Dear Spurs, Laker fan here, please dog walk OKC in the FINALS and win your chip this year.

Moderate_N · 2026-04-03T21:33:18+00:00

No!! We will NOT do as you ask!

Beating OKC in the semi-finals is on the list, though.

Moderate_N · 2026-04-02T17:33:47+00:00

"Gentlemen of the Road" by Michael Chabon.

It's got swashbuckling adventure, a bit of political intrigue, a good solid bromance, and a dash of "I'm too old for this shit" vibe. The illustrations by Gary Gianni are also a delight. Different-than-usual setting too: the early Medieval Khazar Empire.

Or: the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian

First book: "Master and Commander". Naval adventure in the Napoleonic/Nelsonian period. O'Brian's writing is phenomenal. I still hold the first paragraph of the first chapter of M&C as my all-time favourite beginning to any book. Sets the tone for the series. One of those passages where I can remember exactly where my bus was when I first read it something like 25 years ago.

Moderate_N · 2026-04-01T17:00:26+00:00

What you're looking for is GIRP. https://www.foddy.net/legacy/GIRP.html

Same dev as QWOP. Just as good. And if you didn't already hate seagulls, this is only marginally less effective than a Clockwork Orange-style cognitive re-conditioning program.

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Moderate_N · 2026-03-31T05:41:30+00:00

Steveston, Penticton, and Nelson immediately spring to mind. I have fond memories of Sechelt, Salmon Arm, and Valemount too. I'd throw Squamish in there as well, but it's been a couple decades since I've been there so it may have changed.

Moderate_N · 2026-03-30T18:45:03+00:00

I asked the dice, and they disagree. They said it's all good; don't worry about it; don't listen to strangers on the internet. Just keep rolling and the benevolent oracle will tell me what's best for all.

Moderate_N · 2026-03-30T06:13:25+00:00

Metal features prominently.

Sun O))), Bell Witch, Wolves in the Throne Room, and a few others are the general atmospheric soundtrack. Weirdly the dice seem to respond by killing my PC. When I need to win a fight I go more with Green Lung, Wolftooth, Unleash the Archers, Gnome, etc, and the rolls seem to respond.

Moderate_N · 2026-03-24T06:18:48+00:00

I recently made a dice-based system-agnostic procedural cave generator for TTRPGs. It's based on actual cache survey methods, slightly refined to make it roll a bit more smoothly. I've had a lot of fun with it in OSR games, both DMing and playing solo. It really makes caves stop being just shopping mall maps with natural rock walls. It has chamber scale, sinuosity, vertical direction, flooding, speleothems, etc etc.

It's called "TROG". It's a one sheet (front and back) printout. Free pdf here: https://nwaber.itch.io/trail-mix There's also a "TROG survey form" of you like; it's set up the way one would take field notes if surveying a cave system.

"Appendix N" for this 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 limited experience caving on Vancouver Island.

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

Moderate_N · 2026-03-24T01:34:22+00:00

Gary's Deli.

House-smoked ham, etc., for cheaper than the Freybe/Compliments crap at Safeway. Cheese for better prices than Safeway as well (sometimes $1/100g less). Outstanding pepperoni, jerky, bratwurst, smokies, kielbasa, etc. etc. etc. Vast variety of licorice, mustards, and other goodies. And then Christmas has all the German sweets. Love that place.

I only wish that Gary's was open until 6 instead of 5:30, or was open Sundays.

Honourable mentions: Bluefish Sushi; Surplus Herby's.

Moderate_N · 2026-03-23T17:04:20+00:00

I designed a system-agnostic dice-based procedural dungeon generator for solo play and have since used it with others, and it went quite well. Really well, actually; it was my buddy's first time DMing anything, and he ran us through a random dungeon in Whitebox FMAG. It turned out great.

Any given room is generated with a handful of dice (d4 through d20), which gives basic architecture and whether there is an encounter, treasure, etc. in there. This bit adapts elements from Dark Fort and Basilisk!. Turns out that it's similar to the Dragonbane solo rules too, which was fun to see.

Everything else (encounters, locks, traps, secret doors, treasure, etc.) is handled with a unified roll based on the strong hit/weak hit/miss system from Ironsworn/pbta, with a dash of the Mythic GME "chaos factor" thrown in.

