Incoming B-Day Season!

Feeling ill today, so is my husband, neither of us is allowed at our workplace at the moment. It is highly unlikely we have picked up “the covid” as our precautions against it have bordered on the paranoid but better safe than sorry. The doc sent hubby in for a test hopefully that comes back negative! Eek.

On a happier note the spate of fall birthdays approaches rapidly and, as I have a spring birthday, I am currently preparing a stand-alone adventure to run (3-5 sessions) across the whole birthday season. My husband is currently running 3 RPG campaigns, and has one of the aforementioned fall birthdays, so I thought I would take on the task of providing this activity for everyone. Pathfinder and Roll20 really make the whole thing so much easier. I’ll be running the adventure “The Slithering” on Roll20 which will have all the maps and almost all the pawns we’ll need. The only pawns I will need to create will be those for the PCs and any animal companions or familiars they might have. I’m reading the adventure now and gathering all the monster stats referenced so when I go to run it everything will be ready. Since we own the actual, physical booklet, access to maps and everything on Roll20 is about $10. The booklet set us back about $20 or so, so $30 for entertainment for 3+ parties/sessions? Not too steep! https://paizo.com/products/btq023hg?Pathfinder-Adventure-The-Slithering

I did have to whip up my own, very brief, player’s guide since Paizo didn’t bother with making one for this short little romp. For their 6-modules-long Adventure Paths they make these awesome player’s guides that are full of suggestions as to how various ancestries and classes might fit into the campaign, suggested backgrounds and skills that might be especially relevant etc. They’re really helpful. The one I made is less than a page long and not at all fancy but I think it has the bare bones information needed so the players can construct useful, non-frustrating characters.

Now I’m tired and going to lie down and keep reading the adventure. Be well!

Saturday Morning in Our Dystopia

The temperature is slated to be in the upper 80s for the next… forever. I don’t deal well with the heat these past several years. It’s still jarring and crazy-making to me because I used to be cold all the time and I liked it. It was almost like I was always in air-conditioning and because of it I could appreciate immediate heat sources very much. I could still enjoy a nice cold dip in a body of water, enjoyed swimming and going outside in the cold, and so on, and I could soak in the heat from the sun or a crackling fire and purr like a cat. I knew I had it good. Now I just suffer the heat and hate it. I mean, the past year or so, I feel a little better than I did, and I have hope that maybe I can feel good again, cold again, but suffice it to say; heatwaves are my kryptonite. I become weak, and miserable, and nearly inert. UGH. And with the pandemic you know I’m not running off anywhere to try and swim.

But life isn’t all bad. I’m running my game tonight with at least half the players so we’ll see if they survive. LOL. 2nd edition modules are quite brutal. I’m honestly mystified as to how the players are supposed to survive certain encounters. Optimally designed characters, with an exquisite sense of strategy… maybe, but some of my players have not designed their characters along lines that would tend to maximize their potential. It may not cause issues in the short-term but a little ways down the road there is potential for some pretty big problems, character deaths, mainly. It sucks, but there is only so much nerfing a GM can do and still retain plausibility, still allow players to feel like the world makes sense, and that it has cohesion. Meh, we’ll see how it goes I guess. Hopefully adjustments will be made as the players start to realize that they can play their characters any way they want to but that their stats and abilities have to be chosen with combat in mind when playing in a module/adventure path. My home brew games are different, they are always heavy on the plot and roleplay, we are telling a story together and it is amazing, but I don’t have the mental energy to build all that right now. So here we are.

I can’t deal with reality right now so I’m escaping into books, art, and games. It’s all too much. I’m trying to keep up with the news and lend my support to excellent causes but I’m exhausted, stressed, almost ill. I’m trying to find some kind of balance, enough news to know what’s going on but not so much that I want to hide in an underground bunker. Reality is so rough lately. I have seen spots of good news here and there though, and that’s cheering. I mean, we’re all going to like die of the pandemic because a bunch of people think wearing masks is like being handcuffed or something, but besides that it seems like there are positive changes on the brink of happening. We could have non-militarized police soon, who stop murdering people of color, we might see some freaking reparations for slavery and actual racial and economic equity happening. Canada might invade the US and bring democracy to it’s blighted political landscape, who knows? (It could happen, let me dream!)

Stay well, stay safe! Drink some water and get some rest. Take care of you, because no one else is going to.

Returning to Work & Escapism

I will be heading back to work next week and I am full of the most mixed of feelings. On the one hand; Yay! I miss the library, I miss my coworkers, I am tired of webinars, and working in a vacuum. On the other hand; I can wait to see the library, I will only be seeing one of my coworkers at all for an unknown period of time, I will still be taking webinars, and I don’t want to be the reason that this horrible virus gets into my house and threatens our lives, especially my husband who is vulnerable to it.

