Alex's even longer post thread.

[Alex]

In the name of all the gods, they are ravenous beasts whose hunger knows no bounds.

For tonight's game, I had over the past two weeks written out 9 separate encounters. These were a mixture of roleplaying encounters and combats. I figured I have to keep 5 people amused for 5 to 6 hours. That should do it.

The game started at 16:00. At around 19:30 I ran out of pre-written material and started improvising. By the time things were approaching 21:00, I decided I'd done enough and ended the session.

What does it take to satisfy these people?

Still, I had fun unleashing The Cabbage Man encounter on them. It managed to irritate them hugely, without causing any of them to unleash violence on him.

Encounter 3.

Time to unleash the power of.... The Cabbage Man!

"You are riding along in the lead wagon. From up ahead you see a trail of dust that indicates an approaching cart of some kind. As it gets closer you can see a crude wooden wagon, pulled along by a single donkey. An elderly man who looks as if he bears the weight of the world's problems on his shoulders sits in the driver's seat. He has a shock of grey hair and a couple of teeth remaining, evidently fighting a losing battle against age and a lifetime of a poor diet (nothing but cabbages. If the players get too close, they can hear his almost continual foul-smelling farts issuing forth). He stares intently at you as you pass, his eyes boring into yours. His mouth twitches with all manner of facial tics and as he passes by you can hear many random chuckles and laughs coming from him as he mutters to himself. Something makes you feel glad when he is passed. Alas, once the caravan has moved past him, he gets his horse to turn around and at a fast trot, he catches back up with the group.

'Sirs, ladies. Take pity on a poor farmer. I have but this load of cabbages to sell and 12 children all at home, all sick with the flux. Buy my cabbages and let me return home to look after my 7 precious little babies. I have 15 of them you know. Lovely little tykes. The sooner I sell them the quicker I can get home. Help an old man out will you. Me and my wife, we are all alone together. No one else to look after us. I miss her terribly. Won't you buy my cabbages and let me go home and look after my old mum and dad?'

Continue unmercifully in this vein. Should the party offer to buy his goods, the old man changes tact.

"A horrified look comes over the old man and in a voice on the edge of breaking into tears, he starts begging you 'Oh mighty adventurers. I beg you to help me. Evil bandits have stolen my cart of cabbages. I was on the way to market to sell them and now I have nothing to sell and buy food for my 4 starving children and the 26 orphans left for me to look after when all by brothers were killed by a dragon with explosive diarrhoea! Won't you help a poor old farmer in desperate need?"

The old man will continue pestering the party in this fashion until the party figure out some concrete way of getting rid of him. Should the party attack him, however, they will find that the gods look after the insane. Anyone hitting him is immediately stuck by a bolt of lightning, causing d6 damage. If they kill him then anyone involved in the murder is immediately hit with a Bestow Curse with no saving throw allowed. The old man will keep asking for more money to sell his goods but offering less when it comes to buying them back.

[Alex]

Since I picked up Covid, I've been having muscular pains across my shoulders and down my left bicep. Nothing major, just irritating. Anyway, after putting up with it for a couple of weeks Kristi badgered me into going to see a doctor. She did all the usual stuff, asked me my symptoms, checked my heart and lungs then stepped back, took a long look at me and asked "How the hell are you even still standing?"

Got told to go home, go to bed and not to leave it for a week.

The thing is, I feel mostly fine, other than the slight pain mentioned. Oh well, not going to turn down a week off work.

[ER]

Since I picked up Covid, I've been having muscular pains across my shoulders and down my left bicep. Nothing major, just irritating. Anyway, after putting up with it for a couple of weeks Kristi badgered me into going to see a doctor. She did all the usual stuff, asked me my symptoms, checked my heart and lungs then stepped back, took a long look at me and asked "How the hell are you even still standing?"

Got told to go home, go to bed and not to leave it for a week.

The thing is, I feel mostly fine, other than the slight pain mentioned. Oh well, not going to turn down a week off work.

Any chance you could use the time to convert your D&D sessions into a novel, like I often said I hoped you would?

