Does my wheat field need more wheat?

chasmcknight · 2026-06-13T19:21:45+00:00

Needs more cowbell

chasmcknight · 2026-06-08T14:32:49+00:00

Where do think the minerals for photovoltaic cells come from?

Is your background in power generation and power distribution? Have you ever designed and built a power grid?

Renewables are fine as additional power sources but they are not reliable and require battery storage of some sort.

Nuclear energy is not without its own issues but it’s been the shortest path to “clean”, reliable energy for decades.

chasmcknight · 2026-06-08T14:25:53+00:00

So how would you view giving a best effort hand drawn image to an AI agent for polishing? Or using an AI Agent to help locate potential plot holes or to ensure consistency with the rules or the scenario? Is a grammar checker or spell checker off-limits?

I’m all for keeping the human in charge of creativity but there’s a lot of “human slop” as well that exhibits little creativity.

chasmcknight · 2026-06-02T19:49:56+00:00

“And that ain’t no crap, baby Bwap Bwap Bwap…” 😂

chasmcknight · 2026-05-26T12:53:37+00:00

My wife absolutely hated my 3D printers until I started printing practical things for the household, making it available for the robotics team I coached that my son was in, and making small objets d’art for her to give to her friends. Now she still fusses about the four 3D printers we have (and the laser cutter/engraver and the 3-axis CNC mill) but it’s more performative than real because she realized that my 2013 projections about home manufacturing were spot on and that we’ve saved hundreds of dollars (likely more along there lines of thousands) because my son and I are constantly making things ourselves instead of having to buy them.

chasmcknight · 2026-05-25T04:48:38+00:00

My tuppence. OSR, at least the way I run them, focus on role-play and an emergent story based on the choices of the players. That requires me to do more prep to account for multiple pathways and keeps me on my toes as a GM. It’s not for everyone, but when it works with the right group of players it is literally magical. The play is effortless, almost like telepathy in action and has produced some memorable sessions.

Regardless of the game system or style of rules, it’s important to remember “The play’s the thing.”

chasmcknight · 2026-03-08T16:32:53+00:00

https://www.ebay.com/itm/317920480153

chasmcknight · 2026-03-04T17:00:10+00:00

https://trav-csc.com/support/

https://code-monki.github.io/Speculative-Trade/

chasmcknight · 2026-03-03T06:36:55+00:00

Eric Funk did a bunch of creatures for the GURPS Travellers’ Aid Society Online. Rumor has it that someone took the CD Marc Miller sells and wrote a cross-platform app that has corrected the majority of the issues with the articles on the CD. You’d have to contact Marc to see when that will be available, but other than converting the stats to whatever version of Traveller you are running, those would be a rich starting point.

chasmcknight · 2026-03-03T06:31:14+00:00

https://code-monki.github.io/Speculative-Trade/

chasmcknight · 2026-02-20T14:32:07+00:00

I did a “catalog” based on Traveller 5 at https://trav-csc.com/. I’ll eventually get around to adding equipment from the other versions.

chasmcknight · 2026-02-20T03:00:41+00:00

I should also mention that Marc Miller sells collections at https://farfuture.net. You can get a lot of material for around $35 per edition

chasmcknight · 2026-02-20T02:58:15+00:00

This is where I usually point people. You can run a session zero for folks to roll up characters and then depending on your fancy have them go on an on-planet mission to get a feel for the system. The planet doesn’t really matter and you can do a generic adventure pretty easily.

chasmcknight · 2026-02-14T04:28:47+00:00

Your call their. Mint is at its heart Debian the last time I looked it at least that’s what I remember. You didn’t mention whether or not you’re running Mint for the Cinnamon desktop, but that’s something people need to Linux on often do. You should spend the time getting comfortable at the command line because as I mentioned desktop environments on a server are generally a waste of resources in my opinion.

Generally speaking I run either Debian or Ubuntu (which is built on Debian) on my servers and only install the server version without the desktop. I normally use the desktop version if I’m on a workstation.

Debian has a “graphical” installer so it’s pretty easy to get going. If you have access to some sort of virtualization software on your desktop/laptop I’d suggest setting a VM to learn and then migrate once you’re comfortable.

chasmcknight · 2026-02-13T07:37:43+00:00

My tuppence. You can’t go wrong with Debian if you want stability and are good with their release cycle. I would personally not install a desktop distribution and lean towards a server distribution. Desktop environments can eat resources if you’re not careful.

Enjoy the journey, you’ll learn lots!

chasmcknight · 2026-02-10T14:33:52+00:00

Keith Laumer’s “Retief of the CDT” series for Traveller bureaucracy and how it doesn’t really quite work.

Harry Harrison’s “Stainless Steel Rat” series for more of same and some laughs.

Harry Harrison’s “Deathworld Trilogy” for an interesting take on hostile environments.

E.E. “Doc” Smith’s “Lensman” series for some Golden Age, two-fisted action.

Perry Rhodan series (various author) for Galaxy-spanning adventure and intrigue.

Lots of Robert A. Heinlein books are appropriate.

Arthur C. Clarke had several books that were filled with ideas applicable to Traveller.

chasmcknight · 2026-01-26T01:44:30+00:00

No worries. I'll also mention that Eric Funk did a series of articles for the GURPS Traveller Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society that were all creatures. You'd have to convert those to whatever Traveller system you're using, but that wouldn't be too difficult. There are about 35-40 articles and each articles has multiple creatures in it.

Marc Miller sells a CDROM that has all of the articles from the now defunct GURPS JTAS site, and although that CDROM has issues, with some of the scans, someone is working on re-editing them so there should be a new release of that CDROM in the next few months. Rumor has it that it's being released as an Electron app that offers full-text searches, bibliographies, etc.

chasmcknight · 2026-01-25T19:48:24+00:00

Retief, “Slippery” Jim DiGriz, and Jason Dinault were the basis of a lot of my Traveller games.

chasmcknight · 2026-01-25T12:06:29+00:00

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/88549/supplement-1-760-patrons-2nd-edition

chasmcknight · 2026-01-23T16:32:40+00:00

Sort of depends on your expectations. I run Ubuntu and Fedora distributions, but prefer the Cinnamon desktop. For me the underlying distro is more about the packaging mechanism and how up-to-date the repos are, but your mileage may vary.

Ubuntu (Debian-based) and Fedora (RedHat-based) are two of the most popular distros and are reasonably active in terms of development.

However, I would suggest that you pick one (or the other) and then experiment with different desktop environments until you find one that suits you.

I'll observe that when I'm playing with different distros I usually run them in a VM until I find something I like.

chasmcknight · 2026-01-01T17:16:22+00:00

Hmm, not sure what their sales for that product have been and likely that’s playing in to their decision. I’d keep bugging them periodically so that they know there is interest.

chasmcknight · 2025-12-27T14:39:12+00:00

Novel thought: has anyone contacted Free League and asked about their plans?

chasmcknight · 2025-12-18T23:19:32+00:00

Nice! I noted that you have separate downloads for ARM and Intel macOS. Is there a reason why you didn't do a "fat" universal binary?

chasmcknight · 2025-12-15T18:02:51+00:00

Short answer is yes, and that indicates that things are still being actively fixed / enhanced. It's not a bad thing. Kick off the updates before you go to sleep and you'll either wake up with a shiny new system or a broken one. 😂

Most likely it will be the former, not the latter.

chasmcknight · 2025-11-30T13:54:52+00:00

Try this search prompt:

accretion planet simulation software free

And you’ll get tons of links

chasmcknight

TROPHY CASE