New post on Mitt Romney and his failure to reckon with his role in the GOP's transformation from the party of Lincoln into the far-right monstrosity it is today. https://klintron.com/2025/how-we-got-here/

@KateOfMind Thank you!

Here's an excerpt from my novel-in-progress. It's a murder mystery about the deaths of members of a defunct 90s industrial rock band. This bit has the front-man talking about corporations and chaos magic(k). https://klintron.com/2024/persistent-magical-assault/

@KateOfMind I must say the spoiler level is set exactly right to make me want to keep reading the series, which I was leaning against doing, for various reasons.

@KateOfMind Reading Book of the New Sun for the first time this week and today came across your notes from 2012. Great stuff, very helpful!

Brilliant: https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/25/crowdstrike_remediation_with_barcode_scanner/?td=rt-3a

OK Mastodon #OpenSource folks, this is your time to shine

I need some examples of common open source myths. This will have a security slant to it when I put it all together, but I'm not only looking for security examples, I want all types

Here are a few I've cooked up, but I know there are ton more

- Most projects have more than one maintainer

- Most projects are part of a large foundation like Eclipse or Linux Foundation

- There are many options for libraries and you can swap them out if needed

- Open source is more secure than closed source

- Open source is less secure than closed source

- Most projects have funding driving the development

- If I use open source in my product, I have to open source the whole product

- If the source code is available, it’s open source

- There are a few thousand open source projects

I want them all, no matter how small, silly, or obvious you think they are, let me know

Okay, folks... I've got a #giveaway for #rpg fans.

I backed the Last Airbender tabletop game Avatar Legends on #Kickstarter a while back for the whole shebang. Core book, adventure guide, dice and bag, combat action deck, fold outs... I am probably never going to play it, so I want to get it into the hands of somebody who will. Free.

On 1 September 2024.ev I am going to draw a random number between 1 and 1000 inclusive. If you're interested, please reply with a number in that range. Closest to the number picked when I roll 1d1000 (3d10, all zeros are 1000) gets it all.

Please boost?

I’d love to see a lot more people talking about JD Vance’s support for Curtis Yarvin, who believes in the reinstatement of slavery, in replacing the democratically elected government with a CEO king, and that Hitler was acting in self defense.

Is anybody out there who a) works at #redhat, and b) is responsible for running Ansible Galaxy? I think you've got a misconfiguration on your back-end that's breaking a lot of stuff for users.

Boost please?

My latest old school adventure review: The Purple Worm Graveyard, which is by now double old school. https://kidminotaur.com/the-purple-worm-graveyard-review-based-on-actual-play-8ae8d14fc6f1

I recommend some small changes to make it more interesting and less hack 'n slash.

At the very least there are some cool monsters to steal.

Purple Worm Graveyard is up next.

What should I run/review after that? Anyone got anything they're on the fence about running and want me to take a crack at it first?

Latest OSR review: Prison of the Hated Pretender by Gus L. https://kidminotaur.com/prison-of-the-hated-pretender-review-based-on-actual-play-264449552098

This is a good example of a module that plays better than it reads. I have some questions and tweaks I think are worth reading if you're thinking about running this one.

Non-binary: "Attack or retreat" is a boring choice compared to "Negotiate, sneak, bribe, attack, or retreat, etc."

Non-arbitrary: Not a choice between door number 1 and door number 2. There should be a reason to choice one or the other. saying “Webbed footprints lead to a fork on the left. You feel a cool breeze from the fork to the right” gives players a chance to reason about what decision they should make.

Consequential: I don’t mind the occasional quantum ogre to keep things on track (I’d say they’re OK to use occasionally if it makes the game more fun for everyone), but player decisions have to matter.

Meaningful decisions are really important to making a good adventure. To be meaningful, decisions should be consequential, non-arbitrary, and preferably non-binary.

In my review of some one-page dungeons (including the excellent Skyblind Spire), I also develop my thoughts on what makes a good adventure in this post. It boils down to "stuff for PCs to do besides combat." https://kidminotaur.com/one-page-dungeon-reviews-skyblind-spire-brittlestone-parapets-under-the-tree-based-on-actual-7f1d19c335dc

I was going to post “the 1000 free copies of How Git Works for folks who can't afford it have all been claimed, I'll release more when we sell 2000 copies"

But then I went to check this morning and we've already sold 2000 copies of the zine??? So I guess we're giving away another 1000 copies now. https://wizardzines.com/zines/git/

more details in this post: https://social.jvns.ca/@b0rk/112552672907642693

My review of Demon Driven to the Maw by Brad Kerr tldr; Fun scenario. Timing was a big challenge for me, but otherwise pretty easy to run. https://kidminotaur.com/review-of-demon-driven-to-the-maw-based-on-actual-play-063ace49e2ac