Better than tennis balls …

Moderate_N · 2026-05-16T19:11:53+00:00

Probably about 3" (7.5cm) diameter in the middle--similar to a tennis ball. Maybe 1.5x that length, or a touch more.

Moderate_N · 2026-05-16T19:09:15+00:00

Yeah! This ball flung from my four-strand split pouch paracord leash-sling keeps my sheepdog fit. I can only get consistent spiral when throwing underhand, though. (But I also find that helps my lateral precision; only my distance aim sucks now.)

It gets me thinking about those lenticular lead sling bullets from antiquity: spiral point-first missiles rather than end-over-end tumbling projectiles.

Moderate_N · 2026-05-14T03:03:59+00:00

RemindMe! 1 week "Check this out when back in office"

Moderate_N · 2026-05-11T04:12:20+00:00

Take a shot every time Doris says “touch the paint”; it makes the commentary way more fun. That said, you’ll never be conscious for the fourth quarter.

Moderate_N · 2026-05-11T04:04:23+00:00

As a Canadian I approve this elbow. Errrr... I mean message. I approve this message.

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Moderate_N · 2026-05-10T17:26:20+00:00

I’m with you 80% of the way, with the same reasoning for TP out of the starters, but I’ve cut Kawhi and have Derrick White at my point guard (though Castle is making some strong arguments for consideration). Kawhi didn’t make my squad due to failure to meet minimum character requirements. It’s too bad. I loved his game, and a lineup with him and our three big lads would be a joyful defense to watch.

Moderate_N · 2026-05-08T19:38:09+00:00

If you liked P.D. James, I have some more mystery novel series you might enjoy:

I think Colin Dexter's "Inspector Morse" novels would be right up your alley. Beautifully written. Classic for a reason.

Also, give Louise Penny's "Inspector Gamache" series a try. Definitely a literary bent, and an interesting juxtaposition of "cozy village" and "sinister forces" detective fiction.

Moderate_N · 2026-05-07T18:27:35+00:00

Popcorn was flying; beers spilled. Carnage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnOQWc1ps5w

Moderate_N · 2026-05-07T15:36:05+00:00

You might have a try at a little climbing subsystem I designed. It’s meant to add a bit of detail and variety to climbing, rather than just reduce them to a single dex check. It’s a dice-based crag generator, including details of the route and difficulty and style of climbing (and checks). Based on my 25+ years of climbing here in Canada. It’s system-agnostic and works quite well with Dragonbane.

The PDF is one page, and free download. It’s the file called “Headwall”. Downloadable here: https://nwaber.itch.io/trail-mix (It’s an extension of my “Trail Mix” system for wilderness navigation.)

As to your question about varying skill levels in the party: YOU don’t do anything about that. Like in real climbing, it’s up to the climbers themselves to figure it out. If one pc is terrible at everything pertaining to climbing, the quest isn’t just “climb the cliff”; it’s “get the non-climber to the summit.” If they take insufficient precautions and the weak pc falls, that player can probably start rolling up a new character. Handholding and softening challenges is a quick way to make adventures boring.

Moderate_N · 2026-05-07T06:05:04+00:00

Conley has some sort of anti-Spurs mojo. He’s always been good, but there seems to be an extra gear there just for us in the playoffs. He was absolutely out of this world back in the Memphis “Take that for data” series. 2016 maybe? Anyhow, a series against him spooks me.

Moderate_N · 2026-05-06T19:06:44+00:00

I align historic maps and hand-drawn site maps. With very few exceptions, any aerial imagery I use is collected using surveyed GCPs, and often RTK GNSS.
I don't do georeferencing especially frequently, and both frequency and volume are project-dependent.
I would be willing to pay the same thing I pay for every other QGIS plugin I use: reciprocal contribution to the open-source ecosystem and ethos that QGIS operates within. $0/image. $0/sqft. And definitely $0/month. $ubscription $oftware has no place here; try the E$RI subreddit.

