I found this

Deadly purpose cloaked Jacob Eugene O'Carol.

Scaly Jake, as he was professionally known, was no stranger to having his back against the wall. He was a survivor of the last stand at Matamorosa, and seemingly a thousand other battles in the last great war. Death itself was an old friend of Jake's. When came for him this time, he would look it in the eye and say, “Long time, no see.” But he would say that while holding his old service flamethrower and fighting for the life he had made for himself.

Jake's service station was known to those who traveled the waste as the best garage in the north, and Jake's wife served up some damn good pie.

The old flamethrower that Jake had carried through Hell and back was in a neglected corner of his shop, near an even older refrigerator that held a six pack of cheap beer. Both the brews and the weapon had seemingly been waiting for a day like this and Jake had touched neither since he came home from the war. He needed both of them now.

He and his wife had been walking through their cold morning ritual, eating breakfast and watching the morning news to combat the pregnant silence. They were lizard people, and made lifemates through culture and biology, but any love that they had once felt for each other had faded through the years. What the news anchor had to say that morning made both of them stop in the middle of the motions that replaced their intimacy, and begin to tremble.

“...a massive creature has virtually destroyed Kurgisburg and is making its way south.”

A projected path of the creature displayed on a map put Scaly Jake's Filling Station and Garage squarely in its path. Shaky, grainy, video showed a massive shape making its way across the wastes. It was impossibly large and death strode with it.

An hour later, he and his wife had just finished packing their old station wagon. Their work completed, the pair stood facing each other, neither one moving.

“Get in the car, Jake.”

Jake paused, “No, I don't think I will.”

“What do you mean, Jake? We've got to get out of here!”

“No, we don't. You do. I'm gonna stay.”

His wife's jaw hung open.

“Woman, we've been here twenty years, and you've been hating it for at least fifteen. You don't love this life, but I do. I love this service station, I love my work. Hell, I even love those damn dirty dwarves who come through once a year. And working on that fancy car them boys brought in last week, well, I'd rather be dead in the desert than stand by and let some random leviathan step all over my dreams. I'll stay, and I'll fight, and I might die. Most likely I will. But I'm glad to die for that which I love, even if it's only a run-down gas station in the middle of nowhere that ain't worth a damn.”

Tears were in his wife's eyes. They began to stream down her cheeks as she spoke.

“There you are. Here's the lizard I love. You've found your fire. I'm so happy I could see you again before I die.”

“Betsy?”

“I'm staying, Jake. I'm staying.”

They made love then and there. On the hood of the station wagon, on the cement floor, and in the dust out front by the full service pumps.

When their passions were finally spent, Jake unpacked the flamethrower, minigun, and grenade launcher and stacked them neatly against the station wagon. When the shadow of the colossus finally darkened his property, he met the beast on the land that he loved, with the woman that he loved.

I made a game.

I made a game today. It is heavily based on Lamentations of the Flame Princess and will likely never be used. I didn't flesh out the magic system because it's all in my head and as I'm likely the only person who will ever run this system, there's no need to write it down. An ultra-crappy character sheet is included. You can download it here.

Echoes in eternity

I still exist, though I doubt any of my readers would still self-identify as such, should there have ever been any.

Anyway, I ran a game! With my own homebrew system! And my own original setting!

So how neat is that? For added indy cred, my homebrew is classless, much like its creator.

That setting doesn't have a name, yet*. But it's a science fantasy setting, possibly in our own world's distant future, or just uncomfortably nearby in the multiverse as things such as V8 muscle cars and the Top Gun soundtrack exist. Also 8 track players with said soundtrack stuck in them, forever playing side B.

It is a place of dwarven biker gangs tearing down the highways on their custom machines. A place of lizardmen mechanics working lonely, isolated, filling stations with nothing but the company of his shrew of a wife to pass the time.

It is a place of only one elf. But the elf is legion. And an A.I. It exists in many bodies, but one mind, unless of course, a body is sent out into the world to experience the world through the cultural lens of the ELF, and perhaps find true individuality, only to return to the collective.

It is a place of sharp-dressed, psychic spell casters, wielding laser swords and sniper rifles, who have sexual performance issues, and are fiscally conservative.

It is a place of wild nomadic beastmen, ripped from their tundra home and placed in a hive of scum and villainy. They live in abandoned "living spaces" and play cards with cheating robots, who double as microwaves.

