#3E-Resource Management

[level2janitor]

tactiquest structure

so i've posted a lot about tactiquest's classes and monsters and everything on here but i haven't really talked about the non-combat subsystems much yet and i wanted to go into detail about them, bc tactiquest has very different goals from most heroic fantasy systems.

tracking inventory, travel time, worrying about actually running out of your adventuring budget, are things a lot of big-damn-heroes fantasy systems throw out because they're just paperwork that gets in the way of your cool fights. that's not the case in Tactiquest! these systems are so core to the experience that removing them will make a lot of classes unusable. the game is built around them.

travel & exploration

tactiquest explicitly assumes you're running an open-sandbox hexcrawl and is designed to support that, including the fact the game is designed around random encounters. this is the sort of thing D&D 3e expected you to do, but people ditched random encounters because they thought they were boring and tedious. so classes balanced around that attrition of resources ended up with a huge spike in power other classes couldn't match.

the boring-and-tedious problem is mostly addressed by trying to make combat really good and resolve really fast. if i fucked that up the whole thing falls apart, but so far people are liking it

the second thing that helps with random encounters is your resources don't fully restore immediately at the end of each day like they do in 3e. resting is less effective in the wilderness and resources expended are a tomorrow problem, not just a today problem. so you don't have to have 3+ fights every single day just to maintain parity - 0-2 fights per day still adds up to difficult resource management.

because the game has such a focus on it, you can have classes like the ranger actually be good at travel and exploration instead of just giving them vaguely-naturey combat abilities.

economy

in most D&D-likes, even usually OSR ones, you accrue so much gold. just as a side effect of adventuring. to the point money no longer actually matters because you can throw piles of it at any problem. this is bad. it's a system that defeats its own purpose; there are no interesting choices involving money when you have so much the only real expense is like, 50,000-gold-piece magic items.

i don't just want players to care about money, i want them to worry about money, like a normal person. you're not batman who's a billionaire as a side hobby, you're spiderman who has to deliver pizzas in between superhero work because he's got bills to pay like everyone else. so a whole lot of effort has been put into actually designing prices and treasure amounts around this dynamic.

i also hate how games will usually go "oh adventuring gives you 900,000 gold for existing but a normal person's living wage is 2 gold a month". i don't want to be fantasy jeff bezos, thanks

inventory

this is something i just lifted from OSR games outright. you can carry ten things (and tiny things don't take up an item slot). that's the whole rule.

tracking inventory can add a lot of interesting decisions to a game and adds a new lever for abilities from classes and magic items. having a character play the merchant class which gets a bunch of extra inventory slots feels really impactful. finding a bag of holding that doubles your carry capacity feels so good when you actually have to watch your inventory.

supply

the only thing i felt was really unenjoyable when running games with strict inventory limits was tracking rations for each character that you eat every night; it felt too much like busywork with not enough payoff. so in Tactiquest rations are abstracted into a single Supply stat that's tied to the party rather than any individual character.

you can only restock Supply in towns, and it drops by 1 each time you rest. you can sleep without resting and this won't cost supply, but you won't regain any HP or other resources. this gives you the impactful decision-making of tracking rations without the annoyance of "okay it's been a day of travel, everyone make sure you dock a ration from your sheet" like twice per session

Supply is one of the things that slowly drains your funds and gives you a reason to keep seeking out treasure, tying back into the economy. it also gives merchants and rangers some extra mechanical levers for their class abilities to pull on.

[darklordazalin]

Azalin Reviews: 'Darklord' Vlad Drakov

Domain: Falkovnia Domain Formation: 690 BC Power Level: ⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫ 0/5 Skulls Sources: Domains of Dread (23); Domains and Denizens (2e), Ravenloft Gazetteer II (3e); Secrets of the Dread Realms (3e)

Ah, Vlad Drakov, the impaling loving little hireling Darklord of Falkovnia. Falkovnia is a land of rolling lowlands, fertile fields, and lush forests...All these resources are the only reason any other Domain in the Core puts up with this miserable failure, never-was conqueror.

Though the story changes slightly from pre and post Grand Conjunction days, Vlad was originally from the Kingdom of Thenol in the realm of Talades. Not Oerth, so clearly unimportant. Vlad and his little band of ruffians, who called themselves the Talons of the Hawk, were mercenaries. Vlad being the “Hawk” and the rest of his band of brutality being the “Talons”. Vlad doesn’t have a lot going for him, but he managed to scrape up enough charm to convince these Talons of his to do whatever he asked of them, which mostly amounted to them brutally slaughtering people for coin and Vlad impaling captives and watching them slowly die while he took on his evening meal.

Eventually, these hirelings wandered into the Mists and found themselves in the southlands of Darkon. Believing he discovered a new land, Vlad set about slaughtering my people. This did not work out the way he thought it would as his murders only gave me more weapons to work with. I sent the newly fallen and many of the old against him and his men. They fled, like the cowards they are, into the Mists.

Our ever present Tormentors thought it fit to gift Vlad with the Domain of Falkovnia then. Oh there’s some nonsensical “history” about Vlad overthrowing a “wizard king” known as the “Falcon the Great” before he settled in Castle Draccipetri and became the leader of the realm, but I place little validity on that story. Vlad couldn’t overthrow an army of ants let alone a powerful wizard king. Castle Draccipetri stands in the middle of an island on the Lukar River, a single, narrow bridge the only entryway, making it easy to defend, which matters little as no one would bother to send forces against him in the first place. The victory would be too easy.

The hireling was always looked down upon by the mighty lords and leaders that needed his brutality to win their wars and he desired nothing more than to be their equal and earn their respect. He was granted a position of rulership by our Tormentors, but the rulers of the other Domains will never respect him if they even notice him. He is akin to a fly; annoying yet easily swatted away.

Vlad tries to conquer the Domains that surround his, yet fails at every attempt. He has his heart set on Darkon, my Domain being vastly superior and richer than his own. I have lost track of the number of times the little hawk as attemppted to graps my lands in his talons, only to be swatted away by a horde of zombies. These failed attempts are barely worth the effort of a moment's work it takes for me to utterly destroy his forces. But some men do not recognize the futility of their own actions. Vlad also fails to understand where he is and why he is haunted by unsuccessful campaigns...well, besides the fact that he is always overreaching.  King of the Dead here, stop sending your soldiers into my Domain and adding to my side of an utterly pointless fight.

Failing conquest and gaining the respect of his fellow lords, Darkov has little pleasure in life except impaling his victims and watching them slowly die. He also is quite fond of “hawking” and treats his hawks better than any of his mortal companions. He takes out his frustration on his people with oppressive and extensive laws, making life in Falkovnia about as meaningless and futile as Darkov’s campaigns against Darkon.

Vlad is a fearsome warrior, but given his curse is to never know victory or respect, I will award him zero skulls. Good day sir!

[kaznaths-thoughts]

I don’t know what to call Rothbard and Gazpus’ magic system other than "mnemonic." It relies on you remembering the spell at hand and employs rhyme in order to achieve that end. Mnemonic magic makes sense when surveying Rothbard and Gazpus’ entire philosophy. It is also quite unique in the TTRPG space. It does have its competitors though, and they have their own benefits and drawbacks.