[Alex]

Since I picked up Covid, I've been having muscular pains across my shoulders and down my left bicep. Nothing major, just irritating. Anyway, after putting up with it for a couple of weeks Kristi badgered me into going to see a doctor. She did all the usual stuff, asked me my symptoms, checked my heart and lungs then stepped back, took a long look at me and asked "How the hell are you even still standing?"

Got told to go home, go to bed and not to leave it for a week.

The thing is, I feel mostly fine, other than the slight pain mentioned. Oh well, not going to turn down a week off work.

Any chance you could use the time to convert your D&D sessions into a novel, like I often said I hoped you would?

I will try, but all my spare time is going on just keeping up with writing new D&D adventures with no time for doing up old ones alas.

[Alex]

I've gotten some D&D stuff written and I've planned out where the group is going to go to rescue Xora, their missing member.

Ever read 'Something Wicked This Way Comes'? They are going to a funfair with infernal influences. The deeper they go on to try and rescue him, the more they will put their souls at risk. I've got the fair planned out in my head, but I still need to write everything down and stat up the NPCs. Of course the last time I looked forward to something as much as this it went horribly wrong.

Hopefully this will go better.

I am putting my time off to good work with lots of bad movies as well as writing. Not to mention the fun of sorting out my tee-shirt collection (even getting rid of a bunch of them. I keep asking people to stop buying me new ones so often, but it is an easy present to get me. No idea how many I actually own, but it is more than I need lol.

[Alex]

Got some writing done, although not a great deal.

I just feel physically worn out. Can't wait to kick the last of this virus. Still, I am better off than some friends of Kristi who decided they weren't going to take the vaccinations. They phoned us to see how we were coping. Turns out the husband is in a whole world of agony. The family go to the same church as Kristi, with many of the parishioners being rather elderly. Their refusal to get the jag (against the advice of the leader of their church who is I am told a world-renowned heart surgeon), was one of the last straws of her deciding she was done with Christianity.

Religion could be a fine thing if each church (of whatever creed) was in each persons heart and people only got together to celebrate their shared faith, not to judge others or force their beliefs on others.

Watching the only John Carpenter / Kurt Russell film I have never seen before. The Elvis TV movie they made together.

I am hoping for a Bubba Ho-Tep thing, but I expect to be disappointed on that score.

300 posts to go until 10,000.

[Alex]

I went to try and watch the 2016 Ghostbusters to re-evaluate it. Amazon wanted me to pay to watch it though and I thought f**k that. I am not paying to not be entertained.

Got my initial termination interview next week. No idea what they are going to ask me, or what they'll expect me to say so I guess I'll just have to wing it. What are they going to do about it though, fire me? Plans? Do my job until I don't need to anymore. What are you going to do next? Find something else to do. Any idea what kind of job you want to do? Just something ordinary, take a long holiday and enjoy life. Not perhaps the best or most logical answers, but it is what I've got.

[Alex]

Well, the leadership race for the country is down to 4 candidates. 3 of them are women (one of them black), while the male candidate is of Asian origin (no idea how long his family have been in the country, might be first generation, could be 10th). So we could have our first PM of colour. The man is in the lead, but as the candidates get whittled down to two, supporters will move on to vote for others and it could still all change. One of the candidates is one that I definitely don't want to see get the job, two are the ones I'd view as potentially the least worst options from the original 11 nominees. The last one, I know nothing about.

[Alex]

I haven't attended many of them over the years, but this year marked the last Friends & Families Day that I would still be in the RAF for so we decided to attend. My sister-in-law, some of her kids and some girlfriends wanted to come along.

I mostly took videos of the day, but here are the few photos I took.

Two really old aircraft (I'd guess a Spitfire and Hurricane from the Battle of Britain flight, but honestly I'd barely know them from a Learjet).




The Red Arrows doing their coloured smoke bit. I've seen a lot of national display teams flying (pretty much all of NATO).  I am not saying the Red Arrows are the best out there, but I will say I've not seen anything better. In general, though I am not a huge fan of watching these displays. Kristi and the others loved it though. The jets they are flying are pretty old.






Just before they were prepped for take-off.


