OOC THREAD

[GandalfOfBorg]

Someone can take it over if they like, especially someone with the "hot hand" at the auto-gen'd dice rolls

[tomcat]

No worries, Paul. Just another tragedy of age and not being smart when I had my youth. 

Have fun, Matt!

As for goings on at my end - summer has been a blast for the family. It is nice to be back to normal around here. Beth and Sara have been spending a lot of time at the pool, zoo, and the Zoombezi Bay waterpark. My son has bought himself a guitar and is spending his time cloistered up learning all the beginnings of every Five Finger Death Punch tune he can. And I have been working on the purchase of my company (by me and two partners) and the move we will be making to our new location.

Lastly, we are moving right along with the organization of my eldest daughter's wedding. She is in Florida and will be getting married there, so it makes it interesting to plan from 1,100+ miles away.

I would love to say that we have had time spent out in a boat, or camping, but that is not the 'fun' my crew ever seek anymore. The girls like the luxuries and my son has started down the path of late-teenage "It's not too cool to hang with my parents anymore" state of mind. 

[GandalfOfBorg]

Ya I have a road trip later this year with my eldest who graduate HS and my youngest is a senior this year, finishing out his Eagle for ScoutsBSA.  Planning on making it to GenCon again this year with MeepleGamers

[Eclecticon]

That sounds pretty awesome, though good luck with the remote wedding planning!  Things have fallen over a bit in our wide, sunburned country - something like 40% of the population is back in lockdown as COVID Delta meanders through the community, and the vaccine rollout continues to be a blunderfuck. 

I hear you about the teenage years, and I look ahead to them with no little trepidation.  Firstborn just started high school back in January, so someday all this will be mine.     Meanwhile, though, they're still happy for me to read to them before bed (we're finishing Sean Williams' super-excellent Books of the Change, which I recommend to all ages).  I'm hoping I get to read them The Lord Of The Rings before they decide it's all a bit naff. 

[Eclecticon]

Oh, and Firstborn has also started getting really into D&D!  She's playing with a club at her school, and she came home on Thursday all aghast - her party has decided that clearing out a lair of kobolds for 300 gp is a lot of trouble when they could... burn down the town that's paying them until they find the money.  I'm so proud of my little murderhobo!

[Eclecticon]

Okay, I meant to get a post up today but the day has completely gotten away from me.  I'll hopefully post tomorrow morning. 

[Eclecticon]

As we learned from the last chapter if someone is mean or feels off they should be killed out of hand. Redemption of character isnt a thing Paul is into, he's a die is cast kinda guy.

I bristled a bit when I read that, but it got me thinking about how I've been using villains in the stories I've run.  I've definitely relied more on human antagonists than Doug has, which is partly a style thing and partly just the point that we've reached in the campaign.  I do try to give a little moral nuance to the free-people antagonists, though it maybe doesn't come across on the screen like it exists in my head. 

F'rex, Wulfdan is a rolled-gold dickhead, happy to smirk at people he thinks are done for, then run from a fight he can't win and let his followers buy him time to get away.  Is he irredeemably evil, though?  Probably not.  The same goes for Viglar (Viglund's boozehound son).  Real life is full of these guys, and it's nice to be able to slap 'em in your imagination.  They also fill the story role of characters like Gríma Wormtongue - a foil for the heroes to demonstrate their moral worthiness by opposing and vanquishing.   

I've tried to make more hard-core villains a little rarer.  I'm thinking here of guys like Viglund, who makes no bones about the fact that he rules his little corner of Middle-Earth with slavery and brutality, and doesn't lose sleep over doing so.  Can he be made to see the error of his ways?  Probably, because we're playing in Tolkien's world and Men are not born intrinsically evil, but you'd need a lot of persistence and luck to pull it off.  It sort of doesn't matter, though, because that's not what he's for in the story - he's there to a) be a persistent thorn in the side of the Beornings, and b) be an example to the PCs, as they accumulate their own following and power, of what they must not become. 

And then there's Mogdred, who is probably the most morally ambiguous character in the campaign to date.  He's definitely a threatening figure, even if he's rarely opposed the PCs directly.  Doug and I have discussed what's going on behind the scenes with him, but the fact is that only words and events that have taken place in play are set in stone.  He could be a black-hearted, moustache-twirling shit of a man or a tragic figure who seems worse to outsiders than he really is.  It's possible even I won't know for sure until the issue gets confronted directly.   

[Telcontar]

Paul,
I wasnt digging on you. My comment was more making a joke about the last Beorning dude. We let that guys lip slide a couple times and it almost got us killed. Maybe in Beorning circles we were too shy about slapping dudes in the mouth.

[Eclecticon]

I love to take the credit where it isn't due, but the poem in the last interlude owes a great debt to Australia's greatest cannibalism-based bush ballad, Tale They Won't Believe, by Weddings Parties Anything. 

[Telcontar]

I wanted to get a post up on my failed hinting roll but I have been over come by events locally.

[Eclecticon]

Hi guys.  Sorry for the delays on my end.  If I'm allowed a lame excuse, it's that we've gone into hard lockdown here and I'm having to be Tech Support Guy for my kids as they do their remote schooling. 

I do have a scene in mind (and partially written) to keep the story rocking along.  It'll be up as soon as I can find enough clear time to finish it.

[Telcontar]

Thats ok I'm running side missions!

[Eclecticon]

Welcome back Matt!  How was your trip?

[Eclecticon]

I'm going to wait a day in case anyone else wants to post, then I'll move things along with whatever we have.

[GandalfOfBorg]

hey guys sorry it took so long to get back online... i did my back pretty good on that trip with all the long portages.  I am back for the most part now with work and all.

Long story short: Getting old suxxors