B S (XII)

[Rex]

I am heading into the woods for a camping/hunting trip. May be back one night to re-supply, not sure yet but planning to be gone until the night of the 27th. Please NPC my character(s).

[kruk]

Watch out for those owl bears. They are viscous.

Enjoy your trip

[Rex]

Thanks!

No bears so no worries on that account.

[OGRE MAGE]

Sorry for the long delay gang!

Internet is not great here at the moment.

I lost 2 updates so far before I gave up trying.

[Jernau35]

ARGH! 'tis evil magic! Cursed ye be!

[kruk]

The king has something to do with this!! There is no doubt!!

[OGRE MAGE]

You guys are awesome sports!

I am back and we will be rolling again here shortly.

[OGRE MAGE]

Wes

"I'm Wes by the way. What's your name?"

What a great question........

Actually, since a few PC's died recently, and I am not allowing new PC's to enter the game, I guess I would offer these two up for anyone willing to take them on.

Since it was kruk who actually gave me this idea, I will allow him first dibs, as I think he wanted to take on the female guard.

If nobody else wants to take up another PC, I might offer them up to the public to dig up a new player or two.

Any Thoughts?

[gurusql]

Having lost Wake in that preview that area, I would be happy to take the second if it is still available.

[OGRE MAGE]

Okay, thanks!

Let's see what kruk thinks before I explain further.

[OGRE MAGE]

Still waiting.

[Jernau35]

Deciphering the Thieve's Cant reminded me of this...

https://youtu.be/5rKYL0tW-Ek?si=-yFRd7i4tkomsOP2

[Karaunios]

[OGRE MAGE]

And that includes for things moving invisibly and inaudibly. Arguably. Maybe.

[jemmus]

For spell lists/descriptions I am using the AD&D Players Handbook Idol Cover, 6th printing, January 1980. I purchased it new myself with money from digging ditches.

Wow, you still have it. I may have had the same book, or maybe a little earlier printing. Mine was lost along the way, along with my few big masterfully-sculpted Ral Partha lead miniatures. I saw in a documentary about D&D on Netflix or Prime that the Dave Trampier painting for the cover was almost tossed out during a TSR warehouse clean-out. One the employees spotted it in a pile and rescued it. He said it's a big painting, some yards wide.

[Rex]

Very cool. I still have my Holmes Basic (even older), DMs Guide, and Monster Manual. All still get used. I have second copies too but prefer to use the originals.

[Karaunios]

I had a huge RPG collection but sold most of it. Including most of my Dragon magazines, 2e, 3e, 5e and the 1e stuff, excluding the DMG, the best ever made.

I compulsively spent a lot of money on it in a short time. It was during a stressful period. After a while I realized i disliked most of the supplements, since they were mostly fluff and redundancy. I grew up with 2e so that's what most influenced me. Now I barely have the OD&D, Mentzer's Basic and Expert boxes, AD&D 2e, MERP, Star Wars d6 and Hyperborea core rulebooks. Some other stuff I got on PDF.

From having a large six-shelf bookcase full, I've gone to having half a shelf.

I'm running two heavily house ruled 2e games weekly with my friends and mostly use story cubes, literature and sometimes the internet as inspiration for the adventures. I realized that,the less I have, the more creative I get, and the more I like it.

[Rex]

I am not a collector but I am a book person. I have a bunch of PDFs I have accumulated over the years, I just don't care for reading on a computer and I never sell a book. I lost some books (mostly rpg books) to water damage a number of years ago and I have lent or given a few away over the years. I have maybe 15 book shelves in my house and several piles of books on the floor too. Have 3 arriving today in the mail. My wife was kind enough to give me a few for Christmas too, I have read 2 of them so far. I used to read a lot more than I do now. I am down to maybe 60 or so books a year, not counting scientific journal articles. The scientific journal stuff is part of my job and I have to return those when I am done reviewing them.

As far as creativity, for me at least it doesn't depend on what I own, more my mindset at the time. I find inspiration comes in spurts and just sort of pops into my mind at random.

[Karaunios]

I've always had plenty of books (I think most RPGers like us do). My parents' home is always been full of shelves packed with books. I still have three shelves in my old bedroom, where I still sleep when I come back to Spain to pay a visit. In my home in Germany I have five more bookshelves. But it was when moving from one place to another within Germany that I realized it would be easier if I just read more ebooks and PDFs and leave the physical books for special editions, books I really appreciate and books that you can't get any other way (like the academic stuff).

Regarding creativity, I realized I was too fixated in using RPG books as my source of inspiration, but most of the time I wasn't satisfied with what I've got. Getting rid off so much stuff is been kind of liberating, to be honest.

I liked reading that you get through so many books each year. I’m not sure how many I read myself, but it’s by far the hobby I spend the most time on.

I’m curious—what kind of research books do you read? You work in something related to chemistry, right?

[Rex]

I have several hobbies I suppose, but reading is probably the one I spend the most time on.

Yes, I am a chemist. My specialty is analytical chemistry. Work for me means pharmaceutical analytical chemistry in particular. Not recently but in the past I have helped out with some cross field volunteer work, mostly in the area of archeology but some in forensics (a specialty within analytical chemistry) too. Archeology crosses over with analytical chemistry quite a bit and also with biochemistry (genetics and some other areas, determining foods from residue etc.) which is actually my wife's specialty and I am at least somewhat familiar with it. If I am reading science for personal pleasure I am usually in the intersection of those areas somehow.