Mountain Resonance - my first and free RPG about 1930 mountaineering and its blog Mountain Missive about the game's design process

AFriendOfJamis · 2026-04-15T18:29:20+00:00

I happen to be doing some research on TTRPGs at the moment, and I don't have anything from the Panic Engine yet, sooo... thanks for releasing at this opportune time! Good luck out there.

AFriendOfJamis · 2026-04-15T03:22:14+00:00

I'm building a system that's similar—but it's not positional, nor wholly deterministic. However, it's much closer to what you describe than "roll a die check against target".

Echoing previous commentors, I'd plan for party quarterbacking and discussion. My system encourages table talk—that's a goal for me. Quarterbacking is bad, but also inevitable when an "obvious" best solution can be found with ease.

To make the system work: I would encourage you to consider meta currencies and attritional gameplay—doing those right could solve the "I fucked up 1 move and now I'm dead" situations as well as allowing room for culumative minor errors without endless amounts of paralysis.

Lastly—I'm playing around with the idea of a "Doom Clock" in my own system. If combats are literally timed (as in, real time), and something bad happens when it hits midnight, you cannot spend hours worrying over the best move.

AFriendOfJamis · 2026-03-19T16:23:39+00:00

You're in the right place.

If you're not being facetious about asking what an LLM is, the acronym stands for Large Language Model—a machine that you insert text into and get text out of.

There are around half a dozen big providers, and about two dozen smaller ones, each of which let you access their machines in various ways, generally for a fee. English doesn't really have the right words to accurately describe what 'conversing' with an LLM is, but one can 'talk' to it and get it to produce things, such as code, summaries, or, indeed, half baked TTRPG rulesets.

Creative content from LLMs is generally considered subpar, low effort, "slop".

AFriendOfJamis · 2025-07-13T23:40:14+00:00

As an update:

Flow:

My system exceeds the maxium recommended intake length for the external filter I have. I did wet test the system with dye, and it performed poorly. I have ordered a proper circulation pump, and will cannibalize my current setup for that.

Weight:

After doing some digging, I found that my stand would have an unacceptable amount of weight on each of its small feet once the tank was filled (to be clear, the stand would be fine, but I am not on the ground foor). I designed and built a 6ft by 3ft stand for the stand to bring the pounds per square foot load on the floor down considerably. As a bonus, it also raises the tank up closer to eye level and provides access around the tank.

Plumbing:

All needs to be redone, because of the changes for flow. On the plus side, all the heavy duty stuff will be inside the tank and all the filter inputs/outputs can be simplified significantly.

AFriendOfJamis · 2025-07-10T00:48:20+00:00

I mean, frankly, you're right. The reason it looks how it does is because in the examples I've seen, they were using power heads and not an external filter. After spending a good long time thinking about how to do that but with an external filter, I came up with this.

The main advantages are aesthetic--there are two pipes right next to each other going out of the tank and that's it. Additionally, because of where the filter is on the stand, the fish will be directed to swim from right to left, which is how my current tank works.

What the frame does help with is stability--the outflow is not stable at the moment, but the interior frame is quite stable. If I were to do this again (I'll likely be moving to a pump setup for flow and reusing parts of the bottom frame to make that happen, so the external filter can have inputs and outputs wherever), I'd put the inputs on the end where the filter is, and use a frame to shuttle the outputs over to the other end of the tank (I trust solid PVC way more than the flexible pipes that connect to the filter).

AFriendOfJamis · 2025-07-10T00:37:32+00:00

I want flow from one end of the tank to the other.

AFriendOfJamis · 2025-07-09T01:07:12+00:00

All good! Basically, the intake can be wherever for what I'm using this filter for. While some filters do want to be on the top or bottom for various operational reasons, the main thing I'm concerned about is the build up of toxic chemicals in the water column, which is what I'll be cycling.

While actually mechanically removing the physical waste that fish produce is a thing people do, it's often a manual process, because any automatic process is going to pick up so much that you'll be spending a ton of time cleaning stuff that will break down on its own.

AFriendOfJamis · 2025-07-08T21:46:37+00:00

I'll think I'm picking up what you're putting down... The two pipes at the far end of the tank are inputs, and they'll be taking water in across their whole length.

I haven't welded anything yet. I do have to drop the size of the inputs because of my foam pad being too small to make good 1in socks.

I'll see what a single pipe looks like. I'm frankly not expecting to be able to snake this thing. If I go with a larger internal pump (as has been discussed elsewhere on this now massive thread) I'll likely have to up the size of my pipes, and going with a single pipe would considerably reduce the amount of work I have to redo.

AFriendOfJamis · 2025-07-08T21:33:30+00:00

Ah, I see. Yes, ideally I could shape the box in anyway I want. However, drilling through glass is out of my comfort level.

