Realistic Expectations

I had an interesting ritual of acting like I was going to start writing again, and then not doing it. At this point, I haven't written since November of last year.

so many missed caturdays

I acted like I was going to hype up some Dungeons and Dragons posts, and then I never wrote them. Not sure where my motivation went, but I've been playing a new campaign lately and we're already, like, eight play sessions in, and I obviously haven't written about it at all.

I've been building in Cleft of Dimensions, which if you're wondering about that you can just look at the next post down since that was the last thing I wrote about in November, of last year. I've built two areas and will be starting a new one tomorrow or Monday, based on Sunsnug Isle in MH4U. My first area was based on Animal Crossing (no single one in particular) and my second one was actually based on Spirited Away, the 2001 Miyazaki film. My second one was three times as large as my first one, which was quite tough but I pulled through.

it's about 75% source accurate with some personal additions and deviations

Dungeons and Dragons Revival

I said that, for the grand re-re-opening of my blog (back up to acceptable updating standards), I would make a new post about our DnD campaign, as we recently played a session after a century long, unplanned haitus.

There is only one problem...

pff, figures

No no, don't worry, I still plan on writing about DnD, but I went back to see when the last time I had updated about our campaign was, and, well, I remembered that was another thing I had dropped the ball on.

We had several short play sessions since my last post, prior to the most recent one, and a decently important chunk of things happened. I cannot in good conscience simply omit all of that information.

But wait, it gets worse!

of course it does

I can't exactly remember all of the details, but... I don't want to just list off key points that I remember unentertainingly.

This will be a challenge, so, get ready for...

Chapter 5 - in More or Less Hopefully Entertaining Detail!

Going, Going, Guano!

It's been a minute. I've been so busy lately, and yet I haven't had anything interesting enough to post about. I have a few ideas, but in the end I opted for the quieter, lazier option, and just didn't write anything.

it's not that I don't want to write, I've just been really preoccupied

I've started getting back to playing DnD, and we're setting up to restart our original campaign that we abandoned oh so many months ago due to various reasons. That's something to be excited about. We have had some new players come into the picture and new campaigns, so things have been a little up in the air lately about who we're playing with and which characters.

In general, I've just had higher priorities than video games and blog posts, which is kind of uncomfortable really. Whenever I've been free, I've been socializing, which has also been getting too frequent for my comfort.

Get the Cop Out Ready

Whoops. I didn't update Monday or Wednesday. Well, I've been busy.

As I mentioned here and there, I craft stuff. I want to do super cool things, but I'm still pretty novice. As I've also mentioned much less often, I'm unemployed. I was an employee and then later a manager at a fast casual restaurant for a total of four years, but due to a number of overwhelming situations, I put in my two weeks without having a back up plan. It's been almost a year since I took on the role of being a slacker and burden on my family, but I may have found an opportunity to make money through my crafting.

I made dis

The risks, fear of failure, and a general lack of confidence were the main reasons I avoided starting any kind of business or situation where I would attempt to sell my creations. A good friend of mine offered to host and sell my stuff alongside hers at the store where she works at no risk to me. I can see if my stuff is worth people's time and make a decision if I'm talented enough to invest money into starting a "business". Please give her crafts a look at her Etsy and if you're in the Ocean City/Maryland area, you can give her a visit at Shipwrecked, where she works and sells her crafts alongside a large variety of other merchants in the Maryland area.

Leatherworking with Pascal

I posted ages ago that I may make some crafting posts in the future. Since then, the only thing I delivered was a paper towel holder because I kept forgetting to take step by step pictures. I remembered this time, so please, if you've ever had an interest in taking your in-game professions to the actual world, enjoy taking a look through this very visual process of making a simple little leather bag!

three of my previously crafted bags

Chess and Dungeons and Dragons

We finally finished our three session dungeon two weeks ago. I left off after we defeated a giant skeleton and opened a stairwell behind a spooky statue.

not exactly this

We entered a room with five circular discs in a pedestal and no exits. After we clarify that they are just blank discs, I decide to pick one up, and a picture of a castle materialized on it. I put it down and pick up another one, but nothing happens. Our ranger picks one up and a picture of a very royally dressed, fancy woman appeared. Our paladin picks up a different disc, and the DM says "a picture of a regal bishop- oops."

"Oh, duh."

Dungeons and More Skeletons and No Dragons Yet

our campaign so far in picture form

We finished off our most recent dungeon in our D&D campaign. Just so there are no surprises, this is not the final episode of this dungeon! I will conclude it in the next D&D post after this one.

I left off with how we freed all the prisoners and were starting to work our way into the rest of the dungeon to reclaim the evil book that we had for about a minute before it was stolen back from us, all the way at the beginning of our campaign.

So, we were faced with the difficulty of having about 55 freaking people with us, most of them weak, battered prisoners. We armed about fifteen of them and had our cleric and some other guy we had met (probably should have kept the cleric in hindsight though) bring the other 40 people back to the castle town. We had kept one of the prisoners, the guy who helped our assassin defeat the lion with his bare fists, and our DM actually rolled up stats for him and made him a character. He is known only as "The Pugilist" and was played by the DM, who actually made him kind of a nutjob.

Dungeons and Dungeons and Skeletons

and dragons

We've had two play sessions since my last D&D post. We left off having escaped from being captured, buying supplies in town, and getting in a bar fight.

We had planned with the king and queen of the castle to more or less find the secret headquarters of the evil skeleton dude cult by having one of our own get captured on purpose - the assassin - and then following him and his captors to the dungeon.

This worked out great for our DM - since we had escaped earlier when we weren't supposed to - because now he was able to use the plan he had made in the first place for the previous session. He kind of orchestrated this on purpose, since he was RPing the queen and king anyway.

We brought some invisibility potions, along with a fanciful assortment of other things, and planted our mole with some concealed tools in a poor village outside of the castle town. In the night, it was attacked by some humanoid henchmen, and after a short battle, we started to follow the prisoners and their caravan through the woods.

Dungeons and Dragons and RNG

We played our second campaign of D&D yesterday. After having already played once, we had a good grasp of our characters, and so were able to roleplay better with more cohesion.

I am Galstaff, Sorcerer of Light!

The experience of adapting to your character and others' is interesting. You already have relationships with your friends where you understand each other's behavior, but when you create characters you have to learn how they will behave, unique to the game. But, simultaneously, you're still figuring out how you will behave, while you get used to your character. Even if you plan out your character entirely - I had four pages in my notebook detailing my character - things pop up that you didn't think about or suddenly something just works.

Druids and Dragons

For Christmas we got a board game called Mice and Mystics. It's a game where the players work cooperatively to win against the story and plot laid out in basically a guide book of instructions.

We called it D&D Lite - it comes complete with game pieces, map tiles, playable characters and 'character sheets', and instructions on what to fight and how the dungeon is supposed to be played out.

After completing the first chapter of Mice and Mystics, some of my friends wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons. We had an experienced DM, but the rest of us had never played. Aside from me, none of them had even really been exposed to it before. Over the last week or so, we made up characters, our DM created a campaign and we played for the first time a few days ago.