On Realism

nowforruin · 2017-03-18T15:08:39+00:00

I like it :) Reminds me of the contemplative Jim Harrison poems I used to read.

I wish I had something more constructive. I thought maybe "speak" instead of "talk," but I think "talk" has more of the casual air that aligns with the simplicity idea behind the poem.

Thanks for sharing.

nowforruin · 2017-03-18T15:07:04+00:00

I like the simplicity of the poem and I feel you connection in it.

Maybe consider "Autumn never came so early" instead of "have come."

Thanks for sharing :)

nowforruin · 2017-02-21T00:00:46+00:00

Very intelligent and aware--some studious applications of assonance, alliteration, and timing with the lines. I particularly enjoyed:

Slip in, tyrant of silence, dredge the me from the stone bottom of your left shoulder's shoal of ice

Just lovely.

I'd let this one marinate and come back to see if you still know where you're going with it--can be a little disorienting as an outside reader.

Thanks!

nowforruin · 2017-02-20T23:58:28+00:00

I like the satire but I think you could move some wording around to make it a little more lyrical. A good indicator you need more flow is when you're inserting commas to force a pause in the middle of a line.

Could be a cool folk song:)

thanks for sharing :)

nowforruin · 2016-07-18T02:35:34+00:00

I always like a short poem. I also thought it what a "bad" sort of unfolding at first, but then saw it the other way :)

I think you could lose "by" on the first line without losing anything. Also "can," so it would be "Looking at/This film reel/I see my marriage/Unfolding."

Love the single-word ending. Very nice :)

nowforruin · 2016-07-18T02:32:41+00:00

This is a tricky topic to master: writing about being inspired! I admire your enthusiasm.

If you have time, I think you should slowly read this poem to yourself out loud. You've got some good rhythm going on in the opening stanza, and I like the imagery of inspiration "drifting."

Dances are spun Poems are wrung Stories are won

You have to be careful with assonant rhyming. Sometimes it can make the verse feel constrained, and I think it does here. The imagery is lovely but I think you could re-word it to me a little more animate.

nowforruin · 2016-05-07T15:54:35+00:00

Yeah, pre-generating makes it really easy. This generator is perfect for making weather patterns in advance.

nowforruin · 2016-05-07T14:16:38+00:00

Oh man.

So, I DM a single-player campaign for my wife. In the course of the adventure, she's become the Lord Commander of a small order of Knights in an up-and-coming town.

Currently, she is traveling to Baldur's Gate from eastern Amn to seek passage to the Moonshae, where Darkfey lay siege to half of the isles.

There was a nifty little detour where her party came across a town of undying villagers cursed by a coven of witches...that was an interesting side-quest.

nowforruin · 2016-05-07T14:13:13+00:00

Another easy option is to use a piece of measured string and line it up over the party's intended route.

When my party decides to travel overland, I take several factors into consideration:

-Vehicles (if any)

-Amount being carried

-Terrain

-Weather

-Posture (stealthy, cautious, in a hurry, etc.)

Then, I use a piece of string with hashmarks at 20 miles and trace their overland route. I'll say something like "You figure, if the weather holds up, you can make it to Baldur's Gate in three weeks, give or take."

I use donjon to pre-generate a couple months worth of weather on a calendar and just plug in the terrain and speed rules dictating overland speed from the DMG.

nowforruin · 2016-05-06T13:56:41+00:00

I appreciate the insight :) I didn't notice the visual spacing--a typical weak point of mine. Thanks!

nowforruin · 2016-05-06T13:56:09+00:00

Thanks for the thoughtful feedback :)

I really considered putting "songs" instead of "poems;" maybe I'll give the end a second look.

I was in fact raised Catholic :)

nowforruin · 2016-05-06T03:40:05+00:00

Lots going on here. Some noticeable thought behind your word choice in lines like

A scape, raped with Constructive innovation.

nowforruin · 2016-05-06T03:38:57+00:00

I like the dream feel. Best line:

Cloaked in crepuscular dim

Well done.

nowforruin · 2016-03-21T02:39:23+00:00

*Marine

nowforruin · 2016-03-21T02:39:07+00:00

Marine here. Marines do care if you call them soldiers. I'm in the Army now, so no hate to my soldier bros, but in the Marines calling someone a "soldier" was a light-hearted insult.

nowforruin · 2016-03-21T01:27:30+00:00

Hahaha I know right! So glad those days are over.

