DShomshak

What's up with the James Webb Space Telescope? The December, 2022 issue of Scientific American features a set of articles about the JWST, with gobs of gorgeous pictures (and a bit of explanation how the pictures were made, given the telescope looks in infrared). Preliminary "deep field" studies already have cosmologists scratching their heads, because they seem to be showing galaxies that are too big and too well developed to exist so early in the universe. However, that article also mentions some possible confounding features. But the Webb also looks at objects nearer to Earth, such as an image of aurorae on Jupiter and methane ice clouds on Neptune. Dean Shomshak

None of my old AD&D campaigns lasted long enough that running modules could even become an issue. (And even then I preferred to design my own dungeons, despite them making no sense whatsoever. But then, the published examples often made no sense whatsoever, either.) When I came back to D&D at 3rd ed, I no longer saw any need for any of the old material. Also, it was primarily a military campaign: There was no opportunity to explore the classic multi-leveled "dungeon," even if I could have thought of a justification for one. My latest, 5e campaign is set in a city built on a low spit of land, in which the classic dungeon is physically impossible. Nobody's missed it. That said, over the years I did borrow a few premises from the old AD&D modules. Most important perhaps was the idea of a ruined lost city hidden in a huge rift, from Dwellers in the Forbidden City, which I lifted as the setting for the penultimate adventure in my 3e campaign. Only it was a city ruled by medusas, they'd rebuilt it a lot after the month of divinely-inflicted earthquakes that destroyed their empire eight centuries before, and was a functioning town. Challenges were mostly political: Instead of rampaging around looting the place, the PCs were trying to obtain a magical key (one of a set, a big campaign McGuffin), and recruiting the medusas to help fight the evil overlord menacing the little kingdom. I've also repeatedly used the idea of an aristocratic family of wizards descended from an Archmage, as seen in Castle Amber -- most often as a background for PCs. Most recently, when a friend ran a D&D 5e adaptation of the Pathfinder module Rise of the Runelords, my PC was Lord Skyron Actinar of Stormkeep, great-grandson of the archmage Actinar. Family motto, "I Hold the Lightning." Skyron was exiled from Stormkeep for offending one of his elders, and was trying to earn his way back. (He did.) The GM made good use of the Actinars as a source of NPCs and side-quests. I recommend the "Arcane Aristocrat Family" as a Shared Origin for use in FH campaigns. Dean Shomshak

I prepared our small Thanksgiving dinner: a couple slabs of turkey breast I cooked in a frying pan, stuffing from a box, canned sweet potatoes, storebought rolls and veggie tray, with storebought pumpkin pie afterward. Not much, but it's just me, my mother, my brother, and one of my sisters. I am thankful that my mother and siblings are all still alive and mentally functional. Dean Shomshak

I admit I haven't followed the Scottish independence movement, so the only policy I've heard suggested to follow "Scoxit" is for Scotland to rejoin the EU. Which is understandable, I guess. But speaking of precedents... One of the arguments I heard for "Scoxit" was that if the UK can leave the EU because it doesn't like being dictated to by Brussels, why shouldn't Scotland leave the UK because it doesn't like being dictated to by London? But then where do you stop? Several months ago, the BBC did a story about people in the Orkneys who feel little love for the rest of Scotland. Suggestions of "Orxit" are probably just the locals having a laugh at the expense of silly southern folk who clearly don't have enough real work to do. Probably. Any further discussion of the merits or demerits of Scottish secession should probably go in the Politics thread. I'm only commenting to bring up the "Orxit" joke. Dean Shomshak

In the CU, it would not be implausible for the dimensional experiments to open a Gate to Babylon. Likely to the facility of a self-storage company in Babylon! But hey, the two companies should be able to work out an agreement. ADDENDUM: Speaking of storage facilities with, hm, unusual clients -- or contents? -- here's the story of Tacoma Elf Storage: The 'Chilling' History of Tacoma’s “Elf” Storage Building - GRIT CITY MAGAZINE Dean Shomshak

