Announcement was made tonight at church: Special Business Meeting called for Sunday, March 10 to vote on me. Looks like the personnel committee did decide to suggest me to the church, and the vote is now scheduled. I'm generally optimistic now. I don't know of any opposition, and frankly don't know what their alternative is.

So it looks good I think, nothing really to do now but leave it in God's hands and try not to do anything so abysmally stupid the general church would vote no.


On a different note (no pun intended) I had three good conversations while shopping today. All three with church pianists. (alright, not intended, but it certainly fits)

The first was the piano player when I was 10 and talked into helping out with the music, she also taught me to sing specials. The last few years have been hard on her, she lost a lot of people. I encouraged her to find a good active church to join. I of course invited her to join my choir, but I think she's probably going to opt for First Crowville, a good choice for her, and close by.

The second was my current church pianist. I like her a lot and now call her my "Piano Momma".

The third was a crazy lady with her children.  ;)

Tomorrow I will look at the calendar and try to find a good weekend in April to suggest we  get together socially, with maybe discussion about the next game, and what to do about Bekah's game.

I resent being called a crazy lady!

...Even though it's accurate....

That was insensitive of me. We prefer to be called "normality challenged".

https://youtu.be/1ZiMwE2TZYk

I got an email from Amazon that someone was asking a question about the French press coffee pot I bought a while back.  It was such a stupid question that I couldn't help myself.

Q:  "What happens if you add regular store bought coffee grounds?"

A:  "Well, assuming you add hot water, in about 4 minutes you have coffee.  All I ever use in mine is store bought grounds and it works fine."

I couldn't figure out why Nexus Mod Manager wouldn't update.  Looks like they're using something called Vortex now.  I'm not sure how I feel about it so far.

https://youtu.be/mMesEO5_lWA  Scott Brown Incident

https://youtu.be/epM1GJN4kog  The Bonesaw

https://youtu.be/dJxHZITIc2g  For Thor!
This message was last updated by the player at 21:38, Thu 14 Mar 2019.

If you feel like getting extra into character:
63 differences between American and British English

https://writerswrite.co.za/bri...vs-american-english/

I always heard that one reason that America dropped the "u" from words like "colour" and "armour" was because of newspapers charging by the letter for ads and such.

These guys are starting up a new RPG related podcast and their first episode is going to be about the "Satanic Panic," so they were on Reddit asking for people's stories about it.  So I shared my story about the first game I played in.  I think they're supposed to have it ready in a week or 2, I'm sure they interviewed more people than just me.  But they were asking about how my faith has affected my gameplay and vice versa.  It was some stuff I'd never really thought about before.

https://i.redd.it/uw24rwlz36m21.png

Yes, it's a cantrip but it's arguably one of the most useful spells in the book.

-You create an instantaneous, harmless sensory effect,
such as a shower of sparks, a puff of wind, faint musi­cal
notes, or an odd odor.

If you need to signal someone on the other side of a courtyard or something, just throw a shower of sparks around yourself as a signal.

-You instantaneously light or snuff out a candle, a
torch, or a small campfire.

Useful if you need to start a fire in damp conditions.  Nothing says you can't add more wood to the small fire to make a bigger one after it's lit.

-You instantaneously clean or soil an object no larger
than 1 cubic foot.

Laundry?  What laundry?  Or the opposite, if you need to make someone's clothes dirty to sell a disguise.

-You chill, warm, or flavor up to 1 cubic foot of nonliv­ing material for 1 hour.

For the record, that's 7 1/2 GALLONS.  So if you want cold beer, make friends with the wizard.  Is the elf cooking supper again and he doesn't know how to season food?  Prestidigitate it up a notch!  BAM!

-You make a color, a small mark, or a symbol appear
on an object or a surface for 1 hour.

Okay, this one's maybe a bit more limited because of the spell's range (10 feet) but I can see using it to pass messages back and forth secretly at a dinner table or something maybe.

-You create a nonmagical trinket or an illusory image
that can fit in your hand and that lasts until the end of
your next turn.

Again, I don't see this one being overly useful because of its duration, though I can see it being used basically like making a holographic image of something to show the rest of the party what they're looking for or something of that nature.

In reply to James Urquhart (msg # 35):

So I went down the Skorkowsky rabbit hole...

