Ah, yes, flimsy justifications. I am quite familiar with this.

Hey! It's not because they just wanted skittles! They also wanted to eat some M&M's.

Except for Phil. Phil has to eat the chalky, unpleasant candy hearts from February.

Candy hearts ARE DELICIOUS. I expected better from you.

Everyone has their preferences

Not eight month old ones. They're stale.

By the way, somewhere online, I recall being able to purchase bacon flavored candy hearts.

That's what we're doing in our group: in parallel with the main story also playing the game in the past when one of our character was a kid, his "start of darkness". No fear of time paradoxes can prevent people from having fun!

Time Paradox? You know the character is present in the future. All sorts of bad stuff can happen in the past, up to and including death.

If Magic (or Science!) is available, then you have to ask (or have a mystery of) how you came back to life. If that sort of Magic isn't available (or you're stuck with boring old works in reality Science-without-the-exclamation-point), then you have a new question:

Who are you, really?

You see paradox. I see plot twist.

I've been outlawed from plot twists and/or time travel gameplay of any kind. I tend to abuse them. Not to hack the game, so to speak. Mostly to slowly terrify my fellow players.

Hehehehe... Reminds me of this one time, during a Comment Warriors game (sorta like D&D except dice only needed be rolled for specific things, and we didn't consider ourselves as having levels, instead just having a set number of weapons and attacks and such from the beginning), where my Phoenix Unicorn hybrid, Hephaestus Ironwright, was fighting against a Cosmosus and a Chronicorn (Space pegasus and Time unicorn basically), and started killing himself over and over, the explosive blasts of his body turning to ash (only for him to be reborn again) causing only enough damage to be considered a slap on the wrist, but due to the Chronicorn's magic, he was able to age up to a few thousand years old in only a few minutes, or his normal age of 800 in a few seconds. So he stood there, dodging their attacks, and let his age exceed three eons, and then wiped out half the universe-- mainly, he obliterated the Cosmosus completely, but the Chronicorn was able to live by skipping its own internal clock backwards to right after its birth. Unwilling to kill a child, even one such as a Demigod Unicorn Super-Saiyan Timelord, he instead decided to raise him as a son, and called him Dust, as his actual daughter was already named Ashen Soot.

The game stopped soon after that due to FiMFiction's rules putting a stop to all RP groups, but it was a pretty epic game all the same, with the other Comment Warriors participating having been fighting against the same two characters, but in different eras all throughout the universe's history.

My mage friend in our Pathfinder game has made a demiplane with "Fixed" time. Time would not go forward for him as long as he's inside, allowing him to craft any item in the blink of an eye. This led me 2 days ago to wonder what would happen if he let an alchemist friend (me) go inside with him but went outside without him. I'd imagined he wouldn't find his friend back when he'd go back in the plane, since he'd go in "after" the fixed moment his friend was there. Or he'd find his friend after an infinite amount of time, and from THIS scenario, there were more time paradoxes:If he went to the moment HE entered when he'd get out, the Alchemist would end up in the Mage's past, rewriting the mage's present by merely being there. If he went to the moment the Mage went to get him back, he'd have travelled into the future!!

Then I realized none of those would happen: since time is Fixed, the Alchemist would ALWAYS get out at the same moment as the Mage, even if he stayed three time the age of the universe trying to find how to do it.

Basically it's a kind of time travel: you're taking a LOOOOOOOOOT of time... to end up in the Present! It's the temporal equivalent as taking a walk and going back home. Except we ripped physics doing a new one in the process. And the better part: I still don't know if that's actually boring or exciting!

Pludering? ^^

Aside from that, Skittles are tastier than M&M`s anyway, so there was no way Jeffs Forces could have lost. ;)

Heh. Remind me to tell you about my skittle cakes sometime.

as awesome as skittles are, a skittle cake sounds like a horrifying idea - where do you find test subjects for mad recipes?

Skittle cakes are simply bite sized cupcakes, flavored with skittles. I mostly experiment on myself, though if a recipe passes initial testing, I will perform further testing on the nice people at the church down the street. They do so love it when I bring them tasty treats.

