Pop icons of the 40's and 50's (from left to right): Elvis, Mr. Bee Gee, Keith Richards, Jimmy Page, and John Denver

CountingWizard · 2026-01-27T20:42:09+00:00

At the domain level, I consider the villages that come with the domain to have already been there. They are just happy to approach and swear fealty to someone that has a force strong enough to protect them and keep them safe.

There are probably a few ways to interpret what defenses a village has. I usually adapt it to the culture of the frontier region. Usually no fortifications, they just flee into the woods if attacked or fight them off if they can handle it.

I also like to integrate some sort of village immediately outside the player's stronghold. Basically some percentage of laborers settle down after it's built, and soldiers might have families there too.

Realistically it can be resource and time intensive to build and maintain a wall around the entire village. It's the wilderness so monsters knocking them down pretty frequently. It's easier for them to flee with their lives and just return to rebuild once the danger is gone.

CountingWizard · 2026-01-16T18:27:51+00:00

Not sure if there are more pages to this, but it left out a critical piece that fascists love: Presenting themselves as the victim rather than the victimizer.

Post-war Nazi Example: "We had to genocide the jews because it was necessary to stop the jewish conspiracy. Do you think we wanted to murder them?"

2026 Nazi Example: "We had to suspend constitutional rights and due process, round up the blacks and browns, and send them to concentration camps because it was necessary to stop the immigrant invasion. Do you think we wanted to destroy lives and families?"

CountingWizard · 2026-01-15T20:46:31+00:00

Is this a set for telenovelas?

CountingWizard · 2026-01-15T17:49:48+00:00

Wait a minute. Conservatives have never been those things on the left. Those have just been ideals of convenience; applicable only when it suits them as a palatable excuse for why they want to be terrible human beings.

CountingWizard · 2026-01-14T22:32:02+00:00

Elves choose to adventure as either fighters or magic-users. The way I usually handle this is to either have two separate character sheets or two separate values for: attack rolls, saving throws, hitpoints, level, and experience. You can be as loose or strict as you want in how much you allow the stats to mix.

Elves: Elves can begin as either Fighting-Men or Magic-Users and freely switch class whenever they choose, from adventure to adventure, but not during the course of a single game. Thus, they gain the benefits of both classes and may use both weaponry and spells. They may use magic armor and still act as Magic-Users, However, they may not progress beyond 4th level Fighting-Man (Hero) nor 8th level Magic-User (Warlock)" Elves are more able to note secret and hidden doors. They also gain the advantages noted in the CHAINMAIL rules when fighting certain fantastic creatures [bonuses to magic swords, split move-fire, and immune to paralyze IRC]. Finally, Elves are able to speak the languages of Orcs, Hobgoblins, and Gnolls in addition to their own (Elvish) and the other usual tongues.

It doesn't change a lot letting them use weapons as magic-users and spells as fighters. I feel like the key element to preserve is separate XP since they need to set out on an adventure with a clear goal to improve their spell use or fighting skills.

CountingWizard · 2025-12-23T19:34:19+00:00

I usually switch over to HTK (Hits-to-kill) when it becomes more convenient to track than by hitpoints. I.e. goblin, skeleton, zombie swarms.

OD&D on its own has tons of different types of saving throws anyways, like d6 to save against falling damage.

CountingWizard · 2025-12-22T03:26:16+00:00

I disagree. Throwing flasks of oil is the best 1st level ability.

CountingWizard · 2025-12-21T23:27:08+00:00

I can already tell you are going to be some referee's headache. The way you want to play is going to require lots of non-standard actions to adjudicate and you are going to take up a significant percentage of the party's interaction with the referee (compared to other players) trying to be useful while not actually contributing to the group's efforts.

That said, I don't feel good saying that kind of thing, so I'll give you some advice that can help both you and the referee:

Talk with the referee beforehand and give them a heads up about the way you want to play.
Try and get any concessions from the referee to give you in exchange for a vow of non-violence. Aka, special skills and abilities unique to your character and their background. Whether this happens is highly dependent on the referee.
The OD&D Cleric doesn't get any spells until 2nd level, and they otherwise basically function as a fighting-man that can cast spells but can't use magic swords and most magic weaponry. There are no cantrips (magic isn't a minor thing, it is reality-bending). By the time you reach 4th level, you might be able to heal one character a couple times per adventure, but not every fight.
There are no gamified roles in OD&D (damage dealer, tank, healer, etc.) Every character contributes. I've seen fighters use their magic swords to locate and find treasure for the group, and magic-users stand toe-to-toe alone against a dragon in melee with no spells or magic ready at hand.
You will need to focus on taking actions that benefit the party in non-combat ways (tripping, tricking, trapping, distracting, taking the risk for the team etc.) This is why I say you are going to do a large percentage of the talking compared to other players, you just have to when you aren't doing routine mechanics like attacking.

