Jokemeister

Hmm. If my actual physical shape is a consideration, I guess I'd have to go for Friar Tuck...

Sorry - have never celebrated Halloween so, as you can imagine, don't put up any decorations. With that said, I don't put up any decorations even for holidays I do celebrate so <shrugs>. Have been enjoying the pictures that people have been posting though. Some of the displays are really creative and I can imagine it would be really cool to come across those at night. Nudge, nudge to those who are out at night!

I would hope that the craziest thing that happened is so crazy that I couldn't even have imagined it. And honestly, if I could have imagined it, it probably wasn't that crazy.

<has flashbacks to the griffin or gryphon (or other possible spelling) question>

There is a massive difference between an oil rig exploding and the party sending a kid into a dungeon with nothing but a torch. To be clear, what is being talked about here is the party knowingly sending a kid into a dungeon ahead of the party with nothing but a torch. The kid has no weapons, no armour, no training and no chance of survival in the event of actually meeting an unfriendly group of monsters (also likely no chance of survival in the event of a trap but if the kid is lucky/smart enough, they may spot the trap so at least this isn't guaranteed death). And clearly, the party is alert to the possibility of trouble otherwise they wouldn't have hired the kid in the first place. This isn't simply a case of something going wrong leading to the unfortunate death of the kid. In the case of real life dangerous work, believe it or not, there are precautions taken to try to minimize the amount of danger. Granted, you can't eliminate the danger entirely and some of this is predicated on the company/people actually following the law/rules/regulations etc but the point is that companies can't simply send people recklessly into dangerous situations without consequences (whether those consequences are severe enough is way outside the scope of this discussion and probably puts this too close to beekeepers so I'm not going there). Going back to the original situation of the kid being sent into the dungeon in front of the party - saying that the party isn't responsible for the death of the kid is, in my opinion, equivalent to arguing that gravity is the killer and not the person who pushed the deceased off a tall building. It that happened in my group, I would immediately make the party evil (assuming they all agreed to go along with the plan) and they would suffer the consequences of being an evil party (obv, I would make them aware that what they were doing would result in them being of evil alignment). To be clear, I would also make the party evil if they armed the kid with a sword and armor. In fact, the only situation where I can imagine not making the party evil is if they made the kid a part of the party - ie he travels with the party and not 10" in front of the party. The last point I wanted to make about alignment is that Good or Evil aren't absolute concepts but relative concepts. Discussion of Good or Evil in itself is a massive topic which philosophers have discussed/argued about for years and trying to get into that in any depth in an RPG is more than I have any interest in for the purpose of a game. When I run an RPG, alignment is determined based on what I consider is Good or Evil which in turn is based, to an extent, on what society currently considers as Good or Evil (or Moral vs Immoral - or Right vs Wrong - or well, take your pick as to terminology as they are all subtly different - again, way too deep a subject to explore for the purpose of playing an RPG). My point is that there are many things which have happened in the past which were considered moral at the time but are no longer considered moral now (arguably, you don't even need to go into the past for this as there are many things happening today which some people see as being moral and good while others see as being immoral and evil). Again - way too deep a discussion for the purpose of playing an RPG. However, as the DM, if the player's argument for something not being considered Evil is simply that it was considered acceptable by people at some point in the past, your argument isn't going to get very far with me as I have no interest in playing that game.

CHICKEN! Actually, a chicken plushie might sell well.

That's no moo(n)...

Not going to ReaperCon (or any con) but I hope those that are going have a great time. One thing I am looking forward to is seeing pictures of the mini that wins the painting prize.

I really like this idea - will have to keep it in mind for possible (albeit unlikely ) future use.

I'm old enough that anything by Hammer Horror is a classic and anything else is too new to be classic... Loved the Hammer Horror movies so much as a kid. Not really horror movies and more monster movies but they were so much fun.

I would be totally "type of confectionery which is made by mixing sugar, butter and milk"

Not this year. I have been to a haunted castle in Scotland before. Had a great time. Didn't see any ghosts and didn't get scared. Totally got snogged though!

