The Forked Cable Square Tutorial walks you through every step of creating this 8-inch crochet block featuring post stitches! Perfect for any "squares-based" project, crochet along with the right and left-handed video tutorials below! Disclaimer: This post includes affiliate links. Be sure to scroll down past the videos to get the links to the free […]
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0It started here with "Eternian History Revealed."
Then, I delved into [People]-at-Arms with "Eternian Armsmen."
Next, I looked at the "Gods of Eternia."
Finally, I looked into Skeletor's past: "The Search for Skeletor."
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Introducing the Forked Cable Square! This 8-inch crochet block features striking post stitches that branch into forked lines, creating a unique cupped shape on each side. Some see a trident, others a clover, and still others see something spidery... What it definitely is, is a satisfying pattern for crocheters who enjoy a bit of texture […]
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0I posted about this earlier this week on social media. June, in addition to Pride, is Myasthenia Gravis (MG) Awareness Month. I’ll get to what MG is in a moment, but let’s get a confession out of the way first: I have myasthenia gravis. I was diagnosed a little over four years ago, though I exhibited symptoms as far back as six years ago.
Allow me to share some information I am paraphrasing from the MG Foundation of America.
What is it? MG is a rare neuromuscular, autoimmune disorder that causes extreme fatigue and profound muscle weakness. Impulses from the brain travel down nerves but are blocked by antibodies before they reach the muscle. The body is essentially attacking itself and stopping normal muscle function.
You might be wondering what this has to do with role-playing games. Bear with me; I’ll get to it. I’ve decided to talk about this publicly to raise awareness and add my two cents to the conversation about the disorder, but let’s get back to the explanations for a second.
First documented by a physician in Oxford, England, in 1672, MG can impact a person’s ability to see, swallow, smile, walk, breathe, or engage in everyday activities. Everyone’s disease presents a little differently—that’s why myasthenia is known as a “snowflake disease.” (I AM a snowflake, I knew it! Unique and special, I mean.)
For me, the worst symptoms were losing my voice, slurring my words, and simply not being able to speak properly. Those of you who know me in real life saw me a couple of years ago when I was significantly weaker, experiencing serious difficulty speaking and swallowing.
To my family and friends, this is no secret. Many acquaintances know as well. If we’ve run into each other over the last four years, I’ve probably talked about this face-to-face, and I have always tried to share information about MG with people I meet. Still, I’ve been reluctant to discuss it or publish anything on social media for fear of being vulnerable. One often worries about how others will react, how revelations like this might affect employment opportunities, or how people will treat you. But in the spirit of the month and all it celebrates, I’ve decided to share my diagnosis and how I’ve dealt with it.
So, how is myasthenia gravis treated, and what is the prognosis? There is currently no cure, but there are treatments to manage the symptoms. For most individuals, myasthenia gravis is a manageable chronic condition. The outlook for most people with MG is positive, as current treatment options are often highly effective. While existing treatments do not cure the disease, most patients experience improved muscle strength, and some even achieve remission.
What else should you know about Myasthenia Gravis?
I have been incredibly fortunate to have great doctors who identified the right medications and treatments. Having the insurance to access these treatments has greatly reduced my symptoms and made them manageable. I am in better physical shape now than I was four years ago, and I hope to continue to manage my condition effectively.
But this was not the case four years ago. MG is hard to diagnose, and some people spend years without proper answers. I was experiencing symptoms for two full years before I was correctly diagnosed, and by then, I was having trouble speaking and swallowing. It was incredibly taxing and frustrating for me as someone whose voice is a vital tool for my line of work. It was scary. It affected my ability to communicate properly with loved ones. It also impacted my favorite hobby: tabletop role-playing games.
What does a Game Master do when he cannot speak?
With all the other complications in life, not being able to play a game may seem like the least of my concerns. But as I’ve said often, gaming is part of my mental health routine. It is a creative endeavor I enjoy outside my other responsibilities. It is something that connects me with my dear friends. We are part of each other’s support group, and the time we spend together is something we value and treasure.
Having to consider giving that up was just another source of stress during an already difficult time.
The reality was that I needed to rest; speaking for hours often left me exhausted. At the same time, I did not want to give this up. I wanted to cling to this vestige of normalcy in the midst of chaos.
This wasn’t easy for my players. My voice was hoarse, broken, and sometimes slurred. I would speak with great difficulty. Often, I would use text-to-speech software when I could not speak properly. Some people would not put up with this, but my players are first and foremost my friends—guys like Carlos, Fernan, both Josés (Bellavista and Garcia), Lao, and Oscar—they knew how important our weekly gatherings were. They knew how much it meant to me, and they kept showing up. They supported me despite the limitations, and we played on.
These guys have been my gaming support group through this process, thank you!That meant the world to me. It helped me deal with my sadness and my frustration. Their love was a vital part of the support my friends and family showed me during those difficult times.
I am doing much better right now. The medications I take help me manage the symptoms. I know the signs, rest regularly, listen to my body’s cycles, and manage my condition. I hope that this improvement continues in the long term. I am incredibly grateful for the love and support everyone around me shows me every single day. Gaming has truly given me a circle of friends who are like family—a gift that continually enriches my life.
