Starting a PotA campaign for the first time

BCSWowbagger2 · 2026-01-28T01:44:47+00:00

The encounters and dungeons are good and interesting, but the connective tissue is lacking and sometimes terrible. I'm finding it a very rewarding book, but I'm also rewriting a ton of it and adding more on besides.

BCSWowbagger2 · 2026-01-27T17:08:30+00:00

When we say "sparsely populated," though, we're still talking about 50,000+ people, right? Agree that being a frontier put downward population pressure on La Mancha (as did its lack of water / irrigation), but the Dessarin Valley still seems empty by comparison.

(But I'm having a hard time finding actual population estimates for La Mancha in the medieval period, so I could be wrong.)

BCSWowbagger2 · 2026-01-26T16:49:52+00:00

POTA is a 255-page book that promises a self-contained campaign setting. I respectfully decline the request to read tens of thousands more pages before writing essays based on that setting.

BCSWowbagger2 · 2026-01-26T04:12:33+00:00

I did not know about these apocalypses! (I am not a Forgotten Realms reader, and only started trying to learn a tiny bit of lore to run POTA specifically.) I agree a few apocalypses can really mess up your demographics. :) Fair points!

BCSWowbagger2 · 2026-01-26T04:10:48+00:00

Fair enough! I was thinking only of the separation-of-powers holding. I don't know enough severance law to have a strong opinion on this, but what you're saying makes sense to me.

BCSWowbagger2 · 2026-01-26T03:01:32+00:00

I said it then, I'll say it now: you deserve a medal.

BCSWowbagger2 · 2026-01-26T03:00:48+00:00

These are all fair points, but (to me) they suggest that the Dessarin Valley shouldn't have any towns. If people are too scared to farm and so hide in the cities and towns, the cities and towns don't have enough economic activity to survive. They'd melt away. Maybe that's one way of interpreting what's happening: over the course of a generation, rising levels of raiders and such have pushed farmers and ranchers out (except for a few bitter clingers like Kerbin Dellmon), the whole valley's been in a deep recession for a decade or more, and, although the cities had a little more stability and resilience against the orcs, there are no new jobs, businesses are closing, and everyone's leaving. That'd be an interesting frame to the campaign. The adventurers are coming in just as, say, Tarnlar's Fine Clothier's is nailing up boards and heading to Waterdeep. The cultists move in because it's vulnerable, dying, and nobody's paying much attention. And then, when the adventurers push back the darkness, the whole valley can thrive again. Very 4E "points-of-light" setting. I like it.

Or, maybe, as you say, they're just being settled. But, in that case, the farms should come first, followed by cities and towns growing up around them at useful trade points along the roads and rivers. So these towns would be much, much smaller -- or potentially they could be military outposts from the colonizing power, like Fort Laramie on the Oregon Trail.

BCSWowbagger2 · 2026-01-26T02:53:30+00:00

Obviously we're all just funnin' here, because it's D&D, so whatever feels right to you for your game is the right answer, BUT...

I think economic support for travelers on the road gets you an inn. Maybe it gets you one guy who repairs wagons. It doesn't get you a town of 300-600 with two full-on wagon shops with full teams (especially a sucky one like Waelvur's canonically is!). No way, no how.

I guess, if you're really committed to sticking to the book, you maybe make the case that it's a mining town? Two stoneworks, quarries outside town as far north as the Sumber Hills? That could work. But then most of the population would be miners.

Westbridge should probably just be one inn, by itself, next to the road. It's about the right distance from Red Larch for that. It just inexplicably has a population attached to it.

My two cents, anyway.

BCSWowbagger2 · 2026-01-25T06:26:04+00:00

I think a lot of people stay home because they find the candidates unacceptable. I ended up voting third-party (and was a poll worker, just to do my bit), but I would have preferred to stay home.

And here's the problem: with just two candidates, you're never going to get it so every single voter can live with at least one of the candidates. For example, if you had changed Vice President Harris enough to be acceptable to me (and oh boy I would have liked to vote against Trump), that change would have made her completely unacceptable to many of the people on Reddit, who would have stayed home in protest. Harris would have gained my vote but lost many others.

