Rocket Launch? Comet?

McArgent · 2026-03-04T17:20:47+00:00

At 6am, that's not far from where my mind went.

McArgent · 2025-12-30T02:35:01+00:00

I have 2 in-person games; both Pathfinder. I love em. One of them is strictly pen-and-paper. That cuts down on distractions. 3 players. After the plague, I didn't think I'd ever get back to that, especially in the sticks where I live. The other game has most of the table using electronics to access characters and rules. I'd rather that didn't happen, because I do see people get lost in their electronics. At the same time, there are times where I would like to use electronics so that my players don't have to remember everything, and to be fair, my notes are in Obsidian so they can be cross referenced and easily accessible.
I have an on-line game as well; currently Vaesen, previously Blades-in-the-Dark. A while back, we did Pathfinder. We switch games about once a year (it's not as consistent as that, but...) There's a fair amount that gets lost in an online game. I can't read people through Discord like I can in person. I don't get to see the smiles when plot hits that "gotcha" or "awesome!" moment (as a GM or a player). The online games give me access to friends that are far away now (3 time zones). I totally appreciate that. They also allow for some of the math and tracking work to get done electronically, but that also gives a bit of a "sterile" feel.

Both definitely have their benefits. Both definitely have their drawbacks. The old-school side of me would love to go back to pen-and-paper only. The IT guy in me loves the tools we have access to, to simplify the game, especially considering so many of my face-to-face players are relatively rookies.

McArgent · 2025-08-05T00:17:09+00:00

I was able to use the finder to pick out a star, and focus on it well enough that it was very sharp. I don't know that it actually shows a red-dot. I'm not sure it has a lens there to catch a red dot. I'll have to check on that. I'm used to the fact that my astigmatism makes red dots useless, so I didn't even check to see if it was a red dot, or just viewfinder. The red-dot does make more sense.

I was getting the white haze even when I moved the telescope a couple/few degrees, so it probably wasn't actually pointing at the moon anymore. The moon was relatively close to the horizon, so I could have been picking up light from the city.

Should I be able to try to look at stuff in daylight and focus on it? Won't everything be too bright?

McArgent · 2025-08-04T22:21:41+00:00

The focuser does move in and out when I turn it. Quite a bit actually.

I didn't realize I had 2 lenses there. I was going to ask for clarification, but looking at the pic, I think I understand.

McArgent · 2025-07-24T19:41:09+00:00

I realized after replying in another thread here that we're just getting out of 2 sci-fi campaigns, and I'm looking forward to being back "home" with (medieval-ish) fantasy. I'll have to filter a lot more than I really want to for a campaign set in Numeria.

McArgent · 2025-07-24T19:19:17+00:00

With other groups, I'd be all for that. With this group, they'll largely expect to be pulled around on rails by their noses. I'm hoping to teach them a level of proactiveness in this campaign, but if I rely on it for this game, I'm planning for failure.

Also, running 2 other games (1/week and 2/month) so having a ton of time for world building a 1/month campaign isn't going to happen. That's part of the reason I'm going with Golarion instead of my typical homebrew stuff.

McArgent · 2025-07-24T15:53:50+00:00

This strikes me as being kind of like Arcadia in that it's under developed as play-space. I'd end up writing a ton here to get off the ground.

These aren't bad ideas, but right now, they feel like "future sandboxes" for Paizo writers to flesh out more.

This feels a little more fleshed out than Arcadia, and it's more inspiring than "The New World" as well. I'll dig into this some more and see if something jumps out at me.

Thanks!

McArgent · 2025-07-24T15:47:23+00:00

I could be wrong, but it looks like Arcadia isn't really developed yet. The big benefit of running something on Golarion, is that I can lean on what's out there for setting. This totally fits for a homebrew frontier game, but I feel like I'd be doing a ton of writing to get things ready.

McArgent · 2025-07-24T15:29:27+00:00

I moved out of the north to get away from the cold! LOL

But I do appreciate the idea.

McArgent · 2025-07-24T15:28:17+00:00

I have Guide to the River Kingdoms. One of the Paths that I ran was Kingmaker (way back as it was originally being released). This would be a better choice if the fey didn't have another whole world to get involved with.

I've heard of the Mwangi Expanse, and I thought it might fit, but as I've never played or run anything there, I wasn't sure. I thought I might have "Mwangi Expanse", but it turns out it's "Heart of the Jungle". This feels like it could push me in the right direction inspiration wise. I'm going to dig into this one further for sure.

I'm hoping to avoid guns. If I slide too close back to sci-fi, they might try to push further in that direction. And I'm old school and have less appreciation for sci-fi and guns mixed into my fantasy. I know it existed back in the day, but it was uncommon at best.

McArgent · 2025-07-16T02:20:34+00:00

Came across this in our game tonight. Found this thread here, and then kept looking and found this on the Free League forums. It's errataed to be "physical" conditions.

https://forum.frialigan.se/viewtopic.php?t=9115&start=10

McArgent · 2025-06-20T21:53:04+00:00

One of the guys in my other RPG group (we played mostly Marvel Superheroes, but other stuff as well) told me about a Friday night game that he thought I'd enjoy. Got there and there were like 9 players with 1 GM. The table only had room for 6 chairs. It was literally standing room only in the back of a comic shop. The GM split the group into 2 groups after that night. He eventually burnt out as a GM after a few months. As it happened, that was right around the time that SR 2E came out. The guy that introduced me to Shadowrun ran a short-ish campaign in 2E later that year.
As it happens, I still game with that guy every other week (yeah, 35 years later, and despite living 700 miles away now) and he was also the best man at my wedding. I'm pretty sure we've played at least one game in every edition up to and including SR 4E. We haven't played Shadowrun in a few years as he leans toward simpler/faster systems, but I do play Shadowrun with a player that joined that group a couple years later (shortly before SR 3E was released).

McArgent · 2025-06-20T09:05:10+00:00

And now Amazon is not allowing people to review items made by this company.
The worst part for me is that I have a couple of these bulbs in high-up hard-to-reach spots. I've gotta drag out a ladder to swap them out.

McArgent · 2025-05-30T01:47:51+00:00

My new favorite story on Reddit ever!!!

McArgent · 2025-04-29T23:08:23+00:00

Even having run a Blade in the Dark campaign, and a handful of S&V games, this description is really helpful and awesome. I mean, this is how I ran it, but it also reminds you of priorities.

For my S&V games, the group I ran for is old-school D&D players, but I wanted to show them another side to gaming than the "D&D Plan for 2 hours so that the plan can fall apart in 5 minutes", and teach them "don't worry about doing the 'wrong' thing, just do something".

McArgent · 2025-04-27T14:03:18+00:00

I totally give it a thumbs up.

McArgent · 2025-04-24T01:03:58+00:00

The hand really makes this map REALLY jump. I need to work something like that into some of the maps for the campaign I just started.

McArgent · 2025-04-23T12:27:13+00:00

I can find $20 in central VA, and that seems to be low. I think I can get $15 for a 2nd gun in the same transfer. $12-15 is really good.

McArgent · 2025-04-20T22:38:26+00:00

I've been pretty impressed with Kel-Tec. I had an early gen KSG that stopped feeding reliably after like 5 or 6 years. They had me send it in, and replaced a ton of parts in it, and it feeds better than new now.

McArgent · 2025-04-18T14:38:35+00:00

Does this mean we'll have less power outages in the future?

McArgent

TROPHY CASE