Being a CFO and other topics

Not just finance, hobbies too ....

20 Years as a Public Company CFO

It is funny that even to establish the right date with something that has an SEC filing and a press release can be a little difficult, but when the action happened in Asia, it could happen on one date and be recorded in the SEC system on another.

So there is an SEC filing on August 4th, 2004 that has a press release dated August 5th announcing that the merger between STATS and ChipPAC had been completed. That press release has a quote from Michael G. Potter, Chief Financial Officer.

That is the date that I became the CFO of a public company for the first time. So 20 years ago today or tomorrow using the time where I was when it happened.

Interesting for me as well is that about 8 years of that has been for foreign private issuers. One a Singapore company (STATS ChipPAC) that was also listed on the Singapore Exchange. The other for a Canadian company (Canadian Solar) who had an admin HQ in China so I worked in Suzhou and lived in Shanghai.

I had been the acting CFO of ChipPAC before the merger and before I joined ChipPAC as their Controller I had been acting CFO of a $1B revenue SBU of AlliedSignal/Honeywell. But acting is not being the CFO. And an SBU is not the top job for the company.

During my time as CFO, I have done quite a few acquisitions and some divestitures. I have done a large variety of quite large equity and debt transactions (IPO, secondaries, converts, high yield debt, CLO for M&A, bank loans (Term A and B) and all sorts of equipment leasing and project financing. Even tax equity financing.

I have done banking and investor relations across North America, Europe and Asia. In the USA, I was CFO in the Silicon Valley area and Portland, Oregon. Had good years and not so good. 

I also have been a fractional or temporary CFO and that was fun and rewarding as well.

When I get asked what does it take to be a successful CFO, I can give an answer around being strategic and taking your area of expertise to the executive team and help lead the company. That is a true answer and what CFOs do. But not what sustains you over time.

What I really remember is the hours and hours working with my staff(s) all over the world. I have had 6 different people that were part of my staff make it to be CFO of public companies, so somewhere is all that work and selection of hires and promoting I must have been doing something right, but most of it is setting a North Star for the team and letting the natural effort and skill of people in your team shine through. I always look forward to going into work and seeing my team and that is as true as ever with my current team.

I managed to make it to CFO at a somewhat young age so I hope to have more than just a 20 year post to make, and I have served on one public company board and several others over the year (and am on a large renewable energy developer’s board now). I imagine that I will start doing more of that soon enough.

If you are interested in some of my observations of being a CFO during the years, I do have a blog at mgpotter.com where I posted a series of articles. I hope to make video content for those articles as that seems to be the leading way to communicate today and I have great gear that my current company makes. As always, I will teach myself to do that just like I have been experimenting with AI to keep current (ollama) and I have been running a small online business to try and learn the skills needed there.

Presenting Well From Home

I have not written a blog entry in a while, but I decided that I had a few things to share since many of us are working from home and are spending a lot of time on video conferences.

Here are the three most important areas to focus on to make you look better when you are on a video conference using a webcam.

First, get the webcam to the correct position. You want it eye-level or slightly higher and looking down. If the webcam is embedded into your laptop, elevate the laptop until it is at a better angle. it is much more flattering to have the image being recorded looking straight ahead or slightly down that it is to be recording in an upward angle. When talking to people, look into the camera lens as that is makes it appear that you are looking at the person you are speaking to.

If you can, try and get your camera control software to zoom in and adjust where you appear on the screen. Many good webcams cameras are fairly wide angle, and that makes you look smaller and picks up more of the background.

Should Look Like This (video is not mirrored but appears correctly to viewer)

Try to wear a plain shirt and shirts with lines or a plaid pattern can “swim” when being recorded on a webcam.

The second important area to focus on is lighting. You want to be lit the most from in front and slightly above is better than straight on as looking directly into a bright light can make you squint and cause eye strain. Some side lighting helps, especially if it is diffuse and a specific back light can also help to separate you from the background. Most people look better with side lighting just from one side to provide a little bit of shadowing as it adds definition to your face.

I use an elgato keylight as my main lighting source. It is behind my camera and elevated. I like the clamping mounting system as it takes up very little desk space. If you think you will move where you do the video conferencing pretty often, the key light air might be a better choice.

If you do research on lighting for video shooting, you will see the above advice echoed. Most professionals use three point lighting. The closer you can emulate that, the better you will look.

The last area to focus on to look as good as possible is the background. Where possible, try and have as plain a background as you can. I use an elgato green screen as it sets up quickly and it easy to store when not in use.

Plain Background

If you can’t be close to a plain background, or create one via a green screen, you end up with something that looks more like this, which is not as good looking on video:

Busier background.

We all don’t have complete control over what is in the background, that is why a pop-up green screen helps. Note how distracting the window in the background is. Try and avoid that as much as possible, especially if you do not have a good light in front as it will back light you and make you look dark with your face hidden in shadows.

With a green screen, the virtual background feature of zoom is much better. If you are not using zoom with its built in virtual background, you can use a program such as XSplit Vcam that will take your webcam feed and insert green screen/virtual background functionality into pretty much any video conferencing software.

As a more advanced topic, if you want an even better video feed than a standard webcam, elgato makes a device called a camlink, which is a USB interface between a DSLR camera with clean HDMI and your computer that allows you to use the superior lenses and sensors in the DLSR camera as a web cam. You probably want to pick up a magic mount by elgato as well.

As it is a little more advanced, here are 2 videos on camlink and using a DSLR camera. They are from the point of view of streaming, but the advice applies to video conferences.

I also provided link to the various product pages below.

https://www.elgato.com/en/gaming/key-light

https://www.elgato.com/en/gaming/green-screen

https://www.elgato.com/en/gaming/stream-deck

https://www.elgato.com/en/gaming/cam-link-4k

https://www.elgato.com/en/gaming/multi-mount

If you want to sound better, the microphone that comes with this headset is quite good.

https://www.corsair.com/us/en/Categories/Products/Gaming-Headsets/Wireless-Headsets/VIRTUOSO-RGB-WIRELESS-High-Fidelity-Gaming-Headset/p/CA-9011180-NA

More Life Work Balance – Two Books that Just Came Out

The Dungeon of Graves

A while ago I blogged about the first role playing game (RPG) book that I had credit in. Two new books just came out and I also have credit in them as well for work I did. I have been more than swamped recently, but my actual work on these were done a while ago.

About a year or so ago, Patrick Pilgrim and I were chatting about how much we liked Frog God Games’ books, but how we wished they did 5e better. Patrick, with a little encouragement from me, called their CEO – Bill Webb – and Bill basically said if we thought it could be better then do it for him.

Patrick ended up becoming 5e Frog and really taking the world on his shoulders for this, and I ended up doing conversion work for The Blight 5e, Tome of Horrors 5e and finally Rappan Athuk 5e. Rappan Athuk is the infamous dungeon of graves, famous for being huge and deadly and being a part of the latest incarnation is fun.

I have done a lot in my career and as a father and son, but I must admit, the 12 year-old boy that started playing D&D in high school (yes, I played in my parent’s basement) is pretty happy to see his name in the credits. Today, being a nerd is part of the pop culture hero story because so much of the technology we take for granted came from nerds, but when I started playing it was different. I still run into a lot of people my age and quite far in their career (running (or very senior)  big companies) that played D&D when they were younger. Some still do today. There is something about the creativity and the ability to lead small teams that is key in D&D that translates well later in life.

As always, my love to my core gaming buddies who I still DM today (Mark Potter , Ed Elce, Robert “Red” Mair and Sonny Reid) and the two newcomers that joined us (Rob Jordon and my daughter Sarah). I learned the newest edition of D&D (5e) with them.

If you want to buy the books, they can be found here: https://froggodgames.com . PDF only right now but available in hardcover in August 2018.

Using 5e Rules and Adventures to Play “Old School” Games

Between 10-15 years ago, not long after the advent of the first Open Gaming License from Wizards of the Coast, there was a formulation and publishing of various clones of the original Dungeons and Dragon rules. At the time, it was needed for two basic reasons: 1) The original rules had long been out of print and it was getting harder and harder to find at an economical cost, especially outside the main markets for the games when they were first released. 2) The OGL allowed you to publish and sell adventures without any worries that WoTC would take legal action against you to protect their intellectual property, including their copyrights.

There are a lot of philosophical reasons why the OSR became more visible and prolific as like-minded people were much more able to share a common core of ideas over the internet, in particular in forums. At the time, there were a lot of people that felt that the 3rd edition of D&D was suffering from rules bloat and there were too many rules that took the game play from interactive story telling moderated by the dungeon master to roll playing where the players just made a die roll as indicated by a skill or other written rule. The game emphasis also shifted from gaining loot to killing monsters as the base way to earn experience points moved from 1 gold piece = 1 experience point to all of the experience points earned coming from the results of combat.

If you wander through the old forums, some only available via internet archive sites, you will find very little resistance to the new rules themselves. The original rules were such a bare framework that anyone who had been running a game for a long time had invented and used house rules to cover common occurrences in their games or to ensure the right type of characters so that they could run the type of game they wanted to. There were a few people that really preferred the old THAC0 or even older systems of looking it up on tables, but ascending AC with a target number to hit was quite popular.

The combination of the practical reasons to want to publish OSR rules and a few motivated people empowered by desktop publishing resulted in quite a few game systems being published, all of which took their own path in tweaking the original rules to suit the different developers that worked on the rules. Some were thought experiments of how to use the now OGL 3rd edition rules and back cast to recreate the older rule sets and the ability to cheaply publish and advertise over the internet meant that their experiment traveled broadly and mutated into new versions. I do find it ironic that for all the discussion on too many rules, pretty much every OSR ruleset introduces some new form of “house rules” to the OSR ruleset. Even today, there are many OSR style products that are completely the introduction of new rules as the product takes D&D to space or WWII or whatever new setting imagined by the author. Somewhere buried deep is the old framework, but all you can see is the new rules on spacecraft and the reviews laud the new rules as well.

I find it ironic that the fear that the older rules were rare and expensive are basically gone today. You can go to the DMs Guild website and purchase PDF of the original rules, and there were reprints of the AD&D rules made pretty recently as well and they can still be found on amazon.com. So if the reason for the creation of the new rulebooks was to make sure the old rules were available at a reasonable price, that no longer applies:

Want a printed version of the Basic D&D rules? (Labyrinth Lords)

Basic Rules Cyclopedia

How about the AD&D rulebooks? (OSRIC and S&W Complete)

AD&D Player’s Handbook

Not old school enough, want the original books (PDF only for now but all three of the original books plus the reference sheets)? (S&W White Box)

Original D&D

I don’t think you even need to go to the effort of buying the older rules if you want to play an OSR-style game, the current 5e rules are quite capable of OSR play and they have the advantage of also having all the modern modules and materials available as well.

