Hey! First of all, Merry Christmas, and/or Happy Holidays! Hope you've both had a good, meaningful, restful time with family and loved ones!

I posted a reply, but honestly am not entirely sure how to proceed. Should we fast forward through the admin? Or does our DM have some hooks in mind that you're hoping to introduce during RP? I'm happy either to fast forward to continue with the tavern RP. Whichever works better for the story.

In reply to Filimena the Gentle (msg # 733):

Hello guys and Merry holidays! First, so so sorry of my lack of presence lately. December passed into a sort of blur filled with long days (and many evening) of work. I tried checking the RP regularly, but got stuck in a loop of 1) Checking RPOL in the morning, being unsure of how Marik would respond or what to do, 2) Take time to think about how to progress or respond during the day and try to post during the day, 3) Being flooded with work pushing the posting in the late evening, 4) Completely forget or being too tired at 10 pm to take half an hour to form coherent sentences. 5)Phase out and forget for a few days until I see a new post and return to 1)  And that is excluding the nights and weekends where we rediscovered (for a time) the pleasure of board game nights, bars and visits to other people. Anyway, I know I'm not the only one with busy schedules here and I don't want to complain. I still love the game and want to play, but couldn't muster the energy for it lately. Sorry, and I'll try not to slow you down in the new year,

Saying that, I already feel like a liar since my girlfriend will finally be able to visit me for two weeks starting tomorrow and I will probably pass very little time in front of the computer to be with her before she goes back to Europe again. Feel free to progress without me or by taking control of Marik. I will catch up with you guys as soon as possible (at the latest of the 18th of January).

For the game, I would also be up for a time skip up to where the tavern has been at least partially reconstructed and operating. I will submit a few ideas to you DM about what Marik could craft as his personal touch in the renovations. Will try to write this in bullet points tonight or tomorrow :D


Otherwise, how are your own lives going? Enjoying the holidays? New hobbies? For my part, I imitated Marik again and started crafting beer myself, which I love. I made an American pale Ale, a dark red caramel red with Munich malt, a Season beer with flowers infusion and a red beer with boreal herbs. Managed to make my first full 24 bottles of crafted beer. I love the process, it's slow and incredibly relaxing (which I usually do on Sunday afternoon). Might I add I'm quite proud that the beer is good! Whish is most likely because I followed recipes, that I adjusted and modified. :)

I've put out a few hooks based on Filimena's desire to find her brother and have a few waiting for Marik and his desire to hunt illithid :D

Honestly I'm up for whatever y'all want to do in Titan's Gate or don't wanna do... heck you can leave and go explore the Maw if you so desire.


Life has been crazy - holidays have been hectic as I'm not taking much time off even though I should.  no new hobbies for me just the usual rpgs and boardgames. I am currently running some ICRPG for my previously in-person group (which is now online) with HOPES of running Band of Blades in the New Year

Heyo! Is anything happening? I've been waiting either for Marik to post one of his ideas (since the last post on the thread implies there are some coming) or for Renaer to respond to my question about him taking care of the arrangements.

I suppose Marik is still happily occupied IRL. I suppose it's safe for me to assume that we're going to hand wave the nitty gritty of setting up the tavern? I'll wait a bit and either tonight or tomorrow morning kick off with Filimena going for a stroll about town in search of clues for her brother, probably starting with the church.

In reply to Filimena the Gentle (msg # 736):

Hola! Yes, sorry for the wait. My girlfriend left yesterday and returning now to my normal lifestyle. Working on my post between catching up on work. Will try to post later in the day with Marik serving drinks in a renovated tavern.

Started the post, which is taking me more time than I thought. Did a few attempts and want to put in more work since it's will be my first longer post in a while. Will try to finish it tomorrow evening. Sorry for the wait!

In reply to Marik (msg # 738):

And there it is, a little fluff piece to describe the new taproom. Back to you, DM! Will write Marik next post depending on the events unfolding. Of course, feel free to add as you wish Filimena. :)

I posted something. Filimena is looking for Marik. Not sure if Marik is also in the tavern. Would he ever be apart from Rani? Haha.

In reply to Filimena the Gentle (msg # 740):

Nah, he's there. He's the shadowy figure on her back serving drinks. He wouldn't leave her ever.  :D

I got my COVID booster yesterday. WOW do I feel horrible. Haha. I hope the two of you are doing ok this winter.

Oh YAH! Got mine last Saturday (Moderna) and was shivering all night. Felt like a hangover all Sunday too. That one was indeed a kicker and felt terrible all Sunday (although I don't know how much of it was due to the vaccine and how much it was the heartache of seeing my apartment again empty after my girlfriend leaving).


I'm doing otherwise great this winter. Did a lot of winter sports including ski, horseriding and hiking. My beer brewing experiments are going quite great to my taste and got some great new board games I can now start trying with my friends (now that we're all vaccinated and cases are dropping). How are you on your end?

