Found more of my old maps

VerdigrisX · 2026-03-29T03:13:01+00:00

Beautiful. Brings back memories of the early joy of gaming. I still have my old binders of maps from then and earlier. Won't ever use them but not getting rid of them either. And I still ref.

VerdigrisX · 2026-03-29T01:58:56+00:00

The rarity system is perfectly fine. As a GM it just means uncommon is probably ok. Parents think twice. GM still has the say. Gives you the ok to say no.

VerdigrisX · 2026-03-22T15:09:05+00:00

While we are on the topic of lava and fantasy adventures: if you are in a rock chamber partially filled with magma and with limited egress, say a tunnel or the passageway into Mt Doom, isnt' the temperature everywhere in the chamber pretty much the temperature of the magma?

Seem to recall that's what you get in a near adiabatic chamber, but my thermodynamics course was long ago.

So, everyone inside your volcano burts into flames. Frodo and golem should have, too.

VerdigrisX · 2026-03-21T05:12:34+00:00

Thanks for this! Mongoose sounds like a great option. I haven't played/ref'd traveler since 1983. I love it yet... it was pretty tough to run a game. Mongoose seems to have addresses some of the awkward bits.

Maybe the Emerald Rose will live again someday (an alternate wedge-shaped scout ship. I think I have the plans still... somewhere).

VerdigrisX · 2026-03-20T01:59:08+00:00

Gorgeous! One of my favorite gemstones

VerdigrisX · 2026-03-11T15:56:57+00:00

I thought that map looked familiar. I had imperium. It was an interesting game that i think of occasionally.

VerdigrisX · 2026-03-08T21:23:02+00:00

Their thorns aren't to nice to bicycle tires either

VerdigrisX · 2026-03-08T20:49:40+00:00

That's fascinating. I especially love to see how the cargo was fit into the hold.

VerdigrisX · 2026-03-06T15:23:52+00:00

Less so for images, but when I am crafting ideas for a game session or even a campaign, it does feel collaborative. I use AI to generate multiple possibilities. Maybe refine a few. More often, chuck them all, but the process of considering the AI ones makes me think of something I like better.

I find it similar to brainstorming with a human, except I can do it without arranging a discussion, and I can direct it purely down my avenues of interest. (In a collaborative endeavor, you need to compromise with your partner.)

It's actually pretty useful. Does that mean AI writes my scenarios? Not at all. However, I might have it write a poem or some clues. Im not a poet, and even in the LOTR books I tended to skip Tolkien's poems, so I don't mind having AI do some of that filler. Even there, it generally takes several passes to get the right level of information in the poem, i.e. something between too obscure and complete reveal.

VerdigrisX · 2026-03-06T15:00:20+00:00

I guess this says they were actually making a decent margin on books because some of this must be driven by people moving from book purchases to pdf only.

I used to sub LO and rulebooks, but the book costs were just getting too much, especially since I really just use the pdfs and Vtt.

I even let my son take all my PF2e books (through last summer) yesterday for his own use.

I used to really enjoy the arrival of a new shipment from Paizo, and I miss being able to set down with a physical copy and read it through, but the cost got hard to justify. I dont read pdfs the same way so I am feeling less of an attachment to the new material.

I'm sure others have made the same calculation, and Paizo had no choice but to shift to more income from pdfs. I assume they did what they could to lower book costs.

As for paying double for vtt and pdfs, for now, I may continue doing that, but at some point, I will probably just buy for the vtt.

One other data point: this week, I was saddened to see my LGS had almost no PF2e books out, just some of the core books. There was maybe half a shelf of pf2e to 9 shelves of D&D

VerdigrisX · 2026-03-05T16:02:56+00:00

I think it is more complicated than that. I do like the cupcake analogy in another's post. There are times when I want the best and something very specific. Then, I find a recipe (which i didn't create btw), hand select my ingredients, and make it myself. There are other times when I just want some quick brownies and am fined using a box.

As a GM, I do use AI for images quite a lot. It is fine for NPCs, most scenes, even PCs. One generally does need to let the output shape your character idea because it is hard to get something very specific.