Here is the basis I used for what an OSR game is, Matt Finch’s A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming:

https://www.froggodgames.com/quick-primer-old-school-gaming

In the primer, there are 4 “Zen moments” that Matt says are the essence of OSR:

  • Rulings, not rules
  • Player skill, not character abilities
  • Heroic, not super-heroic
  • Forget game balance

5e handles these “Zen moments” quite well. I will attempt to describe how, but before I do, here is the absolute first thing you need to change – where experience points (XP) come from. The base rule in 5e says that XP comes from killing monsters. If you want a game where combat is less important, you need to reward the players for something other than killing monsters. Otherwise, they will kill monsters as their main activity as that is the only way they will be able to increase in level. The two choices are either milestone advancement (give XP or levels based on how they progress within the story) or gold = XP. You will need to come up with your own house rule on gold = XP as it is not in any of the published rules. If you need a quick and dirty one, most of the modern adventures work fine with dividing the monster XP in the rules by 10 and granting 1 XP per GP. If you make your own adventures you will have even more control over that.

I also want to be clear that Matt wrote the document at the very dawn of the publication of 4e D&D. At that time, there had been years of both WoTC and 3rd party publishers releasing book after book that added more and more and more rules for 3e games and there was a general feeling that too many new rules had been created.

Ruling, not rules

5e has tremendously pared back the skill lists compared to other editions (18, not including tools and proficiencies) and feats are optional, so should not be considered to be standard. The advice in the new DM’s Guide to decide if a player action succeeds is not that different than what Matt presents as OSR style playing and the basic rule in 5e is remarkably similar to the same house rule that most DMs have been using for decades which is if it is not an automatic success, pick a number and roll against it (or under ability scores which also was super common).

5e also has a catch-all rule that is much better than any OSR rule I can remember – advantage/disadvantage. So if you decide there needs to be a random check, and the character has done something that should be good but does not make the success automatic, then they get advantage.

If your players say that they are doing something that should result in something happening, just make it happen. There is “the rule of cool” that popular streamers do all the time. They focus on making the game fun and on the story, not the dice rolls (dice rolling is boring to watch). Most streamers are using 5e D&D, there is no reason why you cannot do the same.

“But, but, there are a lot of rules. How can you just ignore them?”, you may say. I am not ignoring the rules. 5e is remarkably streamed down and straightforward in many ways compared to even the original rules once you add in all the supplements. The secret is not to hunt for a rule, it is to make a ruling within the framework of the existing rules.

In the example of jumping off a ledge, 5e does not have specific rules for that. Just make a ruling on the fly. I would say, critical on a 19 or 20 for the drop adding damage and surprise and an Acrobatics roll with a DC 10 to land balanced and on your feet. Simple, lets them do something out of the box and I have made a ruling that works within the rules and we can move on to the next person in initiative order.

I would also note that the theory that there were not a lot of rules in the original D&D is not well supported, especially if you consider that Chainmail was officially considered to be the combat system to be used. The original rules even had details on how to run naval and air combat, including writing down expected actions in advance and revealing them as is common in wargames. There were rules on castles and running estates. Rules on specialists and how to hire them. Rules on henchmen with the expectation that you would enter the dungeon with hirelings and henchmen in tow. There was a solid framework to use, what is missing from the original rules and modern rules is all the details and explanations that fill out the framework. The DM was expected to do that.

Player skill, not character abilities

This is an area where I disagree with Matt. D&D has always been an RPG, and even from the very first booklet, there were attributes for each character and the base classes had abilities and rules. Rolling for abilities was mainly done for combat and spell casting, but character abilities were constantly used in the original games. What there was not at the time was a large set of rules for skills, other than thieves and detecting secret doors (elves), sloping passages (dwarves) and opening doors/bend bars/lift gates.

I think that the “player skill” over “character abilities” theory comes from the early tournament culture of D&D and AD&D. Chainmail evolved from miniatures war games rules and the early D&D players all had strong roots in wargaming culture. That lead to games being run in tournament format and tournaments are quite different than a regular weekly game as you have limited time to run them and you need victory conditions. You ran modules like Tomb of Horrors and counted survivors and how far you got into the dungeon. Or you added riddles into the game that players had to solve, and the riddles may not have even related to the game setting at all (I made the finals of the one GenCon I went to in 1983 or 1984 and we missed an important riddle as we were mainly Canadians in the group and the riddle assumed you know what a military Bronze medal was).

My issue with that is that I think it is poor roleplaying and poor playing in general as I think that the characters should have a personality and a hook into the setting and not just be the players. That means that your characters should have access to the knowledge and training they have for who they are. Even the earliest editions allowed checking against ability scores, and 5e has significantly dialed back the skill list and added the already discussed advantage mechanic plus bounded accuracy.

Now, in Matt’s defense, he does say his examples are exaggerations, but if you want an OSR style game but use 5e, don’t be a lazy DM and do not allow your players to be lazy. If moving a moose head reveals a secret passage, allow automatic success if the players say they try it. Don’t allow Investigation or Perception rolls to give the answer, give hints out instead. If there is a trap and your thief checks the area for traps, ask them how they are checking and where. If they are not specific enough to find the trap or you want it to be a little harder to find, use the Perception roll to see if they notice anything off. Don’t tell them they found a trap, give them a good hint that something is off. Maybe they see scuffs on the floor or a thin tread wrapped around a hinge, or something similar. Play it up as much as you can without telling them directly and see what they do. Use the skills as a guide, not a requirement and both you and your players will enjoy it plus you will draw them into the adventure a lot more.

One of the issues with the newer modules is that they have blocks of text meant to be read out. Older modules tended to describe the room in a general was, but “chat boxes” meant to be read out loud by the game master are newer. I like them, but they also encourage not only a little bit too much laziness, they also set off too many alarms when suddenly you start giving away hints because of successful Perception rolls. Before, the DM would always be making things up, little details when describing the room because nothing was really being spoon fed to them (us, I can get just as lazy). If you’re not quite sure what to describe of say for extra detail, I can suggest an old standard – a table to roll on. In this case, a “dungeon dressing” table.

http://www.rpgnow.com/product/152495/GMs-Miscellany-Dungeon-Dressing-System-Neutral-Edition?affiliate_id=229540

And here are a few free examples to try out:

http://www.ragingswan.com/10-things-to-say-when-a-pc-makes-a-perception-check-and-finds-nothing/

http://www.ragingswan.com/10-suspiciously-detailed-dungeon-double-doors/

The Raging Swan website has a lot of free example tables, and a little bit of reading and some creativity and suddenly you will be about as old school as you can get when you describe the room. All while playing 5e.

Heroic, not super-heroic

There is really not all that much to say here. Low level characters have always been somewhat fragile in all editions of D&D. The next concept on not needing game balance is where I will describe the consequences of this in more detail, but the shortcut to the explanation here is that characters can die and character death should be a real possibility. The original rules’ level tables ended as earliest as level 8 for clerics. The rules described levels above what the tables went to, but magic user spells ended at level 6 and Clerics at level 5.

In addition, hit points per level were 1d6 and pretty much all weapons did 1d6 damage. There really was no concept of starting level 1 with maximum hit points and maximum bonus for higher Constitution was +1 per hit die. So characters were able to be killed with one blow at first level and reaching zero meant you died. No death saves and not even -10 hit points is death. Over time, additional conventions that made zero simply be unconscious were added, but the original D&D was pretty unforgiving. There actually was not a specific rule what to do at zero hp, the 0 = death was a Chainmail convention and Chainmail was the default combat system with death being the result of combat in that system.

However, for all the talk or only heroic, fighting-men could get one attack per level against others with 1 hit die or less and a 10th level fighting-man was much more effective against goblins that a 10th level Fighter is today because they would attack 10 times a combat turn, not twice.

Finally, 5e has significant reined in bonuses and is more in line with original D&D that way. The middle editions of D&D had bonus creep as they added more and more abilities and feat whose bonuses stacked. In order to account for the higher and higher bonuses, a DM had to make difficulties higher and higher to make a challenge for even medium level characters such that it would be impossible for a lower level character to succeed and impossible for a higher level character to fail.

In the end, remember that even Conan in the height of his strength was often captured and suffered defeat. Make sure the characters in your game are in the same peril.

Forget Game Balance

As RPG game companies became more and more experienced at writing adventures and as people communicated more and more over the Internet, a concept of “game balance” grew into the accepted wisdom. Coupled with the increasing number of adventures that were published that were not direct translations of convention/tournament scenarios where killing one-shot characters was part of the design, there started to be level appropriate adventure paths that ramped in difficulty as the characters increased in levels. All of the current WoTC 5e offerings are like that. There is a clear sequence of material and a clear progression to follow. If it is followed, the party will increase in levels and ability as the story progresses. The encounters are challenging, but level appropriate in that the party will find them winnable. The Monster Manual(s) assign ratings to the monsters as a guide of when they should be used and the DMs Guide has a section on designing balanced monsters. The adventures or adventure settings tend to be very complete with  a lot of detail that the party may never see and the DM may never use, but there just in case.

The original published adventures and the ones DMs wrote themselves for their friends did not have this concept of balance so firmly built in. Because XP was given for gold pieces, sneaking past or tricking monsters to get the gold was about he same for character progression. Although it is patently false to say that game balance was not in the original rules (the wandering monster tables in book 3 are divided by level and the early adventures usually got harder the deeper you went), unwinnable fights and instant death traps were common because the players had the ability to avoid them with good play.

I would sum up the two main drivers of a more OSR game is player agency and character death as a real expectation. Modern adventures, in their quest for game balance, are not as open (sand box) as the random hex crawls and dungeon crawls where the game got its start. Players would tell the DM what they wanted to do or where they wanted to go and the DM would run with that, even if it meant almost certain player death, because that is what they said they wanted to do. As the character creation was more direct with much less detail required, a new character was quick to make and many players had extra ones ready. Once the party included hirelings and henchmen, there was a natural resource to convert from NPC to player character when a death happened.

There is absolutely no reason why you cannot run existing 5e adventures that way or to design your own adventures that way. As I noted above, milestone XP or even XP for gold pieces removes the need for the party to constantly fight. Discourage your players from writing a novel as a backstory before the first session and let everyone know that character death is to be expected up front. I also would note that the internet is full of stories of total party kills (TPK) in the Lost Mines of Phandelver (the intro adventure meant for players brand new to RPG or 5e or both). I ran that for my group that was 2/3 my original crew from Holmes basic and AD&D and they survived because they treated it like an OSR adventure. Even WoTC is producing adventures when encounters are not balanced to the party level in their 5e base set, so there is no reason why you cannot give players more agency and allow them to get themselves into more trouble than they can handle.

Running or Playing in an OSR Game

I will end this introductory discussion with a suggestion that might seem a little contradictory to the points I just made above. You can fully run an OSR style game using 5e, but I strongly suggest that you try playing in or running an adventure using one of the original or OSR rulesets. There is really no investment to do that but time as there are plenty of free and complete rules and adventures available.  I suggest this because it will help you to better understand what a more rules light game is like and how the older adventures were put together.