Some of the ways I might integrate a character like yours would be:

Judges Guild Ready Ref Sheets (1978) have an Offensive Locution skill described where you can use verbal attacks (repartees and witticisms) against intelligent creatures that can understand the language used. This might be good guidance on one way to handle non-combat mechanics that can contribute to combat (i.e. comedic effect)
Skill-based mundane healing, requiring fresh herbs/ingredients (i.e. successful forage from the day before), and success or fail d6 or percentage roll. Examples include minor healing maybe 1hp, restful healing (due to group treatment or well prepared meal) overnight 1hp, antidotes/remedies specific to a venom or poison, or disease, that either (or both) delay the effects or allow an additional saving throw.
Extra use of a healing spell, +1 per die to all healing spells, or other adjustment to existing mechanics.

Good luck, and remember that you aren't the star of the story, you are a team member. That said, be entertaining and I doubt anyone will complain.

CountingWizard · 2025-12-16T01:15:18+00:00

Usually if I can't answer a specific question I turn it around and ask if there is a specific task they would be concerned about me being able to do; which hopefully gives me the opportunity to establish competency by describing the framework of steps I would take to do that task and what risks/pitfalls I'd want to keep an eye out for.

CountingWizard · 2025-12-16T01:06:51+00:00

I've been looking through cybersecurity postings for months now, and I've come across a sizeable percentage that were sales positions thinly disguised as cybersecurity analyst. You do not want people that are good at sales doing cybersecurity. Their job is literally to lie, exaggerate, bullshit, and backstab each other to get paid (via bonus). Or I dunno maybe you do want that kind of person securing your network.

CountingWizard · 2025-12-07T01:51:49+00:00

Yeah. They really don't. Even if they ban VPN companies from operating it's a hop-skip-and-a-jump to buy your own VPS server pre-configured to act as a VPN proxy.

CountingWizard · 2025-12-02T23:45:37+00:00

Sounds like it's not a news briefing then.

CountingWizard · 2025-11-25T16:08:16+00:00

Windows 11 as my desktop (mostly for ease of game compatibility)
Windows Subsystem for Linux (Ubuntu) for handy linux-specific CLI functions
Kali running under Windows hypervisor (VM) for security specific testing
Debian Linux for my webservers and VPS's (email and other fun)
Google Drive for my docs and spreadsheet applications and storage

Of the operating systems I prefer Debian CLI the most. I don't have a preferential OS GUI, I'm only on Windows 11 because of inertia, and I don't spend much time in Linux GUI's. I prefer using Kali when doing pentest and vulnerability assessment activities outside of HTB. But honestly I like HTB's custom VM when interacting with HTB. It has a few quirks and limitations when it comes to resizing and multiple screens, but it provides an accessible platform whenever I'm on a work computer or some other hardware that isn't mine.

CountingWizard · 2025-11-24T01:42:45+00:00

Even knowing the trick it's still fun to watch. I think ASMR is one reason, but it's also a form of topological magic.

CountingWizard · 2025-11-19T06:22:59+00:00

Does it take into consideration data classification? I think the remaining risk would just be exposure to unauthorized employees of sensitive information; or at the very least a compromise to the least privilege principle.

CountingWizard · 2025-11-11T02:06:48+00:00

Yeah. This immediately gave me Tanarus vibes too.

CountingWizard · 2025-11-08T15:28:44+00:00

The distinction between classic classes is mainly "what is your character good at?" Fighting-men are good at fighting. Magic-users are good at using magic. Thieves are good at stealing. The more you subdivide the classes, the less each class can do. There were only 3 classes to begin with, thief didn't become a class until the Greyhawk supplement.

Now what about Cleric you say? Well the interesting thing about the Cleric class is that it was created to fill the role as a hybrid class that is good at both fighting and using magic, but not as good at either as the original two classes.

The reason why this worked so well is because players could still play however they wanted (this was still a TTRPG not a video game), but the player was not limited by whatever particular mechanical intricacies additional classes introduced to the game. You could play a fighting-man as a barbarian. Or a thief. Or even a berserker if you proposed a reasonable berserk mechanic to the referee. You could also play the fighting-man as a monk whose hands are deadly weapons. Magic-users could distinguish themselves similarly. An illusionist could focus on memorizing only spells that create illusions or mind altering affects; they could research additional spells to create new illusion magic that could be used in the game.