There's a chruch that doesn't attempt to set fire to a dnd player? Northerners are wierd.

yes there is. there is also a church where i was playing Magic, and one of the parishioners called me a devil worshiper. i simply replied to him that acknowledgement was also a form of worship, and he shut up. none the less, it was amusing to say the least. Muahahaha.

Actually, I'm in the midwest. In a small town in the midwest. They more or less understand it's a chance to hang out with other nerds, eat stuff, and goof around.

The pastor believes I could be putting my spare time to better use, but he concedes that if this is my social life, I kinda need to take what I can get.

I'm not sure what my current church's policy is about RPGs and TCGs, because it hasn't really come up. It isn't like I play them while I'm in the building, though it has come up in conversation from time to time and so far no one has said anything. I think that is one of the key things to remember; what was the early face of gaming?

People that don't keep up see gamers as people heavy into the occult that lose their lives to their make-believe world, and who are quite hostile towards various forms of Christianity (and perhaps organized religion in general). Unfortunately... that describes more than a few gamers I know, so old stereotypes die hard. =P

So... try explaining the hobby as well as allowing them to explain right back why they are concerned. I've met enough people blind to how (at least according to the faith to which they claim to subscribe) are clearly in conflict. For others it isn't the hobby or interest or other passion... but what it specifically does to them.

I personally researched things myself, and realized that while I had to be careful about priorities (something I struggle with pretty much across the board), the other elements involved were not made any worse or better by being part of a role-playing game or trading card game.

While i will admit to belonging to the predominant religius group in my country (nonbeliver), i personaly think that more rolplayers should study religion to up their game.

We rearly get to read longer parts of the holy scriptures of the rolplaying world (hardly ever see longer than 3 pages), so studying actuall religions do help to give insight to how to play a religius char.

also, i like to study religion.

would recomend people trying to play an evil cleric to read the old testament, some of the things god comands there are realy good stuff to threaten with. You can also get some realy nice looks from the other players once you start to cut of the forskin of your fallen foes. Keep a tab, so you can deside significant numbers to donate them to your temple :)

For a good cleric, skip the forskin choping and go straight to the fight with the giants. That storry works realy well when you are worshiping a halfling deity (David makes a formidable halfling hero)

Sadly, this is storries that might be to well known to steal for your in char god, and people tend to get upset when i bring bible stories to the forgoten relms.

And in Dragons and demons (swedish rpg), we concluded that we could acctualy make Moses. and that he was barly masterclass, if he got his rols and preperations right.

and considering that he took YEARS to prepare for farao... the preperation part is easy.

Are you kidding? Stuff from the old testament works in soooo many settings, not just D&D. Need a frightening disease? Leprosy. Need a badass death? Didn't die, he was carried to heaven in a chariot of fire by angels. Need an ecological disaster? Turn all the water to blood!

Dude. The bible has a hell of a lot of awesome stuff in it, even if you're not Christian. I will admit, however, that there are some very, very dry parts. United states tax code level dry material. You might skip the chapters that deal exclusively with lineage, by the way. Even I hate reading those, despite the fact they are useful for some people. You know, who beget who, and they beget this guy, and this guy beget that guy.

I'm not joking. Skip those chapters if you're just reading it casually, otherwise you'll get bored quick.

And as far as explaining it, hold out a pair of dice. Say, "You see these? These are dice. D20s. They have no satanic connotations, they aren't used for gambling, you roll them, and the higher the number, the better you do, just like almost any other board game. These games are more complex than monopoly or parcheesi, but in the end, the result is the same. It's a bunch of guys around a table, eating snacks, and spending time with other guys, away from people. I will admit, it is very nerdy, but there's nothing wrong with nerdy things. Dungeons and dragons is just a framework. The game is built by people. They decide where the game goes, and what it does."

Invite your pastor to sit in on a session sometime. Ours is extremely busy and simply doesn't have the time, but I did have him watch the dead alewives D&D video. He asked if that's really what they're like. I told him that yes, and he rolled his eyes. I had to explain that the "can I have a mountain dew?" Guy is just as annoying to us.