Vancian magic is most common due to Dungeons & Dragons’ popularizing of the system. You have prepared spells with a certain number of spells you are allowed to cast per-day, materialized as spell-slots. Its benefit is its clearly defined perimeters, its limitation of spells which can be presently used, and its openness with regard to selection of spells. The drawbacks, on the other hand, are philosophic in some sense. What, in fiction, does the spell slot mean? What, in the fiction, is the explanation for the limitation of the spell slot and not individual spell use [which more aligns with Jack Vance’s use of magic]? And why in fiction do spell slots reset after use if magic is something outside of the caster being tapped into? It is hard to philosophically justify, though it creates a good systemic balance for spellcasting characters and their non-spellcasting compatriots/enemies. 

Psionic magic has become more popular post-3e Dungeons & Dragons and is often used in place of Vancian magic. Psionic magic is any system which uses a resource-like token or point system in which points are expended for use of magic. Skill, of course, defines how many points a character may have or expend. In fiction, this makes good sense - magic is a resource that can be expended and recharged like a form of energy in a person. However, mechanically it can be quite frustrating. This is true of all of D&D’s magic systems - magic users are often weaker than everyone else in every other area, so when their magic is expended, the character becomes rather useless and this can be frustrating to the player. 

"Allomancy" or "resource magic" is another form of magic, which sees far less use, and in some ways for obvious reasons. Allomantic magic relies on the player’s use or expending of a physical resource like metal or clay or some other good [see Sanderson’s Mistborn & World of Dungeons], and was meagerly incorporated into Dark Sun as a part of a pseudo-Vancian “Defiling Magic”. In essence, if you run out of the resource, you run out of magic. This lacks favor because it involves an intentional management of inventory, something which most players and Storytellers dislike. For this reason, it is often incorporated into a system, rather than being allowed to stand on its own - Dungeons & Dragons, as noted, has flirted continuously with Allomantic magic, even in use of the modern “spell components”. 

Lastly, one magical alternative is Eugenic magic. Eugenic magic is magic which is innate to a character due to their family genetics. Magic in this system is an inherited trait. This sees use in fictions like Harry Potter, Dune, and Star Wars; and in TTRPG’s through the influence of “Kids on Bikes”. Eugenic magic usually makes magic one of the defined stats of the player’s character - like Charisma and Strength. In “Kids on Bikes”, they use the “Weird” stat; other systems like “the Window”, “ Cornerstone”, and “Stormbringer” use it in this manner, substituting their own term. This is often the preferred method for those who either don’t like Vancian/Psionic magic or who often are on the receiving end of magical damage within a game. There is a sense of “leveling the playing field”  when magic becomes a stat like Strength or Charisma. It has its mechanical problems of course, such as how does one determine what spell effect takes place when using a “spell check” and how extreme the effect is allowed to be. If it is the Storyteller/Dungeon Master, it lies squarely outside the user’s control and this can be extremely irritating to players. And there are some notable philosophic problems with the system and its effect on the story; essentially some characters are just genetically more special than others in one way or another that gives advantage. A world of Eugenic magic is a world of hard-fast genetic traits, where genes can determine one’s abilities to do this or that, which is fine if the Storyteller and players are willing to reckon with that as a reality in their world. But they cannot simply ignore it. 

Sword & Backpack’s Mnemonic System is great because it places magic firmly in the hands of the player. It is a do-or-do-not way of doing things. Outside of combat, it acts like any other trait though a bit more complicated in execution. Which is fair, because magic is not a trait, but something else entirely. In combat, it can be dispelled by a spellcaster though; avoiding its effects is then equally in the hands of players. Its use and consequences in combat therefore, remain fairly balanced while distinct. It also makes the firm statement that magic is not a sword and a sword is not magic, while still balancing its use in combat such that it is not an automatic success. Furthermore, Mnemonic magic can be picked up by anyone throughout the game, as Rothbard and Gazpus note; a Wizard is only a Wizard because his character is devoted to magic, he can learn fighting and fighters can learn magic as well. Its downside, of course, is its complexity for the player and its lack of limitation in use. For a Storyteller, a spell that can be used as many times as the player wants can feel unfair and counterbalancing it feels equally unfair to players. 

So what system is best? My Thought is that it entirely depends on the sort of story you want to tell and the sort of players you have at the table. If your players hate memorizing things or struggle quite a lot with doing so, Vancian or Psionic magic may be better. But if they hate stats and figures, and keeping track of rests and so on, it may be better to employ Eugenic magic with an openness to what they choose to try to do. 

Story-wise, one should consider how the magic is going to shape and effect play, as well as the world you are playing in. A Vancian world of knowledge is different from a Mnemonic and experiential one. Both are different from a Psionic world, and a Psionic world is different from a Eugenic one. How we treat magic as a fact of our universe unfortunately has major ramifications for how our whole world functions as a result. So pick carefully; and make sure your players are onboard.

[breakingnews-fr]

Union Africaine : Roll Stéphane Ngomat suspendu de l’ECOSOCC pour faute présumée

Le président du Cluster Paix et Sécurité du Conseil économique, social et culturel de l’Union Africaine, le Gabonais Rouler Stéphane Ngomat est depuis le 21 juin dernier, suspendu indéfiniment en tant que membre de l’ECOSOCC pour faute et violation de l’article 8 du Règlement intérieur de l’ECOSOCC et des dispositions du Code d’éthique et de conduite de l’UA par un panel mis en place par l’union continentale.

Au terme d’une enquête conduite par le Bureau de contrôle interne (OIO) de l’ECOSOCC, conformément à la décision du Conseil exécutif de février 2021, le président du Cluster Paix et Sécurité du Conseil économique, social et culturel, le compatriote Rouler Stéphane Ngomat et six autres membres ont été reconnus coupables de fautes et de violation des normes juridiques de la commission de l’UA.

Selon un avis public signé le 21 juin 2022 et publié sur le site de la Commission le 28 juin, Rouler Stéphane Ngomat a été impliqué dans les cas de mauvaise conduite ci-après, tel que spécifié : abus d’autorité / de fonction et signature illégale de protocoles d’accord avec des tiers au nom de l’ECOSOCC de l’UA ; Convocation illégale de l’Assemblée générale et déstabilisation de l’ECOSOCC ; Utilisation abusive des en-têtes de lettres, du logo, du cachet et du sceau de l’ECOSOCC.

En conséquence, le président du Cluster Paix et Sécurité de l’ECOSOCC et ses six compères ne peuvent représenter l’ECOSOCC à quelque titre que ce soit, ni prendre part aux activités de l’Union africaine et de tous ses organes et institutions pendant la période de suspension. «Conformément à l’article 8 du règlement intérieur de l’ECOSOCC, cette question sera soumise au comité de discipline de l’ECOSOCC afin de mener une enquête sur leur conduite et de déterminer les sanctions appropriées à leur imposer», souligne l’avis public de l’Union africaine.

Les six autres membres suspendus de l’ECOSOCC sont : Tunji Asaolu (Nigeria), John Oba (Nigeria), Abozer Elligai Elmana (Soudan), Abdurrahman Mokhtar (Libye), El Hacene Abdallah Bah Mbareck (Mauritanie) et Shem Ochuodho (Kenya ).