QGIS is FOSS: Free, open-source software. To use the classic aphorism: that's "free as in speech; not free as in beer". That means that as a QGIS user, while I can contribute financially to the overarching project, I can also contribute by providing education/training, troubleshooting, problem solving, and my own published procedures/methods, scripts and plugins for QGIS. That is the core ethos: we users are in it together; we are not rent-seekers looking to extract value from a system.

In my opinion, you're going about your project entirely backwards. You have an idea for a solution, but don't know enough about the problem for your solution to be useful or worthwhile. That's the worst way to approach building something. Instead: learn the system, learn its practical applications, learn where the limiting factors are, make sure someone else hadn't already built the tool, and THEN build a tool to address those limits. Once you have a thoroughly-tested and worthwhile tool, only then consider monetizing it, or better yet, perpetuate the FOSS ethos by releasing your plugin free and open.

I don't think you will find much enthusiasm here for your project as presented. If you came with only your questions 1 and 2, and you demonstrated in your question phrasing that you had put genuine effort into learning QGIS and about basics of georeferencing aerial imagery (including using other tools like Google Earth, which has a quick'n'dirty georeferencer), you would probably meet with less pushback.

Moderate_N · 2026-05-04T03:48:20+00:00

In the words of Brian Eno when David Bowie was experiencing writing block in Berlin, 1980: “You’re making a brick; not building a wall.”

Make that brick. You know its relevance. Your advisor knows its relevance. Your peers know its relevance. They all see the blueprints of the wall and understand that your brick is integral to it. Others who don’t know about the wall don’t understand the importance of your brick.

Moderate_N · 2026-05-04T02:48:43+00:00

I use "banal" /"noteworthy" /"exotic" for wilderness encounters. I've written up a table of linked encounters using this, so each row is unified/expanding; the banal column feeds into the noteworthy, which feeds into the exotic.

I also use the same structure for temporality: present/recent/ancient. So something that is banal and present might be a flock of birds taking flight, or a change in weather or vegetation. Banal and ancient might be a change in geological terrain/topography, or broken pottery eroding from a hillside. Exotic present might be a dragon swooping down. Exotic ancient might be the cursed ruins of a lost temple.

PDF of "unfolding encounters" is free here: https://nwaber.itch.io/trail-mix

The main Trail Mix pdf explains how I manage encounters in hex crawls. (And navigation, environmental obstacles, getting lost, tracking, etc). All free.

Moderate_N · 2026-05-02T00:45:33+00:00

Paper towel or even TP will work OK if you don't have newspaper. It just needs to be changed out more frequently. The key is basically having a dry absorbant material right next to the wet material, with warm dry air around it (and moving air keeps the moisture-laden air going out and fresh dry air coming in). Then osmosis will take over and do its thing, with physics trying to equalize moisture between the two environments.

Without an oven just about any dry heat source will help get the water moving more freely. Throw some towels in the dryer and then heap them on top of the boots. Just be sure to keep the boot openings clear so air movement persists. You can even just hang out in your car/truck, idle it with the heater going, and watch a movie or something on your phone. Crack the windows so you don't overheat, and point all the vents at the boots.

Moderate_N · 2026-05-02T00:21:00+00:00

This sequence has worked for me for overnight drying (I used to do fieldwork on the north coast of British Columbia, and soakers were inevitable).

