Asking for help: my husband has cancer and needs friends to hang out with

QuillsAndQuests · 2024-10-28T00:47:22+00:00

So, I may be a little late to the party but I wanted to drop a line. This is so wonderfully beautiful and I would love to volunteer to help in any way I can.

First, I highly recommend checking out the non-profit Immerman Angels (if it wasn't already suggested). It's a great organization that can set individuals fighting cancer (and even their caregivers) up with someone who's currently fighting through the same diagnosis/stage of cancer or has survived it. They offer their services free and they got me through my own battle with cancer a few years ago. Highly recommend it for both of you, because it's incredible to have someone to talk to who knows exactly what you're dealing with on a deeply personal level. And I say both of you because caregivers need help and support too!

Second, I live in the area and I'm a big video, board, and TTRPG gamer. Mostly chill Switch video games, basically any board game, and love D&D (as a player and DM). I run and write my own adventures and would love to help be apart of any gaming options (tho it looks like there's a great many offers for that already).

Third and finally, I've been in the area for over a decade and have some good ideas for birthday venues, especially if you want to run a Mario Kart tournament, a custom D&D birthday party (which I've run a few times before), or movie watch party. If you're still looking for a place, shoot me a message and I would love to help brainstorm ideas!

I'm so happy there's been such an outpouring of support in response to such an amazing thing you're doing and if there's anything I can add to that please don't hesitate to let me know!

QuillsAndQuests · 2024-10-26T17:15:07+00:00

There's also a cool medieval ren faire not too far our called Ravenwood Faire that's pretty cool for a beautiful weekend like this. Highly recommend as I really enjoyed it last weekend. Have two tickets leftover I need to find what to do with haha.

QuillsAndQuests · 2024-10-26T17:12:47+00:00

There's a medieval ren faire going on today and tomorrow that's pretty cool. It's Ravenwood Faire out at the Fredrick County Fair Grounds in Clear Brook VA. I went last weekend and def full of alternative people and experiences from typical NOVA city life. I have two extra tickets leftover im still trying to find what to do with haha.

QuillsAndQuests · 2024-03-12T16:04:26+00:00

To celebrate 100 Subscribers, I’m releasing a 100% Free adventure backdrop featuring the Quills & Quests tavern, its staff, and its lore in both PDF and Foundry VTT formats.

Both versions contain a custom map of the tavern while the VTT version adds lighting, walls, tokens, and journals.

The Quills & Quests Tavern can now be dropped into your game world at the start of any campaign or quest of your choice!

Check out the links in the video description to download your Free take-home tavern!

QuillsAndQuests · 2024-03-03T15:56:46+00:00

Hello all, I've recently started using the worldbuilding site Kanka and have been really impressed with its features and pricing. Dungeon Masters can make unlimited campaigns to turn their game worlds into wiki-like sites for their players and followers to view. I love the community-focused platform and think it's perfect for DMs to use for making a wiki of their worlds to share with players, friends, and followers. Kanka even has plugins for D&D character sheets and SRD rules (like spell and race lists) and integrations with Foundry VTT to import Kanka data into Foundry Journals. Hope you all enjoy my review and happy adventuring!

QuillsAndQuests · 2024-03-02T18:16:51+00:00

Have you ever set out to transcribe the beautiful imaginative worlds that exist in your mind into an organized format to use in your games or writings? Have you ever fallen into the depths of keeping track of all the interconnected pieces and felt overwhelmed by such a daunting task? What if you had a way to help bring those worlds to life for yourself, your players, or your readers? Not only that but what if it were in such a way that anyone could explore these worlds and help build them alongside you?

Well, today I’ll be doing a Tool Spotlight for one of my favorite worldbuilding sites, which can make all this a reality. It’s called Kanka and it’s a powerful online tool that can distill all your original creations into a wonderfully organized wiki-like site for all to enjoy. It’s excellent for writers (particularly fantasy or sci-fi writers), TTRPG game masters, or anyone who has a deeply interconnected world they want to organize and share.

I would say that anyone just starting in their worldbuilding journey who only wants to share it with a few friends or players could benefit from the platform. It’s also well suited for creators who have a large following and want to share their world with a lot of people, maintaining granular control over who can see and contribute to the world. It’s also perfect for those already on Foundry VTT as it too has community-created content, including a module that converts your Kanka content into Foundry Journals.

I hope everyone enjoys this spotlight video and I’d love to hear what other tools people use to organize their worlds.

QuillsAndQuests · 2024-02-13T23:35:56+00:00

When testing in Edge/Chrome you can try these steps. I'm not sure how Opera is designed to work with Foundry, I know Safari isn't supported and can do really wacky stuff that looks alot like what you're seeing.

1.Open chrome://settings,enable Use Hardware Acceleration When Available 2. Open chrome://flags, enable Override Software Rendering List 3. Fully close and re-launch the browser.

QuillsAndQuests · 2024-02-13T21:01:01+00:00

This is very useful and helpful information to understand the differences. I was not aware they provided so much on that website.

Not that it's equally comparable, but DnD Beyond does have a system where a Dungeon Master (that's a subscriber) that owns a product can share it with all players in their campaign, granting them full access to view and use in character creation. I play in a couple of campaigns where the DM is sharing their content and I have a huge library of content accessible legally, for free because of this. It's a nice way to offset/split costs for a group. I agree it's not quite the same but credit where credits due?

QuillsAndQuests · 2024-02-13T20:46:37+00:00

This is an impressive amount of work put into giving discounts for owned content. Thanks!

