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Great opening sentences, today featuring Peter H. Wilson’s Europe’s Tragedy: The Thirty Years War—

This is all well and good, but it has nothing to do with - totally fails to engage with - what I want to talk about, which the possibilities for low-tech bicycling in various climatological, geographical, and ecological conditions. I can’t wait for you to finish your tedious irrelevancy, so I’ll...

Since 2005, D&D has been primarily a mix of Late Classic Maya and Southern Yuan dynasty bolter porn. Everyone knows this and I trust I won’t have to say any more about it.

You’re probably right. Shorter series would be nice, though.

I would love to see Prince Valiant support, like the PV equivalent of the Great Pendragon Campaign.

Yes, they grow and then stray that large all winter, too.

For me, at least, mind control is part of a distinct realm of experience people normally never enter, and I prefer that using it bring its innately eerie nature into play. In my daydreams, all magic (psi, etc) would have the quality Dan Simmons evokes in his novel The Hollow Man: This is...

I prefer to lean away from anything that feels like making mind control okay, and fill up the opened space with resources for changing minds and winning support that don’t hit my “that’s transgressive” alarms. On the one hand, this includes various sorts of persuasion; on the other hand, it...

No you don’t, I assure you. Understanding of Affliction recedes like like when you’re trying to escape a black hole. :)

It’s hard, and I’m really fortunate in many ways, including Mom retain her sunny nature, without any of the bitter mean attitude that hits a lot of people get with dementia. As for Cisco: his novel The Divinity Student is a common, good starting point, and so is his short story collection...

I hit a DNF (did not finish), and don’t think it was primarily the books’s fault: Black Brane, by Michael Cisco. Cisco is an American writer of weird fiction at level of genius comparable to China Mieville and the like, though far less generally famous. I really like his work. This is his brand...

All also true! (And margraves, who has such a cool title.).

The ability of upper classes to murder people in lower classes actually varied a bunch by time and place. The Holy Roman Empire had a court system that did make it feasible for commoners to press complaints against nobles, and to win; it aimed explicitly at resolutions everyone could live with...

I am enamored of warlocks in 5e because the pact concept go in so many different directions, from Elric to Faust to Dorothy Gayle to Old Castro (the HPL one, not the one the CIA tried to de-beard) to whatever. I’m really easy to seduce with mechanics that a) hook up really strongly to world and...

I feel like I’ve learned what there is for me to learn about starting at 1st level. The last times I ran, I started at (depending on the canpaign) somewhere from 3rd to 7th, and would do it that way again.the stuff that interests me is at higher level and I became a devout worshipper st the...

Every so often I think about rolling a custom take on 3.5, since its mix includes a lot of things I like. But by the time I sketch it out in my mind, I’ve basically reinvented Fate and/or QuestWorlds and realize that I’m better off just adapting the D&D bits to one of those. But the appeal is...

I’d see you out, but I’m already underwater and in a sack, so I can’t see you. By the way, for those not knowing: allodial land is land you own outright, not held as a fief or grant from anyone else. Your ancestors have always been there, as far as memory and the tax rolls know, or someone in...

Likewise with the plate armor and the polearms. I’m hip-deep in Peter H. Wilson’s mega-history of the Thirty Years War, and its fascinating how a lot of elements I think of as medieval come from the 15th and 16th centuries. And the absence of allods! Where are the allods? How can-- [Burly men...