#they’ve also been shortened training shifts to get me settled

[just-a-cinnamon-bun]

I just got a new job and I’m relieved by how much I like it so far.

[purplesurveys]

617

When was the last time you went to the dentist? Did you have any work done? I had deposits removed because apparently, they were the source of my toothaches. Dentist also found a decayed molar so I had it extracted the day after. It was the first time I got an injection to the mouth and I was terrrrrrified. Open any social media site. Who's the first person on your feed? I’ve deactivated all of my social media for the holidays and it’s never felt so good. What's the closest store to your house? I live inside a gated village so it’s quite a drive to get to the highway, and there’s a lot of stores outside the main gate, but I’m guessing the closest one would be this hype store just beside our village that sells hype shirts and Yeezys and skateboards and other stuff like that. How much sleep per night do you usually get? It’s always different. I can get either 4 or 10, or anything else in between. Were you born in the state you now live in? We don’t have states, and no, I live in a different city and region now. I was born in Manila but now live in Rizal.

What's your favourite type of cake? CHEESECAKE Do you like to go out to nightclubs? What would you usually wear? No, I prefer bars. I wear whatever I feel good in for that evening. Have you ever been hit in the face? Yes, this was the last thing my brother did to me before I stopped talking to him entirely. Do you wear glasses? That I do. What do you think of the Jonas Brothers? Loved them then, loved them now. They’ve always been sweethearts and as far as I know have no problematic tendencies, so I go right ahead and stan them haha. Are you an optimist or a pessimist? Pessimism does nothing to me, so I always choose to be an optimist at the end of the day. Who was the last person you argued or disagreed with? The uncle I've since dissociated myself from showed up at my tita’s house for our Christmas party yesterday and was drunk within an hour of being there. He tried to join our parlor games and was picking a fight and insisted that he deserved a point or whatever, so I went up to his face and argued back. Do you know how to cook? What's your favourite thing to cook? No. Have you ever been on a plane for more than 10 hours? I have not. What was the last thing you put in the trash? Tissue that I used to soak some of my dog’s pee in. Are you sitting down right now? Yup. Have you ever worked night shifts? I haven’t worked. How do you usually style your hair? Recently I like tying it in a high bun because my hair’s long enough now and because I get a lot of compliments when I style it that way. Do you like to people-watch? I do it for like ten seconds then move on because I find it creepy. Is your fridge full or empty at the moment? It’s pretty full. Christmas celebrations just ended so it’s quite filled with either presents in the form of sweets, or leftovers from parties.

What shoes do you wear to work? I don’t go to work yet but I like going to school in sneakers. When was the last time you mopped a floor? I think it was last week when my dog didn’t notice that his designated peeing area in the balcony was open so he peed inside the house. What's your favourite type of juice? I don’t really like juice, but I guess I’d go for like lemonade or guava. What colour looks best on you? Black or maroon. Who was the last person to leave you a voicemail? We don’t have voicemails here. Would you want a Bachelor/Bachelorette party before you get married? I probably would just so I have an excuse to throw a party, but none of the stereotypical stuff about hiring male strippers.  Do you have a skincare routine? What does it involve? No I don’t. I’m admittedly just lucky when it comes to my skin because it’s very smooth and healthy despite me not washing my face at all, except if I’m already in the shower and it gets unavoidably wet.  Have you ever had a professional massage? No, I’m too scared to pay for it and try it out because I’m very ticklish. What was the last thing you baked in an oven? Chocolate chip cookies around 7 years ago lol. How much cash do you have on your person right now? Around ₱3500 or roughly $70 thanks to Christmas donations from various aunts and uncles hahaha. Where do you like to shop for groceries? My dream is to be able to shop at Rustan’s, which is a high-end grocery store in the country. Nowadays, I’m fine with settling at Merkado or even SM. Who do you put down as an emergency contact and why? My mom. She’s the easiest to reach. What did you have for breakfast today? Chocolate chip digestives from M&S. Do any household chores need to be done right now? I need to finish my lunch so I can wash the plate, but that can wait till the end of this survey. Have you ever played on a poker machine? Nope. What type of gas do you put in your car, if you have one? I have no clue, which drives my car-obsessed dad NUTS. My local gas station has fancy brand names for their gas or diesel products and I always just say the brand names so that I don’t get it wrong. When was the last time you smoked a cigarette, if ever? I’ve never smoked a cigarette. Do you know how to roast a turkey? I’ve never even had turkey, let alone seen one be prepared. How do you feel right now? I’m content. A little bored and hungry, but it’s manageable. What do you like to put on your sandwiches? I prefer going to my preferred banh mi stall for them to make my sandwich. Is there a train station close to where you live? Yes. Do you check the mail every day? I don’t. What was your first crush's name? Andi. Can your name be shortened to become a nickname? Yes. Byn is my nickname, but that’s reserved for family. What was the last bill you paid? I don’t pay bills yet.

