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• Post #4335172

  My job is very depressing lately. I am increasingly be tasked to make our websites more for AI crawlers instead of for people. I say that, but from another perspective I could just blame the people at large. More and more people are using AI. The people at large are still using Google and Google is making more and more AI summaries of things so people never leave Google. It feels like the privacy and tracking problem of the 00s. People will trade ephemeral things that they can not see or under...

• Post #3730127

  Recent discussion reminded me of a blog post I wrote in 2013 about how there is a connection of sorts between Alternity and FASERIP. Sadly, the wayback machine seems to have lost my images. https://web.archive.org/web/20170101063703/https://www.kirith.com/random-wizard/articles/faserip-alternity.html But I have backups! FASERIP is a roll high on 1d100 with a chart to have degrees of success. (Image 2) If you flip FASERIP to a roll low on 1d100 and plot the dgrees of success, you get (Image 3...

• Post #3727036

  Good article on the problem of scrapers and bots and llm crawlers. https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/1080822/990a8a5e2d379085/

• Post #3632309

  I think one of the greatest flaws of human beings is that we trade ephemeral (but important) things for convenience. It is like selfishness is built into our brains and it is hard to overcome (but not impossible). I also have a hunch that companies (especially tech companies) use that to their advantage. But what do I know?

• Post #2933575

  javascript bugs me more than it should. I guess it is because I have to write in javascript from time to time. Today I am particularly annoyed with how to make hashes. In perl %hash In python {} In lua {} In Ruby {} BUT in javascript it is new Map() which they only introduced in 2015. Before that, people used objects which are instantiated with {} , but the objects have a bunch of other junk attached to them which makes it harder to reliably use in all circumstances. So, if you just want a...

• Post #2933574

  //javascript is cursed someVar = new Map(); someVar.name = "Bob"; someVar.age = 24; console.log(JSON.stringify(someVar)); //OUTPUT IS... /* {"name":"Bob","age":24} */ console.log(someVar.get("name")); //OUTPUT IS... /* undefined */ someVar.set("name", "Maxwell"); someVar.set("age", 64); console.log(JSON.stringify(someVar)); //OUTPUT IS... /* {&amp...

• Post #2933573

  I had a meeting with executives yesterday about sitemaps for websites. I am not usually invited to executive meetings. I am just a lowly manager. The executive's use of AI is really concerning, and annoying. They run everything through AI. Its like they think it is some kind of oracle from the gods.

• Post #2933572

  I have done programming in large, boring, enterprise shops for a long time. The code is always a mess. One thing that has been on my mind lately (while looking through javascript code) is that someone should make a language? enforce a framework? that embeds a database as a first class citizen. So many problems in code bases come from attaching objects to other objects over time. There is no source of truth. Data is stale over there. Nobody sat down and thought about how to normalize all the da...

• Post #2933571

  I like functional programming, even though I am not very good at it (based on some of the cool code I have seen from others). But sometimes I will see a functional programmer write something like orders .filter(valid) .map(enrich) .groupBy(customer) .map(calculateTotals) And I think, I would have done that in SQL SELECT customer_id, SUM(total) FROM orders WHERE valid = true GROUP BY customer_id; Many years ago, I use to have to maintain a large ColdFusion application. ColdFusion is...

• Post #2933570

  Updated my little toy dungeon map generator. This code started 20+ years ago and I still open it up and tweak it every now and then. It now punches through walls to already existing rooms a little bit more frequently. The displayed dungeon is pure text, you can copy and paste it into a document. https://random-wizard.neocities.org/random-gygax-dungeon/

• Post #2933569

  Wizards of the Coast has written to its employees to warn that unionizing could mean staff "end up with more, the same or less than [they] have now," and suggested that "your voice is strongest when it is heard directly." "when it is heard directly" Yeeeeeah, riiiiight. https://www.gamesindustry.biz/wizards-of-the-coast-writes-to-staff-to-explain-how-union-representation-works-as-studio-prepares-to-vote-to-unionize #dnd #rpg #ttrpg #wotc

• Post #2933568

  I wrote this strange little program to try and figure out just how many magic items would a character have at various levels in Moldvay/Cook B/X Dungeons & Dragons. The concept is, You are a level 1 fighter. You pick what level you want to be. It generates rooms from the stock tables. It generates monsters from the monster tables. It generates treasure from the treasure tables. You defeat all monsters. You find all treasure. The simulation stops when you reach (or go above) the desire...

• Post #2933567

  I had to write javascript in the late 90s, 00s. It was truly a horrible experience having to write code for Internet Explorer. Particularly when the world decided every company should use IE 6. javascript did not even have a trim whitespace function. browsers did not even have a nice console to go look at what was going wrong. You had to go install Venkmen to get some debugging capabilities. https://www-archive.mozilla.org/projects/venkman/ Or the Microsoft Script Debugger https://en.wikip...

• Post #1894596

  Comic by Martin Rosner https://bsky.app/profile/hotpaper.bsky.social

• Post #974317

  Sometimes I torture my brain by reading the set of Dragonlance modules again. There is something about them I really do not like. It feels like everything is scripted, which ultimately, it is, that is what a writer does I guess. Maybe I should take the leap into the pit of doom, and go and read the novels. #dnd #rpg #ttrpg

• Post #974316

  So I was reading through DL1 Dragons of Despair again, and I think I can articulate why I dislike it right at the beginning. In a well run campaign or story, the world is casually consistent and events happen independent of the the PCs (if they are not doing things). The module starts off with the back story of, "no cleric has been seen in 300 years". But for some reason, the PCs have been searching for a cleric for the past 5 years. And just as they meet, they encounter Toed...

