evilchili @evilchili@mastodon.social

you know how a coupla years back, just as the Outrage Machine was really starting to hum, there was this orthogonal push to stop tweeting about your lunch, because nobody cares about your sandwich? that was the thing I loved best about Twitter: people sharing their most mundane, their most regular experiences. It's like a warm blanket, mercifully free of judgement and outrage. I'm no Buddhist, but I really dig the concept of the sacredness of the every day.

I had grilled cheese with bacon, btw.

Hey. I'm a guy in his 40s doing platform engineering at AWS (sorry). I'm married to the best person I know. We're raising twin 6yr old twin boys to be empathetic, careful and considered members of society, I hope. It's really hard.

I dig #music. I drink #coffee. I play #boardgames and run #DnD. I have a half-blind greyhound, Rufus; he's a lovable idiot.

I post random nonsense about my day, music I'm listening to, and what I'm having for lunch.

#introduction

practicing my sanding with that last batch of #dicefail dice. this was the only one that really came out not warped or defaced, but it came out looking real nice. Gonna try again with a similar approach.

This is Granta, my giant horned space teddy tomagochi. He is my best friend and I don't need any of you any more.

#nms

latest #dicefail found a new way to fail -- the cap of my mold was off centre, and i think i had the pressure too high on my pleasure pot because two of them came out warped. pictured are the ones that are at least formed well; i painted out the d8.

You got 30 minutes and then we're starting without you. Lasagna made with pork ragu, bechamel, spinach and parsley ricotta, parm and mozzarella.

I am also protyping a door insert. It is made of foam core and heavy cardboard, with teeny little brass color hinges. #crafting #dadops #ttrpg

Dice tower is coming along. the boys finished gluing on the bricks this afternoon, so I did the base coat of modge podge and acrylic paint. tomorrow we can paint!

#crafting #dadops #ttrpg

Added some magnets to our dungeon tiles so they don't shift around on the table. They're possibly *too* small, barely holding together, but they do the job. #crafting #dadops #ttrpg

introduced the boys to hot glue today. The dice tower is coming together. #crafting #dadops #woodworking

Dice tower under construction. All wood glue atm but we'll drive some nails before we start the foam core covering, and one boy is going to sew a purple mimic's tongue which we'll attach to the bottom. The ramps are heavy cardboard with a layer of felt.

#dadops #woodworking #crafting

Protyping a dice tower. The boys wanted to do some more woodworking, but they're still big on immediate results so I figured I'd build the plans so they can start checking off parts of the actual build. We're gonna finish it with foam core bricks and male it look like a mimic, apparently? 😊

#crafting #woodworking #dadops

had to finish up a few of our in-flight tiles so I could clean up the foam core, paints, etc and set up for resin casting. Had some dice to sand and paint for Wingus, and a set to get into the pot for Dingus.

We're experimenting with these little wall inserts because we're doing two-sided tiles and don't want to have walls permanently attached. they're fitting pretty well, so next we're going to try some teeny magnets.

#crafting #ttrpg #dicefail

Been working my way through #MassEffectLegendaryEdition. My favourite game series of all time (sorry, Thief) and it's a lovely, carefully done update. 2 has always been my favourite of the first trilogy, but a few hours into 3 and I'm struck again by just how good the combat feels. dominating a field with biotic combos and sniper rifles is very satisfying, and the sound design really sells it. So good.

Day two. the kids noped out of it sooner today but we practiced drybrushing, and they were totally autonomous with measuring, cutting and sculpting tiles.

In all they drybrushed the wood tiles and painted the stone; I finished the stone and the dirt paths and added the moss embelishments.

On the dirt path I experimented with stippling some wood filler onto the tiles ahead of the painting to give it some additional texture. Worked pretty well!

#dadops #crafting #ttrpg

So today we learned how to measure, cut, sculpt, glue, paint and finish form core terrain. Elapsed time 3.5 hours, no fighting, no tears, and no hurt feelings. this is a major #dadops win. Plus I'ma get some sweet terrain tiles out of this parenting sneak attack.

#art #crafting #ttrpg

We've been really struggling to get the kids engaged in anything that isn't hiding in their room sneaking extra video game time. So when they discovered #dnd I showed them a few YouTubers doing terrain crafting and suggested we give it a shot. They said "eh, maybe." but that wasn't a no so i ordered some basic materials and proceeded to talk it up all week. Yesterday Dingus said "I'm excited about #crafting tomorrow!"

Gave the kids their completed casted resin #DnD journals before today's session. I bought some stickers so they could decorate the covers themselves.

I also started in on some dice matching their journals, which match their player characters.

#crafting #dicefail #dadops

More #dicefail experiments. Got a full set of the transparent/blue out of my new slab mold, and some partial sets out of the sprue molds. Those ones are starting to warp and such tho. I didn't like how the red ones turned out and wasn't going to finish them, but they look really nice with nthe silver paint.

Anyway we're all in on this for as long as they're actually excited because it's been a real struggle getting them jazzed about literally anything at all.

I'm making them some custom dice and journal covers to match their player characters: a gold dragonborn rogue named Flare and a black dragonborn barbarian named Blehemoth.

There are so many great lessons in #TTRPG for kids: turn-taking, collaborative decision-making, empathy, compromise, and how not to lose your shit when you don't roll double digits on your d20 for three hours and your dad has to fudge a bunch of rolls behind the screen because he got three crits and you're second level and looking at a TPK in your second session.

The kids have discovered #DnD. quite without any encouragement from me (other than the obvious example that I enjoy it) they decided one day a couple of weeks ago to look at the monster manual. This led quickly to them designing their own monsters, and after a few days of that they decided they wanted to see characters, so I gave them the PHB. Three days later I was helping them roll characters and anyway now I'm running Lost Mine of Phandelver. 😂