We have some American visitors at the moment using our base for an exercise. Kristi says I have to be more useful in describing aircraft and say more than "A flying one", when I am asked what sort of plane it it, so in the spirit of being more helpful, I'll describe this as a moderately old aircraft.


Some vaguely newish jets I guess. When combat aircraft come across each other they have mock dogfights. 3 of these ones came across 12 of the US ones above, and the score in the resulting dog fight was twelve nil, which shows you how technology marches on.


A little aircraft and a reasonably large aircraft.


Many aircraft.


Shame I can't put the video of them doing this up, but here is a picture of the aftermath.


The front of the reasonably large aircraft.





Anyway, everyone seemed to have fun. I dragged my nephews on some funfair rides, and it was a free afternoon off work. Ash got to sit in the cockpit of a fighter jet and if it had been equipped with missiles or a live cannon, he would have fired them all off. He had't gotten any sleep last night and wasn't in the best of moods for much of the morning, but when he saw the Red Arrows display he seemed to love it. Something about when those aircraft fire off the blue, white and red of the Union Jack seems to really cheer people up in a way that other patriotic stuff generally doesn't.

[Alex]

The first poster for the new Dungeons & Dragons poster is out there Trevor.

Let's just hope it isn't as big a disaster as the last one.

Had a coughing fit while I was trying to have a drink earlier. Ended up with juice running down my nose. Also left a horrible taste in my mouth. Blergh! That happened to a friend once during a session. All the sympathy she got was an "If you love me, you'll swallow that." The resultant laughter did not help her situation any. Ah, the fun days with Caz and Clare.

I miss playing with them.

Trevor: One to watch with the kids? https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/dungeons-dragons-honor-among-thieves-movie-trailer/

[Alex]

Checking up on the news.

Let's see, the race to no. 10 is down to 2 people, neither of whom I want to see in power. I think one candidate is clearly more competent than the other, but if he gets in then his party has a better chance of winning than the other one.

Not that my opinion makes a difference on who gets in. The vote for the leader of the party is carried out purely by members of the party and I'll be damned before I'd pay money to join them, even to get a say in that election.

Grain shipments might restart from Ukraine. If that happens then the price of wheat should fall. I wonder if that will be passed on to consumers. Not a trip I'd want to make myself, travelling on one of those ships. Between mines and the threat of Russian warships, I wonder how many shipping companies will be willing to take that chance? I don't mind fighting on the ground, but I really don't care to be involved in naval warfare.

If an army loses a battle you can retreat. If an airfield is overrun, you can set up another one elsewhere. If your ship gets sunk, well it is a long way to swim home.

We've been given a 3.75 pay raise. The same day it was announced, inflation in the up was declared at 9.4%. Over the past 16 years I have seen a constant erosion of how much my pay packet is worth. It does not inspire me to stay in the job. One of many reasons I don't care to stay.

It looks like a nice day outside. Going into Elgin later for my fortnightly D&D session. Tonight, the group finds itself under siege by an army of Goblins and Undead. Going to use a load of terrain that I've not used for a game before. Looking forward to seeing how the party reacts to it.

Whenever someone tells me that they love their country I always wonder, and sometimes even ask: "What have you done for it?" Generally, the answer is nothing. Strikes me as rather empty words if you just say something with nothing to back it up. Supposedly by definition people in my job are amongst the greatest patriots. After all, we are putting everything we have on the line for our country. When you kill someone, you don't just end their life. You also destroy everything they could ever be, preventing anything they might ever achieve. You are taking that person's presence out of everyone they know, everyone who loves them and just the same we risk losing the same. Not everyone can do the taking a life part, and those that love guns are no more likely than anyone else to be able to use them in anger for their intended purpose (as it seems the police in Texas seem to have found out recently).

