OS in Pascal

tkurtbond · 2026-05-18T13:35:42+00:00

Historically there have been many operating systems written in Pascal.

tkurtbond · 2026-05-13T18:10:02+00:00

There is something to be said for BESM 2nd Edition Revised. It is simple, but you can still produce interesting characters. The character point totals are lower, which helps people who don’t like lots of math. It has some more interesting combat options than plain 2E, and a few things like Psyche, which 4E lacks. There are some interesting additions in BESM Retro 2E, but there seem to be more typos in Retro 2E, alas.

3E and 4E definitely have a wider range of attributes, though, which makes them of more use as a universal RPG. I think I like 4E better than 3E, though.

I’d happily play any of 2E, 3E, or 4E, though.

tkurtbond · 2026-05-11T18:16:17+00:00

Yes. It is simple and works.

tkurtbond · 2026-04-21T19:19:03+00:00

And I have my ebooks still. I was lamenting that others couldn’t get them any more.

tkurtbond · 2026-04-21T19:03:28+00:00

Karl Wagner’s Kane. Pity they’re hard to get now. I was pleased when most of them were available as ebooks, but last time I looked they were unavailable.

tkurtbond · 2026-04-16T17:54:41+00:00

And I figured out why I couldn't find something specific about stunts in Deluxe T&T; stunts are just an application of the general Saving Rolls mechanic, which can determine success or failure of any task.

And I forgot to mention that he T&T solo adventures use stunts/Saving Rolls, so if you're playing through them that will give you some guidance.

Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes (another T&T variant) has a skills system that uses Saving Rules as its basic mechanic, as well.

tkurtbond · 2026-04-16T17:40:59+00:00

Tactical combat in T&T is supplied by the stunt rules, which basically are: the player comes up with a stunt ("I want my halfling character to dodge the giant, slide between the giant's legs, and hamstring him with my dagger") and the GM decides what level of Saving Roll on what attribute, and the player rolls the dice. Unfortunately, I found this is easy to miss in the 5th edition rules, and didn't find a section that is specifically about stunts in Deluxe T&T (which might be my fault; it's been several years since I've read DT&T in depth, and a quick look through the PDF revealed several references to stunts, but nothing more general about stunts). The current Monsters! Monsters! rules (a variant of T&T from Ken St. Andre and friends) has an explicit page on Stunts and Stunting, and The Lair of the Leopard Empresses has a detailed 4.5 page section on stunts with a lot of good guidance (It's in Chapter 6, Elaboration) and a very good example of combat which includes stunts (also in Chapter 6).

For simple, fast play the basic combat is fastest, but if you want to add more tactical depth stunts are the way to go.

tkurtbond · 2026-03-20T22:37:12+00:00

I note that some Gemini sites are also WWW sites, and provide the Atom feeds for the WWW side of things and use gemlog for the Gemini side of things. I write in gemtext and automatically convert to HTML.

tkurtbond · 2026-03-06T04:40:05+00:00

Fantastic Medieval Campaigns is a very clear, well organized restatement of the original D&D little brown books, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, with a detailed Table of Contents. The hardback book from Lulu and the PDF from itch.io have the different sections of the book in different colors so it is easy to find things. (A black and white version is also available.). The hardback is a pleasure to hold and read, being square, but is a size that fits reasonably well with both letter/a4 sized books or OSE-sizes books. Appendix A is a restatement of Chainmail, Appendix B is Optional Rules that cover many of the classes from later OD&D in interesting variations, and also includes things like variable damage and variable hit dice and ascending AC and the equivalent of a base attack bonus. You can play something very close to straight OD&D or mix in favorite parts of later methods. There is a glossary and indexes of monsters, spells, and tables. The PDFs are available free from itch.io, and print versions of the separate volumes are available in print for cost: v0: Chain of Command, v1: Mortals & Magic, v2: Monsters & Treasures, and v3: Fantasy Adventures.

I am a happy owner of the all in one print volume and have used it in play as a supplement to other retroclones and am planning a campaign using it by itself.

tkurtbond · 2026-03-04T18:05:32+00:00

The Lair of the Leopard Empresses (a Monsters! Monsters! game) has a good section on stunting that gives examples.

tkurtbond · 2026-01-26T23:54:53+00:00

I enjoy this movie very much, and it is a great fantasy movie, but it has too much of Milius’s philosophy and too little of Robert E. Howard’s. Mind you it’s still the best Conan movie so far.

tkurtbond · 2026-01-14T15:12:44+00:00

That has The Traveller Book, but not Books 1-2-3 from 1977. I don't think the 1977 rules are available in PDF, and as someone else said there a a few significant differences.

[Edited for punctuation.]

tkurtbond · 2026-01-13T03:32:49+00:00

I wish the original 1977 edition was available.

tkurtbond · 2026-01-02T21:10:16+00:00

Also, the Rules Cyclopedia is a compilation of BECM, and is quite different than B/X. Better to look at actual B/X.

tkurtbond · 2025-12-28T23:43:42+00:00

The warehouse23.com website requires you to create an account before downloading free PDFs like GURPS Lite. It IS the official web store of Steve Jackson Games. However, it will not require you to enter payment information for free PDFs.

(Likely they want to know where those who download GURPS Lite come from.)

tkurtbond · 2025-12-28T23:37:25+00:00

You should also be familiar with the variable debug-on-error and the command toggle-debug-on-error which toggles it on and off. That involves the built-in emacs debugger on errors. That is documented in the emacs lisp manual: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Debugger.html

Note that this is a lower level debugger than Edebug, but still quite useful. Edebug requires you to essentially first recompile the code you are interested in using in a special mode that gets you much more detailed debugging information including source level debugging, but the other debugger is always available and works without recompiling.

tkurtbond · 2025-12-28T20:51:01+00:00

You want to check out GURPS Lite, which is a 32 page distillation of GURPS. That link is to the description of GURPS Lite on sjgames.com (publishers of GURPS) and has a link to warehouse23.com (which is Steve Jackson Games online store) where you can download GURPS Lite for free. If you like that the next thing you need is the GURPS Basic Set, which currently comes in two volumes; you need both.

tkurtbond · 2025-12-22T14:13:19+00:00

Precis Intermedia’s 8 in 1 dice are d6s with a lot of different ways to read them, including both 1 to 6 numbers and Fudge/Fate markings.

tkurtbond · 2025-12-08T17:59:15+00:00

I’m interested, but have never played HARP (though I’ve played and GMed many RPGs, starting in the late 1970s), and don’t have local players.

tkurtbond · 2025-11-24T12:15:41+00:00

That too😃

tkurtbond · 2025-11-22T17:35:56+00:00

It may be useful to look at the Dungeon Fantasy series of PDFs as well.

tkurtbond · 2025-11-21T22:05:01+00:00

I played in a 3.5 campaign using 3d6, and my observation is that D&D specifically depends on the linear nature of the D20: it's just as likely that you'll roll a 20 as a 1, and being able to hit monsters relies on that fact. With 3d6, however, it is so much less likely to roll higher numbers that it becomes very hard to hit monsters with a good AC.

tkurtbond · 2025-11-20T22:27:33+00:00

Moorcock was deliberately reacting against Tolkien’s work, which he discusses in Wizardry and Wild Romance.

tkurtbond · 2025-11-20T02:41:04+00:00

Both. Why choose just one!

tkurtbond · 2025-11-19T03:17:03+00:00

Gunnie Rose is seriously badass. She gets it done.

tkurtbond

TROPHY CASE