Reading

Character Keeper – Fallen Blades / Endless Stars

Posted by bankuei

https://bankuei.wordpress.com/2025/11/05/character-keeper-fallen-blades-endless-stars/

http://bankuei.wordpress.com/?p=12741

I set up a Google Sheets set of character sheets with drop down menus for the Mazesword Moves & Guardian Powers. It’s nothing complicated but it should handle the player character sheet side of things.

Anyway, this is a good chance to talk a little bit about online character sheets and VTTs. Generally we’re juggling a few different needs at the same time:

Accessibility (electronic)
Accessibility (user)
Shared Reference
Integration to other tools

Accessibility (Electronic) is about what devices can use the tool in question. While conceptually I love the idea of local hosting with Foundry, a couple of my players’ devices will not run it, so we end up using other systems instead. (Playingcards.io and Tableplop are my two most used, though I play in a couple of games on Roll20 as well). It can also be helpful if you might need to access the files from different devices regularly; such as doing some game prep during lunch at work.

Accessibility (User) is about how easy/hard the tool is to use for the people using it. This both about learning to use the tool and the UI of using it. An unfortunate reality is I’ve found many VTTs make running a PbtA harder, not easier, which is ironic given the mechanics (roll 2d6 add a small number) are streamlined for easy in person play.

Shared Reference is about how much a group might need to look at the same information regularly. So, the most obvious case is games with a battlemap and grid combat; the group looking at the placement and positioning is key. That said, I’ve found a lot of games do well with having the “character keeper” standard of trying to put every character on the same sheet or at least just a tab click away. This is where players who are more versed in the game can quickly hop over and look at the character sheets for other players and help guide them in playing the game, tracking their powers/resources, etc.

Integration to Other Tools is the other usual VTT expectation: can I click or change something on a character sheet and get the dice roller or the chat to automate some process. For most, this is “roll to attack” and it does the math for you. I’ve come more and more to the position that this is the least important tool though its the one everyone focuses on – usually the tradeoff is the more convenience in automation, the less convenience there is in setting up something off the standard it’s built for.

I don’t think Google Sheets is “great” for all this, it’s just solidly 2-2.5 star for this kind of stuff, but it’s consistent, easy to access, and allows just enough that it works for most of the games I tend to play.

If you find my blog entertaining and valuable, consider supporting me on Patreon.

https://bankuei.wordpress.com/2025/11/05/character-keeper-fallen-blades-endless-stars/

http://bankuei.wordpress.com/?p=12741

Entry tags:

Things Completed

nacramamo has ended and for the time being so has my jewelry making. I made more than I posted about, although there was a lot of that, too. Just a reminder that

everykindofcraft remains open for everyday work in progress, completed or stalled.

2) Finished a few shows, such as Perry Mason on HBO. I can see why it was cancelled. It was ambitious and fairly well written, and I thought the character backstories made sense. However, it liked to roll around in the noir aspects rather too much, which I think affected the pacing in S1. I prefer S2. I also think you could watch S2 on its own. ( Read more... )

3) Finished both seasons of House of the Dragon. Am looking forward to S3. I can see why Game of Thrones would have drawn people in. I love a complicated political story with various competing interests, which is what this is. Add in the important female protagonists and it's interesting to follow the zigs and zags.

4) For those with pets, the same things are happening surrounding vet care, supplies and even services as with a lot of other industries – buyouts, stripping services to the bone, and reduction of care. "As with human health care, billionaire consolidators aim to extract big coin on veterinary services, pushing expensive tests and pricey interventions, instituting aggressive billing and collection, and focusing on cost-cutting on the service side, including squeezing wages from employees....These vulture investors typically collect management fees on all transactions, strip out profitable assets (including real estate), call the shots in terms of major decision-making in the practice, and charge fees for monitoring them, even as some of the companies they acquire spiral into bankruptcy. “It’s like setting the fire, being paid to put out the fire, and collecting the insurance on the fire all at the same time."