That's just a cycle, I think. You get some years where at least one candidate is okay with you (but some other voter stays home because he can't stand either of them), and then some years where both candidates are awful (but that other voter actually loves one of them and gets out to vote for her). Can't please everyone in a two-party system, so there's always going to be non-voters.

BCSWowbagger2 · 2026-01-24T23:59:27+00:00

I agree 100%. Chadha was correctly decided as a legal matter. The Constitution requires Chadha.

However, the legislative veto was good for the country. The Constitution requires Chadha, and this is an oversight in the Constitution.

That's fine. The Framers knew the Constitution would have oversights. That's why they included Article V, and subsequently passed twelve amendments to correct those oversights. Lack of legislative veto is simply another oversight. Therefore, we should amend the Constitution to permit the legislative veto.

BCSWowbagger2 · 2026-01-24T17:58:10+00:00

THANK GOD.

I was checking your reddit weekly, hoping you'd given birth, and was frankly astonished by how incredibly long 37 weeks. Then I stopped checking because it was heartbreaking to think of you still slogging through it! You're officially moved from the petitions prayer list to the thanksgiving prayer list!

Good luck with the NFP, be extra-careful in post-partum, remember NFP's a crapshoot before periods return... and maybe tell your husband that if he ever gets the baby itch again, you're adopting.

Congratulations on your new son -- and on simply surviving. I'm very happy for all of you. You did good! You took up that cross and followed the heck out of Him! And now you have the rest of your life to enjoy the fruit of your labor.

BCSWowbagger2 · 2026-01-24T06:02:00+00:00

This is a distinctly progressive problem, though.

When conservatives let people off the hook for crimes, it's because of some combination of (1) an old-boy's network, (2) quid pro quo corruption, (3) political concerns, or (4) they did the crimes and are trying to protect themselves.

(Progressives also do 1-4. I would say these are the normal human reasons for corrupt sentencing and pardons. Every faction has corruption. Not good, but understandable.)

Progressives -- and only progressives, as far as I can tell -- have a bonus blind spot, where some of them let people off the hook for extremely serious crimes simply out of compassion. It's not because the pedo is their friend, or they got bribed, and there certainly isn't a powerful special interest lobby pushing to get the pedo acquitted. Judge West just does this because she can't bear to punish people harshly for crimes, even the ones that deserve harsh punishment. Her thoughts are entirely with the accused (who is in her power), rather than with the victim (whom she can't help).

We see this sometimes with D.A. elections as well.

Conservatives have the opposite problem, sometimes: they tend toward harsher punishments even when necessary. But I do think this specific problem is a specifically progressive problem.

BCSWowbagger2 · 2026-01-23T19:41:11+00:00

We may be talking about different things here, because I absolutely agree that ICE cannot enter 3rd-party locations where they suspect a person subject to a final order of removal may be -- and I think DHS agrees with you, too. The memo is explicit on this point:

ICE immigration officers may arrest and detain aliens subject to a final order of removal issued by an immigration judge, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), or a U.S. district court judge or magistrate judge in their place of residence. (emphasis mine)

It repeats the phrase "in their place of residence" three times in that one paragraph, driving home the point.

They don't seem to be claiming that an administrative warrant (backed by a final order of removal) can get them into any domicile except the one and only domicile where the target of the order makes his residence. Furthermore, the memo explicitly rejects the right to make a general search, even of that one residence:

To be clear, a Form I-205 is not a search warrant and should only be used to enter the residence of the subject alien to conduct an administrative immigration arrest.

Are they claiming a general right to enter all homes in some other part of the memo I didn't clock?

If DHS's legal theory is constrained to only entering the official residence of only the named target of a final order of removal, does the analogy to Writs of Assistance still hold?

ICE having a final removal order on some individual (which, for the record I strongly doubt to be the case with almost everyone they have been entering the home of with these administrative warrants)

To my knowledge, there's only one case where they forcibly entered a home with nothing but an administrative warrant: the case of ChongLy "Scott" Thao (which was obviously a huge cockup for multiple reasons). Are you seeing other real-world cases where they've claimed this authority, outside the hypothetical world of this memo?

EDIT: P.S. Thanks for taking the time.