For the evil druid build, Elisha is almost to evil to be alowed in most parties.

I seem to remember seeing an actual part of the taxcode in there... then i skiped to the part about how god enjoys the smell of burnt flesh. God stuff, made som notes for my fire domain cleric

Useful for some guys? Dude, if you translate the names of the line from Adam to Noah in Genesis 5 you get the gospel in a nutshell.

There's an entire book dedicated to the laws of Israel. A lot of it is no longer needed, like the harsh penalties for petty theft, or term limits on debt slavery.

It does, however, give you a very good idea for a harsh, ancient culture. Harsh, but not unfair. In fact, one point is that Israel was actually much nicer. I mean, yeah, they slaughtered other cities, and took over, but by the standards of the time, They were actually quite gentle.

I mean, they required no less than two witnesses in order to condemn a man for murder. The sentence for perjury was death, however, because sentencing a man to death falsely was, and is, murder.

Even the dry parts can be fascinating, wouldn't you agree?

Yeah, i once read up on it to help my paladin game. Bit boring, but it did help.

the linages are to boring to read though, and i have yet to come up with a situation where they warant reading.

I find it amusing that there's still the old Satanic Panic about demons and devils and such, when the whole "Other gods" thing is just a little bit more front and center to modern play.

I find study of religion and belief systems (comparative religions was awesome) is almost a requirement for whole cloth world building. Integrating your deities into your world origins gives you a different feel than the Johnny come lately / ascended mortal / just popped in from Mount Celelstia and boy are my wings tired approach used in many game worlds. I blame the Immortals part of the BECMI for that.

@Inbetweenaction: stories out of religions, with some adaptation, can have some major resonances with players. The trick is having the stories be "inspired by" rather than "actual events of."

I normaly go for slightly more obscure stories, makes it slightly harder for my players to realise what they are about to face.

But yeah, once lifted 4 dfferent mytologies and put them into a corporate form for a syfy campain. Was great

only one of the players realiced that one of the corporations probably had an even more secret blackops once i told him that he was in the ratatoskir corps, and the ordinary security force was called Hräsvelg.

Imagine ragnarok in space, and fought with giant battle cruisers. Congratulations, you now have a campaign.

Seriously, religious text inspired campaigns are what I run when I am too sick to think up new stuff. Nobody notices, and they're easy as hell to make. I have at least three end of the world campaigns, two of which, the players are the bad guys without realizing it. MWAHAHA!

@Raxon: And in the third they're the bad guys and perfectly aware of the fact?

It wouldn't be the end of the world if they stopped it.

Ah yes, that happened to my Players in my first Major Campaign (lastet 5+ years), when they, unknowingly, helped the true Bad Guy ursurp the "Actually only slightly darker than themselves" guy buy simply introducing the two and working a few adventures with the TBB.
He even went so far to send them a Thank You Card after the fait accomply. Although the Word Joke in it only works in German (Macht macht mächtig mächtig ^^) that IS a polite way to says "Haha!".
Then they went to kill of the unkillable guy who had created a 100km Diameter Death Field killing all Life around him by first seeking ways to become unkillable themselves, which ended up turning them into Vampires.
Ah, good Times indeed. Too bad the Group split (due to one palyer moving away and another one marrying and hence not having the time any loinger) roughly 7-8 Sessions bevore the Big Finale....sigh.

I guess I'm lucky. My equivalent of a pastor (We call them captains in the salvation army church) plays MTG and WH40K with me. We've been good friends for years.

The closest thing to a pastor i have had (guy about a term away from being one) introduced me to paranoia and cthulhu...

We once had that problem, we knew that my char was going to be alive at a certain place a few hours later, wich made it quite awkward when our mage was beating him up and trying to crack his skull due to me being demonposesed and trying to kill him...

I am scandalized by you repeated instance of product placement on the behalf of the skittles brand !!

I was about to comment exactly what Rika said !