Tabletop Fun

[Nunavut Pants]

Interesting about the vamps. In AD&D and 2e and possibly a few versions after that, vamps simply drained your levels. You would have gone from level 11 to level 10, losing one level's worth of HP and that level's abilities. Come to think of it, vamps may have been one of the critters that drained you TWO levels at one hit! Very very very nasty monsters! And that doesn't even count them assuming gaseous form at will, polymorphing to bats, and being immune to non-magic weapons...

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D AL--

Got a chance to jump into a Tier 3 (Levels 11-16) game at Adventurers' League this week. So often the higher tier games are the same weeks as the Frostmaiden campaign I've been taking part in, so I haven't really had a chance to do a lot with it. Thankfully, I was able to this week, and I finally brought Seb, my half-orc barbarian, up to Tier 3 by bumping him up to Level 11. Only real new feature I got with Level 11 is Relentless Rage, which basically would have let me keep going if I dropped to 0 HP while in a Rage, which never came up.

But I got to get some disgusting damage in thanks to Seb's build and his Greatsword of Wounding. To refresh, a greatsword by default does 2d6+STR damage. The Wounding property means it deals an extra 2d6 necrotic damage. Seb has a Belt of Hill Giant Strength, which means I get a +5 in STR. Greatswords are also heavy weapons, so my Great Weapon Mastery means I get to add my Proficiency Bonus (+4) to my damage rolls with heavy weapons. My Rage also gives me +3 to any STR based damage. By using my Brutal Strike while using my Reckless Attack, I deal an extra 1d10 damage if I hit.

4d6+1d10+12 = an average of 29 damage, 6 of which is necrotic.

We started the session in combat-- this was a carry-over from the previous part of this adventure-- and I got a Nat-20 on my Initiative roll, but had to spend the first two rounds just getting from where we arrived in the dungeon to where the combat was happening. The continuing adventurers were in combat with a pack of vampires. Seb finally gets in range of one of the vampires, and so I go for my Reckless Brutal Strike -- Nat-20! I double all the dice I'm rolling. (8d6+2d10+12) I took that vampire from full health to almost dead in one strike, and the follow-up attack, while not a crit, was still disgusting, and left that vampire hanging on by a thread.

It wasn't until combat continued that I realized I'd forgotten a feature of my Greatsword of Wounding, but typically you can't retroactively apply something you forgot like that, so I just left it until I got my next turn. Unfortunately, all the vamps soon after went down before Seb got another turn, but there were plenty more in other parts of the dungeon. One of the things that makes vampires a nasty enemy is their bite. Not only do they automatically get to hit with it if they have you grappled, but if you fail a CON save, not only does the bite apply necrotic damage, but it lowers your max HP. This is an effect that can only be cured by taking a long rest or using a high level spell called Greater Restoration.

When we moved on in the dungeon, we entered a room which had more vamps in it, but also this machine which we'd figured out was causing this enervation effect in the dungeon, causing anyone who spent enough time in the dungeon to lose vitality (lowering their max HP), and simply entering the room where this machine was caused PCs to lose 5 off their max HP. We decided we needed to destroy the machine, so our monk gets into the room and starts whaling on it. When he finally disabled the machine, it caused the crystal powering it to essentially go haywire, and now it was sapping 10 off everyone's max HP every round. Along with the six vamps in the room, that was a nasty threat. Even just looking through the door, as the party's cleric and wizard did, was enough to get hit with the enervation effect. As I remarked about it, "We're basically fighting in the basement of Chernobyl."

Still, I was able to get in and keep doing some nasty damage of my own with Seb's Greatsword of Wounding, and along with that, used the feature I'd forgotten in the previous combat. After hitting a vamp, I told the DM to have it make a CON save, which it passed on the first hit, but it failed on the second. That's when I explained what the sword does-- if the victim fails the CON save, they are unable to regain HP for the next hour, or until the effect is broken. The victim can attempt the save at the end of each of their turns, ending the effect on a success.

When I finished reading it off, the DM went, "Ooh! Ewww! That is nasty! Ewww!" I had correctly deduced that the vampires were regaining HP with each bite attack, but thanks to my sword, this particular vamp was now unable to do it.

