ihsien

I haven’t interrogated the list yet, but it does feel like a statement in the vein of Cloud Dancer.

Curse of Strahd Deep Dive 11 - Til Decay Do Us Part | Critical Lit As we wrap up Chapter 5, all is not well in Vallaki! Never mind the devil cult hobbyists or the rampaging tiger. The coffin maker has six secrets buried in the attic, and they're waiting for a chance ...

Curse of Strahd Deep Dive #11: Til Decay Do us Part. As we wrap up Chapter 5, all is not well in Vallaki! Never mind the devil cult hobbyists or the rampaging tiger. The coffin maker has six secrets buried in the attic & they're waiting for a feast.
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Critical Lit: Curse of Strahd 10 - That's So Wereraven | Critical Lit All will be well! Provided you avoid the murderous man with the barbed devil arm and his eerie collection of identical dolls. Or the incel wizard. The bone thief and his shovel. The priest with a secr...

Curse of Strahd Deep Dive 10: That's So Wereraven. All will be well! Just avoid the man with the barbed devil arm & his collection of identical dolls. The incel wizard. The bone thief & his shovel. The priest with a secret. Keep smiling, because you must. critical-lit.simplecast.com/episodes/cri...

🫡 Top notch trench work, truly.

The werewolves finally make an appearance in the Curse of Strahd deep dive. And what an appearance.

The Princess Bride (Part 1) - November 2025 Bonus Episode | Critical Lit Get more from Critical Lit on Patreon

November bonus content on Patreon! Close your eyes and picture a castle in a low-fantasy setting. A forest of thieves. Giant rats. A sword duel. Chances are you're actually picturing this movie, even if you don't remember you are.
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Critical Lit: Curse of Strahd 09 - Crypt Walk | Critical Lit

Curse of Strahd Deep Dive Episode 9: Crypt Walk. Castle Ravenloft Final Level: Exit here for Entombed Enemies, Plot Devices, Bat Guano, and Bridal Returns. Trust me, you don't want to talk to customer service.
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Critical Lit: Curse of Strahd 08 - Innocents and Insensibility | Critical Lit A cape a day keeps the Dark Powers at bay! Never mind the young woman of indeterminate age in the King's Bedchamber. Just don't use the bathroom if you value your privacy—or sanity. In this episode: C...

Curse of Strahd Deep Dive Episode 8: Innocents and Insensibility. A cape a day keeps the Dark Powers at bay! Never mind the young woman of unspecified age in the King's Bedchamber. Just don't use the bathroom if you value your privacy—or sanity.
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Sure, tradwifery is better than feudal serfdom.

tl;dr: THAC0 is the tradwife of RPGs. Do not romanticize this inelegant and clumsy mechanic.

tl;dr: THAC0 is the tradwife of RPGs. Do not romanticize this inelegant and clumsy mechanic.

A no-brainer in hindsight, but at the time a brave slaying of the THAC0 sacred cow that some misguided old-timers still mourn today. Many of them liked THAC0 as a gate they could keep. Of course, 3e has plenty of other problems, but leaning into addition was never one of them.

As a corollary, Bracers AC 4 were better than Bracers AC 6, rings of protection lowered your AC, etc. With 3rd ed, all the axes were flipped to face the same direction. S o a naked peasant is still AC 10, but now armor and magic items increase AC, and a higher attack bonus is always better.

You can see how this is stupid. Everyone had their own little math game to speed up this process. If you knew your target's AC, you could figure out what you needed to roll in order to hit, and then rolling was just pass/fail rather than subtraction or number inversion or whatever method you used.

went down, since you didn't need to roll as well on your d20 in order to connect with an attack. Made-up numbers ahead: So let's say your level 1 fighter had a THAC0 of 17. If you rolled an 11 on the die, you were 6 numbers short of hitting AC 0. That meant you hit AC 6. Roll a 19, hit AC -2.

