Posting challenges, usually time bound or on a particular topic or theme.
DOT, the way I use it, lays out diagrams in a matrix. Before I automate converting these to TikZ matrices, I want to draw some by hand. Again, Angelic Blood is a good candidate to work from. Small enough to be manageable, large and complex enough to be interesting. Angelic …
As part of developing the Echelon Reference Series, I make heavy use of GraphViz. GraphViz includes several layout engines, but the key one here is called ‘DOT’. DOT takes a file with a simple declarative syntax of nodes and edges, and lays them out as a graph. You can specify …
A little over three weeks ago I announced this year’s theme (“Small Gods”). Last week on April 1 I announced the starting lineup of small gods I was going to write about. At this point it looks like an April Fools joke, but it wasn’t mine, on purpose. I think …
This might derail my original plan (“Small Gods”) for the 2025 A-Z Blog Challenge, but I think it’ll be worth it. For me, at least. Recently I’ve been reading a couple of books about LaTeX, my publishing tool of choice. I’ve worked with LaTeX quite some time, and I’ve cobbled …
Welcome to my 2025 A-Z Blog Challenge! This year, my theme is ‘Small Gods’. Gods are often depicted as immortal, immensely powerful beings. They often epitomize elements and aspects of mortality, while not themselves being mortal. Even if not omnipotent — how can they be, when they can defeat each …
I’m getting a little ahead of myself, but it’s timely for other reasons. I have a use for this table right soonish. When I wrote Polyhedral Pantheons, I wanted to avoid associating any domain with either gender. I came up with a scheme to randomize the gender selection. I could …
It is A-Z Blog Challenge time again! This year I’m going back to an older topics, part of my Year of the Lost: Small Gods. Small gods are semi-divine entities that can be focus of faith at local levels. In most roleplaying games, it seems deities are omnipresent, if not …
I feel like this series got off to a good start, but stalled right away. One post! So, time to get back to it. Yes, I recognize I’m jumping around from topic to topic, but I’m okay with that. Right now I feel there’s more to gain by touching many …
Another topic I’ve overlooked is ‘small gods’: semi-divine entities that can be focus of faith at local levels. In most roleplaying games, it seems deities are omnipresent, if not omniscient and omnipotent. It would suck to play an adventuring cleric who can’t do their thing because they’re too far from …
When I first started working on Just the Rules, I had thought to just make a minimalist version of Pathfinder. Don’t include all the game entities, just the rules around them, much like the D&D 3.x Rules Compendium. While doing, so, though, I kept getting sidetracked into alternate rules sets. …