Oh, and of course Thalassene has festivals timed with the solstices and quinoxes, because those are natural times to celebrate something-or-other. The Furanian immigrant community celebrates all four, since their religion is sun-centered. There are many Furanians in the neighborhood of Oddmonger, so the Furanian Sun Cake -- glazed golden with saffron and honey -- is a familiar treat for those four days, and popular with non-Furanians as well. The Plenary Empire began among the Yidmiri people, so that pantheon of gods remains popular. The festival day of the Yidmiri war god Sar sees a variety of martial contests. One of the PCs won a local archery contest held as part of the festival. The biggest religious festival of Thalassene's year, though, is the annual Marriage to the Sea in which gthe city renews its covenant with the sea-god Manakel and the local merfolk. Ten young men and ten young women dive into the sea from the Pera Sacra, or Sacred Pier, the holiest shrine to Manakel, and swims a seven-mile race to Treaty Reef. There, the male and female winners make love in the surf with merfolk who won their own contest. Mer and landwalker priests bless the unions; and offspring are born with the magical power to exchange feet and fins, becoming merfolk or landwalker humans as needed. The gift is sometimes inherited, but remains miraculous: "Children of Land and Sea" are unique to Thalassene and the local merfolk tribes. Dean Shomshak

The city of Thalassene is in the Plenary Empire, so the chief secular/political holiday is the anniversary of the reigning Autocrat's ascension to the throne. The biggest to-do in the city is the parade and street fair in Mactown, the district settled by refugees from the Macrine region. So many Macriners arrived at once that Mactown seems more like a transplanted bit of "the old country" than like part of the Plenary Empire, and other Thalasseners sometimes grumble that the Mactowners should decide what country they're in. But the Mactown Ascension Day Parade is the biggest in the city. I'll decide what actually happens as part of the parade when I can arrange to make it part of an adventure. Most of the festivals in Thalassene are religious -- and since the Plenary Empire absorbed many different cultures, each with their own gods, there's usually at least a minor festival going on somewhere. In Vicus Drohasus, another ethnic district. the largest public festival is dedicated to the Ennead, the nine chief gods of Drohashi religion. The idols of the gods are paraded through the streets while people sing the old hymns and play the old music of sistrum, flute and tabor, while waving banners of the Golden Lotus that was the symbol of Drohashi sacred kingship. Every year, the Viltish ambassador Hegetsa -- representative of the theocratic empire that conquered Drohash -- secretly watches the parade and seethes with rage. The sun god Sorath is honored, but to no greater degree than the rest of the Ennead, and not by the rites ordained by the prophet Orvikka. The Drohashi of Thalassene are worse than infidel: They are heretics! Soon, Hegetsa promises herself, they, their city, and their false idols will burn. Dean Shomshak

Long ago, I set a super-battle in a junkyard, modeled on one I'd visited briefly with my father some years before that. (Why were the villains using a junkyard as their base? The leader was a metallokinetic. His plan was to steal rare and valuable antique cars, use his powers to make copies using the metal in the junkyard, and sell the copies to all those unscrupulous millionaires in comic-book worlds that are just waiting to buy stolen treasures and not tell anyone.) Anyway, one thing I remembered from my visit: This junkyard had a huge, rusty iron sphere. An old bathysphere? Okay, it was probably just one of those spherical storage tanks for natutal gas or the like, but I decided it was a bathysphere. It turned out to be just the thing to hold a captured villain who was too strong for any mundane confinement. Dean Shomshak

A friend of mine recommended this youtube essay about why Russia's military has done so badly in Ukraine. I guess the presenter "Perun" started by commenting on wargames, but since the Ukraine war began he's used his knowledge of RL military matters to offer his own take. This installment deals with the corrosive effect of Russia's culture of vranyo, a particular form of lying. He seems fairly careful in his research -- and his analysis explains a lot. It's an hour long, but worth it. Related (and in fact an earlier installment -- Perun's doing a series) about corruption. Dean Shomshak