Still, thanks to some successful bites from vamps and failed CON saves from me, along with the haywire crystal's enervation effect, I went from 108 max HP to 44 max HP by the end of that combat, when the crystal was finally shattered to stop its effects. When I commented on how bad Seb was doing-- he'd only avoided getting his actual HP (not the max) damaged thanks to the cleric's regular buff that gave everyone temp HP each round-- the rest of the table was shocked and very quickly agreed to let Seb take the Greater Restoration to get him back to full max HP, because otherwise he was in very serious danger in the rest of the dungeon.

[Nunavut Pants]

I finally got to the reconstituted Monday night boardgame group!

There were five of us, most of whom I hadn't seen in months. It was good to catch up, particularly with N who has a new medical regime that has resulted in her actually not needing a cane any more! Woo hoo!

We played "Things in Rings", which has been described as "is a hot dog a sandwich, the board game." You set out three rings in an overlapping Venn diagram, and one person gets three cards, one for each ring. One ring is for "word", and its card lists a specific criterion, such as "has at least five letters" or "has duplicate letters somewhere in it". One ring is for "Attribute", and its card lists some sort of attribute that an object can have. Examples from today were "floats in water", and "you can look through it". The third ring is for "Context", and its card lists a way that objects can be used. A couple of examples were "you can buy it in a store", "makes noise when used", and "single use".

Each other player is dealt five cards that have nouns on them. The original person gets as many cards as there are other players, and places them in the Venn diagram according to which of the three criteria they meet. (There's a "none" area outside all three rings.) Then the other players try to place their cards, one at a time, into the correct area of the diagram. If they place a card correctly, they try again. If they are incorrect, the first person moves the card to the correct spot and the guesser takes a card. Theoretically the object is to run out of cards, but we were trying to let everyone go out and then guess the criteria cards.

It's an interesting game, but pretty thinky for me.

We only got the one game in.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance--

Jesse had car trouble (he lost his car keys and was stuck at home, and there wasn't enough time to arrange for transpo for him) so he was joining us on speakerphone for the session.

In the aftermath of dealing with Cyan Bloodbane, we had to work out our next course of action. King Lorac had asked us to find his daughter, but all we knew was she had left to "find help," and could be literally anywhere. Given that forging new dragonlances would take months of work and we didn't yet have the appropriate wizard and cleric to bless/empower them, much less dragons to ride to wield them properly, we decided our next step should be liberating the Metallic Dragon eggs from the Abasinian Empire, as dangerous as that might be.

As we rode into the region of Estwild, however, my character Gavin recognized the mountain pass we were traveling through and noted that-- while it might be called Estwild now-- this was the road into his homeland, Erol. The same region that had produced the historical legends of Huma Dragonbane and Magius. Gavin had been childhood friends with both. He had some melancholy as he looked over his once-homeland, now pretty unrecognizable after 1200+ years and a cataclysm. Especially when they found a few remnants of the village of Erol in a forest.

Then they came along where the village and castle of Baxtry should have been, but where the castle once stood was this beautifully-built chateau, with a sign out front reading "Baxtry Arms - The Last Homely House in Estwild." It turned out this was a traveler's inn, and had been built by a master mason (former head of the mason's guild, no less) from Palanthas. The mason explained he'd had a vision in a dream of "a star the size of a mountain" falling to earth, and was told to "raise a home where the star fell." He came out here and built the chateau, but there isn't a huge amount of travelers.

But, while we were enjoying some sherry (out of game, too; DM Bob brought some very sweet sherry for us all to try), Angus MacKenzie showed up-- the avatar of the god of crafting, Reorx. Angus contrived to have the innkeeper leave to prepare dinner, and then spoke with us all alone, but specifically to Runa the Barbarian, able to tell that something was amiss with her. We explained she'd been experiencing recurring nightmares, and that they were connected to the dragon teeth that had been put into her scimitars' hilts. Angus did some sort of ritual over them, and then basically spoke with the ancient red wyrm dragon Emberekanashli.

What followed was some lore-dumping, after a heated exchange between god and ancient dragon, as Angus first purged the taint from Runa's swords, before explaining that long, long ago, when the world was first created, the gods learned the stars in the firmament were actually souls, and the first five that were drawn to the world of Krynn were the First Dragons, who became beloved of the gods. But Takhisis (the goddess of evil) corrupted them and the First Dragons turned away from the gods, who mournfully tried to fill the void from their absence by shepherding the mortal races that followed. (Elves, gnomes, humans.) In the First Dragon War, the First Dragons were sealed away in the Dragon Orbs, but now they've been freed-- something that would have taken some manner of divine intervention. Ember and Cyan Bloodbane were two of these First Dragons, explaining why they were so powerful.

