Casey G's G+ Feed

Action shot!

Outdoor swim meet. 54 degrees. Hardcore.

Coop and I saw this moth crawling through the grass. I think it must be just hatched from its cocoon, it's wings were small and folded up. Hopefully it finds a nice place to spread them out in peace.

Abby has a ritual in progress to bring a dragon back to life. Absorbing magical energy from artifacts seems important.

My Olman warlock's gibbering mouther familiar pulled a trap door handle to plummet a half-troll dwarf and it's howler pet into a 20 foot spiked pit. It then closed the trap door. #letmetellyouaboutmycharacter

Guess what time it is?

West Side Story for Iguanodons. Thumb spikes instead of switchblades. http://www.markwitton.com/shop/4588356872/iguanodon-bernissartensis-thumb-wars/9753855

You encounter 1d4 goats in their lair. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goat_tower

Yes. http://markwitton-com.blogspot.com/2014/07/think-batman-x-iron-man-how-pterosaurs.html

Why is Clutch the world's greatest band, Casey? I dunno, just look at this poster. The picture, as far as I can tell, is from the USS Massachusetts, a WWII battleship. That iconography is some Warhammer 40K level stuff.

I have a new favorite dinosaur controversy. There is a claim that the Broome Sandstone in Australia shows sauropod footprints of a titanosaur that are 2 meters wide. Meaning you could lay down in the footprint easily. This is a picture someone on a forum posted (causing excellent "someone is wrong on the internet" arguments) showing how big an animal with that size prints would be. The little sauropod is an Argentinosaurus. Meaning the big guy there dwarfs a blue whale in size. There are all kinds of reasons this might not be true (no fossils in Australia (or anywhere else) near that size, for one), but it's fun to think about.

Speaking of Jurassic World's chimeric dinosaurs, here's a spinosaurus/cobra/kentrosaurus hybrid I drew for Riders of the Purple Lotus several months ago. The snakeman bio-engineers got creative when creating their tomb-guardians.

The Jurassic World toys at Target just got me more excited for the movie than the previews did.

Hey, artists, Redbubble now makes dice bags. You know what to do. edit: this is actually probably a huge duffle bag sized thing, so, just barely big enough for all your dice.

It's time for Stars Without Number !

Tataouinea hannibalis is a "small" sauropod that is disappointingly not named after Tattooine, the Star Wars planet. But it turns out both the planet and the dinosaur are named after the city of Tataouine in Tunisia. And the species is named after Hannibal, the Carthaginian general, so I guess that's cool. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tataouinea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tataouine

I was listening to the Drink Spin Run - An RPG Talk Show Podcast  episode about published campaign settings this weekend. Adam Muszkiewicz, you don’t need to be ashamed of Spelljammer. Spelljammer is fantastic. I ran it in 4e a few years ago with lots of sci-fi and fantasy parody stuff, like an Aliens rip-off with giant space hamsters on a gnome asteroid station. If I did Spelljammer again, I’d want to focus on the naval aspect. I don’t feel like the Napoleonic British naval elves really got their due. I'd go full-on Master and Commander in space.

The only way an orc dies of old age is if they live long enough for one of their tusks to grow into their own skull. From here: http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2010/03/08/babirusa-impales-own-head/

Last session you drove your crawler through the jungle towards the ruins you’ve been hired to raid for pre-scream narcotics in exchange for registration for your newly acquired ship. On the way you encountered a crashed stealth-flyer from a smuggling operation and some ultralight flyers who were most likely searching for it. After fighting off some owlbears at the crash site, you discovered it was full of drugs, which you proceeded to take. You then continued on towards the ruins in your crawler. events/cq27qn50eobg57gvbbg7tjcr9ok?authkey=CIGYl8mkkMKMag

I had no choice but to pledge for this. The Sixth Gun is the most D&D comic out right now, and yes, I've read Rat Queens. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/545820095/the-sixth-gun-rpg-for-savage-worlds?ref=hero_thanks

Inspiring. Originally shared by ClickHole http://www.clickhole.com/article/stephen-hawkings-message-little-girl-who-wants-be--2442

Late Canasta with Grandma before heading home in the morning.

”The bridge is up!” Brrrrroooooooooeeeeeewwwwww Ka-blam! ”No it ain't.”

