Creative Questions: Episode 8

Episode Transcript

Desiree: Welcome to Creative Questions. The podcast where we attempt to review various creative projects we ourselves are part of and, or other people’s unique creations in an attempt to celebrate the creative inspiration in all of us. I am Desiree Silver, your host and owner of New Nerd Novelties and # own your weird lifestyle brand.

Liam: And I’m your co-host Liam Hewlett brother of said Desiree. Uh,

Desiree: back, back, back

Liam: Yeah, back again. Our post Halloween, post, post, Halloween Creative Questions. I’ve been through my holidays and I’m finally back into a working mood somewhat.

Desiree: Well, who’s really in a working mood?

Liam: Right. Yeah. It needed to happen though. Any more than two weeks. And my body starts breaking down already.

I was not doing any physical activity for two weeks. I go back to work and my legs are sore. Just because I hadn’t used them at all for two weeks, I’d basically sat in my chair and played video games the entire time, which has

Desiree: Guess I don’t have to ask you how you’re doing because apparently your legs hurt.

Liam: Uh, they did just for the one day. I’m okay now. I had my second shift and that wasn’t the case, but they hurt enough that it actually made it a bit difficult to sleep that first time coming back.

Desiree: I guess you got to do a little bit of exercise if you’re going to be alone for two weeks.

Liam: Uh, Nope. Two weeks is enough. Three weeks then okay. I’ll think about it. But two weeks I’ll accept one day’s worth of like minor, minor discomfort. It’s not worth the effort to pick up an exercise routine. And I’ll say that. During that time though, I somewhat knew this was the case I actually am more productive when I’m working, because I have myself on a more consistent schedule.

So hobby-wise, I got practically nothing done during my holidays, but that’s okay because I hadn’t set out to do anything during my holidays. So I don’t feel bad for having not accomplished a goal because I knew myself well enough to not set one at that time.

Desiree: Well, that’s what a holiday is for to holiday. Sometimes it’s from even the stuff you enjoy.

Liam: Yeah. Yeah. I just needed a bit of time to do whatever I felt like on a day to day basis. And which leads to me picking up a new MMO usually.

Desiree: Did you?

Liam: Yeah, I did. I was playing elder scrolls online and I still am. I’m enjoying that.

Desiree: Is that new? I thought older school. It’s an old, old game. Sorry.

Liam: Elder scrolls is an old franchise, but the MMO is one of their newer entries into that franchise. It’s not new, like within the last few years or whatever it’s been around for a long time. Most MMOs are forever games, so you can pick them up and play them whenever you want it to. Like, I played final fantasy 14 this year too of the two I’m preferring ESO.

And I’ve put about the same amount of time in both of them at this point, I’m still playing it and I’m enjoying it. One of the things that I am enjoying the most about it is that I get to somewhat, role-play some of my characters from Dungeons and Dragons. I get to pretend.

Desiree: Oh as you can creature create them to be close enough to them?

Liam: Close enough. Yeah. Like I can at least get an approximation.

It’s not set in, in the same world and they’re not the same exact races, but they’re closer than most other games. I would have been able to come by. Like the character that I’m playing the most from my D and D world is a character called Schrock. Who’s an NPC I made for the party to interact with that.

I really like, I liked Schrock a lot. And so to the party, he’s like one of our favored NPCs, and they spent a lot of time interacted with him and stuff like that. And he is a lizard folk, a very pragmatic sort of ex commando ex slave kind of guy that is quite harsh. And blunt. He’s, he’s old, he’s kind of the personified version of my blunt, pragmatic, vigilante justice side.

He’s on the more, a Punisher end of the moral spectrum. And he is very physical. He’s a fighter, right? That’s all he does, but he’s also a lot more intelligent than people give him credit for. And he kind of plays into that because he is of a, of a bestial race. Right. So he’s all about the intimidation.

He’s not about the persuasion. And I like that character quite a lot. And so in elder scrolls online, you can play and Argonian, which are lizard people. And you can do that in most of these elder scrolls games, you can make an Argonian and that’s not something that you’re usually able to do in most MMOs.

A lizard guy is not a common character race. So,

Desiree: No more like Orc guy or something that.

Liam: Yeah. A very common elves dwarves humans, and then like second, most common orcs, right? Like gnomes you’d go down the list and lizard is pretty close to the bottom of that list. Right? The, the same amount of games have lizards as they do furries and

Desiree: Yeah, that’s pretty far down.

Liam: Right.

Yeah. ESO has both of those. So cause they have Kajeet as well, which are the cat people. So it’s nice to be able to play as Schrock and the game. Unlike final fantasy, the game is diverse enough and how you can create your character and the build for your character and the equipment you put on your character.

I could actually role play as Schrock and that he’s wears like light or medium armor wears leather armor. He uses a shield and an ax and just goes around, kicking the shit out of people. The only thing he doesn’t have, which he would have in the D and D world is a javelin. He spends a lot of time throwing javelins as a fighter.

And that’s one of his like specializations, but, they don’t have that weapon in ESO. Besides that though, he even has like a lizard bipedal lizard mount to ride it’s less Raptor and more tadpole with legs that it’s like horse size in ESO, but it’ll have to do, I guess.

Desiree: That sounds really ugly!

Liam: It is, but it’s the closest I could get to a Raptor.

Desiree: It’s a tadpole with legs. Poor Raptor. How far you’ve fallen.

Liam: It’s better than having Schrock ride a horse. That just wouldn’t be right. I mean, he’d more likely eat a horse than ride it.

Desiree: Yeah, yum horsemeat.

Liam: Especially, and I kind of enjoy this, his legs are just superior to most mounted creatures that he could ride. And that’s true in the game as well. I can sprint faster than I can ride.

Desiree: That’s funny.

What’s the point? Oh, I, so you don’t get tired if you’re running around.

Liam: Yeah, you don’t, the, the horse gets tired rather than you do. So that’s kinda, what I’ve been doing is role-playing some of my characters, I have actually two in ESO because my other one that when I started with it, I didn’t want to make shock my first character just in case I fucked it up.

So that first character was Al candor and I really like Al candor. And so is our party. He’s one of our other favorite NPCs from the campaign, because he’s a very,

Desiree: For people who don’t know what’s an NPC, by the way?

Liam: It’s a non-player character. It’s generally not something that the players will play, but they’ll interact with on a periodic basis.

Desiree: And you make those because you’re the dungeon master.You have to play and control them just in case people didn’t know what that means.

Liam: Yes. And Al candor is a unique case because, when COVID first started, some of the guys didn’t want to gather together for our D and D sessions. So we just reduced the size of the D and D sessions to the guys that wanted to come and continue playing D and D. So we went from a group of four people, plus the DM to two plus a DM, which is still fine by me.

I just created a different set of one scenarios for the guys that did want to come. And one of those one-shot scenarios that I did was with this character called Al candor. And along with another character, like I gave them a choice, the two guys of characters that I had created that they could play for this one shot.