Magic, high science, pop culture, post apocalyptica, fear, loathing, and really old cans of coke.

*I think I'm going to call the setting "The Danger Zone". Well, I know it's not a very good name, but, well, fuck you. Go on. Fuck off.

When all your blog posts are just posts apologizing for not posting...

Look, I know it has been awhile, but I've been busy, life intrudes, you know?

Well, fuck you then.

Go on, fuck off.

Or continue reading.

When one cannot game, one must think about gaming.
When one thinks enough about gaming, one must write about it.

So I'll do that.

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about my original world, its politics, and denizens and have created a map that I am most proud of. Not proud enough to show you people, but still proud.

Furthermore, I've started work on blending my favorite elements from Lamentations of the Flame Princess and ADnD 2E. I call it, Lamentations of the Second Edition Remix or LoSER.

The idea behind the project is to marry the accessibility and quick start up time of LotFP with the depth of 2E. My biggest issue with 2E is the time it takes to roll characters and my biggest gripe with LotFP is how flat characters made with that system start out.

Now, it is my belief that characters really receive their "roundness" through actual play, but I think that the decisions made during character creation help the process. In LotFP, your choices are class, alignment, and equipment. I'd like to add some depth there.

Depth, but not crunch. Unnecessary number crunching is to be avoided. To that end, saving throws are out the window.

At first I thought I'd steal from the third edition of DnD, with its three simple saving throws, and then I thought, "Wait. Aren't fortitude, willpower, and reflex covered by constitution, wisdom, and dexterity? Y U ADD MORE THINGS?" Why not a simple stat check?

What's that you say? Saving throws should be more difficult? Fine. Bring back the 3E style saving throws but each one is set at 10 and acts like an armor class. Modify that number with the relevant stat bonus. (Descending armor class, you Luddite.)  Whatever is forcing the saving throw now must make an "attack roll" against your saving throw. Embrace the suck. Because this shit goes both ways. Anytime you force a saving throw against something else, you must make an attack roll against it. Wizards, dust off yer d20's.

About dem gnomes...

In my home campaign setting I've spent some time working on three sample backgrounds for each major race, divided along social and sub-race lines.

In this I have two major goals: First provide some ideas to players creating characters and second to further flesh out the individual cultures that populate my world.

Gnomes are general divided into three groups: Architects, peasants, and exiles.

Architects are part of the former ruling class of the highly organized and rigidly caste-based gnomish society. Before being conquered by the Iron Empire, these gnomes belonged to the gnome leaders who were directly involved with the cult of Mechanics.

Peasant gnomes where the hoi polloi of gnomish society and have barely noticed the change in management. Though many of the laws that had made them second class citizens have been repealed, most stick to the old restrictions, still not daring to violate what have become cultural norms for the uneducated laborer class.

Exiles are those gnomes that regardless of which caste they had previously belonged too, fled their homeland en masse rather than be ruled by a foreign power.

Two for the price of naught

Quickie gaming update: My sociopathic savage worlds character is now a blooded priest of the wolf god of dreams and nightmares and also had all his fear removed. Literally, he cannot feel fear. As fear was the prime motivator of his antisocial and psychotic behaviors, he's effectively been cured.

But who is the man without fear?

We'll find out when that adventure continues, I suppose.

In the meantime, I'm scratching my sci-fi itch by coercing the group to switch to a Travellers game, of which, I am DM.

I find that space games suffer from the same problem as sea-based fantasy games. Ostensibly, the only difference would be that the characters mode of locomotion has changed from foot and hoof to oar and sail, but the reality tends to be "OK, we have a ship.... now what? We just sail around until something attacks us?"

I've never had it work out, for whatever reasons. However, I am not one to walk away from such problems.

So I lurk here, in my basement, chain smoking unfiltered Camels and listing to Neil Young; stewing over the elements of the scenario.

Also, I read an article about the Michigan Dogman. So, using Ed's sans-system monster thingy, here is the Dogman.

Name: Dogman

Purpose: Could function fine as a random monster, or the focus of a one or two shot adventure, or as an element of a location, something of an environmental hazard. I see them as being something horrific, without origin or a natural place in the world. A corruption of both man and beast.


