schneefink

I want to show off my TTRPG dice collection!

Top row, left to right:
- Tiye's dice. My first D&D dice set! In a leather bag I made myself as a kid in the natural museum, cutting with a sharp stone and all. I played 104 sessions of a (completed) D&D 3.5 campaign with these, from mid-2016 to mid-2018. Actually I didn't: I wrote that, then I read back through my D&D tag and discovered that I only bought them over a year after that campaign started ^^ The numbers used to be in gold but I kept holding the dice in my hand and playing with them until the color wore off.
- my first-time DM dice. I ran a 20+ session campaign and I ordered myself new dice for that.
- my one-shot dice. My first dice order got lost in the mail and as an apology the store added these, and I think a random set like this is perfect for one-shots.

Bottom row, left to right:
- Reya's dice. The dice for my second long D&D campaign that lasted 53 sessions and sadly remains unfinished due to COVID.
- These dice were a table gift from L&M's wedding, and DD made the bag for them. I haven't used them yet.
- These dice and the bag were a birthday gift this year from my current TTRPG DM, given at my first birthday party in many years. Not used yet either.

On the side:
- Kian's dice. The dice for my current TTRPG, Die Schwarze Katze: 2 D20s and 2 D6s. I ordered the official dice set, so the 1s are cat eyes (lower is good in this system), but sadly the D6s land on the sides so often that I had to change them out. Now I use skull dice I got at the Paris catacombs.

I love all of them, and in hindsight I'm glad I managed to resist the frequent urges to buy some new set of pretty dice I saw because now they all have a little history connected to them. (Though I'm not ruling out that I might give in to temptation one day... there are so many so pretty dice out there.)

DD and I went to see Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves today! I originally wanted to go with my TTRPG group but the earliest date we could find was in three weeks and I was too impatient for that. Fortunately I loved it so much that I definitely want to go see it again :D

That was so much fun. I don't remember the last time I had this much fun watching a movie. I didn't have any spoilers, I hadn't even seen the trailer, which was great. I'd just heard that it was entertaining, but I didn't have that high expectations either, and I was completely surprised how much I enjoyed it.

It worked wonderfully as a movie in general, as a fantasy/action/heist movie, and as a D&D movie. You didn't need to understand any of the references but there are so many of them. I've never played a D&D campaign set in the actual canon world so I only knew most of the places second-hand, from things like TAZ, while DD has actually played campaigns that visited those places and it was great to see them. I recognized the races, of course, and specific monsters and spells and some things that I think were easter egg jokes – they might not have been but I think the odds are pretty good.

It was clearly made by people who love D&D very much and know exactly what makes it work. It felt like a D&D campaign, and I mean that in the best way. Many of my favorite moments were when the characters were confronted with an obstacle and figured out a clever way to deal with it, I could almost feel the excitement around the table and see the resigned/proud/equally excited face of the DM. And it managed the balance of not taking itself too seriously while at the same time being completely earnest and heart-felt. Even when you 100% knew what was coming because that's just how those tropes work that didn't cheapen the moments.

…okay I think I'm in danger of overhyping this, it's not perfect, but I loved it a lot. The plot complications and the traps and enemies and the moments you absolutely knew that someone had rolled either a nat 1 or a nat 20 were so good. The setting and the world and the costumes and the music were very good, they didn't especially stand out but they did exactly what they were there for. The fights were varied and exciting and fun, and I liked the characters and the plot as well.

( Spoilers )

It's the kind of movie where I would enjoy reading fic for it, there's some canon divergence scenarios that could be very interesting and fun, but at the same time I'm satisfied with the movie itself. I already look forward to seeing it again.

Our D&D campaign was put on hold due to COVID and still hasn't resumed. I hold out hope that we'll continue the campaign one day... fingers crossed.

In the meantime I've found another group to play TTRPGs with. We're playing "Die Schwarze Katze", an off-shoot of the popular German TTRPG "Das Schwarze Auge" where everyone plays as a cat. It's fun! We've played four sessions so far and have already faced dogs and ghosts and allied with sentient cockroaches and are currently planning to rob a group of thieves.

I'm having a surprising amount of trouble with my character. We're a party of five: two of them are new players that play mostly passively so far, and two of them play fairly chaotic characters who tend to be impulsive and go off on their own (and get into trouble.) I sort-of accidentally fell into the role of planner and peace-maker again. I like thinking about what our options are and how to do things, and making use of allies is just smart. It just gets frustrating to feel like I constantly need to keep an eye out and be ready to stop other party members from doing something impulsive and, uh, counter-productive. I know I don't actually need to, even if they "screw up" that can still lead to other unexpected and fun situations even if it makes things harder for us, but that's hard to keep in mind in the moment.
And being indecisive on how I want to play this has also made it hard to get a grip on my character. I hope that it'll become clearer in our next session. Goal for tomorrow: don't stop anyone from making a stupid decision if they want to.