My introduction to RPGs came when I was a kid. My older brother and I had gone over to the house of one of our neighbours to hang out with the kids there who were pretty much the same age as us. While there, we saw this red coloured box with a strange type of lizard on the front (yes, it was a dragon - no, we didn't know that at the time) who appeared to be fighting someone in armour. The rest, as they say, is history. In terms of miniatures, I've always been into miniatures but only recently started painting them. As a child, I used to build model airplanes and managed to build up a pretty decent sized collection (before most of them were ruined by an unruly cousin). I never actually painted them though as the prospect of painting seemed too daunting (esp with no-one to teach me and no easy access to tutorials). I actually dropped all things mini related for many years after I started University. In fact, it wasn't until many, many years later that someone suggested to me that mini painting was a good way to relieve stress. I bought a Citadel starter paint set and had a massive amount of fun with it. As a result, I started to look at expanding my collection of models and paints which was just around the time that Reaper started their first Bones KS. Been a fan of Reaper ever since!

The next Star Wars movie and anything by Marvel basically. Also, while I'm more of a Marvel fan, given how successful Wonder Woman was - I'm now hoping that DC movies start getting their act together a bit better. Would be great if we had good Marvel and DC superhero movies to watch. I'm also massively happy that Star Trek is back! I won't be watching Star Trek Discovery anytime in the near future but it makes me happy that there is a Star Trek show back on the TV. In terms of books - I'm still reading books from years and years ago so I don't think I'm qualified to answer this question!

So sorry to hear that Siri. Hope the doctors can make him as comfortable as possible. <hugs>

Haven't played a pen and paper RPG in what feels like forever. I am currently in a couple of pbf RPGs on the BGG forum though and I'm having a ton of fun. In terms of video games, I'm actually replaying the Long War mod for Xcom. It's a brilliant mod which is amazing in how it adds so much depth to the Xcom game. I've played it before but gave up as it was just too difficult for me. However, someone recently told me that there is an easy mode in the mod so I recently reinstalled it in order to play again. For board games, I have a group which meets up approx once a month. We've mostly been playing Zombicide as it's a fairly simple game and most of the group are fairly casual gamers. We generally top off Game Night with some simpler games like The Resistance, Get Bit! or Battle Line.

Agree with alchemist in that this is also my understanding. Basically, the science as I understand it, when you sleep, you slip between REM and non-REM sleep. REM sleep is the "deeper" sleep and where dreaming normally occurs. If you dream a lot, this means that you are probably getting to REM sleep which means you are probably getting enough rest even though it may feel like you aren't. As for myself, I never remember my dreams. But then, I dream enough during the day anyway...

Excuse my skepticism but really? I can imagine that it has a plot (maybe even a decent plot) but I'm finding it hard to believe that the acting is anything other than bad.

The only food that I had to eat as a child was stuff that was healthy for me (like veggies etc). As a result, there wasn't anything I had to eat as a child that I refuse to eat now. With that said, there is a lot of stuff that I have eaten before that I really don't want to eat again. Cotton Candy is a good example of this. Durian is another.

As a very young child, I would often stay up late at night to watch the old black and white B movies. In particular, I recall there were lots of B movies about irradiated insects growing to super large size. As a result, while not a phobia per se, anything with more arms or legs than me does ick me out.

Don't watch much TV anymore. When I do, it is invariably binge watching. Not that many shows that I absolutely have to watch either. I'm almost current on Doctor Who (haven't seen the latest season) but beyond that, not current on anything else (eg I'm currently midway through Season 2 of Eureka...).

Like others here, I also let players respec their character if they aren't having fun. At the end of the day, if the player isn't having fun - then what is the point? Obviously, there are limits (eg if you are constantly respeccing your character, then I'm not going to allow it) but as long as things are within reason, I'm generally okay with lots of things that are intended to make the game more fun for players. I remember a conversation I had with someone many, many years ago (to be fair, my RPG days are all many, many years ago ). At the time, I was working with a player to build their character for a 1 PC campaign. During character creation, I had let that player "cheat" by improving some of that PCs stats after the initial dice rolls. A different player found out about this and felt that this was a mistake and that the rules of character creation should have been followed (as they were the rules!). My view at the time (and which hasn't changed over time) is that the PC is only as powerful as I allow and its easy to keep the game challenging by throwing tougher monsters (or just tweaking existing monsters to give them a little more oomph) at the PC. Ultimately, boosting that PC doesn't make any difference to the campaign but made a huge difference to the player playing that PC as they now hen felt they were more like the mythical hero of yore. Obviously, you couldn't do this in a party based campaign where you have multiple players and PCs.

That is beyond amazing. I am lost for words.