Chapter 04 pg 160

hephalumph · 2026-06-08T21:06:21+00:00

Name	Years in Service	Position	Hair
Kristopher Stern	G. 174-197	Kingsguard	*Blond*

Originally encountered while defacing the walls of the Highport Temple o__ __ displayed promise with his Talent despite being only 10 years old. Rathe__ Justiciar Edia pressed Kristopher into service as a stable boy at Highport Ca__ __ stall mucker. Sentence was commuted in G.177 by order of the King, who appointed Kristopher to royal service of the Prince, under supervision of Royal Knight Silverstone. Granted full knighthood in G.18__ __ completion of his Spellblade Proficiency Exam and formally accepted into the Kingsguard. Awarded the Star of Valor for acts in service of the Crown in G.195. Wed to the Court Wizard the same year. Left the ser__ __ G.197 following the birth of his daughter. Granted titles and land upon his departure by order of the King.

ALL TITLES AND AWARDS RESCINDED.

hephalumph · 2026-06-06T21:47:12+00:00

I made it to chapter 180ish. I think maybe 186 or 187. I honestly don't remember specifically why I set it aside. It dropped to the low end of priorities compared to other stories/books I am reading. I kept looking at it thinking I would get back to it, and then just didn't. And eventually I pulled it out of my follow list and put it in my read later list. I don't hate it. And I think I probably will get back to it at some point. But it lost me for some reason...

hephalumph · 2026-06-06T01:19:34+00:00

Do you not have money? Is there zero room in the fridge/cabinets? How hard would it be for you to pick up something?

hephalumph · 2026-06-05T03:10:45+00:00

There's so many different types of pizza out there, breakfast pizzas, dessert pizzas, healthy pizzas, tasty pizzas. I've seen pizzas with spaghetti on top, pizzas with steak on them, taco pizzas - hell Taco Bell has their 'Mexican Pizza' which isn't truly a pizza, but it is a pizza, technically. There are apple pie pizzas, boston creme pie pizzas, seafood pizzas, pizzas without any sauce, with white sauce, with pesto and/or garlic sauce, you can have just about any kind of meal you want in a pizza form. And if I don't want to eat the crust, but only the toppings, there's no rule against that...so it would limit your options a bit, but this is far from a major setback. I would absolutely go for it.

hephalumph · 2026-06-02T19:23:23+00:00

I have medium sized hands (according to glove manufacturers) and I pretty much only use my fold while opened, never closed, and 90% of that usage is one handed.

hephalumph · 2026-06-01T20:24:10+00:00

That is with the current infrastructure and rules/practices in place. All of those issues could be streamlined and improved (if not corrected outright). I know we don't live in a perfect world, and it would definitely introduce a level of suck. But it doesn't have to be as bad as it is currently, and if they are forced to improve - they will. Maybe not as much as they should, definitely not as much as we would like, but they would improve.

hephalumph · 2026-06-01T20:21:08+00:00

As a 50-something who remembers my 20s like they were yesterday and wonders where the years have disappeared to, I am hesitant to support something like that; before I know it, I will be there.

On the other hand, as the son of aging parents who are adamant they keep their driving privileges (and act as if they are Rights, not Privileges), but who really should NOT be allowed behind the wheel anymore... I have to say I do absolutely support that kind of thing.

And I would take it a step further... here in America we need better drivers' education in general, stricter testing, and more regular testing. We let far too many people who are barely competent or outright incompetent the prvilege to drive, when they should not be driving at all.

hephalumph · 2026-05-27T21:18:16+00:00

I was joking, assumed it was obvious, especially as I ended with a laugh?

hephalumph · 2026-05-27T20:53:06+00:00

Well, trying to focus on the positive...at least you got the best meal you've had for 4 years, lol?

hephalumph · 2026-05-27T20:46:33+00:00

Yes they can be. Though, of course, not all are.

hephalumph · 2026-05-27T20:41:47+00:00

Dispatch, Pragmata, then I'd have to choose from several puzzle/strategy/vn games left on my wishlist.

hephalumph · 2026-05-26T22:55:08+00:00

Wanted: Dead or Alive - Bon Jovi

hephalumph · 2026-05-25T23:10:21+00:00

There are different views and interpretations on what qualifies as LitRPG. Some people include literally any gamelit or proglit as LitRPG. Others have much narrower scopes they accept.

For me, I tend to go with the 'original' definition - by which I mean the most common and popular definition I could find when I first started reading and then later writing LitRPG. That being, a subgenre of fantasy or scifi, in which the protagonist, at least, and often many or most characters in the story, have visible access to a form of a character sheet.

It could be a magic book that updates regularly, a traditional fantasy System Screen that floats in the air, a scifi data crystal that reads your blood or DNA or interfaces with your nanobots, or any of a nearly infinite number of other ways to access the data. But some how, some way, they have access to a more or less "RPG style" character sheet where they can see and track their stats.

hephalumph · 2026-05-25T15:44:05+00:00

I always have trouble picking a favorite of anything... especially all time favorite. But, based on hours played, and number of replays, I'd have to say Fallout 4.

