Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,061
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Post by Confessor on Nov 25, 2023 23:17:32 GMT -5
Of course, that reminds me of The Great Storm....... I can't see the video; it's blocked in the UK. Is that about the Great Storm of 1987 in Southern England? If so, I remember it well. I was a newspaper boy and I had to deliver my papers at 5am at the height of the hurricane and almost got killed by a falling tree! For such extraordinary bravery and tenacity in making sure everyone got their papers I received a special bonus that week...of 50p! 50p!? I nearly died for Chrissakes!!
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Post by codystarbuck on Nov 26, 2023 0:36:52 GMT -5
Of course, that reminds me of The Great Storm....... I can't see the video; it's blocked in the UK. Is that about the Great Storm of 1987 in Southern England? If so, I remember it well. I was a newspaper boy and I had to deliver my papers at 5am at the height of the hurricane and almost got killed by a falling tree! For such extraordinary bravery and tenacity in making sure everyone got their papers I received a special bonus that week...of 50p! 50p!? I nearly died for Chrissakes!! The Vicar of Dibley, when a storm knocks out the stained glass window of the church and the seek financing for a replacement. There is an early bit about various Great Storms, Great Winds, Great Frosts, Great Blizzards. I got to experience Hurricane Hugo, while stationed in Charleston, SC. Wouldn't want to go through that again! We had to sortie our ships, but a couple couldn't get underway and had to ride it out, in port. We couldn't bring the ships back until we could remap the channel leading into Charleston, as all of the channel markers and buoys were torn away. We had to go out with mine sweepers and use their side sonars to map out the shoals, before everyone could return home. I had to evacuate my neighborhood and go north, to my parents' home and ride it out, while my sister had to evacuate Hilton Head. I came back home a few days later to find a tree sticking through the roof of my bedroom, over my brand new waterbed. I also had to deliver invitations to our change of command, which meant using an old map to identify the senior officer houses, on the base, which had most of the identifying signs blown away. I delivered one to the Naval Station headquarters, which required me to climb over the pavement, at the entrance, which was torn up to about a 45-50 degree angle, by an uprooted tree. Nature is pretty f@#$ing awesome in her might!
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Post by MRPs_Missives on Nov 27, 2023 0:13:41 GMT -5
Saying hey all, it's MRP. I'm back for the Classic Comic Christmas. Been a challenging 5-6 months since I left, well a challenging last month really, before that things were mostly good.
I spent the week before Thanksgiving in the hospital with another blockage due to the hernia I have been living with the last 2 years. It cleared without having to have surgery, but it wasn't a pleasant week. Then two days after I got home, we had to take my best buddy Bear to the vet because he had been acting listless before I went into the hospital and hardly ate the entire week I was in, and they diagnosed him with stage 1 kidney disease, which is essentially untreatable and will continue to deteriorate over the next year to 18 months, and at some point will start to negatively impact his quality of life. He's ok for now, but we're not sure how much more time we have with him.
Other than that, things had been good. Still buying and reading comics, still playing a lot of D&D and ttrpgs, still reading a lot of books, still a huge fan of the Red Sox, and enjoying perhaps the best incarnation of Conan in Comics we've seen in 15-20 years.
So I'm waving hi while I visit for the next month or so. After that, we'll see.
