In reply to Thane Harkensen (msg # 369)

Dal raises her mug in recognition of the toast.  "Here, here.  Well said Thane.  I hope everybody has a great and safe holiday."
This message was last edited by the player at 03:12, Tue 25 Dec 2018.

Happy New Year Heroes of Icewind Dale! Wishing you all the best for 2019!

Shane

May this year be filled with happiness and prosperity!

Yes, Happy New Year, everyone!

Happy New Years my fellow comrades and most excellent GM.

Let the New year start off right.

Brew - check
food - check but could use another roast
family - absolutely - looks around
and....

hugs!  - Proceeds to tackle everybody and gives them New Years Hugs.

Happy New Year :)

Here's hoping that everyone's wishes and resolutions come true during this new year. :)

Hello folks!

Hopefully life is treating you all well. As for myself, the last few months have been really good.

On the gaming front, this past summer I ran a Kids-Only (ages 10-14) 5e D&D mini-campaign at the local game store. This game was loosely based on the excellent cooperative board game Forbidden Island and was a lot of fun. Table size for that game ran from 5-10 players and those kids really kept me on my toes! Running games for kids is a lot of fun because they don't approach the game the same way as adults. Lots of outside-the-box thinking and you need to be really good at improv to keep the game moving.

I also wrapped up my 18-month 5e D&D Tomb of Annilhilation campaign, in which the players were successful in foiling the machinations of the notorious lich Acererak and ending the Death Curse that had plagued the lands. I ran that campaign under the Adventurers League format, and over the course of the campaign over 40 players ran through that adventure! We did have a fairly steady crew of 4 players, but having new players drop-in/drop-out kept things pretty dynamic.

I was able to wrap up the last of my PbP games, Realms of High Adventure, earlier this month in what hope was a satisfying conclusion to a Basic D&D game that had been running for 3 years and which had started as a "one-shot". In the end, the players prevailed against the Red Hand of Doom and prevented their warlord from summoning Tiamat into the vale and visiting certain death upon the citizenry of that far-flung realm.

On the non-gaming front, my family completed the South Carolina Ultimate Outsider challenge, in which we visited all 47 state parks! It tooks us a little over two years to visit all the state parks and was a very memorable adventure consisting of camping, hiking, kayaking, mountain biking, fishing, swimming, horseback riding, body-boarding, and just sitting back and enjoying the great outdoors.

I also got orders a couple of weeks ago, wherein we will be moving to San Antonio, Texas in January! We're really excited about this move and the new opportunities it will present. I think this will be my last assignment in the Air Force and we will be putting down roots in Texas. I have 23 years in the Air Force and this assignment should bring me to 25-26 years of military service. Air Force basic training is in San Antonio and there is something fitting about ending my military career in the same place where it began. Texas is also a really good place to retire and has good job opportunities for both me and my wife. Excellent schools for my kids too, who are both now in middle school.

Obviously most of my focus is on moving right now and as a result, I won't be doing much gaming in the next few months...but have definitely been thinking about what I want to do next! Lots of ideas to be sure, but need to sort out our move first.

At any rate, like I said up front, I hope all of you are doing well and the dice roller has been cooperating lately!

:)

Shane

Glad to read all that great news Shane!  Safe travels and you're right, it is fitting that you end where you begin.  I hope to be retiring in 2020 but I will be moving out of state, maybe Arkansas, which will be the first time I'll be living/moving by myself.  Daunting.

I hope everybody is staying safe and enjoying life when you can because you never know when you can't.

Hugs to all

All good news there Boss!  Glad to hear from you again and hope once things settle you can toss us around in a game some more.

Hey Dal, what part of Arkansas you thinking of settling down?  It is a nice state and there are gaming places if you want to find a tabletop group.

In reply to Kira (msg # 379):

I'm not sure yet Kira.  Jonesboro, Trumann, Weiner area probably.

Ah, more north than I am.  Jonesboro of course is where Arkansas State University is and a fairly good part.  Not sure about Trumann and Weiner but probably smaller and quieter towns, definitely rural.

Glad to hear everyone's doing well :)

I expect it will be nice to finally get settled. We moved around quite a bit during my training, and it was a huge relief to get rid of all the moving boxes when we finally landed where we are now. They're going to have to drag me out of this house one day. I'm not planning on going anywhere.

In reply to Morgrim Ironhammer (msg # 382):

<tackles brother and give him a big hug>

Hey bro!   Do I get to help drag you out?  :)
It's good to hear from everybody.

