The number 1 rule of DMing is "if you think your players wouldn't do that, they most certainly will!" I love your kenku bard! You'll have to send me some tabletop stories of how your players are doing. I accidentally made exploding cookie dough back during a 2021 campaign, and it pops up in new campaigns all the time.
Speaking of cats, I came across two YouTube shorts of cats. Don't know how, never searched for nor showed an interest. Haven't posted them as I'm not sure it's allowed (they're not my clips).
I spent about 4 days with people screaming It's me, I used my AI bot skills to add them to your shorts. I think, in all fairness, cats are so popular that they just appear in shorts and reels at this point.
I still at some point have a full campaign prepared and ready to go in the pre-republic era of the outer rim warlord Xim's conflicts with the Hutts (eventually his janissaries and war droids were stopped by Boonta the Hutt, who got a holiday named after him) - a time in which the Jedi are barely heard of, blaster tech relies on big battery backpacks, and some familiar planets are very unfamiliar, like how Raxus Prime's ecosystem has yet to collapse. I and several friends run and play all sorts of tabletop RPGs, taking turns to run various games.
Yes, I'm very interested in heavy freight in the US! I hope the US can open a heavy freight route as soon as possible, and I personally dislike the DTG's official route mileage (40 miles) as the standard for route development. I also hope that future heavy freight routes in the US can be developed based on longer mileage, rather than like the DTG.
So, I could go on forever on D&D war stories (many I can't actually share on here), but here's two short ones... The first is from our actual D&D campaign. My Kenku loves books and reading as a Lore Bard, and has gotten into grimoires and some of the more necrotic and "naughty" dark magic as he finds them. One of the first ones he ever found was at a dark magic shop while out traveling, and it was supposed to be the "Grimoire of Polymorph" and allow him to cast that spell twice per day (long rest). Well, because it was homebrew, my DM had to physically add it to my inventory as a custom item. When she did, for whatever reason, her phone auto-corrected "polymorph" to "polygamy"... My DM starts laughing, tells me "This is hilarious, so we're keeping it!", and now I have a "Grimoire of Polygamy" in my inventory... The second is from my second ever session DM'ing my Star Wars campaign. I sent my players to Jedha to exchange credits for an Imperial data disc with an Imp Officer. Only, I didn't tell them that they were meeting an Imperial, only that they had to find their contact in a cantina, and that they would respond to the code phrase "Banthas mating is a hairy situation." So, instead of actually rolling investigation checks or anything, these two start chatting up every single person in the cantina except for the Imp sitting in a booth in the back because they were afraid of getting arrested. I have nothing but time, so I let them do this, but decide to play a joke, or at least so I thought... One of the cantina patrons that my normal DM talks to is a Wookie there with a friend of a different race, and when she asks them about the phrase, I have the Wookie start hitting on my DM (translated by his friend) thinking she'd freak out and bail... Nope! She ends up flirting back and trying to get a date with what's basically a throwaway character! So, now blushing, I have to try to back pedal to get her and my wife back on track so I don't have to RP "Wookie Dating Simulator." It was for sure one of our more interesting moments, lol. That's awesome! I'm not well-versed on the pre-Republic and old-Republic lore, but that's for sure an interesting route to take since it's not exactly mainstream or covered in depth beyond books and comics (most I think are considered Legends now too, if I'm not mistaken?). Speaking of Raxus, I play modded Empire at War and just had to take it as the Republic (I've been playing the Awakening of the Republic mod)... talk about a total slog! That's cool that you and your friends take turns. I know my DM really wants to play more often than just DM most of the time, and she will play with us in games as her own NPC's. I'd like to talk my wife into coming up with maybe a one-off to see if she'd enjoy DM'ing, but she's told me she's not great at coming up with stuff on the fly for the chaotic moments.
Okay but FR, I have recently been working on a whole bunch of linear maps for Foundry Virtual Tabletop, for a Snowpiercer game I plan on GMing.
Thanks for this thread, Candace. I started off in TSW because I wanted to experience North American freight; I have since learned to love high speed German passenger runs . . . It seems that every NA freight route so far has a huge flaw. Even recent releases have been a disappointment. For me, it is all about the driving experience which includes sounds - the engine and horn should rattle windows and peel paint - as well as accurate physics. Finally, EOTD monitoring, a train length counter, a functioning airflow meter, an accurate in cab accelerometer, and in cab signaling round things out. While some of the later releases such as Cajon Pass come close, the loco that puts it all together still seems to elude TSW. With mods available on PC, the ES44C4 on Cajon comes close for me. While a new route would be great, having locos with the same old issues would just lead to the same disappointment for me. Back in my TSC days, the best purchase I made was also the most expensive: the Searchlight Sims CP 4400. After that, it was difficult to drive anything else in TSC. What I think we really need is an expert NA freight loco that checks all the boxes, comes in multiple skins, and subs in for driving on routes such as Sherman Hill, Boston Sprinter, and Cajon.
While I agree, such a loco would have to come in multiple versions because CSX, UP and BNSF each had EMD and GE build slightly custom variants. Good God, back at the beginning DTG not only gave us two liveries for each of three locos, but the models were also different as well! And when they did SFJ a couple of years later, they still took care to give us a genuine UP GP38-2, not just a reskinned CSX (and yet a third for Oakville)
