What are y'all up to these days?

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Went to the last day of a big book sale and struck pay dirt. Got kith books troll, satyr, and slaugh, plus autumn people and the 2ed core. But the real treasure was later finding a new noodle place, just out of the blue. I am now stuff to the gills with many, many bowls of delicious, savory slightly fishy ramen. had a great time eating while reading my books and sketching out next weeks game session. Would do it all again for even more bowls of Ramen:grin: soo good!!
 
I ate at my favourite Mexican takeaway today. They have a couple paintings of wrester masks on the wall, and I was interested to note that after watching several luchador movies recently I was able to identify them as Blue Demon and Revenging Shadow.
That's cool that they have them up! Where is this place? La Sombra Vengadora, closer translation would be "the Avenging Shadow," but essentially the same thing. I often confuse his mask with El Rayo de Jalisco ("Jalisco Thunderbolt"). Here's La Sombra Vengadora:
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Here's El Rayo de Jalisco for comparison:
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And here's a decent site that has brief fact files for a lot of luchadores: http://www.luchawiki.com/index.php?title=La_Sombra_Vengadora
 
That's cool that they have them up! Where is this place? La Sombra Vengadora, closer translation would be "the Avenging Shadow," but essentially the same thing. I often confuse his mask with El Rayo de Jalisco ("Jalisco Thunderbolt"). Here's La Sombra Vengadora:
Here's El Rayo de Jalisco for comparison:

And here's a decent site that has brief fact files for a lot of luchadores: http://www.luchawiki.com/index.php?title=La_Sombra_Vengadora
Tough question! It was just the masks, so I'm now a lot less certain about Avenging Shadow. I'm leaning towards Jalisco Thunderbolt, but they're so similar that artistic license could be enough to obscure the difference.

It was a chain restaurant called Mad Mex, in a local shopping mall. It's my favourite because it's actually the only one in my neighbourhood. We're not exactly spoiled for choice in Mexican restaurants down here...
 
I've had the spring and summer "off" while one friend continues to run GURPs, and another has been running Call of Cthulhu since January. With the CoC campaign coming to an end, I think I'm going to run a short campaign of WEG Star Wars 1e. Change of pace.

Besides that, I've been painting board game miniatures. Blood Rage, currently. In another month or so, it'll probably be Zombicide Invader.
 
My first adventure for The Expanse kicks off tonight. I wonder how my players will take it when they discover this session will be more to the tune of a SF crisis film like The Martian than the space action fare they might expect.
 
Playing in a 5e D&D campaign, next session in a few hours. Although D&D is not my system of choice, I'm really enjoying the game. The DM is really good & the other players are a lot of fun. I greatly enjoy playing my character, a really chill barbarian who just wants to learn to surf, but keeps having to rage because of the situations the party always ends up in. His name is Rocky.

Continuing to run Savage Worlds one-shots 2x month @ the library where I work.

Being a bit frustrated with my home Savage Worlds group. After I wrapped up our last campaign, I asked if anyone else wanted to GM. One player stepped up, which initially was great, but after a few sessions, he got too busy with work to actually do it. That's okay, real life happens; the thing that's bothersome is that he kept saying he would finish the campaign when work calmed down, and now that work has calmed down, he doesn't have the drive or interest to finish GM-ing his campaign. Again, that's okay and I understand, but dude, if you're gonna quit, you could have quit four months ago and we could have been playing in the meantime! I feel the group has really lost momentum by not playing from mid-February to the present. And when I sent out a text asking "can we get together to make characters on dates W, X, Y, or Z?" all I got was a "none of those dates work for me" from one player and silence from the other three. Sigh.
 
That's okay, real life happens; the thing that's bothersome is that he kept saying he would finish the campaign when work calmed down, and now that work has calmed down, he doesn't have the drive or interest to finish GM-ing his campaign.
Yea man I have seen this a lot, people get all enthusiastic and their game fizzles after 0-3 sessions. DMing is tough.
 