Appearance:

Man/dog face, human body, covered in fur, dog legs, four of 'em. Though capable of walking upright, the "arms" are just another set of legs. Sharp claws. Stanky. Makes sounds like a large dog, or a man with a cleft pallet.

Descriptors: The Dogman is as intelligent as the smartest wolf and just as fast. Whatever stats your game gives for something like a dire wolf should work just fine, or a faster bear, perhaps. They should be pack manimals. Territorial, if shy. Smart, fast, deadly. Tougher than your average man, though completely unarmored. Strongish. Keen sense of smell and hearing. Nocturnal.

Ecology: Dogmen could be a cursed race of men, horrors summoned from the Twisting Nether, or a natural part of the ecosystem. Suppose some or all of them are domesticated and serve in roles traditionally filled by mundane dogs. My immediate thought was of something like a pack of stray dogs. Dirty, wild, and dangerous. Surviving off society's refuse and feasting on the unwary or unlucky. Regardless, Dogmen should be truly uncanny. Close enough to being a man or a dog that the similarity only serves to highlight their strangeness. Unsettling. Perhaps their appearance in a location could be a symptom of some greater corruption? Perhaps any who encounter Dogmen and leave some alive are doomed to be forever hunted by that particular pack? Though, if Dogmen are cursed, the effects shouldn't be spread by mere encounters with or wounds from a Dogman. If you want some polymorphing disease monster, we have werewolves for that.

In the Fiction:

"We tracked the pack of devils from the O'Leary farm to Sutter's Mill. They seemed to disappear by day. It seemed that we could only catch a glimpse of them once the moon was up and they could see and we couldn't. You could smell the pack before you could see them, anyway. Though, if you can smell the beasts, you can bet they can smell you. The bastards are smart too. You'd spot one standing out in the open, and he'd lock eyes with you, eyes that were too much like a man's, and you would know that he was staring right at you. Not just in your direction, but right into your own eyes. That's when the rest of the pack would come down on you. All teeth and stinking fur, tearing and barking and screaming at you. That night, we lost three good men and killed one, maybe two, of the beasts. The rest fled, and we called that a victory. How do you hunt something that is hunting you? I say we lost three good men, and we did. Their widows had no bodies to bury. The Dogmen took them as they fled. Between the O'Leary's and those we lost, those monsters were likely fed for a month. Did they come out of the hills seeking to eat a few families? Or did they want us to come at them, all angry and stinking of fear? I don't sleep but with my doors and windows locked. And if you think it's Dogmen you've got, then take my advice and let them have your sheep and your horses and cows and pray that they'll settle for them and not you."

Must... keep... blogging....

Willpower! Hal Jordan, man, let's do this~!


I'm playing in a Savage Worlds game, it will soon be converted to The Pool, then back to Savage Worlds, I think.

I dunno. My character is a complete sociopath. Everything good that happens is because of him, everything bad that happens is the fault of his weird pre-human sasquatch goblin companion.

What the GM had envisioned as an epic quest to rid the world of the taint (HA!) of the Elder Gods has become "A Complete Asshole and a Goblin Awaken All the Old Evil".

So far, I have two pacts with a snake god (who's unholy text I possess) and a blind wolf god of sleep who's avatar I may or may not have helped slay and then further desecrate with poop. Some death goddess tried to attack us, but she was cast down.

Basically, my character is an ex-pharmacist turned unwilling polygot priest who takes credit for everything, deflects all blame, and is never grateful for anything. It's only a matter of time before he becomes some kind of cult leader/serial killer.

Internets, debateabke

My inter web access is spotty at best, so I'm updating from my phone. It is less than adequate.

I'm running two lotfp games, one of which is online over g+ and I must say that it is working way better than I thought possible. Provided, of course that I have internet.

Any way,

I was thinking about how fragile first level characters are in lotfp and whether that is a function of the system or my DMing style. I've yet to run a session with rookie PC's where somebody didn't die.

My stock baddies for low level have 4 HP and no armor, generally hitting for d4 or worse damage and the party is almost never out numbered.

Statistically, the average PC starts the game superior in every way.

The only major difference between with lotfp is that my combat rolls are made in the open, meaning I cannot fudge the dice in favor of the players, something that I admit to doing, especially at low level. Because when your party gets wiped out by two goblins in an alley, it is usually not very fun.

