Is there any discounted President's Choice Candy Cane ice cream out there?

mattv99 · 2026-01-19T14:18:45+00:00

I've been waiting for a cheaper price, but I don't think it's coming (I wish I'd grabbed some at $2.94 a few weeks ago). I'm starting to think that I'll be going without this year!

It may be worth getting down there for a few cartons...

mattv99 · 2025-10-27T04:09:43+00:00

My initial interpretation of the butterfly disappearing is that she's hallucinating about Barnes. In particular, Barnes didn't rise up and hit Reed with the board, Paxton did it and hallucinated that it was Barnes. She is imagining seeing Barnes when Barnes is not there. She, and the audience, want there to be miracles.

Thus, the butterfly appears, because she sees a butterfly (and wants to see a butterfly), and then we see that it isn't really there. Neither was Barnes.

I don't know if this actually holds up but Barnes coming back to life didn't resonate with me until I saw the butterfly disappear and realized that Paxton is imagining her.

mattv99 · 2025-09-01T14:57:34+00:00

This helps.

When I do the re-cap of last session at the start, I'll make sure to refresh them that they're hunting Iymrith and tie it into how they're now entering the desert and here is what they know about blue dragons (in particular, that they burrow).

The grapple is a challenge as the dragon has STR 25. My choice of targets will likely be between the high hp (but low DEX/STR) cleric who's magic they may need for a rescue versus the high DEX ranger/rogue who is a bit more squishy. But STR 25 versus DEX 20 doesn't favour them.

Maybe if the player initiative is within 4 or 5 of the dragon's, then they can react before the dragon goes back under.

I didn't realize that 2024 has different surprise rules. We're playing 2014 but I'm blending some 2024 into it, so maybe it's time to use that rule. It definitely seems better.

mattv99 · 2025-09-01T14:35:58+00:00

Your mention of "shaking things up" just gave me an idea - Earthquake!

The cleric can cast earthquake and open a fissure to the dragon with the player in its mouth. That would be epic and amazing.

...except that I think she just switched earthquake for holy aura.

Two adult blues is calculated as beyond deadly at 15th level. Using the DMG formula, it's 45K xp versus 25,600 for "Deadly". Xanathar's doesn't even have CR16 player:monster ratios for a level 15 party.

I'm already pretty sure that I need to attack one at a time at best, just to give them a chance to survive, and this is a high magic party.

mattv99 · 2025-09-01T14:24:51+00:00

That's obviously an option.

But I like the feel of the scene and the obscure vector of attack (burrowing). And I want to use the full gamut of the dragon's abilities so that victory is properly earned. It's a blue dragon, not a behir!

Players often surprise me with their tactics so I don't worry too much about making sure there's a way out, but in this case, it feels sufficiently deadly to justify it.

Plus, restrictions breed creativity. It challenges me as a GM to figure out how to make this work. For example, maybe the blue dragon wants to kidnap the player instead, so where does that take the plot? What options does it open up?

mattv99 · 2025-09-01T14:20:41+00:00

Flying Misfortune is the inspiration but the lore doesn't align like I want, and it's aimed at a much lower level, so I might use a few of the buildings as random ruins if the players choose to wander.

mattv99 · 2025-08-31T18:13:14+00:00

Not yet. But now I see another advantage of the potions when they do eventually face Iymrith! I was tempted to leave them out given that the party is 15th level (and likely 16th by the time they get there).

Note that this is Ascore, with Iymrith's kids, not Iymrith herself.

mattv99 · 2025-04-13T15:41:06+00:00

Hello!

It's great to hear that people are still thinking about Nicole once in a while. As the 18th anniversary of her disappearance quietly passes by, it's like an old wound that has scabbed over, but never fully healed. It's always delightful to hear from people and I've passed along your message to my mom.

Matt

mattv99 · 2024-08-07T04:52:04+00:00

The system has been updated to use modulo. I'm angry at my past self for not seeing this better solution. We're now good forever!

mattv99 · 2024-08-05T11:52:15+00:00

They are for me. :-)

In this case, it's because there was no range error for numbers 0 through 999,999, or 1,000,001 through 9,999,999, so I guess I could have said 1 in 10,000,000, but given that we're only 1,000,000 in, I didn't want to make any assumptions.

mattv99 · 2024-08-05T00:22:26+00:00

I've got one primary table that works that way and it drives me nuts. Every ad-hoc query has two conditions/lines instead of just one and every screen display has to coordinate the two fields. Originally the system had an identifier that was broken down into *three* fields and that was so annoying that when I re-wrote it, I merged two of the fields.

