Show Notes - Week of May 27, 2019

How was your week? Mine was like playing Minecraft for the first time in a year, getting lost and then having to fight off a zombie with a chicken because you can't remember how to change weapons.

Accomplishments?:
FWIW, I did all of the daily challenges in both Wordament and Solitaire this month. Tell my parents that when they tell you that I never amounted to anything. 

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BYDTWD:
In our weekly lunch hour session, I was back to playing as my stint as a guest DM is now over. I have to tell you that I really prefer DMing. All you have to do is show up when you are a player, so the level of engagement just isn't there for me. That was one change in perspective that I had. The other is how much weird the players seem to want. Our regular DM developed a campaign in a low magic world, but people seem to want to jump in with high magic, exotic characters. Our newest player came in with a Tiefling Bard. Wait, what? Yeah, exactly.

I watched the first forty or so episodes of the second campaign of Critical Role, and now that I look back at those episodes, I notice the same. A goblin, a tiefling, a half-orc (admittedly pretty low magic), an Aasimar, a furlbog played a person who previously played a Tiefling, and two humans.  Every single one of the players behind those characters are great actors, but for my money, the best character in the lot is one of the humans. (You can argue about which one in the comments.)

When Matt Colville was ramping up for The Chain of Acheron, he told his players that the preponderance of the characters needed to be humans, even though the campaign is very high magic. Even so, within the first few episodes, one character gets turned into a pink mist and the player wants to play a githyanki. So much for the players adhering to the guide posts. 

What does this mean for the DM? I'm not sure to be honest. Maybe the lure of the unknown and the magical is too strong, and the DM just needs to build that into the campaign. Maybe it is reasonable to expect players to want to stray from the mundane in a fictional setting. Playing a character that is essentially your neighbor in real life does seem less enticing than a githyanki that has never eaten a caramel sausage, for example.

Book: Anathem
Anyone making the argument that Neal Stephenson has mastered the art of complex plot lines can certainly use Anathem as supporting material. In 900+ pages, which includes a glossary and three calca (essentially detailed material that didn't need to be included but were good nonetheless - think a Director's Cut edition of a movie, but where the material added in didn't suck), Stephenson brings the reader into a world filled with rites and terms that are completely foreign and explains them through subtle narration, and then intersperses all of that with a truckload of complex scientific principles, but somehow in the end, it all makes sense. The skill required to pull that off is immense. It was a really good book, but not likely one that I will read again due to its length. However, I am sure I will use certain phrases from the book forever. For example, Gardan's Steelyard instead of Occam's Razor. 

How's this for a Smash in the Mouth?

My world's on fire, how about yours?
The wild fires in Northern Alberta are terrifying. The thought that out of control fires in the spring are the new normal is even more terrifying. The northern half of the province needs a Noah's Ark scale deluge in the short term, and we need to figure out how we can fix the planet in the long term. I don't ever recall hearing about the Air Quality Health Index before last year, but now with all of the fires, our local schools keep kids inside for recess when the air quality is too poor. 

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New beers:
Just one new beer this week. It was the Red 8.6 from Royal Swinkels Family Brewers in the Netherlands. Red 8.6 seems like a strange name since the beer is only 7.9% ABV (only!), even though it is a red. But I digress. I'm not a big red fan, and this was okay, but it was quite a mouthful with the alcohol taste. Not great, but good enough that I will try out their other beers, like the Gold 8.6 for example. (3.0 / 5)

New words:

su·per·ses·sion
[ˌso͞opərˈseSH(ə)n]
NOUN

1. replacement of a person or thing previously in authority or use.

pred·​i·​ca·​tion
pre-də-ˈkā-shən \
NOUN
archaic
a : an act of proclaiming or preaching 
b : sermon

in·a·ni·tion
[ˌinəˈniSHən]
NOUN
formal

1. exhaustion caused by lack of nourishment.

mid·den
[ˈmidn]
NOUN

1. a dunghill or refuse heap.