I'm inclined to go with the pseudo-archaic/Fantasy myself. Several ancient Earth cultures built stepped pyramids: The one in the image could be a Mesopotamian ziggurat, a Mesoamerican pyramid-temple, or a Buddhist stupa. (Only the stupa would have chambers cut in the sides; but the stairs look more Mesoamerican. The stupa for which I have plans has a more complicated shape than a simple square, and the stairs are on the inside.) Could be Atlantean/Muvian, as the prototype culture that gave rise to all those designs. But for my Millennium Universe, it's one of the bases for one of Earth's most powerful villains, the chaos-goddess Tiamat. She's into stepped pyramids, per her Mesopotamian origin. (Or vice-versa.) With her magic, she can create a base anywhere she wants: The site could be any rugged mountain range on Earth, including the Trans-Antarctic Mountains (for a Savage Land vibe). Or since Marvel's Blue Area on the Moon was mentioned, she could build her base in a lunar range and have a Gate back to Earth. Recruits to Tiamat's cult are brought to bases like this for advanced indoctrination. Those that are especially diligent and lucky to have the right qualities of soul are transformed into snake-dragons, lion-demons and other creatures of myth, the better to serve the Queen of Chaos. Only a very few possess the right qualities to be transformed into new Dragon Warriors, Tiamat's cadre of supervillain demigods. Heroes who try to whittle down Tiamat's cult resources could find their way to this valley. They'll be in for quite a fight just from the cultists (some of them armed with magic weapons) and monsters. They'll have to act quickly, though, before someone sends an alarm message to Tiamat and the Queen of Chaos comes to join the battle. Dean Shomshak Dean Shomshak

X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, on Svengoolie. A bit slow in parts, but behind the conventional horror movie tropes of scientific hubris and obsession there's quite a good treatment of Lovecraftian themes without making a single Lovecraftian reference. The scientist wants to expand the range of vision. It works. He sees more... and more... and more... Dean Shomshak

The "evil race" issue is a consequence of the "Gygaxian Naturalism" to which the blogger alludes (and his link leads to an essay that's interesting in its own right). If orcs, goblins, bugbears, etc. are essentially "natural" creatures presumed to have lives of their own when PCs aren't fighting them, modern sensibilities may not be comfortable with saying, "Oh, just kill them and take their stuff." Including killing all the children? Not an issue for, say, the book of Jashua when God tells the Israelites to exterminate entire cities because they are inconveniently located in the land God has promised, but monder Western folk often feel uneasy with genocide. Or the rationalizations adduced to justify it. If the adversary is emphatically *not* an essentially natural creature that has a life and culture of its own, the issues are a bit different. If goblyns are truly mythic monsters, their motives are not going to be natural either, and the moral calculus *might* change as well. So, goblyns as primordial chaos. That can be developed. They might be, in essence, the world pushing back against the order that humans (and gods?) try to impose. Giants as comparable to natural disasters? They might actually *be* personified natural disasters. Why does an earthquake flatten a city, a storm capsize a fleet, a swarm of locusts devour everything and cause a famine? No reason. No malice. It's what they do. OTOH the Norse trolls the blogger cites as inspiration are not always and implacably hostile to gods and heroes. Some of the Aesir are descended from giants, or marry giants. They have power: Odin stole the Mead of Poetry from a giant (who, in turn, extorted it from the dwarfs who brewed it from the god Kvasir's blood, so in a sense Odin was reclaiming stolen property? Complicated.) So it might be possible -- though still dangerous -- to deal with goblyns in non-combat ways. Like, moving from Norse to Russian, the ogre-witch Baba Yaga's usual story role is the reluctant helper: Heroes overcome her to obtain magical treasures. On the other other hand, were goblyns always hostile? Or did something happen to make them that way? Like the conflict between the Hindu Gods and the Asuras, this conflict might go back to before the beginning of the world. (The gods and asuras had to cooperate in churning the primordial ocean of milk to produce the elixir of immortality. The gods cheated the asuras of their share.). But there might have been some historic event that turned the goblyns hostil and, effectively, broke the world. If it's something people did, then maybe people can fix it and restore harmony. For instance, that desert that was burned over in magical war long ago. The devastation could have broken an ancient pact with the goblyns. They are trying to expunge humanity to prevent such destruction from happening again. Or conversely, the devastation might have been inflicted by the giant leaders in retaliation for some terrible offense given to them. Either way, they will not accept an "Oops, sorry, can we be friends again?" But if goblyns are a symptom of the break in the world, and not its ultimate cause, then just killing goblyns might not be an ultimate solution, either. Okay, this has gone way too long. Enough for now, and more than enough. Dean Shomshak

