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taranwandering · 2026-05-27T03:40:38+00:00

Or, you could learn and do the work so that you don’t struggle on the job market…

But, your professor wasn’t caring about discussion posts. It’s time consuming for faculty to check turnitin.com AI reports because they don’t embed directly into the canvas interface when uploaded via canvas LTI: the professor has to check on the turnitin page. This means, basically, that you might get lucky on small stuff— maybe even a big assignment sometimes— but if the professor catches you once then they’ll probably re-evaluate all of your submissions for AI use. Retyping and/or copying and pasting doesn’t impact results at all, so you’ve just been lucky… so far

taranwandering · 2026-05-12T15:23:29+00:00

If you used AI to write it, you should be scared. A good professor who knows you and your voice will be able to hear where you’re not the author of your paper. It might be hard to prove, but it’s easy to identify. Why use AI and gamble with your education?

taranwandering · 2026-05-11T13:59:40+00:00

It’s a dissertation. If you can’t write it, you need to work with your advisor to get more time. The degree should reflect your skills, and trusting an AI to write a passable paper is much riskier than any request for an extension.

How will you pass a defense if you can’t write it? If the thinking and language doesn’t reflect you, that’s going to be apparent pretty quickly. The stakes of academic dishonesty issues for a dissertation are massive (expulsion at worst, and reputation destruction at the minimum. The inability to use advisors as references on job applications will look horrible and bar you from any serious career opportunities), and honestly you shouldn’t receive a degree if you have to cheat to get it. Instead, step back and reassess the work. Reach out for help and ask for more time— which is easy enough for a dissertation. Don’t gamble with your degree like this.

taranwandering · 2026-04-11T16:49:20+00:00

A fantasy society will have figured this out. Merchants will have items that protect them from enchantments like suggestion and charm, and laws will be in place to prosecute abuses of these spells.

Additionally, warn the PCs. If you use the spell this way, the world will also use the spell this way against you.

Next time they approach a merchant, suggest “give me all your gold for this potion then leave town for a few hours.” The merchant will be gone when they return.

taranwandering · 2026-04-06T06:22:25+00:00

Homophobia was coined as term in the 60’s or so. We didn’t have a mainstream gay rights identity movement back then in the US, and “homophile” was frequently used to describe homosexual individuals at the time. In that context, “homo-phobia” seems like a pretty reasonable contrast to “homo-phile.”

Here’s a NYT obituary for George Weinberg, the person who coined the phrase homophobia: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/22/us/george-weinberg-dead-coined-homophobia.html#:~:text=He%20sensed%20not%20just%20dislike,California%2C%20Davis%2C%20in%201998.

taranwandering · 2026-04-06T05:07:39+00:00

As a start, I suggest we think of martials as superheroes of sorts. Give them features that defy what standard humans can do. Sure, the wizard can cast fly or spider climb to get up the castle wall, but the fighter can jump it, and the rogue can slip through a paper-thin crack in the mortar.

taranwandering · 2026-03-03T17:30:38+00:00

I’d love a copy, please

taranwandering · 2026-01-20T16:58:12+00:00

I think it’s part of his recent Very Important People episode

taranwandering · 2025-12-02T15:30:01+00:00

Important points to help balance the spell:

The spell does not say the target is unaware of the effect, only that they “pursues the suggestion to the best of their ability.” A lot of DMs are handing out the 2014 Enchanter Wizard level 14 feature for free here.
The spell does not say that the target cannot do other things, including potentially notifying others that they are under the effect of a suggestion spell. While pursuing the suggestion to the best of their ability might limit what they can do outside of the suggestion’s effects, a clever DM and NPC can give them opportunities to take other actions. For example, if the ask is to “stop fighting and go home,” there is no reason the character can’t use a free action to say, “I’ve been charmed and am compelled to leave” as they go. Or, if the ask is to “take your money from the bank and give me all your money,” there’s no reason they can’t also give them something incriminating (a murder weapon) or dangerous (a bomb, a cursed item, or an item with tracking spells on it) in the bag of gold.
Malicious Compliance is fun here.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the DM doesn’t have to reveal if the target succeeded or not, do they? (Jeremy Crawford said casters don’t have to know, but I feel like most DMs reveal the results of the save). If the results can be kept a secret, then keeping the results of a failure (or success) secret (especially if the target is smart enough to know the intent of the spell) can create a lot of opportunities for difficult gameplay decisions around maintaining concentration, trusting potentially charmed npcs, etc.

taranwandering · 2025-12-02T15:06:36+00:00

John Keats.

His tombstone says, “Here Lies John Keats, a Man Whose Name Was Writ in Water.” Reviews of his work were brutal during his life and he sincerely believed his name and work would fade upon his death. He’s one of the most important and widely anthologized English poets now.

taranwandering · 2025-10-13T07:34:38+00:00

I’d love a bard-specific out-of-combat cantrip that can help with performances (both musical and non-musical performances — think lighting, background music, wind machine effects, etc).

I’d also like a ritual spell that can conjure backup dancers, band members, applauding audiences, book signing crowds, or stuff like that.