[betabites]

Dragons of Tiamat, a good-parts campaign

A while back, I posted my thoughts on a ‘good parts’ campaign. I’ve actually started one, so I thought I’d share some of what I’ve done for that game.

The Pitch: ‘Y’all are a clutch of dragon wyrmlings that were raised together by a cult of Tiamat. Lately, your biggest, reddest sibling has been kidnapped! The rest of you are out to rescue her, and maybe have a little fun in the process.’

Because of the amount of content, I’ll be including links to individual pages with the dragon chassises, templates, deeds and the opposition. I love hyperlinks.

Overview - Dragon chassis - Templates - Deeds - Opposition - The Prison

The Introduction:

I started out by recapping the campaign concept, and that what we were doing now was outside the standard meta-narrative. I may have made Inception jokes. Basically, we were going to choose pseudo-classes for the characters, and then, by them selecting cards, determine a few specifics of ‘last session.’

I gave each player a character sheet, a dragon mini, a breath weapon template, and a name card to fill out. The characters were:

Delachiiwaer, the black dragon,

Zhazhefflix, the blue dragon,

Bhelachatemyx, the green dragon,

Minnenfrixxicks, the purple dragon, and

Fahrezintbrentuz, the white dragon.

And they were trying to rescue Halyxxialtix, the red dragon.

You can see the need for name cards. I recommended that folks make a shortened version. This was mainly for usability, but also let the players make an immediate stake on their characters. Delachiiwaer didn’t get used, since I had a last minute cancellation, which kind of emphasizes why standard campaigns don’t work for us. The wyrmling names we used were:

Flix, the blue wyrmling (played by @lawlessdragon),

Bhela, the green wyrmling (played by @saffrontherogue),

Minnen, the purple wyrmling (played by @sherlock913) , and

Rezzy, the white wyrmling (played by @kaminaduck ).

And Hax, the red wyrmling. She preferred Xialt, but the PCs felt otherwise.

Because of the cancellation, I had more Template and Deed cards than I needed. I dealt each player an extra Deed card, and the remainder from both went face-up on the table, where anyone could use them.

From there, I dealt out the Template cards - two to each player, and two face-up on the table. Each player could select one, either from their hand, or the table.

(Flix chose Faerie Dragonkin, Bhela chose Bookwyrm, Minnen chose Suspiciously Shiny, and Rezzy chose Ate Your Nestmates).

After that was Deed cards - six to each player, and one on the table. Players discarded one to the table, and then chose two, from their hand or the table.

(Flix chose Robbed a Potioneer and Extracted Tribute from a Druid. Bhela chose Recovered a Grimoire from a Ruined Tower and Sacrificed a Treasure to Tiamat. Minnen chose Saved Some Bandits... for Later and Indulged in a Manicure. Rezzy chose Smitten (by a Paladin) and Captured a Pixie. For those of you keeping track, they managed to take every single Deed that gave them combat-capable allies.)

Once everyone had their complete character, I ‘recapped’ last session. The PCs,between acts of banditry, counter-banditry and treasure-huntery, had fought and interrogated a member of the Smith-Cult. The Smith-Cult had captured Hax, the PCs surmising that dragonfire was an important component in magical item creation. So, they had traveled to the Big City (Garfellan), where they needed to find the headquarters of the Smith-Cult and get Hax back.

The Session:

I’m going to err on the side of brevity here, because it ran a lot like an ordinary session of a campaign. Folks settled into their characters, arrived at a new city, got a feel for the place, mingled and looked for information, did some scouting, got some exposition, came up with a plan, executed their plan, had a big fight, and got some twists dropped on them. 

I dropped plot threads and hooks left and right, some of which the PCs jumped on, others which they were interested in, but left fallow in interest of time. This particular miracle of PC-focus was achieved by me briefly stepping out of the metanarration to say, ‘Cool, I’m glad you’re interested in this. I’ll add it to your quest log, and it’ll come up in a later episode.’ Actually treating to your PCs like adults is amazing, folks.

