Random Thoughts X: Impromptu Interpretations

[The_J]

Well.... death?
Also happens once in a while that kids fall from tractors, and then... as mentioned...

 

[Kyriakos]

Well, ok, I mean if it is typical that a tractor running over your hand or leg will lead to it needing to be severed.
I just wish he didn't suffer anything like this.
But tbh, I am not optimistic, from the little I've heard.
Too bad, cause he is a very nice person (from the little I know of him - in a business setting).

 

[CKS]

The mother of a kid I knew in school was run over by the tractor she was operating twice, several years apart. The first time she lost both legs. The second time she died.

 

[Kyriakos]

Man, this is terrible.

Sometimes life is garbage. And ok, I wouldn't wish such a thing on anyone, but it makes it even worse that it happened to a decent person.
There is still some hope he didn't get hit directly, or not hit in a way which resulted to loss of limbs. May it be so.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I know nothing about tractors. Are those huge wheels able to cause more than just break bones? I just hope his injuries don't involve losing actual limbs.

Tractors can crush people. So yeah, it's more than broken bones.

It's why I'd never make a farmer. I know too much about how the various kinds of machinery can crush and chop people up, and my imagination tends to work overtime.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Wasn't there some nightmare-inducing British film about farm safety where that happened?

 

[Kyriakos]

Tractors can crush people. So yeah, it's more than broken bones.

It's why I'd never make a farmer. I know too much about how the various kinds of machinery can crush and chop people up, and my imagination tends to work overtime.

The thing is, he wasn't a farmer at all. Had a white collar job and was good at it. I have to suppose he just accepted to help someone. So unfair

 

[Valka D'Ur]

The thing is, he wasn't a farmer at all. Had a white collar job and was good at it. I have to suppose he just accepted to help someone. So unfair

People unfamiliar with farm machinery should absolutely never go near it. Accidents happen to the most knowledgeable and experienced people (a friend who was living with a farmer and later married him ended up with a broken leg from a fall), so non-farmers are definitely at risk around a farm.

 

[Arakhor]

Wasn't there some nightmare-inducing British film about farm safety where that happened?

It's called Apaches, featuring the cream of British '70s' child stars, and includes various grisly farm-related ends.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

We just had a very bad thunderstorm (it was rattling the house) and now there's a firetruck outside and firefighters walking across the lawn with flashlights. I don't know why they're doing that.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

I got the same thunderstorm and lightning hit my power pole outside my house. It knocked my cable box offline for about five minutes. Strangely, I still had internet.

I'm glad the cable box recovered. I hate explaining things to Bell. Their customer service reps are sooo dense.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I got the same thunderstorm and lightning hit my power pole outside my house. It knocked my cable box offline for about five minutes. Strangely, I still had internet.

I'm glad the cable box recovered. I hate explaining things to Bell. Their customer service reps are sooo dense.

There's some trees down around my town. My lights flickered a few times and the radio made some weird noises but our power didn't go out.

 

[Hygro]

In hoping to make a better D&D experience with my people, I've been looking at some 1st and 2nd edition material to weave back into 5th edition.

One thing that rings loud in my mind is the description of the cleric. It is described as a crusading knight, quite explicitly. It is more directly described was what is understood as a paladin than the paladin is. And that leaves the paladin basically another flavor of ranger. But meanwhile the cleric is the teutonic knight, in those very words. And they are expected to build a stronghold and attract a small army more loyal than that of the fighter.

 

[Arakhor]

Well, priests of war, certainly. What about all the other types of priests?

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

We just had a very bad thunderstorm (it was rattling the house) and now there's a firetruck outside and firefighters walking across the lawn with flashlights. I don't know why they're doing that.

A tree was on fire!!!

 

[tjs282]

A tree was on fire!!!

Sooo.... life imitating art...?

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

It wasn't my fault!

 

[Valka D'Ur]

In hoping to make a better D&D experience with my people, I've been looking at some 1st and 2nd edition material to weave back into 5th edition.

One thing that rings loud in my mind is the description of the cleric. It is described as a crusading knight, quite explicitly. It is more directly described was what is understood as a paladin than the paladin is. And that leaves the paladin basically another flavor of ranger. But meanwhile the cleric is the teutonic knight, in those very words. And they are expected to build a stronghold and attract a small army more loyal than that of the fighter.