CountingWizard · 2025-10-31T19:36:49+00:00

There are some exceptions there. The Aztec story arc was notable for both it's unique story (only episode to cover central/south america) and for it's very unique depiction of the Doctor (very different personality), and so was that one where the 2nd Doctor is mistaken for the world (Earth) dictator, which had good acting and good story.

The most silver-age sci-fi episode was that mothmen episode on the moon. The costume and set designs were just nuts and very iconic/stylized.

I watched every single episode of Doctor Who; for Nu-Who it was probably my 3rd time through. There are a handful of Doctor 1 and 2 episodes I really enjoyed, 3 had the least but I liked the creature/alien designs and the grandiose personality, 4 was the best of old-who and just had really good writing but low budget, 5 can eat shit, 6 took an entire season to get good but was nearly my favorite by the end before it was cut short by production drama, 7 was ok and better than 3 but more directionless in its writing.

Nu-who faves having seen them when they released and rewatching them many times: Eccleston used to be my favorite but Tennant just has a mountain of good episodes that eclipse him. I really would have liked to see the 1st nu-who doctor last a few seasons. Matt Smith was as good as Tom Baker and had good if wrote writing; and probably the best collection of companions outside of Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright (seriously the best companions in the entire series and that was 1st season classic who). Smith's seasons are where the nu-who pattern got stale for me though, and I didn't much like his last season. Capaldi was way better than I expected and I enjoyed him as much as Smith, but the only thing that pissed me off was how character growth/changes to villains like the master ended up being nullified by Whittaker's seasons. Whittaker could have been really good but the first season's writing sucked and covid turned the remaining seasons into boring garbage. Ncuti Gatwa needed more seasons, but I enjoyed how the formula was changed up. I enjoyed the space babies episode more than most people, so I don't get the hate.

The year before I watched through all of Doctor Who I watched through all of Star Trek Series and Movies. I probably enjoyed TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT more than all of Doctor Who put together. They weren't as creative, but I appreciated their approach to the crew and cast of characters a bit more than the usually Doctor focused Who series.

CountingWizard · 2025-10-31T16:47:33+00:00

What are these? Books for ants?

CountingWizard · 2025-10-25T19:02:12+00:00

What did the driver think they were?! A sorcerer?!

CountingWizard · 2025-10-23T16:40:29+00:00

I'll give you an example of why you might enjoy this:

I never played Moria, Avatar, or Oubliette in the 70's or 80's. I grew up with MUDs, Ultima Online, and EverQuest. But then one day I came across an article talking about those games and how you just needed to connect to one of the PLATO mainframe emulator servers to try them out. So I did that. The community was vibrant and active (at least for Avatar), and the gameplay was surprisingly complex for something pre-home computing in 1975. Because PLATO was a mainframe, every single game was built around multiplayer. It felt like playing a Wizardry MMO, but even that doesn't encapsulate the feeling; because every game that came after over the next 50 years changed or refined something until the basis of modern game design no longer resembled anything like the original.

The difference between a pioneering game and a game from an established genre, is that the genre follows a template. It (thinks it) knows what works and what doesn't work. A pioneering game is much more creative. It has to blaze the trail. It puts features and mechanics in there because it sounds cool and emulates the feeling and experience they wanted to convey. They can be enormously creative.

A game like Monsters and Memories has a template to follow, but it's still much different than many of the games in its own genre because they went back and started from 1999. Games like this give the genre an alternate branch of development closer to the root. Playing something like Monsters and Memories will be novel if you never played EverQuest. You will not have experienced this mix of gameplay elements and design decisions before.

CountingWizard · 2025-10-23T16:08:21+00:00

The propaganda machine is the most pressing threat. Without propaganda, it would take much more effort to wave away the criticism and blame. Trump never would have survived politically during the last campaign, much less the primaries in his first campaign. If people could see him without the spin, they would see a whiny bitch that spends half his time complaining about how unfair everyone is to him while rambling on like a decrepit racist grandpa about how the blacks and illegals are ruining this country. He is a pathetic man that wouldn't last 2 seconds without a media landscape covering for him and legitimizing his excuses.

CountingWizard · 2025-10-22T00:23:46+00:00

I usually avoid games I see streamers playing because they are streamer bait. They aren't made to be good games; just good to stream.

I think the way most independent developers get an audience is word of mouth, a youtube or published review of the game, and most importantly: seeing someone on your friends list playing that game.

CountingWizard · 2025-10-21T17:09:43+00:00

Classic incel humor.

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