Jarric

Thank you . Annoyingly I can't do Summer Nuts this year. I'll be running up Snowdon, so it's a fun reason, but it's still a shame to miss it.

Often this is the only way to learn important lessons. Well done on the chapter; sounds like you're in a really good place with it.

Deffy! Glad you came for this challenge, it felt weird without you. Out of interest, do you have a cavity wall? This might be totally overkill, but I drilled into the cavity in my place and ran an ethernet cable from the ground floor to the first floor, and stuck a socket on each end of it. Now I have my computer wired straight in to the router, so I get full speed on the top floor and don't have to rely on the wifi.

Remember: you are not a salmon. Words to live by.

Week 3 - Wednesday to Saturday It's been a good week, though my updating has become sporadic again. Fighting Cloudflare to get on on my mobile is not helping Wednesday I did languages and stretching/yoga first thing. Thursday I did languages and stretching/yoga first thing, calories were on track, and I wasn't late to anything by virtue of having no appointments. Friday I did languages and stretching/yoga first thing, calories were on track, and I wasn't late to anything by virtue of having no appointments. Saturday I had a long soak in the bath after my race (more on that to follow), which counts for my recovery goal, and that was it I have not done any essay writing in the past 4 days, or worked on Gygax75. There have been a variety of things that I've just found really draining over the last few days. These don't excuse me not getting on with my essay, but I've just been worn out and lacking the get up and go to get up and write. The same goes for Gygax75, even though that's a fun thing that I want to do. On Wednesday I went to see my Dad, because Mum was worried about him trying to take the car out (his brakes need replacing, but he doesn't remember this). Thankfully he was still there when I got there, and I enlisted his help in replacing the wing mirror on my car. It's a bit of a better job than my previous bodge, for those who have been following along with the wing mirror saga, but it's still not quite a perfect match to the drivers' side one... It wasn't a hard job, and Dad was on quite good form, but I still find being with him pretty draining, and I didn't want to do anything but sit on the sofa and eat for the rest of the day. On Thursday I went to visit the grave of a friend of mine who died about 15 months ago. I think it was a good thing to do, but it wasn't exactly a cheery morning. WW and I went for lunch afterwards, then grocery shopping, and again by the end of that I just felt drained and done. Friday was my birthday - I spent the whole day watching Lego Masters Australia, and also some of the day making some lego figures that WW bought me as birthday presents - it was glorious. Not great for my goals, but glorious. In the evening I cooked a massive home-made burger with potato cakes, and got an early night as I had to be up early for the race on Saturday. Race report - Winter Nuts 2023 I was woefully under prepared for this race. I got up at about quarter to 6, which as it turns out was not long enough to get ready and get out the door. I forgot that I'd bought glasses to run in last year, but luckily stumbled across them when I was getting ready. I nearly forgot about energy gels as well, and didn't think about nutrition for the transition zone at all. I did manage to arrive in just enough time to get my race gear on and down half a cup of tea before the race kicked off. I had signed up for the 2-lap qualification wave, which would theoretically allow me to qualify for the OCR European Championships and the OCR World Championships. Not that I'm planning to travel to either, but it means that I get to play on all of the biggest and best obstacles. The qualifying criteria included getting a wrist band on each of the 4 mandatory obstacles in lap 1, and then either completing every obstacle on course or completing the penalties for