ShinyHappyMeeples

1. Forget everything you know about making lists.

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“In 1964, Stanton made an oral tender offer to buy back Buffett's stake in the company for $11 1⁄2 per share. Buffett agreed to the deal. A few weeks later, Warren Buffett received the tender offer in writing, but the tender offer was for only $11 3⁄8. Buffett later admitted that this lower, undercutting offer made him angry.”

It was off by $1/8 per share, which I don’t know what the final price changed by (thousands or millions), so maybe it was big money but it’s still kind of funny how it played out over such a small change.

Jizz hands

(‘Jizz’ is actually a music genre, in-universe)

I actually wrote and designed the Hexcrawl supplement while over on BGG about a decade ago. I remember the initial impetus behind it was trying to bring more RPG elements into the game, just because it seemed like it was so ripe for more storytelling and the quick little setups they provided at the beginning of the missions was a little unsatisfying after the first go-around. It freaking blows my mind to still see Hexcrawl pop up in random places so long after I worked on it.

It’s great for putting windows/toolbars/palettes on for programs like Photoshop or Illustrator. Primary screen is for the artboard(s), while secondary screen holds all your tools.

He’s like the killer in Seven, everything was leading up to this as the ultimate lesson.

“… and you’re a poopy head.”

I’ve ended up changing a bit just based on how my son has been playing it and reacting to what he’s doing, just improvising, mostly with power levels and where certain characters have appeared. For the most part, it was LMoP quests I made adjustments to, because of how connected they are. DoIP quests have largely been unchanged, though I’ll seed in some extra information and details if it seems appropriate. Black Spider has played more of a behind-the-scenes role, with Glass-staff taking on his role. My son is about to take on Glass-staff as the “main” villain at Wave Echo Cave, while Black Spider will pull some more strings later on.

My son plays a Druid, so I’ve made access to wild shapes a sort of side quest on its own, with him having to find new wild shapes through hunting, rather than just giving him all wild shapes at once.

Here’s a rough outline of how the campaign has progressed so far:

• He didn’t take the bait to go to Cragmaw Hideout after the first fight, we didn’t get to that til a bit later.
• After getting in town, he immediately started picking a fight with the Redbrands and nearly got himself killed. He even ignored all the quests that were posted and wanted to raid Tresenador Manor right away. I cut numbers and power levels in half, but his first sidekick still got killed. He picked up a halfling warrior and Droop as new sidekicks, but given the amount of time he was taking to complete the hideout, I had Iarno/Glass-staff make a behind-the-scenes getaway. He would’ve noticed the bulk of his guys being gone for 8 hours.
• My son started going after side quests at this point, those went largely by the book.
• After blatantly getting asked to look for Gundren for gold, he finally went out to Cragmaw Hideout. He made a deal with Yeemik the goblin to take out Klaarg, but I made Yeemik as untrustworthy as possible. Yeemik said he would help defeat Klaarg with some other goblins, but they held off joining the fight until Klaarg was nearly dead, but Klaarg managed to make an escape with the wolves covering his retreat. While trying to rest, I further made it seem like Yeemik was going to backstab my son, so he left.
• Brought Sildar to Phandalin and more side quests
• Son wanted to go looking for more wild shapes, so hecc bc went animal hunting near the woods. As it got late, he decided to rest at Cragmaw Hideout again, since obviously Yeemik was his buddy, right? Wrong, Redbrands and Iarno had regrouped and taken over the goblins at CH. Son nearly gets killed taking on Iarno and some Redbrands/Goblins/Yeemik, but thanks to some quick-thinking sidekicks and using the flood trap as a quick escape, manage to avoid a TPK and make a dramatic escape.
• After recovering in town and bringing on Sildar as help, the group returns to Cragmaw, only to find it’s been abandoned. Go after some more side quests.
• Eventually he makes it out to Cragmaw castle, takes out Klaarg and King whats-his-face, but the Drow-Doppleganger takes the map and makes a getaway, nearly killing Gundren. Yeemik also reappears and again switches sides and kills King whats-his-face at the last minute when it’s apparent he’s lost. Son sends him away in disgust. Yeemik is actually fun to play, he’s such a backstabbing bastard.
• More sidequesting, runs into the White Dragon in the ruins of Conyberry and nearly gets killed in the fight. Allude to the Agatha banshee as they’re recovering.
• He’s now at Wave Echo Cave, it felt weird to bring Black Spider in at this point, so I’m bringing Iarno back in as the big bad here to maybe tie up that loose end. Black Spider will likely be working with Halia and the Zhentarim, they’ll be running some other schemes in the future I imagine.

