You should buy a Subaru. Makes getting around in this stuff pretty easy.

All I can find in the Predictions are Fucking Useless department is flurries tomorrow. If it looks like that will turn into another foot of disaster, we can cancel, though we should definitely wait until tomorrow to make that call.

My Subaruwand is running low on charges, sadly. The Z would be trivially undriveable.

It will be a bit later in the evening, but I plan to attend.

Becky says Denver is expecting 1 to 3 inches from Saturday afternoon through Sunday evening. That doesn't sound too bad to me. Still, if there is one "I don't think I can survive this and won't be there," then we can cancel. If there are two "I will go if we game, but I really don't want to," then we can also cancel.

I will go, but only for moral support when characters die. Oh, and drink duty of course.

Well, you got to hit something with a stick. Or at least, try.

Also:
Sir Alastair Morningstar - powered by cleric heals, a renewable resource


And given the religious infighting:

http://www.pbfcomics.com/271/

I'm happy to have taken up the mantle of Party Punching Clown. I'm going to take lessons from Kaliq.

Gents,

I would like to figure out our gaming schedule soon so I can figure out what weekend I'm going to tile my office.

March 14 and 21 are out. Let's start the bidding on...

March 28
April 4
April 11


Note: DMing is a lot of work. You probably don't realize how much time and effort it takes to set up the campaign. I will not attempt to convey that now except to say it's a lot. And I hope you guys like it. That said, H and I are pretty much in agreement that it annoying as fuck to have people playing games on their phones. I don't care what you do if I have knocked you out of a combat. Go entertain yourself as you see fit. Aside from that... no more phone or tablet games. No more Facebook. This is not 15th level combat where your turn comes along every 45 minutes. Things move pretty quickly in E6, and I try keep the pace up. Making it move faster requires everyone to pay attention. And when we're out of combat... you should be role playing. It's a game where we're acting out roles, and not one of those roles involved playing on a phone. It is a better game when everyone participates.

Call me Principal Dykewad or Bitter Napoleon if you want, but that's the new house rule.

March 28: Open
April 4: Open
April 11: Tentative

I'll recognize that I'm as guilty as anyone for being on my phone. I'll say that, at least for me, those instances mostly occur when I'm saving for some 3M upgrade on CoC, and I want to keep it live and not get raided. With that said, I'll change my habits and pay more attention.

I don't have any trip plans, but I know I will at some point. For now, I'm tentatively available for all of those dates.

It costs about 70 cents to buy a day long shield in Clash. Unless you guys use those things almost on cooldown, that would be ok, right? I mean, if I offered anyone 70 cents to lightly stroke my bald head every forty seconds for two hours, they'd likely not take me up on the offer. I just think like, shield up if you can. It's unfortunate that the pause button costs 70 cents, but we all CHOSE to play a game where the pause button costs 70 cents.

The other piece is that in my games, there's a lot of downtime at high level (that's true of any game) and the few roleplays that can happen during combat are a lot more obvious, and have lead-in that gets people's attention. Mark has a lot more plot integration in the moment to moment, and runs a more story based game. I think I need to focus some more as well.

See, but I actually chose to play a game where I don't have to pay ANYTHING. And I don't. One of these days, I may pay for an app on my phone, or pay some money within that app, but for now, that's not something I do.

Sure, you don't have to. But by not doing so, you are choosing to value that 70 cents over the time and attention it costs you, even during gaming. My point above is that if someone actually tried to give you money, especially of such a low value, in exchange for that attention, you'd reject it out of hand. If you find yourself weighing "get paid five dollars to wash a car" and "pay five dollars to have someone wash your car" vastly differently, especially if the five dollars is five hundred dollars or five cents, such that you reject BOTH offers (aka, you reject being paid 500 to wash a car AND you reject paying 500 to wash a car, or you reject being paid 5 cents to wash a car, AND you reject paying 5 cents to wash a car), then there's something irrational afoot. That can be fine, but are you aware of that process?

I think what you are really trying to say is that you have some principle, temporarily, about how you don't pay for these games. But I see you touch-touching that screen, and your time is not cheap. You enjoy the game, but do you enjoy every aspect of the game? Do you enjoy having to queue every single archer, touch the dark drill or lose oil to the oil cap, wiggle the game or lose the connection and get pillaged by whatever half of Good Korea is awake?

It's not rude to ask that you pay 70 cents to skip all that. How much is your gas? I know I pay more than that just to get to Mark's house, one way! Pay that at the start of the session, start raiding again a few hours later once you get back home (you can cancel your shield at any time, and if the "lack of efficiency" of that action bothers you, then it is proving my point). I threw some money on the table, a couple bucks, offering to pay for someone to shield up a few weeks ago. Unsurprisingly, this was considered rude, but I'm not sure anyone got my point- it cannot both be rude for me to offer a paltry three-pacman-game fee to you or another, while also having it not be rude for you to refuse to pay that paltry fee yourself to skip the mandatory must-access aspect of the game for a little bit. The fact that it appears that way for even a moment is paradoxical and interesting. The core mechanic is something like "If I pay money for this I didn't choose it and I'm not in control, so I'll tell myself I choose whatever the results of choosing NOT to do it, whether I like them or not." Which is fine as long as you like those results, but in the name of control, you lose it.