-M
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Post by EdoBosnar on Nov 27, 2023 4:31:34 GMT -5
Good to hear from you, MRPs_Missives , and sorry to hear about the health problems. That's sounds rough, but it's good that you're feeling better. Also sorry to hear about Bear; it's getting close to 2 years since we went through something similar with our aging canine companion, although in her case it was less than two months from a sharp deterioration in health to the end - I'm still not entirely over it. Hope you have more time with Bear.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Nov 27, 2023 7:38:05 GMT -5
Saying hey all, it's MRP. I'm back for the Classic Comic Christmas. Been a challenging 5-6 months since I left, well a challenging last month really, before that things were mostly good. I spent the week before Thanksgiving in the hospital with another blockage due to the hernia I have been living with the last 2 years. It cleared without having to have surgery, but it wasn't a pleasant week. Then two days after I got home, we had to take my best buddy Bear to the vet because he had been acting listless before I went into the hospital and hardly ate the entire week I was in, and they diagnosed him with stage 1 kidney disease, which is essentially untreatable and will continue to deteriorate over the next year to 18 months, and at some point will start to negatively impact his quality of life. He's ok for now, but we're not sure how much more time we have with him. Other than that, things had been good. Still buying and reading comics, still playing a lot of D&D and ttrpgs, still reading a lot of books, still a huge fan of the Red Sox, and enjoying perhaps the best incarnation of Conan in Comics we've seen in 15-20 years. So I'm waving hi while I visit for the next month or so. After that, we'll see. -M Welcome back!
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Post by impulse on Nov 27, 2023 9:15:19 GMT -5
Saying hey all, it's MRP. I'm back for the Classic Comic Christmas. Been a challenging 5-6 months since I left, well a challenging last month really, before that things were mostly good. I spent the week before Thanksgiving in the hospital with another blockage due to the hernia I have been living with the last 2 years. It cleared without having to have surgery, but it wasn't a pleasant week. Then two days after I got home, we had to take my best buddy Bear to the vet because he had been acting listless before I went into the hospital and hardly ate the entire week I was in, and they diagnosed him with stage 1 kidney disease, which is essentially untreatable and will continue to deteriorate over the next year to 18 months, and at some point will start to negatively impact his quality of life. He's ok for now, but we're not sure how much more time we have with him. Other than that, things had been good. Still buying and reading comics, still playing a lot of D&D and ttrpgs, still reading a lot of books, still a huge fan of the Red Sox, and enjoying perhaps the best incarnation of Conan in Comics we've seen in 15-20 years. So I'm waving hi while I visit for the next month or so. After that, we'll see. -M Welcome back, whether temporary or longer. Great to see you here. I am sorry to hear about the health concerns you and Bear are having. What are your favorite ttrpgs at the moment, and are there any you think some relative noobs would enjoy? My wife is sticking her toe in games and I'd like to jump on that train while it's running.
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Post by MRPs_Missives on Nov 27, 2023 13:26:27 GMT -5
Saying hey all, it's MRP. I'm back for the Classic Comic Christmas. Been a challenging 5-6 months since I left, well a challenging last month really, before that things were mostly good. I spent the week before Thanksgiving in the hospital with another blockage due to the hernia I have been living with the last 2 years. It cleared without having to have surgery, but it wasn't a pleasant week. Then two days after I got home, we had to take my best buddy Bear to the vet because he had been acting listless before I went into the hospital and hardly ate the entire week I was in, and they diagnosed him with stage 1 kidney disease, which is essentially untreatable and will continue to deteriorate over the next year to 18 months, and at some point will start to negatively impact his quality of life. He's ok for now, but we're not sure how much more time we have with him. Other than that, things had been good. Still buying and reading comics, still playing a lot of D&D and ttrpgs, still reading a lot of books, still a huge fan of the Red Sox, and enjoying perhaps the best incarnation of Conan in Comics we've seen in 15-20 years. So I'm waving hi while I visit for the next month or so. After that, we'll see. -M Welcome back, whether temporary or longer. Great to see you here. I am sorry to hear about the health concerns you and Bear are having. What are your favorite ttrpgs at the moment, and are there any you think some relative noobs would enjoy? My wife is sticking her toe in games and I'd like to jump on that train while it's running. My current group only want to play D&D 5E, so that's what I have been playing the most lately and where most of my time and effort has been focused. I want to dabble