Randomness XVII: The Madness of the Quorum

[Marvin]

I was thinking about doing a NaNo. Almost started a thread the other day to see who else  is giving it a go.

 

Still thinking about it. I'll just aim for cranking out a bunch of short stories tho, which is the (only) way I had success with it before. I'd like to start an actual novel, but I know I won't follow through on that.

[Lord of the Dish Pit]

2 minutes ago, SparrowMarie said:

A little frustrated with my D&D group. We haven't played in like 3 weeks for one reason or another. Like they're reasonable reasons but I need my D&D fix. Especially since this is my only like social outlet where I actually get to talk to people on voice chat. I'm also still a few days out from not being in 14 day quarantine so that doesn't help. Had to schedule my therapy Tuesday as a phone appointment because of this. Which I don't particularly like doing. Anyway, I'm trying to write but seeing as I'm here it's not going well. I want to do NaNoWriMo again this year but I've got zero ideas for a story.

Perhaps something about half painted miniatures coming to life, and the house cat finds itself in the position of having to try and keep them in line, while getting blamed for whatever mischief the minis cause, written from the cat's point of view?

With my own writing I rarely get the whole thing written in order, usually it's random scenes somewhere along the timeline and I just concentrate on working those together into a coherent whole. As to gathering ideas, try taking two or more things that seem to have no connection or a very odd one and try to combine them in a way that makes "sense".

Such as, salt being a major ingredient in foods, but also useful for fending off the malevolent unseen, so perhaps something like a baker or cook finding themselves on one of those competition cooking shows, and the elfhole host is some manner of metaphyical nasty and so using only common ingredients, the cook has to stop it's nefarious plot. 

Hope this helps.

[Werkrobotwerk]

Bleh, I wasted all day on getting an RMA for a laptop I had bought to replace my falling apart surface pro 2.

For some reason the manufacturer considered a 20 pixel stairstep wiggle to be normal for a pen interface that they advertised as good for drawing. 

 

So I'm basically back to square one on replacing things just with one manufacturer crossed off the list. 

 

Almost enough to make me just switch back to paper. 

[Marvin]

It's so much fun to pronounce "paper" in the French with a bad accent, though.

[TheAuldGrump]

Does anyone else feel that putting Birthdays under Off Topic Rampancy made it a lot more likely that you would notice them?

 

The one thing I am not liking about the new set up.

 

The Auld Grump

[SparrowMarie]

1 hour ago, Lord of the Dish Pit said:

Perhaps something about half painted miniatures coming to life, and the house cat finds itself in the position of having to try and keep them in line, while getting blamed for whatever mischief the minis cause, written from the cat's point of view?

With my own writing I rarely get the whole thing written in order, usually it's random scenes somewhere along the timeline and I just concentrate on working those together into a coherent whole. As to gathering ideas, try taking two or more things that seem to have no connection or a very odd one and try to combine them in a way that makes "sense".

Such as, salt being a major ingredient in foods, but also useful for fending off the malevolent unseen, so perhaps something like a baker or cook finding themselves on one of those competition cooking shows, and the elfhole host is some manner of metaphyical nasty and so using only common ingredients, the cook has to stop it's nefarious plot. 

Hope this helps.

 

I like these! Thank you!

[haldir]

2 hours ago, SparrowMarie said:

A little frustrated with my D&D group. We haven't played in like 3 weeks for one reason or another. Like they're reasonable reasons but I need my D&D fix. Especially since this is my only like social outlet where I actually get to talk to people on voice chat. I'm also still a few days out from not being in 14 day quarantine so that doesn't help. Had to schedule my therapy Tuesday as a phone appointment because of this. Which I don't particularly like doing. Anyway, I'm trying to write but seeing as I'm here it's not going well. I want to do NaNoWriMo again this year but I've got zero ideas for a story.

 

I totally understand where your coming from for the "fix". It may be simple but once you've played & then you don't play, you wonder when you'll get to do it again. I think that is why when the shop re-opened in July after being down from March & then it had to shut down again due this county (which btw, we still are leading the state per capita!!!  ), could get their crap together (gov'nah shut us down), it was one of the reason why I started my Saturday group. I'm back at the FLGS but I think I'm gonna do bi-weekly & let a guy that's been wanting to run games do the other 2 weeks in a month. At least for now, as I know he's a old school type player & has allot of ideas he'd rather see in 5e AL then what AL wants you to run. 

