2024 Session 2: TLQuest week 4

If you're busy this week/when reading this, the weekly goals and prompts are right at the bottom after the list of last week's goals, just skip the earlier stuff!

Greetings!  It really does feel like nearly work-summer here - all marks had to be in earlier this week so those of us who are not out in the field are now knee-deep in students with questions/problems, ranging from the resigned one asking about resits already (August, child, August) to the confused one who forgot to ask for an extension on one assignment of three due the same week they were out having a minor operation, administrators asking for checks of modules (marks are passed from the VLE to the student information system (SIS) to code-laden spreadsheets in a nearly but not quite automated way, and since the ViLE and the SIS don't talk quite the same language, and human intervention is involved, there are many small opportunities for error so the spreadsheets come back to us for manual checking - but of course half our colleagues are in the field/on holiday/at conferences/away external examining for other universities already, so someone has to be found to do the task)... but the first examiners meeting is next week, and the university has announced an All Hands Financial Situation Is Dire meeting the week after, which are as much a sign of summer as swifts screaming overhead, and the traffic cones are out in swarms on local roads, also a good sign in the UK.  Which has me thinking about how to create little moments of True Summer, the ones that seemed so possible on the last day of school when we were children, acres of time and lashings of lemonade and real, deep freedom.  Because there isn't room for the big stuff, between summer goals, the creep of the rest of the job (the All Hands will be bad news the only unknown is how deep and how soon the cuts will be; resit creation and processing invades July and August, and ViLE set up/new software arrivals/preparing for Clearing start in August, and there are project student crises all summer...), and just Being A Grown Up.  What does True Summer look like for you, and how can you capture it?  I'll be making at least one batch of my Granny's Home Made Lemonade and finding a tree to drink some under whilst reading metaphysical poetry...

Our adventurers will be up bright and early in the morning to get information about their chosen quest this week.

THIS WEEK'S GAMEPLAY:
Our characters have decided they want to be Skilled Assistants to Silan Fontana - even if Scout is only going along because she thinks the rest are too kind hearted and may find themselves aiding a poisoner, or poisoned by a poisoner, plus it's close to where Mistress Underwood is offering good socks (anyone who walks any distance knows the value of Good Socks, which was considerably greater when socks were all hand made by people - my Great Great (Great? I lose count) Grandmother actually paid rent in her old age in the form of half a dozen pairs of navy blue shooting stockings - thigh high socks for wearing inside boots when standing around in chilly dawns - hand made for the landowner who had respected her deceased husband and allowed her to stay in his tied cottage for her last years, with the socks as rent for mutual dignity, or so the family story has it).

In D&D, there are three "modes of game play" - social interactions, exploring (interactions with the physical environment) and combat (hostile interactions).  Different characters shine in different places!  Basic game play is the same in all cases - the DM describes the situation, players describe what their character wants to do, and the DM decides whether they can do that and whether there is a chance of it not succeeding, in which case a dice roll is made to see what happens.  For example, 

• the DM says "you come to a stone bridge crossing the river, with several small statues evenly spaced along the parapet on the up-stream side".  
• The elf ranger wants to carefully inspect the closest statue, the human fighter wants to take a quick look under the bridge arches in case of trolls, and the halfling bard wants to hurry along to the tavern.  
• The ranger would make a roll to determine how much information they collect from their inspection, the fighter would make a roll to determine how stealthily they moved to get under the bridge, and the bard would just set off across the bridge without a dice roll being needed.  
• Each in turn rolls, and the DM explains what happens as a consequence (perhaps the ranger realises that what they thought were statues are actually Leathery Winged Avians having a nap, the fighter slips and falls in the river making a loud splash (but seeing no trolls), and the bard is now half-way across the bridge singing a little tune, so the DM is about to roll for the LWAs to see if they wake up hungry...).

In the full game, the DM decides how hard the task is (how high the player has to roll to succeed, or to get different levels of information), and players keep track of all the properties of their characters (everyone has numerical scores for strength, intelligence etc., and skills in specific areas) and add or subtract those values from the dice rolls (e.g. a ranger will usually have a high wisdom score, the personal quality which determines how well a character can perceive and interpret their environment, so might be able to add 3 or 4 bonus points to their roll to inspect the statues.  But the fighter might be wearing plate mail, which is noisy, so would subtract one or two bonus points from their roll to be sneaky).  To keep this TLQ version simple, I'm going to adjust the difficulty level of a task for the character, based on their race and class, but the same idea will apply.  And hopefully that's the last of the long bits of explanations of mechanics needed! On to our first social encounter:

It's a fine morning, and the tavern bakes fresh bread every day, so our group are decently fed and in good moods as they set out to follow the directions they've been given to Silas Fortana's cottage.  The Innkeeper said Silas was a decent enough old boy and didn't charge locals more than they could pay for his remedies, but that he hasn't come in for a drink for the last week or so, and the notice had been pinned up by one of his neighbours.  The village seems to be reasonably prosperous, and no-one is surprised to see a group of travellers, although a couple of dogs follow along companionably for a while.  Silas lives in a small cottage a field or two away from the main village, close to the woods.  You spot his cottage immediately because it is surrounded by a riot of green, neatly divided into sections by gravelled paths.  As you get closer, those of you who know about plants will realise that the divisions reflect conditions - a full sun bed against a southerly wall, a shade bed, a bed with crushed lime scattered among the plants to make the soil more alkali.  The whole garden is neatly fenced, and a wider fenced path leads to the cottage door.