Angus, hearing that we were intending to go into the imperial capital of Neraka, advised us to visit the Monks of the Rose, whose monastery was in the mountains nearby. They might know ways into the city that would reduce our chances of a deadly fight.

Before retiring for the night, the innkeeper did warn the party that some guests had reported strange happenings in the night, things being moved, etc. So we weren't too surprised when a ghost manifested during the night. And once again, Gavin came in useful here, as he recognized the ghost as Lord Oswal Baxtry, the last lord of the former castle, who had died during Gavin's time, poisoned by a traitor. Oswal was surprised to see Gavin alive, but after speaking with him, we learned that Oswal's unfinished business was simply that he wanted to be remembered; he had died with no heirs or family, no legacy to be carried on. He was gratified to hear that the chateau had been named for him (Baxtry Arms) and then we summoned and spoke with the innkeeper, who was frightened of the ghost, but Gavin again explained the situation. The innkeeper saw the potential for historical significance to putting Lord Oswal's tale to paper, and arranged for paper and pen to be provided to the ghost. The innkeeper would likely use the tale for marketing purposes, and we also saw a possible way for Justinius the Wizard to get his "in" to the Library of Palanthas, if he could be the one to deliver the finished book to the library.

Mind you, DM Bob has semi-jokingly told the rest of the table (Jesse is only half-aware this is not a joke) that Justinius will basically never get to return to Palanthas, and he'll contrive to have him get plane-shifted when/if the party ever makes it back.

[Nunavut Pants]

Another on-line game of Terraforming Mars lost. I was leading partway through the last turn, but one player did the kind of annoying "sell one card and end turn" thing over and over so she could take all of her actions uninterrupted at the end. And she had a 32-point final generation, out of a 92-point score. The other player and I tied for VP, but I won the tiebreaker. So I could proclaim "NOT LAST!"

Board game afternoon today at a friend's house. We played a three-player game of Azul. The one person who had never played before won. I led early on, but wound up coming in last.

We played a round of "So Clover" while the other table finished whatever it was they were playing. Then we consolidated to a single table so we could all play "Ransom Notes". Which is basically refrigerator poetry the game. There's a prompt on a card that gets drawn from the deck, and everyone has a bunch of words on magnets. Each person tries to follow the prompt as well as possible, and theoretically you collectively choose the best fit, but we all just shared ours and laughed a lot. One of the prompts was "Write the text for a missing cat poster". Which is tough if your bunch of words doesn't contain "animal", "cat", "missing", "return"... Of course, the prompt that I drew was "walk us through the act of masturbation". Which led to some .... interesting word sets.

[Ceir]

Anyway, when David mentioned still wanting to run a RED game, I commented on still being interested. Peter and Mark, two other players, also expressed interest. Brian looked vaguely interested, and seemed to get a little more clear on it when we described it as "Shadowrun but without elves." Brian had played Shadowrun once and had not enjoyed the system much, though he enjoyed playing with the table he was at so he just put up with it. David told us he'll message us on Discord if he gets around to committing to running a RED game.

As opposed to "cyberpunk with elves", which is how I had to explain Shadowrun back in the day. I've been eyeing the RED Combat Zone skirmish game, 'cause it has some neat mechanics and pretty spiff looking models, but I just do not have room on my hobby table for another miniatures game right now.

We've been playing Flash Point fairly frequently at my FLGS board game nights, and I finally picked up a copy of the base game myself. I love co-ops, it's great for solitaire, and for as simple as the mechanics are it delivers a pretty thematic game - probably the most important thing for something in my solo collection. There's a few spots where the rules are a little muddy, and in reading up and watching some videos I realized just how many house rules we'd been working with in the FLGS group, but it didn't knock the game too askew.

Last solo I played, I set up the easy 'house' map, medium difficulty number of hazards, 4 firefighter team. Since it's co-op regardless of number of players, there's one way to win (save 7 victims) and multiple ways to lose (4 victims die, running out of damage markers means the building collapses, the outside chance of the entire firefighting crew dying...).

