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Wed Nov 3 06:00:01 EDT 2021 ======================================== Slept from ten to six-thirty. Partly cloudy. Slight chance of snow showers in the morning. Slight chance of rain showers through the day. Slight chance of snow showers early in the evening. Highs in the lower 40s. West winds up to 15 mph increasing to 10 to 15 mph early in the evening. Chance of precipitation 20 percent. Work ---------------------------------------- - ✓ 10 AM Entrta website call - ✓ set up Entrata "Webmaster" group, account for Beacon marketing person - ✓ 12 PM weekly Entrta call - ✓ revoke access for Chateau phones - ✓ figure out what H&T services need to move off the existing Amazon account - export more mailboxes No. Hour-long walk at lunch. Cold and cloudy. Saw a raptor of some kind flying very high. Between Pembroke and X (at about 42.5532083,-83.1898489) there's a peculiar little pedestrian cut-through to Derby. From that path, looking east, you can see that the backyard of one of the houses has tons of beautiful Bonsai-like little trees. Nothing from the front of the house would give any suggestion of it. Home ---------------------------------------- - ✓ check if rent got auto-paid (It had not. I paid November rent, and set autopay to start for December.) - ✓ vaccine booster Booster appointment scheduled: Wednesday November 03, 2021 6:10 PM EDT COVID-19 Vaccination Clinic - Beaumont Hospital Troy 44201 Dequindre Rd Troy MI 48085 > The Covid Vaccine Clinic is located in the Moceri Learning Center via South Blvd Entrance. Arrive from South Boulevard through Donald J. Flynn Park and park in the Vaccine Clinic Parking Area. Enter to the right of the Moceri Learning Center. North on John R, east on South Blvd, south onto Autumn Blvd (Donald J. Flynn Park entrance, just west of Dequindre). Notice during our last D&D game over Jitsi that I couldn't share my screen. This is probably because I recently switched from Xorg/i3 to Wayland/Sway. Something about pipewire? https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PipeWire > For xdg-desktop-portal-wlr to work, the XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP and WAYLAND_DISPLAY environment variables have to be set in the systemd user session. XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP has to be set to the name of your compositor, e.g. XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=sway. WAYLAND_DISPLAY is set automatically by the compositor. The recommended way to bring these environment variables over to the systemd user session is to run systemctl --user import-environment WAYLAND_DISPLAY XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP after launching the compositor, e.g. with the compositors configuration file. ``` 🐚 bava ~ $ sudo apt install xdg-desktop-portal-wlr ``` https://beyondfomalhaut.blogspot.com/2021/11/blog-hex-crawls-simple-guide.html > You might remember a common way to describe RPGs to outsiders: “This game is all in your imagination, played without a game board.” Hex-crawling is a lot like that game, but with a game board added to it. This board shall consist of two map sheets with numbered hexes. One of the maps is for the Gamemaster, and like your usual dungeon map, it is marked with terrain features, and an encounter key. Unlike dungeons, the key is not numbered sequentially, but by hex coordinates: a certain number of hexes may have varied features in them, while some are “empty”, consisting only of terrain. The second map is the one the players actually see: while it conforms to the first in most respects, this one is much more sparse, usually showing coastal outlines, a few major geographic features, and maybe a section of the “known” lands. The rest is left blank for later discovery. > > Over the course of play, moving around and exploring the wilderness map, filling in its blanks, and coming across the keyed encounters shall be the focus of the game. The exploration process may be complicated by random encounters, navigation hazards, the depletion of food and equipment, and other complications like bad weather, or events keyed to the passage of time. Like dungeon adventures, hex-crawls are a combination of keyed encounters, random events arising from game procedures, and emergent gameplay created by GM–player interaction. A good hex-crawl is a lot like a good dungeon – reasonably open-ended, challenging, accommodating of player decisions, yet not overwhelming at any single decision point, since every given hex allows only six directions of travel from it. > > The hex-crawl, of course, is not the complete campaign, but a component of it. Add a starter dungeon (and start thinking about one or two more – they don’t have to be large affairs), a few rival power centres and organisations, and you have a full landscape of adventure (see [this post](https://beyondfomalhaut.blogspot.com/2016/09/blog-dirt-cheap-sandbox.html) for a general idea). > > Much of the hex-crawls occurs through simple procedures. Here are the essentials: > > Descriptions: describe what the party sees in the surrounding hexes in a brief way. This should include terrain, visible landmarks, and maybe a little detail. For example, using our sample map, and starting from the castle home base at 0608, the GM could begin thus: “Day one breaks as you ride out through the gates of Krakhal. It is still misty, but you can see the roads meeting here: the Winding Way crossing the river to the NW and going through farmlands towards the mountains where stands the tower of Breezehall to a day’s journey; the other direction heading SE and disappearing in wooded hills. A more narrow cart road crosses the river to the W, then heads SW through grassland. In this direction lies Fell, a village where you have heard of troubles with raiding humanoids and brigands. To the N and NE stretch thick forests, and to the S, you see tall peaks.” From here on, the descriptions can be even shorter: “You cross the grasslands into 0509, along the river running SW. NW lie woods, SW and S are flat grasslands, and SE are the mountains. The road continues SW.” > > How detailed should hex entries be? > > For personal consumption, as detailed as your average dungeon room. Some, like major towns and power centres may deserve a little bit more, maybe a bullet-point list. But keeping things brief and versatile is usually the for the best. > > Since hexes cover a lot of territory, shouldn’t adventurers have a chance to miss keyed features? > > This has always struck me as bad advice, since the point of hex-crawling is to find cool, interesting stuff, not walk by it. It is in both the player’s and GM’s interest to bring these encounters into play while travelling through the wilderness. You could rationalise it with the understanding that a given hex probably has multiple interesting features, and your party will find the one being described in the key. But generally, unless a feature is deliberately hidden, it is best to let the characters find it. You can always add secondary and tertiary sites later, if needed, although it is also vital to expand horizontally, and encourage players to seek out new lands and sights. Very quick and efficient vaccination at Troy Beaumont. Talked to Yvonne on the phone for a while. Chatted a bit wiht Jay and Ed on Signal. Servings: grains 3/6, fruit 1/4, vegetables 3/4, dairy 0/2, meat 1/3, nuts 1/0.5 Breakfast: banana, cucumber, left-over curry, naan, coffee Afternoon snack: ramen with avocado and sausage Dinner: potato chips

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