Rouler Stéphane Ngomat a été élu président du Cluster Paix et Sécurité à l’ECOSOCC de l’Union Africaine le 11 décembre 2018, lors de la 2e session ordinaire de la 3e Assemblée générale permanente de l’ECOSOCC tenue à Lusaka, en Zambi. Il a été membre du cluster des affaires politiques et représentant du Gabon à l’UA-ECOSOCC de 2017 à 2018, il est observateur électoral de l’Union africaine dans de nombreux pays africains, il est conseiller en investissement pour la Global Business Roundtable (GBR) pour l’Afrique de l’Ouest et du Centre depuis 2015, et est consultant chez Ciel-resources international depuis 2015 et Housing Africa Management depuis 2016. Il a été l’ancien secrétaire général de l’Association gabonaise à Johannesburg de janvier 2012 à décembre 2014.

[diagraphers-brother]

Attempts to reconcile information about the planes in Dungeons and Dragons between editions

I am concerned here specifically with D&D settings such as the Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk that have some amount of interaction with the rest of the multiverse - totally self-contained settings like Eberron and Dark Sun don’t raise the kinds of questions I’m talking about.

My impression reading the Dungeons and Dragons rulebooks is that 2E and 5E treat all the settings as being part of a shared multiverse, with overlapping pantheons and shared outer planes; whereas 3E and 5E treat them as entirely seperate settings, with entirely seperate pantheons and outer planes. Overlapping gods aren’t removed from settings in 3E-4E, but they’re treated as reused setting elements rather than a single entity that straddles both. In every edition Corellon Larethian is worshiped by elves in both the Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk, but in 2E and 5E he is a single god whose power extends into both worlds, whereas in 3E and 4E the Forgotten Realms Corellon's Arvandor is part of the Forgotten Realms cosmology while the Greyhawk Corellon’s Arvandor is part of the Greyhawk cosmology and there is no attempt to make these compatible.

This would be all well and good, except that every edition attempts to set itself up as a sequel to the last and explain all the changes with metaplot - 3E is 2E after Vecna attacks Sigil, and 5E’s Forgotten Realms is 5E’s Forgotten Realms is  4E’s Forgotten Realms after the Second Sundering. This would seem to imply that Vecna’s attack on Sigil split the multiverse in to large numbers of non-interacting parts, and that during the Second Sundering they came back together. This is not, in itself, a problem, but how cross-setting gods like Corellon and Moradin fit into it is left unexplained.

On the other hand, 5E’s DMG presents the Great Wheel cosmology used in 2E, the World Tree used by the Forgotten Realms in 3E and 4E’s World Axis as being different theories propounded by different cosmologists within the same setting, which seems to point towards the discrepancies between the editions being a matter of different takes on a single constant cosmology rather than the result of actual changes to the cosmology. You’d think the fact that they can be distinguished by leaving a divine domain and seeing if you’re in an outer plane or the Astral Plane, but spellcasters capable of travelling to other planes are rare enough that it makes sense that it’s hard to get accurate information about them. This, however, would imply that the information on the outer planes in previous editions is near-groundless in-setting speculation rather than a statement of fact, which does not match with how it was presented at the time.

Tracking Which Domains go Where

We are not told explicitly which divine domains go where when the outer planes combine back into the great wheel. However, we are given information with which we can surmise what happens in most ambiguous cases, at least assuming analogous ambiguous cases are handled differently. The Golden Hills are stated in Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes to be in Bytopia, despite the fact that Arvandor, where 4E’s Forgotten Realms puts them, would presumably return to its position in Arboria: This indicates that domains that have merged with other domains after the split return to their original planes rather than following the domains they merged into. Volo’s Guide to Monsters places Nishrek in Acheron despite Gruumsh’s alignment having become Chaotic, so the domains are clearly drawn into the outer planes that match their original locations rather than those that match their deities alignments. And Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount makes it clear that those Dawn War gods who originate in other settings are back where they were in 2E while the gods who originate in 4E still have domains in the Astral Plane.

So, having established which domains went where, what can we conclude about the state of the different planes?

The Straightforwards ones

Some of the planes are fairly straightforwards: Mechanus, the Outlands, Acheron and the Beastlands have never existed in any cosmology other than the Great Wheel, nor had any significant part or inhabitant do so, so we can assume them to have gone through things more-or-less unchanged. The Abyss, Pandemonium and Hell have been presented extremely similarly across editions and settings, and the Abyss and Hell get much more detailed write-ups in the 5E DMG than the other planes, so we don’t need to speculate as to what they’re like.

Planes Missing Major Powers

In other planes, the planes themselves haven’t been mentioned outside Great Wheel material, but gods with great influence in them have been. This is the case in Bytopia (which was dominated by the gnomish gods, who 4E Forgotten Realms place in Arvandor), Elysium (dominated by Pelor before 4E, when he’s in Hestivar - Elysium’s situation is further complicated by the fact that Pelor only seems to have risen to his position there in 3E, when many of the other gods who lived there had already left), Ysgard (dominated by the Aesir until 3E, where Deities and Demigods puts them in a seperate cosmology) and Limbo (where the Spawning Stone that formed the centre of Slaad civilisation spend 4E in the Elemental Chaos)

If we take the 5E DMG “different theories” approach, it may be that nothing has changed in these planes at all, and 4E simply presented an alternative cosmology that did not include these planes and put important parts of them in different places. This approach is feasible for Ysgard and Hades, where the 3E cosmologies place them more-or-less on their own, but the Golden Hills, the Spawning Stone and Pelor have explicit other locations in the World Axis, such that the only way I can see to have the same Golden Hills be in both Arvandor and Bytopia is to pull some sort of space-warping to give the hills two outsides (which, to be fair, is not unfitting for the outer planes), but with the spawning stone we can take a similar approach by proposing that Limbo is a part of the Elemental Chaos.

If we instead approach the changes as changes to the cosmology, there are still two possible approaches with these planes: it is clear that after Vecna’s attack on Sigil, large numbers divine domains split off from their planes, leaving a reduced great wheel attached to Greyspace and containing the gods worshiped there and the demihuman pantheons. However, when a number of Greyhawk gods move to Astral Sea dominions in 4E, it is not clear if the great wheel continues to exist in an even-more-reduced form, still attached to Greyspace, or if they dissolve entirely.

In the former case; we could see political fragmentation as a result of the loss of major power centres; major planar burgs (e.g. Release from Care), major outsider power groups (e.g. Prince Talasid and the Five Companions) or previously-minor gods (e.g. Olidamara) stepping into the gaps left by the more powerful gods or neighbouring planes coming together as they no longer have the resources to manage apart. In any case, once the planes come back together, the planes would face a choice as to whether to stick to the new order or return to the old one. Aspects of how this occurs are likely to differently between the planes - things are likely to be resolved peacefully on good and lawful planes and violently on evil and chaotic ones - but similar uncertainties exist for all of them.

If the planes dissolve entirely, they presumably recoalesce in 5E from the divine dominions that broke off from them and the raw essence of their alignment. In this case, the gods and planars could might revive old customs of interaction or renegotiate new ones from scratch. This possibility raises the question of what happened to inhabitants of the outer planes who weren’t inside dominions - were they annihilated and new ones created when the planes reformed? Split off to other parts of the multiverse we know nothing about? Trapped in isolated demiplanes? placed outside of time so that their consciousness resumed after the second sundering as if no time had passed? Any of these would be entirely compatible with what we know.