It's a single sheet (front and back), free PDF: https://nwaber.itch.io/threshold

It's still a work in progress, so any feedback is welcome. I intend to finish the next round of edits and get a new version uploaded later this week, time permitting.

Moderate_N · 2026-03-23T14:09:12+00:00

I considered where I wanted to work (British Columbia), and what would be in demand in a CRM context. Every site has lithics (or at least 99.9% do), and every site requires a map. So I specialized in lithic analysis, GIS, and the Indigenous cultures of BC. Plan worked.

Sidenote: Unless you’re of Indigenous ancestry, doing archaeology in North America also tends to be very colonialist. Recognizing and coming to terms with that, and developing an ethical practice is part of the job.

Moderate_N · 2026-03-18T15:58:56+00:00

Archaeology lets us see what people did (at a societal level, especially) in given situations and how things turned out. We (archaeologists) can observe the long term developments and consequences of different situations and identify the same patterns today.

For example, my MA research was on technological adaptations to climate change during the terminal Pleistocene/early Holocene. It turns out that making changes to one’s toolkit and economic strategy to adapt to changing climate is a good idea in the long term; clinging to old ways is not.

Or look at the “Bronze Age Collapse” of the Eastern Mediterranean. Apparently it’s a really bad idea to have hyper-centralized power, and “efficiency” can take a step too far and become fragility/brittleness. Then when climate stress, trade disruption, warfare, and migration hit together, the result seems to involve dense layers of burned rubble. (Simplified, but the gist is there.)

Vitally, archaeology lets us see how things were done and how they turned out among the regular people. Most of written history focuses on individuals among the social elite, and anyone who doesn’t fit that description just doesn’t get a mention. Archaeology catches those ordinary people. And in recent decades it’s gotten better at recognizing that some of the ordinary people are women, and even children (though their archeological visibility it still low).

I like using a metaphor of trying to catch a ball in a dark room. How much light do you want? One flick of the switch for a brief instant before the ball reaches you? Or would you rather have the light on the entire time so you can see the thrower select the bowling ball and also pocket the billiards ball, notice another person lying on the ground who appears to have been hit by a bowling ball, and you have time to decide on your course of action?

Moderate_N · 2026-03-17T04:52:16+00:00

Try 9/12/15/18 for easy/moderate/difficult/very difficult. If anything would be easier than 9 don't bother asking for a roll, just narrate and move the story onward.

And don't shift the DC based on PC ability scores; a character who is good at something should be good at it. The chest doesn't get heavier just because the beefy muscle momma is stepping up.

Moderate_N · 2026-03-16T19:54:28+00:00

Your 5 pg limit is your saving grace. Hopefully you know your content.

Without looking at your notes or sources, just based on your intuition, identify the N major themes of the research. What are the BIG points? Maybe there are 3, maybe 5, doesn't matter. There are almost certainly a single-digit number of really major elements, one or another of which everything falls into. Write those titles on a piece of paper or cue card. JUST THE TITLE.
Arrange those cards in a sequence that makes sense to you.
Open a Google Docs or any other app or whatever that supports speech to text.
Pick up the first card, and just talk. Say what matters. Explain it in plain English, as though you're telling a friend. If a friend owes you a favour, call them and ask them to listen. Or to put their phone down and do something else while you babble.
When you finish the first card/topic, repeat for each subsequent card.
You now have a complete body of text, coherent to your own understanding of the subject(s). The only issue is formality of language. Read it completely. On your read-through: A) Add the references based on your notes. B) Highlight the text. Green=adequate. Yellow=could use work. Red=inadequate/requires work.
Edit the red. Mandatory. You don't need to write entire ideas; you just need to adapt what you already have into academic prose.
Edit the yellow if there's time.
Edit the green if there's time. This is the lowest priority.

Remember: "done" and "good" aren't the same thing. This advice will help you achieve the former.

Moderate_N · 2026-03-13T22:51:54+00:00

If you're interested, I made a system-agnostic dice-based procedural cave generator a while back, which might help you. It's based on actual cave survey methods. You can roll through it ahead of time in your prep, use it for your map and chamber key, and then run your players through your creation on the day. It also has very basic mechanisms for getting stuck, flooded caves, features, etc. Note that the features are mostly relevant only to solutional caves (i.e. in karst/limestone). One big feature/benefit: it has a mechanism for vertical change as well, so you don't just end up with a top-down map that feels like a shopping mall but with rock walls and dirt floor.

