That and the litigation is precisely why I broke with family tradition and became a corporate rat. In the end, I will state categorically that it would have been better to have suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous government than to have been unceremoniously treated to IBM cancelling not one but two pension programs on me, receiving the first round of pay cuts in company history on their 100th anniversary, having them remove all my incentives and limit my bonuses (effectively reducing my salary from 85 to about 55, ouch!!) and then unceremoniously laying me off 6 months shy of 20 official years with the company, a total of 22 in service, making sure that I had no grounds to petition for the pension under the law suits.

Maybe the other way would have been a rough road but dammit, you have a hand on the wheel. I was blinded by my dream of retiring at 62 with a full pension and a lot of fishing in my future. Probably work until the day I keel over dead now...

2007 and 2008 cost me over a quarter million in 401k, stocks and equity, I have just now recovered this year.

Oh, to do it over again... 18 and know what I know now... would have married that cute brunette and robbed a liquor store if I had to do so to finish up college that first try!

Ouch. I think maybe I'll reevaluate things after reading that.

07-08 was miserable for everyone, but a quarter mil? That's A LOT to leave on the table through no fault of your own. Swear corporations, combined with lawyers are the devil's henchmen.

I'm sure there's a way to leverage 40 years of playing dnd, I just wish I had the technical chops to do it. If I have any regrets (and, if I'm being honest, I'm mostly just bitching to hear myself bitch) it's that I didn't get into a tech MOS when I was in the Navy. Loading bombs was great and all, but being an electrician or some other useful job would have done me much better.

As for the cute blond, yeah, I wish I had that one to do over too. LOL.

By the way, and appropo to nothing, but I just got nominated as one of the finalists for a poem I submitted to a contest I entered over the summer. TBH, I forgot about it - got the email yesterday. I'm a bit excited...grand prize is $1000.

Brunette, I married the cute blonde. The cute brunette keeps sending me pictures on facebook to remind me that she looks 20 years younger than she really is, still hot as a firecracker and I walked away from her when I went to college....duh... owns her own business and has a boy toy that looks like he might have a 70 IQ to go with all those muscles.

Yeah, my MOS translated fairly well to the civvie world but the transition was rough for me. It's kept food on the table, opened some sticky doors and generally been good though it probably aged me twenty years. Got recruited by State when I got out along with a few other agencies I'm not going to mention, I turned away from working Govt and went to the private sector, haven't regretted that decision! Regret not realizing Big Blue was set to screw us all over, about 45 to 50,000 of us in similar situations, and walking when I had the chance in 2010.

Poem? Nice? Tried my hand at it in college, while technically sound, it was doggerel at best.

I wrote a lot of poetry in college. I always liked to write - stories, poetry, have a couple full length novels I've been kicking around for years.

Although I had these dreams of being a successful fantasy author, I think parental pressure to 'get a job' after college distorted my goals. Somehow making $40K out of school became more important than my dreams. Don't get me wrong, my parents were great. I just didn't have the vision or the motivation to really deep dive into a writing career. Path of least resistance and all that. It was only after the Navy that I realized how demanding a 'real' job is.

I can't complain: I've had some incredible successes in business, a couple epic failures as well, and everything in between. My biggest regret, ironically enough, was not staying with the little blond girl from Miss State who absolutely adored me. Instead I went with the Vandy Grad. I wish fervently that I had made the right choice on that one. But, we are the sum of all our decisions, so you either I'll grin and bear it, or move on.

Those little Mississippi blondes can sure tear a guy a new one...

I hear ya bout the epic failures, nice thing about yours are you learned and moved on, obviously, mine, I had to hunt a new job. Was never fired though, laid off what? five times now? Ugh. Sux.

The Swords Against thread will be my default after each adventure. FYI.

Gotta run, work calls. I'll be late tonight. Try to get most of the important parts of your character sheet done so we can get up and running. Have some really good ideas...

Looking forward to it!

I will be at work tonight, probably after about....11 Eastern, I'll get on and get some of this done if not all. I will have a lot of catch up after missing last couple weeks!

No pressure and no worries. I'm just excited as hell for this adventure. I think it's gonna be fun.

Well.... 11 turned into 3 which turned into 6 when I realized that all that coursework my boss assigned was just prereq's. Good news is that he's hinting around at a promotion coming up and well, call me greedy but I could use a 10% raise for the job I'm already doing...his...

