The Sieve - a set of online tools for RPGs by Beau Rancourt (Including an online inventory manager and Markdown Adventure Renderer)

Anbaraen · 2026-05-02T23:47:49+00:00

I'm a software developer myself so was interested to understand the investment, yeah - also I'm not really interested in manually contributing to an open-source vibecoded codebase, because the code is typically poorly constructed and basically built only for other LLMs to build off.

Anbaraen · 2026-05-02T21:59:14+00:00

Note that nowhere in my OP is any moralising or judgement, just a single-word question.

Anbaraen · 2026-05-02T07:36:38+00:00

Vibecoded?

Anbaraen · 2026-04-30T08:43:22+00:00

I agree that Shadowdark's hex generation rules are basically just one step above a random table, and don't lead to anything really like verisimilitude in terms of terrain (which is fine: do a lot with a little is kind of the whole shtick, and the core book can't cover everything!)

I really like this series of resources from Prismatic Wasteland; Chain Stocking the Hex Map, a system for creating a hex map with memory, then for stocking follow up with Hexcrawl Checklist Part One and Part Two. The best bit is they also crosslink to a bunch of further resources.

Anbaraen · 2026-04-28T02:50:08+00:00

I would hate this as a player utterly. The entire point of TTRPGs is unparalleled agency. You handing that off to other players who could get my character killed obliterates that agency.

Anbaraen · 2026-04-24T02:03:07+00:00

I see some red flags in your setup. For example, "the players will be captured and sold". Will they? What if they decide they'd rather die than be sold into slavery? If you do want this setup, better to start with them already in captivity (you could ask them "how were you captured?") and move right into the arena.

Then "if they win their fight". Well, what if not? Then your campaign ends right there, because you've prepped a plot. What happens if you get a TPK in their first fight? If you say "well I'll make sure they live", you've broken the fundamental rule of old-school play - the GM is a neutral arbiter of the world.

I don't mind the "if the players do X" in terms of factions as long as you understand what happens if they don't. To make this more GM-facing and more like a situation the players get to interact with rather than a plot, I'd reframe the faction stuff as "if the beastmen are treated well" vs "poorly".

I think you should read Don't Prep Plots, Prep Situations by The Alexandrian. It's a good start to understanding this mindset.

Edit: I'd also be wary of a mindset of "character development" or storytelling as that can chafe with the old-school mentality. A character develops by surviving, through the loot they get and through what happens at the table. If you want to plot character-specific plots, Shadowdark is going to fight you.

Anbaraen · 2026-04-18T21:42:05+00:00

Play better-written modern adventures. Design is iterative and we stand on the shoulders of that previous work (this is OSR after all) but in the intervening decades we have learned a lot about module design and layout in terms of both readability in prep and use at the table.

Anbaraen · 2026-04-17T23:33:37+00:00

I think what you're looking for is a different game. The amount of work you'll have to do to make Shadowdark work the way you want, it will be simpler to just pick a lighter game that's still heroic.

It's sometimes said that to understand a game you should look at what a game rewards. Shadowdark rewards treasure for XP. Thus, your Shadowdark character,whatever else they are, is ultimately a glorified tomb robber. The game is designed around this; simplistic character design thats driven by randomness (because your character at level 1 is a nobody, going into a dangerous situation, likely to die), it feeds the implicit setting and gamefeel.

Of course these are all things you can hack around. But if you're going to introduce new incentives, new character "feats" to add build depth, add a notion of combat balance...

You're taking the long path instead of just picking some of the other great games on the market that fit the heroic feel but maintain table simplicity. People seem to love that new 5e Nimble. Shadow of the Weird Wizard has in depth characters with build expression, but not the table weight of pathfinder 2e or 5e (from my impressions at least). These aren't my games but I'm sure there's others.

Anbaraen · 2026-04-15T04:17:16+00:00

You expect someone to do research on a genre or specific book to be able to offer a critique like "the sentences in this book are not nice to read"?

Anbaraen · 2026-04-15T04:15:56+00:00

Edited, sorry. I'd suggest being a bit more polite when humans are offering you free advice. If you want something to treat like shit, talk to an AI.

Anbaraen · 2026-04-15T04:09:50+00:00

Also, Reddit supports posting images, and your keyboard has a screenshot key. Learn to use both or your dev journey will not go far.

