Recent content by overgeeked

TIL cowboys are not a US original. The whole thing comes from the vaqueros of Spain and Mexico. The word buckaroo is a corruption of vaquero. Ranch is from the Spanish rancho. Rodeo is a Spanish word. So all those white people in cowboy hats and boots are LARPing as Mexican vaqueros.

Easily the best referee book I’ve read in years. Worth every penny and definitely useful beyond running sci-fi and horror.

Could be. I loved them in the earlier books. Maybe it was too many Discworld books in a row. Shrug.

Weirdly, that's the one I'm stuck on currently. I'm about 25% of the way through Wyrd Sisters and just checked out. Haven't gone back to it in months. Checking my posts...yep. July 2025 I was just starting Wyrd Sisters. Marched on to about 25% and stopped dead. Haven't looked back since.

That's exactly what happened to me. I tried Colour several times and bounced off. I looked at all the guides on just starting with later books, like the Guard series. I bounced even harder off the first one. I think I got maybe 20 pages in before dropping it. Gave it a few years and went back to...

As someone who relatively recently was able to finally get into Discworld, I agree. Reading books out of order is always wonky. Information the author assumes you already know is referenced but not explained because you should have already read the previous book(s) where it happened. Those...

Just finished Spring, Summer, Asteroid, Bird. It’s a short non-fiction book about the kishōtenketsu story structure as well as nested and cyclical stories. If you read manga or light novels or watch anime, you’re already familiar with kishōtenketsu. It’s a fun, quick read. It’s informative...

Not related to the above, but some days are like that.

Exactly. Anything that can be automated will be.

Wow. That’s a one-two punch of posts that explains so much.

The number of people who think they have telepathy is too damn high.

That's not the bit I'm talking about. That's the bit I'm talking about. The repeated failed attempts to solve the puzzle itself. You list three attempts to solve the puzzle plus "a bit of back and forth" before getting to a roll. I can imagine how frustrating that is for the player, I've been...

Examples like this make me rethink letting players roll to solve puzzles. Maybe something like three strikes then roll. Or steal the Idea roll from Call of Cthulhu. If you're properly stuck make a roll. The story moves forward regardless, but on a failure you get a nasty surprise while on a...

Here’s the man himself talking about it a few months back. ETA: Cross post!