Posts Tagged "tao-of-dnd" from 2023

It seems to me that the thesis of the Streetvendor's Guide is that careful consideration of everyday objects and materials reveals a world -- *our* world -- in fascinating detail, and that consideration of those details, in turn, prepares the reader to be critical and meticulous while designing his own world.

In light of that -- and do please correct me if that's wrong -- I don't think these have gone too far in the direction of subtlety or blandness. Nor are the subjects too ordinary.

It really does feel like there's a parallel universe where other people are doing something that they call RPGs, but which bears no resemblance to what you are doing here at the Tao (nor to what your readers are doing with you as inspiration.)

It occurs to me that most creative endeavors must suffer from it. I'm familiar with it in the poetry world, where the "parallel universe" people who think splashing 20 random words onto the page is a poem, and the Smolenskian OGs are sweating over every syllable, every implication of a word's etymology. I don't doubt that you've seen the same for the art of writing, more generally.

I'm here and I'm reading. I'll follow you and your work wherever you take it.

I understand that you want to channel your writing energy into the most productive thing you can do with it. That said, for what it's worth, blogs aren't dead for me. I strongly prefer reading to watching. I can read anywhere, as fast as my brain allows. And I can easily save written material for offline reuse, e.g. annotation/summarizing for my own private DM prep work (which I do offline to avoid distractions.)

Ah, what the hell, my email is public anyway, and linked to this account to boot. Anyone with wiki quibbles can ping me at maxwelljoslyn@gmail.com .

Not at all! "Email followup" works for *one* post -- and only if I've already commented -- and only if I remembered to tick the box. Would be useful to receive a notification of comments on *any* post; then people could leave notes about the wiki wherever.

I know you don't want to re-enable your RSS feed for the posts themselves, but there may be a way to enable an RSS feed just for new comments. I daresay I've seen that on other Blogger setups before.

Thanks Croaker and Escritoire!

Alexis, do I understand you correctly that there's a way to subscribe by email and receive notice of all new comments at the Tao? If so, please tell me how to sign up for that.

I'll also check the "email followup comments" option for this post in particular, so we can use it as the Bat-signal for wiki corrections.

I'll cop to having essentially done "you leave the wilderness aaaaand you're back in the city" last session*. I'm finding myself really hard pressed to come up with descriptions and possible hooks on the fly. You'd gnash your teeth if you saw how often I've shamefully zipped the players from A to B, with minimal mention of the people, buildings, roads, signposts, smells, sounds, sights along the way...

My current prescription: practice writing brief descriptions and hooks during the week, then recite them out loud like an actor's lines to install in my head some choices I can fall back on. We'll see if a month or two of that ups my game.

How delightful to be surprised on my Saturday morning with a post like this!

Thanks, Alexis. It's been a pleasure to help refine the wiki. Full steam ahead.

Alexis I hear you loud and clear and I'm working away!

Drafting food quality rules into my game. Want the players to feel they are getting their money's worth for the cook they hired...

Regarding mapping: I'd like to see the Provence map extended -- adding one hex east and one hex north if that's alright.

Finally have time to go over some of the streetvendor material. Sorry for not saying something sooner even though you took the time to email me during the Patreon kerfuffle.

First off, I love your decision to go all in on rich and informational text. It’s been a long long time since I used any published RPG material, from WOTC or from smaller publishers or from independent, because none of them know how to actually describe anything (because they don't know about the world, only about generic fantasy). They just give me a bunch of badly written cliche flavor crap I don’t need. I can open a history book and get 10 gallons of “flavor.”

Unfortunately I also cannot access the pages. In fact, I no longer see a $10 tier on the Patreon at all (though my subscription is still active at that amount.) Weird.

Great showcase for the aptness of the color scheme. The differences in the locations are immediately apparent. And once drawn in by the pleasant colors, the other information becomes more salient, and its easy to lose myself in each map for a while.

As for crowdfunding, at my next game session (probably a week from Sat) I'll ask my players if they're willing to pitch in. I predict success: they love your wiki, and we use many of your rules (especially sage skills.)

Hip hip hooray for any and all interactive versions of your work! Good one, Alexis.

I'd like to see a very-high-infrastructure area, please. How about London? Say, from Kensington Palace on eastward along the Thames.