5) The issue of news avoidance or indifference isn't a new one, but what I found interesting in this was the breakdown of who actually sought out news or made it part of their routine:

MSNBC viewers: 72% active
CNN viewers: 71%
Seniors (65+): 69%
Daily Twitter users: 69%
Strong Democrats: 67%
White college grads: 67%
Fox News viewers: 66%
White collar workers: 66%
MAGA Republicans: 64%

Given this is a recent study I find this to be relatively unsurprising, as it leans towards politically engaged and even fanatical ideologues, who are the only people I can imagine being able to tolerate most of the news these days. Seniors are also unsurprising as they have traditionally been the biggest news consumers, partly due to time, but also because they have the most time to be politically engaged and are the most reliable voting bloc.

This also leads to a logical reversal in more passive news consumers: ( Read more... )

Poll #33802 Kudos Footer-548

This poll is anonymous.
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 1

Want to leave a Kudos?

View Answers

Kudos!
1 (100.0%)

Entry tags:

Electric Sheep online reading!

On November 12th, 8 p.m. Eastern (5 p.m. Pacific, 1 a.m. UTC), I'll be the Guest of Honor for a session of the Electric Sheep online reading series -- for poetry! Yep, I'll be reading my Hugo poem, "A War of Words," and possibly something else if time permits. But I won't be alone: my fellow finalists Mari Ness, Ai Jiang, Angela Liu, and Oliver K. Langmead will be joining us, along with Brian U. Garrison (the president of the Science Fiction Poetry Association) and Brandon O'Brien, who was Poet Laureate for the Seattle Worldcon. So it's a heck of a lineup!

Attendance is free, but you do have to register in advance, and space is limited. If you're interested in joining us, sign up now!

(originally posted at Swan Tower: https://is.gd/DgpOvt)

(no subject)

There were ten posts in the community in the past two months:

On Sept. 10,

watersword posted about the Restore Trust in Congress Act:
https://thisfinecrew.dreamwidth.org/315708.html

On Sept. 13.

toastykitten posted a link roundup about Palestine/Gaza awareness and possible actions.
https://thisfinecrew.dreamwidth.org/316064.html

On Sept. 24,

gingicat reminded people about 5 Calls dot Org, and suggested some calls for people in Massachusetts:

https://thisfinecrew.dreamwidth.org/316387

On Oct. 1,

gingicat posted about the government shutdown:
https://thisfinecrew.dreamwidth.org/316542.html

On Oct. 2, I posted about a Boston Globe request for letters about anti-trans views of foster parents:
https://thisfinecrew.dreamwidth.org/316711.html

On Oct. 7,

toastykitten asked people to call California Gov. Newsom about trans issues:
https://thisfinecrew.dreamwidth.org/317077.html

On Oct. 10,

mxcatmoon posted about nonviolent resistance training:
https://thisfinecrew.dreamwidth.org/317190.html

On Oct. 21,

gingicat posted about the What’s Next after No Kings livestream:
https://thisfinecrew.dreamwidth.org/317532.html

On Oct. 23,

toastykitten posted updated links about Palestine/Gaza:
https://thisfinecrew.dreamwidth.org/317729.html

On Oct. 29,

otter posted about a Minnesota Medicaid fraud investigation, noting that they weren’t sure what to ask, say, or do about it:

https://thisfinecrew.dreamwidth.org/318026.html

And on Nov. 2.

toastykitten posted about a call to end arms sales to the United Arab Emirates:
https://thisfinecrew.dreamwidth.org/318426.html

Thanks to everyone who posted.

Here's a poll to tell us what you've been doing:

Poll #33801 November check-in

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 4

View Respondents

In the last two months, I

View Answers

called one or both of my senators
1 (25.0%)

called my member of Congress
1 (25.0%)

called my governor
1 (25.0%)

called my mayor, state rep, or other local official
0 (0.0%)

voted
4 (100.0%)

did get-out-the-vote work, such as post-carding or phone- banking
0 (0.0%)

sent a postcard/email/letter/fax to a government official or agency
2 (50.0%)

went to a protest
1 (25.0%)

attended an in-person activist group
0 (0.0%)

went to a town hall
0 (0.0%)

participated in phone or online training
1 (25.0%)

participated in community mutual aid
0 (0.0%)

donated money to a cause
2 (50.0%)

worked for a campaign
0 (0.0%)

did textbanking or phonebanking
0 (0.0%)

took care of myself
1 (25.0%)

not a US citizen, but worked in solidarity in my community
0 (0.0%)

committed to action in the current month
0 (0.0%)

did something else (tell us about it in comments)
0 (0.0%)

As always, everyone is free to make posts about any issues and actions they think the comm should know about. You can also drop information into a comment to our sticky post if you'd like the mods to do it.