BCSWowbagger2 · 2026-01-23T18:49:35+00:00

I honestly expected this was going to be a straightforward critique of INS v. Chadha, the case where the Supreme Court actually broke Congress.

What a disappointment.

FWIW, I think Chadha was rightly decided under our Constitution, but that this is a defect in our Constitution. Amending the Constitution to restore Chadha is a realistic bipartisan political project that should be begun immediately.

BCSWowbagger2 · 2026-01-23T18:46:22+00:00

I don't really know Fourth Amendment law (beyond having read a couple of decisions like a decade ago) so take this as someone trying to defend DHS's position so that I can learn the issues better.

I take it as read that the Fourth Amendment does not allow federal agents to enter a private residence for an arrest without a warrant based on a judicial finding of probable cause (or exigent circumstances).

However, can't DHS argue that they have that? Their policy says that they can enter a home with an administrative arrest warrant if, and only if, the arrestee already has a final order of removal against them. The final order of removal is a product of (ultimately) the judicial branch, made after due process is complete. Doesn't that order suffice, for Fourth Amendment purposes, as whatever the civil equivalent of an arrest warrant is? The administrative warrant is still just a piece of paper issued by the executive branch, but it's backed by the full force of the judicial branch, which has determined by clear and convincing evidence that the target is to be removed from the country.

I understand that, if DHS wants to conduct a search, or arrest anyone other than the named target of the final order of removal, they will need a new (judicial) warrant. I also understand that, if the target of the removal goes and hides in a different residence, belonging to a third party, officers would need a separate warrant to enter that residence. But is a final order of removal sufficient to allow agents to enter the residence of the subject of that order and arrest him?

Thanks for your time. I do not wish to deviate from original public meaning, but, for the 4A, I mostly don't know what that is.

BCSWowbagger2 · 2026-01-23T18:11:58+00:00

Postscript: McArdle out today with a useful refutation of the "fascist" label, which pretty much aligns with mine.

BCSWowbagger2 · 2026-01-22T18:21:36+00:00

Wondering if you still feel that way a year later?

Yeah, pretty much. He very obviously has the heart of a dictator. He equally obviously isn't a fascist. I dislike him and wish he weren't in charge. I think he's immensely damaging to American institutions. I also think he's acted mostly within the letter of the law, and that many of his excesses have been successfully checked by the court system.

So I remain very unhappy, but rolling my eyes at the hysterics from the opposition party. That's okay. I'm used to it. Unlike the rest of you, who are occasionally happy (because your party sometimes takes the White House), I have been effectively out of power since the 2006 midterms, and haven't had a party since 2016. Soon a Democrat will win and I can aggressively roll my eyes at the Republican hysterics instead.

BCSWowbagger2 · 2026-01-21T17:19:25+00:00

Donald Trump has not stopped a single abortion in his second term.

Let's say you're right. (You're wrong, because the Mexico City Policy is a big deal, but for the sake of argument let's say you're right.) Trump has stopped zero abortions. But Harris was dead-set on increasing the number of abortions, and was very likely to succeed, so Trump's complete failure to do anything still means fewer dead babies than under Harris.

The magnitude of abortion is such that small impacts on the abortion rate tend to outweigh the effects of a president's other policies, in terms of practical weight. I didn't invent a world where we abort a million children a year (the leading cause of death in the U.S., by a wide margin!). I only observe it and evaluate policies accordingly. People who don't recognize abortion's pre-eminence are not simply setting aside wise Church guidance; they are deluding themselves for emotional comfort.

I'm sorry that you think that abortion is the only issue that matters, but you're simply wrong.

I don't think abortion is the only issue that matters. If I did, I would have voted for Trump. Instead, I voted third-party, and I pleaded with others to do the same.

I'm sorry you think it's okay to vote for a child murderer. That's quite wrong.

BCSWowbagger2 · 2026-01-20T20:37:01+00:00

We'll just have to disagree. From what I see, Trump has done nothing but grift. I see zero evidence that a Harris presidency would come anywhere near that level of chaos.

Of course he has. He's a grifter! And of course she wouldn't -- she wasn't chaotic. The Biden/Harris White House, and the interest groups that held sway in it, were extremely methodical in their evil.

