Apparently I have had a lot to say recently on substack. Come over and have a look: open.substack.com/pub/lonesome...

Last substack for the night. I had something of a back log of ideas. lonesomemage.substack.com/p/how-to-get...

Most recent posts on Substack, "Building a Campaign" substack.com/@lonesomemag...

I have started to become aware that I go on a bit in Bluesky when there are better mediums (e.g. Substack) to share my thoughts. So I have decided to start posting there again, and linking to those posts here. (what an Idea!) My substack: substack.com/@lonesomemage

I just finished reading Kobold Press's, "Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding" and it has me super excited about a new setting/campaign that I am developing to be run in Tales of the Valiant when my current 70+ session campaign wraps after probably 4 years of play. The energy I feel when my general

Proud to be represented by Rep. Jayapal. She gets slammed in the press a lot for somehow being out of step, but this is a clear and forceful demonstration of the bankrupt corruption of this administration. For all their high-handed commentary they just don't care and they look small in these moments

Had an absolutely epic D&D game on Tuesday night back at the brewery where we started. In two encounters the party of 8 Tier 3 PCs faced down an Arcanoloth and 5 Gnoll Demoniacs (who proved tougher than I thought they would be) and a CR 20 up-leveled Nafleshnee and 4 made-up CR 13 Fungus Demons

One could do worse for office views.

So, tonight I did what I rarely do, I cancelled a game session because I wasn't feeling up to it. I feel a real reluctance to do this sort of thing in part because games kind of live off of their momentum, but after having an honest conversation with myself this morning

Been going down the rabbit hole of high level (Tier 3) large party (8 PCs) encounter design in 5e 2024, and I am struck by how broken it is. The guidance in most recent rules is at best ball-park but really leads to unenjoyable encounters in that you are either into very swingy all-or-nothing (1/9)

There is something to be said about suspending disbelief when making random encounter tables targeted at 8x 14th level characters in 5e. I mean, how many Balor can they find in one place? Reskinning doesn’t begin to fill the void of CR 15-22 creatures. I cannot wait to share my favorite new (1/2)

Sea-

Today, with the assistance of Claude Opus 4.5, I wrote a python script which analyzed 3 years worth of ticket data and spat out a formatted "annual report" along the lines of what I get asked to do every year about this time. There are of course, concerning elements of this use-case. A few.

This angle always amazed me. In the course of my career (much of which was involved in Datacenter operations) the number of employees needed to staff a datacenter has done nothing but go down. When I started they kept a skeleton staff and if something broke you got called to go in

Had some Italian sausage that needed to be eaten in the fridge. Some bell peppers, a convenient sweet onion. Some spuds…. Sounds like…. Friday breakfast.

With you Gov Walz. This is a rogue government that is out of control. We must all make sure our voices are heard on this.

Curious regardless of system, how GMs out there track initiative with large (8 player in my case) parties? What works for you, how do you maintain veil of secrecy when there are surprises? What do you offload to your players? I know most of the major systems methods, but curious about managing

5e game tonight. Through a daisy chain of encounters my group faced and defeated 3 super zombies, 1 Flind, a Shoovusa demon, 6 Gnoll Abyssal Summoners, 2 Nalfeshnee, 4 Vrock all in one interconnected string of encounters. We started the year with a bang. #ttrpg #5e #dnd.

Thank you Eugene Goodman for saving Democracy during the Capitol insurrection #January6th

Woot Hawks. Been a while.

Late on the trigger but. WOOT! Hawks! Omfg what an ending. #1 seed…. For now… cynicism creeps back in. W00T! #seahawks #sportsballthing my family tolerates me.

Most of the time I feel fortunate in that I have a decent job, good friends, a spouse I am deeply in love with. Then there mornings when IT saw fit to change our end point protections, disable the wireless services on. My laptop. Never install the replacement and leave me to figure how to fix it.

Planning for upcoming session with 8 Tier 2-3 PCs. Encounter Budget is Low: 17,900 Medium: 28,900 and High: 37,500... Well I guess there goes the neighborhood. But I am sooooo looking forward to it.

