I'm trying out Horizon's Gate. It's a nautical-themed, 2-D rpg. Character development and combat is Final Fantasy: Tactics style (primary/secondary jobs + turn-based combat).

It's pretty chill but with enough crunch to make the encounters engaged.

Seems to be both sandboxy and hand-crafted.

Oh, I didn't realize those guys had made another game.  Voidspire Tactics was solid, at least.

I had considered one of their earlier ones, but they just didn't seem to be games that I would enjoy looking at even if they were pleasing in other respects.

Given that things tend to slow down around the holidays, I'll give Ati a couple more days to post his response.  If he doesn't I may have to retcon his arrival.  We'll see.

Happy New Year, everyone, and may 2020 rot in Hell.

Makes sense to me.

Looking forward to traveling again. You know, the freedom to visit NYC for a couple of days.

Absolutely don't want to work in an office again, though.

And I'm not sure if I want to get colds and flus again. I may stick with masks.

Happy 2021 to all!

I will not be recalled to the office before June (already announced) and I am planning to lobby for staying at home until early 2023 when I retire.

Being able to travel will be great, but I will be antsy about planes for some time to come...I expect to be wearing masks in some situations for a long time. As much as I hate wearing them!

Not really much point to this unless you can convince everyone around you to wear them.  Which would admittedly be very impressive.

I do believe wearing a mask protects one from the exhalations of others.

Yeah, I don't think our main office will fully reopen until summer. They're like super cautious because our clients reside in shelters and boarding houses and so on. My supervisor, I know, has little to no interest in returning to our coffin-shaped office for three. But our director can be a punctilious, authoritarian prick. He's got that streak.

Retirement in two years? Wow. I would prefer to work for another 15-20 years, but there are certain repetitive aspects of my current job that wear on me. I can only really see doing it for another 2-3 years. But where would I go for FT work in my early 50's?

As I play Horizon's Gate, I find it more and more agreeable. The 2-d graphics are distinctive yet simple. Modern rpgs tend to have that busy/cluttered look. It has spare NPC interactions; they have like one or two lines. Modern rpgs tend to make everything a meal even when I might prefer a nibble. I guess it's imaginative without being pretensious. Crunchy without being dense.

... You all are much older than me. I knew before, but I feel it more strongly with this conversation. I still don't have my first full-time job.

Also, masks do protect the wearer from infection. If you consider a situation where only A wears the mask and B does not, and a situation where only B wears the mask and A does not, A has a lesser risk of infection in the second situation. However, in both situations A has a lesser chance of getting infected than if A had not worn a mask at all.
This message was last edited by the player at 14:20, Sun 03 Jan 2021.

Man, all this talk of being out of the office.  I work grocery retail.  I have not stopped working through the entire pandemic.



It can, but Covid travels in droplets, and mainly infect you by getting on your hands and then entering your body when you touch your face.  There's some evidence that a mask helps protect you, but its primary purpose is to keep you from spraying those droplets where  they can infect others.



Retirement ever?  I'm a millennial; that's probably a pipe dream.

Each man must find a job that both suits and stretches him.*


Likewise, except for vacation and holidays. When I do take vacation, I must squish my duties into a shorter timeframe; they still must be tended to. I don't mean to imply my job is inordinately taxing or anything like that.

I remember the first alarm about Covid was (1) Not enough PPE, and then (2) it was Not enough respirators, followed by (3) Not enough testing. I think we have all three of those things now and still have mindboggling amounts of Covid. Cynically, I wonder if there is just too much of a sizable minority that (1) doesn't care all that much about health (public or otherwise) (see pre-Covid rates of heart disease, etc.) or (2) hated masks for political reasons. Or maybe this disease was always going to be too difficult to contain despite all of our efforts.

*Not always possible. Can take a lifetime.

Having been on medical retirement for the last three years, I can warn you that retirement is something you need to prepare for.   Your social network is likely tied to work and you need to  find friends that you can spend time with and enjoy talking to.  You need to find something to give your life a sense of meaning and accomplishment that matches your energy level.  It really is a case of use it or lose it.  Set goals and achieve them.

In Canada, things were looking fantastic in the summer. It was early fall when it was time to go back inside and masks and distancing were needed and people were slow on the uptake.

And then by December it seemed that people were sick of isolation, and while many passed on large Thanksgiving dinners (October in Canada) by Xmas people were ignoring the 'rules'. I expect a huge local spike in another week from Xmas dinners.

Maleketh, my hat is off to you. It's the people working in grocery stores and gas stations and Costco that make it possible for people like me to stay at home and isolate.

Brian, as I sit here, looking at 56 in two months, all I can say if you can find a way to live your life without having to be tied to a job/career, do it!

My daughter just turned 15, and while I hope she will get a degree or even two, I would be most happy if I can leave her in a position where she can work part of the year and travel part of the year. The idea that we exist solely to work for most of our life is appalling to me, especially now, that I have done that!