I got lucky with the initial rolls to place points of interest, they all wound up in one corner of the house - and they all turned out to be people. I was able to get in, breach a wall, and haul three victims out in the span of about six activations. Of course, while I was doing that, half of the building became - as they say - 'fully involved', with a couple of hazmat explosions blowing out doors and cracking walls. And then I had to go into that mess to get the other points of interest that may or may not have been people. Took a couple of fatalities, and one firefighter got KO'ed for a turn by an explosion, but I saved enough victims to win the run.

Definitely eyeing a couple of the map expansions, I'm not too fussed about the miniatures. House rulings aside, last game I played with the FLGS group was on the High Rise map in hard mode and good lord we lost that quickly. Chain reactions, busted elevators, flare-ups that took out a whole cubicle farm...it was messy.

One neat thing that I swear I've seen before but can no longer find is photos online of someone's giant-size game at a convention - all built out of Lego. It was scaled to Lego fire trucks and ambulances at the old 4-stud-wide City size, the map was built so the walls and doors were breakable, and they'd custom-painted the minifigures. Super neat.

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D AL: Rime of the Frostmaiden--

The running gag of "Boron doesn't know what class Rhoric is" took a couple of new twists this week. After last time, Boron thinks Rhoric (a sorcerer) is actually a wizard, but due to circumstances during the session this week, he now thinks that Rhoric is "on the run" for "wizard reasons" and hence his insistence that he's a sorcerer is to cover up what he really is-- and so now he's "playing along" to help cover for him. When an NPC remarked on this to Rhoric, I just shrugged and said, "I'm accepting the fact that he's right, even if it's for the wrong reasons."

And then, a new wrinkle came up during the main combat encounter of the session. The party had gotten split up while exploring a cave. Our monks had gone down a tunnel to investigate what appeared to be a hot spring, and been attacked by a monster called a remorhaz (basically a worm-thing ambush predator), while the rest of the part on the origin point of the tunnel got attacked by a vampire gnoll and a pack of vampire kobolds. Our cleric cast Daylight in the area, impacting all of the vampires, and I had burnt down a bunch of the gnoll's HP with spells beforehand.

Then Boron hit the gnoll with an arrow strike before spewing a bunch of insults at it. When the gnoll's turn came up, it took enough damage from the Daylight spell to die, leaving Boron to think he'd done that somehow. He repeated it on the kobolds (who lost a bunch of health from my Fireball) by using a Conjure Barrage technique and then some insults... kobolds' turn comes up, cooked by the Daylight. Leaving Boron to think that he'd somehow done it himself.

Before the session, the DM had asked Brian (Boron's player) for the actual specifics on Boron's backstory, where it came out that Boron's brother (who had "beaten him in an honor duel" to become king of their homeland) was a wizard. So when this moment came up where Boron thought he'd somehow used magic, I quipped, "Are you sure your brother is the wizard?" Brian played it for what it's worth, first with an existential crisis, before Boron decided he must be a sorcerer (since wizards develop magic through study and practice, while sorcerers are just born with it) started trying to "embrace his newfound sorcerous power" in various situations.

I noted to the DM, "You were kind of running out of classes for Boron to mistake Rhoric for, so this new wrinkle might just be the way to sustain the joke."


Somewhat related, during a break in the session, the conversation turned briefly to Cyberpunk RED, a more recent variant on the classic Cyberpunk TTRPG (the inspiration for the Cyberpunk 2077 video game). It had started with talking about 2077, and specifically the character Adam Smasher, and Brian was the only one at the table not familiar with it. We sort of caught him up as best we could, both about the game world and Smasher (a cyborg psychopath who is 99.9% machine and is really pissed off that there's still that 0.01% human left), when DM David mentioned he still wants to run a RED game sometime.

Three years ago, when I had just started getting into TTRPG's, responded to an LFG post on one game store's Discord, where David had been hoping to gather a group together to Session 0 for RED. To create characters and whatnot. I was sadly the only player to show up, and with a character no less. David and I spent some time chatting for a bit while I explained a little bit about the character I'd created, a mechanic called Wayo with a mild case of Tourette's-- mostly just a twitch and a stutter, but the latter would lead to his occasional outburst of coprolalia ("PISS!") more out of frustration than anything.

