What things could you talk about in length?

[Casualfanboy16]

Okay, now onto the part where I talk in length about my characters. I'm still figuring things out about them. It's kinda nice. I've had my characters in my head for years and they've pretty much grown up with me and evolved from hollow husks to more fleshed out characters. I still have to work out other factors like worldbuilding and story direction, but I digress. Anyway, here they are from when I first made them to the present moment...

 

 

I just laugh so hard looking at the first image. They look soooo bad. The shriveled up juice box looking physique with their sort of contorted spines has me in tears lmaooooo!! The second one is much, much better, but there's definitely room for improvement. I love how Jack remained pretty much similar to how I first had him. Everyone else is wildly different in both looks and personality.

 

Rue used to be a blank slate even though he was the main character in this story. Literally no personality whatsoever. Then I got the idea randomly just to make him really into rock music and then the rest of his personality came naturally.

 

Edgar was also a bit of a blank slate. His only real personality trait was liking anime and Japanese stuff. 12 year old me wasn't the best at characterization, but I'll give him a point for trying. Edgar now is a completely different species (cat -> cheetah) and is just a ball of anxiety and is kind of a self-insert, but a lot of my characters have bits of me in them anyway, soooo...

 

Jack, as I said, remained pretty consistent. Although, I did turn down his murderously violent tendencies from his first incarnation to a more mischievous troublemaker type who causes problems for fun. He also is a bit of a kleptomaniac bastard man. I love him.

 

Finally, Lucas is the last of the main characters. Originally, he was basically a goth (or what I thought was goth back then. I don't think goths worship Satan... to my knowledge, anyway). Now he's a stoic and quiet bookworm who kinda steps up when the rest of the group gets themselves into various shenanigans. He's also a caffeine addict because he's a nocturnal animal operating on a diurnal schedule, so there's also that. I'm still working on him a bit.

 

There's two other characters I have too, but I'm gonna expand on that, along with character lore, later. If anyone has any questions about them, I will try to answer to the best of my abilities. I still have so much work to do with them and their world and all that.

[Wertbag]

My favourite pastime to talk about is Dungeons and dragons (D&D). I played a few times growing up, but ended up playing other systems more often (Warhammer, Battletech, Necromunda etc). It was around 5 years ago that they put out a new revision of the core rules system (known as the SRD) for free, along with the free virtual tabletop system Roll20 and just a ton of free resources and reference material that i thought i could give it a go with no risk. 

I asked everyone at work and found 4 people who were keen, and one was even keen to run the game as dungeon master (DM). So i was a player for 2 years before he left the group and i took over as DM. We played through a couple of offical campaigns, before i designed a story from scratch and ran the party through an orc invasion and are now nearing the end of my second home made campaign, stopping an evil god from being resurrected.

The game has unlimited scope for creative writing but you also have to improvise on the fly as your players come up with crazy ideas. I really love to throw moral grey area challenges at the party. Would you help a bad guy vs an even worse guy? Would you expose the shapeshifter who is posing as the king if it will plunge the kingdom into civil war? Do you arrest the drug runner when his only motivation is getting some coin together to save his sick child?

Lots of imagination, character creation, monster creation, quick thinking, creativity and constant laughs.

I suggest sticking to 4 players as any more than that slows the game down too much.

There is also a lot of YouTube content and podcasts, with some hilarious comedy d&d shows, so I'm usually listening to one of those in the background while i work.

[Casualfanboy16]

9 minutes ago, Wertbag said:

My favourite pastime to talk about is Dungeons and dragons (D&D). I played a few times growing up, but ended up playing other systems more often (Warhammer, Battletech, Necromunda etc). It was around 5 years ago that they put out a new revision of the core rules system (known as the SRD) for free, along with the free virtual tabletop system Roll20 and just a ton of free resources and reference material that i thought i could give it a go with no risk. 

I asked everyone at work and found 4 people who were keen, and one was even keen to run the game as dungeon master (DM). So i was a player for 2 years before he left the group and i took over as DM. We played through a couple of offical campaigns, before i designed a story from scratch and ran the party through an orc invasion and are now nearing the end of my second home made campaign, stopping an evil god from being resurrected.

The game has unlimited scope for creative writing but you also have to improvise on the fly as your players come up with crazy ideas. I really love to throw moral grey area challenges at the party. Would you help a bad guy vs an even worse guy? Would you expose the shapeshifter who is posing as the king if it will plunge the kingdom into civil war? Do you arrest the drug runner when his only motivation is getting some coin together to save his sick child?

Lots of imagination, character creation, monster creation, quick thinking, creativity and constant laughs.

I suggest sticking to 4 players as any more than that slows the game down too much.

There is also a lot of YouTube content and podcasts, with some hilarious comedy d&d shows, so I'm usually listening to one of those in the background while i work.

Dungeons and Dragons has been something I've been interested in for a while, but never got around to actually playing. Imagination and character creation and all that are right up my alley. I'll have to check out YouTube videos on it here soon!!

