Do you have one of those back support thingies?
Do you know why Shatner had a girdle? It wasn't because of his big belly, it was because he was always on his feet. How often is Kirk really sitting in his chair? TV shoots are like 16 hour days...regularly, and a lot of that was being on his feet.
So. Get a girdle, or at least one of those wrap around back support thingies...
Oh, and I wear one when I'm in my shop doing woodworking for more than a couple of hours, because my back will start hurting. Even if what I'm working on isn't heavy and when I have padding under my feet...
I don't, yet, but I'll try to get one next time we're in town. For me, it's not just being on my feet, but working at an angle, leaning over the grill that gets to me.
Oh boy...Apollodorus warned Alexei about Valerian...now I gotta go back through my notes. It's finally clear to me why the heck Valerian was attacking, for a minute I was going to suggest 'disbelieving'.
Ouch... Lagging behind...
For the record (about girdles), I am hurting if I stay up too long, so I can perfectly understand poor' old' will.
What you're saying is the exact same reason why I am loathe to have a grog leader with low int.
Yet...
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Mechanically, yes, Com will be useless to your fighter grog.
He doesn't need it to listen and interpret orders, nor does he need intelligence for this (or please, point me to the relevant formulaes), just like Marcus doesn't need his Dex, Str and Pre. If he's a leader, he might benefit of a good presence, but that's all (yes, Pre+3 and Com -3 make a very effective leader, rules-wise).
Unless the player feels like "my awesome grog leader shouldn't be dumb as a brick", or the GM articificially penalizes the player by saying that, due to his crappy dex, one has a penalty to his lab's safety, most character types can do perfectly without at least 2 stats.
Now, you're gonna tell me that his dump Dex, Str and Pre are important to marcus and penalise him on a regular basis? Please. These won't be a problem unless he tries to "multiclass" and do something else than being a combat monkey, just like if your fighter grog tried to be an orator or your loremaster a shield grog. -
The absence of a limit to the negative stats you may take, combined to the desire to optimise, leads to characters like that shield grog, that loremaster, or Marcus. Caricatures, that are at peak normal human capacity for some things, and worst "normal human" for the others. This is, IMHO, ridiculous, and makes for less credible characters. This limit, well, it limits this. So you will have the skinny and weak librarian, which is a dinstinctive feature, but he won't also be sluggish, clumsy and miopic as a mole. He can be bad at these, but he won't be terrible.
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Related, this limits munchkinism and optimisation.
I mean, this is simple. You keep arguing that Com can be important for a fighter, Qik for a librarian... Yet you are the one who dumped stats that where useless for Marcus, Ra'am, Tektonius and who else. Because it allows them to be better at what they do.
Okay, I am sorry. I get the feeling that I've hurt you, and I didn't. I wasn't antagonistic.
I just have this tendancy to talk, talk, talk and explain myself and my reasons, and give my thoughts on things, as you may have noticed by my intrusion on the character creations thread. This is like "you get to decide, but have you considered this? If you don't care, it's okay".
IMO, this is sensible. The cautionning.
I know there have been numerous times when I, as a player, was lost and didn't understood at all things that should have been apparent to Isen. I've seen it happen to others, too. Before you put yourself in question, I don't think this comes from you at all, but rather from the limited number of words one can push into a sentence and (at least in my case) the language barrier making things stranger. I mean, sometimes, I feel dumb as a brick, like everyone is understanding things and I am left gawking. Poor memory doesn't help, either.
It took me quite a while, but I laughed out loud when I realized who was she was. I found her incredibly rude, and suddenly, I was all "Aaaaah!!! Okay!!!" 
And yes, there was a point where it was quite easy to recognize the understandable error, there would be no harm done, yet...
Just to be clear about this. Because I think one may always have doubts or fears, and that some things are important to hear.
I have thought this (and seen it), with other GMs. Never with you. Likewise, I never thought viscaria was getting a sweet deal at all.
?? What do you mean?
