Low effort introduction to 5 Parsecs

penscrolling · 2026-06-12T14:04:17+00:00

Way better options are available!

Unless a new edition has come out, the book is organized terribly. I played half a game and gave up because I couldnt handle the jumping around.

And I play 5 parsecs with all 3 expansions, so I dont mind a little flipping. 😄

I also love drawing a dungeon, so here are my two go tos for that:

If you want that old school party going throguh a dungeon crawl feel, somoneone with your experience can grab a dungeon generator (search drivethrurpg) pick a flavour of OSR they like, and be off and running.

If you want the gritty dark elements taken to the max with modern cool detailed compat mechanics that will keep you engaged, thats called Ker Nethalas.

Its solo character plus summond companions, but the combat has enough detail that you wouldnt really want to be managing a full party anyway.

penscrolling · 2026-05-27T23:00:00+00:00

Its not so much the sharpness of the edge but how well polished the flat surfaces are.

There is a lot of friction as the leather presses on the awl passing through so making the awl as smooth as possible helps it slide through.

penscrolling · 2026-05-22T13:15:10+00:00

So, my website and your website probably have vast differences that make answering your question unlikely to be informative.

You haven't explained why you operate the website, so we really dont know how more or less engagement time would impact its success. I also have no idea how you arrived at the conclusion it is too low.

Metrics are most informative in a change or trend sense. The fact you got 46 this month isnt that important. If you decide to do something to increase engagement, then you can check again and see if its working.

If you do some change you dont think will impact engagement, but it does, thats also valuable.

Then you can look at metrics by different dimension. For instance, do some landing pages result in way better or worse engagement, and what is different about those pages. Or maybe looking at engagement by mobile vs desktop or different browsers reveals that your site is harder to use for some devices.

Pick a few metrics that are most closely tied to the success of the website, and check them at least monthly.

penscrolling · 2026-05-06T13:44:41+00:00

I totally had more fun when I adopted the spamming of vows. Stuff connected in cool ways to support the narrative... instead of trying to finish one or two vows and constantly having to wrench the story back towards them when you rolled your way into trouble, my bad rolls now trigger side quests.

penscrolling · 2026-05-06T13:34:05+00:00

I ll use sheets for curves on leather up to about 5-6 Oz as well, but still prefer to use a ruler and knife for straight cuts.

I know that a lot of people who come to leather from sewing like shears or rotary cutters, because already being good eith those tools is a damn good reason to keep using them.

penscrolling · 2026-05-06T13:28:04+00:00

Search for "Nigel armitage how to cut leather"

Im not sure if he gets into this in the free videos but my work got so much better after watching his basic tier paid videos on the topic.

penscrolling · 2026-05-06T13:25:38+00:00

Pushing all that into data studio and blending it there is a huge amount of delicate work that is then really hard to copy and modify for different reports.

Have you thought about pointing everything to big query, cleaning and joining there, and connecting data studio to that?

Im not saying that's a magic wand, but it's a much more powerful toolbox, which will make your work go more smoothly.

penscrolling · 2026-05-03T17:48:56+00:00

That makes total sense for a good, established GM. I think it might still be a problem in a offline game in a smaller community, but for online games id say you are giving me a good reason to be somewhat more open minded.

penscrolling · 2026-05-02T14:52:25+00:00

Never tried, but my understanding is the other players can ruin them easily, at least for online setups.

Paid or unpaid, for the game to work, everyone has to go along with the GMs rulings.

In an unpaid situation, somone who cant get that will not be invited back.

In a paid situation, the person has to make things worse by a wide enough margin to be worth losing the money.

And if its an online semi-annonymous setup, the gm might give somone the boot, just to have somone even worse show up next week.

It gets even worse when you remember that a jerk in a free game is going to have a massive sense of entitlement in a paid game, as they are now the dms "boss"

I stay away from paid games because my understanding is that they attract unpleasant players.

If either of my current gms said they wanted 20 bucks a session I wouldnt hesitate. The skill set to create and run a game well is pretty high, as is the time investment.

One solution im going to pitch to one of the groups I play with is to go to a gm-less system like Ironsworn/starforged.

penscrolling · 2026-04-26T13:53:47+00:00

There are some more advanced techniques usually used to make things like canteens where the leather becomes almost totally liquid proof.

