Happy Wednesday, when I inflict the swirling vortex of my mind on to my unsuspecting readers. This is random thoughts, and this week I thought I’d dedicate it to the Monday Murder Hobos.

1. While DMing/GMing ¹ this week I asked the party party, “OK, you’re about to leave on an ocean voyage—do you have anything you want to do in port first?” This led to me to being forced to create some new side quests on the fly, as well as to the invention of a type of fungus the rogue wants to use to gain darkvision. I thought they’d just want to go shopping.
2. One of the side quest is to take a letter to a gnome named, Ockjong—who is a well-known grower of ornamental plants. The party has named him, “The Topiary King.”
3. When the party comes up with a really good plan to avoid combat, I feel a mixture of both pride and frustration ².
4. On Monday there was a multi-day montage when the party’s dwarven paladin kept getting stuck into a spell called “Leomund’s Tiny Hut” over and over in order to hide his presence from a big nasty thing. He’d pop out, they’d shove him food and tell him to be quiet, and ten minutes later they’s pop him in. It was wonderful.
5. When the ship reached the port I figured the party would disembark, but they still wanted to keep the dwarf secret and spent fifteen minutes deliberating about how to do so. Finally someone pointed out there were a bunch of barrels in the ship’s hold, and they just stuck him in one of those ³.
6. When a player is hiding in a barrel, it would be almost rude to not have said barrel rolled down a ramp.
7. Another idea to hide the dwarf while they got off the ship was to paint the dwarf’s face blue, stick him on the shoulders of the rogue, and put a cloak over them so they could pretend to be the character who’s face is actually blue ⁴.
8. The party’s wizard really wants to cast fireball⁶, but always forgets that the spell has a radius ⁵.
9. Fireball is never a wasted spell ⁷.
10. I had my friend, Jamison, all set to jump in to play the party’s contact when the ship arrived at port. He came on voice chat with his mic muted when the ship docked, and then enjoyed the party’s “solutions” to the sneaking problem for a quarter of an hour. His private messages during this were most entertaining.
11. Bonus random thought one. I was marred in ’97. It’s kind of an important number to me.
12. Bonus random thought two. I sat down with a friend this morning to make some images for a ad campaign. I kinda missed doing that.