Anyway, when David mentioned still wanting to run a RED game, I commented on still being interested. Peter and Mark, two other players, also expressed interest. Brian looked vaguely interested, and seemed to get a little more clear on it when we described it as "Shadowrun but without elves." Brian had played Shadowrun once and had not enjoyed the system much, though he enjoyed playing with the table he was at so he just put up with it. David told us he'll message us on Discord if he gets around to committing to running a RED game.

[Nunavut Pants]

Went to another Game Day this past Saturday! Played "Fresco", a game about restoring an old painting. You're a master artist with five apprentices, and you have to choose what time to get up in the morning (earlier means you get more choices, but pay more for paints and your crew's morale drops) and choose where to dispatch your apprentices to. You can have them use paint to restore the fresco, or send them to the market to buy paints, or have them paint portraits to make extra money, or have them mix paints to make more colors, or send them to the theater to improve their morale.

Each space on the fresco requires some combination of paint colors to restore. You spend the paints, and collect the tile for the space. The tile gives you an income every turn, as well as victory points. The actions above have to be taken in order, so any paints you buy this turn are available for use this turn, but any paints you mix are available for use in the next turn, as mixing paints comes after restoring the fresco.

There were four of us playing, one of whom had played the game once. He won; I came in third. He basically got into the lead about a quarter of the way through the game, and just kept it for the rest of the game.

After that, we played quite a few rounds of "Just One". Lots of laughter, lots of fun was had. We were successful most rounds, guessing the words correctly.

[Kit-Ginevra]

Phew. That was a whopper, and I haven't even tried Cindy yet

That's what she said

[Ceir]

Decided I needed some anti-summer vibes, and picked up a new Final Girl module - North Pole Nightmare, the Christmas movie from season 2! This one's the North Pole Village map, Krampus as the killer, Mrs. Claus or 'Cindy' as the PCs, a bevy of Christmas puns, and gimmicks of annoying elves and (possibly literally) explosive gifts.

My first run at it, with Mrs. Claus, was bluntly a redux of Christmas At Ground Zero. Mrs. C being a healing/health tank of all things helped for a while, but Krampus as a killer ramps up real quick. It started well enough, I was able to throw enough elves out the exits to get a whack of extra HP early; and the elves actually managed to put a little damage on Krampus, but...well. After that it kind of all went to hell. I started fluffing rolls, elves fell under the Krampus's broom and hooves or died to booby-trapped presents, Santa was ripped to shreds on the runway, and the Workshop exploded in a fireball (incinerating several useful items and barbecueing Comet). The game ended with Mrs. C going at Krampus with a hammer, during a blizzard event, in front of the flaming workshop, and finally running out of HP to fall under the monster's horns.

Phew. That was a whopper, and I haven't even tried Cindy yet. She's a reference, of course, to a certain Who despite not being blonde, and is a speedster - maybe that'll help get some bonus victim saves out of the gate.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance--

Camilla, one of our players who portrays our group's kender, was out sick this week. She lamented in our Discord that fate keeps conspiring to keep her away from the game. But there wasn't too much combat this week that needed another hand in, but she missed out on some roleplay, which I imagine DM Bob will address next time.

After routing the Red Dragon Army, our ragtag bunch of Misfits had some choices to make regarding our next move. We still needed to rescue the metallic dragons' eggs from the imperial capital of Neraka, but we suspected the place would be crawling with dragons, and powerful ones at that. Ember had made it clear just how outclassed we were. We figured we'd need dragonlances to stand a chance, but even if we crossed the world to get back to the region with the dragonmetal ore that we'd need, it would take months to forge enough to equip an army, and even then, they're meant to be used from dragonback, so we'd still need to rescue the eggs first. A real catch-22 situation. Can't get friendly dragons on side without the eggs, can't get the eggs without the lances, can't use the lances without friendly dragons to ride.

So we figured we should keep building the coalition to fight back against the Chromatic Dragon Armies. We were on good terms with the Solamnic Knights, the Ergothian Empire, and now the Dwarves of Thorbardin, so the next logical step should be getting the Elves on side. The nearest elven kingdom was Silvanesti-- a notoriously insular and almost xenophobic bunch-- and the rumors we'd been hearing were that the Green Dragon Army was besieging it.