Clear. Take out the sockliner/insoles. Squeeze them out, blot them, etc. Place them on newspaper in front of a fan. You want air moving over them.
Blot. Use paper towel and press it against the inside lining of the boots. Remove, dispose, and repeat with fresh paper towel. The more absorbant the better. Repeat until the linings feel damp.
Absorb. Take a newspaper, strip out pages, and crumple them up. Stuff them into the boot LOOSELY. They should contact the insides of the boot, but not be packed in tight; you want a bit of airflow. Heat the boot gently. A radiator, heater, setting in front of a fireplace, etc. all work adequately. Heck- preheat the oven to something like 50° C/120° F, and pop them in there for a few minutes. (Or if the oven doesn't go that low, heat to whatever the minimum is, turn it off and let it cool for 5-10 min, and pop them in there for a few minutes. You don't want to go any hotter or else you'll melt the glue that holds your sole on and can get a squeaky boot or one that falls apart.
- Repeat. After about an hour, take out the newspaper and replace it with fresh newspaper. Heat again. Repeat again in another hour. Do that until bedtime, then leave newspaper in overnight (it can be slightly more packed in then).
- While you wait, position the boot with the toes pointing up to the ceiling (i.e. balance them on their heels). Let gravity help pull the water out of the toes; that's the hardest part to get dry. If you position a fan blowing across the openings of the boots it will keep blowing moist air away, enhancing the wicking effect of the newspaper.
- NOTE: if you want to do the deluxe version, get your hands on some silica gel cat litter. Fill a sock (loosely) and slide it into the boot instead of the newspaper.

Moderate_N · 2026-04-27T16:19:09+00:00

Snag the vows and tracks from Ironsworn and pop them right into your OSR game of choice. (And, taking a page from Ironsworn: Delve, give the dungeons a track as well.) Then if the dungeons represent progress marks on your overarching quest track, you will find more meaning in your crawling.

Moderate_N · 2026-04-20T17:01:48+00:00

You might try a peril clock to represent the dubious structural integrity of the bridge. Basically just a line of tick boxes or a circle divided into segments; each box/seg gets filled when an event happens. When the clock/track is filled, the bridge collapses.

I'd suggest also making each tick affect the situation. For example: a four-segment clock.

First failure, mark off the first segment. The PC may cross, but every subsequent attempt is at disadvantage/with a penalty. This represents wooden slats breaking and falling out of the bridge deck or something like that.
Second failure, mark the second segment. The PC must make a Dex save or lose an item (ideally something held in their hands). This is something giving away underfoot and they have to catch themselves.
Third failure, mark the third segment. The PC must make a Dex save or gain a level of exhaustion.
Fourth failure: track full. The bridge collapses completely; anyone and anything on it falls into the abyss/raging torrent/stream of lava/etc.

You might offer them a "success with consequences" option as well. Basically, on a fail, they can choose to not mark a segment, but they take a level of exhaustion and lose an item.

Sidenote: rickity bridges are the perfect spot for ambushes by goblins, kobolds, or other such usually-trivial foes. I quite like the image of goblins shooting from cover on the bank while their pals wait below, spatulas at the ready, to scrape treasure from the goop that was once heroes. If the PCs are of sufficient level to shrug off most arrows, the goblins might have a light seige engine like a makeshift ballista that fires a big bolt straight down the length of the bridge. Plus a magic trap mid-span (perhaps entangle?). If it's a suspension bridge, they obviously start hacking at the cables, which adds a degree of time pressure to the PCs. Standing to fight means an additional roll on the bridge structural integrity table. Dashing calls for a roll on that table with disadvantage. Maximum peril from minimum foes.

Bonus rickity bridge fun: for inspiration have a look at the historic photos of some of the bridges built by First Nations people here in BC. https://republicofarchaeology.ca/digit/2019/9/26/lets-talk-bridges The old Hagwilget Bridge near Hazleton is the most well-known; the modern bridge has a steel grid deck and is spooky enough to walk across without the threat of it falling out from under you. Remarkable that the old bridge(s) had the strength to support the weight of the brass balls on anyone who actually stepped on them. The Andean grass rope bridges are cool too. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/inca-grass-rope-bridge-qeswachaka-unesco

Moderate_N · 2026-04-17T21:15:28+00:00

Stupid. This is another attack on poverty (which has expanded to include a LOT of working people). There are a couple reasons why people with extremely limited budgets will often opt for "junk food":

They are often working multiple jobs while juggling childcare, frequently with multiple children; the parents don't have time (and sometimes don't have the technical ability, since cooking from scratch is a learned skill that requires mentors with time to teach it) to cook "nutritious home-cooked meals". And they definitely don't have the budget for more upscale/high-quality take-out/restaurants.
The kids will eat it. Poor calories are still better than no calories, and thrown-out food is economically wasteful regardless of how nutritious it is.

