T w e n t y S i d e d
So! It’s my turn to introduce myself. Some of you may have ‘met’ me if you watched the stream of my dad’s funeral. (Which is a hell of a sentence, but we don’t have time to unpack all of that) but for any who missed it, here we go.
My name is Peter T. Parker. The T stands for Telemachus which I’ve pronounced wrong (Tel-ehm-ah-cuss) since I was a child. I don’t plan to stop now and that is, unfortunately, everyone else’s problem. I’ve been mentioned a few times here, but under a different name that doesn’t bear repeating. I’m the middle child, aka the youngest daughter turned oldest son.
With that out of the way here’s what you can expect from me. I’m a madman with a full-time job. I’ve agreed to pick up a bit of the slack and snag a day for posting here whenever I have something to rattle on about. There won’t be any particular topic, but D&D is one you might see a lot. Fair warning, I’m not a stats guy. Numbers give me headaches, but I’ll tell you about the story I’m writing with my friends where we roll dice sometimes.
I really don’t have a plan. But, it’s a simple exchange. I get a place to keep my D&D notes where I have to keep it under 20k, and you get content to look through in bafflement like an archeologist finding the journals of a madman scattered around a cave. Maybe I’ll show you how I made a language for the campaign I haven’t started yet, or the three-ish different versions of Orc culture I built off the same two ideals, or Werewolves. Lots of possibilities, kings.
I do sometimes think about video games. I enjoy a lot of retro stuff that I hate thinking of as old because it reminds me of the inexorable march of time. I also play a lot of online games, and could probably draw some interesting notes on the importance of gameplay in constructing healthy online communities via both the mechanics and the types of people it attracts by default. And how even small changes can make a massive difference.
So yeah, you’ll be seeing me around at some point. Later skaters.
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Hey, Peter! Nice to meet you! I absolutely love worldbuilding, so I’m very excited that some of your posts will be related to that.
I’ve got a weird history with TTRPGs, and long story short – I love reading about them, but I guess playing them just isn’t for me.
Anyways, can’t wait to read your stuff!
Hey lino!
As a DM that’s constantly recruiting friends from all horizons… I’d like to hear the long side of your story if you fancy sharing.
I’m always trying to get people into the hobby and i feel that if i know why people bounce back maybe next time i try and bring a new person into the fold i can prepare things better for them (especially people who may never even have considered roleplaying). Or i’ll learn to better spot people who don’t fancy cooperative storytelling/improvisation and not push them into having a gaming session (or worse a campaignà that they’ll feel obliged to play because we’re friends even though they don’t have a good time.
I should say that i’m not on a crusade to get everyone to play ttrpgs, i’ve had many friends that have tried and not liked the experience and that’s ok . But if i can learn what doesn’t work from people who bounce off, maybe i can make other people’s first times a little bit better (or improve the game for those already playing!)
Currenlty i’ve been drifting heavily away from rules heavy, number crunching rpgs into rules-light, cooperative storytelling rpgs with my absolute favourite still being ten candles. (there is nothing quite like ten candles!). It’s a shift that has generally worked around my tables (got some people who weren’t into rpgs at all into a campaign) but it has also meant that some players more used to traditional rpgs (namely D&D 3.5, pathfinder) found themselves not quite into it as my games tend to play less on the puzzle of how to make one’s character and more onto characters being flawed and everyone improving from there.
Whoah. At least for me (Chrome, Mac) this background/font-colour combo (mid-grey on black) is completely unreadable. I can highlight and read, which helps somewhat.
Trying to fix, something about dads old code meant Peters’s user got given ‘transparent’ as a backdrop color. Turning into a baffling mess. I can change the author to myself for the time being to make it readable while we fix the issue.
I didn’t see the “Peter background”, but I also find the “Bay background” hard to read as it is still partially transparent and the window background bleeds through. I’ve been using the browser inspect tool to set the “entry-content” class background to white to make it comfortably readable.
Edit: In case it helps, the style.css, lines 704-712 appear to define the background colors and is probably where Peter’s colors are also missing.
I don’t know that it was intentional on his part, but making the background color transparent almost sounds like a dad joke.
Nice to meet you Peter! Looking forward to hearing your dnd stories
Would it be possible to brighten up the font a bit? It blends into the background right now
Edit: nvm, just saw Bay’s response about that above
Hey, more D&D content! Sounds like fun.
Hi Peter, looking forward to seeing what you post.