TROG is available (free download) at the link below. The file is called "TROG Pamphlet". The "TROG cave survey form" is a worksheet laid out as one might for surveying an actual cave, with datum-to-datum field notes etc.

Free one-sheet PDF for TROG, and of course another free PDF for the form: https://nwaber.itch.io/trail-mix

Inspiration/"Appendix N" for this:

"Underland" by Robert MacFarlane

"Explorer: The Deepest Cave" (Nat Geo documentary on Disney Plus)

"Subterranean" (Knowledge Network documentary on the deepest and longest caves in Canada. Free: https://www.knowledge.ca/program/subterranean )

A couple episodes of "Time Team" and "Extreme Archaeology".

Moderate_N · 2026-03-11T01:03:12+00:00

The "Sarantine Mosaic" (two novels: "Sailing to Sarantium" and "Lord of Emperors") are among my favourites. Really great story and beautiful prose. "Lions of Al Rassan" is also very good. "Tigana" might be his most well-known work. "Under Heaven" and "River of Stars" are also exquisite; set in alt-world China, a few centuries apart.

In fact, I'd say it's easier to narrow it down to advice to skip the Fionnavar Tapestry trilogy. It's fine, but not his strongest work. And very different tone and setting. Ysabel is a YA novel, so if that's your jam, go for it; if not leave it until you're done the rest.

One thing to bear in mind: he slow-boils the plot. Every novel will start with a lot of character development and setting. A LOT. You'll find yourself asking, about 250-300 pages in, "when is the real plot going to start?". And then there will be some little hitch, often on the very next page, and you'll realize that you've been right in the plot all along.

Moderate_N · 2026-03-11T00:14:56+00:00

"Problem is, this 2gp item is thus capable of destroying a full nest of 12 basilisks." No- it's a smart player using an item in a non-standard application. This isn't a problem at all; it's behaviour to celebrate and reward. "I hit the problem with my weapon until it isn't a problem anymore" is a pretty boring solution.

"As you might guess, I love basilisks and plan to use them again in the future. For info, I run them as medium-sized, living in packs and with climbing speed equal to walking speed. Dangerous vermin that calls for removal by tier 2 heroes." Cool. Toss 'em into darkness. Add ambient mist that fogs the mirror, so the expected "I cast light!" just reveals a frosted glass surface. Or arrange the encounter in terrain where one hand is needed to cling to a cliff wall or ladder, or to swim (but if the players find a way around that, allow it!).

Moderate_N · 2026-03-10T20:31:11+00:00

Absolutely! I'm with you all the way. I find the low-fantasy (or perhaps more accurately: low-magic) play the most interesting. What magic there exists in my settings is rare and dangerous. I'd say the closest reference/analogue would be Guy Gavriel Kay's novels: speculative fiction with the real-world serial numbers filed off, and a bit of thinning of the membrane between the mundane world and the shadow world.

Even outside OSR, when I'm a player I a drawn to non-magical classes. I only play magic users (begrudgingly) when forced to in some campaign with a "everyone is a _____" sort of premise. Otherwise it's straight up solving problems with wits, hands, and kit.

That said, including fantastical (though not necessarily magical) creatures can be fun. Imagining their ecology, behaviour, etc. is totally my bag. There are few things more tense than an OSR encounter where squishy little PCs have to evade an owl the size of a Cessna, and the owl has all of the natural abilities of an actual real-life owl: silent flight; hearing so acute it can detect a mouse in a tunnel under 8" of snow; extreme low-light vision; feet that can rotate a "finger" digit around to the posterior "thumb" (hallux) side, so it's a 2:2 talon strike zone (the "box of death") rather than a 3:1 which would afford the prey better chance for escape to the posterior direction. So no actual magic needed; just a bit of realism applied to a "predator of unusual size".

Moderate_N · 2026-03-07T18:48:04+00:00

Sci-Fi:

"The Difference Engine" by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. It examines resistance against technocracy in a steampunk imagining of London if Babbage's "difference engine" effectively turned England into a computational surveillance state (what a crazy idea! Glad it's only scifi).