You're welcome to try ;)

Like it would be hard?  Just have a mug or two of ale or one hand with ale and the other with food.  You'd be following me easily.  Especially if it was your favorite mug and I was drinking out of it.  :)

Hello everyone!

Checking in to see how everyone is doing in these strange times...

As for myself, we moved to San Antonio, TX this past January and barely had time to get settled in before COVID-19 struck and changed everything. My family has stayed healthy throughout, but the pandemic has definitely impacted our ability to get out and explore the city. I am told there are a lot of things to do here, but I haven't really had the opportunity to do very much while here. I guess at some point when things return to some level of normalcy, I will have a better sense of the area. From what I have seen, I like it here, just the times we are living in leave something to be desired :)

On the gaming front, I migrated all my tabletop games to virtual tabletop (VTT), in my case Roll20. I have been running two VTT campaigns since last March--one for my kids and their friends/cousins (six children, ages 11-14) and one for adults--on alternating Saturdays. Same campaign/adventure, just different groups, so it has been very interesting to see how the Kids and Adults approach the same problems, differently. Interestingly, the Kids' game wants to parlay with adversaries and the adults have murder-hobo tendencies. Opposite of what you might expect, perhaps?

This past summer, after a year-long break, I got the itch to do play-by-post again. I restarted the Basic D&D Red Hand of Doom campaign I had been running, to run the finale of that adventure (dungeon delve inside crazed dragon cultists' lair who are trying to summon Tiamat from the Abyss into the world). Having a lot of fun with this game and excited to see how it plays out.

Around the same time, I also started up a trial/one-shot 5e D&D Eberron game. This game is close to completion and I am fairly certain I will shutter the game as soon as we complete the adventure.

At any rate, hopefully life is treating you well!

Shane

In reply to DM Shard (msg # 386):

Good to hear from you.

At the end of June I retired and moved out of state.  I'm in Arkansas now and adjusting to living on 3/4 of my income that I used to have.  Overall I am happier here.  It's a fresh start since I don't have family here, etc.

COVID hurt all my games on RPoL but we are hanging in there.

Even though I am retired, I'm still getting settled.  I am renting a one bedroom house (no stairs except the two to get on the porch---YAY!) and it is a fixer upper.  that means I am negotiating with the landlord on what needs to get fixed before bad weather sets in.  He only lives 2 blocks from me so if something goes wrong, I know where I can find him!

Everybody stay safe!

We're good. Work slowed down in the preparatory stages of the pandemic, but never stopped. The older two kids survived a semester of zoom school and are back in the classroom now. Our youngest is still at home. Our bubble has fluctuated a bit with prevalence in the community but we're fortunate North of the border to have been spared the worst of it. There have been two deaths total attributed to COVID in the hospital I work in, and only a handful of admissions besides.

Like yourself we've largely transitioned over to virtual table tops, Forge in our case. I still keep busy on RPOL though. Got to have an outlet somewhere :)

Great to hear from you and to know you are settling into your retirement. I believe one of our other players from this game also lived in Arkansas. So, you're like neighbors now! ;)

Great to hear from you and to know you're getting through these times.

Not familiar with Forge...there are so many VTTs out there in the market now, hard to keep up. There really has never been a better time to be a gamer! We're living in the Golden Age, don't let anyone tell you different!

Yup, another Arkansan here.  Things have been up and down for my house, younger son glad to be back in school and doing well enough with the challenges of being face to face again.  Thought he'd complain about the mask but he really didn't like virtual learning.  Older son is dealing with job issues but plodding along and hoping to start taking some college courses again soon.  Money is just tight for us sadly but we have each other and that keeps us laughing most of the time.

In reply to Kira (msg # 391):

I am glad that I don't have to deal with school now.  I heard that the University has a hold on hiring people and due to budget cuts, they aren't replacing anybody.  So far in the Dean's office where I worked, there are now 3 people who are planning on leaving by the end of November.  It's getting to be bare bones and now the Dean is going to step down and be just a faculty member next year instead of both faculty member and Dean.

Online schooling has kept them going but not everybody likes that and also wonder why pay so much for it if they aren't on campus, etc.

Where in AR Kira?  I'm in Trumann.

In reply to Dalgura Ironhammer (msg # 392):

Ah, you're up northeast.  I'm just a bit southwest of Little Rock.  Sort of in the country but close enough to cities to get what we need.  Sorry to hear about the troubles at your university but it seems like that is what is happening to a lot of places.  My son is looking to take more classes but is going to focus on the online stuff for now while he continues to work and try to keep paying off the student loans he accumulated before.

In reply to Kira (msg # 393):

That's a smart plan for him to have.