Today I met with my D&D group (well, at least 3/5) for the first time since October :) It was fun. I missed this. We caught up, had good food, played a boardgame, talked about everything from tax accounting to Hades, and built a warlock for the player who wants a new character for when we continue our campaign. Next week (hopefully) we'll review the campaign, because it has been a while, and then maybe soon we can play again :)

This weekend was my last D&D session for at least a month, both because I'll be very busy and because I find it hard to concentrate when playing online (it's fine for oneshots, but I dislike it for the main campaign), and with the numbers going up meeting up in person is unwise. (I'm considering taking a bike to work, even though I'm not the biggest fan of biking.)

It was a good place for a break though. ( What happened recently )

It's been a few weeks since my last D&D campaign update, and now is a good time because we're on a break next week. A lot happened! So much worldbuilding/lore.

( Read more... )

It's been a while, but we are playing our main D&D campaign again! Most importantly, after almost 40 sessions we finally have a party name. We're The Just Us League. (Which is a joke that makes no sense in-game and that unsurprisingly as I later found out other people on the internet have made before, but who cares ^^)

( necromancer family issues, grumblings about alignments & rp, new outfits, and some actual plot )

This morning I went for another long run in the sunshine and enjoyed it, and later we made smoothies and went to the market stand to get fresh berries to go with the brownies we'll make for our Eurovision watching tomorrow (there'll be a RQ stream with the entries selected via the RQ semifinals last week), and I was determined to get quite a bit of studying done for the exam next week. But now my knee hurts, and even worse I have a bad headache, which is very annoying.

It occurred to me that I didn't post about our latest short D&D adventure yet, which we finished recently while our main campaign is currently on hold, and now is as good a time as any. ( Introducing Zennys the druid )

We'll probably do another shorter adventure before resuming our main campaign. I played a Dragonfire Adept for a two-session mini-adventure recently, that was fun, but depending on setting/party I'm also thinking of trying out playing a bard. Might be interesting to play more of a support character too. And it'd be hard to create a character that could match the damage output of my Reya the warblade ;)

D&D campaign update: after finding out that the ant hive we were planning to fight was actually interested in a peace treaty with the elves and arranging diplomatic talks between the ant queen and the Elven High King, we decided to celebrate in the "holy city", because we needed to research some things there anyway and none of us had been before. The city is very crowded and very hard to get in – unless you know a cleric who lives there, like my character does. Including a variety of NPCs from different places and classes in her backstory was one of the smartest things I did. So we got into the city and treated ourselves to a luxurious spa night in a hot tub, with a giant fruit platter, massages, music etc.

The next day all of our characters started by doing some solo research/trips in the city, and MC was challenged to a duel by a vampire. Which she lost. So she's currently being turned into a vampire. It took the rest of the party a day to realize she's even missing, and now they have three more days to find her until the transformation is complete.

It's an interesting story twist, and even if I do get turned into a vampire I'm not mindless and it has down- but also several upsides and I'd manage to get free from my creator's control eventually I'm sure. (In addition, MC is a member of a resistance movement of a mostly vampire-controlled country and suddenly being a vampire might complicate that in interesting ways.) And I'd be fine with losing the duel, such things happen: it was very close, I had my opponent down to 4 HP and then missed with my next attack (and with the reroll too.) IF not for the fact that I easily could have won if I hadn't completely forgotten about this one feat I have *facepalm* It's relatively new and I haven't used it much yet but that's no excuse, and now I didn't lose because these things happen I lost because I was stupid, that's much more frustrating. Arrgh.

Next week is going to be interesting!

No lectures in February! I was wondering why it still felt like I don't have that much free time (apart from staying longer at work), and then I remembered that I read books and played games and had extra choir practices and did other stuff I couldn't have done the month before, that explains things. DD also told me to blame her, which at first I found silly, but having to do all the housework and shopping by myself because she can't does add up eventually.

Games I played:
( D&D campaign update )

For my birthday I got the boardgame Village Attacks from LB. ( Playing monsters ) I can't remember playing cooperative boardgames as a child, but I've tried several in the past few years and I enjoyed them a lot.

Books I read:
The Last Sun + The Hanged Man, K.D. Edwards
( No spoilers )

( Spoilers )

The Outside – Ada Hoffmann
( Barely any spoilers )

Because I went to Worldcon in Dublin, I can nominate books for this year's Hugo awards. The only thing I know for sure I'm going to nominate is "Children of Ruin" for best novel. I'm planning to only read books published last year until the end of March, there are several already on my list ("The Priory of the Orange Tree," "Fleet of Knives," "Deeplight" – I know several people rec'd "A Memory Called Empire" and "Gideon the Ninth" but I'm currently not in the mood for either.) I'm going on skiing vacation starting tomorrow, hopefully I'll have a lot of time to read.

