Traverse Fantasy

I watched a video that YouTube recommended like a cat dragging a dead mouse onto my front porch. I don't usually watch videos like these, and I knew that I would especially dislike this one, but I watched it out of a morbid curiosity about what Reddit-core world-builders have in their brains lately. Today was a rough day at work. You know it. The basic thrust of the video was that medieval stasis is the necessary result of a magical society, one which pursues arcane rather than technological development, and is aided by the extensive lifespans of fantasy races like elves who can dedicate even more continuous time to their pursuits of progress ("What if da Vinci survived another 100 years and invented flight before the Wright Brothers?")—although they might be limited by individual shortsightedness and a lack of willingness to adapt to changing times, compared to younger contemporaries. The narrator describes a potential social conflict between an arcane establishment and

I have been writing and printing one-page leaflets. Above is a template; basically you fold the page into eighths, and cut along the dotted line; then you can re-fold and staple the page into a small booklet. I learned this from DIY/indie TTRPG hobbyists, but found it very useful for its info density relative to cost in pages and ink. On average, if I use 7 out of 8 pages for actual text content, I can fit ~790 words per pamphlet or a little over 100 words per page (eighth), using a 10-pt font. It's a challenge to write complex ideas in such short spaces, especially when you assign each page to one topic, but it's also a good exercise to make sure you're writing clearly and concisely. These are more like elevator pitches than anything else. In comparison, for digest booklets I can fit ~360 words per page using 12-pt font (since 10-pt font would feel too small for a page of that size). This means I can fit up to either 3,600 or 5,000 words per booklet depending on whether I

People have praised the bastion rules from the One D&D playtest materials for massively simplifying the complexity of building and running strongholds or other establishments (especially compared to previous D&D versions, including the 2014 version of 5e ). It's definitely abstract and not a spreadsheet. Just also seems like a pain. Here's my complaints and a rework. As Written (Ew) Here's a summary of the bastion rules: 1 bastion turn occurs every 7 days by default, though they can also occur at longer intervals. You can spend 1 bastion turn to order 1 bastion action. Each bastion action triggers a special effect and generates bastion points (via die roll). A few bastion points are also generated if no bastion action is taken on a turn. The number and types of bastion actions available to you depends on your class and level. You need to construct facilities to unlock bastion actions, if they are available to you. You can spend bastion points to: Receive magic ite

We got 100 responses ! This makes it very convenient for us, so let's work with it. Bitch. Results & Analysis Below are the five basic tiers or grades of results: Grade 50C 67C 80C 90C Terrible 1–3 1–3 1 1 Poor 4–8 5–8 5–7 — Okay 9–13 10–12 10–12 11–12 Good 14–17 15–16 15–16 — Excellent 18–20 19–20 20 20 On the table above, each ' xx C' column represents confidence of xx % over a certain interval. This means the 50C column indicates ranges with which at least 50% of people are confident; since the union of all ranges is from 1 to 20, this column covers all possible results of D20 and could be used as a table if you were nasty. The 67C column has gaps at the inflection points. The following values are missing, meaning that they have less than 67% agreement: 4, 9, 13, 14, 17, 18. Some of these values just barely fall short of the cut-off; however, 4 and 9 are very relatively contentious with less than 60% agreement. The 8

This is a little silly, but: Often when I run little dragon games, I will ask people to roll D20 without a specific DC in mind. I feel like usually the result of the roll will be self-evident depending on how the die throws, although at the same time there is no science to it. I couldn't tell you at what point a roll is necessarily good or bad. It probably even depends on a case-by-case basis, like a virtual DC that my brain knows but doesn't tell me. To that end, I made a survey out of curiosity: how do y'all interpret individual results of a D20 if we assume that lower is worse and higher is better? If you're interested, please take my survey below! Survey Here!

Remixing pieces from " Genders Without Number " in a non-game context. This is a blog, not a published work; don't expect it to be perfect or for it to cover every conceivable angle. This is informed by my recent experiences doing volunteer work, as well as conversations with my partner and other women in my life; I dedicate this to all of them in solidarity and sorority. There are also elements of conversations with male friends: I can credit by name Ènziramire who inspired me to put this all on proverbial paper , and John B. with whom I discussed classical Roman notions of gender and sex. Two phenomena characterize the existence of trans people. The first is gender dysphoria, which the DSM-5-TR defines as “a marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and natal gender of at least 6 months in duration, as manifested by at least two of the following: a marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and primary and/or secondary sex cha

There is a weird gap between armor proficiency and everything else. Armor proficiency just means you get to use the armor without getting disadvantaged on whatever saving throws. Everywhere else, it means you add your proficiency bonus. Let's first imagine a world where dexterity did not improve your armor class: what if your proficiency bonus did, instead? We can use a formula similar to the spell save DC, which is pretty common in other contexts: AC = 8 + Armor + Proficiency The trick is that, at early levels, 8 plus your proficiency is really 10. This means that this is a tricky way of saying your spell save DC is 10 plus whatever modifier, but you also get additional modifiers from advancing your character. This same thing applies to our hypothetical AC formula: if you wear a type of armor with which you have proficiency, your base is technically 10 but increases as you advance. This means a wizard's AC, having proficiency with no armor type, increases from 10 to 14 as they