I switched to Moderna too, after taking Pfizer the first two doses. I heard from friends who also made the switch that the side effects would be worse so I sort of expected it.

Well it's not winter down here, one degree north of the equator, but December is our wet season, and this last December was particularly rainy. We had thunderstorms nearly every day, and the temperature got as low as 25 degrees Celsius during the day, which may as well be winter, I think =P

Notwithstanding the weather I've actually been out of the house geocaching quite a bit, during the brief spots of sunlight during the day. Other than that, not really anything interesting to report. I actually considered brewing beer for a while. Apparently it's becoming a quite a hobby here as well. I'm not sure what people do to get the temperature down to a conducive one for the yeast, though. Even indoors, unless you have the air conditioning on all the time, it seldom gets below 27 degrees Celsius indoors.

Incidentally, Marik, I mentioned to my siblings the other evening that I had a friend in Quebec, and they asked whether you had ever fallen victim to one of those street gags on Juste pour rire. I said I'd pass the question along! Haha =P

Hahaha! Never had the pleasure yet but maybe one day :D I don't tend to go much on the main commercial streets where they have their hunting grounds. Will let you know if I ever catch one (or if they catch me!)

Sorry y'all work has been crazy of late and sapping my will to stay on a computer for more than the 9+ hours I'm already on it.  In other news I need a vacation!

The wife and I are fully vax and boosted with Pfizer x3. Booster wasn't bad but it did make it tough to sleep on that arm as it was VERY sore for a few days.  We are still cautious here as cases spiked recently and two of our close friends got the Omicron variant (both had the J&J vax - not sure if they got the booster too)

I'm heading up to Tahoe area for work this week, should get to see some snow and take some pretty pictures while I'm investigation radio tower sites (Beckwourth & Martis Peaks) on the side of mountains.  Next week I'm in Chico, CA for another set of radio sites.



oh and Filimena, looks like my wife's company might be hiring more folks down in Singapore so there's a chance I'll get to go back!  So if you're up for meeting a random 40 something white guy with a beard from the internet I'll buy you a beer and we can talk about how poor Filimena is doing  ;)

In reply to DM5 (msg # 747):

Hahaha. Sure! Let me know when you're coming over! I'd grow a beard too if I could. All I can manage is a goatee, and even that looks really weird because I have a scar on my chin from when I fell when I was a kid, and the hair grows in all the wrong directions.

I want to give Marik a moment to say/do something

Alrihgt! Sorry, wasn't quite sure how to intervene and let things play out a bit.

By the way, I'm happy to report I've started DMing again for my regular group! I'm not really sure what started it. One day somebody asked about playing a one-shot, and usually I would demur and be non-committal about it, but this time I just say, Sure, we should!

I've run a single one-shot, this past Sunday. It was very rough. So many of the rules have slipped my mind. I was especially bad at running the NPCs. I plain forgot how to RP I think. But it was fun. I'm planning a few more one-shots, and reading JVC Parry's Call from the Deep with the intention of running it as a campaign! It's so nice to be back in the groove of things again.

yay more games!!!  I'm sure it'll be fine -- rules are always second to fun at the table


I started a Monster of the Week game with my weekly group yesterday - we got thru character gen and character interconnections -- which ended up looking like this! We will start the first mystery next week

Wow! That looks pretty cool! What tool did you use to do that?

We actually did something similar with our Tomb of Annihilation game, for a session 0. I had each player talk about their character, and then once we were all done, they took turns describing a connection with the characters on their left and right, just as a creative prompt. Once we were done we discarded some connections that we didn't think made sense, and added a few back in that emerged during the discussion and that excited us especially.

Speaking of ToA, we actually decided, instead of JVC Parry's Call from the Deep, we would try rebooting out ToA game instead, because that was the one we were playing when I realised I was burnt out. We were about three sessions in, four if you count the session 0. They were very dense sessions, though. I dropped so many hints and plot hooks. It's going to be a bit of a challenge, restarting the adventure, making sure the players remember the necessary hints and hooks, without it being overwhelming. I'm still figuring it out, but I'm sure it'll be fine.

Despite my apprehensions I'm quite excited, actually, because I had so much planned for this campaigned. Of all the campaigns I've run so far, this one made the best use of all the characters' backstories. I think I burnt out right at the height of my DMing powers. Haha. It's going to be cool getting back into it again.

  It is the built in Roll20 stuff from the free MotW starter adventure.  Each character "playbook" (sort of like a class) has a series of ties/history prompts which we used.  It was really neat to see my players open up once they figure out they were supposed to know each other more than just in passing.


I played thru ToA in Adventurers League with a life cleric where we only lost 1 PC along the way.  Came close a couple of times and I always had Death Ward cast on my cleric and our rogue!

I think Ironclad is my favorite NPC in a while

I love them too ^^ And we can tell you're having fun with his systems.

I mean they're an explorer so they has to have all the proper tools to do that job ... right?
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:47, Wed 23 Mar 2022.