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The Too Deep Simulation

Remember when people complained about The Phantom Menace describing Darth Vader's origins? How people said that you don't need to know how he was a bratty slave kid on Tattoine then a misanthropic youth? Well, you don't and you didn't, but that doesn't mean those movies couldn't be interesting if done better. Enough words and video has been wasted on this topic, enough to fill a million volumes. Bad things make more content and contention than good, that's obvious. No, I want to talk about tabletop gaming, at the table character stuff, preparatory stuff, and my favorite buzz word ever, VERISIMILITUDE. 1. Why are you doing this? So this is the classic question that story game masters want answered, why are you out on the road bashing gobbos in the head with a mace or slicing wolves up instead of safe in bed with a spouse and a turnip farm? This is a good question, it sets up a good answer and is vaguely accusatory.  It also makes your character...
Recent posts

A Return

I've decided to bring this thing back to life. I've started so many blogs and restarted that this one is just going to come back to life every now and then, like a ten month curse. But I'm just going to talk about what I want from now on, forever. Is it an album review of what I'm listening to? Is it a piece of fantasy gaming miscellany? OR is it me trying, AGAIN, to be a video game designer and recording my lame thoughts? Who knows, the future will bear it out won't it?

Game Master Tips #1: the only tip a new GM needs.

If you google "GM Tips" or "DM Tips" you can find a lot of advice. But for a new DM it's very easy to put the cart before the horse, to make dumb mistakes and bone it up. Or, more importantly, feel that way and get discouraged. About six years ago when I started DMing Dungeons and Dragons Fourth Edition for my friends I was working midnight cashier at a gas station. I had brought all the books with me, players handbook, dungeon masters guide, and the monster manual. I read all these books and meticulously crafted a series of encounters and small dungeons that would leave the players at third level, introducing organically the main thrust of my little story. Aside, this story was a weird setting. It was set on floating islands in the astral sea. Fourth edition had this idea of the Dawn War, a war between primordials, creatures of huge elemental power, and gods. In this setting there weren't any winners, except people. The war ripped the whole world to shr...

Everything Is a MAGIC ITEM

So, I occasionally think about building Minecraft adventure maps. Even though the trend has sort of passed I feel like. I had this idea about using command blocks to make it forever night. You have to go into a dungeon to get an item, a gold sphere or something, and then bring it to a citadel to make the sun shine. But that's boring in that context, let's recontextualize it to Tabletop RPGs. High atop the Solar Mount, from which the sun rises every day, is the Citadel of the Sun. This fortress holds the sun when it is not in the sky. In the top of the highest most defensible tower is the golden orb of the sun. The sun orb is guarded by paladins who worship the sun keeper. The sun keeper is a mortal, voted into this position by priests and paladins and bishops and arch bishops through a system involving smoke and flumes and quiet rooms that are overly painted. He is literally a god, because the orb is literally the sun. The current Sun keeper is the son of the previous one. ...

An Explanation

Hi, I'm Harley. I'm an unaccomplished writer, a somewhat practiced Dungeon Master (dungeons and dragons 3rd to 5th) and a "creative introvert". My Meiers Briggs is INTP if that type of stuff matters to you, and this is my third attempt at a blog. What is this thing? Well, I have something I like to call creative diarrhea. I builds worlds and ideas in my head for fun. The problem is I make more than I could ever use, so this is my dumping ground. This is where my crazy ideas settle. I'll write stuff up here that I'm either working on or stuff thatI've abandoned. I'll let you know which. This all started after reading  goblin punch  semi religiously. The stuff in that blog is "THE REAL SHIT". Then I started reading  false machine  and now I'm reading  dm david . Now, I want to do it, I wanna write my dumb ideas down and make peoples minds pop. So this is that, this is that thing, I'm doing it right now. I'll put up a little st...