Jarric

Hope all goes well at the physio today - it sounds like you're making good progress anyway. I love this analogy

Weekend 1 The weekend was a good one. On Friday I got my penultimate essay finished and submitted for marking. Just one more to write now! I did nothing on it on Saturday, but I did at least print off my last essay question and write the word count split on it on Sunday (totally counting that for this goal. On Saturday I climbed, I ran, and then WW and I went to stay with The Captain, Mermaid, and Princess. We had a great time - The Captain cooked steak and chips, we had quite a few beers and some red wine, and played a pub quiz game. Sunday was D&D day. The party went to meet with an extremely high-ranking wizard, who offered them a simple task to go and get some information from a cryptic old monk up in the mountains. On the way, the party were set upon by a peryton, which is a properly nasty creature that I've wanted to inflict on a group of PCs for a long, long time. Thanks to a few good tactical choices and a well-timed dissonant whispers from the sorcerer, they were able to slay the beast, with the rogue sending and arrow straight through one of its eyes. After much discussion on the value of parts of the body, they decided to decapitate the creature so that they could mount in head in their pub. After that the party were relatively easily able to find their monk, and after some terse conversation received a cryptic message to take back with them. The rest of the session was spent discussing renovations for the pub, and trying to figure out where to find the gold to carry them out. In the evening I went for another run (first time I've done 4 runs in a week in ages), did a load of prep for next D&D session, updated a bit of my Gygax75 stuff, and levelled up Psyche, my elf cleric for our Greek myth pathfinder campaign. Week 1 stats The muscle: 5/7. Finished at 21,879 kcal for the week, against a target of 22,064, so only just short. Forgot to weigh myself this morning, so will have to do that and set calories tomorrow. The documancer: 5/7. Got my essay submitted! Just one to go now, so extremely pleased with that. The chronologist: 1/7. Absolutely rubbish; need to work harder on this. The cartographer: 4/5. I still beed to write this up on the forum thread, but got all 3 tasks and 1 of the extra credit tasks done this week. The translator: 7/7 (I think). Smashed this, and really enjoying working on languages at the minute. The second-storey specialist: 0/7. I keep forgetting about/neglecting this. Must try harder. I'm only working 2 days in week 2, so I should have plenty of time to smash my goals this week.

This is 100% accurate

Well I still need to write up my pitch from week 1, but in the meantime here's the tasks for week 2 for ease of reference. Week 2: Surrounding Area Map the land around the dungeon and town. Gygax suggests “sitting down with a large piece of hex ruled paper and drawing a large scale map. A map with a scale of 1 hex = 1 mile … will be about right for player operations such as exploring, camping, adventuring, and eventually building their strongholds. Even such small things as a witch's hut and side entrances to the dungeon can be shown on the map. The central features of the map must be the major town and the dungeon entrance.” – EGG Tasks Get a sheet of hex paper. Draw the following items on it. Name anything worthy of a name. If you don't feel comfortable drawing, lots of hex-mapping programs are available! I’m fond of Hex Kit by Negative Cone of Energy. One large settlement (define large however you like) Two other settlements (camps, larger or smaller towns, a keep, the home base of a fantasy race, etc.) One major terrain feature (covering at least three hexes) One mysterious site for exploration One dungeon entrance – at least! Key your map. The easiest way to do this is probably to number the hex rows and letter the columns. This will give you coordinates to reference. Note down the names of places and terrain types using these coordinates or write them directly on the map. Regarding Scale If your hex paper contained 23x14 hexes, a scale of 1 mile to 1 hex would represent an area equal to 322 mi² – about half the size of greater London. A 1:6 scale would represent 12,432 mi², roughly a third the size of Ireland. You may be tempted to ‘go big’ but the goal is to define one area in which characters can adventure. You don’t need to map the whole world. Scales any larger than 6 miles per hex should be dismissed out of hand. There will be time to draw a larger scale map in week 5. A lot can be done with just a few hexes! Extra Credit Pimp your map. Stain it with coffee, burn the edges a little, or add some color. This will make your map feel like a real document and/or give it some presence at the table. Create a random encounters table. Make a 2d6 table (11 slots numbered 2-12). Put the least dangerous/most common encounters in the middle of the table and the rarest ones at the top and bottom of the list. Consider making a few of the encounters interesting NPCs. I also suggest including adventure hooks, like “2d4 goblins looting the corpse of a dead noble” instead of just writing “2d4 goblins.”