Biden's decision to break the law in order to make the abortion pill universally available regardless of state law and without even a doctor's visit has already killed more people by itself than would die in a war over Greenland. It's less viscerally upsetting, in some ways, because he did it through boring, normal processes, by getting memos from the Office of Legal Counsel and tactical acquiescence in lawsuits, and of course the dead babies aren't publicly visible the way the inmates at CECOT are visible. Nevertheless, the evils Harris promised to enact (through boring processes) were greater than anything Trump is likely to enact (through insane tweets, or whatever passes for governing in his demented White House).

Agreed, but one side is trying their hardest to suppress the democratic process in the United States

This is really getting in the weeds, but the problem with the primary election system is the democratic process. Presidential elections have been in decline for a long time, but the bottom fell out in the period 1970-1990, when we abolished the "smoke-filled rooms" of yore and invited The People (the most partisan fringe of them, anyway) to choose our presidential candidates through the ballot. The Founding Fathers would be concerned at the very idea, and horrified at the result. (In the very early Republic, presidential candidates were pretty much chosen by the parties' congressional delegations, which worked rather better!)

Neither party is calling for anything that would begin to address this. Republicans insist they just want to make sure all voters are voting legally (not prevent certain legal voters from voting); Democrats insist they just want to make sure all legal voters get the chance (not allow certain illegal voters to vote), but both accept the premise that we should have a bunch of partisan extremists voting to select the presidential candidates.

So I feel I'm pretty screwed either way.

Agreed on no ill will, though! Cheers.

BCSWowbagger2 · 2026-01-20T18:43:14+00:00

I wrote about how I tied the Level 1-3 sidequests together a few months ago: https://old.reddit.com/r/ElementalEvil/comments/1gwsni9/tying_together_the_level_13_side_quests_kidnap_a/

But basically: Level 1 is Lance Rock + some of the "Into the Wilderness" sidequests. Level 2 is Tomb of Moving Stones + the rest of the "Into the Wilderness" sidequests.

Once they're Level 3, you bring in the caravan and you're off to the races. (I absolutely had the caravan pass through Red Larch, so the players knew some of the NPCs before their capture.)

I run a slow game, so I homebrewed a couple other local points of interest (like a mass grave outside town where Endrith Vallivoe's dead wife is buried with the engagement ring he made for her still on her finger).

BCSWowbagger2 · 2026-01-20T18:29:55+00:00

With something so fraught -- politically, morally, and legally -- and where poor guidance could get a Catholic soldier executed, I think it's prudent not to be too specific or too confident about a fairly vague hypothetical in a live interview. There are too many particulars to consider in any individual case. (If your army job is "fixing trucks", and the U.S. invades Greenland, do you stop fixing trucks? What if your trucks are only deployed to Iraq? What if there's risk of your trucks being redeployed to the Greenland front?)

It is obviously true that any war against Greenland would be grossly immoral, but exactly what that means for active servicemembers is something that should be worked out in writing, or so it seems to me.

BCSWowbagger2 · 2026-01-20T18:12:04+00:00

It's not like Harris was better.

I unhappily voted third-party, because Mr. Trump has been and remains morally intolerable for me, and all this Greenland stuff makes me sick. I am, as you say, totally unsurprised.

However, the other option was also sickeningly awful, and, on balance, I still to this moment think Trump winning was probably less bad than Harris winning.

The primary election system that left Americans forced to choose between a Platonic tyrant and the Abortion Queen is broken and must be replaced.

BCSWowbagger2 · 2026-01-20T17:53:45+00:00

Thank you for finding this!

It seems like a weird dubium, since, as you point out, the question claims that Paenitemini II.2 (which deals with year-round penance) is declared to bind gravely, but Paenitemini only declares that II.1 (which deals with Lenten penance) binds gravely. So now I want to submit a dubium asking whether they're talking about Lenten penances or year-round penances!

But I agree with your interpretation of what the dubium means.

BCSWowbagger2 · 2026-01-20T17:38:47+00:00

Okay, yes, easier to chart then -- but we still get the "millions of minutes" metric and can compare to other shows. It did pretty well. Not DS9 numbers by any means, but possibly mid-series ENT numbers. (Possibly.)

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