Don't dismiss the psych weight of these games. Supercell advertises during that annual game where they give the ball to the Patriots for no reason, and they made a game with almost no budget compared to other video games. Do you think their game design is superior to Zelda? To Skyrim? Their model is a lot more profitable, they have a lot more hooks.

And you don't win by not paying, as witness to the fact that you are likely a bit insulted by this whole post. There's no equivalent to this conversation five years ago. Ask yourself if you've ever seen anyone bust out a Playstation or Xbox controller during a gaming session, or a Gameboy. Then replace gaming session with almost any other place it's acceptable to bust out a phone but not a gameboy.

I'm not insulted by your post, nor do I find it rude. You're right in that it's my principle that I won't pay to play any games on my phone. It's also been my principle to not pay for ANY app, but part of that is that I haven't found an app that I can't get for free and that I absolutely must have. I'm not against paying for an app if/when I finally find one that's worth paying for.

But you're right about the analogy of busting out a console at inappropriate moments. As I said in my first reply to this topic, I'm fine with changing my habits at the request of our DM. If I'm at some critical point where I don't want to lose my loot and I'm close to an upgrade, you may see me fire up the app to keep it live, but I won't be raiding anymore, unless I'm in punching clown mode.

So if I gave you a dollar to shield up, would you shield up, or be insulted? Is that also the same thing as you paying for it?

On punching clown mode, I'm a little puzzled as to that. Your armor and shield choices give you a pretty darned good AC. I think maybe we should try to get your armor and shield enchanted- +1 armor is 1000 gp, +1 shield is 1000 gp (base prices of course, our mileage will vary). That's not trivial yet, but we aren't utterly unable to do it. +2 AC would be pretty clutch, and 2000 gp as a base is not out of line. It's clear that many fights involve you in the front line, and some of our most threatening foes are melee enemies.

I look at it like this... if you have been playing a game for several months, then it is worth paying. We pay for console and PC games, and most of those don't get nearly as much play time. Fuck, I don't think I opened the last God of War game I bought. I don't really don't see why there's the idea that apps should be free. It takes someone's time to write them, and they write it in such a way that it makes me happier to buy some gems every so often. Win win.

But anyway, shield or no shield, I give zero fucks. Just no more auxiliary gaming.

No, because I don't have a CC attached to my Play Store account.

I do like the idea to get some enchantments on my armor/shield, but I get the idea that we can't just head over to Enchantmentz R Us and sift through the bargain bin for lowly "dented & scratched" +1 crap.

Typing in a credit card is simple. We don't game for like a month and it takes less time to type a number in than launch a raid, so it should be really easy to do it before then, and then, with all of your presented objections removed, there should be no issues!


We can't do that, but we are close to the spot where we can find someone to enchant armor and shields, or who will sell it retail, or something. The fact that there's no We B Magik store isn't the end of the world- we can still ask who does this sort of thing. I don't think it's like trying to find the place that sells the German Porn.

I'm going to go ahead and set April 4 as the date.

Hey Mark, I thought I told you the other night I have a Rapids game on the 4th. I will do it I guess if it's absolutely the only night available but I would rather not if at all possible.

It's the first available until then for sure. I forgot about the Rapids game, and I can't get you or Cooley to post in here.

We can look at the 11th, but please get Cooley to come in here.

Here you go, I hope this is enough.

March 28th - Out
April 4th - Out
April 11th - Available
April 18th - Out
April 25th - Available
May 2nd - Available
May 9th - Available
May 16th - Available

I can do the 4th, but I can't do the 11th. I am taking EFI101 on the 11th and 12th, so I need to be sharplike on Sunday morning.

What about a Friday?

Oh, and I'm out on April 18th. Should be going to the track...

Fridays are extremely difficult. Par gets up at 3am or something. H needs to have an off Friday (every other week), not be traveling, and not be working on an off Friday anyway for it to work at all, and even then I doubt we can start before 6:30. Par and Sweetcheeks will be out by 11. It's really not worth it. Sundays would come well before we look at Fridays.

I'm leaving it up to you guys. Right now it looks to me like it's either April 4th and Sweetcheeks misses soccer, April 25th if H and Par can make it (and we're now looking at 2 months between sessions), we game without someone, or we game on a Sunday.

I am out for the 18th. So, have at it.

If we went for a Friday, I'd take a nap and make sure to bring a case of energy drinks. But the other problem you mention with those days are the fact that most of you couldn't start until later.

I can do April 25, but goddamn, that's a ways away.

I'm open for a Sunday session. Hopefully not one in March, since The Walking Dead has just a few more weeks left.

Just a bump that we are playing next weekend.

Will sweetcheeks be there, or will par be running master swashbuckler/trapfinder Percy "bluetongue" Hugglekins?

Everyone will be attending.

April 25: Yep
May 2: Yep
May 9: Yep

I am fine with those.