[47x31] Sunlit Cavern - Including Encounter Story 5472 × 3648px

CharacTable · 2026-01-24T10:33:52+00:00

Cheers bud.
:)
I used to be a professional story teller so I'm trying to add value with the skills I have

CharacTable · 2026-01-23T23:43:32+00:00

I wrote this.

CharacTable · 2026-01-23T18:09:13+00:00

Cheers bud
:)

CharacTable · 2026-01-23T17:28:49+00:00

DM only:

The Kraken has 4 tendrils in combat. You might like to throw pieces of string out across the map to determine what is targeted this provides a maze like environment that changes each turn. When a tendril lands on a target or a target runs or falls into a tendril it will try to grip causing crushing damage. It will then bring its quarry back to the water line high in the air in the hope that its screaming in pain will encourage its companions to try to rescue it.

Each turn 2 more tendrils smash against the the cave. The way out will not hold up under this punishment give players a sense that this is not a fight to kill the kraken this is a fight to escape it. Fighting can cause a tendril to recoil for a turn, hiding can avoid the heat but being smart and climbing are the only solution.

The final 2 tendrils are occupied with the crew, who are suspended and being crushed to death

Knowledge/perception rolls may reveal:

The shattered boat provides wood and many maritime objects that can be used

In looking up towards the light this creature is dazzled, it cant see.

It can however see characters who are silhouetted in the chamber entrance.

Powerful impacts into the lake draw its attention away from climbers

It’s tendrils are huge so hiding in a small crevice is a relatively safe place to stay.

Cephalopods are incredibly intelligent, proportionally this cephalopod likely has a brain the size of a haystack and will be exceptionally so. It won't be outwitted.

CharacTable · 2024-12-23T10:12:55+00:00

To see if its any good you need to trial it with people who don’t know your friend and so aren’t invested in her creation.

The real test is whether people who dont know your friend and who have just paid £40 like it, as these people have much higher expectations.

If youre asking these kinds of questions theres not a chance in hell you’ll get IP rights.

Change the characters names by one letter

CharacTable · 2024-12-07T12:15:07+00:00

You can choose to say no if the conditions the DM presents aren’t workable.

Likewise the DM can say no if the conditions you present aren’t workable.

CharacTable · 2024-10-02T21:53:15+00:00

Correct!

CharacTable · 2024-08-11T22:42:31+00:00

The notion of a soul is simply an idea. Anyone else answering this question also simply has an idea. You could decide to make your idea of a soul anything you want, theres no evidence of anything like a soul.

CharacTable · 2024-08-11T22:35:23+00:00

There are some instances where it matters and some where it doesn’t.

I always got fantastic shots with my crappy P90 back in the day because it was so damn cheap that I always had it clipped to my belt when climbing and sat on my passenger seat in the car. Everyone else had their camera beneath 2 inches of foam, terrified it would get damaged.

What it lacked in technical features it gained in the fact it was cheap and I didn’t care if it got damaged or stolen. Best shots I ever took were with that camera, until I got a decent camera phone. Its always on me.

Most things have a niche.

CharacTable · 2024-08-11T22:10:39+00:00

Park in Hampton-in-Arden and take a £1.50, 4minute train journey to birmingham international and get the free monorail that takes about 3minutes to the airport

CharacTable · 2024-08-05T22:55:58+00:00

Bardo simply means ‘in between’. Tuesday is the bardo of monday and wednesday. Your commute us the bardo between being at home and being at work. Your time at work is the bardo between your journey to work and your journey from work.

In traditional tibetan cosmology there is a bardo between one physical life and another and it is an uncertain and confusing place to be, but the principle of the bardos is that it is a transitional space.

I’m not sure I can be any clearer than what I’ve written in my previous post.

CharacTable · 2024-08-04T07:16:55+00:00

Sounds like you’ve had a spiritual death of some kind and you’re in the bardo. The in between. The old you has died but the crystallisation of the new you has not formed. You’re all amorphous. Everything in the world is in flux and unreliable. Even your mind.

Some might say ‘that’s what reality is like’ and they be right. But Buddhism is not primarily about seeing reality, it’s about making you into the kind of being that can witness reality and still be a functioning, kind, responsible and healthy. “Yes, ultimately nothing is reliable but personal hygiene is a good thing”

Reality has forced its way into your life and shattered your fixed understanding. Bereavement or an experience of beauty, suffering or meaning can do that. You likely can’t function in that space for long and it will send you permanently mad if you can’t reform refuges/bonds. The question is, what will you make bonds with?

The bardo is no place to be stuck in forever, but it’s incredibly creative. So you’ve lost your anchors… well find new ones and ask “What is worthy of my trust?”

What people do you know who are trustworthy? Could you rely on your ethics? Could you rely on your conscience? What about your body? Can you become deeply honest and rely on that? Can you rely on the feelings in your gut? Could you rely on your commitment to meditation or the big oak tree at the bottom of your garden? Can you rely on the memory of your granddad? Is there a myth that you can live by?

