Nothing But Reading Challenges discussion

Mulled wine.

Ale, Mead, Hypocras, Wine, Braggot, Cyser, Pyment, Perry, Brandy, Whisky, Liqueurs, and Cordials.

For the non drinkers:

Milk (cow, goat, sheep), water, Barley Tea, Sage Water, Coriander water, Grenadine ( a thick, sweet, pomegranate syrup), sekanjabin ( plain vinegar and sugar and water), Rose Soda (Water) and Lavendar Drink, Cold Almond Milk, Chicory Water, lemonade sweetened with honey, varieties of apple ciders. Apple drinks and ciders were basically apple juice with various amounts of pulp, sweetened with sugar and/or honey.

Bartender!
Cherry cordial if you please!

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY EVERYONE!

Nice one Kelly. I tried copying some pictures but I can't figure out how on my iPad one. It show copy but then nothing pastes.

*Strolls to the empty tavern and leaves an enchanted vase with a single rose. A note on the vase reads A ROSE FOR MY FAVORITE LADY, PLEASE LEAVE VASE.

After leaving the vase Lord Alex strolls back out of the tavern whistling*

Sir Reva wanders in to the empty Tavern. Sees the rose and thinks "Why Not?" She takes the rose from the vase and another rose pops up in its place.

"Crafty Alex", she thinks, sniffs the red rose, smiles and saunters out to plan her attacks for tomorrow.

*As soon as the tavern door closes behind Reva, a new rose appears in the vase*

* Enters the Tavern see's the rose and thinks "every rose has it's torn..." picks up the rose and leaves the tavern. *

Notices while looking through the window a new rose appears in the vase.

*After now seeing two roses appear, Zee decides she has drank too many jagerbombs and goes for a kip*

*Takes out the rose and drops a piece of gold in the vase hoping for miracles...*

*Enters the tavern looking for someone who seems wise.*

Quick question!

For the A Toy for Hadley's quest, can the shape word be in plural? Like in Blame it on the Stars. And should we spell it the main word (star) or the form in which it appears on the title (stars)?

Juliana, yes the shape word can be in plural. Even then the spell-out word can be in singular. I asked Kelly the same question about a week ago. You can find her answer in this thread.

Hope that helped.

Thanks Zuzana!

Question, can you use the Find Items Potion on the Academy Quest?

I don't see why not. But IMO it would be a waste. It's a participation challenge. You don't use any books for the tasks, so why waste the potion on it?

Because I can't do a lot of the participation. I read M/M almost exclusively so the BOMs aren't appealing and I'm not very good at coming up with scenes or challenges. Reading lots is easy for me. :)

Oh, o.k. As I see it there are only three tasks in the Academy quest really challenging for you. Writing the Theatre scene and participating in the BOM discussion and volunteering for the DQs. I am worried about the Theatre scene as well. But considering that people here are really friendly and supportive I can't imagine anybody giving you a hard time about the end result. As for the two BOM tasks you can do both by reading a single book and there are some interesting YA and fantasy/scifi books picked every month. Maybe you could try it - it's only one book afterall.

Anyway if you're looking for somebody to do an M/M buddyread with, just ask. I'd be more than happy to help you out. :)

Teresa wrote: "Because I can't do a lot of the participation. I read M/M almost exclusively so the BOMs aren't appealing and I'm not very good at coming up with scenes or challenges. Reading lots is easy for me. :)"

I just finished a M/F/M book

Aiden and Ky by Allyson James 139 Pages Read: 9 / 2/ 2015

139 pages only takes an hour or so.

If you go poke around the back room buddy reads that was set up for the tower teams challenge you'll find lots of people willing to read M/M buddy reads. There's already some up too.

I've also heard talks of maybe doing a back room Book of the Month (or at least an occasional one). I'll bring it up again and we'll see what comes of it.

I'm leery of letting you use the Find Items potion on this one since they're not really items. (Goblin bones, berries, gold are items).

Also, I hope that everyone would know better than to be insulting to someone putting on a performance at the theatre. We appreciate anything you come up with :)

If there's others you're having trouble with let me know and we'll see what we can find. I'm also completely willing to do a back room challenge if you want to make one up to put over there :) I've been thinking about doing one but haven't thought one up yet so you could be first!

I'm not sure what you mean by "back room".

I'm really not good at coming up with stuff: DQs, challenge ideas, performances. I guess that's why this is a challenge... :)

Hey guys :) Just an FYI.

We've gotten a lot of challenges coming into the mod account due to the Academy quest. We're working on processing them but we may not hit all of them for March since we aim for about 2 monthly challenges and 2-3 other challenges each month. But don't despair! They're all on the radar and being looked at.

Teresa wrote: "I'm not sure what you mean by "back room".

I'm really not good at coming up with stuff: DQs, challenge ideas, performances. I guess that's why this is a challenge... :)"

The buddyread requests with sexual content (like most MM books) have a separate thread which is called "back room". You can check it out here: NBRC's back room buddy reads.

As I understand it the challenge ideas don't have to be for this RPG game. You could always draft a regular M/M reading challenge. I sure would be interested in participating. :)

Yup. We've gotten both quest challenges and normal monthly/general challenges.

Quick question: For the ladder in the Rescue Kitty quest, can "a," "an," and "the" be ignored?

Kelly wrote: "If you go poke around the back room buddy reads that was set up for the tower teams challenge you'll find lots of people willing to read M/M buddy reads. There's already some up too.

I've also hea..."

Thank you! I'll go poke around some more :)

Tia wrote: "Quick question: For the ladder in the Rescue Kitty quest, can "a," "an," and "the" be ignored?"

