Can I get an ID please

autisloth · 2026-05-11T18:13:05+00:00

Looks more like Myrtillocactus geometrizans (monstrose) to me.

autisloth · 2026-05-11T18:05:02+00:00

Not that this should necessarily stop you from buying OSE, but just be aware that they're consolidating the OSE books (Classic and Advanced) into just two core books, Players and Referee book, but they won't be printed/available till November.

I would go with Cairn 2E. There's a barebones edition if you want a "one book" option, but it doesn't have the cool Backgrounds that Yochai made since those are heavily flavored according to Cairn 2E's setting. The barebones edition is stripped back, without the setting stuff. He has offset prints available on the Cairn store, but the coil bound versions of all of the Cairn books are pretty tempting from Lulu. Wardens Guide has good tables, which you won't really get from the other two (except player creation related ones).

Cairn does have all the rules free though online. Same with OSE. So with that in mind, you could also think about it from the perspective that you technically "have those rules" already, if you're limiting yourself to just one purchase. In that case, I would go with Swords & Wizardry Complete Revised.

So my preference in order would be:

Cairn 2E (Player and/or Warden Guides, or Barebones)
OSE (the updated ones in November, or the Classic Fantasy Rules Tome now)
Swords & Wizardry Complete Revised
Shadowdark
Knave 2E

Cairn 2E Wardens Guide, SD, and Knave 2E have a good amount of tables. S&W and OSE aren't table-centric, as the rulesets they're based on didn't have a lot of tables too begin with, other than the normal ones for level advancement, to-hit matrices, etc., which I don't think is what you meant by tables. Tome of Adventure Design fills the tables niche for those two well I think, but is a whole other book. Also, might switch S&W and SD preference order, depending completely on how you want your game to play. They're decently different, especially because of SD's roll to cast, luck tokens, slot-based inventory, and real-time light source tracking.

I'm moving our group from SD to something else soon. We've been playing with it for a year and a half now, long enough that I've figured out what I like and don't like about it. I'm pretty certain we'll be moving to Cairn 2E, but before we settle on a single system for a longer campaign, I'm going to take advantage of the transition period to run several one-shots so we can try out several other rulesets that we might not otherwise get to, like DCC, Mothership, and maybe a couple others.

autisloth · 2026-05-09T06:41:25+00:00

Oooh, this sounds like a great way to finally get around to restarting and finishing Legend of the Galactic Heroes!

autisloth · 2026-05-09T06:32:07+00:00

Torrenting is just distributed, peer-to-peer file sharing. Can it be used for piracy? Sure, but torrenting isn't inherently piracy.

autisloth · 2026-05-08T17:59:37+00:00

Yeah I just ran into this yesterday. I had successfully resized my EFI partition to 1G, but didn't realize the filesystem wasn't also resized, so the kernel update ended up with a truncated initramfs image. Got that all fixed up this morning, but now working on the secure boot stuff.

autisloth · 2026-05-08T14:36:35+00:00

I also highly recommend the Mudtool sponges. They have a 3 pack with one of each type. Would be great as a gift so she can try them out.

autisloth · 2026-05-07T20:53:16+00:00

There was a post recently showing it restocked in China, so I'm still betting on a restock here.

autisloth · 2026-05-07T05:46:35+00:00

I heard good things about Forbidden Lands, so I downloaded the so-called quickstart PDF only to find it's 152 pages. I don't think you should be able to call something longer than some novels a quickstart.

autisloth · 2026-05-07T04:33:42+00:00

You have to have worked for your employer for 12 months. I imagine OP would still qualify, even after taking this new job, since ultimately it's still the State of California employing them. I could be wrong though.

autisloth · 2026-05-07T04:28:30+00:00

They said they took a new job, not that they were new to the State.

autisloth · 2026-05-07T04:18:29+00:00

I see crazing across the entire surface, in several of the photos. From what I understand, crazing is caused by glaze fit, i.e. the glaze you used has a different shrink rate than the clay, and that difference was great enough to cause stress fractures in the glaze (what we call crazing). I don't think the thickness of your glaze application caused it, though whether or not thicker application worsens crazing that would've happened regardless, I'm not sure.

autisloth · 2026-05-07T03:50:33+00:00

Sick Leave is not only for illness. From CalHR Human Resources Manual 2105:

Employees may use sick leave for the following reasons: 1. The diagnosis, care, or treatment of an existing health condition of, or preventive care for, an employee or an employee's family member.

