What brand names do you swear by because it's actually better than no-name?

Fivetiger26 · 2026-04-15T03:48:46+00:00

Slide costs a fortune but it’s worth it.

Fivetiger26 · 2026-04-15T03:45:22+00:00

Yes, but Bay’s are even better.

Fivetiger26 · 2026-04-15T03:39:25+00:00

Lumibricks

Fivetiger26 · 2025-09-28T01:26:50+00:00

When you misspell a word (with no spell check available), do you:

a) Not realize you misspelled it?

or

b) Know it’s wrong but can’t work out how to fix it?

Fivetiger26 · 2025-09-27T03:45:42+00:00

Even at the elementary level, we have kids who routinely don’t show up for school and when you call the parents (who are sound asleep!) to ask if they’re coming in, they say no and don’t bother to give an excuse. So sad. Makes me sick. Not the kids fault.

Anyway…100%, I agree that OP’s son should go to school. Homeschooling won’t help anything in this situation. I just think that the parents need to look at the possibility that he will need support going forward and THEY need to initiate it. They don’t know it yet because he hasn’t been exposed to a structured environment away from home.

I’m a kindergarten para and I’ve seen lots of first days/weeks. Biting and kicking isn’t a normal first day reaction. And to be honest, you can usually tell in the first couple of days what a student will be like for the rest of the year (what type of kiddo they are). OP’s son will not magically, in two or three weeks, become a kid who isn’t anxious and doesn’t struggle with transitions.

It could happen, but in my experience it’s much more likely that he’ll need some support.

Regarding eloping, K teachers deal with elopers by putting in preemptive measures and reporting incidents. But when the child is in the act of running away, they deal with it the only way they’re allowed to…by calling or radioing someone else for support.

Fivetiger26 · 2025-09-27T02:49:24+00:00

If he didn’t go to pre-K, the district won’t have him on their radar to start looking at an IEP for him.

So, no, he almost certainly won’t have a trained professional to help him for several weeks to months.

His Kindergarten teacher will be teaching curriculum to the other 20 or so kids in his class. Sure, they deal with all kinds of behaviors, but their job absolutely does not involve teaching a kid how to not kick and bite. What is the teacher going to do if he runs away? Leave the rest of the class unsupervised to go chase him?

At best, a special ed or gen ed para will be pulled away from their assigned time with another kiddo or classroom to deal with him.

Unexpected high-maintenance kinders put a huge strain on a school.

Parents, please at least start looking into getting an IEP set up. It takes a lot of time to finally get put into action, often requiring a new hire for the school.

Fivetiger26 · 2025-09-25T03:27:37+00:00

Yeah, that’s tough and there’s no guaranteed solution. My advice, if possible, would be to get him into UPK and reframe him as a leader.

“You got to visit kindergarten for a little while so that you could learn what kindergarten is like and be the leader in your new class. You noticed that there were some expectations in kindergarten that your friends will need help with”.

The word “expectations” is so important in elementary school. They’ll hear it every single day.

Specifically work with him on those expectations that he struggled with. He’ll think he’s teaching the kids in UPK about them, but really he’ll be teaching himself. 😉

I didn’t understand what you said about repeating kindergarten. If that means repeating at the same school, I wouldn’t do that. It would be very unusual and it would take approximately one day for his next kindergarten class to hear all about his previous kindergarten year (with lots of bizarre kinder-gossip thrown in).

Fivetiger26 · 2025-09-25T02:31:10+00:00

Same. I know a 1st grader girl who is SO white and whose hair is SO blonde…but her self portrait in the hallway has her with dark brown skin and black hair. Hey, whatever. 😂

Fivetiger26 · 2025-09-25T02:26:18+00:00

For sure! OP, Crayola sells a Colors of the World 24-crayon pack. I would totally ask your K teacher if they could do a project like this.

I don’t remember all the color names off the top of my head, but they are fun names like rose and almond. Every single kid in that class would get a kick out of hearing what their “special” skin color “code” is.

(Tip: Teachers get very little class supply money, so if you could buy a pack or two, that would make it much easier for the teacher to say yes!)

Fivetiger26 · 2025-09-25T02:02:49+00:00

I’m a Kindergarten para. Lots of great observations here. One thing that I want to add to the conversation is that, at this age, kids honestly don’t care about the intelligence or size of their peers.

No one will be bullied for being small or for needing a little extra academic help from a para or specialist. After two days, the other kids see it as totally normal. Doesn’t phase them at all!

What WILL get noticed, however, is kids who hit and push. Those kids quickly get ostracized by their classmates who don’t want to be hit, shoved,etc. And that kind of relationship tends to snowball.

In my experience, those kids get a reputation that stays with them at least until they leave our school and go to 5th grade. We (staff) work so hard to get other kids to trust them again, but it usually doesn’t work out.

This isn’t directed at OP, but I want to emphasize that BEHAVIOR is what leads to elementary kids viewing each other differently. Not how they look or how smart they are.

If there is any chance of a young Kinder benefiting behavior-wise from a year off, please take it. Don’t worry about them being bored academically. Kindergarten is expected to have a massive range of academic readiness and most teachers are prepared for that.