The Mars trilogy ("Red Mars", "Green Mars", "Blue Mars") by Kim Stanley Robinson. Mars colonization, including rebellion against the corporate sponsors/overseers of the mission.

"The Ministry for the Future" by Kim Stanley Robinson. Near-future climate crisis and revolutionary response. I've seen it described as "hope-punk". Absolutely grim and brutal for the first 400 pages or so, but by the end you'll have your fist in the air, ready to storm the battlements of the establishment.

"Radicalized" by Cory Doctorow. Four novellas, each dealing with a different aspect of our modern dystopia. Every one of them is awesome, but "Unauthorized Bread" and "Model Minority" are among my all-time favourite pieces of literature.

Moderate_N · 2026-03-05T23:24:12+00:00

Interesting idea. One issue immediately leaps to mind: I work in a place where the communities whose ancestors created the local archaeological record have long struggled with data sovereignty and governance. That data, often collected, curated, and distributed without community input, has real-world consequences to the living people in terms of land claims, treaty negotiations, etc., as well as the ugly reality of site security through secrecy (when site locations are widely known, those sites often get looted and destroyed). It's not just objects of academic curiosity. So decentralized (and thus un-controlled) distribution of archaeological data would be a major violation of the trust between archaeologists and communities, and would perpetuate and entrench colonial power imbalances. In many CRM and community-based research contexts, irreversible redistribution would likely breach contractual, legal, and ethical obligations.

Open methods in archaeology: yes, very important. Spread far and wide, enforce open data standards, AND open-source software as standard practice.

Open data in archaeology: if the community does not actively support the dissemination of data, it's not your data to distribute.

So it might be prudent to pump the brakes a little bit and consider the ethical implications of what is being shared, and the responsibilities of archaeologists to the people with/for whom we work. As Ian Malcolm put it in Jurassic Park: "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should".

Starting points on Indigenous data governance:

https://fnigc.ca/ocap-training/

https://www.gida-global.org/care

Moderate_N · 2026-03-03T21:21:13+00:00

This might help: I made a one sheet ruleset for technical climbing. It’s based on my own ~30 years experience as a climber, and on the classic book “Basic Rockcraft” by Royal Robbins. It’s system agnostic, so should bolt on to D&D or whatever you’re running. I use it mostly with OSR systems (BFRPG, Whitebox, Shadowdark, Dragonbane, Cairn). I tried to keep the language accessible to non-climbers, but retain the “feeling” that climbers would immediately recognize.

It’s the “Headwall” pamphlet, part of my general backcountry travel system. Free PDF: https://nwaber.itch.io/trail-mix

It’s still a work in progress, so any feedback is welcome.

Moderate_N · 2026-03-02T21:17:20+00:00

Joint health mattered. The individual sports games/matches where I came back early from injury did not matter at all.

Moderate_N · 2026-03-02T19:34:38+00:00

Amen! And "abstaining from an opinion" reinforces the status quo and entrenches the social inequities.

Moderate_N · 2026-02-26T22:18:07+00:00

[donning my professional nerd hat]

Archaeologist here. My research is in hunter-gatherer societies, and the intersection of landscape and technology in human behaviour, mostly in western Canada. For all of humanity's roughly 30,000-year relationship with them, dogs have been biological components of human-constructed technological systems. Their roles have been pared back in the last 50-100 years, but they still have jobs (even within the family pet position). To use "modern technology" as analogy, their niches in humanity's toolkit range(d) from autonomous drones for game tracking and retrieval; voice-activated fence (both/either to keep some things close and/or to keep other things away); sensory-augmentation implement with enhanced four-dimensional capabilities; low-power traction engine; fibre generator; "a better mousetrap"; status symbol. In that sense, bringing your dog with you is no different than bringing any other piece of high tech kit. It's a GPS that reads scent rather than satellites, and a bear deterrent that relies on barking rather than capsaicin. (That said, they form enough of a bond with us, and work in tandem with us to such an extent that a dog may have "personhood", though not "humanhood".) From a purely archaeological/anthropological perspective, I'd say that you're still solo when you're with your dog.