failed obstacles. The course is 7km per lap, of which I would be running 2 laps. 3 of the 4 wristband obstacles were in the first 5 minutes of the race. There was a set of mixed high and low monkey bars, then a multi-rig comprising ninja rings, an arms only swinging section from various equipment, and an arms and legs section, and finally a low rig. All of those were ok, and I was pleasantly surprised that I managed to get through them all first time and collect my 3 wrist bands. I was confused that I hadn't got to the 4th compulsory obstacle though, and spent a good portion of lap 1 worried that I'd missed it. The next section of the course had some straightforward obstacles - wall climbs, tyre carries, that kind of stuff, and then very quickly dumped us in the river. A lot of this race is in the water, mostly running through and climbing in and out of the river, which varies from ankle to thigh high. When I started the air temperature was 2C (~36F), so I can only imagine what the water temperature was. I had gone out in a shorty wetsuit, neoprene gloves, and neoprene socks, but by an hour in my feet were still going numb. The next section of the course was more of an open trail run. Again there were some nice little obstacles - walls, carries, a small monkey bar set (actually a ladder suspended horizontally). The running was nice too, across fields and woodland, and then up and down (and up and down and up and down) a particularly nasty hill. I was quite happy to see that my running was ok - I hadn't run in over a week ever since I'd crunched my ankle bouldering, but it actually felt fine. Finally we had the lake zone, which is my favourite bit but obviously the coldest. We had some pontoons to run across, some rubber rings to haul ourselves over, and then finally a swim through the lake. The wetsuit really earned its keep in this section; I didn't have any issues with the cold other than my feet. Then, right at the end of the lap, we had the final mandatory obstacle. This was a brutal low rig, with two sections - one hard and one incredibly hard. The first attempt had to be on the hardest section, which I failed to get through. The next attempt was on the easier section, and I barely dragged myself to the end off a couple of long-low ropes to ring the bell and complete the lap. As I stepped off the obstacle - not jumped, just stepped - I felt my ankle crunch again. I went and downed some cold tea, ate a couple of biscuits, and tried to get out and run again. I got through the first mandatory obstacles, but my ankle was killing me and I was just limping round, not even at a decent walking speed. I knew the sensible thing to do was to call it a day and stop the race there. So, of course, I kept going. I doubted that choice a few times, but after maybe half an hour of walking and run-limping I was able to run again, and I managed to get myself round the course. After just under 3 hours of running, I hit the wall. I suddenly felt totally knackered, and even simple obstacles began to feel like a lot of hard work. I dragged myself through the final sections of the course, did my burpees after failing the final rig, and crossed the finish line in 3:10:08. My results were interesting - I was the penultimate person to finish 2 laps who signed up for 2 laps, and the last in my age category to do so. But, because 4 people started in my category and only 2 managed the 2 laps, I finished 2nd of 4 competitors in my group. Assuming that that doesn't change (extra results might be entered if there was a mistake) then that would qualify me for the European and World championships for an age category place. Again, not that I'll be travelling to either, but it'll be nice to say I've qualified if it becomes official. After the race I was totally wiped out. I got home, showered, ate food, and had a long soak in the bath. In the evening we went out for Turkish for my birthday meal, and I had an excellent (and huge) Lamb Sarma Beyti. I drank a few beers there, and a few more at home, and collapsed into bed by 10pm.