I guess I have this underlying belief that one can improve characteristics or characteristics can deteriorate over a period of time. Most of the time this never comes up in a game, because, well, you make a character how you want it to be. My vision for Marcus is that he was, at one time reasonably strong and could stand against others, but that over time (45+ years) his strength and nimbleness have atrophied. It's almost the same for Ra'am in Phoenix, because when he came to Phoenix he already had 33+ years as essentially an academic, pursuing very little physical activity. If a character were to transform himself through some fairly good play to improve Characteristics, I'd generally allow it. That being said, he's going to probably have some other characteristics decline. You view the +3 for one Characteristic and -3 for another as a caricature, I view it as a character choice that is probably consistent with the background they have selected. If Ra'am turned into a workout freak, he could probably get his strength to +3 by the time his LR begins to fail. Of course, all he's doing is working out 8 hours a day 6 days a week. 
An optimized character is not necessarily a munchkin character. A munchkin character is one that is so optimized that it has no consistent or believable back story, and is designed to play the game rather than tell an interesting story. That's a pretty big distinction.
And while the characters I have created haven't necessarily shown it, I can come up with a character that has a characteristic that is higher than average in a characteristic that isn't necessarily as useful for his role. My current characters aren't meant to be representative of the broad spectrum of possibilities, as they were designed with specific goals in mind. If I make a fighter grog with aspirations of being turb captain, he's going to have better than average Presence and Com, and might even discount strength even making it negative. Ultimately his role is to make his men better fighters, not to be a better fighter himself. A good leader needs to know when to not pull the sword, so he probably has some intelligence, too, to back it up. Will he have strength -3? Maybe not that bad, but -2 is not outside the realm of probability, and he invests in his weapon skill to overcome that disadvantage. This investment in an ability isn't altogether different from a magus just investing in his magic...
And I wasn't hurt, I was just kind of annoyed. If it's not important than there's no need to mention it. If you're mentioning it, you obviously think it's important. So that disconnect annoyed me. It was momentary and passing, and I didn't hold it against you, but I did call you out on it.
I have a tendency towards the subtle. I think my clues are obvious, but they are not. Being on the other side as a player, I know that sometimes SGs think the clue is obvious but it isn't. So I give help if asked, or if I think the story is going in a direction it shouldn't, I'll provide some additional clues. I do have a place where I want certain stories to end...but I like to think I give players a lot of choices between the beginning and ending, and sometimes I can extend those choices into other interesting stories...
That episode actually provided a lot of closure for me. I felt largely responsible for the events that transpired. And then I saw that, and now I don't feel as much responsibility. Note, I said I felt responsible, but I didn't believe I was entirely responsible, if that makes sense. Now my feelings and beliefs are one and I don't feel like I am lying to myself.
I don't load select players up with a lot of super secret info so that they can play the game with a sense of I'm winning, you're losing. I may want characters to behave that way, but I might provide the player with a bit of direction and little actual information to get him into a frame of mind. I feel more like I'm directing actors than playing a game, but I take feedback from the actors because the characters are important to them. I'm not going to have any fun if you're not having any fun. So, Moro will have his dark secret, and the players know what it is, but the characters really need to be played as if the do not. Yes, it does require a certain sense of maturity, but I think most of us are adults in the 30ish range. And we're playing Ars Magica, not D&D[1].
Hint: Apollodorus made a recommendation as to weapon selection...
[1] I'm trying to build another face to face saga, and am slowly working on a friend to come over to Ars, he wants to be in a gaming group, and played RPGs before, and so I asked him what did he do in D&D before? His response is kill orcs, but it was kinda boring after a while. Now, I'm not saying you can't tell interesting and compelling stories with D&D or can't have a lot of fun, either. I am saying that Ars plays to a much different type of audience. If you're playing Ars, you're committing yourself to telling part of the story, when you create a magus you don't just create your character, you're creating your character's master, that first initial covenant, and so forth. It's almost expected that you have these details available to be used by the ASG or to be used yourself whenever you take over SG duties for a story or story arc within the saga.
