Wombats and Potato Chips

[void_nothing]

While you're here, consider entering the August MCC

[Ulka]

Well tonight I just finished running one of my DnD Groups through Storm Kings Thunder and they are now spending more of their treasure they obtained from the Big Bad's Lair to secure their fortified tower and are now setting up to become the patron for a Mercenary/Adventurers Guild for their next campaign where they will be the Patron for their next party. I'm honestly super excited and happy they finished as we had been running storm kings for over 2 years.

Now to get my other 2 groups through storm kings.

[The Fluff]

Here's another one, Wombat's are friggin huge. They're literally the size of the average wolverine.

is that so? I kept confusing wombats for flying squirells, which are small animal. ><

[Krishnath]

Here's another one, Wombat's are friggin huge. They're literally the size of the average wolverine.

is that so? I kept confusing wombats for flying squirells, which are small animal. ><

Yeah, pretty much. I've seen a grown woman hold one, and it's nearly as big as she is, and weighs about the same.

And speaking of wombats and wolverines, Marvel's Wolverine currently has four children, one son and three daughters. His son, Daken, is a sociopath who is an on again, off again, villain. One of Daken's powers beside the claws and regeneration is that he naturally produces pheromones that makes literally every adult not related to him feeling sexually attracted to him, confused the hell out of Bullseye when they were on the same "evil avengers" team. Wolverines daughters on the other hand are technically clones, there used to be five, but two sacrificed themselves to protect the youngest. Laura/X-23 is the most well known, but there are two more who are alive. I don't recall the name of the oldest of the two remaining, but she is missing. The youngest however, is awesome incarnate, her name is Gabrielle, or Gabby for short, hid her mutant abilities for years effectively enough that her creators considered her a failed clone, is best friends with Deadpool (She gave him the finger as a birthday gift, literally, she cut it off, put it in a box, and gave it to him, he thought it was hilarious), and has a literal mutant wolverine as a pet, it's named Jonathan is pretty much indestructible, her and Deadpool saved it from a lab. Gabby's superhero name is "Honeybadger". Both Laura and Daken are extremely protective of Gabby and would both go on a rampage should she get seriously harmed, and considering that Daken is a sociopath, that really says something.

[The Fluff]

about wolverine. I could be wrong in remembering... but there seems to be a wolverine movie that was almost entirely spoiled even before it got shown in theaters.

[Krishnath]

about wolverine. I could be wrong in remembering... but there seems to be a wolverine movie that was almost entirely spoiled even before it got shown in theaters.

That would have been the first stand alone Wolverine movie, someone working on it leaked it to torrent sites, and the entire movie, sans most special effects was on the net over a month before the premiere. It didn't stop the movie from becoming a commercial success though, even though it wasn't the best movie, it was still entertaining, and pretty much the best thing in theaters at the time, so... yeah.

Incidentally, there are two Logans running around the main Marvel comics currently. The original, and an alternate future version of him that survived through the multiversal reshaping after Doom's Battleworld that merged 616, the Ultimate Universe, and bits and pieces of other worlds into one new Universe.

[SquirrelToken]

is that so? I kept confusing wombats for flying squirells, which are small animal. ><

We are small but mighty. 15 of us can take down an Emrakul!

[void_nothing]

Hot take but superhero comics can be really dumb

[Krishnath]

Hot take but superhero comics can be really dumb

Oh, they can be down right idiotic. And that is not even accounting for things like powercreep. They can also be incredibly self aware, for example, after Banshee of the X-men died stopping a plane from crashing into an airport and killing thousands, his daughter Siryn refused to mourn him, saying, and I am paraphrasing here: "Why should I mourn? He's an X-man, he'll be back from the dead sooner or later."

But speaking of idiotic, some comics are both idiotic, and incredibly tongue in cheek and self aware of their idiocy, like Howard the Duck, it manages to both be incredibly idiotic, amazingly awesome, and completely self aware. I mean, one of his main villains is a vampiric cow named Bessie.