So we headed that way, passing through the charred ruins of the town of Solace, but along the way Runa the Barbarian started experiencing nightmares. Seeing a pulsing red light, hearing chanting in old languages, and hearing the cracking of eggs and the shrieking of lizard-like creatures. We were able to figure out that the dreams were coming about because she'd had red dragon teeth implanted into her swords' hilts, and that the dreams were visions related to a ritual being performed to corrupt the dragon eggs. There was nothing for it but to continue onward.

The forest around Silvanesti, however, was becoming twisted, drained of hope and emanating despair. We ran across some zombified elven warriors, but Gavin the Cleric (me) was able to destroy them all with a single use of his Turn Undead ability. Some trees attacked later, but they weren't too much of a problem. But when we approached the city of Silvanost, we were confronted by a spectral army of elven warriors and banshees. (We all made the requisite LOTR references. "The way is shut...") We were able to parley with them, however, and the ghosts explained that there was no Green Dragon Army here, but that the same rumors had reached them, and so their King Lorac had evacuated the city of its civilians, claiming he had some power that would protect the city. Only, something went wrong and now there's an unending scream coming from the royal tower.

So we entered the city, and everyone failed a WIS save. We all found ourselves separated, trapped in our own personal nightmares.

• Gavin found himself in a burning city, surrounded by slain silver dragons that he knew-- including the bodies of his children-- and then saw his wife Gwyneth killed by a red dragon before getting incinerated himself.
• Sir Evrouin saw his family's castle sacked by the enemy, with his parents' bodies hanging from gibbets, and confronted the notorious Death Knight, Lord Soth, before getting struck down.
• Runa found herself back in the midst of her tribe's doomed battle against the Red Dragon Army, including seeing her mother getting slaughtered by Ember. When she tried to fight Ember, the dragon disintegrated her.

Justinius the Wizard was the only one who didn't find himself in a complete nightmare, just an empty city. But he rode on to the royal tower, where King Lorac was screaming, clutching a Dragon Orb (a powerful artifact that can control dragons, if one has a strong enough will and the intellect to do so), while a huge Green Dragon, Sayen Bloodbane, laughed at his misfortune. Justinius tried to bluff his way into convincing Sayen to leave, and even tried using some of his magic to banish him, but Sayen just shrugged all of it off. We could tell that Jesse (Justinius' player) was getting a bit frustrated at not finding a non-violent solution-- Sayen was explicitly said to be on Ember's level in terms of power-- until the rest of us suggested he try using the Dragon Orb.

Justinius did so, and had to make a WIS and an INT save. He evidently rolled well enough that it came down to a straight roll-vs-roll between him and the DM. DM Bob rolled a 17... but Jesse rolled a Natural 20.

Justinius ordered Sayen to leave, "and don't come back until you're ready to die." The dragon did so, freeing everyone from their nightmares and ending the plague of despair over the region. King Lorac was able to whisper to Justinius to find his daughter before passing away, and now we've got a new task ahead of us, to go find her.

[Nunavut Pants]

Actually, I was both. It was a three-player game.

We had a replay, though a different board setup and such. I pulled off a victory in that one! 90 to 85 to 83. I had a small lead in mid-game which disappeared pretty quickly, leaving things pretty close until near the end. One player started pulling away just a tiny bit, and he's the one who had the 57-point turn a couple of games ago, so I was very worried. But his progress ebbed a bit right at the end, and I was able to make several plays that put me over his total. I also was able to stall in that last generation so that I took a number of actions after everyone else had passed, which kind of let me do what I wanted to, unopposed.

[dalesys]

... NOT LAST.

I finished second. They were next to last.

[Nunavut Pants]

Oh, I hadn't thought of that reason! Good on you for preserving it!!

Several more games of Terraforming Mars, no victories. Two games ago, one player had a 57-point final generation! That was more than half of his final score! Sadly, I was never in contention for that one.

In the immediately-previous game, I was able to claw to a lead through the second half of the game. However, in the final generation, that same player put in enough points to put me into second place. At least I was NOT LAST.

[Ceir]

Why are you transcribing the rule sheet? Making it easier to read/larger font/clearer wording?

Readability, and it's a folded-up poster that unfolding and refolding is just gonna destroy - it's not in great shape already. Still, enjoying the project!