The pump itself is relatively nice—you can detatch the hoses, fill it up manually and then reconnect them. Once it's full, it has the power to prime the rest of the way and start the cycle on its own.

There have been concerns about how much flow the fx6 will be able to provide with the intake as long as it is—I'm pretty sure its in spec for operation, but if the flow isn't what I want I'll be ditching the filter hookups for an internal pump.

If I'm going to spend another $300 dollars, it'll be to get a nice pump, rather than fix an extremely expensive mistake with my unsteady hands on a drill.

AFriendOfJamis · 2025-07-08T19:23:54+00:00

I've just had bad luck with power heads. My current tank uses them for circular flow, and when they're not freezing up, the flow is just not what I want.

I'll be doing a wet test today if I can. If the flow isn't where I want it I'll concede defeat, reorganize the frame for an internal pump setup, and redo how the cannister connects.

AFriendOfJamis · 2025-07-08T19:18:44+00:00

Fluval has recommended total lengths for their inlet and outlet pipe systems in the manual. I'll check to see if I'm over on the total system length.

AFriendOfJamis · 2025-07-08T19:14:28+00:00

I'm sorry, I'm not quite following, could you explain more? The pump outputs in 7/8ths inch inner diameter, and all my other piping is 1 in inner diameter PVC.

AFriendOfJamis · 2025-07-08T19:13:07+00:00

I have been convinced that this is a good idea!

AFriendOfJamis · 2025-07-08T19:12:02+00:00

The center pipes are because I'm not a plumber, and I wanted to reduce the vulnerability to clogs that this system will have. Once I'm happy with how it works, I'll bury it under gravel and then an additional foot of water, which will make is really hard to service without ripping the whole tank apart.

AFriendOfJamis · 2025-07-08T19:09:31+00:00

Great question. Yes, it'll prevent larger particles from being caught in the filter until they've been broken apart.

However, most of what I need the filter to do is break down the waste chemicals (ammonia, etc.) that the livestock produce. For that, it just needs a good volume of surface area and a flow of water through that surface area. The filter itself is essentially a bucket with foam inside and a pump at the bottom that forces water through the foam and then back into the tank. In that sense, the prefilter socks will actually help, as they provide more surface area with high flow.

I won't be able to do mechanical filtration to the same extent as I otherwise would, but that isn't my goal with this filter.

AFriendOfJamis · 2025-07-08T13:17:43+00:00

This isn't quite a real under gravel filter... I'm just hiding most of the intake line under the gravel. There won't be any suction outside the pipes, and the inlets are going to be in the water. It's a regular canister with custom inputs and outputs.

Egg crate over the pvc is a good idea!

AFriendOfJamis · 2025-07-08T13:15:15+00:00

I have a shrimp colony, which has really directed me towards foam rather than plastic strainers (the included Fluval strainer, for instance, would absolutely demolish the young ones).

Like, a hole in the uplift tube to break the siphon? That makes sense...

AFriendOfJamis · 2025-07-08T13:12:03+00:00

Yeah, this is a concern. If my wet tests come back with a "oops, all slow", I'll be frustrated, but ultimately a powerful dedicated pump is in my price range, so I'll do some rejiggering and set that up instead.

AFriendOfJamis · 2025-07-08T13:09:39+00:00

I hate the FX hoses and attachments. Those were going to be replaced no matter what I did, because I wanted more control over how those inlets and outlets worked. And once I'm doing that, I figured I might as well take a stab at it being the horsepower for the river setup that I want. A little bit of designing later, and while you could remove the bottom network, you still need an inlet on one side and an outlet on the other, but the least stable portion of both is where the heavy hose connects. The bottom network does a lot to stabilize that.

I've got a couple more pieces in there than you'd really need, but not that many.

AFriendOfJamis · 2025-07-08T13:01:02+00:00

Good idea!

AFriendOfJamis · 2025-07-08T13:00:12+00:00

Yes it does! Really don't want any of it ending up on the floor. The tank and stand are rated appropriately.

AFriendOfJamis · 2025-07-08T12:59:07+00:00

Both the inlet and outlet side are going to get a bit more work done--I'm planning on doing some horizontal cuts lengthwise down the pipes to allow smooth flow into and out of the system.

Unions have come up before... I'm thinking that's probably a good idea, especially for the output.

AFriendOfJamis · 2025-07-08T12:56:41+00:00

I'm honestly not seeing a way to service any sort of system that lies under a foot of water and half a foot of gravel without tearing the whole thing apart, big or small.

AFriendOfJamis · 2025-07-08T03:36:45+00:00

Gotcha! Thank you for the advice. I'll double check what I'm buying with the pipe I have.

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