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^^^ Makes my weary GD insides happy. I need some help from the TG hivemind. A friend of a friend would like to play RPGs with their boardgame group, but apparently DnD 5E was too much for them. Can anyone suggest a good Rules Light Fantasy RPG that does a good job of introducing new players AND new GMs to playing and running the game? My initial thought was OSE, but I don't have a copy myself and am not sure if it does a good hand-holding job for new GMs. Alternatively, a good rules lite game AND another book that helps new GMs, I was thinking Sly Flourish book but not sure if that's really aimed at a brand new GM.
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Nov 8, 2022 02:47
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Arivia posted:If you really want an OSR game, I'd probably go with Basic Fantasy RPG. OSE is a good presentation of a system but it's actually missing a fair amount of advice about how to play the game for people totally new to D&D. I think this is what they're looking for. I've never read basic fantasy, but I'll have them check it out.
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Nov 10, 2022 01:35
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https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F...ock-11668454430quote:An oversupply of Hasbro Inc.’s “Magic: The Gathering” cards is hurting the ecosystem for the fantasy trading-card game, “destroying the long-term value of the brand” and threatening sales, BofA analysts said in downgrading the stock on Monday. Seems like WotC is doing the same things that Upper Desk did when they were riding high on sports cards. Flooding the market with more products than consumers will buy, ignoring their retailers and producing super-premium high priced products.
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Nov 21, 2022 22:49
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Cool Dad posted:If I want to make my own deck of cards but I want them to look professional quality, what are my options? All cut to the same size, nicely printed, like they came out of a retail box. If you're just looking for a few, Drivethrucards prints some pretty nice card decks complete with boxes and such.
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Dec 19, 2022 07:15
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The primary goal of 4e was to sell blind reveal miniatures. The secondary goal was to build a system that could be played online in a living campaign style. Both these goals led to the mechanical rigor of the system. The financial crisis and increased cost of goods killed the first plan, and the second one never materialized because like so many other forward thinking ideas that came out of WotC, they couldn't figure out a way to monetize it.
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Dec 22, 2022 19:33
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Xiahou Dun posted:Do you have any evidence for this besides your tummy feels. Conversations with designers who actually worked on it. DnD has always suffered because it's business model sucks. You can't get rich selling three books to 20% of your audience. WotC has been trying to find ways to make real money (ie on the scale of MtG) off of DnD since they bought TSR. in the mid 2000's Wizkids was killing it with blind reveal miniatures for Mage Knight and Heroclicks, WotC wanted some of that pie and saw it as a way to make DnD profitable. We were doing the same thing at Blizzard with Upper Deck and the WoW minis game. Thing was there was this little thing called the 2008 financial crisis, which not only tanked consumer spending but increased costs of production, destroying the margin on little plastic monsters coming from China. With out the revenue stream from minis, WoTC couldn't afford to make big investments into 4e like they had planned. Combined with the general backlash against 4e from the established players and it went into a death spiral. 4e with a perfect storm of many individual well intentioned and thought out decisions that when combined became a horrible clusterfuck.
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Dec 22, 2022 20:26
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Xiahou Dun posted:O so your source is “trust me, my uncle works for Nintendo”. I dislike namedropping, but since you insist. I was a licensed product developer for Blizzard in 2008-2010, we interviewed Mike Donais, the design lead on the Miniatures game and part of the design team on 4e for a designer position on our team, his brother Jeff was my boss (we got the lesser brother, Mike was a better designer than Jeff was a boss). While in town he ran some 4e for us, showed us all the cool digital GM tools (monster builders, map makers, encounter designers)they developed and lamented about how they'd never see the light of day because WotC couldn't get their poo poo together. Mike eventually went to be the lead designer on the WoW TCG when Cryptozoic took it over. I was on the WoW miniatures game, we had the same problems with cost of materials and the game (and most of the product category) was dead by the time it hit the shelves. Or you know I could be making all this poo poo up and just be a truck driver from Lafayette who's hobby is trolling tabletop nerds on a stupid dead internet forum.
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Dec 23, 2022 01:07
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Siivola posted:That’d be a fascinating project. I was looking at old modules the other day and realized that lots of the classic adventures like Tsojcanth and the Giants series were run as official tournament games. Until then I’d thought Tomb of Horrors was some kind of a special case. The A series even had scoring rules, according to Wikipedia. Yeah that's where most the early adventures came from. They would premier them at Gencon as a tournament and then be like "and you can buy this adventure down on the floor."