Your PC's THAC0 was the number on a d20 that they needed to roll in order to hit a creature with an Armor Class of 0. Keep in mind ACs got lower as they got better. A bog standard human in rags has AC 10. I believe full plate was AC -2 (?), so AC 0 was quite good. As you gained levels, your THAC0

Ok, I'm always up for some THAC0-bashing while my soup simmers. Disclaimer: from memory. So prior to 3rd ed D&D, PCs didn't have an "attack bonus." Instead, they each had a numerical value that indicated how good they were at hitting stuff. It was called THAC0 (To Hit AC 0) & it sucked as a mechanic

Here’s my old-man-yells-at-clouds answer. 3rd ed D&D’s “all numbers go up” rubric was a revelatory experience.

Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula (Part 2) - October 2025 Bonus Episode | Critical Lit Get more from Critical Lit on Patreon

October bonus content on Patreon! Break out the golden bathrobes and horny green mist. Lucy's little quadrouple and their stern, professorial dom turn into pretty effective vampire hunters, despite some initial setbacks. RIP Lucy, you would have loved the Saja Boys.
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Critical Lit: Curse of Strahd 07 - Working Stiffs | Critical Lit Now hiring at Castle Ravenloft! Feeling chained to your desk? Make it more than just a feeling, with a career that will last the rest of your life. Maybe even longer! In this episode: Chapter 4 (Main ...

Curse of Strahd Episode 7: Now hiring at Castle Ravenloft! Feeling chained to your desk? Make it more than just a feeling, with a career that will last the rest of your life. Maybe even longer!
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Libertarianism is always a trauma response. You need more empathy, not less.

Critical Lit: Curse of Strahd 06 - Velcome to ze Dollhouse | Critical Lit It turns out life (and unlife) at Castle Ravenloft is as zany as the town of Barovia is dour. Trade the gloomy mists for the crack of lightning, chanting witches, the clacking fingernails of crawling ...

Curse of Strahd Episode 6: What horrors await within Castle Ravenloft? Marionettes, puppets & faceless dolls galore! Surely there's no metaphor here. As long as you never stop running to catch your breath, you'll be fine.
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Waiting to play Godot.

Critical Lit: Curse of Strahd 05 - Kids These Days | Critical Lit It's 10pm in Barovia. Do you know where you children are? Strahd does, and he has plans for them. Or maybe the hags will get to them first. If only you could tear yourself away from these delicious me...

Chapter 3 of Curse of Strahd reads like a Barovian Career Fair. Choose from: Trapped in Cellar, Doll-like Bride, Buried Father, Ground Into Pie. Or get your degree. You can major in Expectations Management or Accounting.
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Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula (Part 1) - September 2025 Bonus Episode | Critical Lit Get more from Critical Lit on Patreon

September Bonus Content is here for Patreon subscribers! Strahd has us in a chokehold, so we're vamping through 1992's Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula, a Keanu Reeves vehicle (not that one). Gary Oldman chews scenery & Winona Ryder in killer drip.
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Critical Lit: Curse of Strahd 04 - Gnostic Nosferatu | Critical Lit Only some listeners will be able to comprehend the mysteries laid bare in this episode. And only some of those will be compelled to pursue the eternal truth. The rest are condemned to a base existence...

Chapter 2 of our Barovian tour closes with an illuminating look at Vistani leader Madam Eva that should have come much earlier! The Mad Mage is, and Strahd might just be the Demiurge of Gnostic myth. Hylics of the world unite!
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Critical Lit: Curse of Strahd 03 - Lacrimo Ergo Sum | Critical Lit There once was a peasant named Vlad / Who felt neither happy nor sad / With no soul inside / T'wasn't grim when they died / Though the dirt nap did drive them quite mad. In this episode: Lay of the La...

There once was a peasant named Vlad
Who felt neither happy nor sad
With no soul inside
T'wasn't grim when they died
Though the dirt nap did drive them quite mad

^^^ This is our way of saying that in this new episode LIVE NOW we talk all about soulless Barovians without souls (and much more)!

“No one will ever know you died here.”

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (Part 2) - August 2025 Bonus Episode | Critical Lit Get more from Critical Lit on Patreon

August bonus content is here for Patreon subscribers! We wrap up our breakdown of The #DnD Movie: Honor Among Thieves. Don't let AI tell you it's spelled Honour—despite great work by the very British Regé-Jean Page. In fact, don't let AI tell you anything. #ttrpg
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First review up from two folks I admire and respect a great deal. Thanks for checking out the book!