Hi Peter, nice to meet you. Looking forward to see some roleplaying posts. Will be bitter-sweet, the DM of the Rings being what brought me here in the first place.
I don’t care about D&D, I want pictures of Spider-Man!
But seriously, welcome to the community.
…Spider-Man must have fought a dragon at some point, huh?
I love D&D! Can’t wait to see what you have for us :D
Hey, sweet! Good to know you, Peter. I’m very excited to see your D&D stuff, that’s what drew me to the site in the first place way back when.
How long have you been running games? What system are you using? Is it a custom setting?
Heyo! I’ve been running off and on for a few years, usually they don’t go far because of the traditional scheduling issues that come with four to five people with lives trying to find 4-5 hours to sit in a room together and pretend to be someone else. I prefer 5e, but currently i’m running a Monster Of The Week that’s running pretty OK. And my current main setting is very, very homebrew. You’ll definitely be hearing about it sometime!
Heya Peter!
It’ll be a pleasuret o hear your rpg shenanigans, i’m currently trying to wake up my two rpg groups after the summer break and it’s a sysiphean task!
Also now you’ve confused me in terms of how you pronounce Telemachus! Maybe i’ve misread but the way you write it seems mighty close to how i pronounce it (and how wiki says it should be pronounced -> Te – lem – a -kus ) have i been wrong all my life?
Apparently I’m just putting the emphasis in the wrong place according to the english majors I know. I say Tel-em-uh-cus instead of tel-em-ak-us. I never heard it any way but the first, but I also am not a big greek myth buff (Aside from the percy jackson series. But i’ve been informed that those books are not a completely accurate source of greek mythology)
As a student of both classical Greek and linguistics, you’re pronouncing it perfectly fine for an English speaker. Next time sometime tries to tell you it’s pronounced “tel-em-AK-us” instead of “tel-EM-uh-cus” (knowing how emphasis affects phonology in English, I’m guessing that’s what you mean anyway), tell them, “okay, if you want to be pedantic, it’s actually ????????? (tê-LE-ma-chos).”
Except, probably just write it down or show them this comment or something, because as the wronged party here, I’m not gonna make you pronounce a velar fricative or deal with vowel values or pitch accent as a native anglophone. That’s kinda the point: English isn’t classical Greek, so you don’t need to look to classical Greek for pronunciation. (If you did, hyacinth would be pronounced “hu-AH-kinth” – madness!). But, you might be interested to know the emphasis is on the second syllable in Greek, too; that’s actually what the accent on the ? means (though in Greek it’s actually a pitch accent, not an emphasis, because, well, it’s not English).
Side note: I also pronounce it te-LEM-uh-cus, as did my Greek professors. Oh, and that’s also how Wikipedia suggests pronouncing it (except even lazier, because the first syllable is also reduced to schwa): /t??l?m?k?s/
Yeah, that’s right, I bring facts to back up my lazy pronunciation, because it turns out that means language is working correctly! Also, apparently the comment editor doesn’t like UTF-8.
Okay, the comment editor really hates UTF-8, and I don’t feel like experimenting with ampersand entities right now, and now the characters aren’t showing up in an original comment, not just an edited one, so maybe I should give up while I’m ahead. Still, I can try ampersands…
τηλεμαχος
The letter ε should have an acute accent
/tə’lεməkəs/
If you run into this again (or think you will), I wrote a user-script awhile back that fixes unicode character when you submit your comment: the script is here and works with an extension like Tampermonkey.
Yeah, to add to what Randy said above, I’m pretty sure this is one of those “Ma-see-do-ni-a” vs. “Mack-i-do-ni-a” things: yeah, the second is the more ‘authentic’ way that a native speaker would use, but the first is the more common and accepted English pronunciation.
Wait, your family name is Parker? How does that work?
Turns out when they hand you the name change paperwork they don’t limit you to the first name. I could have added like six middle names if Bay hadn’t talked me out of it.
So you could have been Peter Piper Picked A Peck Of Pickled Parker.
Ahh, so you saw the opportunity and you took it. Nice. :)
oooh, back to the D&D roots of the blog. Looking forward to it!
About time this site got back to its D&D roots! Seriously, who reads a blog called “20 Sided” and famous for “DM of the Rings” without any D&D content.
Not that I’m really in any way to contribute, because I’m banned from all D&D groups for wallflowering, rules lawyering, and trying to roll up a naked catgirl.
Your Tabaxi Streaker just didn’t have a high enough Charisma score, that’s all.