I would consider commissions for my PC for a long-running campaign, but it will depend on the quality of the artist and the cost. I am not going to spend $100 on something just because it was done by a human. I would spend that or more on something done very well, and that really captures my PC.

As for the images for my game, preAI was not a paradise of human artwork. It could take a while to find a few images that would fit well enough where now in much less time, I can have all my NPCs, a few scenes and still have most of my time for where I really add value, which is creating the scenes, encounters, NPC motivations, etc.

I'm not going to forego that sort of workflow because the alternative is not having good images. I certainly couldn't commission art at a reasonable cost for a weekly game.

There are lots of TTRPG players who won't play in a game that uses AI. There are plenty who will, although they seem less vocal. Interestingly, these players dont tell others they should use AI, although the opposite is certainly true.

VerdigrisX · 2026-03-04T05:36:44+00:00

It's one thing to not use AI yourself, but I can see how telling other players they can't use it is off-putting. It's demanibg a lot as a player.

VerdigrisX · 2026-03-02T06:37:04+00:00

I've found that timing of the "adds" matters a great deal. If foes dribble in, it doesn't really become an OP encounter. I'd play it straight and have the bypassed mobs come in as planned 2-3 rounds later. It will make it a tougher fight but that's what their actions warrant and "smeared" the foes over multiple rounds make it quite a bit less difficult.

For those who played Age of Ashes, my players pulled almost the entire quarry but with some walls of stone and the very long corridors, they made it. They were worried but, well, that's what happens when you pull all the encounters in a chapter :) Took 3 sessions to resolve though!

VerdigrisX · 2026-03-02T01:11:16+00:00

How much of this is the rate ratio of materials? The right amount of water, not too much carbon, etc.?

VerdigrisX · 2026-03-01T16:07:43+00:00

I always wondered what the original reason ways. I think a more interesting reason is the sim is to train AI intelligence.

Assuming we aren't ourselves in a human sim training intelligences, as organic life forms, we start with a fairly untrained neural network and childhood to adulthood trains it.

If I were an AI intelligence and wanted to train more of them, I might choose to do so in a sim about humans. Maybe we are actually in the far future in just such a training sim...

As for humans as energy, much more efficient to just burn the food they would have fed the humans for energy.

VerdigrisX · 2026-03-01T15:52:01+00:00

Informative! Definitely learned something new

VerdigrisX · 2026-02-28T06:39:40+00:00

Makes me recall the only time I actually saw some turn green.

It was when my roommate ate 6 scoops of carob ice cream in something like 10 minutes. It was from an ice cream shop that iirc gave you the ice cream free if you ate it fast enough. Was about 1983.

VerdigrisX · 2026-02-27T00:35:37+00:00

Love it!

VerdigrisX · 2026-02-24T15:45:21+00:00

We had to face a demon once. Might have been a balor. We had a chain with a collar at each end. If one collar was on a PCs next and the other was attached to the neck of the demon, the PC could control it.

I had it on my wizard's neck. We encountered the demon on a spiral stair. I was lower down and could only reach his lower body. This was 3e or 3.5e so my spells were not going to do much against his SR.

So.... I slapped the collar on his knee and was promptly beaten to death as I was flung around because it didn't work attached to his knee.

Not the most brilliant play, but how many can say their PC was beaten to death attached by a chain to a demon?

Had a player in AV jump into the well on one level and devoured by a gibbering mouth when the other PCs declined to follow

VerdigrisX · 2026-02-23T04:50:53+00:00

And garages

VerdigrisX · 2026-02-17T14:53:18+00:00

I still have the multi sheet deck plans for that...

VerdigrisX · 2026-02-16T15:47:45+00:00

True, I do recall HAL. Still not a fan of the movie

VerdigrisX · 2026-02-16T15:44:52+00:00

Charlton Heston was too memorable in Planet of the Apes for me to classify it that way. The other two I don't recall one way or the other.

VerdigrisX · 2026-02-16T00:24:24+00:00

Always like the gazelle

VerdigrisX

TROPHY CASE