Nope :) That'd make it too easy. It's supposed to be a tricky quest.

This might help:
http://www.morewords.com/ends-with/the/

Just replace the "the" with whatever you want and you get a list of words that end in it. So if your book is The Rest of Her Life

You can search for:
http://www.morewords.com/ends-with/the/ or http://www.morewords.com/ends-with/ther/

Then you get "brother" and find this book:

Brother Odd


I also sometimes sort my to-read list by name and just scroll down to the correct section to see what I'm interested in reading that matches.

I'll try to have March quests out sometime this week so people can begin their planning.

Hm. So if I read The Rest of Her Life, I can read Brother Odd even though the letters I need are sandwiched in the middle and interrupted by Odd?

So, for example, could I link The Last Unicorn to The Last Man?

Nope, Has to be back to front linking.

Reva has a nice example here

Doesn't Reva ignore the "the" in The Sixth Man? Is that like a situation specific rule, like sometimes it can be ignored (with numbers or whatever), but sometimes it counts?

Not trying to call anyone out, hopefully that didn't sound super rude. Just trying to make sure I understand this right before I start a line of books I end up not doing correctly lol

Edit: Here are the books I'm thinking about using for that. Someone/anyone please poke me if I'm tooootally misunderstanding this so I can work some new ones in lol

The Assassins' Village (age)
Agent Undercover (ver)
Veronika Decides to Die

Cait wrote: "Doesn't Reva ignore the "the" in The Sixth Man? Is that like a situation specific rule, like sometimes it can be ignored (with numbers or whatever), but sometimes it counts?

Not trying to call any..."

My plan was: Club Dead / Dead until Dark / Dark Fever / Fever Dream / Dreamwalker Which I assumed works, with longer (4/5 letter) cross-overs, instead of the minimum 3. I deliberately chose NOT to read books with A or The at the front as being way too confusing for my simple head!

Ohhh, she does. I was just looking at the link portion.

My thought is that the whole name would have to be used. I've tried to vary the quests from simple to tricky to appeal to a wide variety of users. So some people may not like being forced to read specific books to form a ladder and that's fine since there's simpler quests that accept a wider variety of books.

Catherine wrote: "Cait wrote: "Doesn't Reva ignore the "the" in The Sixth Man? Is that like a situation specific rule, like sometimes it can be ignored (with numbers or whatever), but sometimes it counts?

Not tryin..."

Overlapping whole words is fine :) and an easier way to do things.

Got it! I can do whole words too. I'm trying to do the Armed and Dangerous challenge and all three of those books had one of the words I needed in the title so it seemed like it might be too good to be true lol

Thanks Kelly!

I trust that this meets with everyones' approval


✓ 1. An Inconvenient Marriage by Ruth Ann Nordin 284 Pages Read: 5 /2/ 2015
2. Agent 6 by Tom Rob Smith 469 Pages Read: x /x/ 2015 (2012)
3. Six Years by Harlan Coben 368 Pages Read: x /x/ 2015 (2013)
4. Arsenic and Old Lace by Joseph Kesselring 105 Pages Read: x /x/ 2015 (2012)
5. Aces High by George R.R. Martin 361 Pages Read: x /x/ 2015 (2008)


Overlapping words would have been much easier than the original instructions.

I'm sorry, Reva. I wasn't trying to irk you/make you change your reading list or anything. I just wasn't sure if I had missed a rule that said we could ignore the "the" if we were using numbers or something. I figured I'd need all the options available to me to get this quest done right.

No problem. Don't want any free passes.

I just used the word and it made it easier. I have only read one of the books so far. Having this one planned our helps a lot.

1. Weeds in The Garden of Love
2. Love Letters to the Dead
3. Dead Sea
4. Sea of Gold
5. Golden Son

Sorry for the confusion guys. I'm still learning how to specify rules clearly enough.

Rules say at least 3 letters must overlap. Reva just did it extra organized with exactly 3 each time.

You're doing great, Kelly :) This challenge is huge, and you're doing an excellent job running it. We appreciate it.

Reva, you did awesome because at first I tried three letters only and that was a nightmare. So, I just figured the entire word. It was easier to find titles that way.

Wonderful job.

I am thinking up some even trickier puzzle quests that require very specific books :) Muahahaha.

Maybe I can get one written up this week. We shall see.

Bring it on sister. No quest is too hard for these seasoned warriors.

Phew. Have 10 quests for March right now.... probably going to add a few more. Tea still needs to look through them and make sure I'm not crazy (well, more crazy than normal).

Are any going to expire? I need to work on those if they are.

RachelvlehcaR wrote: "Are any going to expire? I need to work on those if they are."

I don't know yet, probably some from January will. But they won't expire til March 15th. I'll let you guys know when I get the update out this week.

Reva wrote: "Bring it on sister. No quest is too hard for these seasoned warriors."

Speak for yourself, I'm enjoying the easier ones! :-P

Zee wrote: "Reva wrote: "Bring it on sister. No quest is too hard for these seasoned warriors."

Speak for yourself, I'm enjoying the easier ones! :-P"

The nice thing about this quest is that nothing is compulsory. It can be as difficult or as easy as you want. The purpose is to encourage you to read more--stretch your limits. And above all, have fun!

Haha the thing I like about it is I have to plan so much more than in a normal challenge. Normally a book fits a scavenger task or a letter. Now every book I plan to read I'm like hmmm... do I put this towards a quest or levelling a weapon? Where will it help me make progress the most?

I spent an enjoyable half hour earlier planning my reading for the next few weeks around a couple of the February quests... a new quest update will probably throw a spanner in the works!