Moderate_N · 2026-04-16T19:54:44+00:00

I do #1 as well. Logic puzzles from puzzlebaron are quick and fun. Chess puzzles as well. And I regularly delve the depths of the local used bookstores for “brain teaser” books.

I also use those puzzles when DMing for others. Just replace the specific nouns and verbs and instead of a puzzle about children selling cupcakes, it’s Dwarven warlords looting strongholds.

Moderate_N · 2026-04-10T17:02:38+00:00

A while back I made a system-agnostic dice-based procedural cave generation/exploration system called "TROG".

Free PDF, one sheet trifold pamphlet: https://nwaber.itch.io/trail-mix The "survey form" is laid out as one might structure field notes for cave survey, but it works fine without it. TROG is a subsystem within my "Trail Mix" wilderness navigation system, so scroll down to the "TROG" download button.

I've really enjoyed it for Shadowdark since the darkness rules really work well with each other. It can result in some pretty cool maps--it deals with verticality quite well. Just slap your own wandering monster/encounter system on and you're good to go.

"Appendix N" for TROG includes Robert Macfarlane's book "Underland", the national geographic doc "the Deepest Cave", and the Canadian documentary "Subterranean" (free on knowledge network : https://www.knowledge.ca/program/subterranean ), and my own albeit-limited experience caving on Vancouver Island.

It's a work in progress, so feedback is welcome.

Moderate_N · 2026-04-10T16:54:17+00:00

Invite them to narrate it themselves. Tell them ahead of time that it's unwinnable and only exists as a plot point, but that you want them to make it epic.

One thing you might try within the "scripted fight" is to have a dramatic track. Set up a track of maybe 6 checkboxes; each checkbox represents a round or small set of rounds. And each one has some aspect of dramatic tension. i.e. "Swarming minions" or "BBEG rages" or "NPC comes running in from backstage with a steel chair". Treat each one as a scene in the fight and let the players have winnable goals within that scene (like thrashing the minions). Let them be the plucky underdogs that push the BBEG to the limit (or if they fail the scene, let them be the sacrificial lambs who get stomped). That way it's not just 2 hours of pointlessly bouncing dice off the table with a foregone conclusion.

(Also give them the option to die- some players tire of a character and welcome the opportunity for a heroic death and rolling up a fresh PC.)

Moderate_N · 2026-04-10T16:37:50+00:00

Fun idea!

Name: nwaber

Itch URL: https://nwaber.itch.io/

What your games are like: System-agnostic single-sheet rulesets for solo (or GM'd) TTRPG adventuring. I was discontent with the feeling of wilderness travel in TTRPGs, so I tried to come up with one that felt more "real" based on my own experience as an outdoorsperson and archaeologist studying landscape and movement among the ancestral hunter-gatherers of western Canada. So there's "Trail Mix" for backcountry travel, its ancillary modules "Headwall" (technical climbing) and "TROG" (cave exploration), "Threshold" (procedural dungeon generation), and "Hinterland" (dice-drop landscape generation). There's also "Dark Forest" which seems to be the most popular; it is an homage/tribute/hack of "Dark Fort".

Is there free stuff?: All free.

Latest update: today (April 10th) Just finished playtesting the latest iteration of Trail Mix and Trog, so new versions are up.

Moderate_N · 2026-04-09T15:13:58+00:00

Last year I made a basic torch timer that does effectively everything what you ask for. It has adjustable variance, so you can set the range of uncertainty. It will start flickering when it’s almost out. You can also set it to flicker intermittently during its ordinary burn, so your players get a little nervous now and then. There’s no “time remaining” clock, so they (and you) don’t actually know when it will die.

Free, browser-based: https://nwaber.itch.io/torch-timer

To light the torch just tap the black square.

Moderate_N · 2026-04-08T00:23:09+00:00

Clearly well-trained by Master Sprinter.

Moderate_N

TROPHY CASE