I feel the need to note that I have never once done the opposite and fudged in favor of the baddies. As a DM, I'm winning when we're all having fun, not when my numbers are better than your numbers.

I do feel, however, a twinge of guilt at fudging at all, as I feel that to provide an advantage to the players is just as dirty a trick as trying to murder them.

Any advantage the players gain should be their own doing. (not by fudging, mind you, but by setting up an ambush or learning a monsters weakness for cheese)

So, is the x-factor me? Are players dying in droves because I'm not shielding them?

Death is so prevalent that I've instituted the Shields Will Be Shattered rule and the It Gets Worse rules.

My instincts tell me to drop all that nonsense and roll and let die.

Holy Shit I Should Write Something and Gnomes for LotFP

It's been forever since stuff.

I'm gaming again, playing some Lamentations of the Flame Princess: Weird Fantasy Nerd Game for Kids.

Also, might soon be running an online game with some far flung friends and streaming the whole fucking mess on twitch.tv.

Anyway,

My original world has gnomes, the stock LotFP rules do not include the little bastards. So I made my own version.

GNOMES - Distant cousins to dwarves. Mechanically inclined, magical leanings.

Gnomes save as dwarves and roll a d6 for HP. They enjoy the same skill advancement as Specialists and start life with a 2/6 in the Tinker skill. Gnomes can also cast Magic User spells with one gigantic caveat: Spells may only be cast by using a scroll, rod, staff, wand, or other magic device or artifact including but not limited to the things I just mentioned. Other than that, their magical abilities are as described in the magic section.

Sometimes the bear eats you.

My septic tank exploded, I've got a roommate moving out and a girlfriend moving in.

So I've been doing that instead of gaming.

Aww yiss.

I think I'll be buying the full set.

Essurans of Jaguan

A race of humans in my original campaign world.

The quick and dirty:
- Essurans/Essurons come from the semi-theocratic nation of Jaguan, their native tongue is Essurat.
- Skin tones and hair colors range from black to light brown, eye colors range from black to gold, though, magic users always have blue eyes.
- Essurans are famed for their prowess at sea as sailors and explorers.
- Essurans are noted for their odd economy which uses favors owed as monetized debt.
- Beautiful men and women typically veil themselves.

Tedious meta-description by an in-game sage:

From the notes of the Thrailish sage Xerex IV

Aside  from the obvious difference of their skin, the Essurons are notably different in their economic practices.

Rather than coin, value is placed directly on work, or service owed. The Myralonian Scholar Arontius famously called this system "The Whoring Commerce" in his review of the culture in 845, and while modern students must forgive his language they will no doubt find that 500 years have hardly rendered Arontius' conclusions false.

 Essuronion custom dictates that payment for any good or service is made by a good or service traded in kind. A night in an inn can be paid for by sweeping its floors or providing food or drink for the establishment or anything else the innkeeper desires.

Deceptively crude at first, this system of barter becomes infinitely more complex with the addition of slavery. Many slaves are themselves sold into bondage voluntarily in exchange for some great favor. The possible labor of slaves is owned by their master who can then freely barter with his accumulated "wealth".

Less formal means of servitude also exist where a man might pay for a meal with a writ of promise pledging a certain service or amount of goods. This writ may in turn be sold to another individual, thus transferring the original debt.

It is this web of debt that ultimately supports and sustains the larger Essuron economy.

As if to further complicate matters, all debts are periodically erased. Typically, the forgiveness of debt occurs every seven years, but is by no means guaranteed. Periods between forgivenesses of debt have been as short as three years and as long as 15. The event is always arranged by the high priestesses of the Essuron tiger God, who themselves are part of the royal family. When the time is right, the highest ranking priestess, who is said to be the most beautiful woman of all, will call a gathering of noble families and appear before them nude for one quarter of an hour.

According to folklore, this is a reenactment of the first business transaction whereby the folk hero Astor begged a woman for a vision of her beauty and was required to marry her in payment.

Upon viewing the naked high priestess, all debts owed by the nobles to the church and the throne are forgiven and likewise the nobles are required to forgive all debts owed to them and so on and so forth until all debt is forgiven and likewise, all slaves and servants released.

Senseless

Did I pre-order an AD&D 2E PHB reprint today?

Did you eat my bike?

Yiss.

Shit shit shit (I just felt like swearing)

BLOG, right?!