My game starts Friday, I hope, haven’t heard back from everyone yet, and it will be my birthday. ^_^ Quarantine Birthday, didn’t even take the sign down from my son’s party yet. I think I will make my favorite box cake: Yellow w/ Chocolate frosting. Yum! My Instacart shopper managed to score me some little bitty Breyer’s ice cream cups, Oreo flavor, so this will be an epic event. I expect my husband has ordered me a book or two and I intend to spend the day prepping for my game and painting. I am very much looking forward to it.

Tonight we launch a game called “Hell’s Rebels” in Pathfinder 2e (adapted) and I am very excited about it. I’ve made an urban druid who lives in the undercity and looks after strays and orphans. I guess things are going to get pretty crazy but hopefully I can protect my charges. I know we will essentially be up against the Thrice Damned House of Thrune so I assume we will all die in the end. We’ll be in good company anyway.

At least the view is nice…

I will not let the troubles all around me crush me. Not yet. Not today. Today I will focus on things I can control and just be me. I’m just going to do my things, be who I am right now.

I am the wonky lamp and I have to learn to love me.

Yeah, so, we will order a new air mattress for the fort, my little sanctuary and I can stop fussing about that. I’ll cook meals, do laundry, clean, declutter, etc. and the house will be a pleasant place to be. I’ll keep painting and drawing and all that happy stuff. I’ll enjoy what I have, listen to music, dream of less stressful times, play games and keep on going.

I’m still excited to start running my upcoming game. I have 5 players and they all have at least vague character concepts. I think it will be a lot of fun. I’d like to get started soon. I think we all need something fun and distracting and I know my sweet hubby would like to play rather than GM all the time. The only game he’s in is a D&D 5E and we both just hate that system. Way oversimplified and just awful. I play a bard and the class is so utterly gimped I might as well be a non-player class like a peasant or something. It’s so broken. I don’t know what happened to them, D&D used to be so much fun, now Pathfinder is the best and it isn’t even close. Eh, I suppose it’s just the way of things. As long as I have Pathfinder to play I have nothing to complain about.

No word on our friend yet today. I hope he’s doing better. His girlfriend is stuck home alone, in isolation and she’s having a hard time. Of course. We’re going to hang out with her online tonight. Hopefully distract her for a bit with some games and such. Hopefully we’ll hear about our friend today, get a positive update that he’s kicking Covid’s ass and that he’ll be able to go home soon so he can start kicking cancer’s ass. I can’t believe he’s had all this happen in one week. WTF.

Day 43 of Isolation

Blogging to try to stay sane here. I’ve got this creeping feeling of despair that threatens to overwhelm me. I’m swimming in stress and I have to think that’s what’s aggravating my acid reflux. I haven’t been drinking almost at all, I think I have somehow managed to lose my taste for beer, but last night we played Remote Insensitivity with some friends and I drank more wine than is good for me. I don’t think that helped my acid reflux either.

We’re gaming a lot. Today we will be playing Pathfinder again. A good game. We’re currently exploring an abandoned Hell Knight Citadel and it’s been a lot of fun, challenging, and I’m collecting pets. I’m trying to convince the party that I should get to raise the warg pups we found because CUTE, and keep the kobolds because they are hilarious. They are already sold on allowing the goblins to be part of our lives so there’s that!

I’m trying to ART but I can’t because I require some solitude for that and there isn’t really any solitude right now. I could make some but that would involve carting all my art stuff around and it’s a lot of work. I’ll probably be desperate enough to do that soon. The only craft I’ve been working on is slowly knitting rows so I can be done with the HP washcloth and move one to something more interesting. I can’t wait to be knitting something else.

I’m cooking a lot, of course, and I get super sick of it. I always have to cook enough for all 5 of us and it sucks sometimes. If anyone else were to cook something, or make a sandwich even, they could make it for themselves and no one else and no one would think anything of it. If I want to make myself a sandwich I very much feel like I have to offer to make one for everyone else. Tiring. But, hey, we have food and I’m deeply grateful for that. Food is a very good thing. I’ve got another delivery floating out there somewhere and this time I actually remembered to add the baking powder so that will improve my baking and keep me from having to muck about with substitutions. That will be awesome. Lately I’ve made lasagna, scones, a really bad shepherd’s pie, (ground chicken does not cut it) kielbasa and rice… and a lot of noodles. So many noodles. I’m going to make this crazy butternut squash mac & cheese tomorrow before my squash gets icky.

I’m reading A Serpent of Venice; by Christopher Moore very slowly. I don’t seem to be able to concentrate on reading for very long these days. Stress? How are you all doing? Able to read? Tell me your stories, what are you doing to stay sane in this isolation? Is anyone still out there or have I gotten to the point of screaming in the void?