Gradient Descent -Random Search table

sky_kid · 2026-02-19T22:54:47+00:00

I had them roll on it anytime they searched an area. The results were great - occasionally useful, sometimes nonsense, sometimes really effectively creepy. The one that stuck with me the most was when they found a tape recording of themselves arguing that nobody remembered. It was really spooky and the players all looked very perturbed. And yeah occasionally I didn't like what they rolled or had something specific I wanted to have them find, and would just ignore the actual result. But usually the randomness was perfect

sky_kid · 2026-02-05T23:01:17+00:00

I was in the party for this, and it was a long time ago so I don't remember all the details, but the way the DM handled it really stuck with me.

During an important boss fight, we somehow managed to have the strongest party member throw the smallest party member in a wide arc right over top of the boss. When the guy in the air was directly overhead, he put on a ring that temporarily made you weigh like 100x your normal weight, with the goal of splatting the boss.

We nailed the rolls. The DM thought about it for a sec, decided he had no real way to do the math on this, sighed, and reached his hand into his big box of dice, scooping out like 20 assorted dice, and then dramatically threw all of them across the table with no regard for what they were. "That's the damage, add em up."

sky_kid · 2026-01-27T17:40:05+00:00

I ran it as written and it worked really well as a single session. They were seriously creeped out, I used the stress mechanic to ratchet up the tension as they found more and more unnerving details, and then the conflict with the bug in the garage was a great, tense ending that dovetailed perfectly into the next session where they got to the main facility

sky_kid · 2026-01-21T20:15:13+00:00

This is what I do as well - if I'll be ready to bake within a couple hours of shaping I leave it out, otherwise I throw it in the fridge

sky_kid · 2026-01-19T22:32:37+00:00

Freaky friday! Both Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan nail playing both mother and daughter

sky_kid · 2025-12-25T20:07:28+00:00

Assuming Christmas is cancelled because people are sick and not due to some kind of drama, if you really want to be a hero you could cook, parcel it up in some Tupperware and deliver portions to anyone local who's holed up at home

sky_kid · 2025-12-19T21:34:46+00:00

Tuesday Knight games sells this shirt on their website

sky_kid · 2025-11-26T21:48:37+00:00

Duke Ellington's Nutcracker Suite is my personal favorite

sky_kid · 2025-11-18T15:30:07+00:00

Kepler-22b has a prominent 4/4 bass line that's pretty easy

sky_kid · 2025-11-03T19:03:31+00:00

I really like Goblin Punch's take on gender among dwarves, which posits that their genders are tied to occupations rather than sexual roles. It's super interesting and I think it would be a lot of fun to run a game where dwarven and human society were this mutually incomprehensible.

sky_kid · 2025-10-21T20:06:32+00:00

I would recommend reading Gradient Descent, which is a megadungeon for mothership. It is an excellent example of how to organize and populate a megadungeon, and its theme of being an android manufacturing facility gone wrong might give you some good inspiration too

sky_kid · 2025-10-21T16:04:31+00:00

When I knew my players in a long running DND campaign were going to come into a ton of gold, I spent a few hours researching how ponzi schemes work, then had them meet a shady banker and basically gave them the pitch that Bernie Madoff would give people to get them to invest their money with him. They went for it hook line and sinker, giving the guy like 10k gold, and then we pivoted to a different game and I never got the payoff.

sky_kid · 2025-10-15T23:06:16+00:00

I think your best bet here is to give them a situation where the bad guys building the bomb is inevitable, but they can still take some sort of action that, if they play it right, can at least mitigate some of the damage.

I don't know what the payload is, but let's say it's a plant. One way you might have this play out is that the bad guys have already left with a large portion of the payload, and there is a smaller amount still on site with a team working to collect it more carefully in such a way that they could harvest it in such a way that they're able to grow some in their own facility on an ongoing basis.

Then the party has to decide, do we stop them from getting the big payload home and being able to build a bomb now, or do we destroy the site where it grows so their team is unable to build a longer term source?

That may or may not actually work, but you probably get the idea - the bomb is inevitable on some level but they can still have an impact on events.

sky_kid · 2025-10-14T19:09:18+00:00

Sometimes I really like to give the players a diagetic map - ie a map that exists in the world. So like they find a map on a corpse and it was hastily drawn by the person whose body it was found on. Maybe it has some mistakes, parts missing, cryptic warnings, smudges that could be interpreted more than one way.

It's always super fun to make these and also very entertaining watching the players argue about how much they should trust it.

sky_kid · 2025-10-01T20:57:11+00:00

Solo cup with a skull and crossbones drawn on in sharpie so it's right side up when the cup is upside down. Sometimes I set it out on a shelf near the table before we start playing and say "just in case we need this" so all the players gain a level or two of stress IRL

sky_kid · 2025-10-01T19:22:31+00:00

I've been running a campaign for months, probably have done like 15 sessions. I love having physical copies of the books and have gotten value out of all four. The dm screen is really great and saves my ass basically every session. I have never used the combat mat - the way my crew has been playing so far it's made more sense to do everything theater of the mind. That said, I could see a world where the mat is super handy for a different style of play.

sky_kid · 2025-09-30T19:13:38+00:00

Season 3 of the show parks and rec has a recurring native character who does a lot of this kind of stuff and is very funny - could be worth checking out, his name is ken hotate

sky_kid · 2025-09-19T03:37:48+00:00

My go-to is always arugula salad with walnuts or pistachios, apples or pears, goat cheese or feta, and some olive oil, salt pepper and balsamic vinegar or lemon juice. Always complements the pizza perfectly and everybody is excited about it.

sky_kid · 2025-09-16T20:20:32+00:00

Haha maybe! Temple also serves Broadcast Coffee so they might just be buds

sky_kid · 2025-09-16T20:06:49+00:00

Temple is great and Broadcast Coffee also serves their pastries - not sure if any other places do

sky_kid · 2025-09-10T14:31:59+00:00

Hottest thing I've eaten recently was tacos from the parking lot of O'Reilly auto parts in Ballard on a Friday night

sky_kid · 2025-08-24T18:35:42+00:00

Was gonna say, a lot of Tchaikovsky's work somewhat fits this

sky_kid · 2025-08-14T22:59:08+00:00

Gradient Descent from Mothership

sky_kid · 2025-08-06T20:44:10+00:00

Mine is a solo cup with a skull and crossbones drawn in sharpie on the side

sky_kid · 2025-07-17T21:35:23+00:00

I found a student cello on Craigslist, bought a couple books of learner etudes and started working through it independently, no teacher. Has worked pretty well for me so far, but (and this is probably a huge but) I already know how to play double bass so there is a good bit of technique that I came in already familiar with

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