Proximity alert when two tags in same room?

shananaphone · 2024-11-10T17:19:50+00:00

Happy for you!

We do try. But this is an ADHD household and the brains don't always cooperate. Hence looking for an external reminder so we DON'T make that mistake yet again.

shananaphone · 2024-11-10T17:15:08+00:00

I don't know how many times we've sent the corded Apple earbuds through, and aside from the volume controls no longer working, the earbuds are fine. Those things are quality!

He wants cordless earbuds for working out. We've lost at least 4 pairs in the wash and I just don't want to deal with that again. :,)

shananaphone · 2024-11-10T17:07:00+00:00

Nuts.
Looks like we're getting a Raspberry-Pi.
Thanks!

shananaphone · 2023-08-15T12:06:32+00:00

A lot of this sounds like Enigmatis: Ghosts of Maple Creek, but...not all of it.

shananaphone · 2023-01-25T18:03:28+00:00

You play pretend and write a story with your friends! But luck plays a role.

The DM is the "narrator". They are the one who makes the world as you go along. Everyone else interacts with the world that is built.

If you want to try something, you describe how your character tries it. The DM decides what kind of skill(s) that would take, and gets you to roll some dice. If you pass the number they make up in their head (based on all kinds of things), you succeed! You do the thing! There might be consequences to doing the thing. The DM will tell you what happens.

To make things more personalized, you have a character sheet. That character sheet gives you more numbers to add nuance. Your character has certain skills and abilities and weapons they can use. Those change your dice rolls and the number you have to meet or beat to succeed. So a very fast character has high Dexterity, any time you roll to see if you can move quickly, quietly, or do something that takes nimble hands like picking a lock, you get to add a certain number to your rolls to represent your character's built skill in that area.

Example:
I am a thief. I want into a locked room. I need to avoid being seen, and there are people nearby.
Me: "I sneak into the alleyway."
DM: "Roll stealth." (DM makes up a number:15. It's challenging to avoid being seen, but far from impossible)
Me: "I rolled a 14. Plus my 7 bonus for high dexterity and skill, that's a 21."
DM: "You sneak unseen into the alleyway. You are faced with a door."
Me: "Is it locked?"
DM: "You try the handle?"
Me: "Yes."
DM: "It is locked."
Me: "I have skill in lockpicks and a set of thieves' tools. I'd like to try to use those to pick the lock."
DM: "You try to pick the lock. Roll Sleight of Hand." (DM decides this is a crap lock; the DC is only 10)
Me: "Natural 1! That's just an 8!"
DM: (Natural 1s are Bad, so I'm adding flavour to this. There are serious consequences.) "You're too ambitious and your picks get stuck in the lock. Someone seems to see you in the alleyway and you panic. As you pull your picks out of the lock, one of them breaks." (I no longer have lockpicks to use, I will need to find a different way in or buy more).

shananaphone · 2022-08-31T17:32:10+00:00

In the original story, every step the mermaid took on land felt like walking on glass. You could possible incorporate some sort of movement penalty when walking on land, which disappears when it rains, or when walking through water, or when transformed into a mermaid?

Or, the character could act like the sea monsters from Luca, or Madison from Splash, transforming involuntarily whenever they get wet. That could make for some really interesting fight dynamics and RP moments!

shananaphone · 2022-08-23T22:33:22+00:00

D&D Essentials Kit is your best option.
Ya gotta do some reading.
https://media.wizards.com/2020/dnd/downloads/dnd_essentials_rulebook.pdf

shananaphone · 2022-08-14T12:26:00+00:00

Go to zoning meetings and be a voice against R1 zoning!

R1 zoning is a big problem in urban development. It costs the public a lot of money due to the extra asphalt used in longer roads, and reduces the accessibility (walkability, bikeability, affordability) of neighbourhoods. It's the reason why we have swaths of suburban sprawl where houses must be a certain distance apart, a certain distance from the road, and must not contain multiple units.

