Claincy

I promise I won't post in this thread after my D&D session every fortnight....but man tonight was good It had a slow start but picked up dramatically as it went on. The one combat we had ended up being rather more dramatic than I thought it would, and more interesting as a result. We recently added a homebrew lingering injury table that you roll on whenever you drop to 0 hp, which has really helped amp up tension in combat. The best part was after that though when the players finally arrived at the ruined underground city they've been travelling to for the past half dozen sessions. There was a powerful magical obelisk in the place they entered with Memory based power (There are 5 special obelisks of this general nature in my campaign world, covering location/memory/form/time/power). When each player first touched this obelisk they experienced a rush of memories, too fast to really comprehend them but with 1 in particular that stuck in their memory which I narrated to them before continuing to describe the rush of other memories. Each of those memories was a carefully chosen one that hinted at or revealed something significant related to the campaign. The stream of memories would then start going through their own memories and one in particular would stand out in their mind. And that is where I stopped and let the player describe one of their character's memories before continuing. I used the playlist I'd labeled "sad" for this sequence, full of more emotional/thoughtful/whimsical/sad music. And it worked really well. The tone of the music really amplified my narration and their narration of their own characters' memories and I was surprised by how many times parts of the music directly complemented my narration. Swells in the volume & melody and just the right time as one of the memories concluded and the like. I've been looking forward to this particular encounter for months and it was just as good as I hoped it would be

Thanks I'm not sick in every dream fortunately, and some of them are cool all the same. (Was wielding some simple magic for a bit a couple of nights ago which was fun.) _______________ My school also had really high ATAR standards. We had this whole accelerated program thing that involved doing years 7-10 in 3 years and then taking 3 years for the VCE, which attracted a lot of intelligent students and also made it easier to do well. They put so much emphasis on how critical a good ATAR is, then a couple of months later once the uni entrance process is done it probably won't ever really matter again.

It's not a major thing, but I've started being sick in my dreams. I still don't have the pain when I'm dreaming (thankfully), but now it's quite common for me to know in a dream that I'm sick and not up to doing things. Apparently my perception of myself as being sick has finally grown strong enough to infiltrate my dreaming mind *yay*.

Nice And sure, go for it! I'm curious to see what you came up with, I'd be the first to admit that my rules could use improving anyway

@18th Shard That's possible. The difficulty with that approach (to be fair, the difficulty with any approach) is the shear number of variables it creates. Ensuring that Torran found out that Korel had saved his sister at the right time such that he meets Korel and convinces him to go back with the cure could be difficult. Things get more difficult if his sister's sudden recovery impacts the search for a cure, which it might or might not. A letter could work, but would degrade over time leading to an unstable loop. To avoid that you would want to make a new copy of the letter in each loop. You would also probably want to include some details about the cure just in case you effected it's development. Another possible route could be to go back and cure her, but make it look like she died and keep the events as close to the original timeline as possible. Getting her to stay in hiding until after Torran goes to Korel, so as not to disrupt the sequence of events. In general the aim would be to minimise the changes you make so as to limit the ripple effect as much as possible.

Thanks I haven't, unfortunately. My health has been rather poor since, well, some time before I posted that. This fell in priority compared to other things I needed or wanted to get done. I would like to go back and finish it but at the moment I don't think that's likely.

Thanks! To be perfectly honest I don't know. If I decide to expand on the narrative at some point I might work that out

A few thoughts: -I don't think the regional magic on Sel is to do with a shard being splintered. I think it's to do with that splintered power residing in the cognitive realm instead of the spiritual realm. It's possible that splintering a shard involves moving the power into the cognitive realm (or causes that to happen) but we don't have another example. -I think you're probably right that the dragons would use investiture in a less destructive way than Nightblood, more like the Listeners. -I think the simplest possibility for the dragons gaining investiture is just that they metabolize food into it like Lift. There is WoB that Lift is unique but that was in response to a question about other surge binders so I think it's reasonably possible that others in the Cosmere can. -I think it might be possible to make the Metallic Arts work in 5e D&D. Not the most natural fit though...I might have a crack at this later.

@Delightfully Smoak That's fair *shrug*. I don't really have the energy to get into a discussion about why I thought it was that good right now. Sorry All else aside I do really like the soundtrack to that film.

@Djarskublar Probably the last comment I'll make on the Frozen discussion for now but I really don't see turned to stone as a less deadly/more curable condition than turned to ice. Turned to stone and turned to ice would both realistically be completely fatal. They seem fairly equivalent to me actually. *shrugs* Anyway, I'm currently playing 5th edition and I heartily recommend the system. It isn't perfect of course but it is very good. Aside from that I mostly play the Mistborn Adventure Game but I also play or have played: Fragged Empire, Mutant Year 0, Shadowrun, D&D 4e or 3e (not actually sure which it was), World of Darkness, Prime Directive, teensy bit of Gurps, a couple of smaller rpgs and a system or 2 I designed myself I haven't tried Edge of the Empire (yet) sadly.

@The Honor Spren More just a rubbish segue, I was pretty tired @Darkness Ascendant You could try seeing if there are any game stores in your area that run Adventurer's League, or just campaigns that are running at the stores. I've heard repeatedly that that can be a good way to find groups though I admit I haven't tried myself. I reckon it's a safe bet that there are plenty of people in your area who would enjoy DnD, the trick is finding them and getting a game going. Particularly as many who would enjoy it might not have thought about it.

