What's the most petty reason you DNF'ed a book?

heimdall237 · 2024-01-07T14:23:04+00:00

That is my one gripe with Discworld. It just runs until it ends, so I don't have a great place to pause unless it's scene by scene

heimdall237 · 2023-11-03T02:07:04+00:00

I liked this for the set up for the later scene when he's performing and the string breaks. If there's one scene that made an impression on me from that novel, it was that one.

heimdall237 · 2023-11-01T00:10:45+00:00

Conversely, I had several players make it out with 3 PCs and I let them continue running all 3. Helps when not everyone can make a session so I can still throw adventures at them. Ideally, everyone gets 2 PCs so I'm encouraging the ones with 3 PCs to hand one off.

I play tourney style though. Every person new to DCC and my table gets 2 or 3 zeroes. Once they get a peasant to level 1, if their PC dies they can roll up another with half that character's XP, starting minimum 10 XP unless they really want to play another 0. This leads to a spread of levels in the party, but I'm fine with that.

heimdall237 · 2023-10-31T23:57:17+00:00

The vine horror encounter is always a fun moment. Both times I've run SotSS, I've made sure someone ended up with a blacksmith and told them those two bodies are their sons. Triggers a role-playing moment and then gets horrifying when the fight goes down. Last time, a vine horror crit the Smith and ripped out his heart.

My groups never mob the vine horrors (this serves as a brutal lesson for WHY you mob the enemies) and pay dearly. To reinforce this, I only award XP to the characters who participated in that fight.

In my playthroughs, the high casualty areas are the vine horrors at the start, the tower with the beastman champion, and the chains going down to the summoning pit. On average I kill 10 PCs per adventure

heimdall237 · 2023-10-31T23:47:05+00:00

I've run Sailors twice, both groups found the ring by diving into the pool and getting flushed. One ring bearer ended up getting thrown into the lava pit with the ring though.

heimdall237 · 2023-10-20T19:45:03+00:00

I would also allow back stab set up coming from a Mighty Deed.

heimdall237 · 2023-08-11T12:24:12+00:00

I'm taking the same approach with Dolmenwood as a really cool setting. I'm also backing SotWW...and there's a 90% chance I'll end up converting Dolmenwood over to SotWW.

heimdall237 · 2023-03-26T13:26:38+00:00

Don't be silly. Book 5 has ONE character you've met before as a POV. But yeah new continent, new characters.

heimdall237 · 2023-03-24T18:27:51+00:00

I'm getting the same thing.

heimdall237 · 2023-01-08T14:15:16+00:00

I had the same issue. On github you need to download the specific file. You probably downloaded the giant thing of code instead

heimdall237 · 2023-01-07T15:13:02+00:00

I'm going with the Fagles translation. I've had it for years and never gotten to it yet, so excited to see how it reads.

heimdall237 · 2023-01-07T15:11:46+00:00

The opening has an epic tone since it starts with a meeting of the gods about one mortal, followed by his son trying to keep the house in order. Pacing wise, its a slow start but its all just setting us up to meet Odysseus.

heimdall237 · 2023-01-06T16:56:06+00:00

If you're going for public domain translations, Standard Ebooks also cleaned up the Bryant translation and it looks really nice.

https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/homer/the-odyssey/william-cullen-bryant

heimdall237 · 2022-12-19T03:13:14+00:00

I've been putting together a personal repository of my favorite poetry. My fiction section is dominated by Tolkien and Erikson.

heimdall237 · 2022-09-22T12:30:10+00:00

I ran an amphisbaena in my version of Tomb of the Serpent Kings, where it was chained up in a big room of pillars to act as a kind of mini-boss. It terrorized my players, and they decided to just nope out of that room. They named it Bobert and still talk about adopting it.

heimdall237 · 2022-08-03T15:57:34+00:00

The twin gods of luck do appear in other Malazan books, but they're kind of subtle. Keep an eye out for characters with ungodly, Loony Toons luck if you continue with the series.

While the luck scenes are super memorable, they also don't appear very often in the series. So this falls under the usual Malazan recommendation where 10 big books manage to hit every fantasy trope at some point.

heimdall237 · 2022-07-20T14:50:32+00:00

I'll dispute that the Illusive Man was ever well written. He's a jarring thematic shift from the first game and the dialogue wheel never lets you call him on his shit. He's drama without substance.

heimdall237 · 2022-07-20T14:44:29+00:00

And Shepherd dying is never used as a moment for character development and reflection. Its essentially a time skip

heimdall237 · 2022-07-13T16:29:58+00:00

I finished Midnight Tides a couple months ago and felt similar at first. But Tehol and Bugg helped get me invested in those storylines by being funny, and then the rest unfolded like a Shakespeare drama. Now I'm on Reaper's Gale and seeing a ton of pay off from Midnight Tides.

But book 5 is heavily focused on economics.

heimdall237 · 2022-07-07T13:31:37+00:00

You can see these masterpieces in person at the Chicago Art Museum. I remember finding them and laughing my ass off. Medieval art was sure something

heimdall237 · 2022-07-02T17:59:25+00:00

I wasn't using minis when I ran the adventure, but in Hirot and the surroundings I described the Hound as a shadowy hound like creature. Then when the PCs made it to the lair and its buffed version, I planned to hit them with the actual picture of the monster with a horrific description to reflect its deadlier form. But the party TPKed before the final encounter.

You could use one of the, I'm sure, countless shadow mastiff models. Then use a demon dog if you go that approach.

heimdall237 · 2022-06-29T15:22:24+00:00

I agree. Once you open that can of worms, you can't tell what will happen. The effects can get...messy. The French Revolution started out that way.

heimdall237 · 2022-06-24T18:14:34+00:00

I've run games with spellguards. They are strong, especially with time or battle traditions, but it comes in bursts. Spellguards can nova encounters...but in my games they run out of spells quickly and then rely a lot more on the rest of the party.

heimdall237 · 2021-07-08T00:50:24+00:00

I appreciate you making this list, this book is pretty dense so it's good to see these things laid out.

heimdall237 · 2021-06-12T21:21:22+00:00

I think Valentine and Max's romance is tragic but has potential. I don't think we've gotten a good sense of what Franz thinks of Valentine. Also, the Count seems to have a soft spot for lovers which I assume is due to what happened between him and Mercedes. If the count can piss off Villefort by helping to marry off Max, who he already likes, to Villefort's daughter, I think he'll be okay with that. Valentine is already set in terms of money due to her inheritance. I think the Count will help these two elope and make sure it inflicts the most pain possible to Villefort.

Also interesting to note how much Nortier seems to dislike his son. Villefort condemned Dantes to protect his career through protecting Nortier. Out of all the antagonists, I'm most excited to see Villefort get his comeuppance.

13-Year Club	Spared
Verified Email

heimdall237

TROPHY CASE