well in that case, I commend your gif finding skills. That is absolute perfection - love it. It's awesome. Although, may I present my favourite advert of all time, starring Jason Statham:

Thank you for the reminder on this Just ordered mine. Sorry, I realise I have not been terribly helpful on this front either. Don't panic though; we'll get something sorted. I'll try and do some work on this later.

That's interesting - I've never really played with XP for gold mechanics (other than that 5 Torches Deep game you ran), but I can see how that would work. I do think that PF2e solves some of the problems with Mathfinder to be fair; it's definitely more streamlined than 1e. I don't know how they've adapted the hexcrawl and domain management rules to 2e though. this is great - what's it from? Deffy! Good to see you; I was thinking the other day I hadn't seen you around here in a little while. Welcome! Sneaking in is always welcome

Tuesday - week 3 day 2 Yesterday was a good day. As my ankle still wasn't right I got up and did some yoga instead, then walked WW to work and wandered home. I updated a bunch of stuff on here, did a little bit of Gygax75 prep, and made a decent dent in my essay. I'm now at 1,331 words out of 3,500 ish that I need, albeit I need to lose some of the words that I've written as this section is currently too long. In the evening we had our Greek myth inspired Pathfinder game. We pretty much cleared out the next level of the temple to Aphrodite we were exploring, and found a bunch of magical items that we largely don't understand, but appear to work together for some kind of ritual. One of them was a cool magic shield - I say cool, I have no idea what it does and I immediately damaged it in the first combat I used it in We also found a very ornate looking chest that can only contain good things. I know the contents must be good, partly because it's so ornate looking, but mainly because when our barbarian (in his infinite wisdom) decided to kick it, he lost over half his hp to the electricity trap that was on it. We finished the session by shouting up the stairs to the inhabitants of the top floor, who we think are at least two androcastia - horrible blood-cloud monsters that have been giving us quite a lot of trouble throughout this temple. All goals ticked off for the day (I think, there wasn't much to be on time for but I'm counting it anyway). All in all, a pretty good day!

Yeah, it does sound cool. I think the difficulty with that kind of campaign is that you start off as normal fantasy adventurers, and then become local lords and start playing a very different game. So you have to have a group of players that want to play both of the games, and design characters that can work in both of the roles - it's quite a lot of moving parts. Would the Kingmaker AP for Pathfinder be the kind of thing you're after? It runs from levels 1-20 so I'm guessing that it crosses over that full development, and looking it up they have apparently updated it to PF2e.

Monday - week 3 day 1 Right, let's start the week updating like I mean to go on. Yesterday was a good day. I got up and went to Crossfit first thing. It was there that I remembered that everything hurt and I was dying. My ankle still didn't feel right after falling from the bouldering wall on Saturday, so I subbed burpee box jumps for burpee box steps and a small box, and I attempted bar muscle ups on a lower bar as I didn't want to drop from the higher bar (oddly, much harder on the lower bar). My whole upper body felt tired and achy too, but I got in a decent few reps on bench press if nothing else. I then went to work for Hopalong briefly - he had a tree felling job which was all of half an hour's work and really didn't need a second person there, but as a safety issue he never works solo, so I came and kept him company and pulled some branches around. Then we went and played snooker for the afternoon, which was fun (even though he thrashed me). When I got back I really wasn't feeling essay writing, but I manage to do a quick bit of introduction to tick off the goal and keep my momentum going. Once I'd done the bare minimum I sacked that off and started doing some stuff on Roll20 for next week's D&D session. I also spent a chunk of the evening reading the next section of the book, which looks like it's gonna be a load of fun. Calories were good - used up 550 out of my weekly overflow budget, but I find it's best to go a bit over early in the week so that I'm not chasing the target at the weekend. I was on time for everything, pleasingly, and essay writing and languages were done. Stretching and Gygax75 were missed for the day. 4/6 goals for the day.

Thank you mate... I think?

It's such a shame you couldn't join this campaign mate - between the various factions vying for the party's support and the whole running a business side of it, I think it would have been a good fit for you. Ah, I see you have actual footage of my players trying to keep track of their affiliations. It does, doesn't it? I've never played or run a game that is this biased towards roleplay and intrigue and as a consequence so light on combat. It's actually been a bit of a challenge to understand out to pace it and keep it interesting. I think if I were keeping up with tracking my goals I'd be happy, even if I was missing updates. If I was going away on holiday I'd modify all of my goals to be suitable too, so that would be less of an issue. Because I'm at home and I want to get stuff done with this time it's a bit more tricky.

I don't know, but I can say that I'm struggling to check in because I'm lacking my regular routine. Is there a regular time that you would usually come on here to update? If not, could there be? Go get it man! Something>nothing

