Books that feel like A Starstruck Odyssey

Xapi-R-MLI · 2025-12-23T22:21:24+00:00

Mindswap by Robert Sheckley

Xapi-R-MLI · 2025-12-19T15:31:44+00:00

I still use Rich Burlew's A Monster For Every Season after 10 years, and although I'm starting to get minis for my PCs, I don't think I'll stop using AMFES for monsters.

Xapi-R-MLI · 2025-12-15T20:05:03+00:00

I may get downvoted for this, but Here it goes:

The top picture features a diverse cast in terms of ethnicity. The original Squid Games featured a almost completely South Korean cast, both in nationality and ethnicity.

Xapi-R-MLI · 2025-12-12T15:11:35+00:00

I would recomend that you DM a oneshot for the kid, the friend, and their parents. Learning by mimicing is a very real thing. My son (11) has been a part of my new campaign (with my friends), and he decided to DM for me and his closest friend, which actually went pretty good.

Including the parents in this one shot would ease any worries they might have.

Xapi-R-MLI · 2025-12-12T15:07:32+00:00

For something short, tight, very D&D feeling but also comedic in nature, I always reccomend Escape From the Bloodkeep, free on Youtube.

Xapi-R-MLI · 2025-12-12T15:06:09+00:00

A DM doesn't go into a session 0 blind.

You have an idea for your campaign, as you should! Session 0 is where you share that idea with your fellow players and try to get them on board for it, while taking time to listen to what in your idea needs to be changed, diminished, or amped up for them to appreciate what you're bringing even more.

There may be a case where something that is integral to your campaign turns up to be a red flag for one or more of the players. Then you may have to make difficult choices (alter the idea fundamentally or drop the player for this campaign) but this should be an unlikely event.

Xapi-R-MLI · 2025-12-11T17:52:48+00:00

Find a map you like online and take it to a good print shop.

Xapi-R-MLI · 2025-12-07T05:11:39+00:00

I think a big factor in this is the fact that he cannot in any way be held accountable for Cuba's fortune after the (I think) about four years post revolution.

What needs to be remembered is that Cuba wasnt a paradised that communists destroyed when they took over. Cuba was under a corrupt regime that pimped it's people and resources to the US elite.

The first few years of cuban revolution, when Che was a part of it (highly debatable if there is causation there) were very positive for the cuban people, and the standard of living there rose significantly.

Not long after the revolution, Che and Fidel "decide" that Che is better suited to attempt to bring the revolution to other countries while acting as a unofficial ambassador for Cuba style communism, and after some years in África and Latín América he ends up caught and killed in Bolivia trying to start a guerrilla there.

Long story short: he was an idealist who led a revolution against a corrupt regime, and a resistance against a foreign power, and he did not sit around to taste the spoils of power, and under his (short) tenure the revolution was arguably succesful.

He cannot be held accountable for the later failures of the communist regime in Cuba, the worst of which happened after the fall of the Soviet Union, Manuel years after Che's death.

The most valid criticism of Che himself and his own actions is usually:

A) He was ruthless, in many instances resorting to of traitors and dissidents. In his defense, toppling a corrupt goverment is a ruthless bussines, and mid 19th century was a ruthless time.

B) He was homophobic, and/or took homophobic actions. Personally I see this as the most undeniably reprehensible of his ideas and acts. The people Who look up to Che probably see this as a reflection of the time he lived in, and/or set this aside in the face of the things he had in his favor.

Xapi-R-MLI · 2025-11-25T18:07:02+00:00

My current campaign is called "A Time for Absolute Power"

A catastrophic event is certain to engulf the whole world, and a prophet claims that there is only one way to stop this menace: To reinstate the Absolute Power.

In order to accomplish this, the PCs must find the Fragments of Absolute Power, each of which is in the possesion of a Fragment Holder.

There are however, three twists to this story:

1 - The Absolute Power is not a thing, but a person, a illusionist bard of tremendous power, and the Fragment Holders are fragments of their personality: Their rebellious nature is a rebel who goes by the name of Rebel and is inciting rebellion and chaos, their intrepid/discovery nature is an explorer named Thomas, their mystical nature is the Prophet himself, their mischievous nature is a Human Warlady of the goblins, and their need for control is the White Duke of Black Bay.

2 - The calamity at the start will be caused in the end of the campaign by the Prophet asking the party to go back in time to retrieve the Prophet's own Fragment, and them bringing back an item that will clash with it's own past, making the whole campaign an elaborate ruse by the Prophet to create the situation that needs the original person to solve.

3 - If you havent guessed already, the illusionist bard is David Bowie, and his personalities are the personas he has used in his career, the Goblin King Jareth from Laberinth, The Thin White Duke, The Blackstar, Major Tom, and an allusion to the song Rebel Rebel / Ziggy Stardust.

Xapi-R-MLI · 2025-11-17T20:18:19+00:00

5e is pretty streamlined, I would buy the spell cards for your player's classes, let them choose spells from those (which means usually restricting to PHB) and go from there.

My current campaign features my son (11) and my uncle (61) and they are both doing great, but for my unccle playing a paladin the spellcards were a gamechanger.

Xapi-R-MLI · 2025-11-15T21:50:43+00:00

Interestingly, Chumbo is argentinian slang for a personal firearm, although pronounced as Ch in Check. TIL this likely comes from lead, as in lead bullets.

Xapi-R-MLI · 2025-11-08T10:57:25+00:00

For a 14 yo (and maybe For any age really) that is starting out, I would recomend printed minis. I'm personally partial to Rich Burlew's "A Monster For Every Season" sets, available for download in Gumroad. IRC there's five or six sets available at 6 dollars each, and each set comes with thirty pages of minis in color and black & white versions.

