1577 Withered Corpses.

by

As far as Mike is concerned this trip went even better than he had hoped. Which is probably why he didn’t actually have a plan for getting what he wanted. In my experience nerds are generally down to play at any time. They’ll give almost anyone a shot, but if you don’t match you’re out. As long as they can find a non confrontational way to let you know. On the other hand you also get the tactless style that tells you straight up if you’re no longer wanted. My guess is that Rulette is the latter. Not afraid to tell it like it is, possibly to the point of maybe not understanding the feelings of other people the way some of us do. She’s learned to live with that problem, if it exists. She’s aware that she can be abrasive, so who knows? In any case, Mike and Ed have a shot at getting some real table time. Who would be the best people to share that with?

It was cool last night. Cool enough that I drove to town in my no AC truck with the kid and got some food and whatnot. It was even pretty cool outside earlier. Maybe the seasons are changing and it’ll be temperatures I can exist in again now. At least after the sun goes down. Mom is still in witchita with grandpa and me not being able to do things in daylight has made it very hard for the teen to prepare for school. Dad has had to take her various places, which is a real bother for him since he’s always busy. I’m going to try and see about getting my AC fixed, along with the windsheild and wiper sprayers. although I expect that if the AC gets fixed it will reveal that there are problems connected to the rest of it that need addressing. My truck has never worked very well if you run the climate control at all. It’s perfectly fine as long as you don’t want to alter your temperature in any way. As soon as you turn on the climnate control you can feel the power drop. The truck strains at it. I don’t know exactly how the various systems are connected, but they are. One of the fans is also messed up somehow and you can hear it grinding if you activate it. When I wasn’t sick I just sucked it up and was whatever temperature the world said I had to be. Now I can’t live that way. Apparently there’s a guy in town who can do stuff relatively cheap, but I’ll still have to save up just in case. I’ve had to buy a lot of groceries this month, so the well is lower than usual. I would have just bought the kid her school stuff online, but she’d so picky about everything it’s nearly impossible to do. Just talking about backpacks nearly resulted in a fist fight. I was a fairly low maintenance kid. Whatever bag I got was what I got and that was pretty much it for the year. No character bags or whatever. Branded stuff doesn’t last so we didn’t get it. My locker was, without fail, in a corner someplace that was insane to try and get to. So I carried everything I needed in my bag all the time. People act like that’s such a trial now, but honestly it was probably the best exercise I got throughout school. I could whip the thing around like it was nothing. I doubt I could even lift the thing now.
Apparently they changed the rules so you can’t carry all your stuff anymore. I think that’s dumb but I suspect they’re worried about someone bringing in heavy artillery and killing everyone. Since this is Colorado, and the entire state seems filled with gun loving drunks I guess that’s fair enough. I can’t express how nice it was, by comparison, not to have to spend all my time in school thinking about what the best escape route was if there was an active shooter scenario. I mean I did that sometimes, but it was just for fun instead of being an actual thing I potentially needed to know for survival. When I was in school kids killed themselves and not each other, which we should try to get back to. We need more crippling depression and less sociopathic narcissism. If we have to choose.
In any event I hope fall is on its way so I can have a little more freedom until it’s straight up blizzards. I also want to get back to selling off stuff I don’t need anymore. Trying to get to the post office was bullshit this summer.

Teen Corner
today was an adventure day, I went to dodge city Kansas with my friend, Diana and my very quiet uncle. I managed to get six pairs of jeans and two bras so it was a successful trip I would say. in my last post I mentioned my crush who is really great and I like him a lot more than I’m okay with but it looks like he will never be anything more than that. a crush. why you might ask? basically its come down to the fact that he doesn’t know if he likes me which basically means he doesn’t from what I have gathered. its a really sucky feeling cause I thought I finally found someone in this town worth wasting time on and he’s even close to my age but I guess it wasn’t meant to be. really dramatic teen times tonight huh? I kinda just wanna binge watch one tree hill and eat ice cream like the sad potato I am but I know that wont fix anything. it stupid to be upset really but you know I’m a teen and a girl. I’m in a wallowing mood really though that never fixes anything either. logically I should be focused on school rather than boys but I mean they can be so cute sometimes when they aren’t being frustrating and complicated that is. I have three days until school starts and I’m still not anymore calm than before. I’m anxious, excited, sad and a little worried. so basically I’m feeling all the feels at this moment in time. I feel like I will probably always be this way though like I’m gonna be the adult that shows up to work and ends up sobbing in the bathroom for no specific reason. like I am going to be the worst adult honestly, so look out world. one extremely overly emotional mess will be headed your way soon. love teen.

27 Comments

I kinda agree with Rulette.
When I have gamed, 5-6 players seems to be my limit.
If there are 7 or 7-plus players, [and the GM], there are too many voices, + the GM + the players can’t communicate well.

I’d say six players and a GM is optimal, but that’s simply because I find it allows for an optimal balance between variety of classes and party size, making it more difficult for the GM to party wipe while still being able to kill off one or two players depending on luck.

I’ve found, since I left school, that if you’ve got more than five or six players, you can never find a time when everyone’s available.

Kids these days don’t know how easy they’ve got it. Why, Back In My Day, we didn’t get no backpacks or nothin’. You carried everything in your arms and Were Grateful For The Opportunity. Sometimes you’d find a locker-stuffed, wedgie-sportin’ swirly-monkey carrying a briefcase. But that was rare — they didn’t last very long (as you could well imagine.)