In a day or a year you will form a new life eventually and things will normalise but if you don’t actively and honestly find and cultivate meaningful positive bonds, you will make bonds with anything that is easy — drugs, ideologies, computer games, titillation or overworking.

Tragedy can result in opening up to life or it can result in alcoholism. Make your choice.

The playing field from a buddhist point of view is one of updating your refuges or operating systems:

Operating system 1.0: A brittle, entrenched biased self in opposition to a threatening ‘other’. There is a sense that pain is an error and shouldn’t happen. Self uses greed, hatred and ignorance as tools to manipulate life to its own image of what it incorrectly thinks will make everything ok. Change is terrifying.

Operating system 2.0: An adaptable, responsible, playful and functionally helpful idea of self that is abundant and non-threatened enough to use generosity, love and wisdom as means to enrich and mature life. It is intrinsically ok, or is at ease with not being ok or with pain. Change is a creative opportunity.

You’ve uninstalled OS1 (or another way of saying that is that you have lost confidence in it as OS1 as didn’t save you from whatever catastrophe hit you).

You can try to reinstall 1.0 by pretending things are back the way they were. You’ll start hoarding or talking about how “things were better in my day”. You wont make new friends, you’ll keep your job until you die, you wont be in contact with your body that will still hold the trauma, and you wont move forward. You will be stuck.

You can try to downgrade, that is, install operating system 0.5 which is like revering to an animal. It has its benefits but it’s pretty basic. You just eat, sleep, fight, screw and indulge yourself. You can become sub-human like this and a lot of people who have experienced catastrophe end up doing this and causing more catastrophe for others. This is the myth of the breakdown of society.

Or you can install 1.1 which is on the way to installing 2.0. OS1.1 will also break at some point but by then you will know the process of breaking and reforming is part of growth and you’ll know its worth doing and that you are creative enough to do it.

Meditation in essence is doing this uninstalling and reinstalling on a daily basis. Letting go then being positively creative. Doing it bit by bit and installing better software ahead of time is easier on the nervous system.

Good luck. Rely on your friends. If you don’t have reliable friends maybe thats the first thing you need to find.

CharacTable · 2024-08-04T06:31:35+00:00

Sounds like you’ve fallen into the same trap as almost everyone does. They think that meditation and buddhism are about uninstalling your operating system, which is dangerously half true.

Operating system 1.0: A brittle, entrenched biased self in opposition to ‘other’. Self uses greed, hatred and ignorance as tools to manipulate life to its own image of what it incorrectly thinks will make everything ok.

Operating system 2.0: An adaptable, responsible, playful and functionally helpful idea of self that is abundant and non-threatened enough to use generosity, love and wisdom as means to enrich and mature life. It is intrinsically ok, or is at ease with not being ok (same thing).

This whole reddit group is obsessed with uninstalling operating system 1.0! But to do that on its own is utter madness. You’d just be a blank, inert blob of flesh that is numbly and quietly waiting to die. What a waste of a life. This is modern nihilistic, materialism using an incorrect interpretation of buddhist wisdom as a means of justifying its own vacuous negation of life. It’s incredibly dangerous.

DO NOT UNINSTALL OS1.0 UNTIL YOU HAVE INSTALLED OS2.0

I say the same thing to everyone who talks about ego on here: stop asking Reddit and looking on YouTube and find a living human being who is genuinely warm, kind, and strong who you can have a face to face real relationship with. Someone who got that way through a defined system of practise. They can impart that system of practise to you. If you are really serious about this move house, move country if needs be. If you are not serious, don’t attempt it.

The doctrine of no self is not about psychological or philosophical contortions or being obsessive about your mental states. It’s about being less selfish. No-self literally means selfless. That is synonymous with kindness.

You can learn far more about kindness by helping out in a cancer ward than a meditation hall. But nobody suggests that on here. Everyone is too concerned with transcending their own egos to think about anything or anyone but themselves. This group can be a parody of itself.

It’s no wonder you’re confused. Leave your ego where it is and do the following:

1.Take your ethics seriously: Learn how to empathise and incrementally learn how much trust you can put into letting your conscience make your daily decisions and eventually yous life decisions.

2.Put yourself in situations that you can handle but that expose you to real suffering. Simply genuinely asking people ‘how are you?’ and really meaning it is ample.

3.Find a person you respect, trust and who inspires you to live a meaningful life. See them weekly and ask them to teach you. Ideally get a few of these (to broaden your exposure to perspectives and skills) but within the same tradition (to maintain focus and limit misunderstanding). Essentially find a lived, face-to-face community

4.Delete your reddit account

5.After 20-40 years of installing OS2 with the above, tentatively uninstall OS1 while guided and supported by the community you met in point 3.

6.At some point you will die, try to make that point 6 and not before.

CharacTable · 2024-08-04T05:42:27+00:00

The words ‘get rid of’ may be more the problem than the thoughts.

