This sign missed the mark by a mile. When I have to stop and think for quite a moment to wrangle a signs’ meanings from it, it has already failed.

Looks more like kitchen ready rat.

Are you complaining about issues with the perfect products of the Alpha Complex’ finest R&D department, troubleshooter?

So they are now breeding astronauts with hyper-flexible spines and much, much faster reflexes?

Close it with the cat inside and go on a trip. Toss it around for a while, and then let it out again. Cat will never go near the suitcase again (if smart enough)

Amazingly, this happened to me with the neighbors cat. We were chatting with them about something, when their cat came outside, took a round around my legs, laid down and turned on the back. I bent down to stroke his belly, and he purred. Neighbors: He does not do that with other people!

And I’m not even a cat person.

Can, yes, but in my experience rarely is.

If you get into those coffee table books about the making of the first three movies, you find lots of world building.

You are well aware that those are retcon? None of this existed before “A New Hope”. Most of it was done later by specialists hired by LucasFilm.

Life is too short to read crappy books. Like those we had to endure in school.

George Lucas is the perfect example what happens when you don’t do world building. The Star Wars universe is basically just retcons stacked onto other retcons.

And I am a firm believer that even short stories in a fantasy or SciFi setting don’t work without at least a certain amount of world building.

The number of fantasy and SciFi stories where the author thought they could get away without thinking their world through and which ended up badly is amazingly high.

Why do you imagine that the,post is about reading?

“There are no ‘rules’ for fantasy”

Wrong. To write good Fantasy (of SciFi), you have to go through a process called “World Building” where you lay down the rules of your world. Properly done, the amount of World Building exceeds the actual works by far. It is absolutely necessary to create a core of inner logic to the story. You are not bound by the rules of our world, yes, but you are bound by the rule of consistency. If you violate those, you automatically write crap Fantasy (or SciFi).

Funny, though, that e.g. many literature teachers / professors don’t even know about the idea of World Building.

Will in now be dinner in lieu of the veg?

Reminds me of a visit to a British castle. Parking was inside the grounds, and there were two picnic areas. One close to the parking lot, one rather far away. Our (local) friends decided on a picnic spot at the far end, and I went all the way to the car to get the stuff.

On my way to the car I saw a single family setting up their lunch on the picnic place next to the parking lot and grumbled why we could not have used this spot instead.

On my way back, I learned why. The family with the little kids were sitting on the blanket, besieged by the duck Mafia from the nearby pond who demanded their share.

My neighbors daughter had one of those water guns. I told her if she shoots at me, I’ll get the hose and retaliate. She grinned, shot at me, and ran away laughing.

I talked to her dad, he nodded, and when she came back for more mischief, she got wet.

I was running a campaign on ‘movie tropes’. Example: They were following a woman who left the city with a cart full of stolen gold. They tracked her to the Inn at the Olde Road, run by a nervous fella with the name Norman Bates, who told the characters about his old mother living ‘up there’ and things like that. The rest of the module did not follow the movie, though. Norman was not a killer, and he definitively did not kill the woman - he was actually afraid of the same thread that had taken the woman before she had reached the inn in the first place.

In the next adventure, the party completely missed the story, though I was sure at least some oft he players in the party had seen the movies. They were looking for the ‘thieves guild’ equivalent in a town in the far north. They passed “Genko Olive Oil Import and Export” a number of times, not even wondering why a town in an equivalent-to-Norway country would export olive oil.

Cooking Conquest? Wondrous One-Shots?

But also, the man that was with me was an African American male. He was wearing a Trump hat.

That person should be kicked out of the bar just for being terminally stupid.

I don’t map them out like this. There is a general overview, and a bunch of maps showing e.g. local caves or dungeons, but the long passages are not coveted by maps. If push comes to shove, I make something up on the spot.

A handful was funny. That avalanche was just annoying.