So I rather thought having some time off work would mean I had more time to update here. Instead, as I've had less routine I've actually been here less. I've also been bad at tracking my goals in my journal as I haven't been updating them here. This is where I think I am anyway: Week 2 The muscle: 6/7 days on track with calories. I finished at a total of 21,990kcal against a target of 22,064 for the week, so within 10.5 calories per day of target. I also gained 1lb this week; if I gain another this week I might have to nudge the target down slightly - I want to be bulking at 0.4325lbs per week, so I shouldn't be gaining a pound every week. The documancer: 2/7 sessions writing my essay last week. I didn't do this Monday and Tuesday as I was at work, and figured I could pick it up on my days off. Then when I was off I couldn't be bothered every day and/or I filled my day with other things. A bit more discipline is required on this one. The chronologist: 2/7 days being on time. Not thrilled about this, but not sure what to do about it other than keep tracking. The cartographer: 7/9 Gygax75 tasks completed - that's all of the normal ones without the extra credit tasks. I'd like to spend more time on this - I only looked at it twice over the week, but I am slowly creating a world. The translator: 7/7 days practising French and Dutch. I managed to get tickets to the Olympics for Paris 2024, and I'm currently planning my trip to The Netherlands in June this year, so I'm pretty motivated to work on both of these. The second-storey specialist: 2/7 - I did an extra climbing session on Wednesday (instead of hangboarding), and I finally did some foam rolling on Sunday. I really ache at the moment - I crunched my ankle climbing on Saturday, my knee hurts, my shoulder hurts, and I'm very conscious that I have a race at the end of this week. It shouldn't be hard to get in a lot more stretching and rolling this week, partially because I'm in pain, and partially because I won't be running or going to the gym and will instead be spending time doing yoga and stuff in preparation for the race. Last week was a good week. Monday and Tuesday were busy at work, but only so that I could clear stuff to have a load of time off. On Thursday night I went and lost some money watching greyhound racing with WW and some work friends. Friday was a very full on day taking Dad to the bank and trying to sort out what is in his accounts, but it felt like a massive weight had lifted when that was done. On Saturday I played D&D - my first time as a 5e player rather than a DM in quite a while. It was a very silly game - the concept being Squid Game meets The Muppet Show, with all of our characters starting the game having woken up as muppets with no idea where we were. Oh, and it was in space, for some reason. It was truly excellent fun. On Sunday I ran D&D, and had fun pulling the party in different directions. We now have 4/5 of the party enlisted in the Grey Hands, all of the party being members of the Zhentarim, and 2 party members also joining the Harpers. The Harper's characters' first mission is to investigate rumours of Zhentarim operatives, and the characters have already decided that this is something best kept from the rest of the party. We also had time for a very intense combat in a dark alley in the dock ward, with the party getting the best of some kind of drow assassin who fled the scene at the end of the session.

