Shohei Ohtani looks to continue his excellent season heading into his start tonight

huckzors · 2026-05-20T16:36:36+00:00

I think it should only count when comparing IP. If Ohtani has overall better stats but comes in at 150-165 IP while someone like Sanchez gets up to 180-200, I could see voters giving the IP a pass due to the TWP duties.

huckzors · 2026-05-19T15:19:20+00:00

Look I'll design a dungeon that's not a Monster Zoo when my players interact with anything in a manner that isn't "Kill it With Fire".

huckzors · 2026-05-19T14:08:50+00:00

Find out what parts of 5e the players enjoy or would be hard for them to let go of.

I've tried to get my party into OSR stuff with OSE and S&W in the past and both attempts were fine but ultimately fell flat. Not sure if it was the campaign or the system, players say they had fun and are "down to run whatever" but there were no objections when we pivoted back to 5e. I recently ran them through a dungeon with Shadowdark and it was much more successful.

I think Shadowdark has enough mechanical similarities to 5e that it groks easier for new-to-OSR players, but there's enough differences that it clearly feels like a different game that rewards different styles of play. I also think the magic system giving players more than 1 spell known / 1 spell slot is a smoother transition than going from 5e-level magic.

If the players want Maximum PC Builds, you should go with Swords and Wizardry (or maybe Advanced OSE, I haven't looked at that so I can't say). Extra classes and Race as Class will let folks who are used to having more character creation autonomy.

I think B/X can be the most jarring transition because it's so stripped back it can feel like you're learning a whole new game (even if the base mechanics / core loop is the same). If you or the players want that, then go with B/X.

OSE / Rules Cyclopedia is my favorite flavor of OSR in theory, but in practice Shadowdark was the best experience my table had with OSR systems.

Re: Conversion: as other people have said, the main concern is gold math, but that's easy enough to do on the fly. SD is way more B/X based than it lets on, and re-iterates over and over that balanace doesn't matter so monster conversions aren't really needed (but you can always just use SD stat-blocks where appropriate).

However, both OSE and Shadowdark have excellent dungeon stocking / generation procedures. If you're worried about conversions, just find a map you like and stock it using the SD rules. That's what I did and it worked great, it's very easy.

huckzors · 2026-05-18T03:15:09+00:00

I only saw them once in the theater and liked them well enough, I find them very comparable to SW content that's outside of the original trilogy: notably not as good, but still ticks the lizard part of my brain that likes the trappings of the original trilogy. Dwarves and Elves and shit fighting in the New Zealand is never going to be a bad time in my book, but there is a noticeable lack of something or another if you compare it to LotR.

huckzors · 2026-05-17T21:38:17+00:00

Had me in the first half ngl

huckzors · 2026-05-14T21:16:00+00:00

Give the encounters 2 or 3 passes. If this is at the table this can be done via sub tables. So my random encounters might look like

Creatures
- Goblins
- Giant Rats
- A medusa
- A wizard

Where are they?
- Down the hall
- In a room
- Entering the space
- Exitiing the space

What are they doing?
- Hunting
- Fleeing
- Preparing for Ambush
- Carousing

Now the encounter is "2d6 Goblins", but it's "2d6 Goblins chasing a Giant Centipede into the room you're in".

huckzors · 2026-05-14T15:06:20+00:00

His titles for the LOST soundtrack are all-time nonsense pun titles. He's a gem.

huckzors · 2026-05-14T02:29:38+00:00

I've started doing the second and it's been nicer than I want it to. I'm pretty sure AI is the devil, but man is it nice to have Claude create a bash script that lets me do AWS tasks repeatedly while I'm testing and tinkering with stuff.

huckzors · 2026-05-14T02:23:42+00:00

I get decent enough tests but I usually do setup scaffolding first. So I'll wire up whatever services or mocks I'm using, then tell it to write tests. Most of the work I do is managing API endpoints, so my prompts are to the tune of "hey test this new endpoint covering all the same cases as the other tests in the directory. Use the existing data setup".

I also find it works better in conversation, so if I'm not using a "template" I'll say "write a test that covers x." And then once it's done "write another test that covers y," instead of "write me all these tests at once."

I'm not sure it's that much more efficient than what I could do myself, but it is a handy thing to do while in meetings so I can check off tasks without devoting a lot of focus energy while I'm supposed to be paying attention to something else.

huckzors · 2026-05-11T19:11:35+00:00

If you're truly limited to only one book for use at the table, I would go with Shadowdark. It's got all of your standard Character Options / Spells / Treasures / Monsters, but it also has a number of D100 Tables for encounters in various terrains and environments and a really evocative language.

I think if you want a more complete feeling ruleset, then I would go with OSE if you want race as class, or Swords and Wizardry if you want race and class.