So they didn’t have to make a whole new character, which is a multi-session process sometimes to make a new character. Instead, I just presented them with a character, gave them like some items of benefits, some spells, and we’re like, okay, this is the adventure. And then they had a goal. And, we worked the whole session to get to that goal, whether they accomplish it or not, but they basically, yes.

And the way I had said it, I made it. So it was set in the fantasy world, like my fantasy world alongside the parties, regular adventures with characters that they had either seen or somewhat interacted with on the periphery so that they, it was not just a side quest, but a side story side quest. Right?

So it had some relevance in the world. It gave them a perspective that their characters wouldn’t have had because they weren’t present for it. And it allowed them to interact more with the world and help flush out my world while also being an adventure for the two guys rather than the full party and having the full party remain untouched. So that when the guys did want to come back, we could pick up from where we were at and we didn’t have to try to pretend to play their characters or anything like that.

Desiree: Good, um, good thing. You have this website up with all the pictures and the, and the results and stuff. So the guys who didn’t play that game could be like, Hey, you know, I want to hear what happened with the side story.

Liam: Yeah. And that’s also one of the, well, was one of the driving motivators for when I was doing the recaps of, I would do digital recaps where I’d take photos of like all of the major events that happen during that session, and then send them out to anybody that was interested with like a, a recap of that session so that it wasn’t just for the guys that did play.

It was also for the ones that were not there at the time. But Al Kander was one of these NPCs that the guys could have chosen to play. And one of them did. And his whole thing is he’s basically a Firebug, he’s a wizard that refuses to learn any spell that doesn’t have to do with fire. So in

That’s a little bit limiting.

Yeah. In, in, in D and D especially fifth edition, there’s a lot fewer fire spells than you would assume. Uh, there’s a lot, especially as a wizard, there’s love utility spells that you can get like that. Or some of them would even consider necessary for wizard survival, like magic missile or shield or major armor Al Canada doesn’t care about any of that shit.

It’s got to burn things or set something on fire. Otherwise he’s not into it. And, one of the other unique things about my world and player characters within my world, and most adventurers, they have some sort of unique quirk, which is very similar to some sort of superpower. Oftentimes they’re very small because the way it quirks work, like they’re like muscles in my world.

The more you use it, the more you exercise it, the more powerful but becomes. So low-level adventurers generally. Small, minor quirks that have a significant downside or something like that. But if they live to become a real boy, then it might turn into something that’s really powerful. And Al candor’s quirk was that he could cast fireball and there were playing level five characters at the time, a fireball is a level is a third level spell.

So he wouldn’t even have had access to it. Like the, the way spells work in D and D is they go up to ninth level. But the, the levels of the characters go up to 20. So it’s basically like getting a third level spell as a fifth level. You would have to get to, I believe it’s at least six level to get a third level spell.

And so he had a bunch of second level and first level spells, but he had this one once a day, he cast fireball and the restriction was that when he cast fireball, he became paralyzed for. Which a minute in D and D combat

Desiree: it. Yeah.

Liam: And parallelization in D and D is devastating. You’re basically helpless.

Anything can walk up to you and just like automatically crit you and that’s, especially for a wizard that doesn’t use any kind of defensive magic. You’re just going to be completely fucked. Right. Uh, so

Desiree: And crit ,crit means kill. Basically.

Liam: Double damage, right? They, they will double the damage. And if you’re a wizard, especially a level five wizard you have, so few hit points, a wet paper bag could probably strangle you to death.

Desiree: Oh, no. I’m thinking of you creating a wet paper bag monster.

Liam: Yeah. Uh, I’ll think about it. If they ever start off at level one, again,

Desiree: Yeah. We’d be like, no, it’s not the flying snake this time guys.

Liam: It’s the wet paper bag. I’ve animated, a bunch of grocery bags to fight. So, it’s was honestly not all that useful. The fireball is a very powerful spell, right. And it’s very signature Al candor. The other thing I did is every round in combat, most often the intellectual choice, like the, the strategist choice, the tactical choice, wouldn’t be just not to cast it, or if you’re going to cast it only cast it when you are safe.

Right. But Al candor has an inherent need to blow shit up, especially with his quirk. So he would have to take progressive, wisdom, saving, throws, every turn. He did not cast it and was in combat and they would get more difficult to the point where he would just cast it.

Desiree: He’s a nut!

Liam: Exactly. And so, that test would also apply if you had not used fireball that day.

So they would be setting up camp and it would just get pretty aggressively more difficult for Al candor, not to just randomly fireball something because he hadn’t that day. The character description, I made this, uh, the miniature was a bright wizard or it had a bright wasn’t. I didn’t have to paint it.

Right. And so bright was as are like bright red robes. I’ve got torches on the, both of their they’re very Warhammer, right. Everything. I’m more hammers metal as hell. And it’s turned out to 11. So he’s got torches on both shoulders. His hair is literally on fire. He’s missing an eye. And like his beard is all singed right.

That’s Al candor to a T. So the guys loved playing Al candor. He was just like, I, I gave him that and they’re not like a heavy role-playing group. They’re much more of a, like, they like the strategic aspect, the more the gamey aspect of D and D. But I gave him one of the guys Al candor and it instantly became like the favorite character on the table.

And, uh, they had a blast!

Desiree: What’s he going to do next? You going to blow shit up? Is it going to be our shit or their shit? Uh oh.

Liam: Yeah. The highlight of that session, because we only ever played that session for one session. The other guy chose to play the gnome barbarian, NAR. Um, so his Mount was a boar and it was very much like gnomes are not generally made to be physical classes because they’re much more.

They’re small, right? They’re definitely more fit for being the intellectual. Like spellcaster kind of guy. That’s what their race lends them towards. But this was a known barbarian. He was basically a miniature Spartan is what we made. It was just hilarious because the two of these characters, the gnome barbarian and Al candor, the fire wizard could not intimidate a fishermen in a fishing village for information for the life of them.

Like four roles, it was two it was an attempted persuasion and then intimidation check by the gnome, a failed attack role by the gnome. And then another failed role from Al candor to cast a spell at this peasant in order to try to intimidate him, which ended up with Al candor, failing his wisdom saving throw, and firing off his fireball in the tree, above this guy, and then collapsing, paralyzed, and having NAR have to drag him away in shame. So

Desiree: You guys can’t really make this shit up. It’s just the roll of the dice.

Liam: It was, yeah, it was definitely, that’s how it went. Like by all means they should have rolled up to this fishermen flexed in front of him and he would have told them what they needed to know, but they just could not do it. And it led to a much more entertaining and memorable story because of that.

Desiree: Hey, remember that day? Shhh we don’t speak of it.

Liam: Yeah. Yeah. That was the most memorable part of that session. That guys still talk about that. So that, that was the other, the first character that I did make was Al candor. And he, cause he was a very easy choice. It was literally just look at the class that has the most fire abilities and then only ever pick anything that has fire. Fuck anything else? So he’s a really easy character to make. I could make, I could make him an anything. He’s also a human, so I could make him in literally any game, most games have some sort of fire spells or fire specialization. And he’s a great character. I love Al candor,

Desiree: He’s not even an elf or anything?

Liam: Just a human.