It really is. The nice thing is, after the other guy's stint in the chair, it seems the group has more respect for the amount of work and effort I put into GM-ing.
Yeah I can see that. With regards to the group semi disbanding. I keep Thursday evenings as designated game night. I do it every Thursday whether I want to or not. I send out a text to all participants every Thursday. It still only happens 50% of the time In summer and 80% of the time the rest of the year. FlI do this because if I don't my wife will eventually see it as a fungible night and start scheduling other things that night.
It also reminds people every week they've got something if they want it.
 
Yeah I can see that. With regards to the group semi disbanding. I keep Thursday evenings as designated game night. I do it every Thursday whether I want to or not. I send out a text to all participants every Thursday. It still only happens 50% of the time In summer and 80% of the time the rest of the year. FlI do this because if I don't my wife will eventually see it as a fungible night and start scheduling other things that night.
It also reminds people every week they've got something if they want it.

Yeah, this is the approach my D&D DM takes and it's pretty effective. Incidentally also on Thursdays, haha.

I'm thinking of using a similar approach if I can get a home game off the ground again.
 
Yeah, this is the approach my D&D DM takes and it's pretty effective. Incidentally also on Thursdays, haha.

I'm thinking of using a similar approach if I can get a home game off the ground again.
It's slow rolling. I started with two friends. One single guy and one with older kids. Cultivate those types. Single no kids people don't have to negotiate with anyone for their time other than jobs. Ones with older kids only need to get the SO in board. The kids are already itching to have mom and dad gone. Those folks are gold. I've added various other dad's over the years. Most with children my age. The desire is there but that's not a reliable time for most dad's. I don't have any women in my game group and that's by design. I'm a stay at home dad and spend all week all day with either women or children. I need guy time. But that costs me players for sure.
 
Mythras red hand of doom tonight, with a 3d printer green dragon!

I also rewrote the classic fantasy monk rather substantially. Honestly, I’m super proud of it. He has a much expanded weapon list, including meteor hammers and rope darts and deer horn knives and three piece rods and the like, and his unarmed is medium and gets new special effects, including grip on parry and armor piercing/dim mak. He’s got some mysticism, but I cut a bunch of it, and he can no longer boost his unarmed or several other skills, only his resistances.

His real shtick, though, is getting to use an extra special effect when he gets a special effect (testing it with weapons and unarmed tonight, but originally just unarmed). He doesn’t get a lot of high damage, but all of his stuff is... tricky. Entangles, defensive, entrapping, very long range weaponry, stuff he can make from almost nothing (think rope and a pot).

Honestly, I look at it and it feels right in the reading, but tonight is the first night to see it at the table.
 
My first adventure for The Expanse kicks off tonight. I wonder how my players will take it when they discover this session will be more to the tune of a SF crisis film like The Martian than the space action fare they might expect.
How did it go??? Any details would appreciated.
 
some picks of the dragon. i did not have time for a good paint job, but this actually doesn't look bad at all. an uneven coat of black spray paint (check under the wings) and a wash of dark green for a bit of a green cast. young green dragons have almost black scales that gradually get greener, and this one was fairly young.
 

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I'm moving. God, but I hate it. People all in and around all my stuff, packing things they shouldn't, leaving things they should pack, then the awful bit about clearing out of the rental. All my books are somewhere else, in gods know what kind of conditions, and I have to hope they'll make it all right. And hope that the people in the house we want to buy find somewhere else to live in the short term so we can get after getting their place.

But, on a lighter note of it, I'll be in Eastern Mid-Michigan soon. Away from all this NC heat. Anyone up that way that's been casting around listlessly and needs a game?
 
Ugh! still in middle of a heat wave:beat:. Way to hot to carry a big box game let alone play. Met up with the group discussed which kickstarters we liked and played another session of Shattered Dreams Chronicle.went through the renown the renown/resources results from the first session and the group decided to spend the bulk of resources on chiminage to ingratiate themselves into the spirit courts rather then then outfit everybody with grandklaives so that was a bit of a surprise. Introduced the party with the regional elders and they determined who they'll be fueding with next session.
 