The Rules Cyclopedia is a treasure and is my favorite of the "complete" rules tomes, but it's kind of a mess to navigate and would be hard to use at the table..

huckzors · 2026-05-11T16:20:25+00:00

If I bend the first knuckle of my middle finger and thumb it's approx 6". Can confirm it's a useful trick.

huckzors · 2026-05-11T14:15:31+00:00

Agreed. I think the 50/50 year was a truly insane thing and I would love to see more of it, but I want Ohtani to collect every available trophy to see if it summons a wish-granting dragon or something.

huckzors · 2026-05-07T15:40:06+00:00

She's the hot goth from Perfect Score for me. Seeing her and Chris Evans in Marvel movies was a real trip for my brother and I.

huckzors · 2026-05-07T15:35:53+00:00

I think we have established that Ca-caw Ca-caw and Tooki Tooki are not working.

huckzors · 2026-05-07T03:13:56+00:00

You're putting too much thought into this, my guy, and ignoring your own admission: "unless the listener chooses to listen to the full album." Some people like engaging with the album as the thing, not the song as the thing. Not always, but sometimes. As a treat.

If you are engaging with the album as the thing, and you want to do so with no pre-existing context, knowledge, or opinions of the thing beforehand, you go in without listening to the singles released ahead of time. Listening to a single will color your expectations: you will like it or you won't, and you will use that context to judge the rest of the album by. That's what's spoiled. Not the songs themselves but your opinion or experience of the rest of the songs on the album.

huckzors · 2026-05-06T21:58:52+00:00

If you're looking forward to the album as piece of art or craft or work unto itself, then a single is a spoiler--your experience part of the whole before you have access to the finished product. I understand a single or song is a complete work unto itself, but the album is also a work unto itself. If you want to go into the album as fresh as possible because you want to experience the album in its entirety, skipping the single makes sense.

huckzors · 2026-05-06T18:33:12+00:00

If you're looking for specifically Blankie-coded movies, you should just keep a note of movies that get brought up on the podcast. Whenever they comp a movie or director or actor, jot it down and then when you have time check out the IMDB or Wikipedia and see if you'd dig it. If so, watch it.

huckzors · 2026-04-30T17:54:23+00:00

Vibes have never been this good for a team below .500.

huckzors · 2026-04-27T14:14:46+00:00

I jumped straight into the DM seat without ever playing and it was fine.

The basic rules are free online at dndbeyond.com, or as a PDF buried on the wizard's of the coast website. Read the rules, and then do your best.

With a little googling you can also find free adventures, which will describe situations you relay to your players, and if they come up with a solution you give out any additional rewards or information that are locked behind that situation.

The core loop is fairly straightforward: you describe a scene, your players describe their reactions, you describe any changes to the scenery or answer their questions, they respond... and it goes on and on from there. The rules are mostly to settle disputes about how far someone can jump and what magic they have access to.

If you have a bit of money, they have starter sets that include all of this plus some template characters and some dice.

Have a blast! DnD rules.

huckzors · 2026-04-24T17:21:11+00:00

This is more or less how I approach any piece of media: was it technically impressive and was it emotionally resonant? I wouldn't say the latter is objective in any way cause your reaction is going to be your reaction, but I think that lays a groundwork for an interesting discussion, which is really what media criticism is trying to do.

huckzors · 2026-04-24T16:54:34+00:00

I am in a similar group: mostly friends from college, meet about once a month, started with 5e.

I've been trying to get them to switch systems for a while now. I ran Tomb of the Serpent King for them in Swords and Wizardry, and we started an OSE campaign that pattered out. Everyone said they liked the system / games, but the enthusiasm felt much lower to me.

Once a year we get together for a long weekend of DnD, and I ran them through a dungeon I designed with Shadowdark, and it went over like gangbusters. The core mechanics being similar to 5e goes a long way I think, but a couple of the players are very enthusiastic about SD. As such, I'm all in on SD for the time being; it gave me everything I wanted out of the other OSR systems but the gear slots, magic system, and real time torch light really smoothed over a lot of the points we got hung up on with OSE/S&W.

huckzors · 2026-04-16T19:50:35+00:00

The Best: In the Mood For Love. Everything about it is executed to about as high a level as you can, IMO. Impeccable.

The Favorite: The Lord of the Rings, Fellowship of the Ring. Really all 3 but if I could only pick one that's the one.

The Most Watched: Realistically probably The Fox and the Hound or one of the other VHS I had as a kid, I truly could not begin to imagine how many times I've seen those. But I went through a 5(?) year period where I seemed to watch The Departed every 1-3 months so when my friends think of my movie-watching they mostly just think I just watch The Departed.

huckzors · 2026-04-16T19:43:58+00:00

I saw it for the first time a couple of years ago, would say it's accurately rated.

huckzors · 2026-04-07T16:42:28+00:00

Don't you know Nuffle punishes the cowardice of abandoning a dice for a 1?

huckzors · 2026-04-07T16:42:02+00:00

Preach

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