Claincy

As the title says. Available from Crafty's website. I don't have a copy yet so I can't really comment on the contents yet *shrugs*. I bought a copy through the house war kickstarter so I should have the digitial copy soon.

I don't think I've seen that before. He's dead on though, good programming is a combination of logic and creativity. Hums to amusement.

*waves* Yeah. I'm aware of the active people in the small subsections of the forum I regularly check (and the discord) but outside of that I know there's a whole bunch of active people I basically never see Hums to consideration. I reckon it probably has decreased post rates slightly, particularly in more chat-based threads like the Random Stuff thread in general. But I'd say there has been far more conversation in discord than that little bit of traffic the forums lost, so a net positive. The discord works better than the forums for casual conversation and chatting and the forums work better for most other things.

!! Welcome back mate Weiry's still around, don't know how active he is in theorising at the moment. I've barely touched those parts of the forum in years *shrugs*. Hums to peace.

In which case you don't need to worry about that at all I'd come but, you know, opposite side of the world. Hums to peace.

Probably worth noting that from my understanding there will be a significant gap between when US backers start receiving their copies and when it's available in retail. From one of the updates "Still, everyone should receive their items well ahead of the game releasing through distribution (currently slated for October worldwide)." Just something to keep in mind when considering timing as the game store won't have copies available for some time yet if that's a factor. Hums to consideration.