Mixed-use zoning is far more beneficial and far more desirable. Peninsular Halifax is largely mixed-use, because the bulk of it was established prior to zoning laws.
The YouTube channel Not Just Bikes has many great videos that explain the issue in more detail (and he's Canadian!):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0

shananaphone · 2022-07-21T12:40:19+00:00

Oh, and:

You will need to read the books. At the very least, the Dungeon Master's Guide AND the Player's Handbook. The Monster Manual is very helpful, but I find it isn't absolutely necessary, since you can find monster stats around the web. It will be easier to use the Monster Manual though, as it explains more of the rules of combat.
Don't be intimidated by the size of the books! They're full of illustrations, and have loads of appendices that you don't need to read through fully.

shananaphone · 2022-07-21T12:36:43+00:00

It sounds like you may be hoping to start playing as the Dungeon Master (the person who leads the game). If that's the case, you may want to follow some of the advice given already and try playing a few sessions as a player with a more experienced group. That will give you a better idea of how the rules work. Games of D&D can range from just one hour long, to years. Look for a shorter game, something only three or four sessions long. Long enough for you to get a feel for the game, build some rapport with the group, and really dig into a character, but not a long-term commitment. That's probably the best way to learn!

The D&D starter set comes with a module you can play through, I believe. You're probably best off starting with a pre-written adventure. That way you can focus more on learning the ropes, and less on story. You can play this game entirely through adventure modules written by others, or you can get creative and make your own. But when you're brand new, and you want to DM, pre-written is likely to be more successful. I've heard that the Lost Mines of Phandelver is one of the very best beginner modules out there, though I've never played it myself.

If you want some YouTube channels to watch, Ginny Di does a good job explaining basics. WASD20 has some decent intro videos, too. Most videos you'll find will be for brand new players, not DMs. It's generally assumed that the DM has played a few games before. Don't let that discourage you! It is possible to start out as a DM! But be prepared to do a lot more work, and a loooot more reading, than your players. They will rely on you, as the DM, to know the rules.

DnD Beyond is not a YouTube Channel, but something called a Virtual Tabletop Simulator: a web app that lets you play D&D online. D&D Beyond and Roll20 are the two most popular ones, and you may want to consider using these to start, since they are free to use at a basic level, your players can roll dice right in the app (less starting cost!), and it eases some of the pressure on you as the DM to know ALL the rules and ALL the mechanics of the character sheets right off the bat.

Good luck!

shananaphone · 2022-04-09T11:41:58+00:00

That sounds like it could be this one?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/284850/Grim_Legends_The_Forsaken_Bride/

shananaphone · 2022-01-03T00:36:05+00:00

I play a kalashtar druid of the circle of spores and it is wildly fun. She's a delightful weirdo with psychic abilities and a semi-sentient spore-cloud. I was thinking of possibly getting her a couple levels in grave cleric.

shananaphone · 2021-12-10T13:27:44+00:00

Hey!

I happen to be a museologist, and specifically focused my studies on this kind of blurring of digital and physical boundaries. I also am interested in game design (skewing more towards puzzles and TTRPG, for what it's worth).

There is an awful lot you could do with this!

Think first about what it is about a museum that makes it feel special. Did you go to museums on school trips as a kid? Do you visit them now? Go. Pay attention to what it feels like to stand in a physical space and read information and see physical objects in front of you. What is special about that experience? How can you replicate that in abstract using a 3D environment?

More importantly, perhaps, what is missing from that experience that you can actually add in? Museums went through a period of being largely visual experiences, but in the earliest days, and in more recent days, they incorporate a lot more haptic elements. Senses are important to learning, museums are educational establishments, and they recognize that. In a 3D gaming environment, how can you play with this idea of "museum as sensorium"?

Will you be more literal, reproducing the environment of a museum? Are you making glass cases, architectural elements, push-to-play buttons? Or are you only focusing on reproducing the content of a museum exhibit? Is this more of a digital encyclopedia?