• Post #974315

  I have been complaining about Dragonlace the last couple of posts, but let me say something good about the concept. It is hard to make up an entire mythos of a fantasy world. It is hard to make up a bazillion names of places and characters. Just making up constellations of the world of Krynn is top notch world building. Tracy Hickman did a good job synthesizing a lot of different things to make a new world. Although, some of the names are not great in my opinion, enough of them are. Also, I re...

• Post #974314

  So going back to another thing I do not like about the Dragonlance modules, are all the clones of things from Lord of the Rings. Now, granted, D&D ripped off things from Lord of the Rings, but Dragonlance reaches what I feel is excessive. Companions of the Lance = Fellowship of the Ring Cataclysm = Fall of Númenor Knights of Solamnia = Dúnedain Dragon Orbs = Palantir Note also, the plot of the Dragon Orbs is it draws you in (sometimes) and some elf king is driven helpless by evil throu...

• Post #974313

  Every now and then, I bust out my outline of the journey of the Heroes of the Lance, and think about what I would do if I were running the adventure path. My ideas change. When the heroes split, and some go west and others go east, I think the west path is more cohrent to the overall story, but the eastern adventures are more interesting. #dnd #rpg #ttrpg #dragonlance

• Post #974312

  If you ever want to read a book that copies Tolkien (way more than even Dragonlance), I present to you "The Iron Tower" by Dennis McKiernan. I read it long ago. I did not actually hate the book, but I can not say I liked it either. I went and looked it up again on wikipedia, and here are some reviewer's quotes. "Yet another abject Tolkien imitation. ... Derivative and dreadful." -- Kirkus "So many of the little cultural details that brough...

• Post #974311

  I met Tracy Hickman once, when I was a kid. It was at GenCon. Not sure what year it was. Maybe it was 1985? I signed up for a talk he was giving. It was so long ago, I can not remember a whole lot about it. Except, I remember he went into designing adventures. And he said something like. Consider if you tell the players there is strange writing on the dungeon wall. You should not put that in the adventure if you are just trying to convey mystery. The writing should actually mean something, even...

• Post #922663

  Side note. Anyone know of a high resolution scan or picture of Keith Parkinson's cover of DL4 Dragons of Desolation (Image 2)? I have seen claims that he hid the Doctor Who's tardis in the image. (Image 1) And maybe K9 the robot dog too. #dnd #rpg #ttrpg #dragonlance

• Post #911870

  I am jumping ahead to DL-7 Dragons of Light because I have read all the Dragonlance modules before, and I remember this is the one that really exemplifies what I do not like about the modules. The party of adventurers decide to take a boat to Sancrist. I think it is because there are rumours of another Dragon Orb there. (That, I have no issue with). BUT, they are attacked by a dragon and shipwrecked before they get there! No matter what, they get shipwrecked and survive. The whole point of th...

• Post #713508

  Once again, ScottyG, long ago, pointed out something interesting about T1-4 ToEE. The dungeon beneath the moathouse has rooms shaped like letters, E, L, M, N, T, A, I, and V. With those letters you can spell ELEMENTAL EVIL. #dnd #rpg #ttrpg #osr #gygax #toee

• Post #666841

  What is the best D&D introductory module for new players? Feel free to comment with options not listed. #dnd #rpg #ttrpg #osr

• Post #644414

  I have mentioned before that I have a theory that the Temple of Elemental Evil was originally suppose to be more about Drow and Tharizdun. I was reading ToEE again, and in the clue passage, the players are given a rhyme in a dream. "The Two united, in the past, a Place to build, and spells to cast. Their power grew, and took the land and people round, as they had planned. A key without a lock they made of gold and gems, and overlaid" "Many now have gone to die in wat...

• Post #644410

  Another clue that the Temple of Elemental Evil was suppose to have a more Drow Lolth connection is I believe the bottom level of the temple was suppose to be in the shape of a spider with a human face, like Lolth is depicted in Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits. #dnd #ttrpg #rpg #osr #gygax

• Post #472245

  For my possible Top Secret RPG but set in WW2 game I was thinking of running. I got interested on what troop movements were like during and after D-day. I found day to day situation maps drawn as the war was happening over at the Library of Congress website. But, I wanted a blankish rendition of the area so I started slowly combining and image editing the maps to make the more plain. Sadly, this is something AI LLM would be good at, but I have not tried. Back to my hours and hours of image edit...

• Post #472244

  Question if anyone out there read this and has the time. Do any of the map links on this map index work for you? I have been trying to find WW2 era maps that a very bare bones looking. UPDATE: Others have alerted that the links DO NOT work. Also, see replies for a couple of alternatives. https://library.mcmaster.ca/maps/index-wwii-europe-1500000-scale-maps

• Post #472242

  Got sidetracked while working on old WW2 situation maps. If you read up on history, there were real talks between the United Sates and the UK about the possibility of landing a force in France in 1942 (2 years before the real D-day). There was worry that the Soviet Union would fall and then all of the German division on the Eastern Front would return. The problem in 1942 is that the UK would have fielded most of the troops for the invasion. I took the situation map used on June 6 1944 and then t...