with Shadowdark, Blades in the Dark and some Old School Essentials in the fantasy genre, but again, the players in my group are averse to learning new systems. I really like Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying ruleset, the same rules that fuel Runequest and Call of Cthulhu, and have ideas for short campaigns in a few different genres using that ruleset if I can find enough players and a timeslot to play. Most of the players in my group are young professionals with kids, and they want to be able to just show up and play a game they already know, so I understand not wanting to spend time learning a new game. Even when we do board game nights, its games everyone already knows how to play not learning new ones. Doesn't stop me from wanting to try something new, but finding time and players is the challenge. My weekends are already spoken for with my game groups. I play in a game every other Friday. I DM a regular biweekly Saturday game, DM a Sunday game that meets 2-3 times a month (sometimes more, sometimes less depending on schedule conflicts), and have 2 floating mini-campaigns (both Southern Gothic D&D) that play on one of the free Saturdays or Sundays usually once a month, but we're currently on a holiday hiatus for the games I DM-we were going to take December off because of too many family commitment schedule conflicts due to the holidays, but my hospital stay wiped out the last half of November as well, so it turned into a 6 week hiatus. My Saturday game is probably 3-4 sessions away from wrapping up it's campaign story, so we will be starting something new in the new year, but when I asked them if they wanted to try a different game or even a different edition of D&D I got a resounding no, we want D&D 5E. AS for finding something for your wife-I'd look at Fate if you want mostly rules light and easy to learn. It's flexible and you can play any genre with it, and probably easier to learn than something like Basic Roleplaying. But it depends how comfortable she is with making stuff up, as Fate relies a lot on players improvising and making things up for themselves. I'd say your best bet was to try a couple of different systems and see what she takes to, and focus on genres she likes. There are free Quickstart rules for a lot of systems online (Chaosium has a starter PDF for Basic Roleplaying, Runequest and some other of their games on their website for example. A Quickstart usually has enough to run a sample adventure that will last a session or three and pre-Gen characters, with a trimmed down version of the rules (all you need to get started and run that adventure with those characters). They are a great way to try different games or to introduce people to a game or gaming as they are designed to be used for that. But I'd start with something in a genre she enjoys and is familiar with so she has something to lean on that she likes while she learns the game aspects of it. That said, my hot take is that 5E is a lot easier to learn than people make it out to be because gamers tend to overcomplicate things and put too much on the player at first. All you really need to know to play D&D is tell the DM what you want to do, if there a chance of success or failure you roll a d20 add a modifier (and until you are comfortable finding that mod on your character sheet someone can help you) and compare that to a target number. The rest can be picked up (or looked up quickly) as you go. If you master that, you'll pick up the specifics & details (class abilities, spells, feats, skills, conditions, strategy & tactics, etc.) as you play IF (and only IF) you are having fun while playing. But too often established players dump all that on a new player so they are too overwhelmed by details to enjoy the game and its vary simple core mechanic. There's actually (and I just learned of this) a very stripped down quickstart version of D&D 5E available for downloads with WotC educator resources that comes with a starter adventure and a rules set that only uses the d20 and a d6 that's intended to be used for school kids learning the game and is geared towards 1 hour sessions. I saw a bit about it on the Sly Flourish Lazy DM podcast on youtube, but one of WotC's strengths has been their outreach to new gamers with the Basic Rules PDF online for free and the Starter Sets they have put out which really do have everything you need to start and run a game for a while in a stripped down package. But again, I take the same tact introducing folks to ttrpg as I do introducing them to comics-ask them what they like (outside of ttrpg/comics) and then give them something along those lines so they are inclined to like the ttrpg/comic they are experiencing because its about something they already like. -M
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Post by Icctrombone on Nov 27, 2023 14:34:02 GMT -5
Welcome back MRP.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 27, 2023 17:03:18 GMT -5