Heard on the radio yesterday that Artemis launched successfully. Dean Shomshak

This has promise. Give more thought to how the world is broken, how it broke, and what PCs can do to fix it. For instance, why are goblyns so hostile? Is there any way peace could be made between them and humans? The desert with the ruined cities is a good location to show the brokenness of the world. Likewise Reuchia and the country withe the backstabbing aristos. To reinforce the exploration theme, include something cool in ever location the PCs visit. Not necessarily anything important, but memorable. Maybe there's something distinctive about the way people adorn their houses, or themselves. Maybe there's some peculiar local tipple -- I've got a lot of use out of that one. If you need inspiration, read Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, or pretty much anything by Jack Vance. You can combine these themes through locations that are both interesting to describe, and in some way broken. For instance: A great bridge crosses one of the main rivers. Its three arched spans are longer than humans know how to build, and its stones are larger and heavier than humans could move into position (at least without powerful magic). But tales say humans didn't build the bridge: goblyns did, long ago. The stones are not too heavy for ogres to move, and legend says giants waded the river to build the bridge -- or charmed the blocks into position! But the central span of the bridge is broken. <Insert story about who broke it, and how.> The bridge is wide enough for two elephants to cross, going opposite directions; but people must cross the central gap on rope bridges that can bear the weight of fewer than a dozen people at a time, going single file. Merchant caravans must stop when they reach the bridge, unload all their goods from their wagons and pack animals, and carry them across to where a new set of beasts and animals wait on the other side. (If humans have magic that could build something sturdier, OK, it doesn't make sense to have the rope bridges. But you can still make the patch across the gap clearly inferior to the rest of the bridge.) Dean Shomshak

They have at least two years until their next primary, and in American politics two years is forever. I suppose it's remotely possible that some of the Pub senators genuinely think it's the right thing to do. Or at least that, culturally, the ship sailed so long ago that there is nothing to gain by trying to reverse it and much to lose. It's irrelevant to whatever they really care about. Dean Shomshak

Sounds good. And speaking of one bit you brought up... I am so tired of "Chosen Ones." I prefer my heroes to be fighting the good fight because somebody has to, not because it's their Destiny. I crystallized this view several years ago while watching the Shannara TV series that aired (only one season AFAIK) on MTV. Okay, not a fan of The Sword of Shannara and never felt any reason to read the sequels, but somebody was trying to do Fantasy on TV so I watched it. And I got really irritated by Alanon the druid telling the young hero that it's his Destiny to fight the demon horde and save the world, because he's descended from the last great hero and so is the only person who can activate the power of the Elfstones, yadda yadda yadda. Especially when the material was there for a different approach. Untested Young Hero doesn't want to save the world; he wants to be a doctor, because his mother suffered so much in her final illness. I think the line should have been: "You're probably not the only descendant of Shannara. If I tried, I could probably find a dozen others. But you responded to suffering and grief by wanting to help others. That's special. Other people could use the magic pebbles. You're the one who should use them." Dean Shomshak

EDIYT: Oops, BNakagawa already posted this information. Never mind. Update: On All Things Considered last night, the possibility was raised that the missile that struck a "grain processing facility" in Poland might have been a Ukrainian antimissile, launched in response to the Russian barrage, that went off course. I just hope the investigation is thorough, honest and reported accurately. If it does turn out to be a Ukrainian antimissile, that's not a disaster for Ukraine: Acknowledgement of the accident, apology, and reparation to the families of the victims, shows the government is honest and worthy of trust. Commitment to truth, even when it isn't good for you in the short term, shows strength and confidence to those who are strong and confident; Russian bluster and lies shows weakness and cowardice, that only looks strong to those who are themselves weak and cowardly. Dean Shomshak

As I said, I find it plausible that the strike was an accident. OTOH Putin must not be allowed to think he can make this the start of a nose-in-the-tent strategy. There must be consequences. But I do not envy the people who must decide what those consequences should be. Dean Shomshak

On today's issue of The Daily radio show, the subject is Trump's expected declaration later today that he's running for president in 2024. The reporter delivering analysis called Trump running for president the Hotel California of American politics: You can try to check out, but you can never leave because it just goes on and on. As for the Russian missiles hitting Poland, the BBC reporting and analysis suggests this was likely an accident. There's no strategic logic to bombing a farm on the border of Ukraine, and many reasons not to do so. Either Russian targeting sucks (plausible), or a missile was knocked off course by an antimissile attack. However, Poland has invoked the NATO charter for consultation (not yet for counterattack). The Russian government, of course, insists the whole thing is a NATO hoax. Dean Shomshak