So, in brief:

PCs arrive in town, drop their kit at a fancy inn, act snooty enough to get a line of credit, and sign up for the ‘rich and powerful people’ newsletter. Garfellan is a city in the throes of an Industrial Revolution. There are airships, lightning trains, mass production. They get a schedule of upcoming events, and go ‘we’ll take one of everything.’

DM Note: I was prepared for them to either act high class or low class. High class just meant they had to do a lot less legwork and administer fewer beatings, and eat a lot more hors d'oeuvres. The poor dears.

There’s a bit of information gathering, hampered by the fact that no one actually has Gather Information. Whoops. I rule they can use other social skills to do so, at a -4. They fill in some details about Garfellan.

The first big event is a lightshow at the local mage tower, The Stellarium (I said ‘The Star-Studded Tower’ in session. But Stellarium is much better, so I’m going to use that). They mingle, snack, and get brainless aristos’ impressions of what the mages are actually doing, of which the lightshow is only a side effect.

They sneak off in the middle, because they’d spotted something unusual. One of the effects of the ritual was to push back the smog and smoke of the city, to provide the tower with clear lines of sight to the stars. All well and good, but one building had kept putting up smoke unimpeded. The PCs figured that whatever was producing the smoke was at least as bamfy as the mage ritual. Like, say, dragonfire.

There are some hijinx as they cross most of town to the source. The PCs get out of them by a combination of stealth and panache. They do spot a burglary taking place at the First Magical Bank of Garfellan, but a peek after the thieves shows them getting pasted by the defending stone golem.

The source of the smoke is a octogonal building with few windows and lots of chimneys. It’s built like a fortress, and it resembles an amulet they’d taken off the Smith-Cultist they’d interrogated out in the country.

They return to the party, and have a run-in with the young Queen Egalatine and her regent, Alfonso Tybaltine. They consider killing the regent (who, naturally, wants to marry the Queen, and become king. He’s a mere thirty years older.), but settle for putting it on the to-do list.

The PCs try to push into the tower, and find out what exactly the mages did with their fancy ritual. They manage to get the unfortunate on door duty talking, one Ballestaria. She says that her fellow astronomers have come to a realization. They can’t change Fate, since that’s written in the stars. But they can change their perspective, and thus their Fates will be different. The ritual essentially installed a giant lense between the world and the stars, bending the light of the stars into a more favorable configuration.

The next day, the PCs devise a scheme, after confirming that the building they investigated was the smith-cult headquarters. They will play the part of the idle rich, and present a business deal to the Smith-Cult. They’ll start a fashion for massively overpriced wrought iron jewelry, accessories, etc, the Cult will have an exclusive contract, the conditions in Garfellan will ruin the pieces with rust almost immediately, and they’ll make millions. It’s just stupid enough to work. Especially since they’ve been hanging out with aristos for the last couple of days, so they know how dumb all this can get.

In any event, their scheme gets them in the door as guests, and quickly, an audience with the Master-Smith. When discussing the particulars, the PCs mention using dragonfire forging as a selling point offered by one of the Cult’s competitors. With some reluctance, the Master-Smith informs the PCs that the Cult can match that. And, eventually, is persuaded to let the PCs see the source of the dragonfire.

As the Master-Smith is escorting the PCs down to the holding cell, he’s called away on urgent business outside. The PCs are led to the dungeon by a lesser smith and escorts. The PCs confirm that Hax is in the dungeon, and launch a surprise attack.

They fight. Flix uses his shifting step ability to transport Hax out of the cell and into the midst of the enemy. The enemy regret this. Many breath weapons are flung. Minnen’s bandits, against all odds, survive.

At last, Hax and the PCs leave the dungeon, but decide to stop at the Cult vault on the way out. There, the find the doors already broken open, the guards slain, and three individuals in strange, baroque armor, lifting a silvery sword from the wall. The blade springs to life in their hands, shifting and flowing like quicksilver.

The githyanki charge Hax to remember the pact between their peoples, and join them. She does so. The sword-seeker extends an offer of alliance to the PCs, saying that the world is under the sway of the illithids, and that it needs to be cleansed. The PCs, after due consideration (and looting everything they can carry from the vault), agree, and follow the githyanki out.