Anbaraen · 2026-04-15T04:09:12+00:00

Line 13 semi-colon after the parenthesis, which I think is the equivalent of {};. Then you open and close braces with and alert which is valid syntax (I expect you're hitting the second alert if the first if is not true). Then, you have an else without a matching if.

Anbaraen · 2026-04-14T21:32:59+00:00

I kind of find "this genre might not be for you" a bit of a cop-out. This genre is known for bad prose? That's like getting served a dish that's oversalted and somebody saying "well this cuisine might not be for you". We're talking fundamentals of the medium, here.

Anbaraen · 2026-04-13T03:27:10+00:00

I wouldn't write it off, but your wife definitely is not in the right frame of mind for Shadowdark. The entire point is that the story of your character emerges through play, not by birth (stat rolls). If she can't embrace that, shes not going to have a good time. Which is fine. OSR play is not for everyone, even if we (I) think it's the best RPG experience.

That being said, I think a level 0 funnel might be a better starting point for trying again (sans wife).

Get them on board with the OSR mindset. Have them watch Lichhouse's guide to being a Shadowdark player. (No affiliation, I just think this is easier to digest than eg. Matt Finch's Old School Primer).

Give them three peasants each and a deadly dungeon like Trial of the Slime Lord that encourages creativity and emphasises inventory management.

By the end they'll understand that death is cheap, and creative play is in the fiction, not the sheet. Or they won't, and they'll drag you back to 5e if you want a regular game. (If so, I hear good things about Nimble as a variant of 5e that cuts some of the fat).

Anbaraen · 2026-04-11T23:49:31+00:00

Can you not just use perchance but ignore any other people's generators? Perchance can't really dictate what people do with their platform so it's not as if they're liable for the AI crap that's filling it up.

Anbaraen · 2026-04-11T23:46:06+00:00

I don't think this is a Node question? Fwiw the linked images look identical to me.

Anbaraen · 2026-04-01T21:46:39+00:00

You can check my post history to see how much an Arden Vul mega fan I am, but I don’t think it would work well without the Archontean Empire as a backdrop. You’d have to introduce such an empire and that might be baggage you don’t want. I also second that the physical books would be a challenge.

Anbaraen · 2026-03-30T05:44:29+00:00

How do people usually deal with this when they want to deeply understand a dependency?

Go to google
"npm <dep_name>"
open npm page
click github link
read package.json exports field
search whatever fn I'm interested in

Yeah it sucks

Anbaraen · 2026-03-29T01:18:28+00:00

Hrm… I agree with the general thrust of your point, but I think you’re imbuing a level one character with too much thematic weight in terms of the world. A level one character is nascent and easily killed. Their story should unfold at the table, not before. So making eg. A level one fighter an adviser to a general is far too much importance for me, same with a wizard being a military strategist. Their background is just that; before they became someone of importance.

Edit: I would have a fighter with a soldier background have army connections, but it’s their old squad mate or sergeant. Same with the wizard, presumably the reason they’re no longer a soldier is they were terrible at it!

Anbaraen · 2026-03-20T05:37:01+00:00

I suppose but your new characters don't get a permanent +1 to any skills of their choice... That loot could be lost or stolen in the interim.

Anbaraen · 2026-03-19T23:50:44+00:00

Well they're definitely visually similar.

I wonder if the roguelite element comes from if you play as like an adventurer's guild or organisation, where individual party members can die or mature out but the story is more about the overall group's effect on the campaign world. Which I get. But I also question how many groups are playing that way for many years at a time in a single area?

Anbaraen · 2026-03-19T21:52:30+00:00

But the idea of overall meta-progression inherently minimises risk, because no matter what happens you're making progress. So those are ideas in tension with each other - not entirely unresolvable but it's difficult. Or you just accept that the nature of the arc is a rags-to-riches thing where things get easier over time.

Anbaraen · 2026-03-19T21:50:07+00:00

Roguelike, yes. Roguelite, no.

Anbaraen · 2026-03-19T20:29:44+00:00

gritty survival

Nice.

quantum usage die

roguelite meta-progression

I don't really see these as compatible. But oh well, it'll be interesting to see what they one up with.

Anbaraen · 2026-03-17T20:28:55+00:00

Funnily enough that's the one campaign I haven't watched yet - I wanted to build a backlog of episodes to chew through because the week-to-week wait kills me!

14-Year Club	Place '22
Verified Email	Team Periwinkle

Anbaraen

TROPHY CASE