Keep searching, you’ll find your people.
I’m pretty sure naked catgirls are allowed in Dark Sun campaigns.
It’s really nice to have someone taking over and posting new content. I look forward to reading it. DnD all the way!
Welcome friend! Having missed the D&D train the first time around (came to the blog later after that had died off) I look forward to all D&D related content. Honestly as much as I love video games D&D is by far my favorite hobby.
Peter, congratulations on figuring out your truth as a man/male person/masc-aligned dude, and also congratulations on scoring a family that still apparently respects you in that truth! I hadn’t heard about your transition prior to this post but I’m very glad that Shamus and the other Youngs have been cool about it.
Hi Peter! Great to hear from your (metaphorical) voice now.
Like with Bay, I’m curious about your journey. She talked a bit about her mild disability. By any chance would you care to tell us about your journey transitioning? I have a gay brother-in-law who is probably non-binary or gender-fluid, who at one time thought about transitioning.
This is a topic I’m interested in because I never understood this need for affirming a gender identity different from the one assigned at birth (unless someone is intersex, then the issue is complicated FROM birth), but nevertheless, I always felt strongly about people having the right to do so without it being so damn hard. Again, like with Bay, if you don’t feel like sharing it is ok. But if you’d indulge us (me).
How was it growing up. How your parents dealt with it. Etc.
That said, I’d love to hear your D&D takes as well. I always loved to mess with the “evil race” concept of most RPG settings. Things like cultural misunderstandings and historical struggles being the real culprits. Like in one campaign goblinoids were the native race of a continent that was colonized by elves a couple thousand years before. Now several races settled in the continent but goblinoids are still criminalized by “ancient law” and hunted on sight, so they mostly just respond in kind.
Gentle reminder my pronouns are they/them. And a request we move away from terms like ‘mild’ ‘moderate’ or ‘severe’ when it comes to my disability. It’s just not a great precedent to set unless I’ve done it myself.
As for Peter, I know he isn’t interested in making this a platform to talk about his transition. There are a lot of great creators out there that do so, and he wants to be a ‘dnd and gaming guy’ not ‘the trans one’. It might come up from time to time, but that’s all up to him.
I’m cool with being the disabled one, since being disabled affects how I experience games, but in his case, it’s more of a non-sequeiur. Good questions to ask, just not the guy to answer them.
Sorry, gotcha.
Portuguese doesn’t have neutral pronouns so it is kinda a blind spot. Non-binary people here are ok with either gendered pronouns.
English has such an easy neutral pronoun in “they/them”, but German doesn’t have it, either, and there still isn’t a satisfying, easy option that the communities can agree on.
Nice to see another voice, welcome and all that, and I look forward to some D&D posts :-)
Also, I just now realized you and Bay are different people. That is, I thought Bay was Shamus’ kid who’d gone through transition. Or perhaps you both have and i’m just completely lost in the family tree? Eh. In my head there were two kids I heard about so I think i was conflating you two. Sorry.
Oh man, we might want to add that to the list of things to make more clear down the line. This transition into running the blog has had a lot of unexpected growing pains.
Bay(Myself, oldest child) They/Them, used to go by a different name, now does not.
Peter(Middle child) He/Him, used to go by a different name, now does not.
Issac(Youngest child) He/him, same name, unless you count we called him buddy until he was around four.
Minor note, until you get Peter’s css code working in a readable format, maybe throw a quick disclaimer that “Bay” is not “Peter” and the authorship is a temp fix?
Pleased to meet you
I’m really happy for this site and community, to be honest. What a wonderful way to keep this going, seriously, this is how it should be done. And as an avid TTRPG nerd, I will very much love reading it.
Good to meet you Peter, and glad to have you here. <3
You can never have too many D&D posts, I say! :D Looking forward to what you’ll be posting, Peter.
I’ve only heard of you in passing so far, but I love the move you pulled with your chosen name. I say this as a fellow trans person who has deliberately picked a “boring” everyday name in order to avoid any conversation about it; my deadname required me to specify its spelling every. single. fucking. time. Which made be doubly sick of it. (My name is Valerie, by the way after the female protagonist in Cyberpunk 2077, a detail that I don’t mention usually.)
I’m sure people will find ways to butcher even what seems a simple name and pronunciation :D
Nice to hear from you again, Peter!
I think you’re pronouncing Telemachus correctly, assuming you’re using the pronunciation you gave between brackets.