Desiree: Cause humans are crazy.

Liam: Yeah. He’s, he’s just a, he’s a Firebug man.

Like as a wizard with a predilection to burning things, he doesn’t fit in very well. That’s the thing about them too, when they found him, he’s definitely the black sheep of the mercenary group that he works with. They pawn them off on people to get them out of the camp.

Desiree: He’s going to blow shit up again. Can you take him for a while?

Liam: Yeah. Hopefully he’ll blow something up that you want him to blow up. Not all of the stuff over here.

Desiree: You know, like the munitions. Thanks.

Liam: Yeah. I based that quirk that he has off of an anime. There’s a character in an anime. I forget what the anime is called. People will recognize it when I when I mention it, no doubt, but, the character is a mage that, uh, she loves the spell explosion and she could become like a higher level of mage and learn higher-level magic, but she doesn’t want to, like, all she cares about is making her one spell explosion, which is what she uses all of her mana bar and basically leaves her completely exhausted from casting it once.

She just wants to make the biggest brightest, coolest explosion she possibly can. And that’s what I based Al candor’s quirk off of he’s basically that anime character put into D and D.

Desiree: Except he seems more crazy cause he’s not female and cute.

Liam: Oh yeah. No, he’s, he’s ugly as hell is missing an eyes beards’ all singed. He probably smells like burnt,

Desiree: Burning

Liam: Burnt hair at all times. Yeah.

Desiree: Like a barbecue gone wrong.

Liam: But he’s a fun character. I really liked giving the guys that character to play with. Cause it definitely helped them see what they could do with their characters of like, it doesn’t have to be too complicated. Right. It’s literally Al is a one note character. I like fire. Fire is cool. How long has it been since I’ve set something on fire?

Desiree: I must fire again.

Liam: Right. And you can still have so much fun with it. So like you don’t have to do a whole lot to get a bit of a role-play out of your characters and make something really memorable out of it. that, that’s what I’ve been mostly doing is my role playing my D and D characters while I play MMOs. But how about yourself?

You’ve done a lot more project wise since Halloween certainly.

Desiree: I had a lot of stuff to do. Yeah. Well, it’s been a little while we attempted to film another one of these with mom, but it didn’t work out so well. So a heads up, she will be a special guest at some point soon. Just not right now.

Liam: Technical difficulties up the wazoo.

Desiree: Yeah, I think we’ll, we’ll figure it out now that we’ve got this going, but yesterday was my injection day.

I have an injection every 8 weeks for my medication for Crohn’s and I’m still recovering from that. I don’t feel too great because I spent the whole day yesterday getting head shots. So I drove yeah. All the way from Coquitlam to Vancouver.

Liam: Before or after your injection?

Desiree: Before, of course,

Liam: Good plan.

Desiree: After I get my injection, I pass out. So I had a beaver buzz energy drink.

I don’t drink energy drinks. I only drink energy drinks to do the Coquihalla to go to Kamloops. And apparently if I have to do anything involving driving for hours on my injection day, and Vancouver is full of traffic and full of construction, I literally had to go through all of it to get there. Cause Kits is almost at the, the ass end of Vancouver.

Liam: Oh yeah. That’s way far away from where you are.

Desiree: Great, great views though. You can see the water, you can see the bay there.

Liam: Not somewhere closer, the company that you’re getting it from.

Desiree: Well, no Vancouver, Vancouver was the closest that they had someone with the company that was free. I’m not gonna argue. That’s fine. He did it at his house and his house was on the eighth floor. When you could see the water and great views of Vancouver.

So that was kinda nice. Black backdrop and my bright lime green hair right now, which I just got dyed. Oh, you’ve got lime green hair. Uh, when I saw your pictures on Google, it was blue. Like, yeah, actually my last color was orange. So this is new. He’s like, yeah, I like it. Oh, I’ve got a black background.

Everything’s going to stand out. So that was interesting. It’s always weird for me because I haven’t had headshots done since graduation. And I’m not going to tell you how long ago that was.

Liam: Yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever, well, I guess I had headshots done during, school, like grade school.

Desiree: Yeah, but you didn’t do the graduation ones. So those were the only ones that were in like a actual photo studio.

Liam: Yeah. I’d never done a studio. I only ever did them in the school and they stopped doing them when I became a teenager and I stopped cooperating very well.

Desiree: What did you do?

Liam: I think the last year I got one because I dropped out in like grade 10 or whatever to go do more homeschooling, which eventually I just stopped doing. But I think my grade nine one, I was scowling,

Desiree: Oh yeah. You refuse to smile. Mom was so mad.

Liam: I was like, but I don’t. That was the thing I’m like, this is unnatural.

Desiree: Put a smile on for grandma. I don’t care.

Liam: No, that’s just like, that’s a lie. I’m not going to lie to the fucking camera.

Desiree: I got a couple of weird ones too. He made me feel really relaxed and his wife was there. He there around mom and dad’s age. So they’re like, oh, I thought it was really cool that we can do like unusual headshots. Cause I’m used to doing the corporate stuff. I’m like, no, this is the company that I have is called New Nerd Novelties.

And I want to do something a little different. So he’s like, I looked it up. I looked up your website and I saw some of the cool stuff you do. That’s kind of neat. So I have some ideas here, you know, unconventional things. So we did a couple of like with my hands up poses and like looking to the side and it is cute.

Liam: Yeah. I’m when do you think you’re gonna get those back?

Desiree: I just did before this, but they’re huge. So I didn’t have time to resize them to send them.

Liam: Uh, okay, so you got them, got them digitally then I imagine.

Desiree: Yeah, I got them.

Liam: I guess that’s how they’re done nowadays. Yeah.

Desiree: Yeah. So I’m going to have to resize them before I can show any of them, but I was pretty happy with myself.

Liam: I’d be interested to see those.

Desiree: It doesn’t look like me because to me I’m still that person who was on weight Watchers and half my size.

So I don’t know who this is, but she’s got great hair

Liam: Nice.

Desiree: And good glasses,

Liam: And it’s well lit, no doubt. Right?

Desiree: Very well lit, and no glare really off the glasses.

Liam: You had, you had glasses early though, like

Desiree: In grade 10.

Liam: Yeah, yeah. Glasses back in high school.

Desiree: That’s what I get for reading in the dark. I mean, really,

Liam: Our entire family. I’m the only person that in our family that doesn’t have glasses. And I had some of the worst habits.

Desiree: You had glasses,

Liam: Yeah. I had glasses, but I still had the best eyesight in the family.

Desiree: Yeah, but I’ve got the best ear, like ability to hear compared to you guys.

Liam: That’s undoubtable.

Desiree: You guys probably all beat me and at smell. I can’t smell shit anymore. I then it annoys me because then I want to, I smell bad things, right. So I want to spray nice smelling things, places and Dori, and I are both allergic to perfumes stuff. So I always use the essential oils, which is really, really strong. And it’s too much for Dory because by the time I can smell it, he he’s like, ah, that’s too much. I’m like, damn it. I can’t smell it until now.