@Pestis the Spider & @Oversleep I also have significant motivation issues. I had them before I got sick and always having pain as an excuse to try to do things when it hurts less is decidedly unhelpful. In any case, I can share what I'm doing to try to improve and if it helps, cool. If you don't think my advice will work for you feel free to ignore it. I'm not in any way a professional or expert to do with this, what I do know is mostly based on experience, game design + gamification and a little bit of education knowledge. Hums to Consideration. So first up if you aren't aware of the terms there are 2 major types of motivators, intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic motivators are internal reasons that you want to do something such as wanting to improve, wanting to see what you can achieve or simply enjoying doing it. Extrinsic motivators are external things that influence you: points, badges, leaderboards, scores, due dates, rewards etc. As a quick illustration when posting a theory on the shard wanting to share your ideas with others would be an intrinsic motivator and upvotes an extrinsic one. In an ideal situation in game design, education, work or any other aspect of life you want the intrinsic motivators to be what keeps you going. In practice this isn't usually the case. But it's the difference between doing your job because you love it and doing it because you need money. (Even if you do love your job sometimes you're only going to do it because you need the money, that's pretty inevitable.) The danger with extrinsic motivators is that they can override intrinsic ones. If you take something that is intrinsically rewarding and add extrinsic rewards for a time you will find that the intrinsic motivators aren't as strong when you remove the extrinsic ones. So it pays to be careful how you use them, but in a situation where you aren't finding the motivation to get anything done the intrinsic motivators are already failing anyway. Creating a simple rewards system might help. A few notes on what I think makes for a good personal reward system Meaningless points are pretty meaningless. If grades aren't motivating you a point total with no meaning probably won't either. If it does work for you in the short term then cool! But sooner or later the meaninglessness of the points usually sinks in. A good reward system should have both short and long term rewards. The long term rewards give you a greater sense of satisfaction and accomplishment and they can be very helpful in setting up longer term habits but they aren't so effective at motivating you to get something done now. Short term goals lack the longer term effectiveness but can give you that impetus to get you working in a particular instance. Avoid due dates and failure states, there's enough of those in real life. The last thing you want is to fail something in your reward system and have it start to demotivate you. Focus instead on accumulating toward a goal. Maybe you give yourself 2 points for every hour spent and when that total reaches 10 you get a (minor) reward. When it reaches 80-100 you give yourself something more substantial. It can also be nice to reward yourself slightly for milestones, but make certain you establish in advance exactly what those rewards will be. You might set out in advance that you get a bonus 5 points for every assignment you submit and 15 for sitting an exam. Don't tie it to what grade you get from those tasks, for now the point is just actually getting them done. As part of the point is to try to build a habit of work it could be useful to assign some sort of bonus for consistency. This could take the form of an extra 5 points at the end of the week if you worked for at least an hour on 5 days that week (for example). Ideally for the rewards you want to pick something that you don't currently have/do so that you feel like you're gaining something rather than taking something away from yourself. Examples could include specific foods, objects you want to buy (books/games/whatever), time spent playing X game you really want or whatever else you want. Setting a schedule for yourself might or might not work. I don't because I've found my health is too inconsistent for me to stick to it and in general failing to stick to your schedule can be fairly demotivating. Hence why I prefer to reward based on quantity done/things accomplished. Still, a consistent amount per day or a specific time of day you will start can be helpful and a schedule may work for you. Accountability. Do it. This is really important. Find someone, online or in person, that you are comfortable talking with about this. Tell them what your system is and get them to ask you how it is going every now and then. If you've told someone (or multiple someones) about your system and about how you won't be getting those rewards except through this system it's a lot easier to stick to it. You're absolutely going to have times where you're feeling particularly down and you really want a reward from your system that you haven't earned yet. Do not allow yourself to slip. You have to be hard on yourself and exercise self control in this, particularly if you had to pre-purchase whatever the rewards are and keep them in storage somewhere. The good news here is that stopping yourself from doing something is easier than motivating yourself to do something so the self control required is easier to manage I find. This point is why the accountability is so crucial too. If you're about to take one of your rewards when you shouldn't then go do something/get something that isn't part of your rewards system. It might not be great, it could waste time and/or money but better to do so in a way that doesn't break your system. An example could be going to buy an icecream or burning a couple of hours playing a game with friends instead of taking one of your rewards when you shouldn't. Similarly, don't reward yourself early. If you do it and don't finish whatever you were rewarding yourself for you're on a slippery slope. I have admittedly at times let my points go slightly negative to get a piece of rpg miniatures terrain that I really wanted for a particular session, then earned back through that. Do not do that if you can avoid it and especially don't do it until you've been using the system for a while and are comfortable with it and in your ability to stick with it through that. It's hard. But it is doable. One thing I've found is that the big problem I have is starting work. Once I've got 20-30 minutes in the intrinsic motivators kick in properly and I can keep going for x hours but getting over that initial bump and getting started is really hard and that's the purpose of the short term rewards. One of the key things to think about with a rewards system like this is that your ultimate aim is to get yourself back into the habit of working. Once you are in the habit of working, rather than the habit of procrastinating things get easier. In my previous system I ordered a bunch of dwarven forge miniatures terrain, spread the postage cost between the sets and noted the effective cost of each. Then I put them in storage. Each hour of paid work I did I gave myself 2 points (I also set some small point rewards for major milestones in my own creative work). When I had enough points to equal the cost of one of the sets I'd expend those points, drop that amount of money back into my savings account and get the set. This system worked reasonably well in that it provided some motivation and stopped me from spending too much money on dwarven forge. It did have some major problems however, in particular: Getting any 1 set took anywhere from around 40 to 70 hours of work so it worked well for long term rewards but not short term so it wasn't as effective at motivating me as I'd hoped. I was spending too much money on other stuff. The system I use now is probably a bit over the top and nerdy for most people's opinions but it works better for me so who cares! (It is probably a bit more than I'd recommend though as it is specifically tailored to me and my situation/health/personality but for the sake of an example...) I earn points in roughly the same way as the previous system. Predominantly from paid hours worked with some creative milestone rewards. I've increased it from 2 points to 3 per hour because of how much of my other expenses/"things I'd like" I've added to the system and stopped spending money on outside of it. The core of the reward system is a loot box program that I wrote and populate with things I want. I've set it up so I can spend points to purchase boxes from myself of the following types, each containing 4 randomly selected items: Common (20 points): 4 common items with a 1 in 3 chance of an uncommon and a 1 in 20 chance of a rare (but only one or the other) Uncommon (40 points): 3 common items with 1 guaranteed uncommon with a 1 in 5 chance of a rare instead Rare (70 points): 3 common items with 1 guaranteed rare with a 1 in 3 chance of 1 of the commons being an uncommon The packs all draw items from the same list which has: name rarity (common/uncommon/rare) Quantity gained (1 for most things) Quantity available Probability weight (So I can make some things that are the same rarity that I like more than others show up more often) Name of the image to display on the item card For common items currently there are miniatures (standard size) and tokens. Each token represents $5 towards one of the following: Dwarven forge, kickstarter, DVDs or Video Games. (The dwarven forge tokens have a higher weight than any other common item.) In uncommon I have the possibility for 3 dwarven forge tokens, a larger miniature or a soundtrack and for rare I currently have special minis (particularly large ones) or a larger number of tokens. I do have other things coming that will also be added to this system when they arrive, some from various kickstarters and it's super easy to add new things or adjust the probabilities. I can also expend points to directly purchase something off myself that I want immediately but that's deliberately less cost effective than buying the boxes. Opening loot boxes is a powerful psychological pull that is commonly used (and abused) in game design as a result. used carefully it's an effective motivator and because the only things in the loot box are things that I want it's a guaranteed positive with a chance of a pleasant surprise. Naturally enough I get weird looks when I talk about this system but so far it has been helping *shrugs*. Anyway, just some advice based on things I'm trying. If it isn't useful just ignore it. Edit: One last note. My current system is fairly based on things that cost money but it doesn't have to be. I have multiple casual positions with extremely flexible hours that pay quite well. This system now covers the vast majority of all money I spend that isn't on meals/rent/health stuffs/and general life expenditures. So it's simultaneously a motivation thing and a budgeting thing and is helping me spend less.