To get back to my original thought, it is funny how few people who do join up really do so for love of their country. I've been accused of being a traitor to my country for voting for Scotland to leave the union by people who have done much less for the UK their entire lives than I've in just a single year. Didn't bother me then, or now. Indeed, I felt vaguely proud of the accusation. While I don't want to move to the US (wonderful country to visit, but I prefer the freedoms and protections available elsewhere in the world. Being allowed to own a gun does not make up for the lack of universal healthcare, lower workers' rights and so on. I guess what puts me off more than anything would be having to worry about Ash going to school and worrying every day if someone was going to shoot the school up.  I could own all the guns I wanted, but no matter how many I have (or anyone for that matter), they won't protect you from a single bullet), if Kristi did decide she wanted to go back I'd have a real quandary there. We have vaguely discussed moving to Canada or Australia (we have no real interest in doing so, just more in a theoretical way). With Kristi having to still pay US taxes if she gets a job, we've been looking at how much of a tax bill we'd have. Looks like between UK and US taxes, we'd be losing 42% of her earnings, but only getting any representation for the UK part of that (this is assuming she gets the job she is after, with the tax bracket that would then put her in). She'd be losing over $10,000 a year merely to have a US passport, while she will also have the option of a UK passport.

I wonder if at that point she'd look at giving up her US citizenship as being too expensive to keep? I certainly won't put any pressure on her to give it up. That is something that would have to be her decision. We are hopefully going to get Ash's dual citizenship sorted out this summer so that if he wants, he will have the option of going for US citizenship. Now that Covid restrictions are gone, we can get Kristi her UK citizenship and get the tiny demon's US one. I think the (US) rules are that he can keep both until he gets to 18 and then has to pick one or the other.

I wonder which one he'll go for?

Shame we (as a nation), gave up the whole European citizenship thing. I'd much rather have kept that.

And that is this morning's long rambling done.

[Alex]

Last night's D&D game involved a full-on siege on a monastery by a Goblin horde (plus assorted allies). It is a scenario I have run before, if under a separate set of rules. As before, the party have a lone doomsayer who is convinced they won't last the night (normally the guy who dies second or third last in horror movies). If you are reduced to 0 hit points you have to make Death Saves. Succeed on 3 and you stabilize, fail on 3 and you die. One party member got bitten by a giant spider, and then hauled up to the roof to be coccooned, in preparation for having his insides liquified.

Turns out this player has a fear of spiders and had to run out of the room at this point.

Heh heh heh.

Anyway, he has passed one death save and failed two (55% of passing. One of my bugbears about 5th ed is that it is simply too easy not to die. When I started playing, you'd go through 20 characters in a campaign and be happy about it too), but unless the odds come up for him twice, we will have our first casualty. After some thought about it last night, I decided that if he dies, he dies. No fudges to save things. It will let the players know that for the rest of the campaign that they could lose their character. I figure this is an epic enough struggle though that such deaths would not be inappropriate. Especially if the players find out what is in the monastery.

They have become laser-focused on two things. Why are the Goblins attacking? & Getting Short Rests (an in-game mechanic). The scenario is designed that they should hopefully get some rest but won't have enough time between every wave to get one (2d4*10 minutes and they need 60 for a Short Rest). They have not bothered checking what is in the wagons outside to see what can help them, nor have they explored the monastery to find out what they might be able to use to defend it. One player did wander up to the first (or for Americans second) floor and was shocked to find there was a ballista sitting there. Alas, it only has 4 shots. It was put in though to give them a fighting chance should they bring the Giant in the picture above directly into the fight. This focus really has hurt them by not taking more notice of their surroundings. They did set some traps though, which I liked. Hollie will get some extra XPs for that.

They only got halfway through the siege in a 6-hour session and the party seemed to think the battle itself is appropriately epic. The doomsayer did complain that they should have been higher level, but I simply replied that were they higher level, then I'd have made the bad guys more powerful to compensate, so he wouldn't gain anything by that.



Andrew, Joesph (Aracnaphobe, oh boy is he going to hate the Temple of Lloth), Hollie, Matt (doomsayer) and Lowden.


Didn't quite have enough giant spider models for the invasion, so anything I had that was vaguely spider-shaped was pressed into service as one.


The party attempted to escape via the sewers and ran into this guy. While they did (barely) defeat him, the sound of more feet splashing in the water encouraged the party to retreat back above ground. The next fight would have involved 4 mutated creatures, sort of mutated turtles who had learned an assortment of martial arts to defend themselves against the various predators down there.