I'm remembering this, and in light of the big V's recent attack it makes sense. I'm going to go verify the post and all, but as I recall and evidence shows this, he's great with Terram, thus attacking him with my spear or other metal weapons won't do much. But different materials might. That bone lance from the joust was a good idea, but most likely such a material would be magically resistable.
Apropos of nothing (well, maybe the dinner I just made and ate) there are few better meals than a perfectly roasted chicken with crispy skin...
You ain't whistling Dixie, my friend.
The gas station across the street sells whole roast chickens, and they are delicious. But I feel very 1st World when I pick up a whole, pre-cooked chicken as an afterthought to gas'ing up my car.
Dude, I look forward to seeing your art in person someday. I'm thinking of attending Gencon next year. It's about a 5-6 hour drive for me, and I didn't plan it out well enough in advance.
What's your range for the smaller cons?
I'll go pretty much anywhere within 10 hours drive for a con that's over 1000 people. Last year, I made a bunch of trips to the coast, but those didn't seem like a good idea.
Catching up on Whatever Happened to Mr Wallid, and I had this thought as Alexei was talking about how to arrange for people to summon him, now that he knows LoH.
"Hope's Divining Rod"
Charged item. A wooden stick. Activated by breaking it in half, it causes the left half to teleport to a pre-determined location -- directly above a large metal gong, say. The half-a-stick leaps over, then lands on the gong, causing a loud noise which would be heard by sentries on duty nearby (specifically place it near a room that gets used 24/7). The half of a stick would count as an Arcane Connection to the other half of the stick.
Base 35 ReHe, as per LoH. Viscaria would, for example, have an LT of 58, for 5 sticks in a season.
+1 for a nicely conceived charged item
+1 for calling it something that might be an amateur porn film
Keep in mind that the spell/item will inflict warping on the recipient being transported.
Well, I was thinking more along the lines of what the Milites use. But it involves a lot of trust as it typically requires an AC and a high Penetration put into the device.
Right, but in this case, that would be half of a broken stick. If you're that concerned about the stick, I can promise to plant it in the Magic Realm after we're done saving our friends. ~duck~
I was basing my idea off what the milites use (and an idea from Curse of the Rhine), but trying to come up with more manageable numbers. And, yeah, this version requires a lot less trust at the cost of a few rounds.
Charcon, the con here in Charleston W. Va. is October 19-21, but I think it is sub 1,000 based on what I saw.
I'm really thinking hard about doing a game there, the theme is Apocolypse... So my tentative idea is a covenant based around Vesuvius...and it erupts. I'm not totally sold on it, and I have confidence issues on whether I can run a good face-to-face game with people I don't know, blah, blah. I haven't run a table game in like 18 years... A con probably isn't the place to run a game, and I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of the rules, so much as I'm good searcher.
My experience in running at Cons says that you need to have parts of player interaction spaced with crazed die rolling earth shattering combat/magic. The chances that you will get 5 true Ars players vs 1 ars player and 4 D&D players are slim. Even though combat is kind a crappy in ArM giving them some big critter/event to overcome will make it successful.
Yeah, I'm not sure I can bring it all home in 5 weeks... I almost registered an event, but I can't quite pull the trigger. I might do it as a pickup game... I need some of Theraposa's skills at ambush and intrigue to help lure people into Ars.
You need a catchy title and an entertaining storyline. For years I ran a Little Fears game called, "Run for your life, Charlie Brown!" The extended entry simply read, "Oh, good grief! That's not the Great Pumpkin!" That game sold out during pre-reg every year.
You also want everything pre-gen'd. Do NOT try to engage people in character creation at a con. This leads to madness. I have seen it make girls cry. I have seen it end relationships. DO NOT make people char gen for a one-shot.
Beyond that, the crucial decision is "demo game or real game?" Meaning, is it to teach people about a game you like, or is it to play the gorram game?
A demo game would ease people into the mechanics until, by the end of the 4 hr session, they are all hurling buckets of dice against infernal forces.
A real game is a good time for experienced players. For example, I once joined a game where we all thought we would be playing Shadowrun. Only, it turned out that we were just using the Shadowrun rules set to discover we were in an Aliens plotline.