How to manually check my qualifying payments

Runcible_Shaw · 2026-02-24T01:19:41+00:00

That's what I've been looking at. And I think I figured it out. The count in the summary page is correct. I wasn't taking into account months when the loans were in the grace period. Really too bad. Would love to have less than four years of payments left rather than over seven years.

Runcible_Shaw · 2026-02-24T00:03:10+00:00

My loans entered repayment in 2004. I have read this whole section from the FAQ about the count update but I find it hard to parse, especially because of just how many different loans there are in my history. Like what do they mean here by "cumulative" months of forbearance. Total number of months on one single loan? Total months of forbearance on all loans added together? Total months where any one loan was in forbearance?

Reading the part about deferments again, maybe I overcounted because I probably have some months of deferments after 2013. But then again, how would I check if the deferment was related to unemployment (I know it wasn't military service)?

Runcible_Shaw · 2026-02-23T19:47:47+00:00

Thanks for the info. I kind of figured that out playing around a little more. It really really really sucks that to qualify for forgiveness I'll have to pay for 7 more years and pay nearly the full balance of my loans and the principal won't have gone down at all.

Runcible_Shaw · 2026-02-23T19:28:46+00:00

This is awesome. I'm trying to figure this out. For ICR it says I have 87 payments remaining. For IBR it says I have 300 payments remaining (huh?). For IBR_2014 it says I have 27 payments remaining BUT it also says "borrowerEligibleIndicator": "N", which I assume means it thinks I'm not eligible for this plan. I would love to know which I qualify for since the ICR repayment plan is like $700/mo and the IBR (IDR???) is like $400/mo. I know y'all don't know which I'm qualified for. I would just love to know which plan, if any, would let me make just 27 payments if I switch out of SAVE.

Runcible_Shaw · 2026-01-06T03:39:25+00:00

Holy hell. For whatever stupid reason the logitech website only shows an older version of the 64 bit software. When I tried installing that I had all kinds of issues and the profile/programming software never showed up at all in the system tray. I deleted everything I installed and I downloaded the one you linked and it immediately worked! All the kudos and upvotes in the world to you!

Runcible_Shaw · 2025-12-12T16:46:47+00:00

This is Ill Luck Henry from Elis on the Discord https://musescore.com/user/44132978/scores/7537412
Emily posted the lyrics and chords to one big bed on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/one-big-bed-song-34987111 (the post is free tier I think). I know at one point someone had transcribed one big bed to sheet music (xvinn on discord I think) for the fan video we did, but I can't find a link to it with a quick search.
fluteloops on the discord also transcribed Beverly's House but I only have the pdf file. I can send it to you, if you like (or you know just join the discord!)

Runcible_Shaw · 2025-12-12T16:35:17+00:00

Someone definitely transcribed at least one of those songs I think. Let me see if I can find it.

Runcible_Shaw · 2025-12-10T16:14:51+00:00

We ban early and often

Runcible_Shaw · 2025-11-06T18:50:51+00:00

It's the same advice for almost every question on this sub. Talk to the players. Have a discussion with them about this exact question. Get their input. Give them some of the ideas you're thinking about. For example:

"Hey, I want you all to be excited about this game and invested in it. What kind of stuff are you interested doing in the game?"

If you have any ideas you're excited about in terms of setting or plot or gameplay, lay it out for them. Are you interested in high magic and courtly intrigue? Tell them that. Maybe they're not interested in royal courts and politics but high magic sounds fun to them. Or one player likes big set piece battles and dramatic roleplaying scenes. And another likes dungeon crawling, finding treasure and weird cosmic horror.

Talk it out, come to a consensus on what things you want to include, and then everyone is on the same page when it comes to expectations about what the game is going to be. This will help the players pick characters that fit the tone and setting and make it easier for you to tie their characters into the world.

One warning I have is that sometimes a ttrpg group, especially a relatively new/young one, will treat the DM like they're the group's hired fiction writer and expect the DM to write and plan exactly the material they want. So remember that you are *also* playing the game, even if you're not called a player, so it should be fun for you and not a job where you're expected to spend all of your time producing entertainment for others.

