Dandyman

The Polyps Khannea Sun Szu   Agent Gilliland bursts from the treeline in a shower of broken twigs, a slick silver canister tucked under her arm like ...

In the spirit of the season, I spruced up one of the Mythos monsters that always felt a lacking to me.

Have some polyps: they fly!

throneofsalt.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-...

Decktamer has the best monster designs I've seen in a hot minute but needs one hell of rebalance patch

Precisely. Booklets, zines, pamphlets, tokens printed on cardstock. Game material as curation, rather than hoarding.

That's like, an anti-problem. That's a design solution. That's solving multiple problems at once.

Chess pieces for enemy miniatures, representing different tactical roles, boom, done, point at a rook and say 'this orc is heavily armored"

Conjure your past, as once you were, printing pdfs at the library and making MTG proxies out of a bicycle deck, shitty jpgs, and tape. If people want to play a game, they will find a way to make it work.

This doesn't make the near forecast less ugly, but longterm I foresee a pivot back towards DIY

I think the tariffs accelerated what was already an unsustainable system: not every game needs to be a luxury product with a bespoke card deck or a companion app or a featureless black cube.

Sometimes, print-at-home is enough. Sometimes it //has// to be enough.

I have a feeling in my gut that people are going to pivot to "print at home" games pretty quickly. Still going to be ugly in the short term as people get caught in the mess.

YouTube video by Wanderbots Classic Tabletop RPG Dungeon Crawler - The Secret of Weepstone [Demo]

I went from "know nothing > wishlisted" so fast that time dilation kicked in.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSPp...

I can now add "the guy you go to if you want a Proto-Indo-European insult for your RPG module" to my resume

I have just been reminded that there's a Delta Green supplement with agent profession "Astronaut Corps Pilot" and with this year's contest fast approaching this is dangerous knowledge to have.

Whoa there, can't be getting too self-aware, that's dangerously close to introspection!

Not a single theater in near me has GDT's Frankenstein.

Korra Season 1 vintage brainworms

I mean, the average D&D party are basically the Pinkertons anyway, so this kind of reputation-laundering is unintentional as-above-so-below metafictional genius

Well you let the brain ferment for a bit, then serve with garlic and a bit of mozzarella

Yeah, it was a lot of fun! Going to be weird reading normal books on my commute now.

Like a lot of Americana, hobo signs were likely greatly exaggerated in hindsight. But they're still great.

And here we go, my wrap-up and reflection of my solo mission in @andrewdoull.bsky.social's 60 Years in Space.

What a wild ride.

throneofsalt.blogspot.com/2025/10/60-y...

Counterpoint: Campbell was a stooge and he infected spec fic with his ahistorical monomyth and cursed us with generations of boring-ass protagonists.

Rey being the drifter out of nowhere who saves the day is pure western, and that fits "freaky junkyard lady" perfectly fine.

They are just the perfect alien shape

A Failed Review of the Ultimate Alien Anthology "Boots off the counter, sir!" I have, by hook and by crook, come into possession of another copy of the Star Wars Ultimate Alien Antholo...

In an uncharacteristic display of productivity, have a review of a 20+ year old Star Wars Saga Edition Supplement

throneofsalt.blogspot.com/2025/10/a-fa...

YouTube video by NMBioParkSociety Elephants joyfully react to didgeridoo performance - ABQ BioPark Zoo

Extremely important: I have found the best thing

They're so happy!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNpE...

Kushan Empire - Wikipedia

Fantasy novelists and RPG designers straight up cannot match the Kushan Empire when it comes to wildass crossover settings.

You could reach into your pocket and pull out coins with Zeus, Ahura Mazda, Shiva, and the Buddha on them just while buying lunch.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kushan_...

Best way is to leave a comment! I check them regularly.

Don't have any yet, but watch this space.

It's time for part 4 of my play report series of @andrewdoull.bsky.social's 60 Years in Space: this time round we get to see the sausage-making procedure and make it successfully to Pholus! Now it's just the wrapup post left.

throneofsalt.blogspot.com/2025/10/60-y...

For the granular approach, the Spectral Class section in Crewed Rules should probably have a components table for each site type, with component types grouped together, and with component weight and any special properties listed individually (So as to avoid "is the refinery included in this one?")

From a player perspective, the most important things for me re: rockets are the numbers at the end of the row and maybe the bonus elsewhere due to refinery or robonaut type. Most of the components can be elided or bundled together, since I'm making choices solely by the thrust / fuel cost.

I'll stand by what I said in Part 2; a flowchart of premade rockets for each factory type would be a good alternative for people who want to engage with decision-making without having to do the whole granular shebang.

It's not easy, but there is a mostly-functioning procedure under there.