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Jan 4, 2023 06:21
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Cool Dad posted:I mean you can go pretty deep into Exalted without encountering any bestiality at all. I can't imagine why they decided they should put that in there, but it isn't prominent enough to matter to most people. That was kind of the standard pattern with WoD. WoD: Here's some hosed up poo poo that the NPCs factions do Players: We want a book about playing those hosed up factions. WoD: We'll make a new book right away.
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Feb 28, 2023 19:35
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sebmojo posted:Or Planetarys Century Babies. In my headcannon Indiana Jones is a Century Baby.
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Mar 9, 2023 01:50
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Panzeh posted:I do think, when the scenario is 'you're an ordinary space trucker and you're beset by a deadly alien', that's not going to be a premise for an extended campaign. If I wanted a big campaign, i probably would have it be about other things and drop Alien in the middle of it somewhere, but then that's Traveller, and not horror. I mean that's basically what happens in Aliens, Ripley's a space trucker who encountered a xeno and survived and then told everyone to go gently caress themselves when they asked to her go back. But they pulled her back in anyway,
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Mar 9, 2023 15:18
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Siivola posted:I miss the Expanded Psionics Handbook. It was one of the good 3.5 splats. Yeah I felt like that book was the designers going "If we weren't beholden to Vancian Magic, this is how we would do it." I really wanted to run a campaign with no magic and just Psionics using this system.
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Mar 15, 2023 14:32
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Alderman posted:Honestly, that all just reads as "it has a slightly different spell list" More specifically it's a different resource system, basically it's mana points, and a well thought out "spell" list that utilizes well. 3.5 Psionic powers are basically spells that can be enhanced in various ways by spending additional points. Which means you have a lot less "this level 4 spell it just a more powerful version of that level 1 spell". It makes Psionics very versatile. Most of the powers have directly comparable spells, but they have more freedom in their manifestation, for instance instead of spells to summon monsters or animals of specific levels, theres a power that lets you manifest an ectoplasmic creature that can take whatever form you want and you can spend your points to increase it's power or give it specific traits. You can chose what it looks like, but it's abilities are defined by the points you spend. For a system for 3.5 it's really well put together, and was really appropriate to the time.
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Mar 16, 2023 13:45
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I love the DCC Fighter Deed Die. Instead of a flat bonus to attack rolls like other classes get, fighters get a die that starts at 1d4 and increases as they go up in levels. They roll and add their deed die to both attacks and damage. Plus if they roll over a 3 on the deed die they get an extra effect that they define when they make t heir attack (or can be based on the type of weapon they use) such as tripping, disarming, moving, taunting or whatever else is reasonable in the situation. It makes the fighter this incredibly creative class that feels good every time you make a standard attack.
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Mar 21, 2023 19:01
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You should sit them on the ground, place a copy of the Players Handbook, and a copy of Blades in the Dark on the floor across from them and see which one they will crawl towards.
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Apr 4, 2023 20:50
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I took an online class that included each of those people, only instead of a bike rider we had somebody attending the class while riding a cross country train. As somebody who's day job is an endless series of zoom meetings it was pretty infuriating.
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Apr 16, 2023 03:53
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Speaking of DnD Movie, Did everyone get treated to a stupid "you're the real heroes for going to the movies" bit before the film?
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Apr 20, 2023 05:27
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Plutonis posted:Nah, he is absolutely The DMPC who is like five levels over the rest of the party that is there to help them through the rough patches and then leaves when the DM ratches up the difficulty Right, that's why when he leaves he walks in a perfectly straight line away from the PCs. Also, maybe there's no divine magic because everyone is low level and they're using ODnD rules where clerics don't get spells at first level.
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Apr 21, 2023 06:12
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Vulpes Vulpes posted:I'd kill for a piece of original Laubenstein art from the 1e/2e era. Those color plates in the 1e core rulebook. 
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Apr 26, 2023 03:18
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:I have all of those...bought new. Shadowrun is my favorite IP, I haven't played it in years, but at one point I had every gamebook and every novel.  I think a few of the gamebooks got misplaced over the years, and I gave away the novels decades ago.
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Apr 26, 2023 18:47
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For players and normal NPCs I think that a few keywords are better for defining who they are. It gives you much more nuance and clarity without being any more complex. Erratic and Selfish is a much better descriptor than "Chaotic Evil" Pragmatic and Loyal is much better than "Neutral Good" I do like the alignment system for the cosmic level of a campaign world. The eternal fight between Order and Chaos or Good and Evil and every immortal being aligned with one or the other is very appropriate.