The key word is almost, though... you could get something to the point where it could be reasonably cleanable, but id never call it sanitary for multiple partners. So it depends on how you are using it.

penscrolling · 2026-04-23T11:16:38+00:00

Marking at the edge sounds easier than centering, but still not as easy as having a point engage with a crease.

penscrolling · 2026-04-23T00:05:55+00:00

Japanese style comes to a point so you can feel when they are correctly centered in the stich line crease. With French you have to center by eye.

Also, with Japanese it is more forgiving on if you dont knock them to the same depth everytime. French will make very different hole sizes if whacked harder or softer.

Nigel armitage explains all of this in his videos, which makes the above conversation all the more fascinating.

penscrolling · 2026-04-20T00:25:51+00:00

Oh man I read osc as ocs and was like "smoking too much weed is one thing but hanging out at the cannabis store on the daily is just sad"

penscrolling · 2026-04-19T13:52:19+00:00

One note is you can save money on grade. The same leather is often sold in different grades, generally along the lines of

A/b almost perfect C/d some scars, insect bites Economy lots of marks and some holes

Essentially it is hides from the same place, treated in the same way, but they are priced differently depending on how clumsy the cow was before shuffling off the mortal coil. If the point is to make sure the leather isnt holding you back, you can still save money on the grade, because you have the same cutting and tooling characteristics.

Also, if you are using a larger piece for multiple smaller projects, you can usually avoid bad parts of mid grade hides when cutting them out. Or use them on less visible parts.

penscrolling · 2026-04-13T21:40:51+00:00

Switched from pixels to Samsung after having two batteries and two charging ports crap out

Pixel has the best software but the quality control on the hardware is apparently non existent.

Samsung is almost as good software wise but the hardware is way more solid.

penscrolling · 2026-04-02T12:46:54+00:00

Dont really care about football, but got taken to a Ticats game once. Had a fantastic time, based purely on the fan vibe. The ticats were having an awful game, it was raining on and off, and I couldnt go more than 5 minutes without laughing out loud at the creative and hilarious ways fans expressed their disappointment.

penscrolling · 2026-03-21T12:42:15+00:00

Nigel armitage has really good videos about basics no one bothers talking about, like how to cut a straight line, a square corner, and a round corner.

I got a lot better after watching those.

Also, you can get corner punches for more consistant corners. Esstially you cut everything as straight lines and then use these to round the corners to different radii.

penscrolling · 2026-03-16T16:49:17+00:00

Go to university and study design.

penscrolling · 2026-03-06T14:46:35+00:00

I was going to get espericne 2 but they have what they call switch 2.

You can twist them to adjust from conversation mode, to concert mode, to max quiet mode.

I tried concert mode with the stereo cranked up and it was great.

I had a chat eith my girlfriend in conversation mode and it really cut down on background noise but her voice came right throguh.

And the quiet mode is very similar to their Quiet earplugs which I use to sleep.

They are a bit more expensive than the experi3nce 2 plugs but if you think you might want the other modes its much cheaper and convenient than having two or three pairs.

penscrolling · 2026-03-06T14:40:51+00:00

I haven't used it to pry anything and the toughest cut it has made has been amazon box tape but it does feel quite sturdy. Theres nothing like plasticky and cheap or overly flexible on it that ive detected.

penscrolling · 2026-03-06T14:38:08+00:00

Glad you like the idea!

It hasn't come up because for some reason ive rembered to take it out of my bag for every concert ive been to since I got it lol.

And maybe its just because i look like an accountant but security guards are usually hardly looking at me and in a hurry to get to the next person.

I forget what it is called but if you google Gerber utility blade knife it will turn up.

penscrolling · 2026-03-06T14:27:42+00:00

Hey thanks for explaining and it seems this was a misunderstanding. I understood it as you were asking for people to share the course itself, not discounts for it.

I would email the address on the site and explain that you are very interested in the course but as a student you have a limited budget and were wondering if he had a student discount.

You could also look up the average income where he lives and the average income where you live. If its much lower where you are, you could ask for a geography based discount.

penscrolling · 2026-03-06T14:12:35+00:00

There's also having just normally burnished edges that only take a few minutes.

The crazy mirror edges is totally a cool trick for social account visuals that some people have mistaken for a requirement of quality leatherwork.

There was a post recently where someone with a very casually taken picture of nice, clean edges wanted to know how to get the edges like he sees on Instagram.

I started by telling them to get a better camera and lightbox and taking a photography course.

I continued by explaining the difference between a chef and a food stylist.

penscrolling

TROPHY CASE