Anim07734

Still hanging around 180lb, but I think I'm getting better about my diet. So we'll see if I can maintain that for the week and break this plateau. Flying out to a friend's wedding this weekend, but luckily, I don't have to eat well as long as I quit snacking constantly.

Nice to be around Belated update: I've been yoyoing around 180lb because hydration is the only goal I'm consistently hitting. Hoping to start working on the costume this week and maybe do a better job sticking to my diet and exercise goals.

Not quite a week behind getting my challenge up, so that's something. I'm currently focusing on cutting the weight I've gained over the past few years. My goal is to cut a pound a week until I get back to 150lb, but the timeline is flexible. I started the year at 185lb and didn't really buckle down until early Feb, but after stalling for a couple weeks I'm only down to 180lb (as of this morning). Hoping to be a little more consistent going forward, so I can hit my goal by the end of this year. For this challenge, my plan is: Stay hydrated - something I've been having trouble with as the weather starts warming up again, so I need to pay attention or my workouts are going to suffer. Limit snacking - I have a tendency to boredom eat, especially before bed. I'm trying to only snack when I'm legitimately hungry, with the ultimate goal of also making them healthy snacks. Workout habit - trying to rebuild my old habits, but since it's been a few years, I keep struggling with it. My current goal is 3x a week with no limit on what counts. This week I've done the local nature trail twice and spent a night working in the garage, and hopefully will get another home improvement workout this weekend. Costuming - our next convention will be Dragoncon end of August, so working to get costumes ready. My current focus is this guy from one of my favorite artists that we meet up with every year:

Ending out this challenge on a mixed note. I'm heading in the right direction, but still have a ways to go to reestablish habits. Looking forward to next challenge and continuing this journey.

It looks like I spoke too soon, as I physically can't do enough reps in a day to complete my PLP goal. So I'm going to be trying to get something else to stick instead, but haven't decided what for sure. For now, I'm just going to shoot for 3 strength training sessions each week and see what feels right. Also, I finally weighed myself this morning and I'm up another 3lbs over the holidays, so I'm now 35lbs over my goal weight. But at least I'm paying attention to it now, so hopefully that'll help get it under control.

Finally feeling better, even got my PLP reps in yesterday. Still a little phlegmy and the resulting cough is being annoying, but things are looking up. I won't be trying to make up for the missed reps while I was laid up on the couch though; at this point, that would be too much to accomplish in the time I have. I also haven't gotten anything done on costumes because of low energy, so I'll be starting on that again this weekend.

So far, so good this week, but spending an hour in the cold and rain last night while the mechanic replaced battery cables on my wife's truck has turned my recovering minor cold to a full blown head cold. Couldn't sleep last night because I kept waking up coughing and called out of work today to recover. So I'm still on track to hit my water goal, and will probably get extra trying to flush my system, but I'm not sure about the PLP reps. I'm going to try splitting them into singles (I only need 5 today), but might still have to make a few up once I recover.

Last year I tried something new to try getting back on track and well... I haven't made any progress over the past year due to lack of consistency and no clear plan, then turned 40 last week with massive back pain due to a pulled muscle from sleeping wrong. So I'm restarting Challenges with their known schedule and keeping goals super simple to build some momentum. For this challenge: 1) Hydrate - with the cold swing, I've been letting myself get dehydrated too often and it's getting in the way of everything. I need at least 2 bottles of water a day, preferably 3. 2) PLP - nice and simple checkbox to get me moving again. I'll go with month+day reps (so starting with 1+1=2 for today) to have a built in deload come February. 3) Mando Costume - this is supposed to be my big costume for Pensacon this year, and I've got less than 2 months to finish. So hopefully I'll have lots of progress pics to post here.

What's everyone got planned for the new year?

If you're playing digitally or don't want to track down hex paper, Inkarnate has a good area map option you can add hexes too. My map below was made entirely with their free assets. I actually did this a couple weeks back for one of my campaigns (and really need to sit down and do the same for the other campaign; so far I've just been making it up as I go based on the world map). I don't have a defined "dungeon" because the campaign started with the starting town of Joyildi being destroyed, so now the party has to decide where to lead the survivors while avoiding their attackers. I've got 3 other small towns and a bunch of scattered farmsteads; a couple ruins, if they want to explore; and enough terrain I can add stuff for them to find later. I went with 5mi hexes to give more area while still providing enough detail for decision making; for reference, each of the towns is 2.5-3 days travel by road.