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Apr 26, 2023 19:55
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KingKalamari posted:I'd argue there are better ways to achieve this: For instance I think using a freeform "Motivation" or "personality" keyword system for NPCs in these sorts of materials does the job much better than assigning them 1 of 9 very nebulously defined spots on a grid. I agree, I probably should have been more clear in saying the conflict between Good vs Evil OR the conflict between Order and Chaos. The second axis muddies the waters unless you clarify it in some ways. In the campaign I'm currently running there is an eternal battle between order and chaos as each side tries to prevent the other from plunging the universe into Entropy. Good/Evil is irrelevant to the conflict, but I use it as a shorthand to describe an entities methods in the fight.
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Apr 26, 2023 23:08
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Vulpes Vulpes posted:The Germany book is the only one of my original group's books to survive to the present day (as far as I know)- the copy of SR2 I bought to kick off my lifelong rpg obsession was the most motley accretion of various types of tape I'd ever seen by the time we had moved on to SR3. I have no idea how I was able to snap up such a pristine copy off ebay. Oh man, that's awesome to hear. Love hearing that people have fun with SO77.
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Apr 27, 2023 14:08
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Vulpes Vulpes posted:Yeah, it's a great evergreen option when you can't think of anything for a 7-9 and don't want to stall the action to mull it over. I cannot think of many games of So77 that I have run that did not involve a police chase. Most of them start in the midst of one.
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Apr 28, 2023 17:46
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Ego Trip posted:How many times have the police been chasing a beer truck with big foot in the back? A lot. "Who's Idea was it to steal the beer truck?" is my go-to start for a new campaign.
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Apr 29, 2023 05:17
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Sex moves are part of Apocalypse World because it follows the fiction that AW is trying to recreate. They are important to playing "Apocalypse World". Sex moves are not a necessary part of the Apocalypse World (PBTA) engine. If they do not follow the fiction you are recreating you not only don't need to, but you should not include them in your game. This discussion came up when I made So77, because sex is very common in 70's exploitation films. I determined that they were inappropriate because sex in the fiction I was recreating did not have any narrative purpose beyond titillation.
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Apr 30, 2023 15:32
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Servetus posted:I don't think the part I bolded is necessarily true. That is intentional to the design of PBTA games. The intended fiction dictates the playbooks. PBTA based games work best when they are focused on a very specific type of fiction. Apocalypse World is not a generic post apocalypse RPG, it's a very specific setting with a very specific type of intended fiction and the playbooks reflect that. Monsterhearts is not a generic supernatural high-school RPG, it's Monsterhearts its about using monsters as metaphors for romantic/sexual coming of age drama. There are a lot of games that stretch PBTA and make more generic settings with a lot more freedom in character creation, but they lose a lot of the focus and mechanical integrity of the game because of it.
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May 1, 2023 01:50
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neonchameleon posted:
I think it's valid criticism that Apocalypse World and Monsterhearts do not sufficiently frame themselves as narrow niche games, and many people come to them with the wrong expectation. Part of this is on the designers, I doubt that Vincent Baker expected AW to explode into it's own genre, but part of it is also on the fans of the system who push it onto everything. I say this fully aware that I used AW for a very broad genre game, which has been pointed out to me by many AW purists.
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May 1, 2023 18:28
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Dawgstar posted:While I haven't played AW or MH, I have played Masks and that while superheroes are involved what it's actually about is teenagers who often have powerful abilities struggling with identity and perception and if you play it like a bog standard supers game where you're trying to leverage the best roll for Unleash Powers because you're the team blaster you're going to have a very mid time at best. Yeah I've never read or played Masks, but that's the vague impression I've gotten from it. Despite that I've also seen people recommend it as a generic "best superhero game".
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May 1, 2023 19:57
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Yeah when I saw that SJG thing I immediately thought to myself "I don't need a bunch of random Munchkin stuff" cuz I'm sure that's what their warehouse is full of. The things I'd actually want, like old Car Wars and Gurps books have probably all been cleared out to make room for more munchkin spinoffs. Good for old Stevie for making some dollars, but Munchkin is not my thing.
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May 1, 2023 23:05
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Antivehicular posted:Thinking hard about the theological implications of an omnipotent, omniscient benevolent god loving up some of his creations so badly he has to send them to Crap Planet and then enlist children to murder them, like your mom telling you to take the trash out because something smells funny in there This pitch sounds so much cooler.