I haven't been drinking near my computer, and therefore have not blogged in a bit.

But I have played a game!

More specifically, ran one.

It could technically be called a "playtest", but I think that word is stupid.

Anywho,

The game is a multi-dimensional funhouse. The player characters are a hyper-sexed drug dealer from the future and an oddly prudish and demure flapper from 1920's land. She is in black and white and she sees everything in black and white, she's good with a gun, he is not. He also doesn't gender-identify, or does, but just checks the box marked "Yes to all".

At any rate, the duo blasted through the first "realm" I set them in. There was a bit with five people escaping in a two person sky-car that I think I should've made a bit harsher, but I tend to go with my gut, and my gut said that forcing the players to leave behind three NPCs would do nothing really but reinforce the idea that all NPCs should wear a red shirt.

If there had been a stronger motivation for one or both of the PC's to have been left behind.... tantalizing.

I've ran very little of the system we're playing and I'm learning much.

Firstly, it requires a light touch.

In a D&D game, to teach a player that knives are dangerous, you stab them.

In this game, you show them the knife.

There is a snap response and sharp corollary between violence and death. Ramping up the tension is something that must be feathered like a touchy throttle. I can't just throw waves of goblins at them and watch them cringe as their hit points get low.

I have to show them a really big fuck'n knife, introduce them to the man who uses it, and then let him wax poetic about how he's going to wear their tummies like a mask.

Review: Pete's Garage

Alexis of Tao of D&D fame published a book, Pete's Garage.

I had intended to finish it three or four weeks ago, but then life happened.

Anyway.

I finished it not five minutes ago. Here's what I think.

This book has two things going against it, right off the bat.

1. Written in first person.
2. More character driven than plot driven.

These things don't matter to some people, I tend to not like books like this.

That said, I would find myself burning through the pages. If nothing else, the book is well written, though the proofreader in me found four? mistakes and as a baptized disciple of the AP Style, I cringed at the use of ellipses.

Mere quibbles, all these.

On a scale of buy, borrow, or burn, this book is a borrower for me, and the reason boils down to personal taste.

What we have is collection of stories surrounding the owner of an old hotel-turned-practice-space-for-musicians. The stories are told as memoirs and occur sequentially. A thin narrative runs through the whole book, that of the narrator reconciling and coming to terms with his past. There are also some supernatural elements tossed in. Sometimes it feels the slightest bit schizophrenic, but it is interesting and the stories never seem to drag.

While reading Pete's Garage, I also finished Salem's Lot and a Dean Koontz book that I can't be bothered to remember. Comparisons are inevitable.

Pete's Garage ranks below the Lot, and worlds ahead of the Koontz book.

Let Alexis write three or four more books, and at the very least, he'll be well on his way to creating something truly awesome.

Blaarg blaarg blaarg

We are creatures.

So, the previous post still rings true, but also for the last week, I've been working on a Thing that pays Money, but required me to labor for 13ish hours a day, which left little time for blagging.

Also, I've become addicted to Sisters of Mercy. Pity me.


In RPG related bullshit:

The Burning Meadows campaign in which I was a player has wrapped up. This is probably the second or third time that I've actually seen a game all the way to its end. My character survived, as did his companion, the city was saved, and he became a landed knight-errant. Not an oxymoron. Shut up.

In my head, he marries the daughter of a hill tribe chieftain and they have children and adventures.

The scroll-wheel on my mouse just broke. Fuck.

Also, "blagging" is not a typo. Fuck you.

I've been drinking.

I will soon be running a game! *GASP*

This means I must begin Thinking, a dangerous prospect in any age. The players will be in that weird dimension-hopping setting I once described, so I must bend my mind's eye to the Land of Grot where they will begin their exercise in frustration and torment. Because RPG's are just like sex.

Nit that anyone reads this...

...but I got laid off at some point in the recent past.

While in theory, this would provide more time than ever to wax poetic about playing pretend, the reality is that the lack of a fixed schedule has made the days and nights run together, time and space become a mystery.

I've been too busy doing nothing to do anything and have literally lost track of time.

The Invisibile System

This is a post about THAC0.

This system for determining whether or not a player character hits in 2E hinges on two factors: THAC0 and Armor Class.

