Lovely. Charger port on phone is borked.

I am immeasurably disappointed that at no point in any Game of Thrones related material does a lost Soviet cosmonaut show up. Like come on, GRRM got his start in the perfect era for that kind of mashup. Perfect way to kickstart the end of the series by wiping the board, stick a spaceship in orbit

A fairly critical review, but I agree with a lot of it (except the bullets and bold - that stays) - as time goes on I've grown rather fond of how rough and ugly UM is. Sam's spot on with the no outline bit. In what will likely horrify my old teachers, I treat "outline" and "first draft" as synonyms

Quick post for today, being a bunch of places NPCs can be from in a pinch. Nice to have a random table. throneofsalt.blogspot.com/2026/06/quic...

Hi yes hello I am being directly pandered to store.steampowered.com/app/4080030/...

Space maps are fun because the only artistic ability necessary is "can you connect circles and lines", everything else is gravy

Got bored, and then the space map fugue struck out of nowhere. Going to try and make a printer-friendly version of the High Frontier map as a 60 Years play aid. This finished section is pared-down Neptune and the Kuiper Belt

IT'S HAPPENING

Having one of those days where the reality of "that thing that's been a big part of your life for basically half of it is Pripyat levels of irradiated and there's no going back and even though it makes you miserable to think about it you can't stop thinking about it" is sinking in. yay, scp wiki

Getting back into 4~5 mile walks, damn I feel like I got hit by a train

I wish more space fantasy RPGs would go for planetary romance rather than Star Wars. Give me 1 really cool and fleshed out solar system instead of a galaxy of really vague ones. Like the genre has baggage, but also if you can't make something cool with Dejah Thoris you lose your game design license

Picked up Look Outside, fantastic game all around but I gotta give props to the random encounter with a priest that gives you the option to say "I'm not Christian" and not only is his response is "Not a problem, I was a hospital chaplain", but the game gives you more options than most as a response

Game design? On my blog? More likely than you think, etc throneofsalt.blogspot.com/2026/06/lang...

I'm giving this a look-through and right now my main thoughts are that this hurts to read. The combo of cramped fonts, small font size, overcrowded pages (THREE columns!), colored + textured background is just a recipe for eye strain.

Downright miraculous comeback from the Pirates last night vs the Dodgers, managed to turn a 6 - 1 deficit to a 9 - 8 win. Unfortunately baseball games are attended by baseball fans so there were people loudly booing Ohtani every time he was at bat.

Finally watched Dune. It was Fine TM. A perfectly whelming film. The strongest parts were the things not from the book, and I couldn't figure out if the stilted, exposition-heavy dialogue was appropriately operatic or cludgy and ineffectual. Paul's vision of the war was extremely undercooked.

Praise the machine spirits I got my steamdeck connected to wifi again

Thanks to @rpdeshaies.farirpgs.com's incredible guide to pseudo-tables in Affinity, I've been working on a rules reference for the inevitable second 60 Years in Space solo campaign (this is a replica of a table from the book, condensed to printer-friendly half-sheet) Back in the saddle.

Figured out how to download my old non-canva version of Affinity Immediately reminded of how it's legitimately less hassle to make tables in Excel, save them as images, and then insert them into a doc than it is to make tables in Affinity.

Nearly 60 hours into Blue Prince, I have thoughts I think the first two main arcs are incredible and you can/should steal as much of the puzzle design as you can get away with. Post A New Clue is where it falls off a good amount because I don't like cryptic crossword style world puzzles at all

Joy of joys: my steam deck has suddenly decided that it just doesn't want to connect to my wifi any more. It recognizes the network exists and just won't connect. Worked fine all this week after I switched the router last saturday

Indie TTRPGs have emulated, in a large but not-exclusive part, the exhausting endless materialist churn that plagues video games. Always new new new buy buy buy play play play kickstart kickstart kickstart Fewer game systems, more making things with what we have & paying into the communal lego box

Gravity Circuit is currently free on Steam, and if you have ever even moderately enjoyed a Megaman game you should grab it if you haven't already. Loads of fun.

Well, the month of Alien has concluded. No AVP and no Romulus, but all the rest are watched. Covenant is incomprehensibly bad.

I promised a follow up essay dissecting how I wrote up "She Sings at the End", and here it is. Proud of how it turned out, I don't usually have this clear of a view of things. throneofsalt.blogspot.com/2026/05/how-...