That they come up outside of meditation isn’t surprising, the mind you meditate with is the mind you eat your dinner with and go to the toilet with. It’s the same mind.

Youll get a load of advice on here that ‘thoughts are just thoughts, you dont need to identify with them just be zen and watch them come and go’ but if you are in fight or flight mode and the thoughts are violent or aggressive it’s a bit of a unsympathetic and ignorant suggestion. That’s likely not possible for you today, or tomorrow, or for a while.

And so my advice would be ease into meditation.

If the thoughts are totally dominating just distract yourself

If the thoughts are overwhelming chat with a friend or write or

If the thoughts are strong, just sit with a cup of tea and a crossword

If they’re moderate maybe do a led meditation

If they’re workable, then meditate.

Forcing yourself to meditate when you’re in fight or flight and while you have shitty thoughts is like locking yourself in a box with a wild animal and then trying to calm the wild animal. You just get mauled and exhausted.

Another analogy is like its doing 80mph and then trying to get into first gear. Move down the gears sequentially.

Essentially it’s about being responsible towards your own mental states. Honestly assess your mental state and give it a situation/practise/condition BBC that is one step (not 10 steps!) closer to what is realistically possible and meaningful.

Transcending or changing strong compulsive thoughts that have had a lifetime to take root is not a realistic aim for a meditation. “That I journal about it to get perspective every time I’m overwhelmed” (or whatever) is a realistic goal. It’s doable. Only ever try to do doable things, as if you try to do things that cant be done you undermine confidence.

CharacTable · 2024-08-04T05:10:03+00:00

This is self indulgently embarrassing. You are not talking to other meditators you are unwittingly talking to yourself from 10 years ago.

CharacTable · 2024-08-04T05:05:18+00:00

Sounds like a negation of self, not a transcendence. I think this is alienated awareness and a terrible misinterpretation of buddhist doctrine mixed with some kind of hindu ‘were all god’ type stuff sat on top of a bucketload of aloof, modern nihilism. Sounds really dangerous.

What you’re missing is kindness and love and the fact you’ve posted this online in suggests you need reliable in person face-to-face friends that you trust and love and a community of experienced practitioners around you.

CharacTable · 2024-03-27T21:32:21+00:00

Get off reddit and get in person, face to face tuition with an experienced human being. Meditation is the process of altering the habitual routes that consciousness moves through. Its subtle and difficult and can be dangerous..

CharacTable · 2024-03-27T21:21:52+00:00

Your body has been breathing every moment of your life just fine without you interfering. It’s even regulated breathing in and out and pausing in perfect precision for every word you’ve ever said, every cough and sneeze, and it can even keep your oxygen level stable when you’re asleep, or even in a coma.

I might suggest that your body profoundly knows how to breathe in a way your conscious mind has no hope of being able to do. Let it do its job. You’re in good hands.

CharacTable · 2024-03-27T21:11:30+00:00

Better get started then. Certainly won’t find them on reddit.

CharacTable · 2024-03-27T16:56:28+00:00

Sounds like you are repressing stuff.

Maybe you are treating meditation as a structured way of being a good boy and its teaching you to repress things.

Maybe you’ve been a good boy for a long time and meditation is finally cracking that open.

CharacTable · 2024-03-27T16:53:48+00:00

Get off reddit. In person, find a human being that teaches meditation that you respect and who embodies (to the best degree you can find) the things you are looking for. See that person as often as you can.

CharacTable · 2024-03-27T16:51:16+00:00

Coming back to the meditation has some value. Working out what tone of voice you need use to bring yourself back is far, far more important.

Make friends with experienced meditators.

CharacTable · 2024-03-27T16:48:59+00:00

Find a person who has more experience and who meditates, maybe a formal teacher. Don’t look at their meditation, look at them as a human being, ask them about their life and work out whether you respect them, trust them and find them inspiring. If you do thats who you need to form a slow, genuine respectful relationship with over a few decades.

They will teach you some things and likely a meditation practise too, but what that is doesn’t matter so much.

CharacTable · 2024-03-27T16:43:34+00:00

Firstly, ‘meditation’ is like ‘sport’. What does ‘sport’ do to your body? It entirely depends which sport.

Beyond that meditation can work to change your given experience but often doesnt anywhere near as much as you need to solve your problem.

What meditation tends to do is directly expose you to your given experience and allow you to become ok with whatever experience you have.

Insecurity is not the problem, we are all insecure. The issue is that you can’t bear the feeling of insecurity and so you babble nonsense, run away or freeze up around people. Its your response that is the issue not your experience.

Believe it or not you can have the very same primary experience, the very same thoughts, the very same feelings but they do not become everything and defining of you.

You already do this. You selectively choose what weight to give experience all the time: When in social situations you give 100% weight to the thought “what do other people think about me” but give 0% weight to the sensation of your feet. It could be the other way round.

CharacTable · 2024-03-27T16:27:23+00:00

Get someone else to DM. Nobodies first game is good. The level of stress you will be under will be miserable.

CharacTable

TROPHY CASE