If you're looking for information on anything else, you can use our tags to check for any ongoing actions or resources relevant to the issues you care about. I try to keep the tag list up-to-date. If you need a tag added, you can DM me.

Entry tags:

When the Wolf Comes Home, by Nat Cassidy

This book is very hard to describe without spoilers, so I'll just cover the setup. Aspiring actress/current waitress Jess is having a bad night that gets much worse when she finds a scared little boy who's run away from his father. Things get extremely strange from there. This book is a wild ride.

I read it in a single sitting, so it's very propulsive. It's also very dark/bleak, despite some absurdist humor arising from the premise. I enjoyed it a lot while I read it, but it's now months later and it hasn't quite stuck with me the way some other books have. Nestlings is still my favorite of his.

Content notes: Child abuse/harm is central to the story. So is an accidental needle-stick with a possibly contaminated needle.

Spoilers! Also contains some light spoilers for Stephen King's Firestarter.

( Read more... )

Entry tags:

finland,
health

Are you fucking kidding me, health center?

When I called the health center in late October and said "My last refill of ADHD medication came with a note that said 'book appointment with doctor for checkup'", they told me that there were no appointments available until December, and to call back at the beginning of November when the December appointment slots open up.

I called after lunch today, and the receptionist told me that all the slots had been filled already (even though the slots only opened for booking this morning - I checked their hours - at 8 am) so I would have to call back on November 17th when the next batch of appointment slots (for later in December I guess) opens up, "and preferably as early as possible in the morning!"

This isn't a functional system.

It might be the best way they can manage the resources they have, but it's clearly a health center that doesn't have enough doctors.

This is not an acceptable way to access a doctor's care in a public health system!!!!

(It's because conservative governments have had control in Finland and have been shoving through 'healthcare reforms' and insane cutbacks to all the social services over the last few years.)

An appointment with a private GP at the chain of private health centers with a branch in town has a base price of 100€, but it's 140€ for specialists and I suspect might be more for psychiatrists. (I haven't seriously considered going there, so I didn't check the specifics. Checking how the psychiatric medications are going for me is theoretically a more long-term monitoring anyway, not a one-time visit.)

Entry tags:

Let's Get Literate! Books I Wish I Could Read for the First Time

As we end the year, I'm resisting the capitalistic urge to have my favorites list out in December for Content Reasons. Those of us dedicated to the ways of book blogging know that personal lists are best out in January because there's always a chance a book picked up in the dead space between holidays and the new year hits different. I will link to best of lists in Intergalactic Mixtape (because I am weak, and I love them), but that's it. I will not create my own!

To distract myself, while I was redoing my bookshelves, I made a list of books where I thought, "Wow, I would love to be able to read that again for the first time."

( Read more... )

Since my massive reading slump in 2020, I've become a lot kinder to myself when it comes to re-reading. It's nice to spend time with familiar characters and worlds. I'm trying really hard to be gentle with my brain, which is overtaxed by the Horrors. An election year seems like the perfect time for a reread spree. It's very likely all of these books, and their companion/sequel novels, will be on my December TBR/2026 reading list.

Entry tags:

meme

what is going on here? and why do I love it?

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Entry tags:

health

I've had it in lattes before but couldn't taste the difference bc lattes are delicious

When I saw her a few weeks ago my vegan-and-gluten-free-bc-allergies friend said that she loves oat milk and it tastes much better than soy or almond milk, especially in coffee, so I got some to try.

And it's so good! I'm only making cocoa with it right now, but it impressed me right away. I use lactose-free dairy products usually, but I suspect that they disagree with me too, just mildly, especially cocoa made with milk. I've always been too lazy to test that systematically. Eliminating all dairy for an extended period (which I have a few times) isn't rigorous enough because other things can upset my stomach too, including just... anxiety.