If you want to be like most of us that started after the original set came out, try B1 In Search of the Unknown or B2 Keep on the Borderlands. As of this writing they are about to be updated to 5e by Goodman Games, but they are available in their original form. I would try B2 over B1 but they both are a good introduction to OSR style play.

http://www.dmsguild.com/product/17081/B1-In-Search-of-the-Unknown-Basic

http://www.dmsguild.com/product/17158/B2-The-Keep-on-the-Borderlands-Basic

Both of the modules are $4.99 in PDF format and have the option of a printed copy as well.

If you want free rules to run them under, here are a few OSR suggestions (otherwise the Basic Cyclopedia linked above works fine). Both were originally published with 4 classes (fighting-man, cleric, magic user and thief) in the Holmes Basic set, so the original 3 booklets for D&D are a little behind the times. Thus Swords and Wizardry White Box is close but not complete.

Dark Dungeons (created when the Basic rules were hard to find and getting expensive due to collectors)

http://www.rpgnow.com/product/177410/Dark-Dungeons

Sword and Wizardry Core Rules (Complete is also available for free but has many more classes and this version has just the 4 classes and the races from when the modules first appeared).

https://www.froggodgames.com/swords-wizardry-core-rules

Basic Fantasy RPG – Rule book and adventures available for free from the website or in an inexpensive printed version

http://www.basicfantasy.org/

Printed version of Basic Fantasy rules

And a reprise of the second Basic Set (Basic/eXpert, often called B/X). I linked the text only free version, there is one for $4.99 with art as well.

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/220729/B-X-Essentials-Core-Rules–Plain-Text-Edition

The above is a good subset of OSR rules based on some of the original D&D rules. WoTC has been slowly but surely making their older rules available again, but they have not opened up the ability to publish new adventures using their old rules so the different rulesets that use existing Open Gaming Licenses have allowed many people to legally publish new material.

I know that this might not be entirely accurate in timing, but here are the two OSR rulesets that are generally credited to have started OSR.

S&W WhiteBox (Original D&D – the first three booklets from the boxed set only). Free PDF linked, there are printed versions as well. This product has spawned many others as it was set up as a sandbox for others to play with as long as proper credit was given.

http://www.lulu.com/shop/matthew-finch/swords-wizardry-whitebox-rulebook-pdf/ebook/product-14956259.html

OSRIC (AD&D, sometimes called 1e but not by me)

http://www.lulu.com/shop/stewart-marshall/osric-a5-pdf/ebook/product-20697767.html

And one final link, to a Youtube Channel run by Matt Finch (I used his primer above and he has been instrumental in writing OGL compliant rules from the beginning of the OSR). You can find videos of an old school D&D adventure he is running called Sword of Jordoba in the channel if you want an example of what he means to run a game under the older rules.

Uncle Matt’s D&D Studio

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Publisher’s Choice Quality Stock Art copyright Rick Hershey / Fat Goblin Games

www.fatgoblingames.com

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Note on affiliate links – this site uses affiliate links for several websites (One Book Shelf group and Amazon.com). There are not enough earnings from them to influence me, they don’t even come close to covering the cost of the website. I use them as a way to raise a small amount of money to cover some of the costs of my hobby.

Evaluating Opportunities

When I first moved to Silicon Valley in 1999, I routinely received phone calls from DotCom start-ups looking for a CFO. I was a Controller of a division (close to $1B in revenue) of a big company, but I had just been promoted to that level for the first time and had near zero experience in what I thought was needed to be a CFO (the general advice these days seems to be to pretend you can do it and just take the job). I used to have a list of the companies that called me, and none of them made it. At the time, they told me I was an idiot for not leaping at my chance. Cryptocurrencies remind me of that.

Now, before I continue, I must admit that one of the companies that contacted me was Amazon.com. This was after they had gone public and their stock was quite high. They were looking for employees with inventory and supply chain experience, the title and pay was far below what I was making and I would have had to move to Seattle. The stock suffered in the DotCom bust, so it seemed that my decision to not change jobs was smart, but if I were really the genius that many bitcoin experts claim to be today, I would have invested then. I would have been quite wealthy now if I had.

I can only console myself in that I was also offered a job a few years later for a lower title and pay at a major networking company. When I declined, the recruiter scolded me for being turned off by their attitude and then not long thereafter, they took the largest inventory write-off that I am aware of and the stock really has neve recovered its high-flying ways since then. Finally, and more directly related to cryptocurrencies, I was a long time participant in distributed computing projects like SETI at Home and such and the early appearance of bitcoins and the first miners came from people like me that were using idle cycles of our CPUs to do something else. However, I never installed the bitcoin mining software. In theory, I could have been mining bitcoins when it was possible to solve for them using a regular PC and do it as an individual. If I had done so and kept the bitcoins I made, at today’s prices I would be far wealthier than my reasonably successful career has taken me to.

I added those three examples because I want to make it clear that I have no magical ability to know the future and perfectly guess every opportunity. This is compounded by the fact that you need to choose now and will not know until later, and often much later, if you made the right choice. Using bitcoins as an example, there is not guarantee that I would not have sold the coins at $100. Considering that I have played Magic the Gathering (a card game) off and on for quite a while, it is likely that I would have placed coins in MtGOX and lost everything I put in there. When you back solve what could have happened, most people solve to the best possibility, not the likely one even if you made one arbitrary correct decision that you did not in the past.

I have seen quite a few posts on bitcoin value cross my feed on Linkedin in the past few weeks, much more than when it was going up and all from people that claim some expertise or professional skill for bitcoin and all suggesting that now is the time to buy the dip.

Blockchain is real technology that is finding new applications. All the cryptocurrencies are experiments and they are valuable for the same reason why anything is valuable – people are willing to spend money on them. There certainly is a good argument that a currency linked to a blockchain has merit and can quite valuable for online transactions. There is no doubt at all that blockchain as a technology will see many applications, like perhaps tracking materials in the pharmaceutical production chains.

There also is no doubt that there will be lasting wealth that comes from the innovation, but I don’t think that trading advice (buy or sell) is the right thing to promote on Linkedin or on a Facebook feed. That type of decision needs to be an informed one from individuals, and older advisers may be trapped in past expectations, but they have also seen a few bubbles pop as well.

Even the arguments around cryptocurrencies and why they have value and are a currency themselves or are more valuable than other traditional currencies are suspect. For those of you that don’t know the standard argument, the normal value drivers mentions are i) production cost, ii) scarcity and iii) utility. The basic argument is that the cost to produce a bitcoin is high, they are scarce by design with only 21 million that can be produced and the blockchain technology makes them useful.

However, the production cost is based on current brute force problem solving and scarcity is all about bitcoin itself, not cryptocurrencies in general. There are near infinite algorithms that can be designed to generate a cryptocurrency and there are plenty of new industries where the first mover did not ultimately dominate (Netscape is a good example as is Visicalc and many other similar examples). The utility is even questioned because the transaction time and process to verify a transaction is thought to be too long and many merchants that had been accepting the currency have abandoned it as the transaction time exposed them to too much valuation variance. Even the early criminal use of bitcoins (the initial foundation in its value came from criminals using it to transfer money for drug deals and to do money laundering) has suffered as authorities have proven to be much better at tracking and shutting down bitcoin fueled deals than was originally assumed.

Even the crypto part of the equation may ultimately prove to be flawed as there still is the real possibility that the assumptions behind the math that powers it may ultimately prove to be false. Eventually there may be no more “greater fools” and there is a risk when you buy that you will end up being the last and most foolish.

I’ll try and parse through my thinking on these types of opportunities to show the how I think through I as an example of what I have done in the past as a CFO and what I do today when asked for advice as a consultant.

First, the normal reaction is to shut down and say “no” to new opportunities because these always represent additional effort needed and additional risk. In the case of bitcoin, the easy responses are “tulip mania”, “artificial bubble” and “ponzi scheme”. I am not saying that those responses are correct, but the longer I have been at it, the easier I find my mind comes to a way to say no. Saying no is easier, and, since the consequences of saying yes or no are rarely immediate, you can insulate yourself from the lost opportunity or loss easily. The problem is, saying “no” is easier, but it also closes down growth and opportunity and isolates you from changes in the market. When I detect that instinctive “no”, I push it down and listen and ask one or two simple questions. This is not free, that costs time and mental effort and causes some distraction, but I think that cost is worth the possible upside, so I pay it more often than not.

The questions I normally ask are: 1) Is this a decision I can or should make, 2) Can I or we afford the expense (or not afford to spend it), 3) How long do I have to consider it, and 4) Can I understand pretty quickly what the idea is all about and how it would be profitable?

The first question is an interesting one. As a Finance professional, and especially as you move up the management ranks, you will get both increasing power over spending and increasingly be lobbied for many different ideas outside of the traditional Finance responsibilities. However, you also need to know your limitations. One advantage of being part of a team is access to opinions and expertise of your team members, and using that will probably result in more informed decisions. You also need to consider that the latest encryption standard may seem cool to you, but the head of IT may not want you to install the ransomware you were just pitched in email.

The second question really is about practicality. I would love to have several different phones and VR headsets and whatever else comes out to see which one is good, but I only really need one phone at a time and I barely have time to use the VR headset I already have, so even more does not help. In the case of bitcoins, like most people, I have a wide variety of investment options in front of me, and bitcoins are just one of them.

Coupled with the cost and time commitment is the need to understand if you should be doing without it. I could just use pen and paper and brain power to calculate my taxes, but Turbotax does a much better job and does it much faster. The danger with budget or time pressures are that you may ignore something important. I have used the time when I was flying to read up on new technologies and I have always carved out some time to look at what has changed in the market compared to what has been happening. This is important for personal portfolios and reserving even a small amount of your investment capital (5%) to invest in new technologies or trends can help here.

It has been my experience that the shorter time you have to make a decision, the less something makes sense. There always is lots of marketing and media hype to buy or sell now, but rarely do you need to make an instant decision. If a technology is good, or a trend really has changed, you can enjoy the benefit well enough if you spend a little more time to make sure you understand what you are considering. Most importantly, the risks it brings. In the case of cryptocurrencies, there are a lot of self-proclaimed experts, but most a simply hyping without any depth or new information. I also have seen a disturbing pattern emerge of people with fairly questionable backgrounds suddenly getting involved. It sure is easy to promote this new idea that replaces traditional investment products when you lost your broker license because you were convicted of defrauding your clients.

