Recent content by Hriston

Different games are different, but, with that being said, I'm going to address the question with reference to the RPG with which I'm most familiar, D&D. To me, there's a clear demarcation around the player's sphere of authority which includes what's commonly called roleplaying. I.e. it's the...

I forgot to mention, the only time I draw a map for the players during the game is if combat starts and we're going to put some miniatures on the battle mat, in which case I draw an outline of the room or the surrounding terrain where the battle's taking place .

During travel (either through a dungeon or in the wilderness) in my 5.0E games, I describe the environment the party is moving through, and it's entirely up to the players whether they choose to draw maps or take notes in some other way, which are ways players can engage with the fiction. Some...

@Steve Gorak, I believe Darius (@VLAD the Destroyer) has a psychic link with Shade-9.

Gargoyles, or, as Dorothy Gale calls them, "gurgles", are the native inhabitants of an underground world made entirely of wood, the Land of the Gargoyles, which she encounters in Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz (1908). The gargoyles themselves are made of wood and have wings, attached by hinges...

NASA released this image of 3I/ATLAS today, taken on October 3 by the HiRISE camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Unfortunately, due to spacecraft jitter and motion during the 3.2 second exposure time, the light from the object is smeared by several pixels.

I'd use the 1932 Clark Ashton Smith story Maker of Gargoyles as inspiration and have gargoyles be actual statues (so constructs) imbued with the strong vice/virtue of their incredibly talented creator/sculptor, which brings them to life. Subtypes: Sin type Pride Greed Wrath Envy Lust Gluttony...

I think story, as it's used in this article, means a broad outline of the expected fictional content of gameplay, so the "story" of D&D would be something like a group of capable adventurers overcomes challenges in a medievalesque fantasy world which likely include fighting against fantastic...

I'm not sure if he meant it to be accessible to readers of his own (Victorian) time. His relentless use of archaisms seems intended, rather, to place the reader into a relationship with the somewhat alien syntax of a high and far-off time. He literally does this at every conceivable opportunity...

Alice Wong, disability rights advocate and writer, has died at the age of 51.

I missed posting this the first time, but another point of interest for fans of Tolkien is the colophon at the end of the Project Gutenberg EBook version I was reading (emphasis added): CHISWICK PRESS:---C. WHITTINGHAM AND CO., TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE. I've edited my post to include this.

I finished reading The Roots of the Mountains, by William Morris, last night. It felt like a bit of a slog, probably because I was reading it every night before falling asleep, and I've had a tendency lately to doze off pretty quickly, so it took me a long time to get through it. Its influence...

New images of 3I/ATLAS taken with the Nordic Optical Telescope on 11/11/25 show no evidence for breakup following perihelion and still exhibiting a sunward "anti-tail". https://faculty.epss.ucla.edu/~jewitt/NOTpictures.pdf

Yep, that's what I have for Terrin as well, assuming he wasn't targeted by Aywin.