Now, I hope to use the spaces I have online to share my story, build knowledge about myasthenia gravis, return the kindness shown to me, and, hopefully, raise awareness of this relatively rare condition. Knowledge is power! Hopefully, further research will find a cure for MG.
While I’ve gotten to know other MG patients, I have not met other gamers with MG. I wonder whether there are more of us in gaming spaces and whether we can organize to support each other and the larger MG community. If you are a patient, even if you do not wish to share your diagnosis publicly, please feel free to contact me.
If you want to learn more, here are some useful links:
What is MG: https://myasthenia.org/understanding-mg/what-is-myasthenia-gravis/
The Myasthenia Gravis Foundation of America: https://myasthenia.org/
Donate to the Myasthenia Gravis Foundation of America: https://myasthenia.givevirtuous.org/donate/donation-form
Global Genes: https://globalgenes.org/disorder/myasthenia-gravis/
European Myasthenia Gravis Association: https://eumga.eu/
Thank you for reading!
Some of the images I used in this post are from the Myasthenia Gravis Foundation of America website, and this post: Back to Doing What I Love: My Myasthenia Gravis Story By Kathalina Nguyen: which you can read here: https://myasthenia.org/blog/2024/08/08/back-to-doing-what-i-love-my-myasthenia-gravis-story/
Come for the frogs. Leave when it all goes to hell. The small hamlet of Roudenbush moulders on the edge of the Great Cheerless Swamp. Built at a crossroads, the town sustains itself on a mix of merchant caravans stopping for provisions, those that seek treasure in the swamp, and the bounty of the swamp itself. Wooden, thatched-roofed residences and stone municipal buildings make up the town. Two weeks ago, a tide of giant frogs breached the town’s outer wall, causing chaos in the streets until they retreated back into the swamp.
This thirteen page adventure uses three pages to describe seven overland locations and a five floor wizard tower. Napkin notes for an adventure, it exemplifies the IF rather than a THEN.
My brief foray in to products recommended that live in Itch has ended as I am, and no one else, is completely shocked. I find it FASCINATING in what both people seem to be willing to pay for nothing and in what people are willing to publish. For Money.So, some giant frogs showed in a a town int he swamps and rampaged through. I guess you’re going to do something about it for some reason. There’s some abandoned wizards tower in the swamp with a magnifying glass turning frogs giant. That location is called Frogtown. There’s also a wandering knight called Sir Robin Hell. Get it?
I’m in a foul fucking mood this morning. This thing isn’t help that any. I’m not going to waste a lot of time on it. Fourteen pages and it manages to put in just a few with encounters in it. This is nothing more than napkin notes. It’s not an adventure. It’s possibilities, rather than specificity.
What do we mean by this? There is some rather common tendency to be seemingly afraid of outcomes. It is as if the designer is terrified of actually stating something concrete may happen. In this sense it is more like a hex crawl but without the scope of a traditional hex crawl. You come across a village of 100 gnomes living in a mesa. “The hive-mind seeks the return of myconids that have gone missing, believed taken by the lizard folk as food / offerings. Will exchange fly agaric mushrooms from their grove for myconids that are found and returned “ I’m paraphrasing the set up but the outcome is from the adventure. This is classic “giant hex crawl.” But it’s not “overland journey to the adventure site.” In the starting village there are a couple of NPC’s. The are not specific to the adventure, just a list of NPC’s for the most part. One of them is a guy you can hire, Buckingham Craddlethatch. The second floor of the five floor “end site” tower in the swamp reads, in its entirety “Ruined arcane library and alchemical lab. Most of the tomes are mildewed and illegible, but an intact Chaos Spellbook can be found among them. If Buckingham Cragglethatch is with the party, he finds a book bound in human skin. Perusing it, he will suddenly announce that he must leave immediately. “
Those two encounters are representative of most of what is going on in this. They are possibilities. They are the “collapsed stairwell to another level of the dungeon that the dm COULD expand upon if they were so inclined.” In a traditional hexcrawl adventure these are the core of the adventure. It’s a wide open area that the party brings themselves to in order to exploit. Contract this to the standard “overland adventure” portion of adventures where to travel to get to an adventuring site. These are instead dangers and Lair, with associated lair treasures. And then contrast these two types of things to the keys found in most adventures. Obstacles and encounters to overcome. Those three encounter types serve much different purposes, influenced by the scope of the adventure and environment.
The muddling of the streams here results in adventure that is nothing but napkin notes for a small adventure.
No more itch for awhile.
It’s Name Your Price at itch, with a suggested price of $5.
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The Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann) returns later this year for a six-part audio drama miniseries across two box sets. For New Pathways and Fear the Reapers strong and loyal Alfie Steep and new recruit Chase Moyo join his adventures. Regular Big Finish contributors Sam Stafford and Natalie Gumede play Alfie and Chase respectively.
As New Pathways begins, the Doctor is travelling with Alfie when he encounters Chase – and realises he has already spoken to her, throughout his life, on the end of a phone line. What is the connection between the TARDIS and a call centre in northern England?
