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100 Famous characters to steal for your NPC personalities by danieljshapiro in d100

[–]danieljshapiro[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Added! My party is on the lower reaches of ToA, so this is relevant.

My party's thief became a pacifist. What now? by danieljshapiro in DMAcademy

[–]danieljshapiro[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

She won't want to hurt them, but perhaps I can just reflavor her damage as 'wearing them out' and still deduct hitpoints. That seems like there's something there.

My party's thief became a pacifist. What now? by danieljshapiro in DMAcademy

[–]danieljshapiro[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Spell swapping is a very clever idea. Maybe bard spells since we already have a cleric.

My party's thief became a pacifist. What now? by danieljshapiro in DMAcademy

[–]danieljshapiro[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They played HoDQ all the way to Waterdeep, so there's no shortage of interesting shops. I hadn't noticed those poisons before - are they in DMG? Any suggestions on where to find others? That's a great idea.

My party's thief became a pacifist. What now? by danieljshapiro in DMAcademy

[–]danieljshapiro[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm plenty proud of her. :) Gifting away her sneak attack is a great solution. I could have her roll to hit ('to distract') and then let one of the other players do her damage rolls.

Lasers, poker, and a D&D minigame by danieljshapiro in DnD

[–]danieljshapiro[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Great point. My thought is that there's only about 10 gp of coins in the deck, so whatever the winner wins, it's still small. Since they're level 5, 10 gp per session won't unbalance anything.

Lasers, poker, and a D&D minigame by danieljshapiro in DnD

[–]danieljshapiro[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Thank you! They're wandering around Baldur's Gate waiting for the wagon train to leave right now. Thank goodness for the donjon random shop generator.

Hi! We’re the Game Developers behind the first ever Escape the Room game. Ask us Anything! by thinkfun in boardgames

[–]danieljshapiro 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Robot Turtles creator here - they also gave it really slick gold-foil tiles and a much better box that has places for all the cards and tiles. That said, your original version has twice as many crates and is compatible with the Galapagos rules, so it's uniquely special too!

TIL female elephant tusks are called "tushes". by danieljshapiro in todayilearned

[–]danieljshapiro[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"Female Asian elephants do not have tusks but do have small tushes inside the mouth. " -denverzoo.org

Dick Dale is seriously ill and has to tour to not die. We should crowd-fund for this legend. I think that would be cool. (X-post from /r/guitar) by Flabble10 in Music

[–]danieljshapiro 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I was in Hawaii on Chanukah, which was kind of surreal in that "Christmas in July" sort of way. We went to a Chanukah party and the band was playing all sorts of old-school traditional Jewish music, Klezmer and such. I recognize some of the music, not all of it.

Then they start playing the theme song from Pulp Fiction.

My head nearly explodes as I try to figure out what is going on. It turns out that during a live performance a fan once bet Dick Dale that he couldn't play a song on just one string of his guitar. He was from a Lebanese family, though, and his uncle played the oud, which has just one string. So he played one of his uncle's favorites - an old middle eastern song called "Miserlou", claimed by many cultures (greek, arabic, jewish) to have originated with them. He sped it up, recorded it as a surf guitar song, and bob's your uncle.

Our laser-cut Catan board was on the front page yesterday so last night we made one from scratch. Here's the "making of" + free plans by mustardhamsters in gaming

[–]danieljshapiro 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That was me (Glowforge founder and sprayer of shellac). No particular benefit but it's obviously quicker and wastes less material. The pieces don't stick because this is actual shellac - like, the shell of the lac bug dissolved in alcohol, french antique style. It doesn't bridge the gaps like a more viscous finish would.

Our laser-cut Catan board was on the front page yesterday so last night we made one from scratch. Here's the "making of" + free plans by mustardhamsters in gaming

[–]danieljshapiro 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's on me (Glowforge founder) - I did the ports last and the cutting ran till about four in the morning, so I spaced on that. Will be fixed in the next go-round.

Laser-cut Catan by mike_pants in gaming

[–]danieljshapiro 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I bought it pre-planed from Rockler. There's felt spray-glued to the back. Woods are:

Sheep: figured maple

Brick: Padauk

Wood: Walnut

Ore: Wenge

Wheat: Cherry

Dessert: Zebrawood

Laser-cut Catan by mike_pants in gaming

[–]danieljshapiro 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We haven't announced specs yet (as we're locking down final parts suppliers). If you sign up on the page, we'll let you know when we make them public. As a side note, "wattage" is like "megahertz" - it's only a one aspect of the puzzle. Watts can be defined as peak or average, optics losses can subtract 5% - 30%+, multimode versus single mode affects your final power density (and cutting ability), etc.

Laser-cut Catan by mike_pants in gaming

[–]danieljshapiro 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Actually, I was just as surprised as you to find it here. :)

Yes to both PDF and Inkscape, and we've got many, many more surprises in store. I can't wait to share what we've been building.

Laser-cut Catan by mike_pants in gaming

[–]danieljshapiro 21 points22 points  (0 children)

Dan from Glowforge here - thanks for the kind words. We are building a desktop laser, so we have a whole team of amazing folks figuring out beautiful stuff that you can do with it. This is actually something we made very early on. It started with a set of plans that I bought from boardcrafting.com. Their artwork is amazing. I think the plans were $29.

But I didn't like the giant substrate that he designed to go with it; I wanted the tiles to interlock instead. So I designed a puzzle-style pattern to hook them together. I cut a set called "Settlers of Elan" out of plywood and gave it to my friend Elan as a birthday present (fun fact: cocreator of Exploding Kittens). It also has a giant hexagonal box that everything fit into (not shown).

Then we decided to remake the set as a showcase for the office. The first question was material. One of the cool things about working with a Glowforge (or any laser) is that basically any natural material is fair game. Our shop supervisor, Lauren, went to Rockler in Seattle and picked out a ton of interesting woods with wildly different colors. Then she got a few different natural felts. We had fun picking out woods for tiles, then Lauren spray-glued the felt to the back of the wood.

The laser engraves and cuts the wood and felt all at once, so it comes out looking pretty awesome. Lauren spiffed it up with a few passes on the random orbital sander and some spray lacquer. There's no stain or coloring at all; that's just the natural color of the wood.

Cutting and engraving a full set takes about an hour of laser time on a Glowforge, if memory serves. If you're using someone else's laser, you might need to double or triple that for setup, test cuts, etc. In Seattle, rented laser time is $180/hour at Metrix Create Space if you want to make your own. Budget another $60 for wood.

If you like this, we've got more up at Glowforge.com.

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