I had a fun weekend. On Saturday I wrote an exam (I think it went well), and in the afternoon I went running for an hour even though it was snowing, I was proud of myself for that one. Then D&D in the evening.
And today for my dad's 60th birthday we went on a mystery hunt in the art history museum, which was a lot of fun. Then we had so much food at an Indian restaurant that I almost threw up, and afterwards there was cake, and then I was "busy" catching up on fic posted over the weekend. Maybe I can still study a little bit… (probably not.) The next exam is on Friday, and that one's harder, unfortunately.

Things happened since my last D&D campaign update: ( Read more... )

I have an annual ticket to the Vienna Museum of Art History now, and it turns out that listening to the ending of the statement from TMA episode 20, "Desecrated Host," while standing in front of a painting called "Hell" is very fitting. That was a great episode. I also really enjoyed "Lost John's Cave" and "The Boneturner's Tale." ( Read more... )

I haven't listened to the last couple of Critical Role episodes. Now that I have less free time the episodes seem even longer. But I've been watching the "Critical Recap" summaries to at least keep up with the plot, and a few times then just watched a couple of especially interesting scenes. ( spoiler for episode 80 ) It's working quite well for now, and I can go back and watch the whole episodes later. …one day. …maybe.

The coming weekend is choir weekend and we're in a hotel in Burgenland from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon, and like everything else, now that I have less free time this amount of time seems much more significant. (Especially since I also have two exams next week.) But it'll be fun. We've started with our Christmas concert program.

I'll miss a D&D session, sadly. Speaking of, the last session was very dramatic! ( We narrowly avoided a TPK. )

- The first two days of the new job were very interesting, which is promising. My coworkers are nice too.
Four days of office work in a row is more than I've done in months and it was tiring. Next week it'll be five, and also classes start so it'll be even worse! But I can do this. I'll have to go to bed earlier (at the new job I start at 8am) and become more efficient with the free time I do have, which is a good idea anyway.

- We sang in the mass today, it was nice, and then our choir leader told me that I should sing first soprano from now on. !!! Singing soprano did get easier every week, and I enjoy it, but I feel like I'm still adjusting. It's good to know that he thinks I can do it though, and I look forward to trying.

- We finally have proper fall weather. We had 25° on October 1st, which is just perverse. And now not even a week later I'm tempted to turn on the heating in my room.

- Yuletide nominations are open: I'm nominating "The Inheritance Trilogy" and "Echoes of the Fall", but I'm still undecided on the third one.

- Our D&D party adopted! 19 rats and a kid. ( This will not end well. )

It's been a while since I reported on my D&D adventures! Some things that happened since then:
( (mis)adventures )

After five sessions of our new D&D campaign, I still really love playing a swordfighter :) A warblade's maneuvers give me just enough special abilities to keep things interesting, and unlike spells I can recover them easily. (Similar to spells though, I can never prepare enough of them.)

Things we have learned: be very. very. careful. with teleportation. Two weeks ago we accidentally ended up in space, and last week in a secret cave deep underground.( Counting down the levels until Greater Teleport )

And then on Sunday I played in a one-shot and got to introduce my flatmate DD to D&D! It was also LK's first experience as a DM, and he did a good job. A classic adventure in a mine with a conspiracy and captives etc. etc., fun. It was a bit unfortunate that DD decided to play a fighter and there weren't a lot of combat encounters (also because like all new DMs LK drastically underestimated how much time things would take) so she felt like she had little to do at times, but she still had fun and we're almost definitely going to do that again. I played a rogue, that was fun too. A high elf noble: aristocrat by day, rogue by night :D
It was my first experience with 5e (plus some homebrew elements), not bad and I could see some advantages especially for beginners, but I'm just very used to 3.5 already.

This week I went running twice, and then today for the first time in a while I went for a ride on my bike and it was great. I took the bike to my friend's place on the underground, then we rode half an hour to the Central Cemetery and had a very nice walk there. My friend has been in Vienna for eight years now and had never been there, and we've been talking about going for years and now we finally managed.
Then I rode back to the city center and left my bike there, took the underground to my parents' place or lunch, and later came back and rode the bike back home. There's a lot more bike lanes now than a few years ago, very practical.
It's so hot outside that the few fingers' width where I wasn't as careful with the suncream are very obvious, but fortunately not too bad.

I missed nominations for

multifandomdrabble somehow :( Ah well, maybe I can write treats again. Right now I really need to concentrate on finishing my fic for

nightonficmountain, the deadline is soon. Fortunately tomorrow is a holiday.