Let me preface by saying that I generally only watch Youtube videos from people I already know because I find so many "Youtube hosts" unbearable - they are convinced their opinion is right, they know everything, and if you don't agree you are the devil. I can only take so much smugness before wanting to inflict pain...

So that is my mindset going in.  Which makes it more meaningful when I say..

I'm all in on the Skorkowsky bandwagon!

After watching the war stories I dug into the gmtoolbox and rpg philosophy videos and while I did not always agree with every conclusion, (though I probably did more often than not) the presentation of his arguments was fantastic. He is careful to make sure most of his arguments are presented as his opinion, not absolutes. He does not berate opposing opinions. For each point he provides a clear thesis with examples.

Frankly, these were a joy to watch.

In reply to The Storyteller (msg # 41):

I agree! I love him and his philosophy of roleplaying in general. His "RPG Social Contract" video should be, I think, required viewing for anyone new entering the hobby. If more people played like this, there would be a whole lot fewer dysfunctional games.

https://www.irishpost.com/news...ound-hard-ons-142488

Apparently there is a way to tell what an individual die will roll most often over time. This is for plastic dice with symmetrical edges.

Put them in salt water with enough salt the dice float. If there is a weight imbalance in the die, that spot will consistently move to the bottom, the number showing being the result you will get most often.

Or that's what they tell me, I have a sneaking suspicion I may try it.

In reply to Sebastiano Elia Romani (msg # 44):

I tried it, my dice wouldn’t float, no matter how much I salted the water.

In reply to James Urquhart (msg # 45):

oops, looks like I've got to edit my post.

In reply to Sebastiano Elia Romani (msg # 46):

Heh, sorry if I cut you off mid writing. My US history students were taking LEAP practice tests today, so I've had extra time to muck about on RPOL.

Not so good at patience when I'm bored!

Here’s the podcast I was interviewed for.

https://open.spotify.com/show/...6d_gOBQgORousE5ggo_w

So...I think we can all say this introduction has had some issues.  Everyone came in with a different idea of what the game was. That is on me.  I take full responsibility for not providing more guidance during the character creation process. For not pushing harder for everyone to discuss everything about their character in the creation thread so we were all on the same page.  That is on me.  I have a tendency to be extremely hands off, let everyone play whatever, and try to wrap my story around it assuming everyone will easily adapt.

Then I made things worse by rapid-fire posting because my schedule allowed it.  That was also wrong, and unfair to those who did not have the ability to post as quickly as I did.

So, My Apologies. Seriously, this is on me, and I’m sorry.  I have been working on a version of this game for close to six years now and wanted so badly to run it, I allowed myself to make several crucial mistakes.

So here is the Game’s full premise – in case there is still any more confusion. The supernatural exists.  How much? You don’t know. The gods are real, though not all of them are active. Magic exists. All of this is a carefully guarded secret.  So secret that it is not spoken of by anyone outside of the taskforce. So secret that most major world governments signed a Treaty to make sure it stays secret. One of the taskforce’s jobs will be to make sure it stays a secret.  The other will be to stop evil magic users, monsters, unexplained phenomenon, whatever, from hurting people.

Does anyone have any questions/issues/confusion about the games premise? Or the game in general? Or anything really?


Next GM story post comes tomorrow morning, that should have provided plenty of time for the characters to air out any remaining issues. If there is a problem with my waiting until then, or you need more time, let me know.
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:46, Thu 04 Apr 2019.

I'll take a share of this rough start, too. I should have figured out which way everyone else was leaning with the party, and taken that into account. I really wanted to basically riff on Shawn Spencer from Psych, and I'm realizing how that isn't gonna work for this game. I'm gonna go ahead and fix that; I'm still trying to make him the comic relief, but he'll be (hopefully) less irritating than I was originally intending him to be.

I'll take that as a kindness, that's the main reason I never watched Psych was because that character annoyed ten kinds of crap out of me.

Yeah, he's a bit of an... acquired taste? I personally love the show, but I'll ease up on the irritation factor.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBe...p;utm_medium=ios_app

This approaches the idea from the perspective of film.  What stood out to me was that Patton, a 3 1/2 hour movie only had about 33 minutes of score written for it.