Played another session of RQG, I really like this game. The combat still manages to surprise me on It's outcome.
Had a wave of mixed feelings towards Trudvang Chronicles this week. I'm on the fence about It, and thinking about selling the books.
Took a look on some board games, don't know if I really want or will purchase any of them but Rising Sun and Time of Legends Joan' of Arc are on my radar.
 
It's been a good week in no particular order.

Got together with a long time best friend I haven't seen in maybe a year due to work/family/distance issues. Fun was had in old stomping grounds but we're now old. It looks like so much work to be young and single. Of course we talked about how much work it is to be old and married with kids...and bought games at a game store.

Had my usual Thursday game night with one player saying he ran into another group of four who might like to join us.

Playedo Rory story cubes with the boys as well as calvinball heroscape/Planeswalkers with the boys. Then they found my Descent minis and played with those.

Spent all day at the zoo with the family and brother/sister in law and their kid. Fun but too much stuff this week results in overtired kids. That's literally a recipe for a shitshow when combined with public restrooms.

Explored the joys of hand planes with smoothing the edges of my gaming table I'm building. What I dreaded tackling with a sander is therapeutic with a hand plane. Go figure.

Looking forward to a week of camp for 3/4 of the kids. If all goes well I may complete my gaming table possibly including staining by the end of the week. Depending on how much stuff my wife hopes I get done elsewhere. Speaking of that I have to now come up with a way to carry the weight of a child standing on the vault topper of the table as my three year old is to small the reach and just looks cute as a button squatting over a heroscape/Planeswalkers terrain setup
 
I've pretty much given up trying to get any players together to play my 5e Spelljammer campaign that I made several months ago.
So I'm going to Ye Olde Local Game/Comic Book Shoppe for D&D night on Tuesday.
The owner pulled a bunch of booths from a shut-down Godfathers Pizza restaurant and added them to the game room.
 
First day off this week. Went shopping, ate out and caught Crawl in the theatre. A very fun, tense creature feature I’ll post about later in the ‘What are you watching?’ thread.
 
Took a look on some board games, don't know if I really want or will purchase any of them but Rising Sun and Time of Legends Joan' of Arc are on my radar.

Rising Sun is a masterpiece. You will not go wrong with it. Note however that you really want at the very least 4 players to get the most out of it.
 
I've been playing around making characters for a new superhero rpg called Simply Supers. It's a bare bones rpg, but the basic mechanics seem to fit the genre well. I'm likely going to run it in a few weeks for the Babies with Knives video podcast
 
Since I don't feel my apprehension of Pirates of the Spanish Main is sufficient to run a live game at the table, I'm thinking up next might be Crime Fighter with the PCs being either private investigators or police detectives in the latter half of the 1970s.
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Misleading box cover: I've never used it for uniformed beat cops
Only three or four players will likely be available so it should work out okay. I'm reviewing my copies of GURPS Mysteries and GURPS Cops to see if I get inspired. Otherwise I'll probably just rip off some plots from cop/detective TV shows.
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Heh my first thought was, "Wow, I didn't know Steve McQueen and Tom Baker did a detective show in the 70s."
Well, when we play a game set in the modern era we sometimes describe PCs as "looks like a young Dustin Hoffman," so maybe Steve McQueen and Tom Baker will show up.
 
Well, when we play a game set in the modern era we sometimes describe PCs as "looks like a young Dustin Hoffman," so maybe Steve McQueen and Tom Baker will show up.
Hell I do that in my D&D game; IMHO, is it a perfectly valid way to describe NPCs in a succinct and evocative manner. If I say "The priest looks like Gary Busey during his 'crazy years'" everyone gets it immediately and we can move on.
 
So I mentioned the '70s cops game idea to a couple of possible participants and one guy sends me back how he'll make his cop look like...
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Gabe Kaplan from Welcome Back, Kotter.
Not to be outdone, another guy stakes his claim as
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David Crosby.
You guys, I said BAD ASS COPS, not
FAT ASS COPS!
 
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