I really love lattes - mostly chai and matcha, but I like coffee lattes too - and I've been wanting to make them for years and years. I was originally planning to get a milk steamer as a reward when and if I ever pass the driving test, but currently I'm trying a caffeine-free diet to see if it helps my anxiety. I'm not sure if I will decide to consume it again when the trial is over (I'm doing two and a half months minimum on physician's advice), and there's no point buying one if not.

There's popcorn flavored oat milk at the store. Bewildered and concerned. Don't like that.

Facilitation Fatigue Part 2 – competing access needs

Posted by bankuei

https://bankuei.wordpress.com/2025/11/04/facilitation-fatigue-part-2-competing-access-needs/

http://bankuei.wordpress.com/?p=12727

Earlier this year, I wrote about facilitation fatigue – the build up of fatigue of doing coordination around play, not playing itself. Organizing schedules, teaching the game, tracking/cleaning up shared records/notes, etc.

Over in a Discord conversation, people were talking about organizing online files for play, and I was sharing an example of one of my quicksheet documents; 2-6 pages, basic rules overview, links to sub-PDFs of a few pages for each relevant section, etc. and I was about to explain how I got to this point over the course of playing online for years…

Oh. Oh that’s what’s been happening.

When it occurred to me that what I’m doing is developing tools for competing access needs for my groups I play with. (Competing access needs is a term developed in disability movements about when people need different needs that are difficult or impossible to simultaneously meet; consider a person who needs high visibility colors to see things and another person has migraines when they’re exposed to the same thing.)

How the information filters, or not

Some players will see a giant PDF, get intimidated, then read nothing. Some players will see a giant PDF, hyper absorb it all but then fixate on parts not relevant for the campaign we’re running. Sometimes players will miss key parts (“Do this to earn Hero points, this is the key mechanic in this game”). My quicksheet system was basically trying to get everyone aware enough how the game works that we can be firing full cylinders by the 2nd-3rd session and not totally going in too many directions. I’m trying to find a middle ground to get play going, and while it’s totally cool that I’ve developed these tools, it’s also somewhat frustrating that there’s few games I can just go “Here folks read this, let’s play on Friday”.

A place where a middle ground can sometimes be found

And mind you, this is not the same issue as “we don’t actually want to play the same game”, it’s just that so many of my circles are operating on different learning / information access methods that I’ve basically developed a lot of strategies over time to try to help everyone coordinate.

Oof no wonder my ass is tired. LOL. Don’t no one say I don’t love roleplaying, got me out here doing information design work as a hobby.

If you find my blog entertaining and valuable, consider supporting me on Patreon.

https://bankuei.wordpress.com/2025/11/04/facilitation-fatigue-part-2-competing-access-needs/

http://bankuei.wordpress.com/?p=12727

Entry tags:

TV Tuesday: Not My Usual, But Nice

Laptop-TV combo with DVDs on top and smartphone on the desk

What do you think about mind-bending, experimental shows? What about eccentric, genius-type characters? Do they get too confusing or condescending, or do they ramp up your curiosity?

Which are examples for "weird done well"?

Paying it forward

If anyone needs a hand to get through this month, let me know. You don’t need to explain, it doesn’t need to be SNAP related in any way. Comments screened. (Not doing friend of a friend stuff, just you, people who read this.)

I will probably make this post private in like a week out of sheer embarrassment so ask soon if you need something.

Entry tags:

political stuff

I went to a fight the other night, and a hockey game broke out

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Entry tags:

movie: hunger games (series)

Finnick Odair Fan Video - The Poet and the Pendulum

Title: The Poet and the Pendulum
Character: Finnick Odair
Fandom: The Hunger Games
Music: The Poet and the Pendulum by Nightwish
Length: 3:24
Notes: Edited original song length of 13:55 to fit narrative.
Streaming/download at: DW | Tumblr

Current Mood: excited

Entry tags:

Yuleswaps 2025: ALL MATCH-UPS SENT!

Here we go. Please watch this post! We will update here as each batch goes out:

Candy? SENT as of 6:47 PM PST 11/4!

Drinks? SENT (twice, lol) as of 6:51 PM PST 11/3!

Books? SENT as of 6:39 PM PST 11/3!

