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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...

Obligatory pedantry: “genus” and “species” are used in Roman-era Latin translations of Aristotle, which made them standard terms through all the following eras. Our current usage of them begins in the early modern era, in the late 1600s, but the words were there, referring to a kind of animals...

We had some tussles during the Adventure play test with one guy whose breakout wanted more detail for his field of expertise, who just wouldn’t get it when we explained how a bunch more skills required to do that one thing well would make it harder to play an expert in it than an expert in...

@EzekielRaiden , I really, really like your thoughts around D&D defaults, and agree that it’s crucial to recognize that the game began as wildly anachronistic melding of elements. In some ways, it’s culturally maybe more like the early modern Holy Roman Empire than anything else, but set in the...

I used to be a reader like you, until I took an arrow to the knee had a friend who specialized in Southern Gothic. Sturgeon’s Law was not revoked: it turns out there are great quantities of crap Southern Gothic, boring, turgid and imitative in prose (you haven’t really lived until or maybe...

Obligatory mention: “steampunk” the word was coined by K.W. Jeter, who loathes punk culture(s). He was referring to the “Victorian fantasies” he and his friends James Blaylock and Tim Powers were writing: Morlock Nights, Homunculus, The Anubis Gates, and like that. The name was an intentional...

True, and I am a fan and customer of that.

I would be a tough one to sell a game where magic is just plain innately bad. But if it were done well, I’m up for being a) impressed and b) a customer.

D6 dice pool. I don’t know anything beyond that yet. Yeah, they’re really all over the map that way. Agreed that Russell’s games are the best so far.

I’ve got Europe’s Tragedy here and am rolling into it now. All this because I wanted some historical context before rereading The Warhound And The World’s Pain. I am an object lesson of some sort.

Just finished Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire by Peter H. Wilson. It’s amazing! At 934 pages/34:03 in audio, it’s a genuine ox-stunner, but it makes good use of its space for well-structured, interesting and useful details. He starts with the lords of the Franks before...