So I got head shots done and I was down in that area. I went to this bookstore. We really like, it’s a pagan bookstore. It’s called Baneyan Books. It was only five, five minutes away. I thought I kinda knew the area. I don’t know Vancouver very well, but I’m like, I’m pretty sure that bookstore is there.

So I went there and I bought a book on witchy sewing, which is like ritualistic sewing for witchy things, which is kind of cool. Cause you can like, sew in your intentions to a garment or use it for ritual purposes as well, because the act of sewing is kind of like a ritual in itself.

Liam: Any, anything that has repetitious motion can be called a ritual, right?

Desiree: And any kind of like chanting is always like repetition of syllables if not words and like, so it’s all kind of interconnected. So that’s kind of cool because it was written by a lady who liked me is a, solitary pagan practitioner who taught herself as well as someone who taught herself to sew. So like, that’s just like me because I didn’t really take any classes for any of those things.

And I’m a solitary. So I thought that was kind of neat. I’m enjoying that book so far. I always love going to Banyan cause they’ve got all kinds of fun things. They’ve got oils, they got rocks, they got books. It’s like Dori and I’s paradise. And there’s a guy that I saw on a market a long time ago for the pagan pride market.

And he has essential oils and incense, and I recognized his brand. Cause it’s all custom handmade by him. And I ordered some more from them because I love his essential oils. And that was kind of nice. Cause I have one I bought from him from like four or five years ago and it’s going to run out and I’m like, I would like more because this guy is so cool and he’s an ex Mason, he’s a pagan.

It like, there’s so many similarities that lives around here. So I thought that was really cool too, that he was in this really well-known bookstore downtown. So that’s made it, man. I want some of my stuff in that kind of a place. You know what I mean? That’s made it.

Liam: Well, just having a store in downtown Vancouver, it’s gotta be profitable because either that, or you inherited the property because

Desiree: Well it’s an old, like it’s been around 70 years. I think something like that. It’s an institution. So I’m really, I’m really glad to be able to go there. And also Christmas presents, I’m still collecting, but who knows when we will be able to see each other.

Liam: Yeah. Yeah. I gotta do that.

Desiree: Had a bit of a problem with flooding. Yeah.

Liam: Well, the roads I believe are open again. Cause we’re recieving frieght.

Desiree: Are they on the Coq?

Liam: Where we’re receiving freight. Where I work and it was only closed for like two or three days. So,

Desiree: But was it between Alberta and you guys or us up?

Liam: Yes.

Desiree: Yeah. Cause it’s probably from Alberta. I bet

Liam: Well, we get from both sides.

Desiree: Yeah,

Liam: I don’t know the details of that specifically. I don’t think it will be close for all that long.

Desiree: I hope not. I mean some of the bridges were like completely washed out. I saw the pictures because I just literally went through that area. Cutting it up for the pipeline and they’re all around those bridges. It was pretty scary.

Liam: Yeah. Even then we’ve still got close to a month as it is. So

Desiree: I hope so. But it just don’t, you know, cause it’s the winter and you guys already have snow. It’s probably just going to be hard for them to work on it. That’s all.

Liam: Yeah, it says one thing that we did get, we got our first snowfall. It’s mostly gone by now. But we at least had the first one come down, got the snowblower out.

Desiree: It’s still warm here. When I drove to kits yesterday, it was sunny and blue skyed.

Liam: Yeah, no scraping your car. I’m definitely having to do that every time I get off my shift.

Desiree: I’ve only done that once so far. Yeah. But I don’t go very many places, which is a good thing because we’re being gas rationed and at the moment, so.

Liam: Yeah. Yeah. Not that you could afford to really go over the ration as it is anyway, with the prices as they are.

Desiree: It’s 30 liters. And honestly, that was almost enough to fill up my tank. I forget how big my tank is probably on purpose because I don’t want to know how much it costs to put the, because when I bought it originally, it was like 50 bucks a tank we’re way further away from that So.

Liam: I only ever put $50 in my tank. It just goes less and less.

Desiree: Yeah, exactly. Me I’m like, Hmm, I can get this much for it. And I’m going to put that much in it and hope it lasts. So, I also have some pictures here in the link dump of some of the other stuff I was doing.

Liam: You’ve got some projects you’ve been working on.

Desiree: Lots of stuff to do because my timing with this group, the thrive group that work gave me that I was doing all this entrepreneurship stuff with, including the headshots that I got for free it’s ending on December 1st.

So I’ve been trying this month to get all I possibly can done with them. I finished my front and back my first set of cards and I finished my front and back my second set too. I tried to send those to you, but there were PDF. So maybe we’ll see about a JPEG later, but yeah, I’ve got my own, my weird own, your weird lifestyle brand one.

And then my New Nerd Novelties. Relearning Photoshop again, but man Photoshop is 10 times better to a hundred times better than when I first learned it. A couple of clicks and I’m like, man, I could already do that first set of cards better than I did. And I just did them two weeks ago.

Liam: Yeah. We always say it, but especially digital tools that they have just consistently gotten more user-friendly sometimes in some aspects, we were just talking about the zoom versus other like services, like discord and how there are some that are just ass backwards for no reason. But

Desiree: And that’s because it’s corporate.

Liam: Because it’s targeted towards a different audience, whereas things that are actually targeted towards creators and their market, but even towards the consumer market, right.

Like phones at this point, basically just have a simplified Photoshop within their photo editing software. There

Desiree: And that’s the stuff they come with.

Liam: Yeah, they just come with it.

Desiree: You can download some too. Yeah,

Liam: I’ve seen the ads for the new Google phone that allows you to cut people out of an image. That’s just a Photoshop process.

Right. That’s stuff that Photoshop has always specialized in. Now it’s just like in built into your phones, editing software.

Desiree: Well, my brand new pixel, which is a Google phone, just the one underneath the next one. The next one that they’re advertising on TV can translate as you go. Like you talking to your phone, it’s translating for the person in the other language. And it had like some crazy video stuff too Dori was looking at.

He was like, oh my God, we just bought phones, but that looks so cool. I’m like, we don’t need any more.

Liam: Well, even a few years ago there was an app. I don’t even own a phone anymore, but I know that this app existed a few years ago, which means it’s probably a lot better now, but it would allow you to point your phone camera at text and it would turn it from whatever language it was into a different language.

I mean, it was

Desiree: Yeah. That’s actually on pixel phone.

Liam: Yeah. I mean, it’s Google translate but a rough estimate estimation at best, but it’s still way better than nothing. Right.

Desiree: Yes, way better. Technology is a weird fun thing. Lately I’ve been trying to stay off social media because of that whole flooding thing was freaking me out. So I’ve been on Pinterest a lot because Pinterest has nothing to do with current events at all. And it’s starting to show me a lot of look at these different photo and video effects you can do for your marketing, for your small business.

And I’m like, oh, that stuff looks cool.

Liam: Love it.

Desiree: And it’s all on the phone. I’m like, I could easily do this myself. That’s pretty cool. So I’m kind of excited about that. My marketing is a pain in the ass. It is cause you sink so much time into it, but now with these tools, it doesn’t seem yeah.