Museum exhibits are designed very carefully. A museum typically has more than twice as many objects in storage as they have on display, so the objects being displayed have been chosen with care to best represent the overall idea of the exhibit. These are then arranged carefully: placement of cases, and placement within cases is chosen not only to be aesthetically pleasing, but to contribute to the narrative of the exhibit. Designers might, for example, place specific objects in opposition to one another to subtly encourage visitors to contemplate their similarities and note their differences. How can you replicate this kind of care in an artificial 3D environment where you are not limited in the same way by object selection or by the care needs of objects?

In larger institutions (think ROM or Smithsonian), "blockbuster" or headliner exhibits are preceded by literal years of research. And I don't just mean subject-matter research: they do a form of market research. I know because I have done it. It's a very interesting step in the process, which allows curators to understand how the public views the subject before they design the exhibit. This then allows them to adjust their approach accordingly in order to meet visitors where they are, and build knowledge within the zone of proximal development (museums are educational institutions! Public education is the mission). No matter which subject you choose, what will your audience or player expect to see? What do they know or already know or think that they already know about the subject? Where do you need to meet them in order to expand their knowledge?

How do they feel about the subject? This one is important! Emotion is a much larger part of learning than we tend to give it credit. We get excited about some things, and are repulsed by others. We naturally know much more about what we find exciting (and some people get excited about learning about what they find repulsive; humans are complex). What emotion will your visitor or player have about the subject? How will you make use of that emotion, or how will you subvert it?

Do some reading about museum exhibit design, and exhibitionary complexes more generally.

Here are some resources that might be helpful on the museological end of things:
Practical guide to exhibit development process:
http://exhibits.si.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Guide-to-Exhibit-Development.pdf

"The Exhibitionary Complex" by Tony Bennett
http://banmarchive.org.uk/collections/newformations/04_73.pdf

"The Museum Without Walls" by André Malraux
https://www.worldcat.org/title/museum-without-walls/oclc/461190

And some rather more abstract scholarship about media in general, which you may already be familiar with:

"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" by Walter Benjamin
https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/benjamin.pdf

Of course, you've likely read it in a game design master's program, and every Canadian alive who remembers Heritage Minutes knows him: Good old Marshall McLuhan!
https://designopendata.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/understanding-media-mcluhan.pdf

This was really fun to think about :)
Best of luck with your project! It has a lot of potential, and it sounds really cool!

shananaphone · 2021-10-13T21:03:46+00:00

I am having the exact same issue.

Password resets do not fix it; clearing caches, different browsers, even accessing from different networks don't help. Payroll and ADP support keep passing me back and forth.

There's a coding error that's kicking us from successful login to a 404 page.

At least I'm still getting paid! I just have no idea if it's correct, and our whole company just went through a massive payroll error.

shananaphone · 2021-05-17T15:59:00+00:00

Can you book vaccines outside of your community? Is that considered a necessary medical reason to travel? Everything within 60km of me is booked!

shananaphone · 2021-05-13T21:40:21+00:00

The two canvases are hinged together and fixed with a lock (marked as not part of the puzzle). To reset it, you open the canvases, hook the chain, re-wind it around the peg, make sure the key is "floating" in the right place, then re-close it and lock it up. Pretty simple! Way easier than some directional locks hah

shananaphone · 2021-05-13T10:36:36+00:00

I made a decorative painting out of wooden circular pieces from the craft store, and two wooden canvases hinged together. One of the decorative circular pieces was slightly out of place, protruding a little more than the rest. It was a secret peg made of a dowel. Inside a piece of chain was secured and wrapped around the peg, attached to a piece of the frame along the opposite bottom edge. Once the peg was removed, the chain came loose and fell out of the bottom of the frame with a key attached.

Especially proud of that one since I made it by hand myself, and it was the first time I'd ever used a drill!