[☆ DarkBishop ☆]

24 minutes ago, Casualfanboy16 said:

Dungeons and Dragons has been something I've been interested in for a while, but never got around to actually playing. Imagination and character creation and all that are right up my alley. I'll have to check out YouTube videos on it here soon!!

Me,you youngest son, and daughter all play DnD. My son is the DM for our campaign with a couple other of his friends. 

[Casualfanboy16]

5 minutes ago, DarkBishop said:

Me,you youngest son, and daughter all play DnD. My son is the DM for our campaign with a couple other of his friends. 

I've been wanting to try it out. Do you do it online or have like an actual thing set up? I don't know how it really works or what all the rules are. I know there's creativity involved, but I gotta learn how to play.

[Wertbag]

1 hour ago, Casualfanboy16 said:

I've been wanting to try it out. Do you do it online or have like an actual thing set up? I don't know how it really works or what all the rules are. I know there's creativity involved, but I gotta learn how to play.

Hard to describe quickly in any depth, but basically the game is narrative, with the DM describing the scene and plot and the players being able to do anything they can think of in that situation. They most common setting is a high fantasy world of knights, wizards and monsters, but there are huge range of settings that can be used, the only limit is imagination.

You can do combat just as a narrative, but most games use a battlemap to help visualise what is going on. Battlemaps can be drawn, printed or constructed to play at a table, or using digital maps online.

Your average session will take 3-4 hours, and a full campaign can take a year of weekly play.

[☆ DarkBishop ☆]

We have our on thing going on. There are a lot of rules. But you get to role play your character and it is fun. We have a lot of funny improve humor that goes on lol. 

[☆ DarkBishop ☆]

1 hour ago, Wertbag said:

Hard to describe quickly in any depth, but basically the game is narrative, with the DM describing the scene and plot and the players being able to do anything they can think of in that situation. They most common setting is a high fantasy world of knights, wizards and monsters, but there are huge range of settings that can be used, the only limit is imagination.

You can do combat just as a narrative, but most games use a battlemap to help visualise what is going on. Battlemaps can be drawn, printed or constructed to play at a table, or using digital maps online.

Your average session will take 3-4 hours, and a full campaign can take a year of weekly play.

This is absolutely correct @Casualfanboy16 couldn't have explained it better myself. ours are usually fantasy but my son makes up his own story lines. We are doing a campaign right now that is based on his experience in the navy. 

 

DB

[Casualfanboy16]

@Wertbag @DarkBishop Alright!! Gonna have to check this stuff out!! Sounds funnnnn!!

[Wertbag]

We have an ogre named Don't. His mother would say "Don't eat all the food" and "Don't eat the prisoners". He did everything she said but she was never happy...

 

One funny story i heard, first session the party started at a tavern. The first player to speak was the sorcerer who said he'd cast detect magic. Rolled a critcal failure on the wild magic table, cast fireball on the table completely obliterating the entire room. All players killed before most had said a word.

[Casualfanboy16]

Another thing that interests me is Japanese music, as many of you probably know. The language as a whole I like and I wanted to learn it for a time... and then I got to kanji and immediately noped out of that lmfao. I still love the music though. I have a lot of vocaloid songs on my playlist (vocaloids are basically a singing voice synthesizer thing). I have over 1,000+ songs that I've slowly collected over years of listening. Unfortunately, not all of them have subtitles, so I can't understand them all, but I really enjoy how the Japanese language sounds. Something about it.

 

Anime is also a whole different thing, although admittedly it's been a while since I last watched any. I was addicted to watching clips from the Ghost Stories English dub in particular because it's like if those abridged anime dubs became like big. It's humor is a lot like South Park and is just so stupidly offensive and it has a lot of memorable lines. The bunny episode is the most famous one lmfaoooooo. My favorite character has to be Momoko because in the dub she became a stereotypical Christian girl whose heart is on fire for Jesus. I quote her too much. "Do not lust in your heart- Jesus, you're right".

[Astreja]

I'll gladly chat about clarinets anytime, but for a much longer and convoluted discussion just get me talking about Dragonlance - particularly the War of the Lance and Blue Lady's War period (Chronicles/Legends).  Once the conversation shifts to the Majere twins, you are *so* doomed... 

[Casualfanboy16]

46 minutes ago, Astreja said:

I'll gladly chat about clarinets anytime, but for a much longer and convoluted discussion just get me talking about Dragonlance - particularly the War of the Lance and Blue Lady's War period (Chronicles/Legends).  Once the conversation shifts to the Majere twins, you are *so* doomed... 

@Astreja Tell me more about Dragonlance. I never heard of it. (Also, I made this thread for this sort of thing, so go into as muuuuuch detail as you want).

[Wertbag]

5 hours ago, Astreja said:

I'll gladly chat about clarinets anytime, but for a much longer and convoluted discussion just get me talking about Dragonlance - particularly the War of the Lance and Blue Lady's War period (Chronicles/Legends).  Once the conversation shifts to the Majere twins, you are *so* doomed... 