Planes Differing Significantly Between Editions

The remaining planes are Celestia, Arborea, Carceri, Gehenna and Hades. Gehenna is straightforwards in and of itself but has complications to do with its relationship to the Yugoloths and Hades. In each of the others, at least a layer is featured in 4E’s World Axis cosmology, and Celestia and Arboria are featured in the Forgotten Realms cosmology as well, but each plane undergoes major changes at some point from the end of second edition to the beginning of fifth:

Arborea

In AD&D, Arborea is dominated by the Olympian and Seladrine pantheons. Come 3E, Olympus and some smaller domains such as Brightwater are split off into their own cosmologies, and Arvandor comes to encompass the entire first layer. In 4E, the parts of Arborea other than Arvandor are not mentioned, but the fact that Arvandor goes from being dominated by forest in 3E to an island-filled ocean in 4E indicates the it may have merged with Aquallor. Mithardir’s fate is unclear, but possibilities include that it broke away from the rest of Arborea to become Shom, was cut off from the rest of the universe and effectively in stasis, was destroyed, went off to some other part of the Astral Plane we haven’t heard of, remained attached to Arvandor and Aquallor and simply wasn’t mentioned in 4E, became an out of the way part of Arvandor or was overtaken by the monsters of Carceri when Corellon opened the connection between the planes and is now abandoned to them and treated as an extension of Carceri.

In 5E, Arvandor is presumably connected to Olympus and the rest of Arboria again, but may still be merged with Aquallor and connected to Carceri.

If we want to equate the 2E-3E and 4E-5E versions of the Eladrins, it may be that part of Arboria also formed into the Feywild.

Mt Celestia

Mt Celestia has three significantly different presentations between the editions (four if you count 3E’s presentation of the layers, but that doesn’t really have consequences that extend to 5E’s tiered mountain version): In the Great Wheel, it is a single mountain ruled by the Hebdomad. In 3E Forgotten Realms this mountain becomes part of the larger plane of the House of the Triad, along with the three surrounding mountains of Martyrdom, Trueheart and the Court. Of these, Martyrdom was originally part of Bytopia, while the other two were part of Mt Celestia. The Hebdomad maintains its authority over Mt Celestia itself, but Tyr becomes overall ruler of the plane.

Come 4E, the House of the Triad is renamed to Celestia, and Torm moves to the city of True Court near the top of the mountain (possibly a renamed Yetsira?) and becomes ruler of the plane.

In the default setting, meanwhile, the seven layers of Celestia become seven seperate mountains. Of these, only Venya, Solania, Mertion and Chronias share names with previous editions’ layers. Venya, previously a gentle, peaceful layer, becomes the domain of the war-god Kord; The lower parts of Chronias’s slopes are explored and settled, while the Bridge of al-Sihal is moved up its slopes to guard the part that is still mysterious (There is also discrepancy here between 4E’s Manual of the Planes and The Plane Above, with the former implying the bridge is near the base of the mountain while the latter places it near the summit); Moradin and Bahamut take over Solania and Mertion from Pistis Sophia and Raziel, and along with Kord replace the Hebdomad as the rulers of Celestia as a whole; and the other mountains all come to be dominated by wilderness and used mainly for the (newly introduced) Game of Mountains.

This makes Celestia the single most complicated plane to merge back into the Great Wheel cosmology. The Forgotten Realms version is relatively simple - Martyrdom is, by analogy to the Golden Hills, presumably back in Bytopia, while the Court and Trueheart could either have returned to their original locations in Mercurial’s and Lunia or simply merged onto the sides of the central mountain to become mountains in Lunia. Default 4E celestia is more difficult - Should the plateaus of Mt Celestia correspond to the original layers of Great Wheel Celestia or the mountains of 4E’s version? In the latter case, what order should they appear in? Will Moradin and Bahamut somehow adapt the Game of Mountains to deal with the fact that the layers no longer have summits to fight over?

Furthermore, in combining the previous versions of Celestia for 5E, we need to figure out how to reconcile the different rulers of previous versions. Will Torm rule Celestia? Moradin and Bahamut? Will Kord continue to rule Venya despite having presumably returned to the Hall of the Valiant in Limbo? Will the gods whose realms have been merged back into Celestia want to place the Hebdomad back in power? Replace Kord in Moradin and Bahamut’s triumvirate? There’s a lot that’s uncertain.

Carceri

In the Great Wheel, Carceri consists of chains of concentric spheres, while the World Axis cosmology makes it a number of moving islands. The World axis version also makes all the islands cold and swampy, where in the Great Wheel only the outermost layer was swamp and only the innermost two are noted to be cold. Finally, Nerull lives in the Great Wheel version of Agathys, while the abominations on 4E’s version would make this suicidal.

5E’s description of the plane indicates that the terrain has gone back to 3E’s version, and the description of the plane as having “layers” implies that the overall form of the plane has done so as well. Whether Agathys contains Necromanteion, the abominations or both with enough space between them to keep Nerull safe (or some other comparable protection for him) is unclear.

Nerull

Speaking of Nerull, he has his own uncertainties around him that straddle Carceri and the Gray Waste: In 3E, as mentioned, Nerull lives in Carceri, but in 4E he is implied to have ruled the Gray Waste for a long time before being killed by the Raven Queen. This implies either that Nerull was resurrected at some point after his death, that there is an extremely long time gap the times of 3E and 4E’s default settings or that 3E and 4E’s Nerulls are seperate beings. Of these, the second seems the most suitable explanation, as it Nerull’s resurrection seems to go against the implications of 4E’s description of his death while treating Greyhawk and Dawn War gods as seperate beings goes against the implications of Explorer’s Guide to Wildermount presenting a pantheon almost identical to the Dawn War one but with the gods shared with Greyhawk in the locations of their Greyhawk versions. The question is raised, in this case, of which plane Nerull lives on now that he has (going by 5E’s list of the deities of Greyhawk) been resurrected, and of whether power in Hades is now held by himself, the Oinadaemon-Hel-Hades trifecta who ruled the plane’s layers in prior editions or some other group who have come into power after Nerull’s death.

Yugoloths

The other issue to do with the Gray Waste concerns the Yugoloths. This uncertainty does not relate to its 4E version at all, but to different editions versions of the Great Wheel cosmology. In 1E Hades is the Yugoloths’ home, and in 2E, while they have moved to Gehenna, they are mentioned as originating in the Gray Waste and have a magical connection to the plane as a result of this. In 5E, on the other hand, the Yugoloths are stated to originate in Gehenna and their magical connection is now to it. I see no way to reconcile these accounts. And going with 5E’s version of the Yugoloths, the question is raised of whether Khin-Oin and the Baernaloths, previously located in the Gray Waste due to the Yugoloths’ connection to that plane, are now in Gehenna as well.

So, what do people think about this? Is there anything important I’m missing? Other takes people have on things?

[gronglegrowth]

Who is Lathla?

Lathla is a Dunmeri Telvanni Dust Adept. She was born 3E 399, so by the time of Morrowind she is 28; by Skyrim she is in her 200s.

During the events of Morrowind, while Nerevarine Varyn is living up to his destiny, Lathla is doing work for both House Telvanni and House Dres. Eventually she stumbles across knowledge of the skyport Subo-Lathla, and decides to restore it to working order as it has clearly seen better days. She then manages to establish a small airship travel network, getting financial aid from her House masters and getting labor from slaves. The airships are Netch-based; seating and platforms are built on top of a few Netches and banners are hung from said platforms.

During the Oblivion crisis, Subo-Lathla is destroyed again, and this time Lathla spends many, many years attempting to restore it, but by this time no one wants to aid her again as the Daedra invasion took a lot of resources from everyone.