Shadow World. Ah. I acquired one supplement set there, The Iron Wind, back when it was all fairly new, and even then I had, hm, issues with the design stule. Some aspects were an advance for the time, but the state of the art has moved on. (And some bits I intensely disliked.) Sample adventures not using the countries the supplement is about is kind of a flaw by any standards... The biggest question remains what style of campaign you want. Treasure-seeking murder hobos call for different design emphases than a campaign of social and political intrigue, a cold war that threatens to turn hot, High Fantasy quest, or the like. For instance, my current D&D campaign has a nesting series of design choices. Overall, the setting is the Magozoic Era -- Earth 250 million years in the future, become a world of monsters and magic. Everything has a past -- sometimes a very long past, stretching back to legend. Every few days' travel, you encounter some eerie or enigmatic relic of past events, from a forest of living stone trees to a field that lightning strikes every time a storm passes nearby. The city that forms the focus of the campaign is on a spit of land that formed around an immense granite breakwater, so old that coral covered it and turned to stone. It is not the first city to occupy the site, either. Shrinking the focus, everything's happening in the Plenary Empire, modeled a bit on the Byzantine Empire: the shrunken remnant of an empire that was once much larger, menaced by aggressive neighbors that want to complete its fall and take its land, people and wealth. The greater danger, though, may come from the infighting among the empire's elite as they seek to gain greater shares of the empire's wealth and remaining power, or attempt secession because they'd rather be masters of small domains than functionaries in a big one. Politics and war and the themes: I explicitly decided that while the world includes dragons, beholders, liches, demon lords and other such threats, they won't be the principal threats. In its rise and heyday, the Plenary Empire faced such threats and defeated them. It's a premise of the setting that once a state reaches a certain size and effectiveness of government, no outside force can defeat it: It can only defeat itself. (Yes, you might find some contemporary resonance here. That is deliberate.) The specific campaign began in the city of Thalassene. It's low fantasy: the PCs are members of a neighborhood watch that finds itself dealing with much bigger threats than bar brawls and riots, from an undead serial killer to scheming foreign ambassadors. The characters have advanced in power, though, to the point where such challenges are no longer challenging: The campaign is on hiatus while we, and the PCs decide where to go next, but the PCs are sufficiently involved in the lives of various NPCs that Thalassene will stay the center of the campaign for a while. No world-spanning quests in the offing. What sort of campaign do you imagine running? Dean Shomshak

From a cynical but rational point of view, that is the job of legislator. Their job is to win elections... period. (Well, and fundraise for future elections.) Parties have think-tanks to work out policies and lawyers to write legislation: If the party holds enough seats, the legislation can pass -- and a loyal dunderhead can fill a seat as well as, or better than, a policy wonk. And the dunderhead may well have a better connection to the common man than the policy wonk who uses big words in long sentences and can't get to the emotional point. Dean Shomshak

It's the real Great Replacement. I suspect (though I cannot prove) that conspiracy theories often are a sort of Freudian displacement, a way of hiding from fears that are too great to acknowledge. I suggest it's less frightening to believe in a giant evil conspiracy to bring in brown people who are Not Like Us than to admit that one's own children are the ones Not Like Us. But hasn't that always been the case? Our children (I use "our" collectively -- I have no offspring and almost certainly never will) are never just Mini-Mes. They are their own people. We teach them as best we can, give them whatever help we can... then put the world in their hands when we retire to our graves. Thus has it ever been. And "conservatives" take note: Stories of attempts to do otherwise rarely end well. Dean Shomshak

Which is why you're here, trying to go beyond what's provided! I've done development work for pay. It may not be fair to judge this supplement (what's its name again?) by your short summaries, and I haven't followed all your redevelopment threads, but what I've seen of the source material doesn't impress me. I think you'll need to do quite a bit of work to make this a setting that will wow your players. I'll try to point you toward the questions to ask, but in the end you're the one who needs to answer them. Dean Shomshak

Today's episode of Marketplace reports that banks that loaned Musk money to buy Twitter are selling the debt at 60% discount. It's perfectly normal for banks to sell debt: They want to get their money back quickly, so they can loan it out again. Taking a haircut like this? Not so much. A sinking feeling about selling Twitter's debt - Marketplace (I think that's the whole episode, but it's only half an hour and you can probably skip through it.) Dean Shomshak

Debris from Challenger space shuttle found off the coast of Florida : NPR Dean Shomshak