Its been 30ish years since i read dragon lance, I've recently got the trilogy out to re-read, and barring the main characters I'm finding i remember very little of the story. Makes it fresh and new even though its the second time through. 

Also heard Jo Manganello has the rights to a Dragonlance TV series, live action and using the writers from the much loved d&d movie. Should be epic, between that, Henry Cavills Warhammer 40k live action, and 2 more series of Critical Role's d&d animated series, there are some great projects on the horizon. 

[Astreja]

13 hours ago, Casualfanboy16 said:

@Astreja Tell me more about Dragonlance. I never heard of it. (Also, I made this thread for this sort of thing, so go into as muuuuuch detail as you want).

 

Dragonlance was originally a D&D setting from the early 1980s, and as part of the development/marketing, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman were hired to write a series of novels (Dragonlance Chronicles) that paralleled the story line from the gaming modules.  The characters from the first series were very well developed and popular, and the books quickly surpassed the game in popularity.

 

Basic premise:  About 350 years prior to Chronicles, an uppity priest had commanded (yes, commanded!) the gods to destroy all evil on the world of Krynn.  In response, the 21 gods (evenly divided among good, evil and neutrality) justifiably took offense and dropped a flaming mountain on the city of Istar, sending it to the bottom of the sea.  The gods then withdrew from Krynn, taking all clerical magic with them.  This resulted in an immediate loss of healing spells, and massive hardship - This is the Age of Despair period.  (Magic-users did not lose their powers, as the three moon-gods responsible for magic remained in the sky.)

 

Dragons had also been resident on Krynn, divided into two camps:  Metallic dragons (good) and chromatic dragons (evil).  They had previously made a pact to withdraw from the world, and over time came to be seen as mythical creatures.

 

Chronicles' first book, Dragons of Autumn Twilight, starts as a group of friends is reuniting after a five-year absence.  They had gone their separate ways to search for evidence of the old gods, and as they reunite at the Inn of the Last Home in Solace (minus one person, Kitiara, who has ghosted them), the reunion is interrupted when one of the group arrives with two strangers he had met on the road.  One of them is carrying an unusual staff, which turns out to have healing powers - the first sign of divine magic in over three hundred years.  A drunken cleric promoting the worship of "new" (but powerless) gods takes offense, a fight breaks out, and the just-reunited group has to flee for their lives (along with the newcomers, and the magic staff)...

[Casualfanboy16]

23 minutes ago, Astreja said:

 

Dragonlance was originally a D&D setting from the early 1980s, and as part of the development/marketing, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman were hired to write a series of novels (Dragonlance Chronicles) that paralleled the story line from the gaming modules.  The characters from the first series were very well developed and popular, and the books quickly surpassed the game in popularity.

 

Basic premise:  About 350 years prior to Chronicles, an uppity priest had commanded (yes, commanded!) the gods to destroy all evil on the world of Krynn.  In response, the 21 gods (evenly divided among good, evil and neutrality) justifiably took offense and dropped a flaming mountain on the city of Istar, sending it to the bottom of the sea.  The gods then withdrew from Krynn, taking all clerical magic with them.  This resulted in an immediate loss of healing spells, and massive hardship - This is the Age of Despair period.  (Magic-users did not lose their powers, as the three moon-gods responsible for magic remained in the sky.)

 

Dragons had also been resident on Krynn, divided into two camps:  Metallic dragons (good) and chromatic dragons (evil).  They had previously made a pact to withdraw from the world, and over time came to be seen as mythical creatures.

 

Chronicles' first book, Dragons of Autumn Twilight, starts as a group of friends is reuniting after a five-year absence.  They had gone their separate ways to search for evidence of the old gods, and as they reunite at the Inn of the Last Home in Solace (minus one person, Kitiara, who has ghosted them), the reunion is interrupted when one of the group arrives with two strangers he had met on the road.  One of them is carrying an unusual staff, which turns out to have healing powers - the first sign of divine magic in over three hundred years.  A drunken cleric promoting the worship of "new" (but powerless) gods takes offense, a fight breaks out, and the just-reunited group has to flee for their lives (along with the newcomers, and the magic staff)...

This sounds veeery interesting. I've been getting into stuff like this, so I'll have to check it out on my own time. I just bought a couple books (including Atomic Habits like you recommended), so I'm gonna hold off on buying anything for a while.

[Wertbag]

Back in the early days of D&D, Tolkien's estate sued them for breach of copyright with characters and descriptions being obviously lifted straight out of LOTR.  LOTR became popular in the 50's and 60's, with D&D first released in 74.  Tolkien Entreprises took the court case too far, trying to claim pre-existing things like elves and dwarves were theirs too.  The courts gave a mixed result, saying that Ents, Balrogs and Hobbits were unique to LOTR, but elves, dwarves, orcs, goblins, rangers and worgs all existed already so couldn't be copyrighted.  D&D updated all of their books, renaming hobbits to halflings, Ents to Treants, Nazgul to Wraiths and Balrogs to Balor.  Book specific features like hobbits having hairy feet was cut.