THAC0 is an acronym for To Hit Armor Class Zero. A character's THAC0 value is the number he must roll on a d20 in order to hit a thing that has an Armor Class of zero. The value of the target's Armor Class is applied to the attack roll of his aggressor.

     Attack roll +/- target's armor class +/- any other modifiers = Modified Attack Roll
     If Modified Attack roll is equal to or greater than THAC0, the hit succeeds.

Complex in its simplicity, no?

You may be thinking, "Fuck that! Why would I want to do that in my head every time I roll the dice?"

Good news, gentle player, you don't. Such things are for the DM to compute. As a player, you tell the DM what you've rolled (plus any modifiers) and your THAC0. The DM adds in the target's armor class and any other modifiers he may have and lets you know if you hit.

The magic of this is that the player is only acutely aware of improvement through examining results. As opposed to an "active" value, like a bonus or penalty, THAC0 is passive. Every time a player attacks, he is not adding his THAC0 or evenly actively considering it unless the DM asks him for it. If the DM has prepared a reference sheet in advance, he might never ask for it.
It should become apparent, however, to the player that their character is hitting more often as their THAC0 goes down. But because they are not reminded with every swing of their mace that they have incrementally improved, they perceive less of the hard mechanics of the game.

But wait! Isn't the to-hit system in 3E the exact fucking same? You tell the DM what you rolled and he tells you if you hit or not?

Yes and No.

In a general, yes. That's how most games work. The players do a thing and then the DM does his things and tells the players about it. Repeat.

In 3E, that Base Attack Bonus is going up. If not this level, then next level. The player must be constantly aware of the arbitrary rule that represents his improvements in combat. Some feats (I'll do a whole other post on why I hate feats) even use those bonus as bargaining chips and let you redistribute them. (I'm looking at you, power attack.)
The bonus is at the forefront. With THAC0 it is in the background. Almost invisible.

Try it out sometime.

To convert, take the sum of a character's arbitrary to-hit bonuses. Do not factor in strength bonuses, bonuses because of fighting style or particular skill with a particular weapon, only the bonus you receive to your hit roll because you are an X-level Adventurer.

Got the sum total? Great. Subtract it from 20 - There's your THAC0.

For armor class, determine how much better your armor is than no armor. Is it two points better? Is it eleven points better? Whatever. Figure out how much better your armor is than no armor according to your system. Then subtract that from 10. That is your new armor class. Have your DM do likewise for all his shit.

Or just pickup (read "download") a copy of the 2E rules. You know, whatever.

And then it hit me...

The city is a dungeon.

On 2E

So, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Second Edition is my game of choice. I can't nail down for sure when I started playing, but my best estimates put it around 1996 or 1997, making me around 12 years old at the time.

My only previous experience had been with MUDs, the great granddaddy to the MMO. I was a fan of Greek myths, Lloyd Alexander, and of course Tolkien.
Living in the Bible Belt, all I knew about Dungeons and Dragons was that it was The Devil. I had no idea what an RPG was, had never seen a die other than a d6, and didn't understand the term "roleplaying".

What I had was an interest in fiction and computer games and some older friends who were curious about said Devil Game.

I was skeptical about playing, but one of the older guys who had already started playing told me that it was basically a computer game, but instead of the computer being the arbiter of the action, another player was. I was told tales of fighting goblins in dank ruins and other adventures and immediately decided that I wanted in.

I rolled up a thief, and played him for a good number of years, along with a host of other rogues, warriors, wizards, and maybe even a cleric or two.

I had been playing for years before the idea of searching for Dungeons and Dragons on the internet ever occurred to me. As I recall, things were pretty sparse. We did find some articles written under the moniker "Uncle Figgy". Those articles were gospel to us. They really taught me how to be both a player and a dungeon master. To this day, I make them required reading for new players.

For the most part, however, I played in a vacuum, disconnected from both the future and the past of Dungeons and Dragons.

I could infer that there were previous editions of the game, but the general understanding among our group was that they were somehow broke and almost unplayable. Relics from a bygone and less enlightened age.

I had no idea about what was happening at TSR, I wouldn't learn about Gygax until years after I had begun playing.

I didn't know that this was the "de-Satanized" version of the game. I didn't know that this was the first version of the game without Gygax.

All I knew was that this was Dungeons and Dragons.

And I loved it.

Why specifically? I'll cover that later. I've rambled on long enough for now.