@Calderis *hugs* Sings to the rhythm of the lost.

Heh, nice Hums to Amusement

@Calderis *hugs* Did she have a good 5 years? I know it doesn't really change how much it sucks right now but 5 good years is better than 2 decades of crem. Is it at all possible that it was caused by an infection or genetic defect rather than anything she ate? Just don't put too much blame on yourself --- I'm usually good about that, I do have very high standards in the quality of my work rather than quantity and 99% of the time I'm able to cope with everything ok. Fortunately that 1% of the time doesn't last very long (And I'm back in the 99% now.)

Your signature makes a compelling case as to the power of Bacon Masters! Though they may lack the refinement and expertise of Waffle Cooks

Over the past threeish weeks I've pushed myself hard, got what I needed done and crashed, had time to partially recover then repeated that. Currently in one of those crashes, I can hopefully slow down now though. Hurts a lot right now. (The worst bit is that at most I've been doing what a normal person would do in a part-time job and I didn't even approach being able to do that much for any length of time.)

For no good reason I am suddenly highly amused by the mental image of Smaug singing the opening of "Part of your world" from the Little Mermaid. (In a deep dragony voice..) Look at this stuff, isn't it neat? Wouldn't you think my collection's complete? Wouldn't you think I'm the drag-on who has everything? Look at this trove, treasures untold. How many wonders can one city hold. Looking around here you'd think: "Sure, Smaug's got everything" I've got gold bars and mithril a plenty. I've got rubies and diamonds galore. You want golden statues? I've got twenty. But who cares? No big deal. I want MORE.

(Firstly a side note: they're working on more Stargate! ) Time for another dwarvenforge build! =D So this one was actually built by a couple of my players (my family in this case, we finally got around to playing again while on holiday). Then I just altered what I had planned to fit the map It was an interesting experiment, one I shall do again in the future.

Indeed Fool's ignore criticism, the average acknowledge criticism and the wise seek it.

"um, never run with scissors?" Alternatively: "Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going, because they were holding on to something."

*hugs* ^^What Delightful said. Extreme temps make it really really hard to do anything.

Pain, mostly, lots of it. So pretty much the usual for me. I had a few days that weren't as bad then crashed again. If I get to that point I will absolutely seek help I should be better able to handle it again tomorrow once I've rested some more. It's very much a conscious decision to detach from the pain more than an inability to cope. I'll be ok, it just sucks a bit. (Thanks though )

I know partially shutting down emotionally and detaching from the world is not a super healthy way of dealing with things, but sometimes I don't see a better option. It's not that it technically reduces the pain but it does reduce it's impact. If you aren't *feeling* much the pain just doesn't matter as much.

Just for fun, another dwarven forge terrain build "the Gentle Spring Inn": (The last image is a gif so it'll play if you click on it to show the various layers )

Up to date now as the final ep aired this week in Aus. Gotta say I very much enjoyed this season. ... And the stinger for season 5. I did not expect that, but I'm definitely on board for it!

@Herowannabe Yay! Glad to hear it.

Congrats! Ooh nice. Using lego is definitely cool imo Making maps out of it is time consuming because of the number of pieces, but very cool. I only really use a map for around 1 in 3 battles in my D&D campaign and only a subset of those use significant amounts of 3d terrain. It's great for the big set piece battles but for simpler battles it's much faster to just run int in theatre of the mind and you don't break the flow by spending 10-20 minutes building the map

Ran a battle royale for my dnd players tonight. I had to push things forward faster than I would have liked in the second half as it was getting late, but it still went well and it came down to the wire on who won. Some very fortunate rolls and a major risk that paid off turned the course of the battle. I also took the opportunity to create the largest 3d terrain map I've done so far, using the majority of my dwarven forge. (My brother helped with designing and building it too which increased the quality further.) I'm quite happy with how it turned out. Here are some pics (Dog included for scale.) The bridge in the centre can change orientation to rest on either stone tower when certain levers were pulled. (Cue multiple "Pull the lever Kronk" jokes.)