Liam: I just, I do. Thank you. Thank God. I’m not trying to do anything like that. I gave up on social media when I was in the fucking eighth grade.

Desiree: There wasn’t really social media then.

Liam: I know I was done with it by then. It was at, at the time, what was MS MSN?

Desiree: That was it.

Liam: Was it, was it just MSN or what was the,

Desiree: And live journal and MySpace.

Liam: That’s what it was.

It was my, it was my space where I’m like, this is bullshit. I’m done. I was, I was out, the first interaction with social media and I was like, mm, not for me.

Desiree: No, I don’t mind it. Cause it’s a lot of artists creation as well. So it’s just a different media form.

Liam: Mom loves it. She spends so much time on her Facebook.

Desiree: So scared when she discovers Tik Tok. It’s not going to be good.

Liam: She spent so much time on her Facebook. She wouldn’t have any time for Tik Tok.

Desiree: No, she wouldn’t have any time to do anything she had Tik Tok, honestly, she don’t tell her.

Liam: Now Facebook’s for her, right? Facebook’s definitely more of her targeted demographic,

Desiree: Well, she loves the videos and that’s what Tik Tok is. It’s just 30 second

Liam: Right?

Desiree: And so she could be there for hours and hours and hours just going down a rabbit hole of who knows what kitty, kitty photos.

Yeah. Well, some of the, some of the stuff I was doing for the business too, is, I talked to Teela for my business website and she’s like, you know what?

I’m just waiting for you to tell me to go ahead and do it. So by the end of the week, I’m going to have three of every category of three hundred words, and she’s going to start it.. So I’m excited for that. As well as the funny thing is, like I said, the photographer looked me up when I was going to get headshots.

Well, the guy who was helping me register my business name did the same thing and they’re both like, oh, that’s really cool. I’m like, well, that’s interesting. The people who are helping me with my business are actually inadvertently marketing for me. The marketing team at thrive also emailed me to be like, Hey, we’re, you know, focusing our newsletter for small businesses this week or a month or whatever.

And they’re like, can we get a write up from you? And then we’ll share it in our newsletter and the people that I did my logo with the other day as well, like same deal. We’re going to do a newsletter. We’re focusing on entrepreneurship and small business. Do you want to, I’m like, hell yeah, this is marketing for me free.

Right. So I’m hoping to get that least set up. So I have at least somewhere for them to go. I mean, social media is good, but you can’t really buy on social media as well as a website.

Liam: A lot of social media doesn’t even have links to its original sources either. That’s the problem. I, well, one of the problems I have with it a lot is you don’t know the source of what you’re looking at most of the time. Even if you want to.

Desiree: Yeah. And so I made a couple of things obviously to add to my stock because that’s what I do. Particularly on my injection weeks when I’m feeling unable to put proper words together. So writing a hundred words, et cetera, is not a good idea for me when I’m brain fogging. So I made bows while i was up in Kamloops and I got pictures of those.

They’re just made of vinyl scraps. I put the bow ends on them too. I made a million. I had to, well, like 30 plus.

I had to, uh, yeah, I was just sitting there for a couple of days and mom’s cat decided that I had to give her pieces of vinyl as a tribute or she’d steal my good stuff. So we made these bows. There was vinyl scraps everywhere. And then I have a commission for a lady that asked me to help make her a movie monster poster wallet from October who was very nice to wait because October is my busiest season and I had that market. So I came back and I decided to make three coffin wallets. Cause I never made just one of anything, especially if one’s sold.

So I added new technique that I used for these, the outside fabrics were actually cotton woven, which is usually you would use vinyl for durability because it’s the outside of your wallet. So I had to use this new stuff called ODI coat, which is a gel that you put on the outside of the fabric to make it waterproof.

Which is quite weird, actually. And then you heat activate it with your iron or your heat press, and then it’s now waterproof. So I did that for the sheep, the Coraline, and the movie monster fabric in the pictures that you can see.

Liam: So as you use a, an iron, it doesn’t look like they’re much larger than a, you’d be able to probably fit them onto your iron.. Or did you get ahead? Borrow heat press?

Desiree: Yeah. I use, I have a, I just use the iron, move it in spots. Eventually I’m getting a heat press, hopefully.

Liam: It’d be interesting to feel the texture of these. I wonder what it

Desiree: It’s weird. Dori does not like to touch them. He’s like, it feels it’s. Have you tried touching those new books? How they’re kind of this weird, not glossy, but matte kind of scratchy?

That’s what he thinks. They feel like it’s

Liam: I think I kind of get what you’re laying down.

Desiree: Yeah. Or like, when you have those changing images and the school, we had the agendas and it

Liam: Uh, yeah, yeah,

Desiree: It, it doesn’t bother me. It doesn’t feel like if you run your nails against it, it’ll be nails on a chalkboard, but it’s different and it’s waterproof and it looks like it’s durable.

I just had to line it with something a bit more stiff, which is normal with these wallets. Anyway. And then I used some cool fabrics from different fabric groups, all custom on the inside, as well as the accent. So I made a Coraline, creepy sheep, Penta, sheep it’s called from black sheep fabrics, sheeps with Pentacles, and then the movie monsters.

And she really wanted the, a Poltergeist Poltergeist. Yeah. On the outside. She said that scared the crap out of her when she was a kid. The Exorcist, the Exorcist. So I made sure that was like front and center on the very front. I didn’t take very good photos of this cause I gave it to her immediately after I finished it.

And then I made sure that The Exorcist, this was in the inside as well. And then I used a different technique for closures on this one. I noticed my friend, Nicky, and mum’s coffins that I’ve given them because they put so much crap in them. They look like a sub sandwich. They kind of need a better closure just in case anybody else’s like that.

I made the closure a bit looser so they could stuff more in it and on the outside. And I made it a magnetic snap. So hopefully it’ll last longer.

Liam: So that’s learning,

Desiree: Yeah.

Liam: Observing, observing the practical use of it.

Desiree: And well because mom already blew her snap out, so I’ll have to do that to hers too probably.

Liam: Yeah, that sounds about right. It’s only supposed to be for like cards and cash, but still

Desiree: It’s got everything in it.

Liam: Now.

Desiree: Just about so those two are still available to be bought. I really love the purple woodgrain on the inside of this one. And

Liam: The Coraline one?

Desiree: Uh, that’s actually the Pentasheep.

Liam: It’s got a rainbow zipper too.

Desiree: Then I decided that I wanted to make myself slippers, but I sweat too much. I have this weird thing with slippers now because when I was younger, I can wear slippers just fine, because I had no body fat. Now I’ve got lots of body fat and I sweat a lot, but my feet bones, don’t like to be cold.

None of my joints do so, like I cover my knees with leggings and stuff to try and keep the cold out, but I could probably be warm as long as my chest was covered and my feet and my hands were covered. I probably still be warm. So I’ve got tile in my house and tile goes up into the bones and just makes it so cold and seeps in.

I don’t like that. It hurts. So I’ve made these, these weird little booties. I found a pattern for basically kind of like moccasins, but they’re this wrap shoes, slipper that apparently lots of little kids wear. So this is an adult version and you make the base out of something really durable. And I use leather and I just made wraps around my ankles and the heel of your foot.