It will take a while for someone to come to the door - you will hear barking, small noises inside, someone telling a "fool dog" to calm down.  Eventually it opens, and you see an elderly human man leaning on a crutch and holding a large handkerchief in his other hand.  He's wearing simple clothes that are made of good fabric but have clearly seen a lot of gardening action, he is missing his left leg below the knee, and he is having a good old fashioned coughing fit.  Once he gets his breath back, he encourages you to take a seat on a pair of benches outside the door, because he needs some fresh air himself, and because the cottage will be right frowsty as he's been mostly in bed the last eight days.  Between bouts of wheezing and coughing, he tells you about his situation.  "You must think I'm not up to much, an apothecary who can't cure his own cough overnight.  But an ordinary apothecary like me can't stop a human from aging, and if the children are sharing around a cold, well, the whole village gets it.  My lungs aren't what they were before, and anything like that goes to them and settles in for a while, whatever I do.  I've been waiting for the weather to get settled before arranging a trip to Darkthorn Woods, it's quite an undertaking for an old codger like me, although there's usually a couple of local youngsters willing to have a bit of an adventure and a break from shovelling muck or pulling weeds, I wouldn't go there alone.  But now this... and I'm out or nearly out of several of my summer cures which require those herbs.  I need a few weeks to get some of them properly prepared and matured, and now the weather is decent, people will be wandering into the woods or marshes or trysting in hedgerows, get over-confident in their foraging, roll in the wrong kind of grass, sit on ant-hills, get bitten by the wrong kind of bug, or the children will be playing further away from the village and picking pretty green leaves or daring each other to poke sticks into holes to disturb beasts.  People will people, and I hate not being able to help them get over the consequences of outdoor peopling.  I can pay well and tell you where to go and all that, and I know those plants so well I can be sure to identify them even if they are a bit dried out by the time they get back here, you needn't worry you'll poison anyone by collecting the wrong thing - or get away with defrauding this old man, although you don't seem the types.  So are some of you people willing to go to Darkthorn Woods and fetch me some Singing Nettles, Feyflax and Perennewinkle?"  By this point the dog, an elderly three-legged particoloured mixed breed sort of animal, has decided you are all wonderful and is going around demanding petting, and you are aware of being intently observed by two cats, one on a windowsill and one in the thatch.

So, are there any actions your characters want to take?  Things you could do might include wanting to do an insight check (do your instincts and people-savvy tell you he's being completely honest?), check your own memory to see if you know anything about that place or those herbs, make an excuse to look around his house or garden, ask his cats... or you might want to do something specific to prepare for a journey away from the road, or to ask more questions.

LAST WEEK'S GOALS:

    DAISY

1. Submit revisions for Paper 1
2. Submit revisions for Paper 2
3. Big association meeting and attached reports
4. Edits on local paper for colleague
5. Read and comment on student proposals and thesis chapters

    DEH

1. finish reading MS I'm reviewing for a press
2. one unit Greek
3. progress on Alms
4. 2 x 2 hours garden
5. notes on at least one ILL book
6. something else worth reporting

    HEU MIHI

1. Write (/read for book) 15 hours
2. Finish reading review book
3. Send two big emails to grad students
4. Read dissertation chapter
5. Review article

    JANEB

1. self-care: tick off at least 75% of the regular chores list, additional intentional movement three days, do physio recommended stretches with great caution at least three days (did everything instructed on Saturday, and today I'm regretting it), practicing rest as needed. The decluttering woman is coming on Friday so I will need to be on the ball for that despite working Monday to Thursday...
2. fun: play some kind of ttrpg (may not be D&D this week), knit some, draw something, read something
3. teaching and administration: last-last minute marking (marks are due in Monday, BUT a colleague has an "extension" and may need help, three blocks of teaching preparation from my list
4. meeting about service stuff in my field now I'm "back". Improve research session goal. referee report on an article. at least an hour on the Slowly Developing Paper

    JULIE

1. Presentation for workshop next week.
2. Decluttering - take books from study to charity shop.
3. FIL's birthday.

    SUSAN

1. Finish settling in, doing house stuff.
2. Re-read Famous Author, set plan.
3. Do something fun this weekend, to remind myself that, “I’m not in Kansas anymore.”

IN SUMMARY:

Your TLQuest prompt is: having heard what Silas Fontana had to say, what does your character want to do now?

Your real-world TLQ prompt is: What does True Summer look like for you, and what can you do to make sure little moments of it happen this year?  Plus of course goals check ins!