QuasiWizard

 Books: Buddhism Books: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind Everyday Zen: Love and Work Each Moment is the Universe To Meet the True Dragon Beyond Thinking Realizing Genjokoan The rest:   Teatro Grottesco The Hellbound Heart Jung: A Graphic Guide   A minor haiku collection Some Flannery O'Connor stories, scattered TBR: Current Read: Frankenstein     La Morte D'Arthur  Reread some Gene Wolfe (did not finish The Wizard Knight , would love to)   Let me take a minute and gush about Frankenstein. I love it. I think it is beautiful only halfway through. I love the emotional, poignant prose as a man takes retrospect on his sins against nature. I love the joy and stinging profundity of a newborn monster as he discovers himself profoundly human then rejected by anything else that might call itself such. The prose and story is so simple, but so penetrating. Its rich first-person narrative is incredibly moving. Reread this tired high school assignment and question your hu...

 Here are three quick principles for an interesting monster:    Give them interesting tools/abilities/skills.  I'm thinking something mechanical or pseudo-mechanical. 8HD is an ability to tank hits, as is AC18 (though in slightly different ways). Incredible movement speed or climbing ability don't have a number attached to them, but still give unusual ways for a monster to interact with a party. Have the monsters leverage their interesting features.  Tankiness lets them take a few hits, so these can sit up front and be bruisers. Agile creatures can get to the back of the marching order in, say, a turn, and attack the squishy magic-users. Have the monster be initially unpredictable, but easy to figure out.  There's nothing more tense than coming upon a monstrosity and having no idea how it might fuck up your party. But after a successful or failed encounter, the party should have an idea of what it can do.   Has anyone done mixed-creature random encount...

 No dungeon room is ever really empty. This is because every room starts with nothing. It goes through various contents, a monster, some treasure, an adventuring party. Between sessions, there is nothing.  Is an empty room ever encountered? No, that is wrong thinking. If you think this is because a party must encounter a room with nothing in it, and thus it is not empty, that is also wrong thinking.  When a room is encountered, one may think "combat encounter," or "social encounter," or "stealth encounter." It is from this that actions are adjudicated and consequences are resolved. These myriad interpretations fail in the face of a room with nothing.   The duality of design is thus: a room must give the opportunity to do anything imaginable and feasible, but still keep a coherent playstyle and encourage the party into those constraints. There is a freedom in constraints, and it breeds creativity in play.   When your constraints are four stone walls, the op...

I have been building a plain HTML website over the past few months. I have been quite enjoying creating non-post pages, like resource collections . I also like the plain HTML aesthetic for some reason, not to mention its accessibility (screen reader & visibility) and portability (save a page's HTML source should you like it, it's all self-contained). So I'll be over there. I'm not shutting down this blog, but I wonder if I will be here again. Maybe if I feel more inclined for blog-style posts. But I often enjoy revising and adding to documents rather than thought-dumping and editing into a blog post. I have done literally nothing fancy with the webpages. No RSS, no CSS , no JavaScript. If you don't like how it looks, then use your browser's reader mode and customize that! I wouldn't be surprised as well if there are browser extensions to overload CSS on webpages. But quick update on my gaming: I was playing and running games into October when I had a he...

A small system for reputation, for use in haggling and other similar activities.   Keep a list of notable deeds by the party, both good and bad. Keep a list of a standard die size (I think 20 for a campaign would work). Write the good deeds at the lowest numbered entries, in chronological order; and write the bad deeds at the highest entries, in reverse chronological order. The middle of the list stays empty.  Every entry should have a definite moral character to be at top or bottom of list, no in-between. You should decide this based on how the average citizen of your setting would view the party having done it, either impressed or disgusted. If the players want to haggle for prices, call in a favor, or persuade in a rather abstracted social encounter, roll the appropriately sized die (e.g. d20). If the result is a good deed, they can call in a 5% discount on all their purchases, a favor will be granted, or persuasion goes through. If the result corresponds to a bad deed, the...

 OK, another edition of media I've consumed recently or is on my radar. Books I finished Book of the New Sun . It's a first non-DNF in sci-fi/fantasy in several years. I had been growing a bit tired of the general genre sphere. But I think this reignited a fair bit of interest back again. I am working through The Wizard Knight by Gene Wolfe. It's much slower paced and written more clearly than New Sun (for better or for worse). It's quite a classically told, but not trope-ridden, fantasy story. I am looking forward to reading more of it. I started the audiobook of A Wizard of Earthsea . Its writing is kinda bland? I'm not sure how I feel about it, and if my ambiguity is due to the reader. I might buy a physical copy to try it out. Other things on my TBR (some of which I already own): Between Two Fires The Once and Future King Lud-in-the-Mist Crime and Punishment The Portable Jung Man and His Symbols   I'm not a frequent reader but I have the rest of my reading...