[void_nothing]

Ah yes, gotta love Howard! Marvel's best effort at self-parody. And the poor guy had the worst film adaptation of any Marvel character, which was also probably Steven Spielberg's worst movie ever.

[Krishnath]

Ah yes, gotta love Howard! Marvel's best effort at self-parody. And the poor guy had the worst film adaptation of any Marvel character, which was also probably Steven Spielberg's worst movie ever.

I think it is actually the perfect adaption of the comic, it's so hilariously bad that it comes out the other side and actually becomes incredibly entertaining. Of course, it is also helped that a young Lea Thompson goes topless in it.

But then again, I have a soft spot for bad sci-fi. I mean, one of my favorite movies is "The Ice Pirates", that movie doesn't take itself seriously at all. Also, space herpes.

[benjameenbear]

@Ulka that's awesome that you've been running a D&D campaign for so long. I've actually been itching to find one again for myself.

I don't know if the grocery store Lidl exists anywhere else, but I was able to get 5 pounds of BBQ chips... for literally $5. $1.69 for 18-20 oz. of crisp, spicy-salty deliciousness that tastes better than the Lay's BBQ chip.

Yes, I will fight anyone on that claim.

[Krishnath]

I don't know if the grocery store Lidl exists anywhere else, but I was able to get 5 pounds of BBQ chips... for literally $5. $1.69 for 18-20 oz. of crisp, spicy-salty deliciousness that tastes better than the Lay's BBQ chip.

Oh, we have one just down the street, it's something like Europe's largest chain of convenience stores, and they are really convenient, cheap wares of decent to good quality.

[The Fluff]

is that so? I kept confusing wombats for flying squirells, which are small animal. ><

We are small but mighty. 15 of us can take down an Emrakul!

yes, we are 1/1.

two 1/1 human to wrestle 2/2 bear. ^^



and my favorite video of a very friendly Savannah Lion.

[Krishnath]

Speaking of lions, time for another useless animal fact:

Both Lions and Elephants used to live in Europe, the European Lion and the European Elephant were both wiped out by the Romans, but were already in decline during the height of the Roman Empire. The last European Elephants lived in what is now Spain, and were wiped out during the Hun campaign, the last European Lions lived in Greece and were hunted to extinction because the Romans used them in gladitorial games. Fossil records show that the European Lion was a subspecies of the African Lion and not a distinct species, while the European Elephant was considerably smaller than the African equivalent.

[Ulka]

Yea this is the 2nd longest I've had a campaign take but my group loved taking on side quests and messing around. I can't speak too much on this as I'm currently running the Campaign for a few Mods and Former Mods of Nexus and Sally atm but it was great.

Now Im working on my super expansion to Tomb of Annihilation as I didn't like the death curse as the main focus of the book and I much prefer to make it what I want to see in a Jungle Island adventure:
- Colonization. This one gets more touchy politically but it was a common place thing in our world and I want my groups to deal with the Harsh truths of it while dealing with the idea of trade wars effecting colony life and it give a good reason to go the jungle peninsula of chult.
- Pirates. Everyone loves Pirates and I love the Ship combat stuff added to 5E from Ghosts of Saltmarch.
- Expeditions. focused hex crawls where the group needs to hire people to carry stuff and take thier time going through the jungles.
- Archaeology focus on the Ancient ruins. I want this to feel like some ruins are abandoned while others may have things still living there but you don't know and its kinda a hallmark of DnD.
- Lots and lots of Geopolitics. The adventures will deal with 8 major powers and their politics and feuds between the countries/citie states.

But yea Chult - Dinosaurs, Zombies Infesting the jungles, lots of Dungeons, Lost cities. Its basically ixilan with one major city and my addition of another 3 colonies and then lots and lots of monsters that are way to strong for most parties as groups must learn you need to run sometimes from fights if you aren't sure you can win.