[TheAuldGrump]

Ended today's after  school game with a combat - but there was almost a battle against the rakshasa... it would have gone badly.

 

Sharah is a rakshasa vizier of CR 14 - the PCs are level 5 - the paladin was the only one that could hurt it - and was also the one that talked both sides down. Yes, the rakshasa is eeeeviiil! but he hadn't done anything, and was helping them at the time.... The paladin had to apologize to an evil Outsider - which amused the rakshasa enough that he accepted it.

 

Sharah is entirely driven by his own pleasure and amusement.

 

At some point that female paladin will find a small cat that will really enjoy being petted.... Because it will amuse Sharah. It's not going to actively do anything - but may turn back into Sarah at some inconvenient point that will, again, amuse Sharah. (There is a... particular scene in Rocky Horror Picture Show that comes to mind.)

 

Sharah will be a continuing thorn in their side. Showing up, annoying them, then leaving.

 

Then they had an actual combat - the same kobolds that worried Megan in the adult version of the game, only a lot more of them.

 

With Casey in prison, they won't meet until the kobolds are likewise locked up. (Grovel, grovel, worship, worship.)

 

The PCs defeated their enemies just before I wrapped for the night.

 

The Auld Grump

[Sylverthorne]

Kind of wish we had time to run another live game...

But.. *sigh* All that energy we don't have.. and that accounts for it not likely every week. >.<

[ShadowRaven]

well. I was going to get in a live game this weekend, but then I just got a message on discord that someone in someone's biology class tested positive, and since I live with my parents. That visit is off the table for at least a week until we get test results back, and probably two weeks or more because I'm paranoid. 

[Kangaroorex]

Well I got to play a small in person game of pulp Cthulhu in person last week.  Was pretty fun not having to fight technical issues just to play a game.  Their week we are going to a cabin and hopefully my captive gaming group (my family) will have time to get some playing in.  Unlike board games, rpgs don't take up much space, especially if we are doing theater of the mind games like cthulhu and Numenra 

[Marvin]

I regret not having kids every time I'm trying to round up a D&D group. And whenever I have to mow the lawn.

[Sylverthorne]

Discord, Mumble and more than one virtual tabletop program have been ridiculously handy in the last few months... but it's not the same. :/

Still. Does let us meet up at least in one sense. 

 

... and if somebody gets it into their head they want an Adult Beverage with their gaming, they can have one, and not need to worry about how to get home. There are advantages, for sure.

[Lord of the Dish Pit]

I've now given myself homework. All this talk of writing got the ideas flowing and now I find myself needing to do some in depth research on Pope, Hardin, and Williamson Counties in Southern Illinois. In one of my earlier stories, a group of bank robbers holes up in an abandoned motor lodge in Shawnee National Forest that is the den of a very hungry eldritch entity. The entity ties in with my version of Cahokia, and while another of it's ilk plays a large role several years later, the one in Southern Illinois didn't return except for the occasional mention.

Well, now I've got a rough outline for it's history from 1600 to 2004, and the few snippets of interesting things I've been able to find out about the area are tying in nicely so far, and ideas aplenty for a series of short stories about it. Which on one hand I'm quite happy about, on the other, I'm having a hard enough time finishing what I've already been trying to work on as it is. 

I did kind of see this coming though, I've been bingeing on old school psychic detective stories, Dr. Taverner, John Silence, etc, and recently hit the collected works of Manly Wade Wellman. I hadn't read too much of Wellman's work until recently, and it's kind of interesting how many of my ideas run so close to his at times. I was surprised to find he liked to use Montague Summers' works and the Compendium Maleficarum as reference or in one case, a direct story seed, as I'm fond of trying to keep the supernatural element in my stories grounded in the same or in line with the ideas of the Golden Dawn. I was also trying to think up a way to use the "Bloody Benders" of Kansas in something, only to discover Wellman wrote a novel about them around 1960. Ninja'd by several decades...

Of course this project isn't made easier by the fact that the furthest South I've been in Illinois is Pana, so I'm not exactly sure if the layout of Shawnee could hide an abandoned motor lodge for decades...

[Chaoswolf]

Friday!!

 

Just 8 more hours to go....