Alex's even longer post thread.

[Alex]

Currently clerics (while still vaguely based on western Christianity*) can use a lot more weapons. Faerun, where I have set my game, has a polytheistic society. Indeed it has a book of gods 220 pages long, and that doesn't cover all of them, just the big ones. Each god has his own favoured weapon, some of which are blunt, some edged, but their followers are under no obligation to use their gods favoured weapon. As long as you picked a god that didn't have a problem with poisons (Besheba in the Faerun for example, Talona or Lovitar), I'd have so let you use that character. Sounds like to me that you had something very characterful there that would have added to the feel of a game.

Plus it would have been really funny if you'd fumbled an attack and poisoned yourself.

Initially, with D&D I am told Gygax wanted the game played exactly as he wrote it with no modifications of the rules (yeah, like that was ever going to happen), although as he aged he mellowed on the idea. When roleplaying started, it was about a bunch of adventurers going down into a cave, beating a random assortment of creatures who served no other purpose other than to be there to be killed. Nowadays, dungeons are a bit more nuanced. They often include a miniature eco-system (just how do those 200 odd Orcs get fed, where do their weapons and armour come from? What about the female and baby Orcs).

Very recently, Wizards of the Coast announced they are going to be redeveloping Orcs and Drow to make them more inclusive. No longer will they be generic bad guys, but in the interests of not being racist, they will no longer be bad guys but are going to be as deep and morally complex as any other race.

I feel like pointing out that these are not real species. Maybe smacking them with a mace would be a bit more appropriate. When the left gets on its high horse, they irritate me just as much as the right does with their (self) righteousness.

Anyway, yes the game is more about role-playing now as a pose to 'roll' playing.


*When it comes to monks though, they are very firmly entrenched in the eastern traditions of the aesthetic martial artist. No one gets to play the kind with the shaven circle on top of their noggins.

[RCMerchant]

Over the past few days and weeks, I've been checking in on various friends from around the world, making sure they are all ok yadda, yadda. The ones from the US have mentioned the exact same phrase, that they were embarrassed to be American.

I'm not ashamed to be an American, but I am ashamed of many Americans.

I'm proud to be an American. But when we f**k up, boy do we f**k up!

[Alex]

Roger and his wife Shelly came round tonight to make up their characters. Roger's dad used to work for the diplomatic core, and his kids were born in Zimbabwe. They've just moved to the area recently.

Anyway, Roger has went for a Halfling Rogue and Shelly a Half-Elven Cleric of one of the nature deities. Garry has decided he doesn't want to play an evil cleric anymore, so I am expecting a Swashbuckler type fighter from him now.

[Trevor]

Roger and his wife Shelly came round tonight to make up their characters. Roger's dad used to work for the diplomatic core, and his kids were born in Zimbabwe. They've just moved to the area recently.

Anyway, Roger has went for a Halfling Rogue and Shelly a Half-Elven Cleric of one of the nature deities. Garry has decided he doesn't want to play an evil cleric anymore, so I am expecting a Swashbuckler type fighter from him now.

I was also born in Zimbabwe (had another name then).

[Trevor]

I'm on Skype now: not sure how it works but if you type in Trevor Moses, you'll find the pic of some idiot behind a film camera. That's me.

[Alex]

Ok, I think I found your profile and have sent you a message.

[Alex]

Ash was running a very slight temperature yesterday, which resulted in me being sent home from work for a couple of days to make sure he doesn't have Covid. He was a little out of sorts yesterday morning but soon bounced back to being his usual self. I've been checking his temperature today, all seems to be normal there and he is acting his normal self. Tried putting him down for a nap this afternoon, but he is just sitting in his cot singing.

Hearing that some guy killed himself and the video is on Tiktok. If anyone out there has kids that use it, they might want to keep them off it for a bit. The company is trying to take the video down, but I guess people being people, it keeps getting uploaded. Never use the service myself and haven't seen it. Don't particularly plan on going looking for it, but it seems to be getting snuck into other videos. I'm told it starts with a brown-haired man sitting at a desk. I wonder if the story is true, or is someone trying to get people to go looking for the video? Sadly one is as likely as the other, although I this one seems to be genuine.

Garry messaged me, he wants to switch from playing a necromancer to a swashbuckler. This is not unexpected. Garry really only likes to play one of two types of character. He refuses to play paladins or bards completely (except for one time he was set up with a pre-generated character's campaign. Strangely enough, his usual terrible luck vanished while he was playing a paladin. He still gets taunted about that one now and again.

Well, after a day of checking Ash's temperature he seems to be fine and work is happy enough for me to return tomorrow. Not going to complain about 2 days off free with no one actually unwell.

[Alex]

We had a heavy rain today. Heaviest I've seen since the Aberdeen incident that killed my last iPod. The walk home from work takes 20 minutes. I was soaked through before I'd done a quarter of that. On the other hand, it was a half-day, and I'll take getting soaked in return for getting home early any day.

Watching CM Punk's horror film on Netflix at the moment. I missed his entire run on wrestling, so he doesn't have any nostalgic associations for me. The film is somewhat slow-moving, I guess it is supposed to build tension, but it might be a little too slow. Only halfway through so a way to go yet. His acting isn't fantastic, but I've seen worse.

Signed up for a course in programming today. If I complete it, I'll get given £300. Think I'll use that to buy my 3D printer, so that's my encouragement to actually do it. There are a few other courses I can sign up for and get similar amounts. Might just do them in my spare time, although some of them cost something to start.