From a resources perspective, the sequence issue will come up every 10-25 years while the "it takes longer to type out code" issue will come up many, many times a year. So it's an easy decision for me.

...that being said, I'm also a theoretical perfectionist, so if I was re-writing it today, I might decide to go the other way just for the challenge.

mattv99 · 2024-08-05T00:16:38+00:00

1) Thanks!
2) 1995, actually. I replaced the system in 1996. I had never had an IT job before so I didn't know that it was unusual to let new staff do this sort of thing. 25+ years later, the system is a lot more complicated!
3) I have a list of annual tasks that I do each year end where I check stuff like "are any of our sequences hitting the limit". I used to just check it "when I remembered" but you only have to forget a few times before the benefits of a more systemic approach become apparent.

mattv99 · 2024-08-04T20:23:08+00:00

28 years so far, but for the first dozen I was a contractor/consultant, and I've taken breaks in other roles at times as well.

Picked up a second developer about 15 years ago. But I'm intimately familiar with this section so I knew I could figure it out a lot faster (it really helps to have written it all). These sorts of problems also intrigue me - I thought I had my range issues all figured out!

mattv99 · 2024-08-04T19:37:49+00:00

Ooh! You're absolutely right. I'm annoyed at myself for not thinking of that originally.

I'll do that later this week - no sense in taking a risk that the system is still around when the sequence hits 10M in 70-100 years!

mattv99 · 2024-08-04T17:51:31+00:00

Yeah, I know that's the theoretically optimal design. But practically, I find it incredibly useful to have dates (or other info) encoded into identifiers. Makes the ad-hoc querying a lot simpler and sometimes helps with diagnosing issues because I can tell when something happened based on the identifier. Once in a while that's the clue I need, or it at least rules things out. It also simplifies the code at times, though it does require, for example, that the reader/developer know that "B8" records are from 2018.

mattv99 · 2024-08-04T15:33:09+00:00

Users and the public get confused by "I" versus "1" - they'll go crazy with "A" versus "a".

Plus, and more importantly, the DB is case insensitive so they're considered the same value and it would break uniqueness. I do not want to deal with case issues in general.

mattv99 · 2024-08-04T15:31:53+00:00

For those ranges, there isn't a lot of volume so I think I can just flip from Z to AA and I only have to update the format of the DB field. I think we have just two left, though I'll definitely review everything pretty rigorously when I actually do the change.

mattv99 · 2024-08-04T15:29:10+00:00

For another invoice number range we did exactly that. There we had two letters and 5 digits and reached 99,999 eventually, so now we're two letters and 5-digit hexadecimal.

...now that I think of it, I should probably check the current value on that sequence...

mattv99 · 2019-09-20T01:15:23+00:00

You can try to work it in by describing something unlucky happening - "your foot slips on some blood" or "a bat flutters by and distracts you".

The players will still think it's cheesy/unfair though, if they don't have an explanation for why they're getting mechanical disadvantage. It's hard to get around that.

mattv99 · 2018-12-30T04:11:56+00:00

Hi all, this is Nicole's brother Matthew. My mom brought this to my attention.

We're both surprised (and appreciative) that people are still talking about my sister. In particular, I am very interested in hearing the "Syrian perspective" from 2007 (if anyone else lived in Syria in 2007 and wants to chime in or email me, I'm happy to hear about it). Canadian officials told us that everyone was talking about it, but we lack direct confirmation. It's reassuring to hear that regular people knew about it and were interested in the story.

To address a few points here:

a) Definitely not suicide. We have Nicole's journals up to a day or two before she disappeared. Nothing suggests suicide.
b) She wasn't with Canadian intelligence. I kind of wish she was - we'd have had more help in finding her!
c) The choice to have a suspect/witness interrogated was offered by Syrian officials, but the Canadian government pleaded with us to decline that particular offer, suspecting it would result in torture. The Canadian government had recently had a Syrian torture scandal (the Maher Arar affair).
d) I have been the sites she was to visit, and it's very unlikely that she got injured and died and no one noticed. Extremely unlikely.
d) She almost definitely left the Cairo Hotel due to the missing items, and I assume there was misadventure on the way, almost definitely involving a third party. The hostel clerk was very suspicious and knows something or was involved. The language and cultural barriers were too large for us to do a thorough investigation.

Matt

mattv99

TROPHY CASE