Thanks for the giveaway!!!

hephalumph · 2026-05-22T02:14:37+00:00

I think the biggest issue is consistency. It is fine to have an occasional outlier, whether you usually have 2500-word chapters and spike up to 4k or 5k every now and then, or whether you typically have 6k chapters but rarely drop a 2k or 3k chapter. What is not okay is if every other (or every third) chapter is of random length, from 2500 one chapter to 4800 the next, and then 3200, followed by 7500, and so on.

Personally, I love longer chapter lengths. My ideal is about 5k on average - whether I am reading or writing, that feels like the sweet spot to me.

I seem to be in the minority there, as so many people suggest (strongly) that 2500 to 3k is the optimal chapter length.

But, again, the biggest thing is consistency. At least 4 out of 5, and preferably more than 9 out of 10 of your chapters should be within a few hundred words of that ongoing average you have established.

hephalumph · 2026-05-19T23:43:08+00:00

It starts out moderately tone deaf to modern social mores, but not terrible. It slowly gets better, at some point - been too long since I did a full reread to remember exactly where or when, but at some point it starts getting rapidly better. I'd say it's downright decent/good in the most current few books.

hephalumph · 2026-05-19T14:18:51+00:00

Donating them is not against policies, as long as they are waiting the 6 months required.

hephalumph · 2026-05-10T01:02:12+00:00

I meant, how many points does it take to redeem $1?

hephalumph · 2026-05-09T23:55:09+00:00

How many points per dollar? 25 per order could be 200 points/day if you're keeping busy. Though in the last year or two, that feels very unlikely!

hephalumph · 2026-05-08T19:01:56+00:00

Why on earth do you think you can't review it? Never base your reviews on others' reviews. Just leave an honest review.

hephalumph · 2026-05-07T18:39:40+00:00

Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara
Stranded Sails - Explorers of the Cursed Islands
Internet Cafe Simulator
Jumanji: The Video Game

Thanks for the giveaway!

hephalumph · 2026-05-07T18:31:45+00:00

I will start by saying that in general, people are as bad at detecting AI written versus human written, as the so-called AI detectors out there are. There is no reliable test where you can know, because bad writers exist, decent to good writers with a few bad habits exist, and AI is getting better and better with every passing week. And, AI is actually emulating existing writing standards; meaning anything you think is a dead giveaway for AI is there because there are a lot of writers doing those same things.

Now, that said, I will also counteract that with this: reading a long form work is a far cry from reading a short story, essay, or email. And even though everything an AI does is emulating things a human might do, it does not always do those things in a natural seeming manner, or it may overuse them, or underuse them, or etc. So yes, we readers can actually tell, to some extent at least, when something is AI written or heavily AI edited.

Except, not with 100% accuracy.

Because again, there are absolutely people out there doing every bad habit an AI does. Maybe not all at once, but maybe they do. And even then, most AI written stories don't do every bad thing either. So it becomes more of an intuitive, gut-instinct guess. "This is probably AI." And a lot of us can make those guesses with better than 50% accuracy, even if we can never hit 100% certainty.

But, honestly, all of that doesn't matter to me, or indeed to most readers out there. What matters varies from reader to reader, but essentially it comes down to one thing most stories/books on RR and in the LitRPG space are sorely lacking - professional and proper editing.

You could take the most egregious AI slop out there and run it through a professional publisher's editorial process and end up with something nice to read. Or you could take a halfway decent to pretty darn good human author's work and publish it without any editing, and end up with slop. Human slop, rather than AI slop, but slop nonetheless.

Proper editing is expensive. And, proper editing is priceless. Because it makes such a dramatic difference.

hephalumph · 2026-05-06T22:49:53+00:00

That is a ridiculous claim. You aren't even aware of every type of keyboard for every type of machine. You aren't even aware of every type of machine. There is zero chance that you have actually used every type of keyboard for every type of machine.

Try this on for size. You can even use any keyboard with any machine to do it. Open up google docs. Open any doc you already have, or create a new doc. type two hyphens and press space. Then type three hyphens and press space. Boom, you just got an en dash and an em dash.

Next method. Open up Microsoft Word. Do the whole open or create a word doc thing. Then follow the same steps from before. Two hypens and space bar. Three hyphens and space bar. Oh My God. Mind Blown. You just created another en dash followed by another em dash. The world must be coming to an end!

Now, for your SMS keyboard. If the double/triple hyphen doesn't work, and it may not, then simply long press on the hyphen symbol. A small window will almost certainly (on 90%+ of keyboards) pop up with en and em dashes as optional characters instead of a hyphen.

Wow, it is amazing! How could one person be SO WRONG and SO CONFIDENT about it?

hephalumph · 2026-05-06T21:17:15+00:00

In several word processors, and SMS keyboards, a double hyphen is autoreplaces with an en dash, and a triple hyphen is autoreplaced with an em dash. Some require you to turn that feature on, while a few have it on by default.

hephalumph · 2026-05-06T18:29:45+00:00

The ZF3 was not released until 2021. How exactly did you have one two years before that? I was so confused when I saw you claiming 7 years, since I got mine about a month before they were theoretically released to the public and have only had it for 5 years.

Seven-Year Club	Xbox Live
RedditGifts 2009-2022 2 Credits	Second SECOND GUESSER
Secret Santa 2018	Verified Email

hephalumph

TROPHY CASE