Reading Petty Gods more closely finally. Favorites so far, Chicxulub, goddess of decaying orbits, and the Fallen One, god of fallen warriors and unsung heroes. I feel like writing an adventure around Chicxulub, and the Fallen One should have a chance to show up after any large battle.

Panorama from the top of Sully's Hill.

Bison at Sully's Hill game preserve.

Hey Casey, why do you like westerns so much? Maybe because this was the room next to my bedroom as a kid?

All Garskes have their hobbies.

At a gas station in North Dakota, get followed to the pumps by a half dozen Norseman MC bikers. Badass dude fills up and then drives away, Dancing in the Dark blasting from his stereo.

World Turtle Day

It's time for Riders of the Purple Lotus !

Pool's open.

"Give us the cuttle...fish...." https://youtu.be/eICyqjtsizo Originally shared by American Museum of Natural History This ‪#‎FossilFriday‬ is a Florida native! Metaxytherium floridanum is a 12-million-year-old sea cow. The earliest known fossils of sea cows are found in 50-million-year-old marine sediments, yet even at that early stage, two groups of sea cows had already evolved—the dugongs and the manatees. Metaxytherium is an extinct dugong. Unlike manatees, dugongs lack nails on their flippers, and have a deeply notched tail fin with two pointed lobes. Throughout most of the evolutionary history of sea cows, their habitat has corresponded to the places where sea grass grows. These are primarily in tropical and subtropical coastal shoreline environments and estuaries. This fossil was collected in 1929 in Gadsden County, Florida.  Another immense dugong species, the Stellar sea cow, survived until around the year 1800 in the waters of the North Pacific. Reaching a length of

And now after the happy feelings I posted yesterday, I'm back to calling a school administrator about their bullshit. We were just taking to them about Abby's schedule for middle school and how we could talk in August before school started. Same day we get a letter saying they wanted to place her in an extended math class based on her test scores. Maybe they could have mentioned that in the half dozen emails we just exchanged. Jeebus.

Playtest campaign starts tonight!

Important summer safety tips. I yanked a kid out of the pool last summer. His mom was 10 feet away, but he wasn't making any noise. Also #gameable  . If a character is drowning, make the rest of the party make some kind of perception check to notice. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/family/2013/06/rescuing_drowning_children_how_to_know_when_someone_is_in_trouble_in_the.html

My wife as Bob, and me as Louise before every meeting with a school administrator Warning: sappy parent stuff The school year is almost over. This was our first year knowing that Abby has dyslexia (specific learning disorder: reading, specific learning disorder: writing). We dealt with a completely unhelpful and actually hostile school district trying to get her on a 504 plan. That fell through because of some slippery legalese the district threw at us. But Abby had a great teacher and a great private tutor, and she ends the year with huge strides in fluency, speed, accuracy, and spelling. No more paralysis when she has to write something. It all comes down to Abby though, she did the work, and has done all the work we’ve been having her do for years while fumbling around trying to figure out what she needed. We feel really lucky to have such an amazing kid. Originally shared by Bob's Burgers When you see someone you don't like.

Flash Finale So I may have misted up a couple times. Man, they gave Barry a crying scene with everyone .  Harrison Wells is one of the best supervillains I've seen - comics, movies, TV, whatever, period the end.  "What is that?" "That's my cue to leave."

Orcnado.

I seem to like stories where nothing really happens, or things happen for no reason, or the actions have no point, or everyone ends up back where they were. Obviously this biases me towards Cohen Brothers movies.   Burn After Reading CIA Supervisor: Jesus Fucking Christ. What did we learn, Palmer? Palmer: I don't know sir. CIA Supervisor: I don't fucking know either. I guess we learned not to do it again. I'm fucked if I know what we did. Palmer: Yes sir, it's hard to say. Fargo “So that was Mrs. Lundegaard on the floor in there. And I guess that was your accomplice in the wood chipper. And those three people in Brainerd. And for what? For a little bit of money. There's more to life than a little money, you know. Don't you know that? And here ya are, and it's a beautiful day. Well, I just don't understand it.” The Simpsons Marge: The moral of this story is a good deed is its own reward. Bart: Hey, we got a reward. The head is cool! Marge: Well then... I

I'm doomed. Originally shared by Pinnacle Entertainment Group The First Gun strikes with ungodly force. #SixthGunRPG Kickstarter begins in 6 days! @onipress @cullenbunn @brihurtt

Just saw a comment that said David Drake's Hammers Slammers stories were ”nothing special.” May they be flattened by a combat car.