Counter to the previous concept of making sure you have enough time to consider the new opportunity, it also must be something that you can grasp with a reasonable amount of time and effort. There are always slight edges that someone with a decade of experience and education can exploit, but it might not be the right thing for you to try and figure out. Quite often new technology products work well for people with the specific skillset to use them but are not worth the cost f you cannot program or change all the base setting on your computer to get the additional 5% performance boost. Learn to recognize when something is more complex than you have the training and time to understand quickly and deeply enough and reach out for help. Do not be afraid to say you do not know or do not understand.

I have always been an intuitive problem solver but working in my chosen field which is seeped in process and logical progression, I have to take what I feel is right based on my internal process and break it down in a way that I can repeat and explain it to the people waiting for my decision.

In the case of bitcoins, and other cryptocurrencies, I have seen little reason other than pure speculation, to try them out in any real way. I can understand that the base technology is something to follow closely, but I do not think that it is something that needs urgent action and there are real risks of fraud and theft and regulatory curtailment. I also am concerned about the poor quality of the advisers that have attached themselves to it. As I cautioned up front in this blog, I could have made quite a bit of money just by embracing bitcoins earlier in my life and I was a natural fit for the early adapters there. Unlike the self-called experts I see in the media these days, I know that I don’t know a lot of the details and I think it is not worth my time and money to learn more, but it is complicated and I could be missing something. I have a real edge in other investment and finance areas and I am choosing to spend my time there.

Kingdom Death:Monster – First Session

Kingdom Death: Monster ran two successful Kickstarters. The second has just completed delivery and the game is available in the KD:M store (https://shop.kingdomdeath.com). I thought that I would do detailed play throughs as I go through the game so you can see what $400 will get you. I will warn you, the game is somewhat of an RPG, and learning what is coming up is part of the fun of the game. The first encounter (this one) is the same for everyone and no big mystery, but the further you get into the game the more and more the “surprise” of what you encounter is part of the fun.

What is the game?

It is a horror/fantasy cooperative board game with RPG elements. It uses cards and the rulebook to reveal the story as you go. You start off as a survivor (4 is the standard number, you can play up to 6 in the game) without any backstory except for you are in a wasteland and a lion attacks you and your companions. The game is cooperative – the players against the game. In combat, the players take turns commanding the enemies and the enemies use an AI deck to control them. You roll dice to hit or to see if you are hit and you use dice to see where you get hit whereas you use cards to determine where the enemy gets hit. The monsters ramp up in power over time.
The game is very miniature heavy and the miniatures come unassembled on sprues. You need to clip the pieces off of the sprues and glue them together. Many people paint the miniatures, but it is not required.

Miniatures and supplies

To assemble the miniatures, you will need to cut them away from the sprues and glue them together. You can use an hobby knife to cut them off, or you can use a set of cutters. Something that cuts flush is best and the “God Hand” cutter is expensive but made for the job. They are available on Amazon.com (God Hand), but you might be able to find them cheaper on eBay or from a hobby shop. They are expensive, but work very well and cut very flush. It will save you a lot of time later on cleaning up the model pieces if you use a good tool in advance.
You also will want good quality glue. The best usually is the type designed to slightly melt the plastic and meld it together. I use Tamiya cement (Tamiya Cement). The green top is thinner and the white is a little thicker. The glue sets pretty quickly and you need to put bare plastic onto bare plastic because of the way it works.
Finally, if you want to paint your miniatures, you will need paints and brushes. There are various brands of paints made just for miniatures (this is one example Miniature Paints). The special paints work very well, but they can be expensive. Another option is acrylic craft paints that you can find at stores like Michaels or Hobby Lobby or even Walmart. They work well enough, but tend to be thicker than specially made paints and need more thinning and sometimes more coats of paint.

Cement and God Hand

Different Cement

This blog is not meant to be a painting tutorial, there are plenty on Youtube or other places on the Web. The basic process is to clean the models to wash off the chemicals used to help them release easily from the molds, prime them, typically with a spray primer, paint and then maybe use a protective coat. Painting can include using techniques like dry brushing and inks to bring out details and highlights.
I just use craft paints, but I have been painting for a while and know the consistency to aim at. I am also not aiming for public display of the models or to win an art contest. The miniatures in this blog were painted by me (White Lion) and my 15-year old daughter (the survivors). These were the first miniatures she had ever done. I did some touch up, but I think the pictures will show you what you can accomplish with just a little bit of effort, even if you are not experienced.
This is what what my starting group looks like:

The White Lion and his prey

Starting miniatures

To play the first game, you will need to build the first 4 survivors plus the white lion. The directions can be found here (and it is a good site to see previews of the included miniatures):
Building Instructions

Playing your first game – Session 1

The first comment I will make is that the game board and the space needed around it is very large. You cannot play it on a small coffee table, you will need a big surface. The picture below has a letter sized piece of paper on it to give an idea of the scale.

The Game Board

You will need 4 copies of the survivor statistics sheet. I used my printer to scan and copy the sheet as I can imagine you can churn right through the included pad. The rule book suggests that you use a pencil to record onto the sheet as wounds and statistics change over time.
The rule book steps you through set up and play in detail. First, you set up the 4 survivors and their boards. You place cloth and founding stone cards on the survivor grid and pick names for your survivors. My first 4 are named Myrdin, Neo Linhong and Imani. The rulebook also says you will need tokens to mark status during the fight. I found a 3D printer token holder and printed one up to help keep the tokens organized during the game.

Token Holder

The interesting facts that I picked up from the starting components was that the Founding Stone can be thrown to automatically hit with a critical wound and that the survivors move 5 as their base movement.
The next step to get ready to play is to create a custom AI deck for the White Lion. It starts with only 8 cards, and the “claw” action is placed on top. The different categories for the AI cards seem to be basic, advanced and legendary. The first session has 5 basic and 3 advanced cards and zero legendary ones.

Various Cards

The next deck to get ready is the Hit Location deck. The only special instructions is to place the Strange Hand on top. Then you place the basic action card down for the white lion. These all go onto the monster control panel which also has spaces for a wound stack 4 traits/mood/skull and space for 7 tokens.
I noticed that if you score a Critical Hit on Strange Hand (the starting hit location card) you can spend your one survival point and gain a permanent +1 Strength boost. Other than that hit location card, you can only spend survival to Dodge in the first session. Dodges negate damage from a hit. I do not know the game well enough yet to decide if it is worth fighting with tooth and nail (survivor base attacks with no weapons) just to gain that permanent bonus.
Finally, you place your 5 miniatures on the board. You start with the White Lion and then put the 4 survivors down and they can be up to 5 squares away from the White Lion. Considering that you need to attack and kill the lion and it can move 6 and you can move 5, I thought that being as close as possible made more sense.
The White Lion also has a blindspot in the two squares immediately behind it, which looked like a good place to get to if you are wounded.
Since I wanted to make sure I could approach the White Lion and attack not matter what, I placed all survivors within 2 squares of the White Lion. Again, this is my very first time playing, so I am not sure if that is the best play.

Starting Set-up

Starting Set-up (front view)

The first session alternates between the White Lion (control of the non-player characters alternates between however many players you have and you get a bonus if you attack yourself, well a bonus if increasing insanity can be considered a bonus) and the players. Each player (survivor) acts each turn. For the first session, you follow specific instructions in the rulebook for the first turn and then play on based on the cards you draw.

Game Ready to Play

First turn

Select the monster’s controller. Since I am running solo, it will be me throughout this example (my painting assistant Rachel did follow along). Since there is a bonus for targeting yourself, I kept the character sheets in order and assumed that I was running through 4 controllers.

Monster Controller

You start the actual turn by drawing the top card. I know it is Claw and I am playing Imani as the nominal character this turn.
Card says Pick Target and lists closest threat, facing, in range, closest threat, in field of view, and sniff if no target. Sniff means even if everyone is knocked down (not a threat) or hiding in the blindspot (the two squares immediately behind the White Lion), they are all considered threats until end end of the next turn.
As can be seen from the initial placement photo, Neo and Linhong are both equally placed in front as threats. I decided that the target was Linhong.
One the target is chosen, next up is to move and attack.

White Lion’s First Attack

Claw attack speed is 2 and accuracy is 2+. So I need to roll 2 dice and anything 2 or above is a hit. I rolled 2 4’s, which means 2 hit.


Since there are 2 hits, I need to roll 2 hit location dice to see where they hit. The dice roll result was legs and body. The only location with armor is the waist. I could use a survival point and avoid one hit, but neither hit dehabilitates the survivor, so I recorded a light wound onto each location.

Recording Wounds

It is now the survivors’ turn. Each one gains an action activation and a movement activation. It does not matter what order they are activated in. Attacks from blindspot have a better chance to hit (+1). Next up in my order is Myrdin and I will want to target him to gain the Insanity “benefit”, so I need to make sure Myrdin ends up in front.
I started with Linhong as she was wounded and I do not want her subject to attack next turn. I do not know what all the potential actions could be, but I am hoping most target survivors in front of the White Lion.
I move Linhong directly behind the White Lion and attacked with the Founding Stone. It has a speed of 2, so 2 dice are rolled and a base accuracy of 7, so with the +1 bonus it hits on a 6 or better. With a roll of an 8 and a 1, there is one hit.

First Attack Rolls

I draw a hit location card and get Strange Hand (this has already been placed on top). The back of the White Lion card says that it has a toughness of 6, so I roll another die to see if the hit wounds. I roll a 1, add 1 for the strength of the weapon, and the result is 2 which is a failure. The Strange Hand says perform a basic action and target the survivor.

White Lion

This is where I was confused a little. Basic Action is Pick Target, and I just moved Linhong into the Blindspot. I did a little online research and the ruling is that the card overrules the target rules. So the lion spins around and attacks again. I roll 2 9’s and two more wounds are applied. Hit locations are leg and head. Both result in Linhong being heavily wounded. I could use a survival point and avoid one wound, but not worth it as either results in her being knocked down.
Imani is next up and she hits with 1 of 2 attacks. Hit location is Fuzzy Groin. I roll a 3 in the attempt to wound which results in a 4 which is a failure.
Myrdin attacks from in front and rolls an 8 and a 3 for 1 hit. Hit location is Straining Neck and the wound attempt is successful with an 8 rolled which becomes a 9. An AI card is placed in the wound stack to represent the wound. This is placed face down so I do not know what it is.
Finally, Neo attacks and attacks from the blindspot. I roll 2 7’s, which become 2 eights and represent 2 hits. The hit location cards are Beast’s Maw and Beast’s Ribs. There is no downside to failing the Ribs wound attempt, so I pick it first, rolling a 4 which becomes a 5 and fails. The attempt to wound the Maw works with a 7 becoming an 8.


The White Lion has suffered 2 wounds this turn and needs a total of 9 to die (AI deck size plus one).

End of Turn 1

Turn 2

I draw an AI card for the White Lion and get Terrifying Roar. The targets are all non-deaf survivors. Usually Linhong would not be targeted as she is not a threat, but the target instructions do not mention threat. The White Lion is level 1. I go through each survivor and roll a d10. On a 2 or more the bad effect happens. Imani gets an 8, suffers 1 brain wound, and is knocked back 6. Myrdin gets a 9 and is knocked back 6. Linhong gets a 7 and is knocked back 6. Finally Neo gets a 9 and is knocked back 6.