I almost, but not quite, have enough to make a table of slushpile tables throneofsalt.blogspot.com/2026/05/slus...

Chatting with some folks and reading some of Vincent Baker's design blogs de-convinced me of my own argument. If there's a way to bridge the communication gap, I'm certainly not the person to do it. So long post, you won't be missed.

In classic "Dan says something that may or may not be a good idea" mode, here's a post about an easy way to avoid perpetuating the misconceptions that kept me from giving PBTA a fair shake for years throneofsalt.blogspot.com/2026/05/ive-...

Next roundup of video game micro reviews is out, with some real winners. Also surprise actual RPG content throneofsalt.blogspot.com/2026/05/dan-...

Gotta love the irony of Eclipse Phase rolling with "the pope hates AI (and that's bad)" for over a decade before reality came in with "the pope hates AI (and while you don't have to hand it to the Catholic Church, that is pretty cool of him)"

Alien marathon continues with Prometheus: one of the worst movies I have ever seen and what can only be described as the lead-fume facebook screed of an old man who /virulently/ hates and disdains both science and scientists.

Won't lie there are times where I think "Man I could just make a sci-fantasy universe, slap a CC license on it, and set it free specifically so people can use it as a creative outlet to stop talking / complaining about Star Wars" and then realize "oh god that's a lot of work"

Life is hard and often awful, but have you considered ham sandwich with the good mustard

Nodding along to podcast… big Éowyn…. So true….

Terrible news: Children of the Omnissiah II is a flat downgrade from the original track.

Alternatives to kickstarter are good but sometimes it really feels like y'all (nonspecific audience 'you') have forgotten the face of your father in the name of the arms race of materialist excess. I don't want a luxury product, I want something I can read on my Kindle or print out at the library.

Current Alien film rankings 1. Alien 2. Halo: Combat Evolved 3. Alien 3 4. Aliens 5. Alien: Resurrection

Today's new post is the first random table in a while. I should do more random tables throneofsalt.blogspot.com/2026/05/50-m...

In case anyone was wondering, I'm still having fun with Scriptorium

I have accumulated enough public domain spec fic resources that I honestly don't know what to do with them all. Slush pile or mashup or both, I suppose.

Alien franchise watch-along update: Alien 3 is the best kind of bad movie, because it's bad in multiple interesting ways. Aliens was much better-made but more prosaic in its flaws and less out there in its ideas, and is less fun because of it. Newt deserved better.

Well, my draft timeline of the SCP wiki's Bright debacle hit 20 pages and got up to date and I think I'm going to toss it. Long story short: staff finally got their act together, but only after a user riot forced them to assign more than one person to the project.

So long as I keep finding interesting things on wikipedia worth sharing, I will keep on sharing them. throneofsalt.blogspot.com/2026/05/wiki...

My partner and I are trying to watch the entire Alien franchise this month. Ratings so far: Alien: ★★★★★, perfect movie no notes except the final sequence is a borderline-unwatchable epileptic kill-switch. Aliens: a ★★ movie with ★★★★★ production value. Bishop's the best, we all love Bishop.

I have been informed that ten years ago today - May 7 2016 -, Arnold Kemp of @goblinpunch.bsky.social posted the GLOG Happy birthday, GLOG

I started putting together a timeline of the SCP Dumpster Fire, and this turns out to be one of those situations where having a clear picture of the entire thing does not make it any easier to process. It's like watching Old Yeller bleed out when there was a cure for rabies on the kitchen table.

Finished up with s2 of the Pitt: damn good show. Not a medical drama person at all (thanks to my partner for being all the ball with 'don't look' warnings) but the character writing and acting is so, so good

Hot off the presses and fresh from the oven, it's part 2 of my "I'm going to ship-of-theseus Lord of the Rings out of public domain parts" series! Everyone should make at least 1 public domain megacrossover, it's too much fun to pass up. throneofsalt.blogspot.com/2026/04/rema...

First entry in my character portfolio project is up: once again, I return to @andrewdoull.bsky.social's 60 Years in Space to build a rocket. throneofsalt.blogspot.com/2026/04/char...

That wonderful realization that I shredded a piece of scrap paper with one specific non-vital but important piece of information and I can neither remember exactly what I wrote or the source I copied it from