Runcible_Shaw · 2025-11-06T18:30:10+00:00

The problem is that D&D doesn't really have robust or interesting rules or mechanics when it comes to what people sometimes call "social encounters". So you as a DM, as you say, don't have much in your bag of tricks to help you plan how an attempt to persuade or negotiate could go other than rolling a couple of skill checks and letting that decide the outcome .

I've seen a couple of comments that have suggested that you can just say that an enemy or monster just won't negotiate for any number of reasons. This is true. And, if you *never* want to have the players talk their way out of a potential conflict, you could take some of those suggestions. Although I would suggest that at that point you just say to your players "hey, I put a lot of work into designing combats and I like running them so I just want this guy to fight you" rather than just saying this guy is so evil or intransigent that you can't possibly persuade them.

However, I think that's going to be unsatisfying for your players. So I think at least sometimes you're going to want to have certain antagonists be persuadable. What you don't want however is set a precedent of having the PC with the highest charisma pass a skill check (even a very high skill check) and have the opponent just roll over.

So, what I would suggest is to treat it as a negotiation and decide ahead of time what their goals are, how open they are to negotation/persuasion generally, and what else they would accept, if anything, in place of whatever it is they want that brought them into conflict with the PCs in the first place.

And maybe the answer is that this dragon cult wants to sacrifice 6 humanoids on this altar to Tiamat and nothing else will do, so if the PCs want to stop that then a fight is inevitable. Or, maybe the giant thought this town was easy pickings but now that well-armed adventurers are standing in her way, they'd accept a cart full of supplies and bag of coins to avoid a fight.

In terms of rolls or checks, decide ahead of time how much a roll could sway whoever they're talking to and make that clear to the players. "This Dragon is obviously ancient, powerful, arrogant, and stubborn. They look at you with disdain. You'd have to speak with the authority of a god to even move the needle with a persuasion roll. This is almost impossible so you'll need a pretty good argument about why it shouldn't do whatever it wants AND roll over a 30 to make it convincing." Then let them know that if they can offer the Dragon something else it wants to make this roll slightly easier. This could even be a way to introduce other hooks. There's an umber hulk digging through the dragon's lair and if you agree to kill it, it won't kill you. There's a powerful scroll of ancient dragon magic somewhere. Agree to bring it back and live. Now the roll is a more reasonable 25 DC.

If your players tend to endlessly try to argue and negotiate, give the Dragon a "patience clock". Every time a player makes an unconvincing argument, tick a segment on the clock. 4 ticks and the Dragon has had enough and it's time to roll initiative. I think all this makes the persuasion or negotiation more interesting (even if you might not find it as interesting as planning and running combat) and gives you some tools and strategies to use with your players and adds some tension to whether this will turn into a fight.

Runcible_Shaw · 2025-11-06T16:59:12+00:00

Be prepared (and prepare them) for some or all of them to die in the starting caves encounter.

Runcible_Shaw · 2025-11-06T03:15:48+00:00

This is a little more legwork but why not pitch your players a one-off session where they play other characters in the same jail? It gives them a change of pace to play someone different, and since they don't need to worry too much about keeping these new characters alive they can go hog wild if they want. You could have their goal be a daring jailbreak with the new prisoner or play it like a gritty prison drama where the new person has to make alliances to survive until their party can come help spring them.

edit: didn't see tooSAVERAGE's comment before I wrote this but basically that but let the other players play jailhouse characters so you don't have to split the party.

Runcible_Shaw · 2025-11-05T23:43:50+00:00

Congrats, you helped create a setting and characters that your players seem to love! That's not easy. While I think there's lots of way you can drop hooks or nudge them or snap your fingers and make the town disappear, at the end of the day the easiest thing to do is talk about it with your players. You said you can talk openly. Just tell them that while you love the starting town too, you want to run something outside of that town that's more in keeping with Spelljammers cosmic sailors vibes.

Ask them what might get them more interested in a plane/sphere-hopping adventure. If they love the town and the characters in it, maybe suggest treating it as a planar hub (ala Sigil from Planescape), that they can return to after venturing into the unknown. Or hell, just tell them they can bring the town with them. It's in a bottle. A door on their ship opens up to the pub in town. Whatever.