Yesterday was the first session of our new D&D campaign! Finally. I loved it. Our party has two melee fighters, a sorcerer focused on dealing damage/battlefield control, a divine caster focused on buffs/debuffs, and a healer (very practical!) In our first session we defeated an evil tree. Sadly my new dice haven't arrived yet, but I'm using my pretty Cobalt Soul notebook as campaign journal and that makes note-taking more fun. We're using a wiki to collect session summaries and other information, I think that'll come in handy.

Our new D&D campaign begins next weekend, and I'm already so excited! It was pushed back because one player was busy for three weeks (normally we also play when the group is not complete but not session one), so we did some play testing and character adjusting, that was actually very helpful.

I like my new character and can't wait to play her. She's a swordfighter (warblade), which will be fun. (In a party that otherwise consists of spellcasters, which especially in D&D 3.5 means that it might become a struggle to keep up, but we'll manage.) I'm still trying to decide on her appearance, especially hair style (some kind of braids?) She's a Lesser Aasimar, so humanoid.
She has a non-tragic backstory, which was half just because it turned out that way and half because I got annoyed by posts saying that tragic backstories are a requirement for adventurers (plus, with the other characters our party's tragic backstory quota is more than filled.) She was raised in a convent to fight demons and left the order to become a free agent for the resistance group of a slave state. I wrote a lot of family and friends and allies into her backstory, half for roleplay and half to make it easier for her to find help when she needs it. Only now, when I'm already attached to the more than a dozen NPCs I've created, did I remember that the DM can also use all of them to hurt me… But it's fun! (Maybe some more, for contacts?)
Regardless, I'm very excited to hopefully encounter quite a few of them. It's intended to be a long campaign, after all. And we already start at level ten!

Our DM has his own rules for learning new maneuvers so that it costs money (and time!) instead of XP, so to start with MC can afford very little equipment and I really look forward to earning some money. We know next to nothing about where we'll start, but we got a lot of background info about the world, I need to look that over again.

In other news, I passed my civil law exam, which means I can do the next civil law exam in June, and I now also have to do all the other stuff I said I would do after that exam. I, uh, was not very productive yet. But I did participate in the women's run last weekend with a respectable time considering that I didn't train, and I went running again today and it was nice, and hopefully I'll get a lot done this week. We'll see.

My D&D campaign is over! I can barely believe it. 29 sessions! We started in early September and back then I thought it'd be no more than 5-10. But now it's over! (Apart from the post-campaign Q&A/afterparty this weekend.) And I think it was a satisfying ending :)

( a lot happened )

For my first time DMing I think it was a big success! I wouldn't have had the energy to do it for so long if my players hadn't often told me how much they enjoyed it, that made it worth it. I'd definitely do it again one day – but not soon, right now I really look forward to being a player again.

I've had a few spectacularly unproductive days. Today, for example, I spent almost the entire day reading ASoIaF fic – I only ever read the first book and didn't like it much, and I never watched the series and don't intend to, but there's some good fic. And by "some" I mean "quite a lot," and a lot of it very long, which is dangerous for people with poor self-control like me.
(I'm currently working on my D&D character for our next campaign. It's wish-fulfilment, so the first thing I put under "strengths" was "self-discipline.")
I did manage to eat something and do a little bit more than nothing, which is, well, better than nothing. Generally it feels like it's getting worse again -.- Tomorrow I'm at work again, which usually helps. (No classes last week and this one, which is never good for my productivity.)

Apart from this, Easter was great! We painted beautiful eggs (my favorites of the ones I painted were the bouquet of daffodils and the Very Hungry Caterpillar eating cherries, an apple, and a pineapple), and then on Sunday we had a great family breakfast, then an outing in a beautiful garden/park, and then more good food. Not religious at all for me this year (I also still have leftovers from the two (!) cakes we had at the D&D session on Good Friday) but I didn't miss it. The spring weather is beautiful.

( Bank heist, part 1 )

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Entries tagged with d&d

Showing off my dice collection

The D&D movie: nat20

Die Schwarze Katze

I missed my warblade

We'll be Frodo

Plot happens when you talk to historians, right?

I have a new sword that is sometimes literally shiny

D&D sidequest: riding big animals is cool

But I like garlic

Krapfenzeit

Finally a few (very few) snowflakes

TMA, CR, D&D… and never enough time

October, week 1

Dice rolling

Teleportation: mind the mishap chance

Filling up my vitamin D reserves

Already ordered the new dice

Destiny Manipulation, the finale

I should spend more time in the sun probably

Destiny Manipulation #26: This time we're actually close to the end! …pretty sure