Then, on Chase’s first venture into the universe, the time travellers encounter a deadly enemy – the Sycorax. These tribal aliens first appeared in 2005 Doctor Who TV special The Christmas Invasion, fought the Seventh Doctor in a 2016 Classic Doctors, New Monsters audio episode, and now face off against the Eighth Doctor for the first time.
And in the third episode, the TARDIS arrives in the late twenty-first century to discover something is very wrong with Britain…
This box set also includes The Eighth Doctor: A New Pathway, a brand-new feature-length audio documentary, celebrating thirty years of Paul McGann’s Doctor and giving a detailed look at the creation of this new era in his life.
The guest cast of New Pathways includes Susan Aderin, Ben Fox, Barnaby Edwards, Harriet Kershaw, Alexandra Mathie, Lara Lemon, Nicole Deon, Sara Powell, Derek Griffiths, Richard Goulding, and Nicholas Boulton.
New Pathways features thirty years of the Eighth Doctor condensed into a week of Chase’s life
Script editor Matt Fitton said: “The Eighth Doctor’s had such a rich and varied life. It felt fitting that what we would do to celebrate it was invent a whole new era and bring in Chase and Alfie as new companions.
“We threw Natalie and Sam’s names into the mix quite early on in the process, and so we were able to build those characters around them. This new team has a different energy and a different way of looking at the Doctor, and that brings out new things for Paul to do as well.”
On kicking off this new era, the first episode’s writer Alan Ronald said: “I was given a bit of a blank slate to introduce two companions. With Alfie, we hit the ground running, and he’s already gadding about with the Doctor, and then we meet Chase, and see how the Doctor crashes into her humdrum daily life.
“Given that it arrives on the thirtieth anniversary of the Eighth Doctor first appearing, we had to find a way to touch on that, but not have it be all about that. I didn’t want it to be a look backwards, it had to look forwards. So, my approach to that was through Chase and the call centre, with her connecting with the Doctor across that entire period. We have a thirty-year period of storytelling condensed into her week!”
The three exciting new stories for the Eighth Doctor are: Chase by Alan Ronald
Chase had hoped for a different life… She sees no escape from her soul-sucking call centre job. But when she is accidentally connected to a mysterious police box, and the extraordinary Doctor Smith – who is just beginning one of his many long lives – her entire world will change forever.
Magic of the Sycorax by Katharine ArmitageIt’s time to put Chase through her paces and so the TARDIS follows a distress signal to a remote mining base, beset by powerful forces.
The Doctor’s defeated the Sycorax before but, this time, they seem to have more magic, more darkness, and everyone has much more to lose…
Blast from the Past by Robert ValentineWhen the TARDIS starts playing up, the Doctor accidentally brings Chase and Alfie to Burnley in 2096, only to discover that the UK has become an authoritarian dictatorship under fascist leader Bastian Clore.
Chase in turn discovers that her descendants, the Moyo family of No. 19 McKellen Drive, are major players in the underground resistance movement. Beyond the obvious, something is seriously wrong with history.
Has the past been rewritten by more than just the propaganda wing of Clore’s jingoistic regime? And can Chase live up to the idealised memory her great-great-grandchildren hold of her?
Doctor Who: New Pathways. Cover by Sean Longmore (c) Big Finish Doctor Who: New Pathways
Doctor Who – The Eighth Doctor Adventures: New Pathways is now available to pre-order for just £19.99 (download to own) or £24.99 (download to own + collector’s edition CD box set), exclusively here. Please note: the collector’s edition CD box set is strictly limited to 1,500 copies and will not be re-pressed.
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Radical Potholder Weaving: Techniques and Inspiration for the Potholder Loom by Deborah Jean Cohen takes this kid-friendly craft to the next level! After all, it's really just a small loom - so there are over 100 patterns in this collection, many never seen before. It's how I got my start with crafting - and now I need […]
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So everyone knows I will be at North Texas Con this week. My books and maps will be for sale at the Black Blade Publishing Booth. I am running three sandbox adventures for the event: Scourge of the Demon Wolf, The Domain of the Rat Lord, and The Deceits of the Russet Lord.
I will be available to answer questions throughout the event, and I am looking forward to meeting everyone who can make it.
Happy Pride! June is a month to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community. Especially in the times we live in, when kindness, respect, and inclusion seem to be under constant attack, we all must come together and fight back. Kindness is punk, and silence is capitulation!
I want to do my part as an ally because too many of my friends, loved ones, and fellow gamers are members of the LGBTQ+ community. While we all dream of a day when who you are and who you love are non-issues and universally respected, we are not quite there yet. Love is love!
To celebrate, I’m sharing a list of ten perfect games to bring to the table this month. You can check out the full CBR article here:
https://www.cbr.com/lgbtq-ttrpgs-to-play-with-friends-pride-month
And on a more personal note, I want to recommend Closet, a game by Paco García of GMS Magazine. I had the chance to back his crowdfunding campaign, and honestly, I absolutely love it. I think it’s an excellent tool to help us step into other people’s shoes and empathize a lot more with the struggles the LGBTQ+ community faces daily. You can find it on DriveThruRPG here:
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/528214/closet
When someone attacks a party member, we all roll initiative!