Traverse Fantasy

The vocabularies of certain Indo-European languages encode a memory of a social taboo against speaking the name of the bear. Germanic languages famously (although not quite accurately) are thought to refer to the bear as “the brown one”. Slavic languages seem to use a term derived from the phrase “honey-eater”. Baltic languages call them “hairy ones”. D&D retroclones operate on a similar principle. They avoided speaking the name of the devil (that is, whichever particular D&D edition is being emulated) for license reasons, but signal euphemistically to the reader which edition is being lifted. Old School Essentials in one printing refers to itself as being “styled after the beloved games of the 1970s and 1980s” but it’s very specifically a retroclone of the 1981 D&D Basic/Expert rules. My own Fantastic Medieval Campaigns is “a new version of the ruleset for fantasy wargaming campaigns, first published in 1974”—but “the” ruleset in question is the original 1974 D&D...

A peek into my dark, twisted mind. I came across someone hacking OD&D for the titular Anglosaxonese setting of HârnMaster and seemingly adjusting the rules to be more Hârn -like (I’m only familiar with it by way of John B. waxing about his eventual midwife campaign—we’re waiting, John!). Everyone gives me unsolicited advice about random bullshit, maybe because I just have that kinda face, so I thought I’d also give unsolicited advice about how to develop dice functions so as to avoid giving the user headaches. This is in the spirit of Idle Cartulary’s series about dice , but less about dice statistics in themselves than presenting an intuitive order of operations. Let’s take the below HP calculation from the Hârn-D&D hack: Hit Points: Males start with 14HP, Females with 15HP. Fighters receive +5 HP to their starting HP Clerics/Shamans receive +3 HP to their starting HP Shek-Pvar receive +1 HP to their starting HP +1 HP per point of CON over 12. –1 HP per point o...

A friend forwarded me an email from a prominent left-Catholic journalist asking Texans, or perhaps by implication left-leaning Christian Texans, to contact her to chat about the recent ascension of James Talarico as senatorial candidate. I really thought about it—but then I was like, well, I’m shy, and I’m kind of a non-representational freak, and I don’t want to waste this journalist’s time. But I did want to reflect on it! So I’ll waste your time instead. The Republican Party is the only one of two national parties with a vision of governance; only, that vision sucks shit. A veteran comrade advised against referring to MAGA as a fascist movement because, unlike historical fascist movements which saw the national financial bourgeoisie revolt against the globalized financial bourgeoisies of Britain and the United States, MAGA is more like a revolt of our national industrial bourgeoisie against our globalized financial bourgeoisie. Still, I think there are deeper confluences between MA...

Feats are a big hit, turns out! I’m bringing back level 0 ancestry feats because I can tell my friends just wanted more to play with. “I don’t like complexity” mfs when they get to build their little guy. Some of these I had basically written years ago! Changling: Once per day, change the appearance of your face. Dwarf: You are immune to alcohol and poison, and can detect both. Elf: You are fully aware while you sleep; nothing surprises you. Hellchild: You have advantage at intimidating and seducing others. Hoblin: You can hide in bush or shadow, and behind bigger folk. Orc: Once daily at 0 hearts, restore 1 and attack with advantage. Nymph:  Spend 1 inspiration to call forth local nymphs of your type. Scalespawn: Spend 1 action to breathe fire for 1 dmg. Treat as arcana. Terran: Never suffer disadvantage from linguistic differences. Watcher: When you rest and heal, you also see visions of elsewhere. I’m also reworking “experience feats” (the ones you get at ...

My name is Anh. I’m a state-employed service worker. The conversation usually stops there. It’s not that I’m embarrassed of my line of work, but most don’t assume I’m anything other than a low-level bureaucrat: the kind of job that exists so people feel like they’ve earned their keep. Who likes a freeloader? But I know I earn my keep, and my clients tend to agree. One was inside me right then. He knew me as Hannah. I knew him as John. His hands gripped my waist, and his hips slammed rhythmically against my behind. His dick slid in and out, in and out, in and out of me. I moaned and arched my back for him. You like that, baby? Fuck, yeah. Give it to me. He pulled me by my hair and held me up with one hand on my breast and the other between my legs, his fingers circling my clit. He kissed me from my neck to my ear and then pushed me back down onto the bed. Grunting. You might be wondering: why is the state playing pimp? Spread open your history textbook. Prostitution is the world’s old...

Okay. They slapped me on the wrist at work for saying in an email thread which CC’d my boss’ boss’ boss that I hadn’t (past tense!) used AI on a project. They apparently spent all of $10 for me to have a license. I was told I came across as “political”, which I couldn’t tell if they meant in the sense of me commenting on the political dimension of AI (I wasn’t; I can be much worse ) or just that I seemed insubordinate in not using it (though, again, past tense). Anyway, aren’t I supposed to be flexible and open to new approaches or whatever? Fuck it. I had my $10. Why not see how well it could perform? I installed Claude and started it off with a dumbass math problem. It got it. I figured I was being a little harsh so, after safely committing my repository so it wouldn’t totally wreck my shit, I started asking it honest questions about implementation that I would’ve otherwise researched on Google and Stack Overflow. Very computationally expensive, I know—with the single benefit that i...

“What distinguishes man from beast?” “I know this one.” Matteu gestured towards the bird, plucked clean of its bones, on the table. “Behold!” he glanced at me, and smiled at himself. “A man!” I smiled at him. “Of course.” Francu humored him. “But I mean, we are not communists. Yes? We are not naïve animals driven by material need or carnal pleasure. We live not to suckle on the bolshevik nanny state. We are men. We strive for existence beyond our bodies, for significance beyond eating, sleeping, fucking. What good is a life that exists solely to reproduce itself? What good is survival if not to live for something greater?” “And, I suppose, a life cut short in pursuit of the Good is better spent than one fully lived in the shallow, material prison of our bodies.” “Precisely, Matteu. Carmelu bequeathed unto you this this fertile land, on which he entrusted you to feed the army of Rumë, to start a family with his lovely granddaughter”—he tipped his wine my way—“and to ponder thus what...