I haven't read the whole series yet, but I really love the first couple of books. They're co-written with Stephen Baxter, later in Sir Terry's life. Would definitely recommend them.

Wednesday - week 1 day 3 Wednesday was a good day. At Crossfit we did a named WOD, which is pretty rare. The workout was 'Nate'. I did it Rx*, which was really cool, doing ring muscle ups. I only managed 5 rounds and 1 rep, a lot less than anyone else in the class, but that still means that I managed 11 ring muscle ups (12 including one in the warmup ). *It occurred to me hours later that, because this is a hero WOD, 'kettlebell swing' probably means what American's call a kettlebell swing, that we call an 'American swing'. I did the workout with what we call kettlebell swings in England, which is what American's call Russian swings. It's not often I have translation problems in the gym, but there we go Essay writing was done, food was on track, and languages were done. I even ticked off my timekeeping goal, so I guess I was on time for more stuff than I was late to for once. 4/6 for the day. Thursday - week 1 day 4 Yesterday was a good day. I ran first thing - 4 miles with 6 x 110yd strides - and it felt really good. In the evening WW cooked (well, heated up) chicken kyivs and chips, and then I went to play snooker. I haven't played a snooker match in probably over a year, but it was really nice; it gave me a chance to catch up with Hopalong, and was generally a really chill evening. When I got home from snooker I inhaled a nutrigrain bar, a creme egg, and half a pint of milk, in order to jst barely hit my minimum calories. I also did my languages late before a late night in bed, Studying was done at work, so 3/6 on a busy day.

Awesome, thank you. I'm going to see if I can find this in the library on Monday now; it sounds right up my street. Ok, now I really want to play in this world. I know nothing about the Oregon Trail, but from your description I'm now realising that The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett very much pulls inspiration from that premise too. Also, this sounds like a really cool setup for a campaign.

I love that. I'm glad she enjoyed it I'd tell him that he's got all of these fans, but it'd only go to his tiny little head.

Awesome, that's the one, thanks mate! Just downloaded the quickstart guide (I love that the 'quickstart' is 152 pages long ) I have not... Tell me more!

Tuesday - week 1 day 2 Yesterday was a good day. I went for a run first thing, thought I failed to get out the door by 06:30. I think I need to be warming up by 06:15 to make this a reality. It was a cool morning though - really misty, but also weirdly light, so that you could see the mist hanging in the air like a movie scene. Cross off 4 easy(ish) miles. Work was ok. As is tradition WW sent me a ridiculous Valentine's Day package to work - a huge 'I love you' balloon, a cactus, a bix of chocolate truffles, and a soft toy/cushion thing. The cat seems to like the cushion though, in a way that's too cute not to share: In the evening I got some beer (ostensibly for WW after her hard day delivering flowers, but I had a couple), and cooked a toad in the hole which is WW's favourite. I got some essay writing done at work (nearly there with this one, currently 100 words over the word count), did my languages early in the day, and started on my Gygax75 ideas in the evening. I wasn't on time for running or getting to work (think I logged off on time?), did no stretching, and massively overshot my calories. 3/6 for the day.

Still 100% in Europe here, I can assure you

Definitely not just me then . Sometimes refreshing seems to work for me too. Oh that's really good to know, thanks man! I spent 3 minutes spinning through Cloudflare just to see and reply to this, so that'll definitely come in handy.

Congratulations on the new job! Between that and deadlifts it sounds like a pretty epic day, despite the train troubles.

Bear in mind that Gygax75 is designed to create the start of a campaign - a starting town, dungeon, and locale - with the idea that you'll build your campaign in the direction that your PCs want to go. As such, do you need to know at this stage in the planning whether there's other worlds out there? This sounds like the makings of a really fun campaign.