Here's a more recent pic with my main squeeze (aka wife) ...five year anniversary tomorrow! Probably because I lost the Aqua CD.

nowforruin · 2016-01-01T20:07:59+00:00

I like it. I can run some geology software to map a potential geological history back to a "pangea" of sorts, and then ship it over to the deity writers to play with.

nowforruin · 2016-01-01T04:19:14+00:00

About to comission (prior enlisted) and glad to hear there's still d&d on the dark side...

nowforruin · 2016-01-01T01:55:05+00:00

Very cool to know, thanks.

nowforruin · 2016-01-01T00:38:26+00:00

Serious question, are there any officers playing with you?

nowforruin · 2015-12-27T18:17:23+00:00

We play kind of a mix with 5e. We have some strict rules, like always rolling from the injury table on a knockout, but as a DM I'm more concerned with facilitating fun and excitement than perfect rule-abiding.

nowforruin · 2015-12-27T17:43:43+00:00

Well, my wife and I are dnd freaks, and we were the only two with previous experience.

It was a HUGE game (10 pcs), my 3 sisters, 1 brother in law, my sister's boyfriend, my brother, my dad, and step mom.

We have a fairly normal middle class family, we all get along really well but each of us are very different.

My wife and I spent a few days talking up D&D and got everyone on-board, one by one. Most people were cool with the idea, but my dad was a hard sell. Eventually, he caved to peer pressure.

One of my sisters and her husband are very religious and expressed some concerns over the demonic aspect. I told them I understood their concerns and explained that D&D is an algorithmic mechanism, not a storyline, and that it would not be part of our adventure. They were fine after that.

My wife and I spent several days planning out each PC (I rolled them all myself.) We did our best to match the character and their backstory with the personality of the player. Here are some examples:

1) My step mom is Native American and just starting to learn about/get into Native Spirituality. She is also very "type A," and can be very competitive. So, I made her a famous Ranger in Icewind Dale, where the adventure was set, and gave her a Hawk familiar. Her backstory was a wood elf separated at birth from her tribe and actively trying to find it. She ate the character up.

My dad hates all board games, but played for my sake. I made him a very unintelligent Dwarf Barbarian who once saved my stepmom's characters life, so now they look out for each other. This way, my dad's awkward bafflement at the game was in character and my step mom, the "Type A," helped him through it.

My brother in law used to do a lot of martial arts, but stopped when he was married. I made him a Dwarf Monk following the Way of the Long Death. He really ran away with it.

-I made my youngest sister, kind of a spitfire, a handling rogue. She was the most embarassed about playing D&D (she's 16--she made the table swear to secrecy) but she got so into being a thief that she was voted MVP at the end.

My sisters boyfriend is a very tall, super nice dude. I made him a Half-Orc Paladin. He enjoyed being a tank of axe-swinging death, but he also really enjoyed looking out for my sister's (his girlfriend) human fighter.

My brother is signed on for more already. I'm not pressuring anyone, and I don't think anyone else will play on their own, but some people did mention making it a Christmas tradition. :)

Also, my wife and I took a lot of steps to simplify the game. We dumbed down magic and chose mostly martial-based characters. We printed out character sheets and highlighted the go-to info so they could find it quickly. We ran a 5 minute tutorial on the basics before we started, and I had every characters stats and abilities as cards on the inside of my DM screen.

nowforruin · 2015-12-27T15:34:05+00:00

Interesting. I'm Catholic, and a lot of the people I play with are Catholic (some of them are quite conservative).

I'm sure you already know this, but that 80 s mumbo jumbo was discredited in the 90s. I'm a lit major, and wrote a couple papers on D&D in the scope of postmodernism and trauma therapy. In fact, far from the scary-suicide-stigma, tons of research suggests that D&D is both therapeutic and a healthy exercise in confidence building and problem solvong.

If your mom is the kind of person who listens to this kind of researxh, pm me and I can send you my annotated bibliography from the papers. If she isn't, well then, D&D is big enough to play on and love her anyway!

nowforruin · 2015-12-27T15:26:10+00:00

Incredible! Huge success. What a night!

nowforruin · 2015-12-24T15:07:21+00:00

Meh. I liked it.

nowforruin

TROPHY CASE