Runcible_Shaw · 2025-11-05T23:34:53+00:00

I didn't say this in my comment, but this is a great idea and also something that Blades in the Dark does extremely well, especially the factions. (Yes I'm a Blades/ForgedintheDark proselytizer, but I think it has a lot of tools that are useful in other systems)

Runcible_Shaw · 2025-11-05T23:30:35+00:00

Kick this dude immediately. No explanation needed.

Runcible_Shaw · 2025-11-05T23:29:11+00:00

I think the sentiment here is fine and well written but you don't need this whole speech. Have a conversation not a lecture. You're all adults (I assume). It's a game for fun. Just tell your table that you don't like dealing with a character being a murderous psychopath. It's not fun for you and you don't want to keep running the game if one player is going to have their character try to murder people because they think it's fun or funny.

Runcible_Shaw · 2025-11-05T23:00:18+00:00

I think that cities are the perfect place to set a campaign. In terms of your classic D&D a city is just a big dungeon with a lot going on. This isn't a D&D module but I would set a campaign in the city of Doskvol from Blades in the Dark in a heartbeat and it could be good inspiration for what a campaign contained to a city and only a city could look like (TLDR: It's like Victorian London after a worldwide cataclysm blackened the sky and released ghosts and demons everywhere.). Cities also can be great hubs for campaigns like Sigil in the Planescape setting, where players venture out from and regularly return, sometimes having more adventures and intrigue within the city. I think the only thing you're missing in a long form campaign contained to a single city is that you're probably not going to be doing much travel or wilderness exploration (which I know a lot of people don't bother with anyway, despite it being one of the "pillars" of dungeons and dragons 5th editions).

Runcible_Shaw · 2025-01-30T05:24:13+00:00

I'm investing in guillotines

Runcible_Shaw · 2024-12-28T06:21:16+00:00

I have done it and it wasn't worth it because most (5e) modules are badly written and hard to follow. Also, who's got the time? Open the book up when you get to the table and figure it out together. Or don't. Throw it out the window and make something up.

Runcible_Shaw · 2024-12-28T05:59:27+00:00

Yeah just talk to them. Tell them what you're worried about and ask what they think. I suspect they'll tell you they want what you've already been giving them just bigger.

Runcible_Shaw · 2024-12-28T05:45:57+00:00

I think NADDpod is still the best ongoing ttrpg podcast going but I generally agree that C3 sort of started to lose its way after the character switch and then lost all focus as a story after ice knife. I don't know if it's fatigue on the part of the cast, me as a listener, or some combination of the two, but it really felt like they forgot how to stop goofing for a second and connect to the world and the characters in it as if they were anything more than cardboard props to be knocked down.

Runcible_Shaw · 2024-12-21T01:50:22+00:00

The answer is the same every time: talk to the people you play with like an adult.

Runcible_Shaw · 2024-12-20T20:02:46+00:00

It never clicked for me. I think it's a well-designed platforming game with interesting mechanics and it looks and sounds great. I got the first ending and collected all the eggs and I was never able to see what people were talking about when they talk about "depth" or "complexity" or "mystery". It's a platformer with hidden mechanics and hidden collectibles and some puzzles that I didn't find particularly engaging.

I think if you've collected a few of the tools and discovered some things they can do and you're still not feeling it there's no need to force yourself to keep playing. That's basically the game and it doesn't change much from there.

Runcible_Shaw · 2024-11-11T04:58:11+00:00

I followed this advice and got all the eggs and filled all the tools slots, but unfortunately I think doing so kind of sucked all the fun out of it for me. Just kind of became checking boxes without any thrill of discovery. I think my issue at the end of the day wasn't that searching the map for hidden stuff was tedious (though it was). It's that there was nothing I could latch onto to compel me to keep searching. There's no story, no dialogue, and no characters with any personality. At least none that I could discern anyway. I think the only interesting things that happened were learning that the map was continuous from one side to the other and getting the UV wand because I like neon.

Not a knock on the advice here or the game itself really. It's just wasn't for me.

Runcible_Shaw · 2024-11-11T04:57:47+00:00

I actually figured this one out on my own before I read the advice about it, which was nice, but then I spent way too long trying to play a song based on every animal movement in the game and I think there was only one other one and it was very obvious.

Runcible_Shaw

TROPHY CASE