Return & Updates

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 Hi folks - the semi-mage returns. I hope to post a bit more regularly now. 

 

Updates:

- Library game from here is officially over. I put it on hiatus in March and moved 1,000 miles away from my player base a few months afterwards. So a new game must begin!

- Been unplugged from RPGs for a bit now. That's fine, and I hope to keep some separation from the very involved communities for now. I have been mulling it over, and running my personal games is much more important than being involved in internet communities.  

 

Things to entertain you:

 

- Lots of cool music:

    - Silent Hill 2 Soundtrack is a video game sountrack to a 2001 video game and every broody night drive ever. Far exceeds any expectations of video game music, and is an amazing album as commercial music.

    - Went on a big Steely Dan kick in May. Aja is my favorite album.

    - Lots of acoustic guitar albums for study in relevance to my own guitar learning. Briefly: John Fahey, Nathan Salsburg, Gwenifer Raymond, James Blackshaw, Jim Croce, Nick Drake, Bert Jansch, Michael Hedges

    - Some dungeon synth but not as much: Potions of Eleanor, SWORD KEY, Quest Master, Fogweaver

    - Metal: Thy Catafalque, Kaatayra, Agalloch, Lammoth

    - Miscellaneous: Sally Daley, Nora Brown, Ryuichi Sakamoto

 

- Movies: Black Narcissus, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Fargo, The Green Mile, Red Rooms, undertone, Argo, O Brother Where Art Thou, Contact

 

A bit of gaming thoughts: 

Think through your mechanics like an engineer with an eye for design. You know what's unsatisfying about a death trap with a dex save? You have no idea how it actually does the death. You can say pit trap, or lowering ceiling, but if a player wants to get into the nitty gritty of stopping the (usually inevitable) death, you gotta have a convincing idea of how someone is tricked into falling into the pit (false floor? does it shatter? flip?) or how lowering ceiling is implemented (on rails controlled by countweights of 1000 lbs). This information takes me 30 seconds to come up with and saves a lot of ambiguity and confusion at the table.

The same can be used for magic. The wording of a spell should be specific and short: "Turns all water in a container to slime" is great. Give another sentence on any relevant details of the slime that conveys the kernel from which a situation can be built on: "Slime is rubbery like leathery gelatin," or "slime is color and odorous as shit." Both give the core idea of the effect, all else follows from there. 

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