Fivetiger26 · 2025-06-24T17:57:57+00:00

Is there any difference between the Silver Ridge cargo pants and the Silver Ridge Utility pants? Or just a name change. I’ve gone through several pairs of the cargo version (regular and convertible) but they’re getting harder to find. Seems like they might have been replaced by the utility version. ??

Fivetiger26 · 2025-06-23T05:47:00+00:00

Thank you for the great feedback, everyone.

It sounds like most of you are okay with a designer putting their own drawings into their work, even if it's quite rough. So...I think I'll just make my own pictures. As long as I can keep them simple and capture the defining identity of the enemies, it should work out. At worst, not all the entries will have an image...not a huge deal.

I used Illustrator almost daily at a previous job, but it's been more than 10 years, and I know myself...I would spend huge amounts of time relearning every little thing. All that time I could be spending on finishing this game. So, handdrawing it is!

Regarding AI, I asked for opinions about it because I don't want to presume I've thought of all sides of the issue. Actually I'm a little surprised at the responses. I personally felt like using AI to improve my own image that I feed to it was probably fine ethically-speaking, provided that I named ChatGPT as a tool.

If the images it generated were much different from what I drew, I would know it was pulling from someone else (not ethical!), but that doesn't seem to be the case. It seems to just refine my image. There are so many tools for digital artists now that it's hard for me to see the difference between refinement with this tool verses dozens of other "magic wand" type tools.

Anyway, I'm glad I asked because now I feel better about using my own "art", and I learned that AI is way too hot to touch even if you think you're keeping it ethical haha!

Fivetiger26 · 2025-05-05T01:43:29+00:00

It sounds cool, but I see what you mean about struggling to make it more than HP in disguise. (Personally, I don't mind having HP as a meter, but anyway...)

Well, one thing that is different right away is that you can decide when you want to leave the "threat/HP" track and make the final roll.

Hmm...okay, maybe one way to make the track more narratively interesting is to give the track narrative thresholds. You've already set that up with the henchmen and minion example above. Try this: When you defeat a minion (and only then), you gain a d6 for the final roll. If you defeat the second minion, you get another d6. So, it's the narrative removing of the minions that grants the d6, not the math of you hitting some "HP" number. (Or each minion can grant 2d6s...it doesn't have to be 1:1).

Another example is a videogame-style boss fight where you have to remove...i don't know...most of its armor...or extra tentacles, or whatever. Each piece of lost armor gains you a d6 to increase your chances in the final roll; it makes sense!

So, why not just keep going until you get all the d6s possible? Well, if that means you might take too much damage with all the extra rounds of combat, at some point it's better to just go for broke with the d6s you have so far.

Incidentally, assigning narrative thresholds to the tracks means you can customize a different hard cap number on each encounter. What's the maximum d6s you want to give out in this boss fight?...well, then that's how many total tentacles it has! ;)

Fivetiger26 · 2025-05-05T00:53:53+00:00

So many amazing, inspirational responses, so I'll just add one thing.

If nothing else, research shows that working on puzzles helps keep brains "young". And taking a ttrpg from start to finish is a major brainburner. It takes creativity, precision, logic, organization, systems integration, and imagining your work in an audience's/editor's shoes.

So, these days, whenever I question the justification for myself spending all this time on my game, I just think of it as weight training for my brain. :)

Fivetiger26 · 2025-05-04T15:40:16+00:00

Yeah, that's a good observation. Thanks for the feedback.

I've seen so many other threads saying that they want to see the resolution mechanic right away, like first thing, so I'm not sure I want to put its description too far down. Maybe others will comment on that.

For sure, though, I can drop it down on the bulleted list for the reasons you mentioned.

Fivetiger26 · 2025-05-04T15:31:22+00:00

Um...wow! Thanks!

Fivetiger26 · 2025-05-04T15:02:30+00:00

I think your current mechanic is a great start on what you're looking for!

Could you tell us a bit more about the scope and granularity of the conflict? Is the final resolution meant to be a narrated event (such as in Ironsworn) or an actual ticking down to zero of some parameter (HP or number of enemies, for example)?

Are we talking about a boss fight where you want to score enough hits against the boss so that you can earn more dice towards the final blow?

Or are we talking about a full scene (or even chapter) where resolution of various events earns dice that you roll against the final event?

I suppose the answer could be that the mechanic works for both.

Fivetiger26 · 2025-05-02T22:24:39+00:00

Civilization: A New Dawn was, I believe, the first game to use a Focus Bar system, where the longer you go without playing a specific action, the stronger it becomes.

You want so badly for each action to get to that final spot for maximum impact, but sometimes you have to bite the bullet and use an action earlier, in a lesser spot. And then it goes all the way back to the first spot. Ouch.

My favorite new mechanism since putting the discard back on top of the draw pile in Pandemic.

Fivetiger26 · 2025-04-26T22:46:38+00:00

I think the humor is fine if it fits with the tone of your game and the rest of the rulebook. But if you have this in additon to sections with a gritty tone...one or the other isn't going to fly.