I have about 50 pages of handwritten notes for added content and about 15 new monsters to add, 2 races, and a list of 50 stated out NPCs.


I could literally talk for hour on this as I Just spend 2 hours battle testing one of my monsters.

[Krishnath]

I prefer making my own worlds to using premade ones, but if you are going to use a premade one, you can't really go wrong with the Forgotten Realms. Please tell me you are using Thay and/or the Cult of the Dragon as one of the major powers.

[motleyslayer]

I remember playing a Pathfinder campaign (that kinda didn't run its full course due to outside life stuff) where the game master pretty much created the world based around medieval Japan and dealt with wars between various samurai factions and he threw the player characters in the middle of it

In my limited tabletop RPG experience, making your own world feels kinda less forced and seems much more creative

[Krishnath]

I remember playing a Pathfinder campaign (that kinda didn't run its full course due to outside life stuff) where the game master pretty much created the world based around medieval Japan and dealt with wars between various samurai factions and he threw the player characters in the middle of it

In my limited tabletop RPG experience, making your own world feels kinda less forced and seems much more creative

I think it really depends on the gamemaster/DM, some gamemasters, myself included, are really creative and can build magnificent and evocative worlds, but really suck at making and running adventures, Others are less good at making worlds, but are really good at running adventures. Some can do both, some neither.

[Ginuqu]

I've run science fiction RPGs for players who I thought I was painting an evocative world for, thinking I was dropping hints about what they can do in it but really just leaving them confused and motionless. There has to be a skill to it that I don't possess. Part of it was that they were used to Dungeons and Dragons, where a lot of the actions available to the player revolve around staying alive, but they started in a quiet part of town (I was planning to have something seriously newsworthy take place there just a short time into the game), they couldn't work out how to pass time and I couldn't figure out a way to shepherd them towards activity without giving the game away. a bit of amateurism all around..

[Krishnath]

I've run science fiction RPGs for players who I thought I was painting an evocative world for, thinking I was dropping hints about what they can do in it but really just leaving them confused and motionless. There has to be a skill to it that I don't possess. Part of it was that they were used to Dungeons and Dragons, where a lot of the actions available to the player revolve around staying alive, but they started in a quiet part of town (I was planning to have something seriously newsworthy take place there just a short time into the game), they couldn't work out how to pass time and I couldn't figure out a way to shepherd them towards activity without giving the game away. a bit of amateurism all around..

When in doubt, random encounters is your friend. Nothing happens where they are? Make something happen, have them witness and accident or a crime, see how they react. Have a terrorist group do an attack, have a wild animal escape from a transport, have a natural disaster occur. Some of the responsibility of progressing the game lies with the gamemaster, but that is not the same as railroading them. Remember, for a world to be useful, it needs to be dynamic, and that means things happen without the players involvement. Being able to improvise, is *crucial* for a DM, even if it just means throwing in a random monster or gang attack.

[motleyslayer]

I've had some pretty mixed experience with how hard gamemasters make the game. I've had one make the game super easy by essentially power leveling the characters but I've also had them kill the whole party at once. Keep in mind the campaigns I've played are few and far in between (not having played any at all in almost 6 years). The last game I played, the gamemaster balanced the game super well and made the world incredibly interesting by essentially making us discover more and more about the civil war between samurai groups all the time.

Now all this RPG talk makes me wanna join a new game

[Krishnath]

Now all this RPG talk makes me wanna join a new game

Then it is good that playing RPG's with friends online had started to become popular even before all this pandemic business. Makes it a lot easier to play RPG's with people, even over vast distances.

[motleyslayer]

I've actually been thinking about looking into options for playing online, although discord might be my choice since I already use it a lot anyways.

I just need to find who I know has what books available to them as well

[Krishnath]

I've actually been thinking about looking into options for playing online, although discord might be my choice since I already use it a lot anyways.

I just need to find who I know has what books available to them as well

Well that one is easy, all you have to do is ask them.