So a couple of random, initial thoughts about my setting. Firstly, no humans - I think the fact that most settings have humans as the default majority population is pretty boring, and I want to make better use of other playable species by not having them play second fiddle to humans. Second, I want geography to be malleable. The untamed wilds are a fun idea, and create opportunities to explore and discover things, but in a medium-high magic setting the idea that the wilds would remain untamed for an extended period of time seems unlikely. With ruins, towns, mountains, being able to pop up and disappear at random, it makes sense that the whole world isn't mapped and civilised. That second point is making me think of a TTRPG that would be an inspiration, and I'm hoping that @DarK_RaideR can remind me what it was called. D_R I'm pretty sure you ran a solo narrative playthrough of it on one of your challenge threads - I think it was a sort of bronze age setting, with a premise that distance travel had been all but impossible until recently when the mists had cleared and the world had opened up again. Do you know what I'm talking about? I also quite want to do something with Irish mythology, because I love Irish myths and I've never really got round to building anything off them.

This is exactly how I feel. I really want to play in that type of survival-horror type setting one day. I really love the layout of your continent. It's really distinctive - I think a lot of fantasy continents are pretty interchangeable but this stands out.

Oh thanks, I like it, though I definitely stole the idea... Well thank you, because I totally stole the idea for it from you . Yours was nicer though. To be honest, this might sound like a cliché but I never feel like I have to go to Crossfit, I'm excited that I get to go to Crossfit. So even if I'm feeling pretty rough I tend to go. Thanks. I'm sure it'll sort itself out eventually. That's interesting, because I wasn't aware the emojis were broken

Yes! I get paid at the end of next week, so maybe if we work towards having a rough plan by then? I would argue this is the best way to drink tea This looks so epic! Take in your own tea? Take in some Yorkshire and you'll be alright.

"Very good to see you around these parts," says the wood elf, seeing his friend approach, "care to join us in creating whole new worlds?" "Oh, I see you've found the best way to drink tea too," he adds, with a wink.

There is a great deal of wisdom in this post.

100% - better to do it and eat afterwards than not do it because you're eating later. Great job on week 0! And sounds like week 1's starting strong too

Monday - week 1 day 1 Yesterday was a good day. A bit of a slow start to the challenge though; I drew up my new challenge tracker about 9pm and realised that I hadn't hit a single goal so far that day . I quickly did my Dutch lesson on Duolingo and forced down an extra glass of milk to hit my minimum calories, so 2/6 goals were actually hit. On Sunday I had been up to town to see a rugby match. It was a great day, that match was fun and we had a meal and quite a few drink there as well. Including travel at 2+ hours each way I was out of the house from 9am to 10pm, so I was knackered when I got home. All of which meant I was feeling a bit flat yesterday. I did go to Crossfit, and hit 100kg (220#) x 3, 90kg x 5, and 80kg x 7 on squats. If that was tough, the WOD was tougher - 7 rounds for time of 2 power snatch, 5 pullups, 10 hand release pushups, and 15 air squats. I went for 35kg (77#) on the snatch, hit the 12 minute time cap after 6 rounds 11 reps, and was bloody knackered afterwards. I was late to Crossfit, late to work, and late leaving work - not the best start but that's why I'm working on timekeeping. The evening was spent being highly distracted by a rather excellent game of play by post werewolf, which thankfully for my challenge goals I am now out of. I've really enjoyed playing it for the past week, but man it was time-consuming. I did at least manage to hit those couple of goals, and boil eggs for the week (usually a Sunday evening activity), so I'm a bit better set up now at least. ETA: is anyone else having problems with the traffic filtering thing you have to go through before getting on the forums? On my phone it now comes up in the Cyrillic alphabet (and presumably what it's telling me is in Russian or another language in that alphabet), and I can often wait minutes to log on. It's not as bad on my PC, but definitely a lot slower and comes up more often than it used to.

That is pleasing to hear. I've been know to sketch one or two... Hopefully I'll sketch some more in a week or two Always good to have you lurking

Thought I'd share my challenge tracker from last challenge. I'm going to do something totally different this time round, but I did like the last one:

Absolutely steal away! Hyped to have you here I'd argue that March birthdays are the best (by 3 days ) Thanks dude! I know! I did think of you when I picked out the Grog image actually I'll definitely take that as a compliment - always happy to be a jack of all trades.