My very first D&D experience with a group was being introduced to a roomful of people, some of whom were smoking (thus making it miserable to breathe), and being given someone else's character sheet. Turns out I was subbing for whoever normally played the paladin character. Since I was extremely new to the game (all I knew was from reading books), I basically just rolled the dice when told to and tried not to get the character killed. I don't remember what the campaign was about. I just remember that two of the people in that group later turned up in the SCA branch I joined, along with the mother of one of them.

Most of my knowledge of the paladin character comes from the Dragonlance setting. Sturm Brightblade is the very epitome of a paladin - a fighter, but one with a religion to uphold, a very strict way of life called the Code and the Measure, and his dearest wish is to become a full-fledged Knight of Solamnia and go to war in the name of the god Paladine.

The Knights of Solamnia are about honor, oaths, being pious, the kind of knightly quests you'd expect of the Knights of the Round Table (in our Arthurian mythos) except substitute the Krynnish concepts, as our Arthurian myths don't include elves, hobgoblins, and the dragons of Krynn are really not possible for just one person to kill.

The Knights of Solamnia have their headquarters in the city of Palanthas, which also is the site of one of the Towers of High Sorcery. The KoS don't trust any kind of magic at all, even that of the White Robes (mages of Good alignment). They are not clerics, and do not use magic. They may talk about honor and prayer, etc. but they're one bigoted bunch - automatically against elves, don't tend to get along well with anyone but each other, and some are constantly lecturing other humans about being pious (sounds like a cross between Arthurian knights and modern-day doorknockers, except they don't push pamphlets).

Anyway, chastity is also expected of a KoS unless/until they marry (from the uptight demeanor of Sturm in the first couple of Dragonlance novels, the readers are led to believe that he's never broken any of the rules or customs of the Solamnic Knights, but later on in the "next generation" anthology and Dragons of Summer Flame we find out... oops. Goody-two-boots Sturm had a secret he was keeping, and we're introduced to his son.

Normally I'm not into the pious knight character. I didn't like Sturm, but damn if I wasn't bawling when he was killed. On the other hand, I did like his son, Steel Brightblade - the epitome of an honorable knight, but serving in the army that his father would have been horrified if he'd lived to know about it. They would have been on opposite sides if they'd ever met in battle.

I'm curious to know: How many here incorporate music into their campaigns? One of the bonuses of the Dragonlance setting is the music and poetry. Some of the Dragonlance modules included sheet music for some of the songs in the novels, and there's a Solamnic hymn called Est Sularis (My Honor) that starts out "Est sularis oth mithas..." ("My honor is my life"...).

I learned to play it on the organ, and it's the sort of music that wouldn't be out of place in a church (not the lyrics, of course, as they honor a different deity). I remember finally understanding a bit more of what the Knights of Solamnia are supposed to be about (unfortunately some of the characters don't live up to that, as any organization can be corrupted). The song is really nice, though. I don't know if the composer had the organ in mind when it was written, but it works really well.


Speaking of fires, we had one here a couple of days ago. One of the places downtown where some homeless people were living (transitioning from the street to actually having their own place off the street) burned down. Not sure about the cause yet - faulty wiring, someone careless about smoking... anyway, everyone got out okay. It was a bad enough fire, though, that a unit from Sylvan Lake showed up to help.

 

[EgonSpengler]

In hoping to make a better D&D experience with my people, I've been looking at some 1st and 2nd edition material to weave back into 5th edition.

One thing that rings loud in my mind is the description of the cleric. It is described as a crusading knight, quite explicitly. It is more directly described was what is understood as a paladin than the paladin is. And that leaves the paladin basically another flavor of ranger. But meanwhile the cleric is the teutonic knight, in those very words. And they are expected to build a stronghold and attract a small army more loyal than that of the fighter.

I agree, the difference between the cleric and the paladin were never well-described. Early on, I tended to think of them as variations on a theme, the "holy warrior", and the player could decide whether she preferred the version with more spells or the one with more fighting spirit. Later, I reconceptualized the Paladin as something more like a "demon hunter", a variant Fighter, like the Ranger and Barbarian, rather than a variant Cleric, kind of like how Druids and Monks are alternate options to the Cleric and a Sorcerer is a slightly different version of a Wizard. Back in the day, there used to be an Assassin class, as an alternative to the Thief, but they dropped that for some reason. Bards used to be really weird; they weren't a Class you could take at 1st level, you had to level up in Fighter, Thief, and Wizard first.

 

[amadeus]

A tree was on fire!!!

Did it command you to lead the Israelites out of Egypt and into Canaan? If it did, tell Him it’s all good and Israel has the bomb now.