Terrifying Roar

The lion then targets the furthest survivor in range. All are the same distance, so I pick Myrdin. Since it is his turn, I get +1 insanity. The lion then performs a basic action, moves next to Myrdin (movement is 6) and attacks. I roll a 1 and a 4, so one attack misses. The wound location is leg.

Widely Scattered Forces

Since it is the end of the monster’s turn, Linhong stands up.
Other than the roll of a 1 to hit, not the greatest of turns as my forces are scattered all over the board and the best I can do is attack twice. I also have a quandary as I want to move behind the monster but I need to make sure the monster does not turn around and move over my survivors as that will knock them down and I will lose an entire turn. So I need to move both the other survivors to force sideways movement.
I move Linhong directly behind the White Lion and attack. I roll a 6 and a 2 which becomes a 7 and a 3 and hit once. Location is Beast’s Ear. I roll a 6 which becomes a 7 and a wound, which is fortunate as a failure would have made the lion jump away and trample Myrdin.
I move Myrdin behind the White Lion and attack. My rolls are 6 and 4 which is 7 and 5, so one hit. Hit location is Clever Ploy, which means that Myrdin has fallen into the White Lion’s trap (it is a trap card).

Clever Ploy

Myrdin is also doomed and cannot use any survival points until the card is resolved.
The White Lions spins around and attacks, which negates my previous plans.
An 8 and a 3 is 2 hits. Hit location is waist and body. Waist armor absorbs 1 and the body hit results in a light wound.
I reshuffle the hit location deck.

Turn 3

I would say that the situation seems pretty bad to me. White Lion starts its next turn and the AI card is Grasp. It has only suffered three wounds so far and my survivors are pretty scattered. This is nominally Linghong’s turn.

Grasp

Since Myrdin and Linhong are both directly in front of the White Lion, I choose Linhong and get one insanity as it is her turn as Monster Controller.
Grasp is one attack and then a trigger after damage. I roll an 8 for the speed one attack and take a hit. Hit location die is a leg. That will result in a heavy wound, but she will be knocked down by the after damage trigger anyways, so I save the survival point.
Linhong is grabbed and suffers another hit as the White Lion is level 1. Body Hit Location, so heavy wound there but already knocked down.
White Lion makes a full move away. The rules are not super specific about facing but you turn the way you are moving as a general rule, so I turned the White Lion away from the rest of the survivors.

From Bad to Worse

Non of the survivors could get into range (except to throw their Founding Stones which would not kill the White Lion), so I moved as close as I could and it went to the next turn.

Turn 4

AI card chosen was Maul. The first target listed was victim of Grab last round, so Linhong was attacked again. Both attacks hit her, and each does 3. Plus a bleed token. Does not look good for Linhong. I roll arms and waist. Arms has no armor and only 2 hit locations. I expend my one survival point to dodge it. Linhong still takes another heavy wound, but was already knocked down so cannot be knocked down again.

Mauling Its Victim

Now Myrdin moves into the blindspot and attacks. I roll a 2 and a 1 and miss with both. Linhong stands up. She is limited by the board edge and cannot move behind the White Lion, so she attacks. She rolls a 6 and an 8 and hits once. Hit Location is Beast’s Ribs. Wound roll is a 5 which becomes a 6 and a wound.
The rest of the survivors move as close as they can and the turn ends.


Turn 5

AI deck is depleted, so I need to reshuffle the 4 cards in the discard pile. I draw Terrifying Roar, which again is bad news.
Imani takes a brain wound and is already wounded there so rolls on the brain trauma table (p. 89 of the rule book). She rolls a 6 and gets danger seizure as the result. She takes a damage to her arms (no other survivor is close), rolls a 9 and gains 5 insanity (3 and over is insane), and gains a disorder. I shuffled the disorder cards and drew Vestiphobia which prevents her from wearing armor at the body location. She is also knocked back 6 squares.

Phobia

Myrdin has insanity of 1, so that is reduced and no damage (roll was a 6).
Neo had a lantern roll (10) and no insanity. Rolls another lantern on the brain trauma table which is Frenzy. Gains 2 insanity, and a speed and a strength token.He cannot use weapon specialization or mastery, but that does not apply in this first session.
Linhong also rolls a lantern but has an insanity point and is just knocked back 6.
The White Lion then moves and attacks Myrdin, who is the furthest in range. Both rolls hit. One to the arms, one to the body. Myrdin spends a survival point to avoid the body damage and stays on his feet.
He attacks and gets a 7 and a lantern, both are hits. I draw Beast’s Maw and Beast’s Tricep. I choose tricep first and roll a 2 (becomes 3) and fail. The White Lion counter attacks and hits twice. Arms and head are the result, both are heavy wounds and Myrdin is knocked down. Under the knock down rules, any unresolved wound attempts are wasted.
Neo moves in, using 6 movement. Cannot get to the blindspot, but he attacks with a speed of 3. Rolls 9,8, and 5 and hits twice. Hit locations are Soft Belly and Beast’s Scapular Deltoid. No failure trigger for soft belly, so I try that first. I get an additional +1 from the Strength token and roll an 8, +2 is 10. One wound. Second roll is a 3 and the resulting 5 is a failure.
The White Lion now moves 6 straight forward and grabs both Myrdin and Neo. Myrdin takes a waist hit, Neo takes a waist hit which is expended on the armor (Myrdin had no more armor).
The White Lion moving forward allows Imani to attack from the blindspot. She rolls an 8 and a 9, hitting twice. Hit location cards are Fleshy Gut and Beast’s Brow. I go for the Gut first and roll a 1, failure. The White Lion attacks and hits twice. The hits are body and head. Spend a survival to get rid of the head wound. The second wound attempt fails as well.
Linhong throws her stone and autohits. When a Founding Stone is thrown, it auto-criticals as well (if applicable) for the wound. Beast’s Temple is drawn as the hit location, and the Critical Wound description has a persistent injury that potentially (roll of 1-2) negates the White Lion’s action on a turn. One interesting feature of the Founding Stone is that if you draw a hit location card without a Critical Wound text/rule, it does not cause a wound.

Beast’s Temple

So at the end of Turn 5, I have done 6 wounds and the White Lion is down to 2 AI cards. One is Tremendous Roar. One is unknown as of now. I need to do three more wounds to kill it.

Turn 6

AI card is grasp and the injury roll is over 2. That means that last wound was Claw. Both Neo and Myrdin are knocked down and same range. Myrdin is the nominal Monster Controller. I pick him as the target and he gains one Insanity.
Myrdin is hit with the first attack and takes 1 damage to body. That inflicts a heavy wound, but he is already knocked down. The second step of the card also creates a collision with Neo. However, he is already knocked down so nothing further happens to Neo. Myrdin takes one more damage to Body location. That exceeds the number of spaces, so I roll on the table on page 88 to see what happens. I roll a 10 (lantern) and the effect is that Myrdin knocked down. Since Myrdin is already knocked down, nothing happens.
At the end of the monster turn, Myrdin and Neo stand up.
Myrdin goes into the blindspot and and attacks, rolling a 1 and an 8. I draw Glorious Mane, which is Impervious and cannot be wounded. I do not do a critical wound. Neo then moves and his three speed gives three dice plus he is in the blindspot. He rolls a 4, 5 and 6. The +1 gives him one hit. Hit Location is Beasts Heel and the wound roll is a 2. The resulting 4 does not wound the White Lion.
The other 2 survivors move closer.

Turn 7

I draw Terrifying Roar for the AI card. I roll a 9, so the Temple persistent injury does not apply.
Imani reduces Insanity by 1 (to 4) and is knocked back. Myrdin reduces insanity by 1 (to zero) and is knocked back. Linhong takes a brain injury and I roll a 2 on the table on page 89. She dies. Neo reduces his insanity by 1 (to 1) and is knocked back. I choose Myrdin to be the target and he is hit twice. Both are to the waist and he is knocked down and suffers a roll on page 87. I roll a 5. His pelvis is warped, he gains -1 Luck permanently and a bleeding token.
Neo moves into the blindspot and attacks. I roll a 1, 4 and 9 giving 1 hit. Hit location is Beast’s Ear. I roll a 1 to wound, +2 is a 3 which fails. The White Lion moves one space forward, colliding with and ending in the space with Myrdin and knocking him back 5.
This allows Imani to get into the blindspot. I roll a 3 and 4 so the resulting 4 and 5 miss.

Turn 8

I draw Grasp as the AI card and roll a 6, so Temple persistent wound does not count. white Lion moves to Myrdin and attacks. One hit to the legs. Heavy wound, but Myrdin is already knocked down. Myrdin then takes a head hit from the Grab. Since the head is already wounded, I roll on the table on page 86. I roll a 4 and Myrdin is decapitated and dies.
During their turn, the survivors move toward the White Lion but cannot reach it. I make sure to be 8 spaces away.

Turn 9

I shuffle the AI deck again and draw Terrifying Roar. I roll a lantern 10, so the persistent injury does nothing. Imani and Neo get their insanity reduced to 3 and 1 and are knocked back. The White Lion moves up 6, but no target is in range for an attack. I am a little confused by the wording here as I am supposed to perform a basic action (which has a target in range) but there also is target furthest survivor in range, which there is none. I played it as the basic action card if none are in range.
As both the survivors are out of range, they do not move.

Turn 10

I draw grasp. According to the target choices, no knocked down, no closest in range, so it it sniffs.
I start edging the survivors to make a run for the blind spot.

Turn 11

Shuffle AI deck and draw terrifying roar. Roll a 3 on the injury check, so it roars. Reduce insanity (Neo now has none left).
Because of the interplay between the two cards and the knockback, I decide I need to close the distance.

Turn 12

Draw Grasp. Roll a 3 on the injury roll. Target Imani. Attack and hit. Damage location is legs. Grab location is body, which is a heavy wound, but grab knocks her down anyways.
Move Neo into blindspot (6 move). roll 3 dice to attack with 10, 10 and 4 (2 hits). Hit location is a trap – clever ploy. He is hit to waist and body, both do light wounds. I reshuffle hit location.

Turn 13

Reshuffle AI deck. Draw Grasp. Injury roll of 6. Imani is hit. Body location, so I roll on table on page 87 as it is full. I roll an 8. Broken rib, -1 speed (permanent) and bleed token.
Imani stands up. Neo rolls 3 dice in his attack and hits all three times. Locations are glorious mane and then Clever Ploy. I stop there as trap card’s stop all hits. Neo is hit twice to body. I use his survival and the heavy damage knocks him down.
Imani cannot make it to the blindspot and the roar is dangerous, so she throws the founding stone. Hit location is Beast’s Knee. Critical wound gives the White Lion a shattered knee and a -1 movement token.