( INSTRUCTIONS & REMINDERS )

SENDING DEADLINE: Friday, November 21, 2025

Extensions/Defaulting: Pre-research your post office/courier service hours, and plan to send as early as you can! BUT if your best-laid plans fail, and you need an extension -- we get it! Please bypass the shame spiral and email us ASAP. We want to know what's going on but rarely hesitate to grant brief extensions, especially to historically reliable swappers.

And, of course, if you need to default for any reason, the above is doubly true!! Life happens, but if you let us know as soon as it does, we can help out your recipient AND probably have you back next year with minimal anxiety.

One More Time: don't forget to check in at Swaps Central! And a safe, merry Swapstide to all!

Current FAQ and very old resources post here, for anyone who needs them. Questions and comments here or via email, as always.

Kat & Livi & Helen

Repair Video

https://xkcd.com/3163/

Game Hype: Fallen Blades / Endless Stars

Posted by bankuei

https://bankuei.wordpress.com/2025/11/03/game-hype-fallen-blades-endless-stars/

http://bankuei.wordpress.com/?p=12718

I picked up a copy of Fallen Blades / Endless Stars and only just got a chance to look at it today.

While both Galactic & Going Rogue give you those great Star Wars heroic / tragic structures of fighting an evil empire in space, Fallen Blades / Endless Stars focuses in on the Jedi thing and does two things:

First, gameplay is a touch more traditional – players focus on using their resources, skills and clever play to overcome the problems put forth – build advantages, roll dice.
Second, it focuses in on the internal conflicts as much as the external; each level of power you gain two more oaths you’re expected to fulfill, and these oaths can conflict at times.

This second part is pure gold. For example, you start with “Protect all members of the Order” AND “Protect the citizens” and, well, obviously situations are going to come up where you can’t do both. The interesting part within this is that there’s no mechanical enforcement to violating your oaths; just that your Sith-equivalents are looking for violators to bring in on their side and your own order is set to hunt down heretics… This feels very strongly like the conflicting orders of 3:16 Carnage Among the Stars and the morally broken code of Dogs in the Vineyard. A very slick, lightweight Narrativist game here.

The pressure cooker
There’s an ongoing pressure mechanic where the GM is rolling every session to see if one of the hunter teams has found where you are, and if you manage to kill them, they will escalate. In later play, you must take on apprentices to restore the order; which also brings more attention of the enemies, and the chance they might convert your students to their side as well. The pressure and the stakes never let up, and there’s a great line where the game says “The empire always finds you. If you don’t want the empire to find you, destroy the empire.”

Light, Fast, Robust
This isn’t a “beginner’s RPG” – it’s expected that the group knows how to run/play a traditional RPG – the GM will set scenes, the characters will mostly work together to solve problems and angle for advantage, it’s a tiny 40 page game, 14 of those pages are full charts to random generate details as needed and the rules are very simple.

There’s special rules for duels which are pretty fun; both combatants roll 2d8 in secret, assign one die to be an attack die, and one to be a defense die. Each combatant has 5 special cards to choose from that modify what happens next – the cards have a priority order, so some effects can only work if you think you can survive long enough for the later priority to activate. It’s light, fast and good, and just a touch easier to navigate than Errant’s great dueling rules.

If you find my blog entertaining and valuable, consider supporting me on Patreon.

https://bankuei.wordpress.com/2025/11/03/game-hype-fallen-blades-endless-stars/

http://bankuei.wordpress.com/?p=12718

Entry tags:

knypplinge

Unfortunately the correct method is still not exactly FAST and also is still stinky...

I finally managed to find good information about getting rust off of a cast iron woodstove by using Marginalia Search Engine, a specialty search engine that is intended to resurface the "old web" of private websites and bulletin boards and stuff instead of SEO and corporate slop.

A few years ago in the winter when we were using the cast iron woodstove sometimes, someone (me) uhmmmmm absent-mindedly left some candle holders sitting on top of it with candles in them and those included ones carved out of solid blocks of pink rock salt (hideous, they belonged to my MIL, who was addicted to candles. Why didn't we just get rid of them? We hated them. Natural aversion to throwing things away. We have since thrown them out). So it turns out that ummm the candles completely liquefy if you do that and then light a fire in the stove, and they like cause the salt to run and melt onto the surface of the wood stove and salt is bad for cast iron. So. Big rust spots.