The Argonian invasion made further difficulties for Lathla, and by this point she decided to join the Telvanni in the fight back as a Dust Adept. Here she learned the ash magic.

Come Skyrim, Lathla is highly skilled Dust Adept, and just seeks to live out the rest of her life... until, of course, she discovers an airship in Skyrim.

[coursekosh]

CourseKosh - Find the best online courses for your career.

Carrier Choice after twelfth Commerce

With the CBSE just declared the Class twelfth outcomes, a great deal of understudies like you with Commerce foundation are searching for Career Guidance for Courses after twelfth Commerce stream.

I, at the end of the day, did my twelfth in Commerce and can identify with your current vulnerability and uncertainty as a main priority.

Wherever you should head, you would be asked a similar inquiry, "Such a huge number… .?"

A few understudies are away from what they need to seek after as a Career decision by beauty of God they have had the option to make sure about the imprints for it as well and are somewhat arranged.

In any case, where dominant part of the understudies lie is with vagueness about what should they pick after Class twelfth and what choices are really accessible dependent on their imprints in Class 12!!!!

I'm composing this article to help understudies like you to have the option to settle on the correct profession decision…

"Aspiration is the initial step to progress, second is ACTION!!!"

All in all, as a Commerce understudy, you need to assess what is your desire, what energizes you personally, where do you see yourself in a long time from now?

Pick your AMBITION astutely, at that point make a move to emerge your desire!

If we pick a profession that coordinates our inclination and our capacity, we have just made the main right stride!

So how to settle on the correct decision?

How to discover what energizes you?

The most ideal approach to do so is to do a great deal of HOMEWORK-do great measure of research and afterward choose where to head!!!

Just to help you, I have gathered a couple of vocation alternatives that you can investigate!

1.B.Com ( Bachelor of Commerce)

Most Commerce understudies need to seek after this course basically in light of the high worth this capability holds when done from a rumored University/school.

Under BCom, there are three most mainstream courses, specifically BCom or BCom-General, BCom (Honors) and BCom LLB. The BCom or BCom-General is additionally alluded to as BCom-Pass by numerous colleges.

In the BCom course, up-and-comers are encouraged center subjects identified with business and money. In the three-year span, the applicants are offered choices to browse a couple of elective subjects as well. The program is typically spread more than six semesters during which the understudy is instructed points like monetary bookkeeping, corporate expense, financial aspects, organization law, reviewing, business the executives, and so forth The course likewise opens up the road to go in for additional higher courses like M.B.A( Master of Business Administration) or potentially other Vocational courses.

Numerous Universities offer this course and getting a passage relies upon you being shortlisted by the school. It is for the most part a long term program.

2.B.B.A (Bachelor of Business Administration)

It is a 3 years in length Degree course offered by numerous Private universities.

BBA can be sought after in full-time just as correspondence mode. There are different BBA specializations one can look over like Human Resource Management, Finance, Sales and Marketing and Information Technology.

The value of the Qualification again relies on from where the course has been finished. Post finish, one may likewise follow it up with a M.B.A. (Expert of Business Administration) Degree as well!

3.B.M.S.( Bachelor of Management Science)

It is a long term long degree course including a high level investigation of the administration rehearses utilized in business/corporate firms, as likewise fundamental ideas in human asset training, for example, worker maintenance, work relations, and comparable critical thinking.

The program is spread more than 6 semesters, enduring more than a half year each, and concerning least qualification, hopeful applicants need to achieve the Higher Secondary (10+2) capability with a base total score of half, for applying to the course.

Admission to the course is offered based on the competitor's exhibition in a pertinent passage test.

Effective alumni of the course in the nation can investigate rewarding work openings in driving public and private area associations as Bankers, Budget Planners, Quality Specialists.

4.LAW

Customarily just Graduates were permitted to seek after L.L.B. Yet, presently a few universities are offering a 5 Year Integrated Law course combined with different Qualifications for Law to be taken up by understudy's privilege after twelfth norm.

These Integrated courses are blend of a Degree course and customary L.L.B. course. For instance B.Com.& L.L.B./B.A.& L.L.B. and so on

There are many open positions in the wake of taking up Law starting from work in any law office at or to fire up on one own private practice, start a counseling firm or even beginning an own law office!

5.CHARTERED ACCOUNTANT( C.A)

C.A. represents Chartered Accountant, quite possibly the most rumored courses in India.

To turn into a C.A., one needs to effectively finish CA Exams alongside Internship needed under the ICAI (Institute of Chartered Accountants of India).

twelfth Commerce pass understudies may begin by applying for CPT (Common Proficiency Test) led by ICAI.

Contemplating associated with turning out to be C.A. is extreme. It requires a great deal of tirelessness from the understudy. And yet, the vocation possibilities are bounty!

In the wake of turning into a C.A, open positions open up in Finance divisions in Private organizations just as Government Enterprises or even beginning working freely, offering conference benefits just as working as a private examiner who might be employed by organizations and organizations!

6.CMA( Cost Management Accounting)

At present ICWA course has been renamed to CMA which represents Cost Management Accounting. This course gives you an inside and out information to oversee business inside the accessible assets. As a cost bookkeeper, you need to gather and examine the monetary data from all the territories of an organization.

This course contains three phases, for example CMA Foundation, CMA Intermediate and CMA Final. You can seek after this course through correspondence or through online from a licensed college.

7.C.S. (Organization SECRETARY) COURSE

For Statutory Compliance, an organization secretary is required! Furthermore, to turn into a C.S., one needs to show up for Company Secretary Course run by ICSI (Institute of Company Secretaries of India) The ICSI gives preparing and training to lakhs of hopeful Company Secretaries.

If there should be an occurrence of twelfth Commerce passed understudies, to get chosen for the C.S. course offered by ICSI, they should experience a 3 phase program. The three projects are-

Establishment Program

Chief Program

Proficient Program

Discussing open positions, undoubtedly, private area gives plenty of open positions under Compliance office.

Global QUALIFICATIONS

With the present GLOBAL open doors accessible to understudies, it would be inadequate in the event that I don't discuss International Qualifications which are currently accessible in India !!!

1. CPA US (Certified Public Accountants)

Much the same as Chartered Accountants (CA's) are allowed a permit to rehearse the calling of Accountancy and Taxation in India, also Certified Public Accountants (CPA) are conceded the permit to rehearse in US. In certain nations, these certified bookkeepers are called Chartered Accountants (CA's) and in certain nations these are called as Certified Public Accountants.

This Accounting capability is called Certified Public Accountant in the US and to turn into a CPA, a Candidate is needed to satisfy the 3E's for example

1.Education

2.Examination

3.Experience

To turn into a Certified Public Accountant, an applicant needs to effectively clear all the tests led by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). This is a uniform test led by the AICPA and is the equivalent across all the 55 states in the US.

Nonetheless, the qualification prerequisite and the experience needed to turn into a Certified Public Accountant changes from state to state and various states have commanded distinctive qualification necessities as controlled by their particular state sheets of bookkeeper and is just legitimate in US.

2. CPA Canada

Like the states in the US, Canada has areas, and every region has its own provincial bookkeeping body. Canada has taken a strong move by combining its bookkeeping capabilities (CA, CMA and CGA) into one major "CPA "assignment. The cycle has been finished with much achievement.