Saw another kid has been shot in the states (Utah) by the police, although this one has survived. I'd love to know exactly what terms of engagement they operate under. Quite often it seems if I was to shoot an enemy combatant under the same situation I'd be committing a war crime, never mind a child. I'd have to know more about the situations though to really make a proper judgement. Hopefully, the kid will recover. No idea on the colour of his skin either in this case or if that will lead to further protests, but if you have to shoot a 13-year-old kid multiple times to stop them, that has to be one hell of a life or death situation right? Kid running at you with a chainsaw or something?

[Alex]

The movie got better towards the end even if it had a couple of plot holes.

[Alex]

Catching up with some old friends. Most of my female friends are feminists and I like to send them a message every once in a while to check they are ok if they've been quiet for a while.

The one I used this time was:

"The first time I saw you, I thought you must have fallen from heaven.

Do you often get mistaken for Satan?"

Works every time. They all seem to be doing well enough.

Having some Doom Bars tonight. Kick back, have some beers and chill out time. Although the morning wasn't great, the weather improved in the afternoon and evening. Took Ash out for a walk and let him play on the swings. That kid loves his swings and chutes. Mind you, I rarely met a kid that hasn't.

[Alex]

Ended up chatting with Helena long into the night yesterday until she fell asleep. She's just had a second little girl. After knowing me for over a decade it came as a complete surprise to her to find out that she doesn't actually know my real name, and the one I have is just one that I've been using for 30 years. Never had my name officially changed.

Rough night with Ash once again. He got up about 01:00 and Kristi got up with him. I sent her back to bed at 5ish (although she didn't get there until Ash went down). Was around 07:00 before he finally settled and got back up at 11:00.

We are all really tired and in strung-out shape. Heh, not really. I just like that movie.

Printing out a PDF of a book I already own, but a friend has on load and I am pretty sure he's managed to lose it in the several years he's had it. Expecting the printer to run out of ink halfway through or something. If it does, I may get... irritated.

So we've had new rules brought in about the maximum group size and number of households that can get together. This impacts somewhat on my upcoming D&D campaign as I'd have had a total of 7 people from 3 households playing and the new rules dictate a maximum of 6 people from between 2 households. In Scotland, this doesn't include under 12's while in England it does. I've decided to split the party in two and run a pair of separate, but linked games on alternate weeks. It will be more work for me to write up two separate adventures and as soon as the restrictions are lifted I'll look combining the two groups into one. Politicians are getting angsty about the new limitations saying people should be free to decide what level of risk they are willing to take. That's the problem though, you aren't just deciding how much risk you are willing to take. Some people are forced by simple economics to take risks they wouldn't pick if they had the choice. You are also deciding how much risk other people are going to be taking. Traditionally though the tories have endorsed policies of laissez-faire, unless it stops rich people getting richer. They get right in about things if that is happening.

I wonder why that is? (insert emoji for sarcasm).

It occurred to me that Graham has been responsible for more deaths amongst my roleplaying characters than any other player I ever gamed alongside. Graham was the first husband of my friend Claire, who is now married to Bruce and has two kids but identifies as being a man. Bruce is also the brother of Roger, one of the new people to playing D&D with us. I can't remember the characters name, but I remember I was playing a paladin and we were trying to save a village from a goblinoid invasion. Something minor happened and he decided to come in and wake my character up from his sleep rather than deal with it himself, half an hour before I'd have been able to claim a full nights rest, regain some health and have all my spells back. The village then came under attack and I died saving the settlement from a rather angry ogre. My most infamous character was called Lelandra and she was a rogue/fighter/ranger/cleric (we only had two players when we'd started that campaign and I had to cover a lot of bases). She was also fairly heartless in certain ways. When one of the team was brought back from the dead, but was naked she simply walked to the nearest settlement in the middle of the night, knocked on someone's door and slit their throat when they answered and then stole their shoes for the naked man. Anyway, we were fighting a dragon and rather than face it, Graham's mighty Dwarf warrior turned around and ran away. This left me facing a very powerful dragon on my own (can't remember where the other party members were at this point). My talents were all in sneaking up behind something and carving it up. I could have killed the dragon if he'd hung around to distract it, but one on one in a stand-up fight I made a handy dragon snack. He would later on in an entirely separate campaign repeat the same trick with a Dwarven Defender (a class known for stoically fighting on no matter what the odds and dying where they stand rather than retreating), which was the end of Gurt the Half-Orc barbarian.

Still, we remained friends until he accused me of having an affair with his wife. Never mind that they lived 20 miles away from Lossiemouth, neither me nor Claire could drive and there were no buses between our villages. I mean if we'd been really determined we could have had an affair, but I never found her attractive (or him as he now is). They were married and divorced before a year had passed.

[RCMerchant]

^ Why do I find this funny as hell? 

"Still, we remained friends until he accused me of having an affair with his wife. Never mind that they lived 20 miles away from Lossiemouth, neither me nor Claire could drive and there were no buses between our villages. I mean if we'd been really determined we could have had an affair, but I never found her attractive (or him as he now is). They were married and divorced before a year had passed."

[Alex]

Glad you like it. It is funny now, but it wasn't back then. Graham worked for the same people I did and told all his other friends I was sleeping with his wife. This caused me problems for years.

[RCMerchant]

^ I didn't mean to laugh at your misfortune,...but that is funny!

[Alex]

It's all good RC, I wasn't taking offence.