Should have more time tonight unless the big boss shows up. He loves to pop in around 2 a.m. He's a vet, about my age, old school. I just laugh at him when he shows and says, "damn, I knew I was gonna catch you asleep this time!". We BS for about an hour and he heads home.

Will get the sheet updated soonest, may have time in a couple hours. Will certainly try, W

Wow... when you updated my name, it cut off access to my RTJ posts. Would you kindly copy the stats and whatnot here? I think you'd maybe posted them somewhere but I didn't immediately see the info.

Check out the sheet, made some progress!

This is the RTJ Intro post. I'll keep looking, but may have deleted them.

Enter, Kalmus the Grey. It is time we talked.

You're not sure where the voice originated from, but as the last syllable faded, your feet started walking of their own accord until you came to a crossroads.

There a black man sat on a tree stump, picking at what appeared to be some sort of lute, the music haunting in its beauty. Noticing you, he grinned. His teeth were stark against the dark parchment of his face and yellowed by age. Then, the moment gone, he went back to strutting his cords. An odd occurrence, no doubt.

Suddenly, the gentle touch of a breeze caressed the back of your neck. Turning, you find an ancient elf, probably close to a thousand years old, standing there. In his hand is a cup of tea. Taking a last sip, he dismisses the cup to...somewhere, and says to you, "Come, we have some things to talk about." You realize then that the elf is the famed Wizard known simply as Stormbringer.

Are you ready, Kalmus the Grey?

You're intro post.

Background: Kalmus the Grey was born of a high-born Elf magic-user as result of her affair with a human rogue. Despite the pressure exerted on her by her family and her own misgivings, his mother kept the child and nursed it at her own bosom, the cheerful little bundle bringing some much needed life and purpose to her existence. She taught him magic while he grew, never the best student and, indeed, restless and ready to play at any excuse, he learned surprisingly intuitively.

When Kalmus was older, he grew up far faster than elf children his age and was always a bit of a misfit. The hero Lahnatha, son of Hahrna the Wise, took a shine to the rambunctious waif, teaching Kalmus to fight and to steal (properly), some out of a sense of camaraderie but also to curry favor with his mother.

Always a quick study, Kalmus mastered all three professions by the time he was thirty years old and determined he would set out on his own, adventure a bit, learn what he could. Kalmus knew in his heart that a wider world awaited and that he had to but find his path and follow it, even if there were a few locked doors along the way.

Knew I should've put this in the OOC1 to start with. Scores below - not sure how the scores got deleted, hopefully just a glitch.

FYI: check your character sheet - you have a good bit on there that's already provided. Also a potion of healing for each of the characters to start.

The Manor should be fun.

A couple of House rules: first level is max hp. since you're a multiclass th/mage/ftr, you take the max of all three, add them, then divide by three. In this case 4+6+10 = 20/3 = 6.67. In this case, I round up for HP, so your starting HP are 7 + constitution bonus.

Future HPs are per class and divided by three: so if you're a mage and you roll a four, you get 2 HP. Constitution bonus applies every time you level up!

Your characters level up each class as your achieve enough XP for the next level. You don't have to wait for all three levels to go up at the same time.

Your starting scores:
17 15 14 13 12 11

You can swap totals on a 1:2 basis. In other words, you want to bump 17 to 18, you have to give up 2 points somewhere else.

I should have put this in OOC thread...sorry!

Cool... 17 15 14 13 12 11

Let's go with:

S 14 > 16
I 15
W 11 -2 Str = 9
D 17
C 12 -2 Str = 10
Ch 13

Sound about right?

Sheet is just about done!!

looks good! give yourself a +1 to hit bonus with the sword for having a bit of elven blood in your veins.

Sweet! Thanks.

FYI - list of suppies and a house rule thread. I have to edit the supplies to make it readable. You are welcome to offer House rules that you've found useful in the past.

We've had a lot of them! Some worked out pretty well, some not so much...

What did you like from my games?

I liked that you mostly didn't use gold for XP. I always thought that was redundant. I like that we don't spend game time on training to level up. Those are two big ones.

I've got a bunch too, we can figure them out as we go along.

I'll have something up for you later tonight.

I usually awarded 10% then 100% for gold for XP as strongholds were built but yeah, I always thought it was better to award for quests, missions, objectives and RP...

Anything else you want to accomplish before you head out? And do you want to leave in the morning, or evening?

Nah, time to get going and see what can be pried loose at the Manor...

For future reference, don't wait on me, go ahead and roll your dice, be they thief checks, attack/damage rolls, initiatives, saves, etc.

A small thing that can speed up the game.