Turn 14

Draw grasp. Targets Neo. Injury roll does nothing. Damage is to legs and arms (both light). Neo stands up.
Neo moves to blind spot. Hits once with 3 dice, hit location is Beast’s flank. Wounded. Neo now has priority target token. Imani moves closer.

Priority Target

Turn 15

Perform basic action as there are no more AI cards left in the deck, Neo is in blind spot, cannot be picked (I assume this is right, possible that Priority Target means you are picked no matter what, even if not a legal target), so White Lion goes after Imani. It collides with Neo and ends turn in his space, he is knocked back 5. White Lion hits arms twice.
Imani is knocked down and rolls on page 86. I roll a 7 and she suffers a broken arm and permanent -1 Strength and Accuracy.
Neo moves up and misses with all three attacks.

Turn 16

Perform basic action. Neo is chosen and loses priority target token. He is hit 2 times to the body and I roll a 10 on the table on page 86 and he is knocked over. Imani stands up.
Imani misses with Tooth and Claw (unarmed attack).

Turn 17

Imani is targeted and hit twice. I roll 2 on the arm table and she dies. Neo stands up and enters the blind spot. He hits twice. Hit Location is Straining Neck and Beast’s Elbow. Straining Neck is not wounded. elbow suffers a critical wound (rolled a Lantern). White Lion dies and Neo gains 3 Insanity.

Victory!

First encounter ends.

The Rewards

Basic Rewards

As a reward, you get 4 White Lion resources and 4 basic resources. the White Lion resources I drew were: 2 x Lion Claw, 1 x Shimmering Mane and 1 x Great Cat Bones. The Basic Resources were: Broken Lantern, Skull, Love Juice, and Monster Organ. None of these are explained in the first rule section.

White Lion Rewards

My Impressions

As you can tell from the session play through above, the game lasted quite a long time. I am not sure if it was just a combination of bad dice rolls and the card sequence, but I was quite tired of chasing down the White Lion by the end of the session. 3/4 of the survivors players died, and I can imagine that would have been disappointing in a live session.
The obvious strengths of the game are the detailed miniatures and the fairly straightforward rules. There were a few times when I was a little confused, but I did a google search each time and easily found what I was looking for. The general advice here is follow the cards or the rules as closely as they are written and don’t try and read too much into it. The game also drips atmosphere.
I also had some bad rolls and bad luck on card drawing, which extended the game. I think ending it around turn 10-12 would have made the experience more fun.
There are a lot of cards, hundreds and hundreds, and the rule book also extends the story, so there is a lot of game play ahead of me.
The only disappointment I had with the game components was the card stock used. The backs don’t seem to have any coating or lamination. That means they absorb oils from your fingers pretty easily and they do not shuffle very well as they do not glide across each other. They also scratch pretty easily and their edges are not strong. I am not sure why in such an expensive game put together with a very good insert and box, would not have used better card stock. I highly recommend using cards sleeves. Standard European Board Game sleeves should work for the AI and Hit Location cards, the gear cards are not a standard size. The Kingdom Death store carries sleeves.
The tokens are well printed on good stock and the cards are easy to read (important for an older gamer like me). The rule book is a hard cover and the pages are good quality glossy paper and in full color. The huge game board suffers a little from not having a protective coating and also picks up stains from your hands pretty easily. I also noticed a little warping after it had been on the table for a while.

Evil High Priest – First Impressions

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1816687860/evil-high-priest/

 

Might as well lead with the main link. This is my quick review of Evil High Priest that I used their print and play preview to try out at the local board game Meet-Up that I go to every week. This is a new game by noted game designer Sandy Petersen which he co-designed with his son, Lincoln Petersen.

The game is a worker placement game for 2-5 players. You are all part of an evil cult trying to summon your patron Great Old One from the Cthulhu Mythos. There are two cult boards included in the print and play (Cthulhu and the Black Goat) plus all the boards, cards and tokens you would use in the basic game.

The object of the game is to have the most resources (the best places High Priest) when the Great Old One is released. All players are working to summon the Great Old One, no player is working to stop it. Other than the normal worker placement rule of only one worker (cultist in this game) per space, the other interaction is to trigger raids when they are not convenient to the other players.

Before I discuss the game mechanics, a few things about the print and play. The boards are not set to standard paper sizes, so make sure you have a plan on how to print them (I used “poster” settings for the cult boards and then cut the pieces out and taped them together, for example). You can take the files to your local office supplies / printing shop, but color printing on non-standard paper sizes can be pricey. I managed to print everything on my home printer, it just took a little bit of work. Petersen Games should take a look at paper sizes for a print and play file and a printing instructions page would help, especially if you have to explain it to a copy shop. Also, be careful when saving the file. I saved from Adobe Reader, and it flattened the file and I lost an icon on one of the boards when it did that.

I used light card stock and then laminated it using this machine:

AmazonBasics Thermal Laminator

I bought it a while ago for a print and play and card stock terrain projects and for around $20 it does a good job.

The game needs some game pieces and 3 6-sided dice. I have plenty of dice and I could have repurposed some Cthulhu Wars cultist figures, but I didn’t want to take them back and forth to the Meet-up. Instead, I did a quick search and for a design for some meeples I could print on one of my 3D printers. I used these ones, but there really are many, many choices:

Meeples!

I used 2 different types – the wizards with a staff to be the high priests and the regular ones to be the acolytes. I wish I have made the wizards about 15% larger than the others, but they served well enough. I also did not want to switch out colors 5 times and print 5 times, so instead I did this:

Once the paint dried I ended up with 5 different colors of meeples (red, white, bluse, black and gray). I used spray paint, but model paint for miniatures would work just as well.

I happened to have a 1″ circle punch, so that made punching out most of the circular tokens quick. That was a little large, you could use a 3/4″ one for the smaller tokens and the 1″ one for the larger tokens worth 3 units each if you wanted. A circular punch is a lot faster and neater than using scissors, but not needed if you do not have one. There are punches in all sorts of shapes, check out the scrapbooking section of your local crafts store.

In the end, it ended up looking something like this in the Meet-up:

Overall, it looks good and helps in playing. I like the fact that the turn order and the victory point values are on each priest card.

The game itself

Like almost all worker placement games, you pick a turn order and then each player places a worker and then you rotate with each other player in turn placing workers until there no more workers to be placed. You then resolve the skulk action and the action phase ends. You then resolve the preparation phase which involves one of the boards (ritual board) and return cultists that were used back to their pool unless they are still performing a ritual.

There are 5 resources in the game – treasure, blood, magic, spellbooks and Elder Signs and that is the ascending order of victory point value as well, with treasure only valuable in the end game if you have the most. Different action squares cost different (or no) resources in addition to having a cultist placed there and sometimes the cultists themselves are the cost (except there is a no self sacrifice rule so one of their companions is sacrificed).

There are three main boards and a player board that you can perform actions on. These are the Town board (get or exchange resources or become first player), the Cult board (get Elder Signs), the Ritual Board (gain more resources at the cost of 2 or more turns use of your cultist), and the Priest board (everyone has one, only the priest can be used). The ritual board only becomes active after the first raid by investigators occurs.

In the basic game, you only get generic monsters. There are no unique Priests, Monsters or Investigators. These will be added to the game via an expansion and potentially via stretch goals unlocked in the campaign. This made the first play through somewhat generic. An easy fix for the monsters would be to name them and add flavor text with no rules text and the 5 power. *poof* you are now summoning Sandy’s Dark Young instead of a generic monster. Same for the 5 starting high priests. Give them each a name and flavor text and no ability. Vary the art on the cards making, some women and some men and maybe even non-human and you instantly have a game with more flavor with just a little effort and cost.

The game itself played well. We played 4 players and first time for this game for all of us, but we all have played worker placement games before. It took us 2.5 hours and we were all pretty even until about 2 hours in and an ill-timed raid against me knocked me so far back that I never recovered. The designers say 60 to 90 minutes play time and I would add 15 minutes to set-up and tear down the game. We got faster as we learned the game, so 90 minutes is probably doable.

The mechanics tie into the genre. As you break more and more seals, you attract the attention of investigators that raid you. Your cultists start in the asylum (you have 6 and 4 start there) and are not available until they “escape”. You sacrifice cultists (goes back to asylum) and monsters to stop raids and once they penetrate those defenses, the innate defenses you build up slow down and hopefully stop the investigators. If not, they destroy resources. The raids hit everyone, not just the person that triggered it and it is a nice touch. It also adds some chance for all players to do something, even in other peoples turns.

Unless you use your priest to Chant (action on the Priest board) or otherwise gain a Chamber card, any resources you gain are unprotected. You use resources to get Elder Signs which are worth the most victory points but it is not the only way to win.

I liked the different areas to play in, but thought that only having chambers vary made it a little to plain. Switching out Cult boards (2 in the basic game plus 4 more in the expansion) will make the game suitably different each time. The dice are only used to set raid strength (1 to 3 dice so from 1 to 18 total).

All 4 of us liked the game and want to play it again, so it passed the first test. Compared to other “premium” worker placement games, the base game looks shy on components. very few cards and the resources being tokens (most premium games use wooden tokens of some kind at least). I know of a few rules we got a little wrong the first play through, but I found the rule book well done in general.

Since this is still in Kickstarter while I write this, they still have time to add more marketing elements to it. The design looks very solid, but I expect that from Petersen games. They just need to add extra sparkle and fun to the game to make it stand out a little. The extra miniatures you can add do not count for me as I think the boards will need to be much bigger else they will block game text. I also found some of the shadowed white print on parchment background a little hard to read.

Also, since this is a Kickstarter, Petersen Games has a reputation for delivering what they promised  (Sandy Petersen even mortgaged his house to make sure that happened one early Kickstarter) but they are generally late in delivering (not worse than the average Kickstarter). They say they have changed it this time and are ready to produce, but they are not great at delivering on time but good at delivering great games.


Other good Worker Placement games

Lords of Waterdeep

Viticulture – Essential Edition

Scythe

 

The Uploaded, by Ferrett Steinmetz – a book review

I know Ferrett (in that we have met a few times and corresponded via the internet for quite a while) and I was very happy when I read his first trilogy. I enjoyed it and my daughter Rachel enjoyed it. Great world building and the main character even was close to my profession as an accountant.

When I started reading The Uploaded I was worried because sometimes a writer gets a world or set of characters just right but when they do something new they just don’t have it.

At least that is not a concern now after I finished The Uploaded. Good world building, good story and writing that moves the plot along on a breakneck pace through the whole book. Some of the plot movement is moved forward via hand-waving (a magic “Icebreaker”) but it is OK. Heroes very often are superhuman and it works in the context of the story.