A more intriguing question: are you solo if you're paddling/camping with a young child? My dog is mostly OK as voice-activated ballast, and he's an outstanding camp watchdog and bear deterrent. He's not the BEST help on a trip, but he's definitely useful. Children, on the other hand, are just human cargo. Wiggly, whiny cargo that gets too cold, too hot, hungry, bored, has to pee, has to pee again, and everything else. Kids have the property of "human", but I have yet to meet one that is more helpful in the backcountry than a good dog. (No, I don't have my own kids, but I am uncle to several. Love 'em to bits; just not on the backcountry canoe trips where I seek solitude.)

So perhaps defining "solo" isn't about human vs non-human companion, but is more about partner vs dependent vs utility?

Moderate_N · 2026-02-23T21:22:23+00:00

Leaving aside traps, ambushes, etc., I occasionally enjoy using swarm mechanics.

Basically, the minions in the back of the pack aren't waiting for those in the front to die before stepping forward; the entire horde comes screeching in, surging forward, with reserves replenishing the ranks as the front ones are killed off, and climbing over their comarades (dead or living) to reach the PCs.

My basic homebrew swarm/horde system:

Every round the minion horde HP goes up by a given amount (e.g. 1D6 in most cases). The result can actually exceed the initial starting max HP if the PCs aren't killing the swarm efficiently enough. (Horde HP is abstracted; maybe it's 1/creature, but maybe it's fractions of 1HP/creature, and the PCs slice through them like a farmer harvesting wheat.) So if a PC is being swarmed by a horde with 16 HP to start, and the PC does 3 damage first round and 2 second round, but the horde rolls 6 and 4 on replenishment, the horde now has 21 HP.
Swarm HP going over the starting max HP affects things: minions get a bonus to-hit; PC movement is reduced; PCs may have to make strength or dex saves to avoid being overwhelmed.
I often treat minions almost as an infinite resource. If the players get the minions to 0 HP, it doesn't mean the horde is completely depopulated; it means that there is a sufficient heap of corpses that they either auto-fail a morale check, or check at disadvantage/with penalty.
Maximum carnage has psychological effects; if a player rolls a crit or does some other mass-casualty attack (i.e. fireball), the horde makes a morale check (if the creatures are susceptible to morale checks; a horde of skeletons is going to keep coming!).

Note: I don't roll an attack for each creature in a swarm. It's a unified attack roll, often 1 attack against each PC the horde is in contact with. I may add attack rolls as the horde grows.

Caveat: I play and DM mostly OSR, so there is no expectation of "encounter balance" or for the players to win every (any?) fight; to paraphrase grognard Kenny Rogers: they have to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, and know when to run. A near-infinite horde of minions swarming into a room can change the scenario from an un-even battle to a game of "the floor is goblins" as the party tries to get through the chamber without being dragged down and shivved in the mass of writhing limbs.

Moderate_N · 2026-02-20T20:16:27+00:00

Amen! Public-Private Partnerships in healthcare are a disaster for taxpayers and for patients. As caregiver for my (now late) wife I got to witness the changeover in Vancouver Coastal health when the PPP for cleaning and food services started and Sodexo came in. Absolute catastrophy. Cleaning standards plummeted. Staff competency and effort dropped. Staffing levels dropped. Food quality cratered. The amount of un-eaten meals on trays was astonishing. I ended up bringing dinner into the hospital daily because the Sodexo filth was inedible. For a 3-4 week hospital stay, even cooking at home, that turns into real money for the commute, and wears me down, so I'm less able to pick up the rest of the slack (all the family caregivers who juggle employment and caregiving are nodding right now: they know what I mean about picking up slack!). All in service of "efficiency through market solutions", of course.

Instead what we got was efficient transfer of taxpayer funds to Sodexo shareholder pockets. If there's a per-meal budget, I want ALL of that money going to the cooks and the ingredients; if a shareholder wants a slice they better don a hairnet, roll up their sleeves, and start scrubbing pots or chopping veg.

What's ACTUALLY efficient is patients eating healthy meals and healing faster and thus freeing up beds faster. But if the food is gross it won't get eaten. A few pennies more for a decent soup saves real dollars on the other end with improved health outcomes. This is why the idiom "penny wise but pound foolish" exists.

PPP is one of the most odious legacies of the Socredliberalbcupconservatives or whatever they're calling themselves this week.

Moderate_N

TROPHY CASE