But it is probably pipe dreaming, big time!

Qadar - I took a retirement seminar last year. The guy talked a LOT about the psychological aspects of retirement, and of maintaining a social network - you are bang on!

One story that stuck with me is that MANY people in the civil service (in Canada) will retire and move to southern BC (where I live) because it is pretty well the only part of Canada that consistently does not experience a cold snowy winter. But they don't know anyone out here and many end up moving back to where their friends and family are.

My wife and I are talking about this regularly. I want to move out of the city ASAP, but since I am not the go out and meet the neighbours kind of guy, we are thinking that maybe we move to my old hometown (which I swore I would never do) because my family is there.

Luckily we have a couple of years to decide as my daughter still has two more years to finish high school.

I'll be 47 in a couple months, ten kids, oldest will be leaving home this coming fall. I'll die on the seat of a tractor or in the saddle, retirement isn't really in my vocabulary. Probably for the best, I'd go crazy with too much 'free' time. ;-) Congrats to those who are already there or close. My youngest just turned one year old a couple of days ago, so I'll be mid-60's by the time she's out of the nest... Seems a long ways off to me right now.


As for our ambush on the Stirge nest, let's make it that. I'd love to get a surprise segment or two to get off a bunch of shots before it's too much of a mess to shoot into melee... Also, whoever's keeping our map (that you Silk?) wasn't there another door opposite the nest place? If so, I could ambush them with a volley and then somebody could pop open the door, toss a 'nade (so to speak), close it again so I could get another volley off, at which point I beginning running around to lead the angry mob toward the rest of you!

Or something.

10 kids! Damn! You should be on a reality show!

Another horrifying thing I learned at that seminar was that 65 is the "standard" age for retirement because often people would die within a couple of years! So pensions would not pay for very long!

I put the updated map on the Loot thread. The area around the east side of the stirge room is not well-known to us. We know there is a door on the west side, and I believe we have assumed that there is an opening on the east side, as the stirges are able to enter and leave the room.

I agree that if we get the chance we should attack from a distance.

Yeah, thankfully we live many hours from any semblance of civilization. ;-)

Thanks for posting that map, it's a good one. I couldn't remember the layout exactly from DM's bitty-bits of map ;-)

How about Silk and I sneak up the hallway that leads to the west of the carrion crawler room and see if there's a door that leads into the Stirges on the east side of their nest chamber?



I also see now what you've been getting at about looking for a secret door. I wonder if the chalice/anvil combo might open a secret door somehow?

I need a separation of 30 feet for my spell or it will affect PCs before the Stirges.

Sil: If you can find a way to live your life without having to be tied to a job/career, do it!

I don't see much separation between my life and job inasmuch as I have a persistent need to contribute. When I've had jobs that I felt contributed negligibly to the common weal, if you like, then the gulf was great indeed. That's why I quit technical writing.

Walker: 10 kids.

My wife and I had one and thought, "Yeah, that was exhausting. We'll stay with the one."

Q: Having been on medical retirement for the last three years...

What did you do?

~~~

Alright let's head straight up that north corridor to fill out the map for the ambush.

Walker - 10 kids?  God, my wife and I agreed not to let them outnumber us.  The two boys are 18 and 15.  It's been a good life so far, although I miss how I used to contribute to society.  I always wanted to be closer to the land, to homestead, but my background and my investment in my future led me down a different path.


Lenny - Four years ago I got an infection in the joint of my toe and the hospital gave me an antibiotic that killed my kidneys.  I am on hemodialysis three days a week and very physically weak for six days a week.

When it comes to a career, you should do what makes you happy.  If that involves not being tied down, things may be tough, but it's not impossible.  I'm one of those oddballs who works retail not because he has to, but because it's work I genuinely enjoy.  I'm good at it, and it's fulfilling for me.  I don't like everything about it, of course (the pay sucks and working six days a week can be draining), but I wouldn't trade it away for any other job.



Unless the confines are small, you can center the spell 15' away from your allies so that only the stirges (or whatever else you might want to hit) are caught within its area.

In reply to Qadar (msg # 922):

So Qadar has to take point? :-)

Maybe the group goes around to the west door to the stirge room, and Walker and Sil'qian sneak up the east side? Bookcase them in Sleep spells?
This message was last edited by the player at 03:30, Tue 05 Jan 2021.

@Silk - That's kinda what I was thinking...

If I might add a (4) to my Covid chain with (4) being No vaccine yet and that almost immediately dovetailed by (5) Not enough vaccine...

Ah. And here we are. We have a sizable minority with little to no interest in being vaccinating coupled with inefficient, misguided distribution principles and methods.

~~~~

Right-O, so let's just finish that little bit of mapping and ambush away.
This message was last edited by the player at 16:14, Tue 05 Jan 2021.