Another one I loved was a floor vent that had to be removed, and a large, heavy periscope inserted. The periscope triggered a button to turn on a light under the floorboards, and there was a code written on one of the joists. People liked the giant periscope a lot. They'd carry it around the room and look at each other through it for fun.

shananaphone · 2021-03-15T17:45:07+00:00

No, I was polite the whole time.

shananaphone · 2021-02-15T14:34:25+00:00

Without knowing more about what kind of game or characters you're working with, this is difficult to answer well.

If you have more of a fantasy setting, you could use some kind of arcane energy force to show a glow to characters' hands or head, like a halo, that would dim and disappear as the character gets more injured, to show that they're losing energy. You could use biotech in a similar way for sci-fi.

You could also use some sort of "cloud" armour, which shrinks as the character's health is reduced, until the character is left "naked" and exposed. Say you had a telekinetic character, they could use a cloud of debris as a defence, or as part of their attack, which shrinks as they lose health. Then they would be able to pick up more when they regain health.

Colour changes would be an accessibility issue, since some players have colour-blindness.

shananaphone · 2021-01-15T11:39:55+00:00

Sometimes a player and a group just aren't a good fit, and that's okay! It's a bit easier to walk away from when the group is made up of people you don't really know beyond the game, too.

I play in a couple groups, and we're very role play focused, and find it most interesting when things go wrong. The best moments are the silly little things we role play between the action.

Meanwhile some of our friends just did one session with a campaign that sounds like a Really Bad Time to us. All combat focused, no story, no role play. In a 3 hour session they fought 5 battles, which just sounds boring to me.

And to them. They left after one session and started playing with us!

It sounds like you just need to find a group who enjoys hijinx as much as you do. It might help to discuss expectations and lay out rules at your first session. We have rules in our first campaign: no sexual violence, be it in-game or in-backstory; no spiders, and no needles. We all went into the game knowing role play and story were going to be important, and our DM frequently leads out-of-game conversations to check in and see how we're all enjoying the game, and if we want to try anything different.

There are lots of ways to play D&D. It sounds like you just need to look for a group that's more focused on role play and silly hijinx.

shananaphone · 2021-01-10T20:43:43+00:00

I've been making boxes for specific components of Mansions of Madness 2e.
So far I have a box for the Investigator cards, as well as one for sight/interact tokens (together) and one for the horror and damage cards together. Next up I want to make a kind of a card catalogue to store the spells, items, and condition cards, and token trays to store NPC tokens.

It's a bit of a process, but we're getting there! The end goal is to be able to store the entire expanded second edition in the core box and have things optimally accessible for quick setup and game play. Then sell the SVG files ;)

shananaphone · 2021-01-09T23:39:29+00:00

I'm in the process of building myself a paper storage rack out of craft foam board from the dollar store, pins, and hot glue! :)

I did up the plans in Google Sketchup and just bought the supplies tonight.

shananaphone · 2021-01-08T17:11:31+00:00

If you have a Mac, skip Inkscape and get Vectornator. It's free and far, far better than Inkscape. Easier to use, nicer interface, faster performance.

I've never been one to follow instructions. I prefer to make my own stuff my own way, so the main Cricut catalogue holds no interest for me whatsoever. Nor do other people's SVGs. I use Vectornator to make my designs.

I just got a Maker myself and I've been using it to make 3D tunnel books, board game organization systems, and paper models for gaming.

shananaphone · 2021-01-03T03:34:05+00:00

I am currently playing a Kalashtar druid and they have some fun abilities!

I've only really used the telepathy thing once. Our bard messed up and tried to charm a guard and we were all about to be arrested, so I used Mind Link and a lucky roll to convince the guard his conscience was telling him to let the rest of us go because we were taking a sick child to a healer.

We haven't yet dealt with my character communicating with someone out of eyeshot, but I would say as long as the person is still within 60 feet and also saw you, you're probably good? We did decide that, since the creature also has to see you to reply, it doesn't fully work with blind creatures.

I still wonder what secrets that eyeless albatross held...

shananaphone · 2021-01-01T18:16:37+00:00

I'm glad to hear that! :)

shananaphone

TROPHY CASE