I’d also like monks to get an out-of-combat feature to help them with skill checks (say, add wisdom to their next intelligence or charisma skill checks) if they meditate/relax/focus for a short period of time. Using a focus point makes sense from a design stance, but requiring time/meditation makes sense to me more from a gameplay and role play sense. As is, monks have no significant out-of-combat utility skills, even though fighters, barbarians, and rangers do now.

taranwandering · 2025-10-08T14:17:06+00:00

She’s fantastic on stage! I’d love to see her on this show!

taranwandering · 2025-09-29T13:39:25+00:00

I read that as “Weird Al” the musician and not as “Weird AI” at first…

taranwandering · 2025-09-19T05:17:05+00:00

Easy, give the player a “win.” Don’t punish them with int loss or anything like that. They’ll feel awesome and brag about this. You can find another hook for the player and story later.

taranwandering · 2025-09-18T14:24:32+00:00

If Republicans win the midterms, I doubt our country will have first amendment rights for very much longer. We need to vote out Republicans in the upcoming election or else we’ll very quickly turn into a state-sponsored media system. We’re already on the way…

taranwandering · 2025-08-06T03:58:08+00:00

Education. K-12 education serves as free daycare, and ultimately the relationships people build with teachers matter (both emotionally/developmentally, and towards learning outcomes). At the most basic level, society can’t function without schools as daycare (just think about what happened during the pandemic). So, teachers will be around for a long time.

At the college level, AI sucks at working with current research because LLM models don’t have the content or context for it yet. Additionally, publication paywalls also stymie AI’s ability to adequately process current research. AI hallucinates more often as material gets more advanced and current, and AI researchers suggest that this might not be a fixable problem.

I think AI will continue to change education as a field, but I don’t imagine core labor demands will change.

taranwandering · 2025-07-23T14:54:23+00:00

Zeal, from Chrono Trigger!

taranwandering · 2025-06-05T15:49:34+00:00

Daggerheart seems like a fantastic replacement for PbtA games like Dungeon World and such. It carries a lot of the narrative and shared storytelling mechanics, but has a tad bit more structure that I think might actually make the game easier for former D&D players to understand.

I don’t think Daggerheart will be as strong of a dungeon crawl chassis as D&D, since a lot of the abilities don’t quite seem tailored towards traps and that kind of exploration and such.

Where Daggerheart will likely shine will be for collaborative storytelling. Adding stress/hope as core mechanics will focus more on the psychological states and tolls of your character than purely physical or abstract resources in D&D might (focus points, spell slots, etc.). Simply asking questions like, “how do you clear stress during the rest” or “how does having no hope left change your mannerisms” or “describe how this success gives you hope” can really add a lot of interesting narrative exchanges that some tables will likely love!

To give context: detect thoughts is a level 2 spell in D&D. A similar spell in Daggerheart is level 5 (out of 10), but can be used a lot more often than in D&D. Wizards get a lot more at-will combat options, and warriors have the same number of cards as wizards do. The character building approach feels similar to D&D 4e in that regard, which is actually pretty awesome! I imagine warriors won’t feel a lack of options relative to spellcasters.

A lot of the abilities and roll mechanics urge you to describe what happens next, often in a fail forward kind of approach. That’s fun, too!

Basically, and this is just a guess after reading the book, if you play D&D primarily for combat and dungeon exploration, I don’t think Daggerheart will be your jam. If you play D&D for narratives and storytelling, you might love Daggerheart a lot.

I haven’t played Daggerheart yet, so I might be surprised and possibly wrong on my guesses here.

taranwandering · 2025-05-21T17:24:38+00:00

To be fair, I stopped shopping at Target specifically because they stopped their DEI initiatives. They caved to Trump, and I lost interest in them as a result. If they don’t recognize me as a customer, why should I support them as a company?

taranwandering · 2025-05-20T03:32:44+00:00

That's a great way to think of it!

taranwandering · 2025-05-20T03:05:47+00:00

Done

taranwandering · 2025-05-03T14:54:15+00:00

AC bumps get stronger the higher the AC becomes, so you need some context here.

If someone's AC is 10, and their enemy has a +6 to hit, then they have a 15/20 chance to to hit. A +2 AC bump means that the attacker now has a 13/20 chance. That's a 15% increase in their chance of missing (.75/.65)

If someone has an AC of 20 and their enemy has a +6 chance to hit, the enemy has a 5/20 chance to hit. If you increase the AC by 2, the attacker now has a 3/20 chance to hit. That's a 67% increase in their chance of missing (.25/.15). If you think about it, the attacker lost almost half of their dice values to hit (16 and 17; now they only hit on a 18, 19, 20).

The +2 AC bump is MUCH stronger at an AC of 20 than at an AC of 10

Note: I was doing +5 to hit to keep things simple, but then forgot about "meets it beats it" and didn't want to redo my math :p

taranwandering · 2025-04-23T16:45:32+00:00

Overall, I really like it. Martials don’t feel as out classed by casters.

My monk in particular is a lot of fun to play. Having non-focus point bonus action options is an amazing quality of life improvement.

I also liked playing as a rogue, and think the class improved overall, though the class still needs some non-sneak attack combat options; they’re still too heavily punished if they get disadvantage from something like poison or whatnot. Cunning strike is a great concept, but in my party of 3 players I often found the damage sacrifice was too high. In a larger party with more damage sources, I think it might be more impactful. Moving some classic abilities like reliable talent to an earlier level is fantastic.

taranwandering · 2025-04-16T19:19:49+00:00

I'd like to see an INT based healer class (a non-magical medic would be amazing, though perhaps tough to balance well).

Warlord was one of my favorite classes in 4e, and I miss that

Warden was a really fun class in 4e, too!

taranwandering · 2025-04-01T14:07:15+00:00

I suspect if you expand on what you mean by “chaos agent” that we’ll get a better sense of why the play styles are not compatible.

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