I don't know about the rest of you, but I am really in need of a nice, relaxing weekend. It's been an emotionally draining week.

With about half the staff leaving, it's thrown my boss off kilter and he's having difficulty adjusting his plans since he'd had this elaborate thought of how things would be going for the next 3-4 months and those plans got sunk about as hard as the Bismarck.
It's put him on edge, which means the trickle down is climbing all over our backs and partially micromanaging. Which is a different kind of irritating than before, but that previous irritation isn't gone either, he's just pouty about the situation now.

But, for better or worse, I have 4 days off this week, which is very unusual, and I'll need to see if that's going to give me enough decompression time, even if it's stressing him out.

Man, I didn't even see WOTC's press release for the next year of sets. Crazy stuff there.
Some quick thoughts:

• Lost caverns of Ixalan - Wonder if this is going in a pulpier direction than pirate world? I'd dig that. It could also take it in a different direction than Zendikar, which is where you might expect this to happen.
• Murders at Karlov Manor - This is rather odd. Is this a full set that's set around a murder mystery? Ooh is it Jace? Does Jace die? I mean, I wrote him off after he was Phyrexianized, so go ahead and off him. Not how exactly they got Aurelia and Massacre girl in the same room for that promo shot, but the currently-living guildpact would be the guy to get them together.
• Outlaws of Thunder Junction- Seems like a lot of the focus is going to be on the "outlaws" part of the name. Is "Thunder Junction" the plane? Sounds more like a town. MAybe Strixhaven didn't confuse anybody and we can get sets not named after the planes they debut now?
  I know the original plan for MAgic Origins was to have a villain-centric core set. Wonder if that had any bearing on this?
  Calling it now- the supplemental set thing featuring reprints with new art? It's going to be MTG villains, and they'll be done up like wanted posters.
  Also, I doubt it will be as cool as Jakkard. Be real neat seeing what lines up though.
• Bloomburrow - All animal people? I thought they said one of Lorwynn's weaknesses was the lack of humans for the audience to latch onto. Might end up feeling kind of Lorwynn-y. Guess that means we're not going back to Lorwynn any time soon. [Looks at camera for no in-universe reason]
• Duskmourne - I can dig a plane that's just one big spooky mansion. Wonder if the popularity of the Backrooms factored into this? Seems to be the sort of direction horror is moving in.
  What mechanic is going to represent getting lost in a random succession of rooms? Could see some sort of very random mechanic there. Maybe there'll be a dedicated jump scare mechanic? Morph? Ooh, haunt could finally be put to good use.
  That modern fashion is really putting me off though. If anything, I want to see a bunch of people from random planes trapped here, all weirded out by these otherworldly people. Ever world except 1980's earth.
  I want at least one card to use the Clown type. Otherwise I walk.
  Wonder what the associated IP tie-in will be. Could see it going to Ghostbusters or slasher villains. Not sure who owns what slasher, but if one film studio has a bunch they could pull it off.
• Racing set - You don't win a race be dealing 20 damage. So is there going to be a focus on alt win cons? Racing seems like the sort of choice that might have come about to represent a really cool game mechanic somebody came up with.
  I want to see what new space there might be for vehicles. We haven't really seen any particular niches emerge within that space yet.
• Tarkir - A battle for the timeline? Represented by double-faced cards? I think so.
• Space Opera - Yeah, I can dig it.
• Lorwynn Again - Oh. And after I just wrote that it wouldn't happen. Is return to Homelands next?
• Not Strixhaven - Sure. Interesting to see how they flesh out a world we've only seen part of. How much of this was in the works when Strixhaven first dropped?

* * *

Incidentally, I realized just now that in order to get out of almost any situation, playing music is a sound strategy...

On the one hand, I feel like I should reprimand you for this, but I know the response would just be you posting a song...

And that's the way (aha aha) I like it.

Holy hell, these ladies in the booth next to me are being loud as sin. Not a one of them are younger than 25, but every last one of them are screeching with the cringiest gen alpha slang imaginable.

I'm a guy way too old to watch as many cartoons as I do and even I feel like these women are some of the most arrested development I've seen.

I don't understand any of what you just said, but you don't make it sound nice. It sounds like it sounds awful.

I'm off to Ottawa for a week! Don't suppose anybody here knows any cool stuff there?

Sorry, but I have never been to Ottawa. In fact, the only places in Canada I've ever been to are Winnipeg and a few places on the coast of British Columbia. And I was very young when we went to Winnipeg, so I remember almost nothing.

Still, have fun!

Well, I just realized that I let the ten-year anniversary of our coming over the NGA slip by without fanfare. Oops...

