F O R D

I found a mentor! Mentors can be in person or online (which is more and more common since mushing is not as wide spread everywhere).

You can join mushing groups both in your area and internationally! Lots of people will give advice when you ask, in general mushers want more people working with their dog as a team and we can best do that by being kind and giving good advice to beginners.

X-Back Harness & Semi-Slip Collar for each dog (Harnesses are from Howling Dog Alaska, Collars from Alpine Outfitters, I also sometimes use the circle collars from Howling Dog Alaska, i just find Semi-Slip easier to deal with personally)

Neckline (mine is from Alpine Outfitters)

Gangline (I have multiple, some from Affordable Dog Sleds, some from Alpine Outfitters). The one you see in my current photos is a two dog line.

Scooter Attachment (this wraps around the scooter front to allow the line to be attached, also from Alpine Outfitters).

Bumper and/or line extender (mine is PVC bought at the hardware store and DIY’d, but these can also be bought. There are bumper designs like mine and also extender designs such as the popular Non-Stop Dogwear one that can be bought on Amazon. These keep the line from tangling in the front tire).

Scooter (mine is an Alpha Dawg Diggler Scooter. Diggler Scooters are no longer in business although they were one of the first widely used scooter brands for Joring. You can also use your bike in the same way, but jumping off a scooter is much easier. There are many other scooters available such as Kickbikes & Pawtrekker for larger scooters). 

Keep in mind you can find MANY scooters used in great condition. As people’s team’s grow they often require different equipment such as ATV’s or Dryland Rigs so they could be selling a perfectly good scooter. Musher’s Exchange is a good Facebook group for this. I got mine used!

Helmet (this is SO important)

Additionally:

Layer clothing, sometimes you’re putting in a lot of work, other times not so much.

Gloves

Water for you and most importantly DOGS. Hydration is key to good athletic performance. 

Some mushers would also recommend getting a bungee line but i am not a fan. It makes controlled stops difficult and the dogs don’t truly feel how much weight is behind them. 

Wear long pants or thicker athletic leggings. Gravel hurts.

That’s really too vague to provide good recommendations. There are lots of tabletop RPGs that distribute narrative authority more equitably than your average D&D clone – like, hundreds of ‘em. We’re going to need to narrow things down a bit!

For example, there are GMless games where players take turns framing scenes, with other players jumping in directly if their own characters happen to be involved, or serving as a semi-interactive audience otherwise. Fiasco – self-described as Fargo: The RPG – is a simple one where the group starts out by brainstorming a scenario based on a set of random tables called a “playset”, then takes turns describing how it all goes wrong. On the opposite end of the crunch scale, there are games like the Jane Austen-inspired Good Society, with its complex multi-stage scene framework and rigorous rules for who has narrative authority over which characters, and under what circumstances.

There are also games that that operate much like traditional roll-the-dice-to-do-the-thing dungeon crawlers, but replace the GM role with a set of random tables, print-and-play cards, or other tools that any player can bring into play to inject adversity into an otherwise collaborative exercise. Such games come in both cooperative and competitive flavors. Ironsworn is a recent (and free) example of the co-op variety you could check out if you’re keen on old school monster-stabbing, and The Shab-al-Hiri Roach is a personal favourite of the competitive sort; the former is heavily inspired by the Norse sagas, while the latter is about campus politics in a New England university town that’s been infested by a telepathic soul-eating cockroach from the dawn of time.

Finally, there are hybrid games that combine the scene framing approach with a traditional GM role, with the twist that each player is assigned as a different player’s GM, so who GMs the scene depends on who the focus character is. For example, your group might be arranged so so that Alice is Bob’s GM, Bob is Carol’s GM, and Carol is Alice’s GM; thus, if Bob is framing the current scene, Carol will GM it. The steampunk-dystopian Perfect Unrevised is a good free example of the type, while games like Polaris: Chivalric Tragecy at Utmost North (short version: fairy tale knights die horribly) elaborate upon the idea by having multiple rotating GM roles, each with distinct responsibilities, such that each scene effectively involves one player and many GMs!

To elaborate a bit, my sisters and I usually role play on our walks with our youngest, Angelica. She’s 9 years old. That way, we can get her to go on 13 mile walks with us. She is most interested in games with cowboys, high fantasy adventure, and assassins. It’d be great if we could go with a preconstructed campaign, not just full-on improv for those four hours; those stories can get very out of wack.

Yeah, that’s why you need to be up front about what you’re planning on doing with the game. Nearly every title plugged in my initial response is kind of inappropriate for a nine-year-old, either due to content (e.g., Perfect Unrevised, The Shab-al-Hiri Roach), or because the mechanics just have way too many moving parts for an under-ten gamer who has no prior experience with the hobby (e.g., Good Society, Ironsworn). You could… possibly turn Fiasco or Polaris into kid-friendly games, I guess? It’d take some work, though.

That’s really too vague to provide good recommendations. There are lots of tabletop RPGs that distribute narrative authority more equitably than your average D&D clone – like, hundreds of ‘em. We’re going to need to narrow things down a bit!

For example, there are GMless games where players take turns framing scenes, with other players jumping in directly if their own characters happen to be involved, or serving as a semi-interactive audience otherwise. Fiasco – self-described as Fargo: The RPG – is a simple one where the group starts out by brainstorming a scenario based on a set of random tables called a “playset”, then takes turns describing how it all goes wrong. On the opposite end of the crunch scale, there are games like the Jane Austen-inspired Good Society, with its complex multi-stage scene framework and rigorous rules for who has narrative authority over which characters, and under what circumstances.

There are also games that that operate much like traditional roll-the-dice-to-do-the-thing dungeon crawlers, but replace the GM role with a set of random tables, print-and-play cards, or other tools that any player can bring into play to inject adversity into an otherwise collaborative exercise. Such games come in both cooperative and competitive flavors. Ironsworn is a recent (and free) example of the co-op variety you could check out if you’re keen on old school monster-stabbing, and The Shab-al-Hiri Roach is a personal favourite of the competitive sort; the former is heavily inspired by the Norse sagas, while the latter is about campus politics in a New England university town that’s been infested by a telepathic soul-eating cockroach from the dawn of time.

Finally, there are hybrid games that combine the scene framing approach with a traditional GM role, with the twist that each player is assigned as a different player’s GM, so who GMs the scene depends on who the focus character is. For example, your group might be arranged so so that Alice is Bob’s GM, Bob is Carol’s GM, and Carol is Alice’s GM; thus, if Bob is framing the current scene, Carol will GM it. The steampunk-dystopian Perfect Unrevised is a good free example of the type, while games like Polaris: Chivalric Tragecy at Utmost North (short version: fairy tale knights die horribly) elaborate upon the idea by having multiple rotating GM roles, each with distinct responsibilities, such that each scene effectively involves one player and many GMs!

Lucifer: “-but I am the Devil. I don’t do adorable”

Chloe: “Well, apparently today you do”

Piece of fan art for @disappearinginq and her thought-provocating piece, “Damnatio Memoriae.” Hope you finish it someday!

Here’s a link to the story:

@fordandra made this lovely artwork for my ungodly long fic that kinda started it all (fanfic wise - until that work I never really interacted with readers beyond Author’s Notes, and I definitely didn’t do things like take requests, etc). 

It’s AHHHHHHHHmazing. You have no idea. Thought I’d misread a tag when I saw it was for something I wrote. 

Must. Finish. Fic. Now. Sooooo close. 

And yet…