Well I'm late sharing the week 3 prompts, but here we go (looks like a lot to do this week!): Week 3: The Dungeon Draw and stock three levels of your dungeon. “Step 3 [...] is very difficult and time consuming. Each level should have a central theme and some distinguishing feature, i.e. a level with large open areas swarming with goblins, one where the basic pattern of corridors seems to repeat endlessly, one inhabited by nothing but fire-dwelling or fire-using monsters, etc. As each level is finished the various means of getting to lower levels must be keyed and noted on the appropriate lower levels [...] A careful plan of what monsters and treasures will be found where on each level is also most necessary, and it can take as long to prepare as the level itself.” – EGG Tasks Describe the entrance to the dungeon in 7-10 words. You can tell a lot about a place by looking at its doors. Create a point-to-point map. This is a simple map with circles (rooms, caves, etc.) that are connected to each other by lines (passages, tunnels, halls, stairs, slides...). Don’t worry about visuals just yet, this map will help you create a good flow for the dungeon. You can add scale and detail later. You will draw three levels. For each level, include at least d6+6 rooms/areas and connect them. Make sure they aren’t connected like a string of pearls (all in a line). At least half the rooms should have more than one way in/out. Add more rooms if you need ‘em! Include several (say d3+1) ways up and/or down per level. These exits may double-count, e.g. a stairs down on level 1 is also the stairs up on level 2 and/or level 3. Remember that it doesn’t have to be stairs: you can use slides, shafts, elevators, rivers, etc. Come up with 1 theme per level. Try rolling d3+2 for each theme to generate a sort of budget. This will help you remember to reinforce the themes multiple times each level. (Unlike a real budget, it’s okay to over-spend!) Example themes: tomb raiders, spiders, machines, fountains and pools, or fungi. As you stock the dungeon you will spend your budget to incorporate references to your themes via ornamentation, creatures, sensory details, etc. It is okay for a theme to “spill over” into the level above or below. Make a list of about a dozen iconic monsters and place them in rooms/areas. You can put them in rooms or passages, and on any level. Generally, the more dangerous the creature the lower it will be found. If any of the monsters help sell one of your themes, remember to reduce the budget accordingly. Your monsters could also be arranged in a 2d6 wandering monster table. Put the ones most likely to roam around in the middle of the table. Spread d6 major features throughout the dungeon. Features should be interactive: traps, puzzles, talking doors, magic fountains… If any of them reinforce a theme, reduce its budget. These are features that are unique or notable. Fill in around these features with general “dungeon dressing” as needed. If you roll a small number, make each feature really impactful! For each room/area, note any treasure. Roll a d6 for each area. If it contains a creature or feature, there is treasure on a 1-4. Otherwise, there is treasure only on a 1. If you have random treasure tables, you can go ahead and roll up each of these piles of treasure now to save time later. Name three wondrous items and locate them in the dungeon. Pull them from your source material or make them up. Again, if they reinforce a theme, you can reduce that theme’s budget. These are probably in addition to any magic items that get rolled up as part of placed treasure, unless you rolled some really good ones. Spend any remaining theme budget adding detail. Note unusual smells, weird lighting, odd stonework, statues or other decorative elements, disturbing noises, messages written on the wall, corpses of previous adventurers… Extra Credit Map out all three levels on graph paper. Gygax would say this is an imperative, but in “theater of the mind” style games it may not be necessary. The old school scale for maps is 1:10’ (ten foot squares), which will allow you to fit a lot more dungeon on a page, but you can go 1:5’ if you like or if you plan on running a more tactical game. If you don’t map it out on graph paper, make some notes on your bubbles and lines about ceiling height, lengths of corridors, sizes and shapes of rooms, etc. Enough for a good description.

I was starting to come to this conclusion actually - I've got all of the main features so maybe I just don't need to fill in all of the area that is basically open plains. Maybe if I colour the map that would be a better time to do that anyway. I am also going to steal this as a great justification to leave some spaces in my map (not that I've done my random encounter table yet, but that will come. On that basis I think my map is done, complete with The main city - Béal Gloine, on the mouth of the river Gloine A small farming village - Ilyathyr over Vertom - so named because it's an elven village above and a dwarfish village below A fishing village - Nalsera A fae gate in a large woodland - my main dungeon entrance An entrance to an abandoned tunnel - my secondary dungeon entrace A ruined town sat in a giant crater, as though it just fell out of the sky A huge, mysterious lake, surrounded by trees Some mountains, forests, cliffs, and hills I won't share the map because it's pencil on paper, though if I ever decide to make it prettier I will definitely share it then.

That is interesting - you target slightly different muscles in each position, but you wouldn't expect it to make that much difference. Is this the same with pushups out of interest? i.e. wide grip pushups are fine and narrow grip/diamond pushups are no good?

I'm glad you like it - I really like that you pick up on these things and run wild with them. I'm a big Hammarfist fan I have to say.

So I've started my map, and plotted a coastline and a couple of settlements. Need to spend the time filling in the rest of the very large open spaces I have now. Above water - seafaring orcs rather than aquatic orcs. Not necessarily pirates, though it's a good chance to play on some stereotypes about sailors. On that note, another image from the mood board: It's not so much gaming timing as learning a new system time for me - I can often claw out 3 hours on a weekend with a few weeks notice, but investing time in a new ruleset is difficult. Also, this feels like a game that runs better as a campaign than a one-shot, from what little I've seen of it?