To begin, applicants ought to adhere to the principles appropriate to their status.

Essential for CPA PEP( Professional Education Program)

•Complete a four year college education in applicable fixation, for example B.Comm with a bookkeeping major

•Complete the essential learning characterized in The CPA Competency Map

•Complete at any rate 120 credit hours or likeness instruction

Nonetheless, similar to CPA US, CPA Canada is likewise Province savvy and is substantial just in Canada !!!

3.CIMA(Chartered Institute of Management Accountants)

Much the same as CMA in India, CIMA is an International expert assemblage of the executives bookkeepers situated in UK.

CIMA is an administration bookkeeping capability which zeros in additional on costing, money bookkeeping, and key business abilities it is a global capability in numerous nations.

CIMA centers around the general achievement which incorporates Corporate Strategy, monetary administration, hierarchical administration, and so forth

Notwithstanding, CIMA can be an extra and might help on the off chance that you are working with a British organization in zone of Accounting or Controlling. In any case putting time in CIMA first without seeking after any Indian Qualifications won't help a lot.

4.ACCA (ASSOCIATION OF CHARTERED CERTIFIED ACCOUNTANTS)

ACCA (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) is a UK Based Accountancy body which is perceived in 181 nations.

It is the worldwide body for Professional Accountants.

In layman's language, it is known as a GLOBAL CA!

It gloats of a Global Reputation which is over 100 years of age and spread across 181 nations across the globe with more than 7,110 affirmed businesses across

also read:- best courses after 12th

[commander-frostii]

A little late but I'm also in the underleveled and struggling boat. Are there any guides or resources with help along the lines of team building, leveling, what to focus on, etc?

I used this guide when I was starting out. It’s been updated since then with some newer dolls and info, thankfully. The biggest problem with this guide is that it’s so aggressively geared towards giving new players some basic guidance and helping them avoid “newbie traps” that it actually winds up giving harmful advice to midgame players. 

I did kind of start making a new player guide but I couldn’t really figure out what level of advice made sense to give. I’m going to try to give a shorter version of that guide here, but it would really help me if you (and anyone else who reads this and finds it interesting or helpful) ask more questions or call out explicitly what you find helpful and whether you feel like I’m missing anything or saying anything misleading, because I would really like to make more resources for other players and I feel like not knowing where other players are at is kinda holding me back. c: 

There’s kinda two different areas of focus for advice here; the first is just general base and resource management stuff. Unfortunately, people don’t make guides for this kind of thing. (I would love to sometime tho.) Here’s what I’ve learned. 

Running 4 logistics at all times is not optional. It is required. Do your best to refresh your logistics as often as you can. Stacking up your resources to 100-200k lets you farm maps as much as you like for drops (read: dummy cores) and XP. 

The fastest way to get a lot of dummy cores for linking your high-rarity dolls is crafting. This is another reason why logistics are so important, and learning to manage your logistics so that you have not only a good ratio of resources but also are building up your contracts over time is really important. If you want to do construction just for cores and don’t care what you pull, I recommend pulling for SMGS (430/430/130/230), as the UMP sisters have a high drop rate and give 3 cores each. (They’re also just really good, so you should raise them if you can.) 

Even if you’re poor, do 4 constructions a day every day. 30/30/30/30 is good enough. You’ll make your resources and most of your contracts back from daily quest rewards, plus you get a guaranteed core every day from the dailies AND you have a solid chance of getting at least one 3* HG from that recipe. It doesn’t seem like much when you’re waiting on 45 cores to get that x5 for just one of your dolls, but I promise it builds up quick. 

If you’re desperate for cores, running maps for drops sounds awful but honestly isn’t that bad over time. I personally liked 7-2E a lot but that’s because My Wife Is A Shotgun and having a shotgun makes it much easier to clear that map without paying a ton of repair costs. 0-2, 0-4 (retreating instead of trying to clear the map) and 4-3E are all fine choices and the guide linked above gives even more options.

The most important stuff to buy from the Black Market Shop, in order, is Combat Reports > Universal Parts > Cores (they’re disproportionately expensive imo so i value them lower) > Special Reports > Batteries > Enhancement Capsules. 

It should also go without saying that you should do your combat simulations every day and use up all of your sim energy. Leveling dolls’ skills is really important when you get to late and endgame, and will also make a big difference in night battles. Enhancement capsules become easy to come by once you are able to farm event boxes reliably (and thankfully you don’t need to be high level to do that), so you can spend capsule days on neural fragments instead if you want. 

I don’t personally like to spend combat reports on dolls over level 90 because getting from 90 to 100 is almost as expensive as getting from 1 to 90, but you get triple combat XP when fully dummy linked and can clear maps with much higher XP yield at that level, so it seems like a really inefficient use of reports. 

The other side, like you mentioned, is more in the game theory and meta world. What dolls are worth using? How should I combine them? What’s the highest priority to raise? 

Purely from a “clearing content efficiently” standpoint, your number 1 priority is M4A1, followed closely by ST AR-15 and M4 SOPMOD II. RO635 is also good but not quite as much of a hard requirement. But the three core AR team dolls are all virtually best in class and M4A1 is literally the best doll in the game when she gets her neural upgrade, with ridiculous damage output and unparalleled versatility. These dolls will carry you through content for your entire career in GFL. 

M16 is kind of niche and weird but certainly not bad to raise. I just wouldn’t consider her a top priority.

Your first echelon should be ARSMG (probably built with the AR team). If you don’t know what to build after that, build a second ARSMG team, then an RFHG team. If you’re diligent and make liberal use of support echelons, this should be enough to clear all story content right now (though I won’t promise it’ll be easy). MGSG echelons should wait until you feel like you have a good grip on your logistics management, because they’re very expensive to use and not that much better than ARSMG.

Great early ARs: FNC is surprisingly good even in lategame and is a solid choice thanks to how common and cheap she is to raise. OTs-12, F2000, SIG-510, and G3 are also good. You get an STG44 from quest rewards and she’s fine, too. Most ARs are good, but lower-rarity ones are obviously easier to raise. 

Great SMGs: A well-loved Skorpion will surprise you. Ingram and PPS-43 are also great choices. I had decent success with Type64 and Spectre M4, too, but they will be outscaled by higher-rarity options later on. The UMP sisters are excellent SMGs with UMP45 possibly being best in class, but they are a little more expensive to raise. 

You should stay away from most 5* SMGs unless there’s one you really love, because choosing your SMGs properly is actually deceptively really hard and spending a bunch of resources on one that doesn’t synergize well with your other options would be a huge bummer. The one exception might be Vector, but only if you really invest in her skill.

Great RFs: People hype up M14 for a reason. She’s cheap, the game hands you a ton of copies for free as achievement rewards (and you can get more of her from map drops easily), and she scales really shockingly well, remaining a really strong choice even in endgame content to this day (and probably forever). SVD and WA2000 are high rarity but so fantastic that they are worth raising if you don’t have any other options. SKS and FN49 are also good low-rarity options; the quest reward Springfield is worth raising, even if she doesn’t really reach peak performance without her special equip (and thankfully it’s not hard to farm for!). 

Handguns starting out are just kind of tough. There are two reasons for this; one, they don’t provide their full power buffs until max dummy links; two, they can’t equip an exoskeleton until level 80, which means they’ll get shredded by basically any enemy that looks at them funny. If you’re having a hard time running RFs + HGs at mid level, it’s fine to put an SMG in front for a while just to absorb damage. Later on you will want to practice luring and stalling enemies by moving your HGs around manually, and if you can master that, RFHG will become a lot stronger (well, technically every echelon will, but RFHG will benefit the most). 

