Tropin' d20 - Animals Hate Him (Addendum)
Original Post Upon reflection, I realized that I wasn't entirely clear about what I was doing with my post yesterday. Those were obviously not entire adventures. They were meant to be set-ups for adventure opportunities that could be fleshed out later on. It was the result of some twenty-to-thirty minutes of rumination. For me, that's useful enough to keep in my back pocket as something that can be used to make tavern rumors or to otherwise throw out teasers at the player
Tropin' d20 - Animals Hate Him
I had a bit of spare time today, so I set a challenge for myself: hit the "Random Trope" button on TVTropes and come up with something interesting for use in D&D based on the result. At best, it'd give lead to some neat ideas. At worst, it should be worth a laugh. Rolling the digital dice gave me Animals Hate Him So, taken at face value, the obvious course of action would be to make an NPC who's hated by animals despite their best efforts and try to tempt the players into h
Using Vampires (and Other Symbolic Monsters) in Fiction
After doing some modicum of research and seeing that Joe Manganiello had acted on the show True Blood, I started thinking about why I bounced so hard off of that (as well as its source novel, Charlaine Harris's Dead Until Dark). Taken on their own merits, I think both works were at least above average, but something about them just didn't click with me, similar to how Tolkien's writing didn't click with me until I checked out The Silmarillion and realized that I could enjoy
E-Book Links
Dan Collins and Paul Siegel of The Wanderings DMs YouTube channel have been gracious enough to give my e-books a shout-out on their show, so I wanted to put up a post of convenient e-book store links for anyone who heard about my work from there. Deceit (Amazon | Smashwords) Saraphel (Amazon | Smashwords) Many thanks to Dan and Paul for doing this! Also, props to this week's guests Joe Manganiello and Steve McAuley! I've got no idea who either of you are, but you put on a g
Random "Village with a Cult" Generator Inspired by Scenic Dunnsmouth (Part 3)
Part 2 Alright, tables and talking are all well and good, but let’s put this thing to the test with some examples, shall we? Take my word for it that I’m running through the examples by actually working through the previous posts, so nothing is contrived to show off or hide certain aspects. As an aside, I didn’t mention it previously, but anyone who looks over the tables and thinks for a moment will probably realize there’s a chance for the village to end up without any cult
Random "Village with a Cult" Generator Inspired by Scenic Dunnsmouth (Part 2)
Part 1 Carrying on from the previous post, the goal here is to come up with a pool of NPCs who have enough color built in to make this list more meaningful than just rolling on general random NPC trait tables, yet still allow enough freedom to be adapted to the overall village as needed. I assigned occupations for a number of them, but I think they can still be used to fill in people in charge of d12 special places (smithy, witch's hut, etc.) by either treating the assumed o
Workout Recap - Week of January 19, 2020
Well, I ended up preoccupied for the last few days, so I'm calling it in at only three workouts for this week. Having back-to-back abbreviated weeks isn't something that I'd wanted to do, but some things take higher priority. Monday Type: Pass/Fail One-arm Pull Up Negatives - 1 set of 4, each side (pass) Fingertip Push Ups - 1 set of 20 (pass) Pistol Squats, both hands behind me - 1 set of 10, each side (pass) Bonus: 2 sets of 6 Superman push ups, 5 breath isometric one-arm
Random "Village with a Cult" Generator Inspired by Scenic Dunnsmouth (Part 1)
The Fear of a Black Dragon podcast made an episode talking about the module Scenic Dunnsmouth, and unsurprisingly, their discussion turned to how much replayability the module actually has and whether it could be used as a basis for random generation of more villages. I think they undersold the former (it would take a little creative reinterpretation of the time cube to justify, perhaps, but nothing terribly daunting, and having the characters/players encounter a completely
Workout Recap - Week of January 12, 2020
I'm dealing with a medical emergency, so excuse the briefness. Monday Type: Pass/Fail One-arm Pull Up Negatives - 2 sets of 3, each side (pass) Fingertip Push Ups - 2 sets of 16 (pass) Pistol Squats, both hands behind me - 2 sets of 8, each side (pass) Bonus: 2 sets of 6 Superman push ups Pull up progress. Wednesday Type: As Fast As Possible 4 sets of: 10 Chin Ups 10 Close Squats 10 Hindu Push Ups 20 Side Lunges Time = 9:30 Bonus: 7 breath isometric one-arm dead hang (each si
Clark Ashton Smith - The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies
Rating: A
Length: 370 pages, standard paperback page size, standard paperback font size Making my way through the pulp authors of yore, the next one on my list was Clark Ashton Smith (how surprising, I know). I'd heard that his contemporaries (like H.P. Lovecraft and Fritz Leiber) often had high praise for his works, so I went into this partial collection of his short stories and poems with high expectations. They were exceeded. Great authors are masters of the written word