Liam: So this specific heating, cooling problem that you’re talking about, your, the reason why legwarmers were existed were created.

Desiree: Honestly, I think so. I don’t know what the hell they use them for before, but legwarmers helped with my knees and my ankles, but I don’t really need those inside the house. So I made these so I could wear a sock and sometimes my toes get cold. So that’s why I occasionally wear socks, but then my ankles are cold.

So I made these ankle wraps out of fur and fleece and snaps. And that’s what those bloody weird looking things are, is my new ankle wraps. I’m probably going to make the full shoe for a bunch of people, but don’t tell them it’s for their Christmas presents.

Liam: I will tell no one then. Cause I don’t know who you’re giving it to.

Desiree: Exactly. But everybody should love me if they do get one with any kind of fleece any kind of fur cause that stuff. You never thought you would be a hairdresser to be a sewist. I had to trim down all this fur it’s a good thing this is for me cause there’s fur all over my house, everywhere.

Liam: On top of the cats.

Desiree: In my drinks, on my clothes, in my underwear, on the floor, it sheds everywhere, but it feels like a real soft cat.

Liam: That’s at least. Yeah. Nice. And it it’s not wet dog or anything. It smells good probably. Or at least this soft. Uh,

Desiree: Yeah.

Liam: So besides playing video games, which I did at the majority of my holiday for, I did, since the last time that we spoke, I had two or three days of like frenzied activity. Cause the last time was our recycled challenge and I made a house that I wasn’t happy with.

It wasn’t quite up to my standards. So for two or three days there, I just put a bunch of effort into making the next, version two of that house. A much more detailed, intricate, and properly scaled and larger version of that house. I haven’t touched it since then. So it’s been two weeks and it’s just sitting there.

I only need to put two or three more days of work into it in order to finish it and I’ll get around to it. But it’s not a big necessity for me at the moment. Now that I’ve had my latest D and D session and there’s been like a big upheaval in the status quo, there’s going to be a lot of my main project now is writing.

I need to write basically three completely separate adventures, present them to the party and have them choose one of them. And then I will rapidly flush out that adventure that they did choose and then abandoned all the work I worked did on the other two. That’s what I’m going to be currently working on.

So I don’t have much in the way of time to be working on the physical project products. Thankfully, I have a whole arsenal of miniatures and terrain and stuff like that, that I can pull what I need in order to start their adventures off. And then once they get really deep into the adventure, I can bring in the more unique miniatures and models and characters that are specific to that adventure.

Desiree: So do, cause they have so many different things that they could choose. Do you have to kind of block out story plot points for all versions and flush it out wherever when they chose?

Liam: Basically, yes, I have to do it in a rough version and then focus down on it for the one that they choose. And the only reason I have three viable, distinct options that will most likely be what they would choose is because by the end of the last session, I asked them for a little bit of input of what they want to do as a party, because if it’s complete blue sky and I have no idea what they’re gonna do, there’s very little that I, I have to prepare for everything.

And so everything would just be basically winging it at that point. I would just have to know. What’s going on everywhere in my world at any given time. Because the way it worked during our last session, it was going to be, uh, it was a very linear session, and I didn’t have much work that I needed to be done for that session.

And it was worked out just fine. Cause I had done all the work ahead of time. They were in the middle of a venture to try to break a blockade on a settlement that had been besieged they failed to do so. And so, they had their accompanying mage teleport them out. As an arc mage in an organization, he teleported to where he was most familiar, comfortable, and safe, which was about the distance from where they were in Toronto to Vancouver.

So going from the east coast of my world, all the way to the west coast capital in my world. So they’re more than 2000 miles away from where they were just the other day. And it was very much, on the moment thing, I’m like, all right, this guy would probably teleport them to this city Miletus. I haven’t in any way, shape or form fleshed out that city.

It’s very much on the rough sketched out section of my world. And so the last two or three, two or three hours of that session was me just describing in more detail, a rough, what I had only had a rough idea of. So solidifying things into actual being that had been just sidelines for a long time. And so now that they’re in this city, I asked them at the end of the last session, what are you guys planning on doing? Because they have so many options of, they could literally just be like, all right, we’re done with where we were at. We’re not going to try to get back. They could go join the military.

They could become pirates. They could do whatever the fuck they want. I don’t know. That’s the whole point about D and D is you can go wherever and do whatever you want. So I had to at least get like the feel of the group, what they were thinking of as a group that they might want to be doing. And so from that, they inferred to me, that’s one of their members as a paladin.

Then he’s the only one that has a tie to an organization. He is a member of a paladin order. And during that session, one of his superiors offered him some work basically. And so they liked the idea of being hired, like as retainers for their Paladin companion to go solve some problems for the palette. And so I’m like, all right, awesome. If I know that that’s something that the group might be interested in, I can work around that. Right. I can make problems that the paladin order would be solving at this point in time and direct them to one of these three problems that I’ve created, basically. So that’s my goal for Sunday is to just have that more fully fleshed out the three problems that they can choose one, or maybe two of more likely, just one that they can try to tackle

Desiree: know how much work goes into this.

Liam: Yeah, my, notebooks, cause I write most stuff down by like pen before I might solidify it by putting it onto the website or writing it down into a document that I would print off and give to the guys or something like that. So I have gone through many notebooks since the start of this campaign, I’ve only been running the game for close to two years now.

Not quite yet two years, or

Desiree: It’s been that long?

Liam: Actually it might just be a little bit over. I don’t

Desiree: COVID timing timing’s mean nothing. I think it is two years.

Liam: Yeah. It’s something like that. I have like a box full of notebooks. That’s just my notes, that stuff that I do for D and D by the end of this campaign, I will have definitely written novels worth of material.

Some of which are only for me, but a lot of it that’s also would be readable on my lore or my website, or give them to the guys and recaps or whatever it might be with all the magic items that I create. Because when the guys get a magic item, generally I will make a physical copy because the guys are just terrible for remembering.

They have magic items. That’s awful. And so if I give them a physical representation of that magical item, they can pick it up, look at the back of the card that I’ve laminated. I’ll tell them in brief summary what that item does and they can put it in front of them. And remember that they have it. If they don’t have that card, they’ve gotten so used to it that if I, if they don’t have that card, they forget to have the item entirely. It’s just, it’s the easiest way for me to get them to lose an item is to just not give them a card for it.

Desiree: You could be sneaky if you wanted to be sneaky.

Liam: No, that’s just sometimes, especially if the item wasn’t one that I created, I always make one. If it’s one I created, because that’s the best way for them to reference what it does. But if it’s an item from, the D and D source books, then it’s not a unique item that I’ve created, they can just look it up on their companion apps on like D and D beyond or whatever.

So I don’t have to, I don’t feel I have to make a card for that, but if I don’t, they’ll just forget it exists. So

Desiree: Just thinking about it we haven’t really asked our main question today yet. I was just wondering, like, do you feel you have to create these stories? Cause I know you said you used to like go over movies in your head through the whole thing. So this is like your version of doing that as an adult, do you have to write to get it out kind of thing?