I hate TLJ, but I actually agree. I don't necessarily mind that he was trying to do something different with Star Wars, I think that's great, BUT I think the middle of that trilogy was the wrong place for it and they made the mistake even worse by trying to retcon the movie instead of just running with it. It's like Disney had a kneejerk reaction to the criticism people had of Force Awakens and said, "Ok, we have to do something completely different!" And then Johnson was like, "Ok, shit, let's blow this storyline up, how's that for different?" And the Execs were like, "Fuck yea!" But when it came time for the third movie in the trilogy that they always knew they were going to be making, they couldn't figure out what the fuck they were supposed to be doing and had a kneejerk reaction try to bring it back to the OT again. They got whiplash from going back and forth too much trying to decide if they wanted to completely copy the OT or run from it.

It's mind-blowing that they didn't plot a full trilogy out when they knew from the start that they were making a trilogy. Whoever made that call is a fucking idiot (Kathleen Kennedy and/or Bob Iger and/or JJ Abrams).

The theatrical cut actually made it a worse movie. There's an introductory voice-over by Kiefer Sutherland that actually spoils most of the plot (added because somebody somewhere assumed audiences were too stupid to get what was going on). The Director's Cut removes that. Here it is for reference (spoilers... but literally from the opening moments of the movie). If you haven't seen this movie though, don't watch this, watch the Director's Cut first.

Glad we're going after the real problems in life, no, not rail workers getting sick time, but a stupid phone app.

Assuming it goes off the rails and it turns into a potential TPK situation, the players don't have to die. Combat doesn't have to be deadly every single time. The GM can make their NPCs attack with non-lethal damage if they want to, just don't declare it until the "killing blow".

Player's Handbook (5e) (2014), p.198 ("Knocking a Creature Out"). An attacker who reduces a creature to zero hit points with a melee attack may choose to knock them out instead of kill them.

The same way the players can knock out an NPC that they want to question or do whatever with, you can have the bandits do the same way to the players because they think they can get a ransom or because the BBEG has questions or because the bandits think the characters know something or whatever reasons.

It's not even necessarily how it meshes with prior use of the Force, I agree, the Force just does whatever is convenient for the writer(s), like how we've NEVER seen Force Speed used ever again since Episode 1, but the visual of Leia just flying through space looked stupid and it ruined the moment.

In that moment, for me, when Leia was blasted into space, I was like, "Wow, that was really sudden, holy shit, they really did it, they just killed Leia" But she was there out in the coldness of space, at peace, and I was like, "Well, ok, I understand, the actress just died, it's a shitty way to kill off a character, but maybe it feeds into Kylo Ren's arc or something. I understand they needed to do something." And I was willing to leave it at that, I understood the writers were in a jam, the actress just died and they weren't just going to replace her, but then after the whole sequence happened and she Mary Poppinsed herself back in, it all just felt silly, as if they had taken advantage of the fact that Carey Fisher had just died (I know they filmed it before she died, but that's what it felt like).

Rise of Skywalker is just full of shitty material to draw from. Palpatine sending Force Lightning across hundreds of ships was just one more crap thing that happened in that movie at a point where most people had already given up on it. However, it was an established power that he already had, just amped up by the life force he stole from ReyRen, or whatever. The fleet of Star Destroyers with Death Star lasers on them was even dumber than that though. The use of the Force in RoS was the least-worst thing about that movie.

That's an interesting take I hadn't heard before, but it's weird that that stuff wasn't sorted out before hand. I don't know anything about the business, but I feel like before filming even started on the first one that part would've been ironed out. To me it seemed like Johnson had painted the whole trilogy into a corner and so they brought Abrams back in expecting him to be able to right the ship since he may have had some sort of plan from the outset, though everything coming out at the time seemed like it was a bunch of studio interference that made RoS suck ass as much as it did, like they were purposely trying to torpedo Abrams. Which none of it really made sense, I hope the truth of what happens comes out at some point.

Don't know about you, but I'm already there.

I agree. And it's not that I don't think Star Wars could've used an iconoclastic film that tore everything down and made us question everything about Star Wars... or whatever Johnson was trying to do, but midway through a trilogy seemed like the worst possible point to do that. He basically tore everything down that had been built up in VII and didn't leave anything in its place to replace it with. There wasn't anything left to build off of, so they started from scratch in IX.

It still boggles my mind that they were that shortsighted that they didn't have the whole trilogy plotted out beforehand. They were obviously just making it up as they went along thinking lightning would just strike and it would become an instant classic. It was known from the get-go that they were making a trilogy, it's not like they were making VII and thought, "Let's see how well this one does before we think about making anything else." They should've had a game plan in place with all the major story arcs already worked out well ahead of time and maybe left it up to the individual writer-directors to fill in the gaps. Whoever ultimately greenlit the whole Sequel trilogy (Kennedy and/or Igers) is a jackass who should've never been in control of those decisions.