Outside, the sky is split by an astral rift above the Stellarium, and astral dreadnaughts hang in the sky, bombarding the city below. The Incursion has begun, and the Prime Material will fall to the Githyanki.

The Wrap-Up:

I make a note of everything the players say they want to see in the following episode. I ask them whether they’d like to keep the same Templates, whether they want to add a different one, or advance the one they have. I find out that the players had been sitting on some of the activated Deeds because they thought they were for the whole campaign, not just for this episode. I agree to carry over most of those effects to the next episode.

We disperse, and I scheme for the next episode. Which includes writing this, as a way to collect my thoughts.

[junker-town]

The Toronto Raptors keep evolving instead of breaking

Toronto is modernizing its style and strengths even if an NBA title remains out of reach.

The Biosteel Centre has become the laboratory for the Toronto Raptors' reinvention experiments. During the tail-end of practices that are open to media observation, one can find four rims occupied by shooters, a hat-tip to their designs on internal improvement from beyond the arc. In the far-right corner, a fifth and final hoop is dedicated to the harder, non-habitual challenge of the Raptors' "culture reset" that is playing out, for the most part, on the offensive end.

Lorenzo Brown stands at the top of the key and receives a pick from Jakob Poeltl, who catches the ball on the roll, and bulldozes into assistant coach Nick Nurse, who is trying to stave off the 7-foot center with two pads. Instead of trying to finish through contact, Poeltl fires a drive-and-kick pass to Alfonzo McKinnie, in the corner, who misses a three. After a few more reps, Lucas Nogueira takes Poeltl's place. After that, it's the much-maligned Jonas Valanciunas, who, after a couple tries, starts hitting McKinnie right in the pocket.

“On time, on target passes. It’s something I know guys ad nauseam get tired of us talking about it and emphasizing,” says head coach Dwane Casey. “But I'm a firm believer that you are what you emphasize.”

The Raptors’ plan to bring back largely the same personnel for the 2017-18 season yet introduce a modern, pass-happy, 3-point heavy offense was met with reasonable skepticism. It felt like a stilted mandate, the plan of a team that acknowledges the problem but can't muster a solution. If they wanted to change things, why re-sign Kyle Lowry and Serge Ibaka to cap-killing deals, and retain Casey as coach?

Dan Hamilton-USA TODAY Sports

So far, they've made it work. At 15-7, the Raptors run the NBA’s fourth-most efficient offense. After finishing second-to-last in the NBA last season in assist ratio — the percentage of a team’s baskets that are assisted — they’re now in the top five. Casey’s goal, in training camp, was to shoot 30 treys per game. They’re shooting 32. The Raptors have always been able to rack them up, but their attack this season is more well-balanced, and they hope, harder to solve in the playoffs. In that regard, they’re certainly less solvable, but they’re still squarely behind the Cavs in Celtics in the Eastern Conference pecking order.

ERGE. #RTZ http://pic.twitter.com/3rKCOaS6h3

— Toronto Raptors (@Raptors) December 9, 2017

The Raptors, in the end, represent high aspirations with middling results. That is the story of most of us, and most of us don't wallow and recede merely because even at our best, we couldn't be astrophysicists. We try, and sometimes fail, to be good friends, good family members, good employees. Professional sports, of course, veer toward more win-or-go home propositions. Yet the sense of dread that accompanies most good-but-not great teams is conspicuously absent in Toronto. It is hard, it turns out, for mediocrity to become the expressed persona of a team that is so dedicated to maximizing its abilities.

As the Raptors inch closer and closer to their collective best, it is painfully clear they are a cut below elite. Yet the organization is filled to the brim with people who, everyday, are striving to be better teammates and coaches.

Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images

Whether or not the Raptors truly believe or don't believe they can win a championship is a question best left to psychics. But I can say this: Professional athletes are so defiant, so single-minded, that if the opponent was gravity, they'd fervently contend that it's still anybody's game in the middle of a free-fall. The Raptors, who ran into LeBron two playoffs in a row, know what it's like to fall.

When you're really up against it, self-belief gives way to self-reflection. The Raptors, who plodded around the court, and ran their actions through DeMar DeRozan, the NBA’s last standard-bearer for mid-range basketball, risked going extinct.