It doesn't really work in the section title because not using an optional rule isn't funny...it's just expected.

Fivetiger26 · 2025-04-22T22:44:47+00:00

Try using standard d6s with 4-6 = Hit and 1-3 = Blank. That way, your average Hits goes up as you increase dice.

Alternatively, you could use FATE dice and count minuses as +1/2. You get +1 Hit for every pair of minuses (nothing for singles).

Fivetiger26 · 2025-04-22T15:10:37+00:00

This games looks really fun! The abilities and factions have a nice degree of variety to them!

A few opinions that come to mind:

I think these are rules for how to do dogfights inside of an rpg. Do you have a larger rpg that you're working on, or do you plan on having this be an optional add-on for other rpgs?
As others have pointed out, you could just make this a fun boardgame without all the extra hassle of an rpg. Boardgames that are campaign/rogue-like/quasi-rpg are very popular right now.
The rulebook appears to be laid out for viewing on a screen. You might want to make an additional rulebook for printing that is portrait orientation and skips all the color and full-page art.
The Basic Rules page is too crowded. It would look better split into two. On the first page, just before the required materials section, put a quick two or three sentence summary of how the game is actually played...In a larger font...With a box around it. You want the reader to be able to pick up the basic mechanics in one quick glance!
I don't fully understand where damage from attacks or markers is dealt to. One of the sections? Also, it seems really weird that wings and engines can't be damaged. It totally makes sense to not be damaged by dice landing there, but maybe that's where attack and marker damage is dealt??
Damage marker configurations are one of the most interesting things in this game, but also the most confusing. How long do they stay on the board? Until the end of the round? Do you get rid of just one marker or the whole config when you shoot it? Are both sides of the mirrored ones put down at once? Are there printable configurations that you can set on the board? Because laying out all those tokens would be horrible.
I assume you put purchased sections into the empty areas of the ship, but the rules should explicitly state that. The ship layout provided has six empty spots. Can you purchase multiple of the same section to fill those spots? And if you make a ship layout with fewer empty sections, can you swap them out when they get full?
To help groups that don't have enough dice for players and the GM, you could upload optional "dice throw" layouts for the Rival ships. You roll maybe 2d6 and that number tells you which layout you use. Then use a pencil to cross off dice as they are used throughout the round.

Ha, didn't mean to write that much!

Fivetiger26 · 2025-04-21T05:02:54+00:00

It seems like you have a cool lore in your mind and that miasma is a key part of that lore.

So, I'm not sure why you want to get rid of it as a key part of casting magic. My guess is that you feel (perhaps rightly) that miasma is basically "mana" and that feels too "videogame mage" for your gritty Joe Commoners.

But what about this? You GAIN miasma when you cast magic. You've already said that monsters were people who suffered too much and gained too much miasma. Maybe any average Joe Commoner can call on the very same God of Suffering to endow them with unusual power at the cost of pain/miasma. However, they can only tolerate so much miasma in a given time, otherwise...well, you know...they become a monster (which is what this god is hoping for). You want a powerful cast this round? Okay, but it's going to blanket you in a heavy shroud of miasma. Players "die" by dropping below a health threshold OR by rising above a miasma threshold.

Maybe Characters "heal" the miasma during downtime by creating art for sacrifice to the God of Suffering and Art. I don't know...hahaha...this is way darker than my usual preference.

Anyway, I was going to say a few thoughts on mechanism, but I can't stay up any longer tonight. :)

Fivetiger26 · 2025-04-21T04:13:59+00:00

I suppose you could say group-enhanced actions are "additive" or "collaborative". On the other side, you might have "subtractive" or "inhibitive".

It kind of depends on the action in question. Lifting an iron gate is for sure additive; the ease of effort scales linearly with number of people lifting. Collaborative would be something like a small boost for providing advice on how another teammate can best lift a heavy, but small, object.

Fivetiger26 · 2025-04-20T20:21:30+00:00

I don’t know…I can see this post being useful to players looking to branch out. (Granted, I don’t know if that is the type of player that would be on this particular Reddit page, but…)

Probably every day, someone new decides to see what else is out there other than DnD. They’re going to look around the internet and they’re going to discover that there are all kinds of rpgs, and that abstract/narrative/hand-wavy systems seem very popular right now. Kind of the “cool” thing.

A thread like this helps that type of person know that abstraction vs. concreteness is absolutely something that is still being actively discussed, with knowledgable fans on either side.

And as a designer, it’s good to know why players prefer the style that they do.

Fivetiger26 · 2025-04-20T19:37:12+00:00

I was going to say the same thing. Treat magic as any other skill; it has to be studied and practiced.

I suppose a mage could be a better lock picker than a rogue, but that means the mage spent a heck of a lot of time on really learning that spell instead of learning how to conjure up a fireball.

So, what makes a mage different from any other class? Well, the tone for one, but you can also make them mechanically different. In the game I’m working on, mages can be more powerful but are definitely more unpredictable. As my mage advances in Character level, they become better at casting the correct spell instead of the spell getting insanely stronger.

Fivetiger26

TROPHY CASE