And the rust spots have got worse with time, because when it first happened and we tried to get them off, we tried with normal google and duckduckgo searches and got no better advice than sandpaper and steel wool. We only managed to get a tiny bit of the rust off and determined that getting it all off would have taken about 5000 hours of hand-sanding. Since that was not a worthwhile proposition, we left it that way for another year.

So anyway, I tried Marginalia a month ago or something, and it only took a few minutes to unearth a thread about restoring cast iron woodstoves on an old-fashioned bulletin board on "finishing.com, the home of the finishing industry". It's straight out of the internet 20 years ago. And the information was MUCH better!

WD-40 softens rust

wire brushes, not sandpaper or sandblasting (although industrial, like, having the stove ripped out and taking it to someone who will sandblast it is the nuclear option if it's completely covered in rust everywhere)

wire brush attachments for power drills

That was all the info we needed! WD-40 never seemed stinky to me when I was using it on door hinges and stuff, but when you spray it over the visible rust on a wood stove it is noticeable, though not TERRIBLE; it smells kinda like you're in an auto shop, but not in the middle of the car part. Like by the entrance.

You can get visible change on small rust spots with a handheld wire brush. A few hours on two days with the drill attachment has seemed to do the majority of it. It's very hard to work in eye protection goggles and a high filtration mask though. I have to stop, lift the glasses to look, then lower them and start again every minute or so. We are not planning to repaint the spots that have been taken back to the silvery iron, according again to the advice on this bulletin board. Apparently lighting a fire after the WD-40 is already going to be stinky enough and the paint would be worse. You can get protective stove polishes of some kind apparently.

This stove is a Jøtul 3 Classic cast iron woodstove, in a traditional 19th century style. It's completely inappropriate for this 1950 modern-style house. The expected stove in the livingroom is (and no doubt was) a masonry stove, which is much better at heating an area because the ceramic conserves heat and releases it gradually. The form of masonry stoves, which are of course built on-site, was typically streamlined in the years after this house was built. Nowadays you can't build them yourself anymore and that makes them more expensive, so somebody probably replaced the original one when it failed with this cast iron stove perhaps in the 1980s, which was the last time this model was made. But crucially, although a woodstove is completely inappropriate to the house and less functional, there were and are woodstoves that are more minimal and modern in form and they could've just got one of those. But nope.

Anyway, we can't afford a masonry stove like, ever, but our ambition is to replace this woodstove with a Porin Matti, a cheaper alternative to a masonry stove that is still slightly better at retaining heat than a cast iron stove, and which also (a) was in popular use in 1950 and (b) looks similar to the style of masonry stoves typically found in our type of house. These only cost about 2500€ (not counting labor), in contrast to masonry stoves which are typically over 8000€ not counting labor (and requiring much more labor because the mason has to build it on site out of blocks and tiles). We would've been able to buy one this year probably if we hadn't had this broken sewage pipe issue, which ended up costing around 10k. (We had previously earmarked that money, an inheritance from my great-uncle who died recently, for restoring the outer front door and maybe a stove; but the last of it got used on the plumbing instead.)

Entry tags:

meme,
music monday

the wind is always listening

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Entry tags:

emotional support fiber

I slightly less half-assedly fixed the warp on the Clover Sakiori loom (Japanese).

weaving WIP close-up

I didn't bring a comb for the weft and was using a tapestry needle, but catten remains unlikely to mind imperfect weaving.

Also, further adventures in dyeing wool yarn. I'd like to test on dyeing combed top for cotton, ramie, and silk (mulberry/bombyx, eri, tussah, and maybe a small sample of my treasured stash of muga); and then try some on alpaca or mohair after I've processed some more.

dyed yarn

Later in the season, in natural dyes, I might experiment with the traditional hoary old standby of onion skins; rose hips (several of my roses shrubs produce them); and find out if windfall figs from the no-longer-quite-so-baby fig tree do anything interested as dyes. Osage orange, common madder, true and false indigo, hibiscus, and elderberry grow in Louisiana so making a dye plant plot might be entertaining. That or I sacrifice e.g. a bunch of beets lol. For personal use, I don't care about consistency (I prefer chaos ball colors) and I'm not that fussed about reliable fastness. "Throw it in a pot and also an ~appropriate mordant" for personal experiment promises to be very entertaining.