Dandyman

One Day (TM) I want to do this

Honestly, I really like the idea fighters having access to a bunch of low power utility spells and moving wizards to pure antagonists. Like if we're rolling with "was a solider, but the war's over", that's plenty of reason to have some useful-for-soldiering spells on hand.

Good news! Scarlet Hollow episode 5 is out!

Bad news! I have forgotten everything!

Good news! I get to play Scarlet Hollow again!

Continuing my trend of being extremely productive on the blog this year, here's a follow-up to my "What do people know about the Mythos?" post

throneofsalt.blogspot.com/2026/02/what...

For a moment I thought "holy shit they added giants to TWD?" but then realized this is not a literal enormous head.

I find a lot of the "heritage" , "ancestry" etc options that have emerged lately are still trying to double-dip into the species category, just like with "fantasy race".

I think this is more a "players seeking fun in games that doesn't support the fun they're trying to have" situation. The seeking itself isn't the issue, its the mismatch that causes larger issues when folks are trying to force their way through something that won't work on some fundamental level.

To be alive in this era

I have inklings of what to do with the Tuatha, but nothing settled yet. The complexity of trying to figure out what an elf is when you don't have Tolkien to codify it.

Yeah for something I decided to include off the cuff it's proven a really helpful format.

Remaking LotR With Only Public Domain Sources Foot of Mt. Ashitaka, Takahashi Hiroaka Last summer I had the chance to go see Fellowship of the Ring in concert. Great show, movie still s...

Last summer, i asked myself "I wonder if you can ship-of-Theseus Lord of the Rings out of only public domain materials?

Answer: Yes, you absolutely can. Had an absolute blast with this one.

throneofsalt.blogspot.com/2026/02/rema...

Oh. Oh no.

I have just learned that the cast of Water Margin includes the 72 Earthly Fiends, a number very conveniently shared by the demons of the Ars Goetia. My inner hack is now demanding a crossover on his desk yesterday like he's J. Jonah Jameson

Oh the joy of finding a perfect art piece that is solidly public domain in country of origin but status unknown in the US because we, of course, don't use the Rule of Shorter Term.

Woof. You know you've gotten rusty with the blogging for a while when you can't remember where all the good public domain art of knights and shit is.

(I remembered Henry Justice Ford and Sidney Sime, at least)

All right Discord, weird swerve to just send everyone a "return to IRC chat" message like that

You might be onto something...

The Keep on Candcor Hill Top post of r/candcorhill (May 2025) The Keep on Candcor Hill "Nodens"; 1983~84?  Self-published B/X D&D   The   Keep on Candcor Hill  is ...

Unfamiliar with the Keep of Candcor Hill? You shouldn't be! I did all this cutting-edge RPG archaeology to make sure people know!

throneofsalt.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-...

Just hit credits on TR-49, which is an excellent use of $7 if you've got it lying around.

Really, really glad that this genre of database / deductive reasoning puzzle game is taking off; if y'all have any recs (already played Obra Dinn and Roottrees), let me know

Dug up an old project for this post. Collegeiate experiments in alternate history, which while something of a mess produced a decent number of ideas that got carried forward, including Lighthouse

throneofsalt.blogspot.com/2026/02/frag...

Actually it looks like I rolled Inner System first, then when I rolled for the thruster it kicked me to the outer system table and that played hell with the payload. Ideal playtesting edge-case, honestly.

Well, got it figured out now which makes this a whole lot easier

No wonder I was losing my mind trying to find the stats, I didn't realize they were in a A-Base.

And, I think I didn't realize that there are both inner and outer system variants for the DeLeval and was using the outer one by mistake.

Thanks for the help, it's making a lot more sense now.

They were named the wrong thing to begin with and no one caught the error until it was too late.

@andrewdoull.bsky.social I am in desperate need of help:

How are low-quality rockets supposed to be built? I've ended up in a situation (DeLeval + inner system payload + froth refinery) where there's no way to calculate my rocket's final mass or thrust

Public domain sci-fi is "fun" (negative), sometimes - you're reading along about a psychic martian chilling in Angkor Wat (as one does), and then out of nowhere the main character just says some shit that reminds you that Current Events are actually Recurrent.

Thanks for the reminder that I need to see if the library has Imaro

Part two of my quest to answer all 100 of @ktrey.bsky.social's burgeoning blogs questions continues apace

throneofsalt.blogspot.com/2026/02/burg...

It's a real pity: i slept on CAS for ages but found that I like his work best out of the three. He had a real gift for comedy and I love the sense of "throwing gonzo shit at the wall because it's fun" I got from his stuff.

I've actually been running into this issue trying to work on a public-domain mashup project - there aren't many pre-1930 works out there that do much myth-building or pantheon-making

aaaaaaaaand bookmarked