As well as the ground floor and the sewer, there are also two more full floors, plus a pair of towers.


Alas, poor Noffle. I knew him well. The undead sewer monster lies un-undead.


From the player's side of the table.


They haven't had to fight the big guy... Yet. He did rip the gates off the walls though to allow the Goblins to attack easier.


The session left me mentally drained, taking tonnes of factors into account to make the game work. I want the battle to have a feel like Zulu, with endless waves of attackers pouring in (which is why the doomsayer constantly saying they aren't going to survive the fight doesn't bother me, despite the implication that I can't balance a fight that size and scope).

Although I am trying to do that game once a fortnight, we'll be skipping the next session as we are finally going to get to use the tickets to go see the Edinburgh Military Tattoo that I got for Kristi's Yule waaaay back in 2019, before the whole pandemic thing kicked off, so it will be three weeks before we play again.

Speaking of the pandemic. I kinda miss it. Made scheduling games so much easier when we were all on lockdown.

[Alex]

Sitting in a boring (skype) meeting at work on a Monday morning. A whole 4 of us have turned up, with a notable lack of management. Then again, as I've noticed, management doesn't tend to actually run things. They more tend to aim us in a vague direction and the juniors sort out the practicalities (normally this involves seeing how far you can go in bending the rules to make what they wan't work, with an occasional slight bit of breaking them completely).

My favourite quote of the day, from a conversation I am having with someone who wants to run his own campaign for the first time, but thinks he doesn't have the imagination for it:

Dark Alex — Yesterday at 5:56 PM
You came up with a cannibal necromancer...
[5:57 PM]
Imagination is like a muscle. The more you use it, the bigger it gets.
[6:00 PM]
Also like a penis, the more it gets played with the more fun it is.

Now I am going to see how many times I can drop that phrase into a conversation.

Ooooh, the local head of Kristi's church is coming round tonight with his family (they sort of misunderstood a general comment as being an invitation and it seems Kristi didn't feel like correcting them. I guess Brit's aren't the only ones who are too polite to deal with this kind of thing), as well as the missionaries. What a perfect time to say it. 

I gave him a simple exercise and got him to design a low-level bad guy (4th level for those who like details). I then went through how a low-level party could fight that character, where they'd struggle (he'd made him practically impossible to hit for example), and suggested ways to make him more suited for this kind of scenario. Then I got him to think about what his villain's motivation was. Turns out he is a bloodthirsty minor lord out to conquer more lands, and the players happen to end up in a village that is next on his list. I've suggested he watches The Seven Samurai for inspiration.

Anyway, he spent last night sitting in his garden and came up with several A4 pages with notes and is wondering what the hell happened to him? He hasn't written since leaving school and suddenly bam he is scribbling away like a mad thing. Gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling, although not as warm and fuzzy as the one I got when Joesph had to run out the room and go throw up, after the spiders got him.

[Alex]

Last night got even better than I expected.

One of the missionaries turned out to be called Sister Bangs. I am willing to bet if I googled that, I'd find some porno had been made with the title.

[Alex]

While we had the missionaries around for dinner, we also had some other people from Kristi's church round. The husband isn't someone I really like, although he doesn't seem to be a bad person. He just reminds me an awful lot of an airforce officer. He just has the same kind of personality. He is the head of the local branch of the church and it seems his wife is feeling a bit resentful of the time he spends dealing with church matters rather than his family. I have no idea how justified that is. The entire family, including his parents, decided not to get vaccinated. The parents caught Covid around the same time as myself and Kristi did, but suffered a lot more than we did.

Anyway, he asked me about becoming an officer (bit ironic considering my views on him). He has a university degree and wants to constuct buildings. I've directed him toward the Royal Engineers. I can just imagine it being the last straw in his marriage though.

I wonder how many deaths they have contributed to? How many fewer people would have succumbed to the virus if everyone who could had just gotten one of the damn things. It is a shame that we never get to know how the ripples of our lives fully interact with those of others. Some of us have much larger ripples than others, but no one can really have no effect on anyone else, no matter how small. Even the briefest life leaves its touch.

Metal Micky needs to make a comeback.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MU28db_4Zc