Again, please please please let me know whether or not this is helpful and don’t be shy about asking follow up questions. This game is kind of hard and tricky and weird and I want very badly to help! The more I know about where my followers are at, the better advice I can give!

[sternprotocol]

The Worst Quiz Ever (Attitudinal Psyche)

Tagged by: @one-shall-fall Tagging: no one for the lord’s sake save yourselves

VFEL — The Arbiter

VFEL is the Attitudinal Psyche type most motivated to enforce rules that make everyone’s lives easier to manage. They are resourceful leaders that patiently teach others how to organize their environment so they are fit for success. This type can be uncomfortable with acting on their emotions and prefers to use willpower and practical skills to enforce their own stability. VFELs value their own time when accomplishing goals and they do not like to waste it on technicalities. They enjoy people who can concisely explain solutions while respecting the VFEL’s emotional vulnerability. This type does not spend too much time in their own imagination because they believe taking action is a better way to make their aspirations a reality.

1V — Confident Volition

VFELs generally feel a sense of ownership of their own identity and will independently decide how to reach a goal. This type will take over any responsibilities that others are failing to complete, especially in the physical realm. They can talk at length about how to use belongings to meet daily goals but they are not interested in compromising the goal itself. VFELs can sometimes ignore their conflicting emotions to focus on what the course of action is. This type prefers to direct their attention on the most fundamental answers as to why a particular responsibility is ideal. After listening to others explain the rationale behind rules, VFELs have no problem executing and enforcing these new found rules. VFELs spend the most time considering the physical demands and emotional effects of their personal aims.

2F — Flexible Physics

VFELs tend to give great advice on aesthetics while refusing to promote one style over the other. They wish to keep an open mind, so all options are on the table when deciding how to manage the environment. They place equal importance on the opinion of others as their own when it comes to tastes. This type understands how to appear presentable, especially towards their work colleagues. VFELs are tolerant of most aesthetics unless it is offensive to their surrounding culture or environment. This type often takes control of the priorities of people around them unless it relates to their physical health. They tend to talk about their purchases in depth and enjoy sharing tips and tricks they’ve gathered from adventuring through the commercial world. VFELs are always expanding their arsenal of possessions, often without regard for detailed information regarding the products. This type openly receives criticism about their hygiene and tidiness and they make attending to these a part of their responsibility.

3E — Insecure Emotion

VFELs can feel insecure in showing their emotions. They may need time or to be talked through these emotions before feeling ready to express them. If VFELs don’t have an outlet to express themselves, they can go on emotional tirades where they criticize the characters of everyone around them. However, these outbursts can fill VFELs with regret. This type may try to rectify their issues by adopting different responsibilities in a hope to improve their emotional state. VFELs fear that their indecision in person to person interactions will hinder their motivation to fulfill obligations, so they often leave their vulnerabilities locked inside. They are not sure how to interpret the emotional intent behind statements and they appreciate people who first ask how they feel about them. This type spends so much time pinpointing their emotions that they can fully neglect the “why” and “how” of their thoughts. This can sometimes lead the VFEL to use drugs and develop poor habits to cope with uncomfortable emotions.

4L — Unconcerned Logic

VFELs are open to the logical principles of others. They do not see the point of arguing without agreeing on what they perceive the correct answer to be. This type would rather listen to the conclusions of experts than waste time thinking through complex nuances. This is because VFELs believe the experts have spent enough time on the subject to offer worthy insight so they don’t have to waste time themselves. VFELs feel the full force of their willpower when they make decisions without dwelling on what they must know. It becomes obvious to VFELs which facts are true when they implement them in reality. In order to change their mind, someone must present them with better evidence than what they’ve experienced. VFELs feel more in control of their emotions once they adopt a solid, efficient logical structure to the world. So long as they see an end goal to the energy they place into things, they feel more comfortable expressing themselves.

[mornyavie]

At @my-smial​‘s request, I’m going to elaborate on the differences I’ve seen between 3E D&D and 5E, focusing on mechanics which make big differences to the experience of play. Following up on this post (x), it’s intended as further discussion of the ways in which 5E is a fundamentally different system despite frequent cosmetic similarities with 3E.

First, here’s where I’m coming from. I’ve almost exclusively played 3E - and, which is going to make many people reading this a bit boggled, I honestly do mean 3E, not 3.5. My childhood group was a bit set in our ways (and unwilling to spend money on new source books). So we certainly didn’t bother switching to 5E! We were an insular group, playing with my father (who cut his own teeth on early AD&D, and brought in lots of homebrew rules from that system), and I didn’t really even know that other RPGs and play styles existed until I started playing with college friends much later. I have 3E basically memorized - enough to point out where 3 and 3.5 differ, even - but my knowledge of 5E is limited to recent exposure, talking to 5E friends, and just skimming the books.

I’d love to hear other people’s input, especially if you disagree with me or can bring in more input from the 5E side of things.

3E numbers are just plain higher than 5E numbers. This follows on from AD&D numbers, which were even higher. A big reason, I think, is the 5E proficiency system over 3E’s skill ranks and attack bonus. The proficiency bonus is never higher than 6, while a fighter’s attack bonus goes up every level, reaching 20 (and higher, if you’re playing epic-level versions), and skill ranks are a similar progressions. ACs are lower in 5E to compensate, and AC-enhancing spells less powerful. And this is slightly less true, as technically both 3E and 5E recommend using 4d6 drop 1 to generate ability scores and ending up with a usual spread around 10-16, (ignore this if you don’t understand it), but 3E expects even your ability scores to be slightly higher; you can increase them more frequently as you go up in level, and spells and items that augment them are more common and powerful. Again, this is following the trend from AD&D, where I’ve seen people on forums swearing by things like a forty-point buy system that result in the majority of your stats important to your class starting at 16-18.

Result: 5E players expect different numbers. My players were impressed by stats I considered mediocre, and they initially failed to utilize stat enhancements (or debuffs, on their enemies) because they thought they were already high enough and didn’t realize that those were still powerful tools.

Following from this, 5E advancement is different from 3E advancement, because you can’t rely on increasing stats to get more powerful. Some of 3E’s special-ability-focused classes advance more by accumulating their various powers than by adding up numbers; my impression is that this is true basically of all 5E classes.

Result: 5E players look more for discrete abilities than to geek out over having a six instead of a five. My players were sometimes disappointed by 3E’s less overtly flashy classes, and felt frustrated when their rewards were “hey your save gets +2 now!!!!” They also tended, following on the last point, to fail to remember and understand how the various numbers mattered and to thus fail to fully utilize the many, many 3E buffs and debuffs.

The whole concept of short rests, cantrips (as opposed to 3E’s 0-level “cantrip” spells), and refreshable special abilities (which actually draws a lot from 4E, in my opinion) makes a huge change in resource management. In 3E, managing your resources like a caster’s spells and a magic item’s charges is based only on a 24-hour-day, and you end the day fairly drained and low-power. This is especially important for low-level magic users, who often have barely half a dozen spells, many of them practically cosmetic like prestidigitation, before they’re out for the day and reduced to maybe bopping a goblin over the head with a staff and praying nothing tries to make a go for their AC of 11. Compare 5E, where magic users have unlimited access to cantrips that are often quite powerful (more equivalent to a 1st or maybe even 2nd level spell in 3E) and many class’s special abilities can be refreshed by a short rest instead of overnight. The resource management becomes much shorter-range. 