Dippin' into the bag of tricks early. #RTZ http://pic.twitter.com/RPgcxw1ZnB

— Toronto Raptors (@Raptors) December 6, 2017

That DeMar's parting offseason admission was that the Raptors were toast without LeBron James, but still entered this season with a renewed ambition to re-tailor his game in order to better serve his teammates, is some kind of beautiful. A beautiful that will not veer into the transcendent but will, over time, pay the bills.

“As a competitor,” says DeMar, “you wanna do every and anything to win. Sometimes, that comes with balance.”

Casey, on the other hand, is on his own mission against instinct: biting his tongue, as the Raptors hodgepodge of young talent works through their early kinks.

There's Pascal Siakam, busting out overzealous spin moves, taking threes early in the shot clock, dribbling around the world like an oversized Fred VanVleet, bobbling behind-the-back passes in transition. There's Norman Powell, driving into traffic, angles and helpers be damned, while OG Anunoby, fishing for steals, gets back-cut by Courtney Lee again.

“I don't wanna limit myself to just be an energy guy or whatever it might be,” says Siakam. “I want to expand my game, and I'm a hard worker. I started playing basketball late, so I have a lot of things I have to learn.”

To allow reps for Anunoby, Poeltl, VanVleet, Siakam, Powell, and Nogueira, Toronto is employing a 12-man rotation that, at this juncture, isn't showing any signs of tightening. Nobody has a short leash. Everybody's allowed to mess up. After spending three seasons in a row sweating every regular-season loss, the Raptors are finally making like a playoff team and treating it like a breeding ground. Sometimes, you can't act like you've been there until you've actually, you know, been there.

The Raptors, as a result, employ one of the best second units — the best, if you ask CJ Miles — in the NBA. None of the Raptors young guns projects to be a star, but they have helped strike the near-impossible balance of winning now and building for the future.

Bench mob connection. #RTZ http://pic.twitter.com/Gax156Lu03

— Toronto Raptors (@Raptors) December 9, 2017

The team had plenty of reasons not to make it work. DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry, career scorers, would have to shelve inborne habits. The shortened preseason hindered their ability to effectively implement a new system. The toughest stretch of their season came early, when the Raptors, in the absence of immediate results, would likely be most prone to reverting to old habits. They couldn't hit a shot for the first month of the season. DeRozan was overpassing. Lowry struggled to channel the appropriate moments for aggression.

“Training camp was tough because it was short. Trying to institute a new system, I thought, we're not there yet,” recalls Casey. “We really struggled in those exhibition games, and the first few games.”

Wax cynical if you must. But the Raptors persisted. And because of that, they managed to execute the blueprint for change that has left so many other franchise stars on the trading block and coaches unemployed. The task of real, appreciable change is often impossible at worst, and trying at best. The Raptors have done it, they’ve done it well, and they have no designs on reversion.

A Sideline Story

I am writing this, dear friends, to eat crow. Well, first, I have to tell on myself. There was a juncture of my life (read: the past year) where I was truly convinced that Andre Drummond just didn't like basketball. I wasn't the only one, and hey, there was evidence suggesting we were onto something. A tall dude without a lot offensive skill who had his first and only All-Star season in a contract year and then proceeded to fall off dramatically in all manner of non-fantasy stats? It was fishy, to say the least.

It turns out that Drummond had it in him to give a shit. A lot of shits, actually. He spent the offseason doubling his free-throw accuracy, which has settled in at 62 percent, allowing his lumbering frame to attract attention down low without being hacked. That is, combined with an attitudinal shift, why he's averaging four assists per game this season — his career high, prior to that, was one. Even when he isn't being doubled, he's done an excellent job of finding cutters from the high post, when opponents try to cheat on pick and rolls. His defense has been a mixed bag. One-on-one, he can't stay in front of quicker guys and ends up in no man's land when he's matched up against spacier guys. But he's gotten better at shutting down traditional pick and rolls, especially with Stanley Johnson on the court, and he's flicked guards out of the restricted area with ease.

.@AndreDrummond had that 20-20 vision tonight. Check out his 26-point, 22-board evening. #DetroitBasketball http://pic.twitter.com/lfXr6pYSNT

— Detroit Pistons (@DetroitPistons) November 28, 2017

I don't know what the backstory is behind Drummond's resurgence (and Detroit's, for that matter) is. I'll leave that to Lee Jenkins. But what's clear to me now was that I was stereotyping a tall dude. It’s also a reminder that when things aren't right with a player, the explanation is often deeper than what's happening at the surface level.