The two parts of the story that I think just do not work well enough (and why it is a 4 star book for me) was the love stories. Rachel had exactly the same issue here and she is a teenage girl. There is absolutely no connection that I can find in the love story and any character development or plot advancement. I am not a huge fan of love triangles, but the one in this book did not seem to matter at all to Amichai.

The second was the treatment of religion. The two groups of characters in the book seen to be atheists or Neo-Christians. There are no middle ground characters, anyone with faith that still believes that uploading after death is fine. There are lots of random descriptions (like “jewfro”) that just does not make sense considering the context. The family background of Amichai is meaningless and seems tacked on. All of the religious in the book are extremists and they are all Christian. Even in the USA, there are enough other religions that could be characters and I cannot see in the world created why the religious groups in it all have to be extremists living on the fringes of the world.

I can live with the religion, but the romantic triangle was just too much for me. Too stereotypical in one Young Adult way (and it seems that the society is much less prudish than current world, so even a little off) and not satisfying in terms of plot or character development.

I liked the book. Rachel read the whole book in a day, including sneaking a reading under the covers late into the night, It has a really interesting idea behind it and world and characters are fun. So give it a try.

The Uploaded on Amazon.com

Getting Started Playing D&D 5E using Fantasy Grounds Virtual Tabletop Program

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Fantasy Grounds is a virtual tabletop program designed to make playing role playing games online.  In many ways, it replicates the experience of playing in person with a table in the middle of the group, and in many ways it is quite different.  It is not an RPG game itself.  It does not have an Artificial Intelligence and it requires a someone to be running the game for other players.  This person is commonly called the Game Master (or Dungeon Master for D&D) and that person will be the “host” for the game.  The program uses a client/server approach with the GM running the server and the players connecting to the server as a client.

You do not need a VTT to play D&D online.  There are a lot of quite powerful conferencing software programs that allow for video, audio and sharing of screens.  Any of these could be used (GoToMeeting is a good example).  A lot of companies have spent a lot of money developing conferencing software to make remote business meetings better and if that is all you are looking for, the ability to share your screen (probably for maps) and to have multi-person audio is all you need.  A VTT like Fantasy Grounds does this better for specialized functions like dice rolling and moving tokens on the map, but I have not seen any VTT that is as good as the meeting software you can find from major corporations like Cisco for basic remote conferencing ability.  I prefer using Fantasy Grounds, but you do have other options.

Where to Get the Program

www.fantasygrounds.com or on Steam.  Search for Fantasy Grounds in Steam.

The Cost = Free (probably)

If all you want to do is play, Fantasy Grounds is often free.  There are two levels of license and two ways to pay, but the base software itself is free.  Let me breakdown the cost of the two licenses you can pay for, but the demo software is free and fully functional for playing.

Remember that Fantasy Grounds uses a client/server model and that the person running the game, the Dungeon Master in the case of 5e D&D, is the server.  It is the level of license that the server has that determines if the players have to pay for a license to play.  You also cannot buy content for the free, demo version of the game, you need to have bought a license.

The two different levels of licenses are Standard ($39 onetime fee or $3.99 a month subscription) and Ultimate ($149 one time or $9.99 a month subscription).  The only real difference between the two server licenses are that the Ultimate license can host unlimited free players while the Standard one cannot effectively host any free players (it can host one, but if anyone else joins the game, paid license or not, there can be no free players).

One not so secret feature of Fantasy Grounds is that it has been around a while.  People that like to DM tend to buy the Ultimate license.  So within the community of people that like to DM, many of them have bought the Ultimate license.  So a great many of the DM’s that are looking for players advertise that they have the Ultimate license and that means you do not need to spend anything for the program if all you want to do is play.

If you are only going to be a player, then the only license you will ever need is the Standard license.  If that is the case, I highly suggest that you ignore the subscription option and just pay the onetime fee of $39.  If you play for 10 months it is a wash and if you play for 4 months and then buy the Standard license you cannot apply any subscription fees that you have already paid to the onetime cost.

If you mainly want to be a DM, then I suggest that you consider the Ultimate license, but I will cover that in a different blog entry.  Just let me say that being a DM that can accept any player and who has all the rules available is expensive compared to just being a player.  This is no different at all compared to being a DM in a physical tabletop game as the DM usually buys the modules, provides the maps and monster miniatures, etc.

Sales/Discounts

The MSRP of the Standard license is $39.  Steam routinely sells a 4 pack of licenses for $120 (25% discount or $30 each).  There also is a 20% off sale for a single license every few months, at least for the Standard license.  Once or twice a year (Black Friday/Cyber Monday time, for example, usually when Steam does their big sales events) there might be a larger discount.  If you’re a little patient, you can probably get the Standard license for close to or just below $30.

What Operating Systems Does It Come On?

The program is a Windows program.  It works on Mac OS and Linux via WINE or other Windows emulation programs.  Fantasy Grounds recommends that you use the Steam version for the Mac as the installer seems to work better.  There usually are no real issues with installing the program in Windows, just about the only real choice you need to make is where the data will be stored.  Mac installations can be tricky, I had issues getting it to work on my daughter’s MacBook Air and if you don’t want to have to google and read through forum posts, I suggest trying Steam first.  Steam actually is convenient as it stores your license keys for you.  I have not tried installing it on Linux but others do run it there.

How Powerful a Computer / Internet Connection Do You Need?

The official specifications can be found on Fantasy Grounds and Steam.  This is the latest for Windows:

Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8 (and Windows 10 – my addition)
DirectX 9.0 or better
DirectX 9.0 compatible video adapter
RAM: 4 GB
Internet Connection

Those are not very demanding specifications and I have connected and been the DM on a Cellular 3G Hot Spot.  A faster Internet connection helps but there is not much data being sent back and forth unless larger graphics files are being loaded.

What About the Rules or DLC?  What do they Cost?

Even the demo/free version comes with the Systems Rules Document (SRD) that Wizards of the Coast provides for free.  It is almost all the rules including the rules on creating characters, their spells, weapons, equipment, almost everything except for the detailed class options.  This is free with every license level of Fantasy Grounds and includes drag and drop functionality onto your character sheet.

The DM also has the ability to share any DLC they have bought with players that are connected to his game (server model).  If you are not connected, you do not have access any more.  Most DM who run 5e games will own the Player’s Handbook (called D&D Complete Core Class Pack in Fantasy Grounds) and you can connect to their game and use it to create your character and whenever you need to level your character up.

You cannot buy DLC without at least a Standard license.  If you are just going to play D&D, the only DLC you will need is the Player’s Handbook.  Remember that the SRD, which is free, comes with all the standard rules and almost 100% of all the spells.  Fantasy Grounds not only sells the complete “core class pack” with all the character class details, it also sells the classes as a separate pack for each class.  So if you are playing in one campaign with your friends, you are unlikely to be playing multiple characters with multiple different classes, and that means you just need to buy the class pack for your character.

The cost for the entire “Complete Core Class Pack” is at the MSRP that WoTC has or $49.99.  That is not the price that Smiteworks (the company that owns Fantasy Grounds) sets, that is the official WoTC price that they have to follow.  One other VTT is now licensed for official 5e D&D materials and they are charging MSRP as well.  Even more often than the license there are 20% off sales on the Player’s Handbook.  So if you wait you can get it for $40.  Even less on the much rarer special sales days.

You can also just buy the class pack for your character class for between $3 and $6 depending on which class you want.  Unlike the SRD, the DLC contains all the class features from the Player’s Handbook, and, if appropriate, all of the spells.  There is one more piece of DLC that has all the races and all the background “fluff” automated and that is $9.  This DLC also includes the optional feats that you can use if the DM decides to add that to the game.

So, total cost for the software license and the complete Player’s Handbook is, if bought when not on sale, about $90.  Again, there is a good chance this will be completely free assuming the DM has an Ultimate license and has the DLC available for you.  This drops to $46 if you just buy one class pack.  Or $55 if you want the race details and background details to be automated.

Your cost for the DLC if you played with the physical book at MSRP?  About $50 if not on sale.  There is no difference in DLC cost!  Sure. Amazon.com has the books for less than MSRP but Fantasy Grounds offers it on sale as well on occasion.  You do not have the option of just buying one character class, so you actually save money there if you are just a player and only want one or two character classes.

More on the Rules and DLC

You do not just get the text of the rules.  Fantasy Grounds actually automates a lot of the rules.  For example, roiling to hit a monster and dealing damage can be completely automated by the game.  You get dice built into the game and this includes a 3D animation of the dice being rolled.  The rules automation is all free and included in the SRD and the different DLC increases the automation.  As a player, you get what the DM has purchased when you play and most who have been DMing for quite a while will have all the automation.  The program has a full effects builder and you can generally automate most powers, weapons, spells, features, traits, etc. that you have.

One Last Comment On the Cost of Fantasy Grounds

If you read reviews of Fantasy Grounds, especially when compared to other VTT (the main competition is Roll20, D20Pro and Map Tools), almost always the “high cost” of the software is the first major criticism.

As I have already explained, the software is FREE and you very often can play for FREE.  Unless you and your friends are all brand new to Fantasy Grounds (and I was when I started with my friends a year ago), you can probably find a game with a DM with the Ultimate License and play for free.

Let’s assume that you all are new to Fantasy Grounds and you all want to DM at some point.  My first advice is for the one being the DM to try for one month the subscribe to the ultimate license and everyone else use the demo client for free.  If you cancel before the month is up, you get the first month subscription free.  So your group can try to play with a DM using the Ultimate license, the full SRD and free modules that the community has made available (probably not as good as the commercial ones available but they are not bad) for free.  As in it costs you nothing.  Really, I mean FREE.

Then, after the free month you like it a lot and you buy it, and it is not on sale and you pay $40.  Please go to Steam and look at the top selling software.  The average price is between $40 and $60 with $60 being the typical “A list” price.  If you want to play multiplayer, everyone needs to own their own copy.  I can assure you, that if you really like D&D, you will log more hours for your $39 that you spent than pretty much any other software you own on Steam.

If you want to play D&D, then you need the rules.  So the DLC cost is not really fair to add on to the cost of Fantasy Grounds when discussing the cost to play.  Since the SRD is free and most of the rules and you can actually recreate everything else yourself if you had time without buying the rules DLC, if you have time and no money you can play for free except for the license cost.

There are some stones you can toss at Fantasy Grounds because of the age of the program (it is old but maintained and had the official 5e D&D DLC at least a year before anyone else did) and UI choices that were made, but the cost is not high, especially when there is a good argument that for a player it is often free.

What Else Do You Need?

In theory, you could play by typing into the chat window (and some handicapped players do exactly that) but almost everyone will want some form of voice option and something that can support all the players in your group at the same time.  I do not want to do a grand survey of all the available options, so here is my top three choices: Teamspeak, Skype and Google Hangouts.  You could even do a conference call by telephone if you wanted to.

