Articles

Iteration is the thing. Or at least that’s what I tell myself. After all, tinkering is easy to do, especially when you are working with a platform as flexible as Jekyll. So as you would expect, I’ve made several changes to the site since the initial relaunch.

This article from Strolen’s Citadel is easily the best piece of practical advice for a DM that I’ve found. Dungeon design is difficult to get right. Despite what the swollen published modules may lead you to believe, shorter crawls are almost always better.

Ahh, a site relaunch. That fresh new-theme smell! Just what the doctor ordered for the Ministry of Intrigue.

This GQ story about the North Pond Hermit is amazing. One day in 1986, Christopher Knight left family and friends behind for good, and spent 30 years leaving alone in the woods of Maine, sleeping in a hidden tent.

Outstanding article from Wired on Steward Butterfield, the founder of Flickr and Glitch, and how his business software Slack is growing at an unbelievable rate. We’ve been running a trial of Slack at work for select teams, and it’s an amazing product.

I’ve been trying to get back into the routine of doing morning pages. That is, the process of writing three pages of material each day to clear my mind and prime my creative pump for the day.

Great article from Cory Doctorow on the conversations he’s had with his six year old daughter about mass surveillance. What’s particularly revealing is which concepts she intuitively grasps from her own experience with technology, and how that aligns with research done on the online habits of children.

Earlier this year, I wrote about my resolutions for 2014, and in that post I promised a monthly follow-up where I would report on my progress towards each of my defined goals.

Nik Custodio has put together a wonderfully easy to read primer on Bitcoin titled “ Explain Bitcoin Like I’m Five”. I think there are valid concerns out there about Bitcoin (more of that another time), but it doesn’t stop it from being a remarkable technological achievement, and this article does a good job of explaining it in layman’s terms.

New Year’s Eve has always been an uncomfortable holiday for me. While for many, it’s used as a time of renewal and looking forward with hope to the future, I’ve always spent the time reflecting on what did and did not get accomplished the previous year.

Author Sam Sykes has concocted a drinking game certain to destroy anyone foolish enough to play it. It’s quite clever, but I am certain that there is no way that this does not end with someone throwing up.

I’ve recently written about Monte Cook’s game Numerera, and by all accounts, the game appears to be enjoying some success, or at least significant buzz. Many creators would be content with that and simply double-down on that product.

Welcome to the Ninth World As I’ve been running my D&D campaign, I’ve become interested in the alternative role-playing systems that came about after my initial foray into gaming. It all started because I was looking for inspiration for fun rule tweaks I could incorporate into my games that would foster more role-play and streamline combat.

I recently wrote about my return to Dungeons and Dragons, and promised another post where I would share what tools our group is using to facilitate our long-distance games. It’s really critical to make sure that game groups are well organized, or many campaigns will fizzle out due to the amount of work involved.

I’ve been playing Dungeons & Dragons again for the first time in over ten years. It’s been a lot of fun, and challenging as well. When I started playing again, I elected to start by being the DM for my group, which is quite a bit of work, but very rewarding.

This is our first Valentine’s Day as parents, and I wanted to get my wife an extra special floral arrangement for the holiday. I knew that with our schedule I would have a hard time sneaking away to a florist to make arrangements.

As previously discussed, I recently switched to Octopress on this site. I’ve been pretty happy with that decision thus far. Performance is good thanks to static files. It’s a joy to compose in Markdown, preview it on my own machine, and then deploy to my site.

I’ve added the short story that I wrote for the Kopoint Halloween Spooktacular to the fiction section of this site. I’ll continue to add stories and fiction projects that I release online to that area as the days go forward.

I was randomly searching the iTunes podcast directory a few weeks ago and stumbled across the Drunks & Dragons podcast. Essentially, it’s a series of recorded gaming sessions between friends playing through their first campaign.

This site is now powered by Octopress. The tentacles compell you! It’s tentacly delicious ! The Search> The Search # As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve been looking to try out a new CMS for this site.