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May 11, 2023 22:59
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Oh hell yeah, Nigel was the best, and he died tragically young. He was also a fuckin machine, he wrote so much stuff, like DnD adventures, a ton of 2nd ed stuff like Spelljammer books. I love all his Shadowrun stuff, but my absolute favorite game book he wrote was GURPS Illuminati. It's just chock full of interesting conspiracy theory poo poo, like secret conspiracies were really his trademark, there were so many of them in his books.
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May 16, 2023 06:22
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Arivia posted:Nice. I’d think they should maybe be a bit cheaper since it’s now the old edition but whatever, adding them to DTRPG is a win-win. They come up on Humble bundle often enough if you're looking for a discount.
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May 26, 2023 14:14
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tokenbrownguy posted:yeah, i just finished up Neuromancer by Gibson for a book club. Molly, a "samurai" mercenary lady explicitly is taken advantage of by those mind things before she gets cybered up and murders a john. Yeah I don't think this is one of the places where you can blame the edgelordy stuff on the game writers, the literary inspiration for SR, CP20XX and every other Cyberpunk setting is full of weird sexual violence. Cybered up prostitute assassins were a theme in more than one story. Most of the tropes of OG cyberpunk are rooted in the western cultural fears of the late 70's and early 80's. So I think the killer sex worker thing might stem from the AIDS crisis, there was a lot of "Sex can kill you" fearmongering in the media at the time.
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Jun 3, 2023 02:52
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Dawgstar posted:And I think a lot of the 'sex worker cyber killers' probably comes to us from Priss, both in Blade Runner and Bubblegum Crisis. (At least it's probably where Pondsmith got it, but I haven't read Hard Wired so maybe there too.) If I recall correctly (it's been decades) Hardwired had a male prostitute/spy/assassin with a weird throat weapon that I think they called "The Snake". The other major influence on Pondsmiths CP was When Gravity Fails which had (trans) sex workers as secondary characters, I think they were mostly victims of the murder plot line though and not killers themselves. ninjoatse.cx posted:Is there an easy way to match paint colors? I ordered a figurine from China, and some of the parts are mispainted. Is there an easy way to sample a color and then find out what to buy / how to mix? The mini painting thread would be a better place, but I can't think of any reliable way to do that, other than consulting a paint manufacturers color chart.
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Jun 3, 2023 12:49
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mllaneza posted:You all are thinking small. I've never read the Kamandi comics, how many of these places did they visit? I really want to know more about the Surfing Orangutan and the Beatnik Bulldog civilizations.
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Jun 6, 2023 14:42
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The best Shadowrun game I ever played was when we were all deckers. But SR isn't the only culprit, pretty much every cyberpunk game in the 80's/90's had a seperate game for hacking.
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Jun 20, 2023 14:48
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Cyberpunk was my jam back in the day and I made it a point to buy and read every new game in the genre up until the 2000s, with the exception of Spacetime(as far as I'm aware the first CP TTRPG), I can't think of any games that didn't have a bespoke hacking system, and strangely I think I would have been disappointed if I one didn't have it.
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Jun 20, 2023 14:59
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I literally just watched Hackers(1995) the other day and was trying to think of how you would emulate that type of action in a RPG. I really just want a move that goes "When you hack the gibson..."
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Jun 20, 2023 17:25
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Helical Nightmares posted:Found this blog post from a blogger I'm not familiar with, which does some financial analysis of producing an RPG with art and how much you should expect to make from writing (read: good luck with that). Since I've always been curious about producing independent products, I find the arguments raised interesting and I figure some people here may also find them interesting. As Peter Adkinson likes to say "The best way to make a small fortune in RPGs is to start with a large one." I wish he had said that before i wrote him a check for 25k to start a new game company but that's on me. My buddy and i spent two years on So77, and we each came away with a couple grand, I did the math once and it was like a little less than 4 dollars an hour for writing, layout, graphic design, promotion and everything else I did for that project. Successful independent full-time RPG creators are astronaut rare, they're either workaholics constantly busting their rear end, business geniuses who could be making a lot more money doing anything else, or they've found some sort of hack that lets them produce mass content on the cheap. If you are not at least one of those things if not two or three of them you stand no chance. It's the nature of the business, your core audience is also your competition, everyone knows that they could make their own content(even at lower quality), so they don't value it as highly. The only way to sell is to do it cheap enough that they won't bother to do it themselves. Simply put, if you want to make money, you're better off driving for Uber, or working at an Amazon warehouse than writing RPGs. That said, if I had it to do over I would still make So77, it made me a lot of lifelong friends, taught me valuable skills and gave me something that I could point at and say "I Made That" which helped me in my career in so many ways.
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Jun 23, 2023 07:50
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