attached to specific pregens. so, with Halloween looming the day after my last session- i decided to take them from toddlers learning to crawl- straight to learning to ride a bike: BY RUNNING THEM THROUGH THE INTRODUCTION OF STRANGE AEONS.
Kids came, asked where the pregens were, I simply smiled and said "Today's special."
So they picked their dice, and their pawns and sat down as i began reading...
"You come to consciousness, amidst dense fog. You have no idea where you are, why you are here, or how you even got here. Worse, YOU BARELY HAVE ANY IDEA WHO YOU ARE." With that, i presented the pregens- all face down, and told the kids "Choose at random."
After they chose, i ran them through an abandoned town [courtesy of the Slum Quarters map pack] and hunted them down with the Tatter man.
A Cleric was strangled, a barbarian who tried to punch the tatter man had her arm cleanly cut off, and a monk who didn't stay for tea was thrown down a well.
A nice adventure for halloween week. Best yet- i told the office workers i was going to 'traumatize' the students with today's session and one replied "good- do it, my kid is in your club."
The librarian hopes to try to make this an "After school" session, but it would be hard managing two dozen students trying to learn the game. Unless the students don't mind alternating weeks to keep a managable party.
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Venture-Captain, Special Projects
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So... it's my first time with a PC death at my table, I was terrified that my player would be really upset, the Society here is really new and I didn't want to scare off a new-ish player... He looked at me and said "Hey, it happens. I was going to make my dash two anyway, now I really have to." and I'm am so grateful and happy that they took it well.
I honestly have the best little Society group because they are all really relaxed and understand that sometimes the dice just aren't on your side.
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Venture-Captain, Minnesota
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My first PC death at a table was like that too. Nate (Rosc, here on the forums) took his level one character's death to Barbarian crit very well. However... The very next time he was at my table, he had created a spiritualist with the ghost of his former character as a phantom.
In introducing himself, the phantom announced, "I was crudely murdered not just by an Aspis barbarian, but also by a humming sound on the wind...."
Hmm
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So...like...every time I hear Billy Joel sing
She's Always a Woman
[I]Billy Joel[I]
She can kill with a smile, she can wound with her eyes
She can ruin your faith with her casual lies
And she only reveals what she wants you to see
She hides like a child but she's always a woman to me
She can lead you to love, she can take you or leave you
She can ask for the truth but she'll never believe you
And she'll take what you give her as long as it's free
Yeah she steals like a thief but she's always a woman to me
Oh, she takes care of herself, she can wait if she wants
She's ahead of her time
Oh, she never gives out and she never gives in
She just changes her mind
And she'll promise you more than the garden of Eden
Then she'll carelessly cut you and laugh while you're bleeding
But she brings out the best and the worst you can be
Blame it all on yourself 'cause she's always a woman to me
Oh, she takes care of herself, she can wait if she wants
She's ahead of her time
Oh, she never gives out and she never gives in
She just changes her mind
She is frequently kind and she's suddenly cruel
She can do as she pleases, she's nobody's fool
But she can't be convicted, she's earned her degree
And the most she will do is throw shadows at you
But she's always a woman to me
I want my Bard to have an encounter with a charismatic medusa rogue/shadowdancer with bleeding attack so I can sing about it.
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Venture-Captain, Special Projects
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I really need to visit the forums more, Hilary, that's hilarious xD
Happiness for the day: It's now officially been almost a full school year since I started Flagstaff's branch of PFS (we end term in 2 weeks-ish), and my little Society that started off with me not knowing if I'd have a table that night or not has now grown to the point where I need to consistently plan for 2 tables and call up my friends to see if they'll GM.
The group is really very positive, doesn't really argue a ton, and generally respects whatever ruling I have to decide on when disagreements occur. I've had a rough term health-wise, and PFS has been my escape and honestly the group I have is really supportive and helps get me to and from games when they can (I have a visual impairment so I can't drive myself, and so they'll offer me rides when they can :3).
Tonight the veteran players helped my table of entirely new players build their characters before going to play at their table. It was very fantastic and heartwarming to see!
Anyway, I just wanted to share the positivity that's been going on here in my little section of the world :3
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Well, my middle school volunteering gig is winding down, as the students prepare for the "standardized" end of the year testings.
I was planning on running the kids through We Be Goblins but with one more week left, i've changed my mind.
I've ran them through the Beginner Box, ran them through the introduction to Strange Aeons for halloween, i gave them lvl 7 pregens and threw them against some dragons for the holidays. I tried to get them to build characters themselves, but they just seem to want to play more than learn how to play... so I began running them through Silverhex Chronicles.
with one last session looming, I've decided their final encounter- THEMSELVES. it will be a mirror match.