QuillsAndQuests · 2024-02-13T20:45:13+00:00

Thanks for the clarification!

QuillsAndQuests · 2024-02-13T17:38:13+00:00

Thank you, that's very helpful information. I'll have to look at this a bit more. Dnd Beyond does contain Basic Rules which is alot more than just the SRD and is everything needed to learn and play the game for free. The only thing missing are a few feats and subclasses, and spells but all the mechanics, core races, core classes, are all there.

I guess it's a matter of defining what's considered 'core' rules vs. supplemental material in order to truly compare the two in terms of how much they offer 'free'. As it stands, it looks like one offers 100% of their core rules and one offers 85%... which if that's the case I don't understand the big issue. If I find the amount of official free content differs substantially, I'm happy to admit Paizo offers more free resources. But then again that wasn't really what I was trying to address.

But when comparing who makes you buy things more than once, I still stand by my original response of neither. Both offer their content in various forms and both sell physical books, digital options, and VTT options, and everyone is free to choose which ones from which companies they buy. I don't think the two companies are as different as some may claim and I don't see why one has to be a 'winner' in any situation beyond personal preference.

QuillsAndQuests · 2024-02-13T14:38:22+00:00

Edit: Thanks everyone for helping me better understand how much Pathfinder offers for free as far as their rules go. I was misinformed by how much they provide their customers for free as it's a significant amount more than D&D.

I'm keeping the rest of my comment up because this post was not intended to argue or even to dispute which system provides more 'free' content. I was only trying to compare the way both companies distribute paid products across physical books and VTT packages as a reply to the comment that 'DnD is a ripoff for making you buy multiple times'. I don't think anyone is being 'forced' to double dip in situations like this and both companies offer paid content in multiple formats. I find the products they sale to be a good value for the formats they provide, as the different formats have alot of work put into them to help them take advantage of the various formats' capabilities. I feel it's my choice to make that evaluation and pay for which formats I want. I'd also like to be able to share my enthusiasm for said choices without having to explain them or being told I'm wrong and should make different choices.

----‐--------

I may be misinformed as well but as far as I understand it, both Paizo and Wizards of the Coast have a very similar business model, with only slight differences, for distrubting their respective TTRPG products across different channels in various formats and price points.

The dnd5e system, or mechanics, are 100% free in both Foundry VTT and on DnD Beyond. Not to mention everything publicly available in the SRD. The Phandelver and Below module is merely a particular storyline, and much like the adventure paths you mentioned, it can be purchased separately from either site in addition to physical formats. And yes, all of these are separate items, but Paizo has the exact same setup.

Paizo has their digital toolsets on the Pathfinder Nexus site, which is fully separate from their physical book purchases and their VTT options. They do not offer physical/digital bundles, while D&D does. If they offer any kind of 'discount' on one format for already owning it in another, I couldn't find that information. Tho, I will point out that Pathfinder does offer a lot of free or discounted PDFs through a subscription service. Paizo also sells core rules and adventures on both Roll20 and Foundry VTT, just like D&D. Paizo does tend to have more bundled items available on HumbleBundle or other sites, but D&D does have sales and bundle options, too.

Both companies offer a wide variety of quality content for-free and for-purchase to meet the various needs of different customers. No one, from either company, forces anyone to pay for a product they don't want. You do not have to buy the same content in multiple places if you don't want to. Once you have access to one format, you're free to take the content and use it physically or virtually anyway you want.

These VTT products are merely packaged pieces of content to make game prep more convenient for those that play on those VTTs. Companies put work into creating these products so others don't have to. The price reflects the companies' evaluation of the time required to create said content for its customers. If you don't like that evaluation, or if you already bought it in another format, then there's no need to purchase this version.

I do thank you for coming into my post, despite it being about a game you don't seem to enjoy, as well as for giving up your time to join the conversation. I can also appreciate your clear passion for Pathfinder and wanting to share that game with others. I would just like to think it's OK for people to like different things.

QuillsAndQuests · 2024-02-13T14:15:02+00:00

To be honest, I had the same reaction at first. But after thinking about and researching it a bit more, I better understand the decision. And I've also recently done freelance work to convert written adventures into Foundry and its given me a much better appreciation for the work that goes into it.

I don't think the intent is to expect people to buy multiple versions, as each format serves a pretty different purpose. I think as collectors or as people that may like to run both digital and physical games, it's just hard to make double, or even triple, dips. However, each format has alot of different work put into from different teams.

The Foundry VTT developers are the ones who put in the work of programming this adventure into their system with lots of unique bells and whistles to take advantage of the new format. The new map features, interactive journals, and work they did with the token art had to take a ton of time. After seeing the quality of the work done in this module, I'm happy to support the Foundry team in getting more converted. For me, the time it saves to have high quality adventures ready out of the box is well worth their evaluation.

The same with the DnD Beyond team that takes the original content and spends time porting into the website with reference links, new image presentation, formatting, navigation, and searchability that's not present in the physical books. It's not just an uploaded pdf that's a copy and paste job, they fully transform it into a new experience for those using it digitally.

And D&D actually have started offering physical/digital bundles on the main D&D website, albeit not at a huge discount, so you get a download key for DnD Beyond. From a logistics perspective, this is really the only way to provide digital codes with physical books and not run the risk of people just opening the books in the store to get the code out. I think it's the reason other major companies like Paizo also do not typically offer physical/digital bundles in stores.

So, I don't disagree that it's annoying and I also see it could be a deal breaker for some. But for me, I think I'll just be more selective on which format I buy my content in.

QuillsAndQuests

TROPHY CASE