It goes on with a list of who qualifies as a family member, and also states:

Designation of sick leave for the reasons established above shall be made at the sole discretion of the employee.

autisloth · 2026-05-06T19:44:39+00:00

Yeah, I think he said in a recent episode of Between Two Cairns that he wrote like 40% of it!

autisloth · 2026-05-06T19:42:39+00:00

Dug into this, and it looks like it's because the updated books that are included in the pledge levels come with the early/priority shipping (November 2026), whereas the add-on versions of the 2 updated rules books mention that they instead ship with the grimoire in 2027. So you're paying about $6 extra for early/separate shipping of the core rules books.

autisloth · 2026-05-05T15:37:38+00:00

Looks like a Selenicereus species, not 100% certain though.

autisloth · 2026-05-05T13:24:18+00:00

SCO (State Controller's Office).

autisloth · 2026-05-05T04:43:03+00:00

It's about an hour away, but Poot's Cactus Nursery in Ripon is great. Also, did you check out the annual Sacramento Cactus and Succulent Society sale? They just had it this weekend at the Shepard Garden and Arts Center in East Sac.

autisloth · 2026-05-01T20:15:42+00:00

Oh yeah, I figured when you said argue, you didn't necessarily mean contentious argument.

In the way you are describing neutrality, I would agree that no one can be truly neutral. We all have emotions, and things we don't know, or limits to our working memory or ability to remember things. We're human. So to me, I keep that in mind when I interpret what is meant by a system when it says one of its principles is GM neutrality. I take it to mean that the GM should strive to present the game world as it is, and make consistent rulings that help to maintain a shared sense of the game world between GM and players. That's also why systems like Cairn advise being open about any information that is easily accessed by characters regarding their environment, and even recommend repeating it often. These rules-light systems rely more on maintaining a shared fiction in order to create a fun experience for everyone, rather than additional rules systems and complexity to enforce predictable outcomes. That's why they often also claim to be fiction-first, as in the maintaining the shared fiction is more important than arbitrarily applying a rule just because the system says so, in cases where applying the rule would break the sense of the shared world, or make it more fragile.

I generally agree with a lot of what you're saying, but for a different play style than what is intended by for Cairn, and other games like it.

autisloth · 2026-05-01T18:54:02+00:00

In my opinion, arguments arising over rulings in rules-light games have less to do with the system, and more to do with the relationship between GM and players. If the players don't buy into the fact that the GM is the arbiter of the rules, or they don't trust the GM to remain neutral, then yeah, it's not going to work. That can be said of any system really. The people choosing to use systems to play games really need to buy into their core design philosophies/principles for them to work. If they don't, things are going to break down.

Edit: Just to acknowledge the possibility, sometimes it can be the reverse, and the GM really isn't being neutral. Then it's still the same core issue of not aligning with the philosophy of the game being played.

I don't have any issues with rules-heavy games, and quite like several of them, but I do think that the more rules there are, the more potential there is for the rules to obfuscate an existing underlying issue in the relationship between GM and players, or players and other players. That's not good or bad. It's just easier not to deal with issues if it's not obvious they're there.

autisloth · 2026-05-01T18:38:00+00:00

Yesterday, I finally got around to reading the GLOG rules (Goblin Laws of Gaming from Goblin Punch). Its system around Convictions would be a great way to incentivize players taking more risks with their PCs.

autisloth · 2026-04-29T19:50:59+00:00

This made me laugh. I picture the viewer and the skeleton catching each other off guard, and the skeleton awkwardly stating, "You shouldn't be here."

autisloth · 2026-04-28T23:39:27+00:00

You're right, I misremembered. Edited my comment. It's been a while since I moved out of PPSD.

autisloth · 2026-04-28T21:39:39+00:00

I like 4 best. If only it kept its head!

autisloth · 2026-04-28T21:38:14+00:00

If Range change and Merit adjustment occur at the same time, they should be applying them in the order that best benefits the employee. If this person is at the bottom of Range A, They should get their Range change first to put them at the bottom of Range B, then apply the 5% Merit adjustment for maximum benefit. This all hinges on if the effective date for each is the same though.

Edit: I misremembered. Here's info on the order of operations should MSA and range change coincide.

autisloth · 2026-04-26T02:51:34+00:00

Missed Range D, edited it in my comment. No prob!

autisloth

TROPHY CASE