On a warmer note: D&D went very well tonight. I had all 7 of my current players present. They were going into a big battle to save a massive sentient tree called the Grandfather Tree. They had managed to get a powerful ally to come help and the tree that would also be helping them a little. All that adds together to make for a very challenging encounter to balance and can easily drag horribly with that many participants. But it ended up being one of the best battles we've had in the campaign There were particularly cool moments for multiple of the characters which really helped. I also had some new miniatures that I knew would arrive soon, including a treant figure. I was really hoping they would arrive in time for tonight because one of the things that was likely to happen was an opportunity for the party druid to be temporarily turned into a treant by the Grandfather Tree and having the mini would make the moment so much cooler. The mini arrived just in time. So when I was describing it I was able to describe the transformation and plonk this huge mini on the table as they turned into it. The player loved it. (Not the best image but it'll do.) Anyway, seeing players get invested in a session and hearing how much they enjoyed it is really rewarding as a GM.

@Djarskublar While I don't agree with some of what you said I do agree that a sequel is highly unnecessary. Rationally it would almost certainly take years for Elsa to recover and I highly doubt she'd ever fully recover. You don't have one sudden realisation and all the psychological issues go away, it's not how it works. I'd be up for a movie that actually took that theme and kept it as a major part of the movie but I'm not sure how likely Disney is to do that. The success of Frozen might give the writer a little more leeway to do that but I'm concerned at best. With that said, I'm happy to withhold further speculation on that until it comes out. The last time I felt that an animated movie I cared about was getting a sequel it really didn't need the sequel ended up being really really good and surpassing the original in my opinion. (How to Train Your Dragon 2)

@TwiLyghtSansSparkles A+ I will add that people who've been bullied and/or struggle with social anxiety and kind of shut down or limited themselves emotionally (or tried to) as a response will also often connect really strongly with Elsa. I suppose anyone who has had reason to suppress their emotions and/or hide their personality/interests/whatever are likely to connect with her. Personally I enjoyed Tangled but loved Frozen. I'm not saying Frozen is better, just that I liked it more because it resonated with me. I think that Tangled was overall executed better but Frozen was a little more experimental and daring in what it tried to do. Some of which worked great, some of which didn't. I connected more closely with Elsa than with just about any other character in any media I can think of. The opening half an hour of Frozen blasted through every dang layer of emotional shielding I had like it was nothing. It actually had enough of an impact that it has changed the emotional response I have to other films & media 0_o.

Heh Not for now, but possibly later. I dunno if I'll write this out to a longer story but I do have ideas on the backburner for a time-travel based rpg which would use the concepts outlined in this. When I get to that I might expand on this narrative as well, but I'm not really sure yet *shrugs*.

*Quickly Googles* Hmm, sounds interesting. I might check it out at some point.

*hugs to all* My health has been particularly shoddy over the past couple of days, slightly more than what's normal for me at the moment. There were a couple of events that I wanted to go to and thought I kinda should be going to but I just couldn't. Well, technically I could but it would have been decidedly difficult and would have made my health worse. I really don't like having to make that choice of when to go and when the consequences are bad enough that it would be wiser not to. *sigh* On the other hand in the same timeframe I wrote a short story and designed an rpg in 200 words for a game design challenge. And I'm pretty happy with both. So that improves things markedly

Thankyou all @Quiver Which visual novel is that? @StrikerEZ I think one of the prevailing theories is that once you build a time machine you will only be able to go back as far as the point where you built it. Personally I don't have strong theories on whether time travel is possible or how it would work. I think if time travel backwards is possible this might be a reasonable theory, but I don't really know Mostly I just think it works well narratively.

I've been thinking about time travel a bit lately, probably a result of spending too much time watching Dr Who and 12 Monkeys. Anyway, I was thinking about my ideas on how time travel might work and found myself thinking the explanation in the form of a short story. So I wrote it. *shrug* I haven't really gone through and edited it so there are bound to be plenty of issues but it's approaching 3am and I felt like sharing it anyway. A stable loop (google doc)

I do understand that, and I don't entirely disagree. 3-3.5ish years back I might well have been in favour of such a change. It's not that I don't see benefit to it still, I just think that now it'd do more harm than good on balance

Those are the worst times, when you know that reading, playing, watching or creating something would make you feel better but you just don't have the willpower to decide to do any of them. As a side note: Turns out Dark Souls has actually been quite helpful to some gamers suffering depression. It seems odd on the surface but Dark Souls is really a game about facing difficult challenges, persisting and finally succeeding. That feeling of overcoming a challenge you initially thought you couldn't possibly do can actually be really helpful when you're feeling similarly about life. The depressing tone of Dark Souls and how some of the characters don't think you can succeed either can actually help in that regard. You do have to have some baseline of competence with action games but you don't need to be all that good at them, just persistent. The difficulty curve in the first Dark Souls game is really well designed.

I apologise for misunderstanding

I feel season 3 dropped the ball a bit, particularly in the latter half. The writing just got really obvious and dull for a bit but they did pull it together again for a good last 2 episodes. Season 4 is much better than that and probably overall on par with seasons 1 & 2 imo.

@Argent & @Extesian I can't say I agree. I did enjoy the times when the majority of reputation was hard-won by really well crafted theories but that was over 3 years ago now. The site has grown dramatically over that time and while theory crafting will always be an important part of the site it isn't the predominant feature anymore. I know there is a distinction to be made between theory crafting and Brandon-related content in general but the point stands that the parts of the site that aren't directly Brandon related are now a very significant part of our community. To stop reputation from the social boards from counting would send the message (intentional or otherwise) that their contributions to the community aren't as valuable, and I think that would be quite harmful to the community as a whole.

Only noticed this because of @Flynn in the update thread but the won the day banners are a fun little addition I really wasn't expecting to have one but apparently I was wrong, albeit from quite some time ago.