So, just so you all know, M:EM, I love you folks, and I appreciate you being in my life. I very much miss our fallen friends, but I am very thankful for those of you who are still around.

You too my guy.
I've been quiet the past little stretch, but that doesn't mean I don't check in several times a day. Just in case someone's wanted to share something.

I guess I'll follow suit in that with two things.
First, does anyone else ever have trouble remembering exactly what and how much you've created?

Watching I've (probably) finished the piece I've most recently been working on. It's an orc warboss, one mister Ghazgkull Mag Thrakka.
It was a surprisingly intense project this time and I think you can directly see the development of my technical skill on the model. I don't have any decent pictures I can post though.

s to y'all

Sorry for the radio silence, I check the board from time to time but between the last stages of obtaining a CAD qualification and having already started working and my mom having covid and two ttrpgs campaigns as a player and working on a future campaign as a Storyteller (VtM) and guh brain tired sorry

I do the same. I have myself set to always appear offline for a variety of reasons, but I usually just leave a window open to the M:EM and, every so often, I'll refresh to see if anyone's posted anything.


No.


Well, congrats on the finished project, then!


I played Vampire the Masquerade for the first time this last summer. A friend of mine introduced me to it in college, but we never managed to get a group together to play. I really enjoy the lore, although I have to admit I'm not really in love with the mechanics of the system, personally. Still, really fun game if your group is into the RP.

Which mechanics, exactly? Also, which edition are you playing? There's a huge rift from V20 to V5.

I'm still here too! I have a pretty strong internal filter, so sometimes I have trouble small talking.

I always do feel like I'm going to get back to my big M:eM storyline.

Honestly, I probably won't.
But I may get back to my small M:EM storylines.

We were playing the most recent edition, whichever that is. I'm no expert on the publication history of the game. I bought the book, but I don't have it with me right now.

Mostly, I'm just not a fan of the pool of d10s system vs a certain number of successes. It's personal bias, admittedly, but I much prefer the d20 system of D&D and the use of modifiers. The thing is, I have pretty bad luck when it comes to dice rolls. I've hit a few lucky rolls in my time, but mostly, my rolls tend to suck. So, a system wherein my character's experience, expertise, and proficiency in a particular task only gives me extra rolls, rather than a hard number that modifies a roll, it is usually worse for me. With D&D, I can usually decide what my character is good at, focus on that, and often get a high enough modifier in those skills that it mitigates my bad rolls, at least to a point. I cannot do that with the pool of d10s. All my "being good" at something does is give me more dice to roll badly.

No joke, in one of the sessions of Vampire I played, I had 9 d10s because I was doing a thing my character was literally built to do. I needed either two or three successes to do it, I don't remember which. It didn't matter anyway, because I rolled only one. And while I understand that that's life (sometimes you fail even at things you're good at), from a gameplay standpoint, that was extremely frustrating.

But again, to each their own. The heavy focus on roleplay is a lot of fun in Vampire, and as I said, I really like the lore. And I'll probably play again when the opportunity arises, but I just don't think I'll ever really like the d10 pool system.

(btw, if all rolls succeed at the same threshold AKA have the same "DC" - which should be 7? - then you've been playing V5; up to V20 rolls could have difficulty modifiers that could potentially bring roll difficulties to 2 "red carpet" or 10 "no chance in hell")

I get that feeling, I tend to build my characters similarly; I'm not... constantly bad at rolls, but me and a friend are known for pretty catastrophic moments - in the same WtA campaign (also d10 system) he once scored a single success out of 26 DICE (pretty optimized character near the end of his "build") and I failed a ten dice roll where the "DC" was THREE (1,1,1,2,2,2,2,3,3,3. I wrote the result down on my character sheet for posterity)

(I don't know V5 all that well, but earlier editions had a "take 10" mechanic where the Storyteller should allow you to automatically succeed at rolls where you have a more than reasonable amount of dice (in V20 is when your dice pool is higher than the roll difficulty). As for taking 10, though, it's not for critical moments)

But yeah, the WoD has a heavy RP component and some of the lore is sooo good. You can always look for a way to port the VtM setting into another system - I once ported a Shadowrun concept into Not the End, a very rule-light system, because I love that setting but I couldn't be bothered to study the rules and force my players to do the same lol - although losing some setting-specific mechanics like the V5 brutal successes hurts (I love "yes but" mechanics) and it's hard to accurately port the flavor of the Disciplines, unbalanced as they are.

Sorry for how this is undoubtedly going to stretch everyone's screens.

Well, it was worth it