Tell us what's happened to you recently (that's interesting)

We dont really have a good vehicle for taking a boat in and out, so a good second option here is joining a boat club, which I did. I’ve been in it about 7 years, now, they have 22 boats I believe. It works out well.

But man, prior to joining I learned just how relaxing and enjoying it was on the water, even if just an occasional day.

I would LOVE to know how to sail. The sailboat here is available constantly.

I know a couple of people who enjoyed classes at Oriental before they bought a sailboat (10+ yrs ago)

Oh, our boat stayed in the water year-round. As you might imagine the bottom got kind of nasty, had to be scraped about every other year and repainted maybe every third.

As for learning to sail, well I mainly did it be sailing. My buddy I owned the boat with was from Ireland, grew up sailing. So while I might be short on book larnin’, I did get a good practical education.

Funny story how we came to own a boat - he was living in Berkeley at the time, but we were both working in Portland on some project. One night we were out drinking as we were wont to do, and he says to me quite gravely, We should get a boat. So I decide to go along with the “joke”, day we’ll timeshare and sail it up and down the west coast. So he says, I’ll just move to Seattle. And he did. And then we got a boat.

Man, that’s how boats come to BE. I hear ya. I was out with a friend for the first time here and he was like, “try it, drive.” So I did. And we went and proceeded to have a fantastic time. I was sold.

Was driving in town this morning after going out for breakfast and saw a car strike a pedestrian crossing the street at a streetwalk. The pedestrian was an older guy, probably at least 75. The car was turning and miscalculated, I guess. It was a slow motion hit, thankfully, and the older guy did a complete somersault and then popped back up on his feet, like a ninja warrior.

So we stopped. The guy was fine. The driver of the car is a teenage girl and she runs out and is sobbing. So now everyone tries to comfort her since the guy is fine, probably ready to take on three ninja assailants now.

Someone dialed 911, though not in our little group. Next thing we know we hear sirens and two police cars race up and do their park-to-slow-traffic thing. Then an ambulance. Then a firetruck. Then the Fire Chief in his car. Then another police car. I expected to see helicopters next.

Everyone was fine. The girl got talked to, may have been issued a ticket. The girl was on her way to, of all things, an appointment with her psychiatrist and was only a block away. My GF drove the girl in the girl’s car to the psych’s office since the girl was still shaken up. Then we went on our merry way.

The day is still young. Maybe there’s a topper waiting for me still!

That was really sweet! You guys are awesome.

I got married yesterday. I guess that’s kind of interesting. The implacable wave of the wedding-industrial complex broke on the rock that is my wife’s deeply-ingrained cheapness, with the result that we threw an extraordinarily beautiful party for about 90 friends without going into debt to do it.

I don’t know what she’s going to do with herself now that she doesn’t have a wedding to plan.

Congratulations!

Congratulations! And that’s just a tad more than interesting ;-)

Congrats!! That’s awesome!

Grats, and double grats in marrying a sensible woman who didn’t blow your entire future on a wedding!

Congrats, you two!

Awesome!

So my group came together last night for a Session 0. I thought it might be a good idea to get used to voices, lay down the campaign rules, etc.

I had one guy attempt to create an ‘insane’ rogue that wanted to ‘steal from the party’ ‘throughout the entire length of the campaign’. I said no to both things. He insisted. I rolled my eyes. He was there about five minutes last night until I announced his intentions (which was my way of getting rid of him, and it worked), the group went nuts at him and he quit the Discord server completely. I removed his character from D&D Beyond.

So we’re down to six players but one can’t start until late November. This is fine. The less things I have to juggle right now, the better.

So far, I’ve written 40-45 pages of notes about the campaign world, the NPC’s, the towns, cities, gods, and my fingers are about to fall off.

The group surprisingly gets along well and is mature enough that they wanted to know if we could do less fighting and more roleplay and politics. (Yes please). (Less paperwork for me). They want to see slavery, racism, all sorts of things. After we agreed on our rules and game time, a few people had to leave, but a few stayed for one-on-one character discussions with me.

I helped a player take his cleric from a character with 3 sentences of terrible backstory to a multiple plot-hook holding character that helped me write his character’s religion (I read about this trick). Since he helped contribute so much to the world, he is hopping up and down to play.

My players are excited, and we’re starting on October 6th. I’m not ready! I probably won’t be ready. But hey, it’s something social, even if it’s only voice-based D&D. We do have a dice rolling bot and handy tools but this whole thing hinges on how well I can hook them into a tale of epic magic, creatures and political scheming.

Here’s to hoping it goes well. I’m gonna need more tranquilizers that night.

Knight, I’m not up on how well role playing is handled these days with the advent of Discord and other tools. Do you have any visual tools you use as well along with the players? Anything to map or show scene/character placement?

I’ve created static maps that I just link for everyone, but no combat maps. We all looked at Roll20 as something we might use. One person will tell you that it’s free…it isn’t free, unless you want to create your own everything. If you want a specific tile-set for a map in Roll20, that’s $5-10. Per battle. Nope.

So we’re doing what I’ve heard is called ‘Theatre of the Mind’, wherein I describe a battle scene as best as possible, we picture how far away things are, people ask how close they are/can get to things.

Plus there are 5 players, soon to be 6, and none of them are interested in 2 hour long combat on a map encounters. They want to be more role-play oriented. I’m fine with this :)

I did use Inkarnate to make a plethora of area/city maps for them when they get to wherever they may be going, so it’s not completely non-visual.

It’d be pretty trivial to stream a webcam of a tabletop if you want to have dynamic battle maps.

Yeah, but we held a vote, the majority said no battle maps. I’m fine with it.

That is so awesome.

As the father of a cell phone addicted teen who drives, the story as a whole makes me cringe.

At eye doctor. He mentioned cataract surgery. Fuck me.

Sitting here dilating.

Edit: So surgery it is. I’m terrified.