Liam: I definitely do not. I started this in order to, uh, like I started the D and D session and I specifically started the D and D campaign in my own created world so that I would have a motivator to actually write it. Because if I didn’t have a motivator, if I don’t have a goal or I don’t have a reason to do it, I’ll just create, continue creating these worlds.

But I’ll never put any pen down to paper. Right. So I’ve definitely had a lot of these concepts in my head that I’ve worked on through multiple different variations. I’ve got like a science fiction universe that I created, started as a kid. I got multiple different fantasy universes that I created while I was a kid.

That’s what I used to do in order to get myself to go asleep. Right. I would be like, all right, I’m going to fall asleep now. And I would just start creating a story or making a setting or adjusting a setting. Oftentimes that’s what I would do is I would be like, okay, I liked that story, but what if I made it my own right?

Or what if I incorporate it into one of the universes that I’ve already started working on? And so I would basically play like Minecraft in my head for however long it took until I fall asleep. And I would do that. I done that since I was like six years old. I’d say

Desiree: It’s a good way not to fall asleep too, because you’re too excited about theabout what you’re creating.

Liam: I guess so. It was never really something that would keep me awake. It was a meditative routine, I guess that would get me to fall asleep. Especially because of how long that I’ve done it. Certainly my tastes have changed. The settings have completely changed the input of what I receive has evolved many times over the years.

And so the, the world’s themselves and the ones that I’m putting into the D and D campaign, they’re nothing alike. What I was creating even three or four years ago. They’re just, they’re constantly evolving. But the cool thing about doing these D and D campaigns is it has made me solidify some of my ideas into some framework, right?

So there is something that I can give to other people to have a look at and have them interact with it, which is a very unique thing that I didn’t really. Consider would be an option. I always just considered these tales to be something, to entertain myself. Right and that’s something I’ve heard from a lot of creators that a lot of creators will make things that they would want.

Right. Make things as something that they would enjoy. And that’s what this world is. This world is something that I would want somebody to have made for me. And I just continue to do that for myself. I enjoy it quite a lot, so I don’t feel like I, I need to do it because I don’t feel like I need to let it out because I enjoy internalizing it so much.

It’s just nice to have an excuse to do so.

Desiree: And sharing it, It’s just a side bonus and people do appreciate it. I mean, I’d probably love to read all of your stuff. If you ever, you know, cohesively string it together to read it. If you know what I mean? Not just because I know you, but because of the depths of your creativity,

Liam: Yeah, I can, I can talk about it a lot. Right. I don’t talk about things that I don’t enjoy generally. So if I do get started to talk about the concepts that go into these worlds of the worlds themselves, or what I’m doing and what I’m working on, it’s because I enjoy it right. The moment I stop enjoying it, I stop talking about, or I stop thinking about it.

Mostly. I, I literally just will go out of my brain. That’s one of the reasons why I’m so bad with names, I can remember people’s faces quite well and like where they’re from and what I’ve experienced them in. But I am awful with names both like in real life, but I’m especially bad with stuff like actors.

I can remember what an actor has been in. I remember seeing an actor, in being an actress and being like, I have no idea what that person’s name is, but I saw her in an episode of house, right. And I’ll never remember her name. It doesn’t matter how many shows she’s in or what she does or how famous she gets.

I won’t remember. And I won’t care, but I’ll remember what I’ve seen her in.

Desiree: The funny thing is mom and dad pride themselves at remembering that stuff. And we’re just like, IMDB whatever. Don’t fill our heads full of filler. We got other things to do.

Liam: My head was, my head was ruined well before the internet did that to me. I have just like, I just it’s in one ear out the other, if I don’t care about it, I don’t retain it. Like at all.

Desiree: Now that used to be an interesting fight with mom and dad over and over again. Cause some it’s true. I mean, obviously you’re successful. So you were right. You only need to remember the stuff you need and you like, so.

Liam: You can get by with forgetting a lot of things.

Desiree: Yeah.

Liam: It takes me, it takes me like a full month of working with somebody on a daily basis to remember their name. I will say that.

Desiree: I must admit there were times when my work hired 20 people and I still may or may not remember their names because they all came in at once. too much for me.

Liam: Work can hire one person. It’ll take me a fucking a month. And especially because like, I’m like, why do I, haven’t gonna bother remembering this person’s name. He might not even be here in two weeks.

Desiree: Yeah.

Liam: Like why bother? It’s not worth the effort.

Desiree: I didn’t even have that turnaround to be used as an excuse. It’s just because I’m busy, I’m working.

Liam: Actually I’m, I’m thinking about there’s one guy that we hired and he’s been there for several months now. I don’t think I can remember his name without looking at his name tag.

Desiree: No offense to you person.

Liam: Yeah. Whatever your name is, you seem to be a better worker than the person that you work with. So good for you. just can’t remember your name.

Desiree: For me for art stuff. I kind of feel like I have to get it out, but that’s probably really related to my anxiety, unlike how, how you would put yourself to sleep by making these things and eventually it became kind of like a meditation and you would fall asleep. Dori and I are kind of the opposite. If we think too much, we spiral and then we can’t sleep.

Cause we’ll just keep going in circles. Right. Either with worry or creativity. Cause it can do it with when you’re excited about something creative too unfortunately, because he likes to world build like you, but he likes to world build in the JRR Tolkin type, concerning hobbits and every little tiny detail in his world.

Like SIM style, which can really make him spiral.

Liam: Where I go very large brushstrokes, right? Where I’ll take a, I take a cons. I cut. That’s why I have so many different settings is because I’ll take a concept. I’ll be like, okay, what if? And then just broad strokes, like many, many, many broad strokes. And that’s also been one of the things that campaign is great for is I get some detail in there, which I don’t generally do.

Cause there’s so much, you can do broad stroke wise when you’re creating a universe or a setting that you oftentimes don’t get down to the fine details until you actually start writing down something for someone else to experience, right? You don’t make a conversation between two characters unless you’re trying to relate something to somebody else.

Right. Or you are creating a specific scenario in your head. That that’s not how I do things. I will think about like organizations and how they relate to other organizations, what the global politics are like, what wars have happened in the past, but it will still be pretty broad stroke until I get down to writing down the history.

Cause I did that for my, my setting for sanctuary anyway, for the campaign, on the solo quest.ca I have a section, that’s the lore section. And in there I have the history, which is what I would give to the people that are proficient in history, in the D and D campaign. And it’s the history that they would know of as a learned person in sanctuary.

And it’s that stuff. Uh, I I’ll especially never make a name because I would never remember it and I’d never stick to it. In history, I would need the name. Right? My some of my players are better at remembering names of Kings than I am. Actually, most of them are. I have to look it up. Anytime I’m like the name of a place name of a person.

I know the place. I know it’s like all of the culture around it and how it interacts with his neighbors. Like what’s going on in that place, if there’s any hidden, like dealings or anything like that, the name of the place, then it’s 50 50. Whether I remember it

Desiree: And you made it.