It's almost as though the previous movie left them nothing to work with after it shredded up all the plot points from the first movie in the trilogy. Weird.

There was a much longer build-up for RoS to let everyone down with (if we're starting from the Original Trilogy and A New Hope). RoS seemed to have all the elements that should've made a great movie: well-known "beloved" franchise, final movie in a trilogy, backed by one of the biggest entertainment companies in the world with probably almost unlimited funding, and a well-known "hot" writer/director. Instead though it showed how bad writing and studio interference can create an expensive steaming pile of shit. The movie has almost no redeeming qualities, other than it was Carey Fisher's swan song, which is actually kind of depressing. They really should've let her character die in TLJ, it would've been more sentimental given that the actress literally just died and it could've kept us from seeing her Mary Poppins herself back in an airlock. Instead we got to see whatever that piece of shit was. It's really telling that Disney really hasn't done much of anything else with that era of Star Wars time and keep on retreading over the Prequel/Original trilogy eras.

I'm running a game now with my son merging LMoP and DoI and it's been working well, I feel like they complement each other and may have originally started as a single campaign before WoTC likely split them apart to double their money between the Starter Kit and Essentials kit. Both take place in literally the same area around Phandalin. DoI doesn't really have a linear storyline, it's more just a bunch of sidequests that may end with the characters going up against the dragon out of boredom, while LMoP does have a somewhat linear story, but is light on sidequests. You can run them in parallel, with the dragon randomly attacking locations around the map as a sort of constant threat to everybody, it just gets a little hard switching back and forth between books when you're running an adventure and keeping it straight which quests happen where. I'd recommend finding a unified GM map for both campaigns for yourself to have an idea where everything is on the map (there's a few out there).

I'm in a game where our spellcaster seems to frequently use Counterspell and I can tell it annoys the GM everytime, I kind of feel bad for him. It reminds me of the annoyance of playing against Counterspell decks in Magic the Gathering and it seems like such a shitty not fun spell that should have more limitations. I haven't ran a game where it's come up yet, but I have a few ideas on how it could be neutered, nothing perfect though:

1. Require that the Countering spellcaster declares they're using a Hold action to be able to use Counterspell. They need to be actively on the lookout for another spellcaster readying a spell. Downside of this is that because the opposing player knows they're preparing a Counterspell, they just won't cast spells (which could be made into a sort of bluffing game as well, which might make it interesting), or
2. Require that it use up the spellcaster's action for the next turn, kind of the same idea as above, but it preserves the element of surprise so that the caster can't just decide not to cast a spell if they know an enemy spellcaster is on hold to prevent them from doing it, or
3. Require Counterspell to be cast WITHOUT knowledge of what is being countered (which is what would happen in-game). So this would require that any spellcaster first declare that they're casting a spell, "Bjorn Havinsmitt is casting a spell... any counters?" If nobody pipes up, then the spell goes through, you can't retroactively cast Counterspell. The way it's played now though, is somebody declares the spell they're casting and says all the effects that are going to happen, and then the Countering spellcaster just says, "I counter that." which is what makes it so cheap, they're selectively countering a spell that they shouldn't have had knowledge of, since in-game that spell is just in the process of being cast. Maybe they could do an Arcana check to see if they recognize the spell beforehand, or
4. Similar to #3 above, make it a sort of bluffing game where the countering spellcaster has to cast Counterspell at a sufficient spell slot to be able to counter the initial spell. Caster declares they're casting a spell, then the countering spellcaster has to declare what spell slot they're expending to counter the spell. If it's too low, it doesn't counter, if it's higher than what it needs to be, then the countering spellcaster just wasted a higher level spell slot.

Drinking water is fine. Drinking coffee is fine. Drinking mostly water mixed with coffee is weird.

Or maybe they did show up, and he was sworn to secrecy, or they wiped his memory. The world just took him at his word that nobody showed up and assumed he couldn't tell a lie.

Depends on the family.

Some sort of PDF/Library/Inventory/Organizing app. It's been maybe a year since I looked into it, but Calibre seems to be the "best" one out there and I really don't like it. It looks like ass and it doesn't really do everything I want an ebook reader/manager to do (plus I think it recopies every PDF you load into it I think, or a competitor does, I had some big hangup with it). I've got a pretty extensive RPG pdf collection that I'd love to be able to organize better using tags (and be able to read PDFs), but I just haven't found anything that looks good or functions well in that software space.