There are other options to Teamspeak (Discord, mumble, ventrillo etc.) but there is a free Teamspeak server provided by the Fantasy Grounds community so if you are joining a game you found on the Fantasy Grounds forums there is a good chance you will be using Teamspeak.  There is a free client available at www.teamspeak.com.  There also are IOS and Android clients for phone charges.  As an aside, a non-commercial 32 user server is free and I run one on my Networked Attached Storage unit but the software is not that demanding.  You can even run it on a Raspberry Pi ( https://eltechs.com/run-teamspeak-3-server-on-raspberry-pi/ ).  There are plenty of guides out there on how to use Teamspeak.  You will need to know the server information where to connect.

I personally do not think that video is needed for the conferencing software, but both Skype and Google Hangouts offer it.  I traveled a fair amount and part of that time was in China and I and my group often play from hotel rooms.  Bandwidth can be at a premium and video eats a lot of it.  If your group uses these programs, then make sure you understand what you need to do to connect.

No matter what software you use, a headset and a decent microphone really help.

So I have Everything, How Do I Play?

The very first thing you will need, after the program is installed and running, is the information you will need to connect to the server (to the DM that is running the game).  Your DM will likely give you one of three things:

  1. An IP address which is a string of numbers like this 192.168.1.1
  2. A server alias which is normally a few words like “friend blue squad”
  3. A URL or internet address like this “fantasygrounds.com”

You click the Join Game button on the front page that comes up.

FGstarting Screen

That gives you a screen with two choices – user name and Host Address

FG server input

In the user name box, use whatever name you want associated with you in the game (generally not your character name but it can be).  In the Host Address Box you put the connection information that the DM gave you, one of the three options above.

Your program (a client) will now try and connect to the DM (running the server).  Assuming that you entered the correct connection information.  Try to remember what user name you used.  It all will be saved on the screen and if the same next time you can just click what you last used.  Your DM can fix it if you change user names, but your character is “owned” by your user name.

There are a lot of Youtube Videos and Wiki entries that shows you how to play and if your DM is experienced, they will help you learn the program.  Let me give a few top level tips here, but this is about getting started, not using the program.

The UI of the program is unusual and it does not look or act like a standard Windows (or Mac OS) program.  It takes a little getting used to, but playing is much easier than being the DM and there is not as much to learn.

The first thing you will find is that right clicking will bring up a circular or “radial” menu.  There will be a center “spoke” and symbols around it.  Hovering over the symbol should bring up a tool tip.  Clicking the symbol activates it.  Clicking the center spoke closes the menu.

To enter ability scores, you need to hover the “hand” pointer over the space and then type.  Follow this specific order:

  1. Enter your ability scores.
  2. Then drag your race into the race spot.
  3. Then drag your class to the class spot. You will level up later by dragging the class here again.

Please note that if you start adding and subtracting races or manually changing numbers, the program may not calculate all the bonuses correctly.

Look for what looks like little magnifying glasses.  Clicking them often opens up more fields for input.

Either find an image before you connect or do an image search once you make your character.  Dragging and dropping the image onto the portrait spot for it will create a token for your character.  There also are portraits included in the game or you can use outside images.

One the right is a series of buttons.  The two most common ones you will use as a player are the combat tracker (top of the button row) and the library (where you will find the rules, like the player’s handbook) available for you to read.

Generally, you can target two ways.  Holding control and clicking on the token or on the entity in the combat tracker will add or remove a target.  I find clicking the combat tracker to be more reliable.

There is no area of effect targeting.  There are “pointers” that can draw the area of effect on the map and then you individually target the appropriate entities.

You attack by the action tab in your character sheet.  Open it up, select the weapon and double click the “to hit” die.  The game should automatically determine if you hit or miss if you targeted before you rolled.  Click the damage die to do damage.

Most of the spells that can be are automated.  Target and either apply the effect or roll to hit or apply damage, whatever is needed.

The bottom left near the chat window has the buttons and space to apply modifiers before you roll.

Holding shift while applying (clicking for) damage makes it a critical.  Normally the game has already done this and it is not needed.

When you are done with your turn, there is a button to click in the combat tracker to move to the next player or NPC.

The DM can roll all initiatives or you can roll your own.  I find it faster for the DM to do it but many players do not like that.

Using hit die to heal is done by clicking the die on your character sheet.

Again, read the detailed wikis or spend a few hours watching the Youtube videos before you first play and your first session will be better.  This is especially good if your whole group is new to Fantasy Grounds.

Have Fun!

These are links to buy the physical (not Fantasy Grounds versions) D&D 5e rule books: Player’s Handbook (Dungeons & Dragons) Monster Manual (D&D Core Rulebook) Dungeon Master’s Guide (D&D Core Rulebook)

CFO Pay

One question I get pretty often from people starting in Finance as a career is how much does a CFO get paid, and how do you make sure you are getting enough.  In many ways, that is a very puzzling question to me.  In a US-listed public company (not a foreign private issuer), executive pay is public and normally can be found in the proxy statement that is filed annually.  So it is no secret what CFOs get paid, everything is laid out in their contract (material contract and a copy is filed with the SEC) plus broken down in some detail in the proxy statement.

These are my general rules on pay and they really apply to every position, not just CFO, but I will use CFO as my example.

No one will take care of your pay except for you and you will only get what you negotiate for.  Hoping that you’re doing a good job and that the pay will just be adjusted accordingly is a false hope.  You need to be your own advocate here.  Maybe your boss needs to carry it to the compensation committee.  Maybe the head of HR needs to go argue on your behalf with your boss.  Whatever the case, if you are not making sure that more pay is needed, chances are good that nothing special will happen.

The best and only clear time to negotiate is before you accept the job during the hiring process.  Once you are on board, it will become much harder.  You need to know what a fair price for the position is.  You need to know what you would accept to take the job.  You need to negotiate for that up front.  Some negotiation is not only expected, if you do not, it may hurt their perception of you as a good Finance leader as they may wonder what you will do as CFO.

Most companies are not interested in hiring a leader that is too mercenary and you run a risk of being too demanding and setting yourself up to fail from the very beginning.  This needs to balance with the point above about the best time to negotiate is when you are being hired.  It is my view that there is more to life than being paid cash and the opportunity to learn and to work with a good team is important.  I also do not get paid as much as some of my peers and their setting a higher bar up front never seemed to hurt them, so I might be wrong there.

There are a few immediate sources of what pay you should be expecting.  The first is the proxy statements of the hiring company and its peers.  Look at what the CFO you are replacing received.  Look at what peers or companies of similar size and complexity are getting paid.  That will set a baseline.  The second source is the recruiter that approached you (assuming that is how you heard of the opportunity).  You need to keep in mind that their client is the hiring company, but they also play a role in setting the right expectations with the company.  Don’t be afraid to be upfront with what you are making now, they deal with attracting talent as a living, they are used to that type of discussion.  If what you want is too much, they will tell you.  If you are asking for too little, then you did not do your homework and maybe lack some confidence.

Once you are set on the base salary, you need to make sure the bonus is appropriate.  The same two sources you used for salary are good for this as well.  You should not only focus on the base bonus, you need to understand when it will be paid and in what circumstances it will be larger than base.  My normal expectation is that by working hard, 80% of base bonus should be very achievable.  As I have worked in several turnarounds, there have been years when no bonus was paid.  Again, it might be somewhat of a failing in my views as I have always accepted the same targets as the other team members when I have started.  Quite often the company is having a bad year and that is why they are changing CFOs and that approach means zero bonus for me as that is what the existing team is getting.  It is not uncommon to negotiate for a set bonus for the first year.  In many cases you would earn a good one if you stayed where you are and part of recruitment is overcoming such obstacles, so the hiring company often will make you whole.

The final “pay” part is the equity you will receive.  This is a question of how much the initial amount is, what can you expect on an annual basis and will you receive stock options or restricted share units.  You certainly should try to be made whole for whatever you would give up to join the new company.  You probably cannot replace the vesting, but the value should be on the table for negotiation.  Annual grants are important.  Over time, your base pay and your bonus will help to let you pay your mortgage, pay for your kids to go to school and save for retirement, but it is unlikely to change your life.  Stock compensation can change your life.

The normal choice between RSU and Options is certainty versus upside.  You really cannot control the overall stock market and there always is a risk that you do well but the stock cannot perform well because of general market conditions.  In that case, RSU are much better as payment, even if smaller, is at least going to happen.  Sometimes you are not doing all that well but the market takes off and your stock moves with it.  In that case, Options end up much better.

In the long run, as a responsible CFO you should tend to prefer RSU as dilution is smaller and expenses are more certain and predictable.  For pay, if the company is stable and growing then RSU will give you certain return.  If you are doing a turnaround and you want the biggest pay you can get, then Options have the most possibility.

One smaller item to consider is retirement savings.  I am sure that you will save the most you can into the 401(k), so any matching is a plus.  You also need to understand if the plan is top heavy and what happens if executives cannot save via the plan.

The pay factors to consider do not end with salary, bonus and equity.  Pay attention to the complete package and the contract they are offering you.  Vacation time is important.  You do not want to have a seniority-based system where you start with one or two weeks like any other new employee and only increase the longer you are there.  Clauses like this tend to be boilerplate and the same for all new hires and you need to pay attention to it.

You also need to pay attention to the severance clauses.  In the USA, at will contracts are typical.  So you need some protection if you are let go without cause.  It takes a while to find a senior management job and you should negotiate a buffer.  Look at what the comparable are as in all other pay items, but 6 months is about as little as I would accept and one year is not unusual.  Change of control clauses are usually somewhat linked to severance clauses.  Make sure you understand what the standard equity programs give all participants if there is a change of control.  If your equity does not vest on change of control, then try to at least have it vest if you are let go as a result of a change of control.  If your company is being bought they probably do not need another CFO and you are likely to be let go.  So make sure you are protected here.

Make sure there is a clear “Good Reason” clause in your contract that would be triggered and your severance pay become due for several usual circumstances.  For example, a forced move over 50 miles because your place of employment is changing, a drop it title or responsibility or a drop in pay, all of these are typical “good reason” clauses and you should make sure that you are protected.

Your contract will probably contain many clauses restricting your ability to compete if you leave, stopping you from hiring co-workers, making anything invented while you are there company property and defining what is considered to be confidential information.  Many of these are boilerplate and in most employment contracts for the new employees of the company.  Make sure that the requests are reasonable.

Finally, look at miscellaneous items like travel policies, restrictions on you being a Board member at another company and other anti- “moonlighting” clauses.

You would be well served to have a lawyer, especially a lawyer experienced working with employment law and employment contracts review your contract before you sign.  Make sure you understand what you are being asked to sign and that it is worded properly so that you are protected.

That really is all the top level advice I have on CFO pay.  Knowing what the market price and standard terms and conditions are is the most important.  The rest will come down to your ability and just how attractive you really are to the company trying to hire you.

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