My brother and I started playing during middle school in the mid-90's, and while it's had several upgrades and retcons, our World is a living place shaped by events of previous campaigns. And yes, I just call it World, because it's the most realistic name I could think of; it compares favorably with the IRL planet of "dirt." Now that we're posting info online and sharing it outside our immediate players, we've decided to name the main continent Omneth. My current map is here (created using Inkarnayt's free version). And I'm running with custom races, gods, and a very rough draft of what I'm calling Homelands (intended as an addition to the current race, class, and background system to further differentiate characters). Part of what I hope to accomplish this challenge is fleshing out these Homelands enough to start playtesting them, so I'll link that doc when it's ready for critique. The other two docs are open for comments and criticism, since that helps me continue refining them and figure out what information needs to be included. The races doc is a complete list of the playable species, but some are missing descriptions and most need more added, if I can figure out what's missing. The gods doc only has the major gods and a handful of others I've developed for campaigns over the years; they all need a lot more information, especially the ones that are just a name and title. To keep from cluttering this thread too much, both docs have comments turned on, for anyone interested. In one of my last games, the party decided to found a "monster" nation to protect their people (orcs, goblins, giants, etc) from the paladins of the Sepran Empire, which led to a major war through the foothills between the Northern and Southern Mountains. Both of my current games are dealing with the results of those actions, roughly 10 years in world later. The first is based in the trade-city of Anderssted, which is doing its best to protect and shelter its people (and an ever increasing number of refugees) from the war as winter arrives. The party initially formed in answer to a call for heroes to solve problems beyond the town guards' abilities, but having proven themselves in several quests, are going to be trusted with increasing responsibilities and authority. However, the party is much more self-serving and anti-government than most of the city realizes, so I'm interested to see where they go with it. The second game just finished their "prologue" adventure where their middle-of-nowhere, 100-person village was destroyed by unknown attackers. They managed to save some of the villagers, but now have to decide what to do next. One of the players started as a higher level "trojan" character for me to kill during the attack, with the plan to take over her apprentice afterwards. But the dice decided to let the mentor live, so she's now in a coma, as another plot hook to figuring out who the attackers were and what they were doing. Both of the games are very sandbox/free-form, so I just have ideas for what's going on in the background, and depending on what the party decides, they may or may not find out what some of that is.

I'm currently running 2 different games in the world I've been building for almost 25years, so I won't be following the Gygax challenge, but I would like to tag along and share the worldbuilding motivation. My accomplishment for today was building the minibosses my Wednesday group might encounter this week; a pair of bandit captains who have taken over an outlying fortress as a base of operations. The local baron is going to offer the party titles and ownership of the fort in exchange for clearing out the bandits and protecting the nearby road. But I'm hoping the bandits will live long enough to make a counter offer: let us live and we'll only raid outside of your territory and give you a share of the loot. This party is much more "protagonist" than "hero," so I want to see what they do. So may I present: Umei Sharpwill, dragonborn thief/battle master and Isis Giantblood, hill giant rogue/tempest cleric Both images from Will-E-H on deviantart

Finally got Speedy's new tank finished, so yesterday's workout was removing the old one and putting the new one in place. She's still not sure if she likes it, but it's growing on her.

You mean the greatest gun ever made? I'm working a couple programs looking into upgrades/modernization for it. Someone in my office also does the final acceptance testing on every ammo lot made for the GAU-8 before the purchase is finalized.

I've been keeping busy with life. All my "workouts" last week were moving ammo for a test at work (I do gun and ammunition testing for the USAF), so I managed to stay active in spite of 9-10hr days. Then last weekend was a lot of driving visiting friends for their baby shower. Mando costumes have been put on hold, as there's no way to finish them and all the others we want to do next month. So we need to finish our fancy Dr Who inspired outfits (TARDIS dress for the wife and cyberman shirt and vest for me), repair my anthro knight (while deciding what the character actually is), make some touch-ups to the wife's foxgirl huntress, and do upgrades to our Aragorn and Arwen costumes (replacing Mandos). I also need to hurry up and finish Speedy's new enclosure since she officially won't fit in her old cave and the new one is too big for the old tank. Weather hasn't been cooperating, so I'm going to have to clear space inside to put on the final silicone seal for it's 24hr dry time. But as you can see, she barely fits and has started dragging her cave around the tank and getting upset when she can't get back inside to sleep.