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That is all.

A Bit of Inspiration

Being a collection of weird things from gaming and non-gaming news which may prove useful for future campaigns...

1) First let us speak of the Musk Deer...

If the image to the right alone is not sufficiently creepy and fantasy-enough, let me point out that this species of sabre-tooth cervid, native to the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan, is so rare that it has not been "officially" sighted in 60 years and its musk glands are "considered more valuable by weight than gold, fetching as much as $45,000/kilo on the black market." 

Then, of course, there is the SKULL. What self-respecting adventurer would not want one of these bad boys hanging on their wall? 

And, for your alchemist friend "It is rumored that ancient royalty wore the scent of the musk deer and that it is an aphrodisiac."


2) Also, Sunken Ships is not a thing I have ever done in a game...

I can't imagine why I have not done this yet. I've had plenty of underwater exploration in games. Given the wealth of deep-sea exploration magic (not to mention awesome squatic monsters) available in the various versions of D&D, a just-a-bit-too-deep shipwreck has so much potential. 

Then of course, there is the specific wreck referenced which includes such wonders as the Antikythera Mechanism and a 2 meter long solid-bronze spear (anyone else thinking of an underwater hybrid of Expedition to the Barrier Peaks and Against the Giants yet? Of course you are...)

 3) Diet as an identifying characteristic?

Obviously, I try to find real-world examples and inspiration for the things that go into my fantasy games. The other day I came upon this article where some researchers analyzed the diets of deceased Roman gladiators based based on trace elements found in the remains (summarized in plain-English here). The idea that gladiators not only had a specific diet (consisting mostly of grains, beans, and a tonic of plant-ashes dissolved in water as a beverage and calcium supplement) but that other people had a special word for them--"hordearii" ("barley eaters")--is just fascinating.

I've played lots of games where adventurers eat things like weird meats or encounter subterranean societies that have to subsist on mushrooms and the like, or cannibals (surprisingly many cannibals actually), but haven't ever really bothered to distinguish specific cultures or subcultures in my games by diet. 

Plenty of real-world religious sects have odd  dietary constraints. Likewise there are tons of interesting choices of food (based on availability or taste) between various cultures. Why don't we do that more in-game? What about mechanics for physical changes brought on by diet (like the gladiators drinking ash to promote accelerate bone healing and growth after battles or the chunky "chankonabe" stew that sumotori eat to promote growth)?

What about competitive eating? Plenty of games have a scene with a drinking competition (and accompanying wages or dares to spark adventure). What about hot sauce shots? Or mechanics for tolerance to the effects of certain food additives (such as the increased general pain tolerance exhibited by extreme chili-heads)?

 4) Are encumbrance rules completely wrong?

Everyone hates encumbrance rules right? All that tracking of how much what you are carrying weighs and whining when you had to make Strength your dump stat and you can't haul any loot, and delegating all the carrying to a single large party member as the proverbial "pack-horse". Well, a recent  study by the American Institute of Physics proved that, put simply, "Overall strength of an individual does not determine how heavy a backpack a person can comfortably carry."

In fact, the finding was that "smaller students could comfortably carry a greater pack weight than the larger ones of similar fitness levels". That's right...D&D got it backwards...

The reasoning..."hikers must haul not only their packs, but also their own body weight". Or "incorporation of the backpacker's weight as part of the carrying capacity was essential to model the backpacker."

You can dig into the math here.

My simple solution...

1. Increase the overall amount that a character with a Strength score of X can carry (by a factor of n, where n=the minimum weight for the character's race).
2. Subtract the character's weight from that carrying capacity.

1.  

Justification for Your Paranoia

Okay, yesterday was the last day of NCSAM, so here is one last bonus security post to close out the month. As I write this, I am hitting refresh like mad trying to get into Shmoocon 2015 in January...

1) Let's start with this awesome video...

2) On the same topic, slightly less amusing, but slightly more useful...

If you have trouble coming up with sufficiently long, sufficiently random passwords, passwds.io can help. Just specify the length and how many passwords you want and it will spit several out for you. The passwords are only pseudo-random, and are designed to have pronounceable portions to make them easier to remember. Keep in mind, even a 20-character or longer password from this site will not be completely secure...

First, they are broadcast to you in plaintext. Yes, its over https, but that does not stop the guy who made it from reading them all. 

Secondly, they are only lower-case, upper-case, and numbers, which means you are pulling from a much smaller character set than you could be, making brute-force attacks easier. 

Even with those caveats, if your passwords suck, you should take a look. It might be inspiring.

 3) Facebook has actually been working hard to improve its anonymity stance...

The most recent, and best, step has been to allow direct connections through the Tor network. Facebook has come out with a .onion address (link only works on Tor-enabled browsers) that works with SSL and lets users access Facebook without disclosing their true location. While connecting through Tor is little help for those of you who plaster your real names and address all over your facebook page and check-in at every store and restaurant you go to, for the rest of us, who would like to keep track of our friends without exposing ourselves, this is awesome. 

Keep in mind that even Tor is not bulletproof.

 4) If you have a website running Drupal, you should assume it was hacked...

Nearly a million websites running the popular Drupal content management system had only hours to update their software before attacks likely compromised the systems, thanks to a widespread vulnerability, the Drupal security team warned this week.

On October 15, the security team for the Drupal content management system announced the discovery of a critical security flaw that could allow attackers to steal data or compromise vulnerable sites. Within seven hours of the announcement, attackers had begun broadly scanning for and attacking Drupal sites, according to the project’s security team, which provided the details in an October 29 public service announcement.