Here's to hoping the teacher next year calls for my assistance and we do an afterschool session, rather than half-hour lunches.
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I always like the funny stories from games past... So let me "float this story past you..."
The players are a group of (mostly) new players and the scenario is First Steps (3 of the five playing an RPG for the very first time, and another one was a younger kid (yeah, the "experienced gamer" was maybe not so experienced...).
At the warehouse they discover their ninja has no ranks in Disable Device, so, can't pick the lock and they are concerned about braking down the door. So they look for other ways in... Looking around they find a boat... yada-yada, climb up the hole into the warehouse.
Continue the adventure, disturb the inhabitants, and several minutes pass while they first fight the "monsters" in the area, then get the McMuffen. Yeah! It's high fives and congrats all around, ... then they discover no one tied the boat off... and it's drifted away.
After braking OUT of the warehouse, they all do the "I'm not guilty fast walk" away from the dock - glancing around to see if anyone might have saw them.
This only gets better when the next week several of the same players (and PCs) play a different adventure where again they are in a small boat. This time they climb up the side of a ship - into a fight - and you guessed it, failed to tie the small boat to the ship... leaving an animal companion (a boar) who couldn't climb onto the ship in the small boat.
So I think I'm going to look up another scenario for this group that involves traveling in a small boat... just to see if "three times the charm"!
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Note to self: my character needs to buy something ridiculous before starting at the tier 1-2 SFS special on Saturday!Wait, what tier 1-2 SFS special? The only one I know of is Skittershot and that uses pregens.
We played the 2018 Gen Con Saturday night special at Tier 1-2. We had a great time, and I think envoy is now my favorite class (although I did not get to try the playtest witchwarper).
Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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Envoy is a wonderful class! I've gotten such a kick out of Charli, my -701!
Hmm
The amount if fun I had with my Envoy and separate from that, the Icon theme, is really quite astounding.
For the class it might be a mechanical thing, actually doing things every round feels better than starting your barding performance once, and at the same time, I am not bogged down having to track buffs.I am so very curious what cool now things we will get in the next hardcover.
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Envoy is a wonderful class! I've gotten such a kick out of Charli, my -701!
Hmm
The amount if fun I had with my Envoy and separate from that, the Icon theme, is really quite astounding.
For the class it might be a mechanical thing, actually doing things every round feels better than starting your barding performance once, and at the same time, I am not bogged down having to track buffs.I am so very curious what cool now things we will get in the next hardcover.
Seconded!
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Venture-Captain, Special Projects
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Today on Arizona Pathfinder Society: Convention Edition
I miscalculated how much time it would take me to prep a total of 40 individual maps for Phoenix’s convention this weekend (yeah... have fun at Paizo Con without me guys xD). Many of the GMs I got to volunteer are new to GMing, and so I offered to prep their maps for them if they’d give me some money to help cover the cost of laminating sheets (even with their help I still spent $50 of my own money on the laminating sheets and I’m not even GMing this Con, I’m in HQ >.< ). So... needless to say when I went to GM Saturday, I still had a lot of work to do and took my laminator, scissors, tape, printed maps, and the laminating sheets to the store...
I worked while GMing. Until all of a sudden, I didn’t have to anymore.
At one point one of my players grabbed the stack of sleeved map tiles and fed them through the laminator for me. Another player grabbed the scissors and began to trim the maps. By the end everyone was helping in some way or another and when the store closed they came back to my apartment to help me finish. It was 3am before we were done.
Additionally, when they found out I had to still spend my own money on the laminating sheets, one of them covered my snacks and dinner that night.
If that wasn’t enough, as they were leaving, my players told me how much they appreciated the work I put into Society so hey can have good experiences at my tables. Not going to lie, I cried a little at that one. I have an amazing community and I feel blessed to have players that will stop and help the new members or recruit friends to come play. But these displays of appreciation for me—that got me.
It was nice to know I was appreciated <3
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If that wasn’t enough, as they were leaving, my players told me how much they appreciated the work I put into Society so hey can have good experiences at my tables. Not going to lie, I cried a little at that one. I have an amazing community and I feel blessed to have players that will stop and help the new members or recruit friends to come play. But these displays of appreciation for me—that got me.
It was nice to know I was appreciated <3
Heck, Kiela, I don't even know you and I appreciate all the effort you put in for this. Way to go working that extra mile and it seems you've surrounded yourself with the right people. :D