Ok, it's about time I shared my pitch for my setting I think: Designed for D&D 5e/Pathfinder 2e Much of the setting will be based on Irish mythology, and on other myths surrounding sidhe/fae realms The starting land is a verdant and wild place, with small towns and villages separated by lush grasslands and dense forests The world is a mutable place, and maps are unreliable here. Hills, lakes, forests, ruins, and sometimes whole cities appear and disappear without warning. Large changes are rare, but you can very easily find your path to the next town blocked by a stand of trees that wasn't there before. There are no humans (or half-humans) in this world The main species are elves, who largely live on the ground, dwarfs, who largely live below the ground, and orcs, who largely spend their time at sea Other species exist, and I will work with players to define their place in the world if they want to play said species. Elemental and planar species are born of elves/dwarfs/orcs etc. (this is a concept from Pathfinder 2e, where aasimar/tieflings/ifrit/sylphs etc. are a heritage that modifies your ancestry (species) I'm not going to share my whole mood board now, but a lot of my love of Irish mythology comes from my last visit to Ireland, when WW and I stopped at Loch Gur: That's not my picture - if only the weather was that good that day . It's a beautiful place though, and they had tapes of the local myths and legends that you could listen to whilst wandering around the lake and stone circles. It was wonderful. Anyway, although that's an inspiration from my real nice, I also need some sources I can actually refer to, and these are: Irish Folk and Fairy Tales, edited by Gordon Jarvic - I've had this for ages so a great excuse to dip into it a bit now Forbidden Lands RPG - I love the feel of this (or at least what I've seen of it shared by @DarK_RaideR), so I want to pick up on it stylistically The Iron Druid series by Kevin Hearne - I can't find this in the local library, but thanks to @sylph's recommendation I think I'm going to be picking this up on payday Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable - this is a goldmine of weirdness that I'll probably dip into from time to time

They were very moreish (and also almost entirely made of sugar ) . And thanks I'm not that creative . These books are great though actually, a really comprehensive list of stuff for everything in the monster manual and volo's guide.

I'd keep it in the hills - it's more interesting that this city is different, and it gives you a creative challenge to decide why it's different. Maybe it's natural resources? Maybe it's a last safe haven where lots of people stop to trade and resupply before an arduous leg of the journey? Maybe at this point the mode of transport for freight has to change, so this city is where everything is unloaded and reloaded? Maybe the local lord laid down extortionate taxes for goods wagons travelling through the city, so everyone unloads at the city gates, carries everything through the city by hand, and picks up with fresh wagons on the other side? I've actually never used this, I was quoting from the Gygax75 book at that point. I am going to check it out though, as well as the Madison Paper link you mentioned.

Monday - week 2 day 1 Yesterday was a good day. Crossfit first thing was block pulls off 2 blocks, and I built up to 140kg (308#) x 6. Then we had a cool little workout of 4 rounds for time: 4 deadball loads, 7 calorie air bike. The deadball loads are like atlas stones but the balls are smaller and rubberised - I used a 70kg (154#) ball and loaded onto a box at sternum height. Felt heavy but good by the end. Work was busy - lots of meetings and we had corporate photos taken as well. I ended up staying late having a really good chat with a friend from work. Having got home late I cooked a lamb biriani without our leftover roast lamb, and then collapsed on the sofa until I got a call from my mum. She wanted someone to talk through about life stress, and also to enlist my help in trying to sort out some admin issues with my dad, which I'll do on my time off. By the end of that conversation, following a late finish and a big meal, I was completely drained and just wanted to collapse in bed. I did manage to put some washing out, but that was the extent of my evening activities. 2/6 goals for the day. Calories were quite high as I had an entire pack of Colin the Sour Caterpillars at work on top of all my normal food, but starting the week on a high number is quite useful. Languages were done. I was on time for nothing all day, didn't study, didn't do Gygax75, and didn't stretch.

No kidding - I even pulled up the harvesting guide you shared with me to determine what they could do Yeah, I really like that in this adventure they have a reason to participate in society. Of course, they could have just decided to sell the building on, but I'm glad they didn't. I did a bit (though really not very much) of writing up my own stuff too. I've definitely got the concept and the basic pitch down - need to print out some hex paper tomorrow for week 2 mapping. Haha nice! I love Perytons, they're so unnecessarily nasty, and the lore/myths around them are really fun too.