Liam: And I made it and it, like, some of them are really important, right?

Like there’s a village that was the first settlement in the Crescent wild lands, which is my like new world style setting for the campaign that the guys spent the majority of their time in. It was a, like the first settlement sort of beachhead. And it was lost. Like it’s covered in fog.

There has been no contact from it for the last like few years. And it had a sizeable population to it. It was very reminiscent of there’s some north American settlements that just got lost to time. Nobody knows exactly what happened to them. Like people went back east to get more supplies and help for these pilgrims or whatever they come back and the settlement is just gone.

Right. And that’s basically what happened to this village. And for the longest time the guys remembered the name of the village. More than I did. I had to like put some actual effort into remembering what I named it, because I named it also something that’s difficult to pronounce. So the guys would always be talking to me, referencing is that how you pronounce it? like, you know, better than I do.

Desiree: I would just say yes.

Liam: But I like, I have, it has to be consistent. Cause like I can’t have the thing be called three things. Cause then I get even more confused. Right. And I don’t want them to get confused. I want it to be consistent. Right. So like, I don’t know. Well, I know why I named it. but it’s still like, that’s not an easy name to remember how to pronounce.

Desiree: I’m not going to remember that two seconds.

Liam: And you don’t need to, it’s not information you need to retain.

Desiree: No, though sometimes I do depending. That’s probably another reason why I have such a hard time quieting my brain is, you know, I got straight A’s in school, mostly just by osmosis and listening to the teachers. I didn’t even need to do the homework, which I did anyway, but.

Liam: Most schoolwork is memorization as is anyway.

Desiree: It’s just, yeah, it just sinks in. I was too. I didn’t get to tell you that. I did like that. The house, the improvement to your house, especially with that cool little porch. I know I said it in the one we did with mom, but I want to make sure people could hear it from you this time. This is a much better 2.0 of this house.

Liam: You’ve, you’ve seen it in person. It’s still like mid project, but you’ve seen it because you were up here for the Halloween

Desiree: Yeah, it looks good.

Liam: Yeah. It will look complete once I’m finished it. And it doesn’t require that much work once I hash out these fresh adventures for the campaign. And once I find where they’re going and like what miniatures I actually do need to make which will probably be the session after this.

Then I’ll start working on the house again, probably.

Desiree: So it looks like we’re getting pretty close to the end of our hour. Is there anything else that you’d like to ask?

Liam: No, I think we’ve managed to get catch ourselves up a little bit. We, yeah, it’s been a little bit since we sat down to do one of these, so it’s nice to have a chat. As I said, I have not been doing much in the way creative stuff except for writing. And I am excited about that. I’m really enjoying, I enjoy writing potentials.

Like I enjoy writing potential scenarios for the Dungeons and dragons campaign because they’re never set in stone until the session ends. Basically.

Desiree: It’s kind of like a choose your own adventure.

Liam: It very much is. Yes. Cause

Desiree: Especially as a kid. Cause those were so cool.

Liam: I do, I have to leave open ended. Um, well, I don’t have to, but I do because I don’t want to direct my players with like an iron hand. I don’t want to railroad them.

Right. So the, when they set out to break the blockade and to Solo Claus, I was like, all right, the odds are against them. Honestly, they’re vastly outnumbered. The only advantage they have is that there are a small group of people that can like make their way through unannounced if they’re sneaky and fast enough about it right.

But they are vast, they’re going up against an army basically of werewolves at, at the worst. Like werewolves are the lowest end of the, where creatures they’re going to be fighting. So it could be, it’s a difficult task. It could be disastrous. So I gave them some tools in order to have outs. And they needed to pull that rip cord at the end.

They were not able to accomplish that task. If they had managed to accomplish it, then the story would have gone a completely different direction. It would have and there’s such a strong party that I would not have been surprised if they’d managed to pull it off. Like if they’d managed to just wipe the floor with all those were creatures and walk right into solo claws, I would’ve been totally fine with that.

And I would’ve been actually more prepared for that than I was for them to pull the rip cord and have to like cause there were three major options that could have happened. And gernerally that’s how I like to do it. I like to have three alternatives so I can at least limit down my options to what I have to plan for. Though one was them making it to solo Kloss, either easy or hard, whatever they made it all the way into the settlement that they wanted to make it into. And they were successful. Hooray. Uh, they got captured. Which would have been that’s bad news bears. And that was one of the ones I definitely enjoyed thinking about that scenario.

Cause I’m like, if that happens, well, that’s going to be juicy. That’s going to be real. That, that, all that, that, no, there would’ve been a lot of real meaty role-playing in that regard. But that didn’t happen. I did, like I said, I gave them some outs and that out didn’t get taken away from them like the arch mage, which they were protecting didn’t die before he could cast this teleport.

And so then the other option was that they would have to get transferred out and that would lead to all three of those are completely different adventures. They’re 100% different results. And so now they’re on the, uh, the adventure that branched out from being teleported 2000 miles away.

Desiree: Nice. It’s exciting and fun. And I’m glad the guys are having a good time. I’m glad that we get to do these, these meetups to talk about these different things. Cause people really don’t know, but we don’t get together that often. And when we do, and even when we do, probably when I move up there, our whole family just sits and talks about stuff.

Even if it’s the same stories over and over, it’s always worth hearing. And we’re all kind of raconteurs, which is what mom calls us, which is a French, French word for a storyteller.

Liam: Yeah, I will. I enjoy hearing stories as well. Uh, I always have enjoyed hearing stories, so I like to be talked to.

Desiree: And I like to like participate because they, we always kind of like paint it so that you almost feel like you’re there.

Liam: yeah.

Desiree: So, that’s it for us for this week. Going over time a little bit, so good for us. If you want to. Yeah, we did. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you everyone. Thank you for tuning into us.

I guess you would call it. We’re going to, we’re going to be up on pod bean. That’s our main for pod bean, new nerd novelties, where you can listen to us directly just for the audio. And then there’s YouTube for the video audio, even though we don’t have any video.

Liam: Pod Bean also uploads it to a bunch of other services as well, which are common. Right?

Desiree: Yeah, a bunch of them, the only one I haven’t still figured it out is, is iTunes because iTunes is a pain in the butt. I might have to use Dori’s to figure that one out, but we’ll figure it out.

Liam: Yeah. The other services are what? Cause it had a bunch.

Desiree: There’s a couple, the Google one, so Gmail’s version and the other ones. I don’t know off the top of my head, but if you go to pod bean there’s options.

So, the social media site, which has done from my perspective for new novelties is under Facebook as well as Instagram. And my website is www.new novelties.com and Liam’s is solo quest.ca.

Liam: And that’s where the images for the projects that he has been working on and one in progress, photo of the house.

Desiree: Yeah, those are all on there under the link dump for number eight. Thank you so much for tuning in and listening. Hopefully you can like and subscribe and maybe shares so we can get a bunch more people talking and listening to us.

Liam: And our stories.

Desiree: Yeah, this has been the brother and sister pair of Liam and Desiree.

And thank you so much for Creative Questions signing out

Liam: And have a good day.