Happiness is, Katz Deli pastrami freshly heated on rye bread when it’s raining outside. You can’t take NY out of a New Yorker

It is a time of incredible need. Please give as you are able to support those who are innocent bystanders to our current ailments as a society. If you are in PNW I’d suggest NWHarvest and Hopelink are a good start. #nwharvest #hopelink #givetocharity

So ran first game of Shadowdark tonight. The group of three were progressing well, and had gotten lucky on a couple of could be lethal hits. This was until the last door they opened sprayed two out of the three with poison. #ttrpg #shadowdark

Have my first game of Shadowdark scheduled for tonight. Been enjoying pulling together materials and trying to frame in an old school frame of mind. I have been collaborating with 2 other GMs who will be taking turns at running this in a rotating schedule. #TTRPG #Shadowdark

Last night was a good night for democracy. Hopefully today will continue in the Supreme Court. (not holding my breath)

I have finally gotten around to reading #13thAge update rules. One of the things I really like about the old books (which carries forward to the new ones) is the clean layout and accessible writing. So many RPGs are so dense with prose or unrelated exposition, it is a pleasure to read something

It is not the goal of running games, but last night in Curse of Strahd, at about the mid point of the campaign the party charged into a “you should run” encounter which ended up killing two of the four members of the party. (Including my wife’s…), and after this everyone was still

Aarrrrggggggghhhhhh!!!!!!! …nice hit Springer. Damn I thought we’d do it, but now I’m a Jays fan until next year. #beatLA

Sometimes when you wake up before everyone else you realize how beautiful a part of the country you live in.

Happy Birthday Ingrid.

There is something special about sitting down for a birthday meal at a French restaurant in honor of your wife’s birthday, selecting the seat in the corner with a line on the TV over the bar, watching the Mariners Suarez hit the GWRBI grand slam home run. #bignight #goMariners

I wish I had thought of this.

Went to see “One Battle After Another” tonight and it’s been a long while since I have had to unpackage so much in a movie. It is very Paul Thomas Anderson, and paced more slowly than I expected. A worthy movie which won’t work for everyone, but I like them that way. Will have to watch again.

There have been waves of friends/acquaintances telling me lately that they have set a date for their retirement. (a luxury I know all of us don't get to look forward to) It has led me to do the calculus about how ready we are for this, and how would I spend my time. As the news has been (1/6)

Last night my "You Met in a Bar" D&D group had their 62nd session which climaxed with a full on brawl between the party (8 PCs between 9th and 12th level along with an Empyrean companion) against 2 Adult Red Dragons, 2 Fire Giants, 4 Hell Hounds, and 1 Gorgon. It was a little unhinged. (1/7) #ttrpg

So as an update to my experiment in muti-GM open-table effort with Shadowdark, I met with the two other GMs to talk about "how do we make this work?" We each want to contribute different things, and all agreed that this is okay. We then touched on some other areas of intersection or potential (1/6)

This, most definitely this.

For those who play TTRPGs online, what platform do you find your games within? How often do you play with strangers vs. acquaintances you met online vs. friends and friends of friends. In short how did you build your gaming community? #ttrpg

I wish it were true for the rest of the country, but grateful to living in Washington State at this time. #resist #science #vaccinessavelives

Finding myself dusting off "Caves of Qud" again while imagining the sandbox I am developing with a couple other people. I have made different false-starts which vary between building a map to hang things on, to randomly generating the same (via online tools or tables in Shadowdark) to (1/7)

There is something gratifying in asking GPT to optimize a bloated query I had written, going through multiple suggested paths to optimize to discover the original query performs better than all of them (to date). Normally it has been very enabling but in this case apparently I did okay the 1st time.

As usual this is dead on. Don’t act like what is happening is in anyway about openness or willingness to debate one’s opposition. Charlie Kirk didn’t represent that and the administration certainly doesn’t embrace that principle.

Unfortunately there are also a lot of assholes.

This commentary offers a clear, powerful statement of why freedom of speech is at the heart of democracy and must be defended, whether the speaker is Charlie Kirk or Jimmy Kimmel, MAGA supporters or MAGA opponents.

I try to not dip political into this feed, principally because I want it to be about gaming, networking with other gamers (regardless of their politics, to a point) and generally build community. But today I was wondering how much general productivity has been sapped by Trump admin. assault on

He, as usual, is not wrong.

After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like.