Typically, our campaigns always had about 7, tho we’ve had 9 before, and yeah, I’ve broken my 3DS before. Small battles would last two hours and a lot of rules jockeying and arguments, and blah dee blah blah. Due to… circumstances involving our house, we had to stop DnDing for a while, but those of us here are getting antsy. We were seriously considering doing a small campaign with just us family. The DM was either going to be me or Dad. His would likely have a well thought out story, and mine would likely just be madness and chaos (hence the username), but have a ton of laughs and silliness in there, maybe a good story if I can cook one up. At least until we can get the place to a point where others can come in.

Largest table I’ve run was 18 players, 113 characters + 851 henchies, for a month. It was Ravenloft, so those numbers dwindled rather quickly down to the ~30 who completed the siege, and the ten or so who made it out alive after fighting over the loot.

It was absolute insanity, during the summer, with 12-hour days, and I made some solid bank for it, honestly. Wouldn’t do it again now, but certainly don’t regret it.

If I had to pick, and I thought Jess would spend the time on it, I’d love to see these two + Nina and Jess. I don’t think Thomas would be a good fit for the rest of the group because of his grandstanding, especially if he’s half as intelligent as he appears, instead of just wise to this group.

Though I could see Brooksie, Thomas, Ed, and Carol being another interesting group with tons of dynamics.

And I think too much, heh.

Our gaming group sits pretty solid at 4 players. We have our tank (Zert, half-orc barbarian), our healer (Kao’lyn, half-elf druid) and two wildcard characters (Welcher (my dude), halfling rogue, and Brevis, human wizard). Our characters gel pretty well, and we have levelled up pretty high, so we are a pretty kickass group, even despite our character flaws (Zert is dumber than a brick, Kao’lyn is blind (but sees through the eyes of a familiar), Brevis gets fascinated (read: distracted) at the start of combat, and I’m a lunatic prone to panic when overwhelmed (the only difference between me and my dude, is that I can’t cast Sleep around myself).

To the Teen: don’t discredit this guy so readily. If he is as nice and kind as you see him to be, then maybe it’s worth a shot. I used to be absolutely terrible at gauging emotions, and I was more or less instrumental in my own friendzone placement (I have no qualms with that, personally. Being helpful helps sometimes). Maybe he is just nervous?

Just… don’t be too eager. He’ll either be frightened away if you’re lucky, or misinterpret your intentions in a most ignoble way if you’re not. As with anything, being yourself is crucial.

I run two groups at the moment. a swift moving six player group and a slow moving four player. it’s… …

yeah…

It would be fun to see their characters depicted from within the campaign’s universe. Like in the movie “The Gamers”

The last withered corpse I found was a mouse, up in my attic. Oddly enough, it had, clenched in its shriveled paw, a tiny gaming die in the shape of an impossible regular polyhedron. It made my eyes water and head pound to look at it, so I disposed of the die with the body.

My brother has a ’96 Ranger with over 190,000 miles. It has been very little trouble, aside from needing a serpentine belt and the mice eating his fuel lines. That said, it has only ‘Armstrong’ air conditioning — meaning, you crank the windows down. It’s a re-badged Mazda made in Ontario, so I don’t know if that has anything to do with its longevity.

I do leak surveys for a gas company-running 5 mph in the ditch with a leak machine going. Vacuum type, not the laser so I try to be right on top of the lines. If it’s really hot, you can’t run the ac or the truck will overheat-even with dual electric fans. Radiator builds up with dust and weed seeds, so it gets progressively worse. So you have to run with the windows down, and you can imagine how the dust and pollen swirl into the cab. Except when there’s obstacles. Then you have to walk with the machine and wand. Have nearly stepped on rattlesnakes 4 times. And don’t ever hit them with the wand. It just bends the wand and pisses them off.(or it did that one, anyway)

I plan to play Masks on release, but besides that my only rpg experience is Munchkin Quest which starts to get out of hand at 6 players, so unless everyone is square on how things are gonna go down I wouldn’t recommend it.

I’d recommend Mutants and Masterminds for a superhero fix until then. The character creation is the most complex part given it’s super freeform, but the actual gaming part itself is really simple and enjoyable.

To The Teen…stress less, princess. Wallow in your feels all you need to, and when you start feeling like it’s a pretty pointless thing to do, take a few breaths and step outside yourself. So your crush isn’t `sure’ or whatever; it’s not an indication of your worth, but only his opinion. You like him for a particular reason(s), more than you like other guys. He suits your taste, so to speak. There’s probably a dozen guys crushing on *you* that you just don’t notice, so one guy’s opinion isn’t the One Absolute Truth. The most important thing is to accept your *self*…this is where you are, over there is where you want to be and you’re getting there one step at a time. Guys respond to that more than we like to admit. I’ll even go so far as to advise you to go back and read your Dad’s comic from the beginning…forget he’s your Dad, just read. There’s a lot of relationship info in it; good, bad, and realistic. And when it still seems like an emotional minefield…just remember that at your age, you don’t have to pay taxes.

I can see now, after Rulette’s few appearances why Mike thought she was as young as he said. At first glance she does appear rather young, but upon closer inspection, the eyes (at least to me) give off a much more world-weariness.

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