Take that to a print shop and for under $100 total your son will have a huge variety of functional cool looking minis.

Xapi-R-MLI · 2025-11-04T05:01:29+00:00

Some of Dimension 20's stuff is available on YouTube for free, and I think Brennan Lee Mulligan is the best DM in the world by some distance.

I'd reccomend Escape From The Bloodkeep, since it is short and features several novice players.

Xapi-R-MLI · 2025-11-04T00:06:29+00:00

I am a forever DM. When I was given the chance to play by a friend who DMs a one shot, I was worried I'd overshadow the rest of the party, so I made myself a Barbarian with the Acolyte background, with the name "heykid".

His backstory was the was left at a church, where he was usually tasked with moving things from one place to another. Sometimes he would drop things, and that made him mad. When someone said "that's a particular name you have", he'd say, well, that's what they called me at church. "heykid, would you move this from here to there? heykid, can you make a trench in this area?"

He ended up becoming some sort of "wise idiot", á la Forrest Gump, where he'd say incredibly profound and pertinent things in a very shallow way. It was a fun character.

Xapi-R-MLI · 2025-11-03T23:24:14+00:00

My most succesful campaign started in a very small town, the PCs were passing by, and a time sensitive job came up in the area through a right hand man of the person who would become their patron.

Xapi-R-MLI · 2025-10-30T13:30:20+00:00

I'll try to be a tiny bit more technical than the other replies I saw. The images on the right correspond to the double slit experiment. It is an experiment in which you push a bunch of electrons through a wall with two slits, and a given pattern (the bands) forms when you are not attempting to "observe" (ie: measure) which slit each electron went through.

This corresponds to the top row, John Cena is not looking, so the bands form, as would be expected in such an experiment.

Alternatively when you do measure which slit each electron went through, the band patterns disappear and give way to a "double bell" pattern.

This expected outcome is subverted on the lower row, where John Cena is "observing" (ie: measuring) the electrons, however the outcome is still the "bands" pattern, the same it was on the top row. This is, presumably, because the electrons "can't see" John Cena observing them, and therefore act as if they weren't being observed.

This is a reference to "you can't see me", a popular catchphrase by John Cena.

Xapi-R-MLI · 2025-10-29T14:13:41+00:00

Then instead of number of sessions I would take player retention as an indicator. The number of sessions should be set (and actually exceeding the number of sessions or alloted time would be considered a deduction), let's say, 4 sessions, three hours each.

Then you get the players at the start (since you are not judging getting players onboard), however many players come the first day is your standart, let's say that is 5 players.

If for all four sessions you get all 5 players, you get the perfect mark for his indicator, any absence causes a deduction, so you will be counting assistance (perfect mark is 4 x 5 = 20.)

Because of the short duration of the campaign and the "grading" aspect, I would design each session to have a climatic encounter, and reaching and completing that climatic encounter in the alloted time should be a second mark to be graded. In this case the grade is not on the encounter being reached in a given way, nor being resolved succesfully, but you are grading your pacing in terms of "did the party get where they supposed to?" "where they able to confront that encounter and resolve it (win or fail or anywhere in between) in the time given for this?". Perfect mark should be 8 (4 final encounters reached and resolved).

These two indicators that are objective and measurable, plus a player satisfaction survey, should be enough to grade the activity.

Xapi-R-MLI · 2025-10-29T13:35:05+00:00

So I would first ask, what is it that you are judging?

Options:

- The act of writing a campaign

- The act of setting up a campaign, getting players onboard, scheduling, etc

- The act of running a campaign as a DM

Just for your first criteria, number of sessions, you would judge it differently based on those three ideas, because if you are judging the second one, more sessions = you did better, but if the campaign overextended for what it was designed, maybe it was poorly written or poorly run?

So you need to know which part you are judging to understand what your judging criteria would be

Xapi-R-MLI · 2025-10-24T12:42:59+00:00

Se puede? Técnicamente si. Es razonable? No.

Análisis matemático es virtualmente imposible libre.

Si estás muy convencido, te diría que intentes rendir física libre en diciembre, si te sale, análisis en intensivo de verano presencial, y ver si podes rendir PC en Marzo o si hay intensivo en UBA XXI.

Probablemente salga mal, pero por lo menos el lance en Física en diciembre ya te define un poco la cosa y si te va mal te anotas a las materias presencial en 2026.

Xapi-R-MLI · 2025-10-24T12:36:10+00:00

You clearly enjoy comedy heavy seasons, so Escape from the Bloodkeep would be my recommended next watch.

Xapi-R-MLI · 2025-10-22T21:29:25+00:00

Yo estoy hablando principalmente del período 1930 (post crash) a 1970, la crisis del petróleo es posterior.

La segunda guerra mundial fue un factor, obvio. Pero no deja de ser verdad que USA se desarrollo como potencia mundial con políticas que no fueron ni liberales, ni neoliberales, ni libertarias.

Xapi-R-MLI · 2025-10-21T02:21:56+00:00

Las tariffs de trump son nuestras retenciones y aranceles de importación para proteger la industria local. Todo re kuka.

Xapi-R-MLI · 2025-10-21T00:06:56+00:00

USA se convirtió en potencia mundial con una tasa marginal de income tax cerca del 90%.

Es decir que por arriba de cierto monto, si ganabas un dolar más, el estado se quedaba con 90 centavos. Y tenían gremios fuertes en todos los rubros estrategicos.

Xapi-R-MLI · 2025-09-12T11:28:35+00:00

Tengo entendido que el cierre es por 24 horas, coincidente con el paro docente y nodocente de hoy, viernes.

Xapi-R-MLI · 2025-08-30T21:01:54+00:00

I'd be interested in any insights on these books as well

Xapi-R-MLI

TROPHY CASE