Saying hey all, it's MRP. I'm back for the Classic Comic Christmas. Been a challenging 5-6 months since I left, well a challenging last month really, before that things were mostly good. I spent the week before Thanksgiving in the hospital with another blockage due to the hernia I have been living with the last 2 years. It cleared without having to have surgery, but it wasn't a pleasant week. Then two days after I got home, we had to take my best buddy Bear to the vet because he had been acting listless before I went into the hospital and hardly ate the entire week I was in, and they diagnosed him with stage 1 kidney disease, which is essentially untreatable and will continue to deteriorate over the next year to 18 months, and at some point will start to negatively impact his quality of life. He's ok for now, but we're not sure how much more time we have with him. Other than that, things had been good. Still buying and reading comics, still playing a lot of D&D and ttrpgs, still reading a lot of books, still a huge fan of the Red Sox, and enjoying perhaps the best incarnation of Conan in Comics we've seen in 15-20 years. So I'm waving hi while I visit for the next month or so. After that, we'll see. -M Welcome back my Ohio neighbor! I was away when you left and very sorry to hear you were gone when I came back. I'm sorry for everything you've been dealing with, life has a way of coming at one hard at times. I hope for Bear better days than worse for as long as possible, I've been in this situation and it's hard, they really are members of the family. I'm glad you are still finding time for those important outlets for enjoyment as well. Even if it's just back for a visit, it's really nice seeing you here again! And if it turns out longer, that's great, but respect for you needing to go the path that works best.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Nov 28, 2023 14:28:51 GMT -5
That dilemma when you see a brand new $100 book for $50, but it's volume two in what will be a long-running comic strip reprint series and you aren't going to commit the money to guarantee you get all of them at full price.
But I really want it!
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Post by Deleted on Nov 28, 2023 15:14:36 GMT -5
That dilemma when you see a brand new $100 book for $50, but it's volume two in what will be a long-running comic strip reprint series and you aren't going to commit the money to guarantee you get all of them at full price. But I really want it! Personally I'd go for it. I've got plenty of "orphaned" volumes like that, and more times than not I actually READ them and enjoy them. Every time I pick up a whole set of volumes, too many times I never get through them all.
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Post by impulse on Nov 28, 2023 15:24:15 GMT -5
One can reason that the other volumes will go on sale at some point, no?
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Nov 28, 2023 15:40:25 GMT -5
One can reason that the other volumes will go on sale at some point, no? One might think that, but with strip reprint books that's not necessarily the case. In fact volume one may well already be out of print. This is the Terry & the Pirates Master Edition. So it's a pretty limited print run to begin with. There is a sweet spot with strip reprint books where you can get deals on them (sometimes) and if you go beyond that they get super expensive even if they're actually available at all.
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Post by berkley on Nov 28, 2023 20:13:17 GMT -5
One can reason that the other volumes will go on sale at some point, no? One might think that, but with strip reprint books that's not necessarily the case. In fact volume one may well already be out of print. This is the Terry & the Pirates Master Edition. So it's a pretty limited print run to begin with. There is a sweet spot with strip reprint books where you can get deals on them (sometimes) and if you go beyond that they get super expensive even if they're actually available at all.
I ended up overpaying for the six volumes when I belatedly realised I wanted to read this famous strip only a few years ago. I'm glad I have them now and it doesn't bother me at this point that I paid about double what I would have done if I'd bought them when they came out (let alone what I might have saved on bargains, etc) but of course now I'm curious about this Master Edition - what are the additional features?
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Nov 29, 2023 10:54:21 GMT -5
One might think that, but with strip reprint books that's not necessarily the case. In fact volume one may well already be out of print. This is the Terry & the Pirates Master Edition. So it's a pretty limited print run to begin with. There is a sweet spot with strip reprint books where you can get deals on them (sometimes) and if you go beyond that they get super expensive even if they're actually available at all.
I ended up overpaying for the six volumes when I belatedly realised I wanted to read this famous strip only a few years ago. I'm glad I have them now and it doesn't bother me at this point that I paid about double what I would have done if I'd bought them when they came out (let alone what I might have saved on bargains, etc) but of course now I'm curious about this Master Edition - what are the additional features?
I think this picture sums it up. They're almost twice the height of the earlier IDW books, so the Sunday's are a full page as they would have appeared in the newspapers at the time. This is a link to the Library of American Comics site about them.
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