Lots of cute semi-aquatic avian theropod dinosaur babies out tonight.

Saw this on FB. The Avengers on Letterman. http://assistanteditorsmonth.blogspot.com/2012/05/avengers-239.html?m=1

Yet again I’m impressed with the versatility of the advantage/disadvantage mechanic. For Riders of the Purple Lotus I didn't want to have to assign speeds in feet to everyone and everything. I don’t want fiddly tactical movement. But I still want to a way to measure sheer speed for chases and such. So everything gets a pace : Slow, Average, or Fast. Slow creatures have disadvantage on rolls for chases or races, Average is a straight roll, Fast creatures get advantage. Pace will also determine daily movement rates. We’ll see how this works.

Sorry to anyone on my Fury Road thread. Someone was going to thread crap, and I nuked it. No time to moderate or explain deleting comments today. If you can read this it wasn't you. That was fun, again, sorry!

If the energy at a fifth grade track meet could somehow be harnessed, our energy problems would be solved

I got in on Petty Gods right at the last minute with a minion entry. But it got a whole page in the book. Such a cool project. And free. I'm going to have to order a hardcover though. http://www.rpgnow.com/product/149434/Petty-Gods-Revised--Expanded-Edition

Symbiotic Relationships and Random Encounter Tables Here’s an article about a frog that gets protection from a giant tarantula. I can see the random encounter table now. 1. 1 Giant viper 2. 2d8 Giant ants 3. 1 Giant frog and 1 giant tarantula 4. 1d3 Axe beaks There’s a little ecosystem here. The frog eats the ants that want the spider’s eggs. The tarantula keeps away the snakes and axe beaks that would otherwise eat the frog. This is how you get weird seemingly mismatched encounters in dungeons too. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/tiny-frogs-and-giant-spiders-best-of-friends/ http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/tiny-frogs-and-giant-spiders-best-of-friends

Take a look at Mount Saint Helens from space. Originally shared by NASA On May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens gave way to a cataclysmic flank collapse, avalanche, and explosion that killed 57 people and displaced many others. The event dramatically reshaped the volcano and surrounding land in southwest Washington. Now, 35 years later, satellites in orbit and scientists on the ground still monitor the mountain and track its recovery. More: http://go.nasa.gov/1EXpNLc #EarthRightNow

Literal edition warring in Knights of Pen & Paper 2 .

"Brawl." Not gunfight or riot or massacre.  http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/17/us/texas-shooting

Two hours spent troubleshooting the dishwasher. All repair and juryrig rolls failed, including using a rubber band! That should be good for a huge bonus to the roll! Next step is to take the sensors to work and have someone test if there's actually current going through them...

Fun with silhouettes.

"If I had four stomachs I would use them for hot-dogs, pizza, pancakes, french toast, and waffles...actually, five stomachs."

So, Warboys are orks, right? Warboyz?

"Flames... on the side of my face..."

Thumbs up.

What Matthew Nelson said! Originally shared by Matthew Nelson It's time for D&D!

I started a new game of Knights of Pen & Paper 2 because I wanted to try this. Cheerleader elf warrior. High Senses + Riposte power means she gets a free attack after a monster attacks her about 40% of the time. She can also do a cheer to heal the party.

Twin Cities peeps. http://www.riverviewtheater.com/show/show/2064

I go into Abby’s room to read with her before bed. She’s drawing a picture of a girl and boy. “Who’s the boy? You never draw boys.” “A British officer.” “…” “You know, the one she’s spying on. To report to General Washington.” “…” “The girl is Lydia Darragh.” “…” “For my history report!” “Oh! Yeah! Looks great.” “Jeez, Papa.” “You should color the officer’s coat red so you know he’s British.” sarcastic “Thanks.” I didn’t get a pic of what she was drawing, but here’s the excellent cover of her report. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lydia_Darrah