Result: 5E players don’t pay attention to resources and time flow the same way 3E players do. For my players, I think this was the biggest stumbling block making the switch: they ignored my increasingly unsubtle hints that they might want to stop for the night and repeatedly charged into combat without realizing that their cleric only had one spell left before they were out of aid - and out of healing.

This is a subtler one, and partially based on the kind of campaign you’re running, but I get the impression that 5E is a lot more stingy with its magic items than 3E. They separate items by common-rare instead of minor-major, and the random gen tables seem to net you items less often. 3E players get loaded up, unless the DM is consciously restricting magic items. It’s a bit of a meme, the ludicrous-looking adventurer with a cloak of darkest night and a couple jeweled rings and a massive necklace and a golden circlet and a pair of goggles and.... and it’s all part of the way that, I think, 3E advancement seems to be much steeper and higher-ceilinged than 5E.

Result: didn’t come up as much in that brief adventure I ran with this group, so I can’t comment well. My players weren’t used to having as many items as I gave them, but, when they remembered they existed, they also were a lot more ingenious about clever and unorthodox applications of items, instead of brute-forcing and expecting to find new items if they wanted to solve new problems.

[libertineangel]

Introducing my all-in-one OC: Delam Farano

Delam Farano is a Dunmer spy, too often pressed into saving an Empire he hates.

Born in 3E 375, his parents were formerly mid-ranking members of House Hlaalu, part of a minority group within the House that opposed further Imperial encroachment on Morrowind’s traditional institutions, content to have them as business partners but not leaders. Due to this, they were vehemently opposed to the appointment of Vedam Dren, known Imperial ally, as Grandmaster, and as a result they were “strongly advised” to leave Morrowind by the Cammona Tong. As a result of this, Delam was born and raised in the town of Riften in Skyrim, being taught of his heritage, his birthright and all the traditional skills necessary for a young Hlaalu initiate.

He took to this education well, with a quick mind, a steady hand, a talent for moving quietly and a cool head under pressure, and he began working as a spy-for-hire (and occasional thief or assassin, for the right price) in the courts of Skyrim’s Jarls, making steady coin and connections off their conflicts, all with the intention of building a power base strong enough to reinstate his family’s rightful place in Morrowind. Unfortunately, his skill earned the attention of the Empire’s Blades as a potential agent, and what the Empire wants it tends to get: one night he returned to his chambers to find a note telling him that he had impressed the Empire and his services would now be put to their use, that he should take a carriage waiting for him outside the town gates in the morning and that he should then expect a letter from his parents, who had been relocated to an Imperial settlement.

Clearly seeing the veiled threat in those words, he took the carriage, felt a hood go over his head and upon its removal found himself in High Rock, where he was informed he would be stationed until further notice, reporting to another local agent and receiving short letters from his family every few months, to which he of course could not reply. He began carrying out the Empire’s orders, working diligently as always, until one day he was given the assignment to exorcise the spirit of the late King Lysandus, a task which quickly escalated far beyond what anyone had expected.

After the Warp in the West the Empire lost track of him, and he took that opportunity to use what information he had gleaned from other Blades agents to try and find where the Empire kept its hostage families, but was captured and thrown in the depths of the Imperial Prison, too valuable to execute but too dangerous to be sent into the field for extended periods except at utmost need.

Utmost need arrived a decade later when he was sent to his true home of Morrowind, where it suited the Empire’s needs to have the Nerevarine Prophecy fulfilled and he was the only agent the Blades thought stood a strong chance of succeeding. Delam did his job admirably, while leaving a cell only a handful of times a year for a decade had dulled his skills somewhat he was still highly competent and pursued this assignment with particular fervour, as he thought he might be able to use his position against the Empire that sent him into it. Unfortunately the Empire had of course anticipated this and he was recalled back to Cyrodiil as soon as all their work was done in the province, and for another six years he languished in a cell, before one fateful day when the Emperor himself would pass through.

He very nearly kept the Amulet of Kings and let the Mythic Dawn wreak their destruction, travelling to Weynon Priory only with the intention of asking Grandmaster Jauffre himself where his parents were, but events moved to quickly and he thought that, while he would be glad to see the Empire burn, the letting the whole of Tamriel die was foolish and served no benefit. Hating the fame brought on him by his deeds as Hero of Kvatch, he travelled through the Door in Niben Bay and found himself yet another land’s champion, though this time feeling a little more at home in the court intrigue of the House of Dementia. Of course, he could not leave Tamriel for long, for as always his primary goal was the freeing and restoration of his parents, though after the Oblivion Crisis all of his leads and information had become obsolete and he had very little to go on. He did the best he could, but he abruptly left when Baar Dau fell to aid his people however he could. He then returned to the Shivering Isles, as stories claimed the great rock was Sheogorath's doing and he intended to confront the Madgod, who naturally denied all involvement. With the Imperial infrastructure in tatters and House Hlaalu disgraced he found himself struggling for direction, as he had no means of finding his lost family and no position to restore them to once he did, and the Shivering Isles fed on this depression as he stayed there longer, becoming more integrated in their courts and society, and as the Greymarch began in earnest he ended up mantling the Madgod himself. Part of him maintained the hope that he could use this position and the resources it commanded to finally find his parents, but much of his time and energy was spent restoring and managing his new land. Eventually he returned to Tamriel, but his perception of time as it passed in the mortal realm had become distorted with his apotheosis and his extended stay in the split land, and the years had turned to decades, and he realised that if he did not find his family soon he would likely be too late, if indeed they still survived. Upon learning of the current political situation, and not trusting the feeble Empire's knowledge of even its own past operations, he presented himself to the Thalmor as a defector and gladly worked his traditional clandestine job against the regime he'd hated for centuries, all the while hoping to find some intelligence on what the old Blades did with their captives. Unfortunately the Aldmeri Dominion realised what Delam was looking for and decided they could use exactly the same leverage as the Empire, except they themselves had not found the old prisoners and Delam knew their attempts at blackmail were fraud. He disappeared back to the Isles, knowing there was nothing left for him in Tamriel, and there he remained, this time keeping a regular eye on the mortal plane to ensure he did not lose years like before. When the Stormcloak movement began and he saw his people being persecuted he decided to intervene, hoping to work his way into Skyrim's political scene just has he did over two hundred years ago...except he was captured, trying to cross the border.

[o-hybridity]

how would you make a tabletop system like D&D that's crunchy for players, but not a huge pain in the ass for the DM to make monsters?

This is the Eternal Question, and it cuts pretty close to the core of my basic principles of design philosophy! I don’t know if I have a definitive answer but I can springboard into a meandering explanation of the things I’ve done to wrangle with this exact problem. Here goes:

for a while I thought there was a game that answered that question perfectly, and it was called Dungeon Crawl Classics. I don’t hold that belief now (Zocchi dice…), but we can loot an important principle from its couple of good design decisions:

1. Every player gets one really good toy. DCC’s chief virtue is that it found a way to make Fighters a fun choice, not just the choice that’s less mentally taxing than being a spellcaster, and the way they make that work is by giving the role an inherently textured core mechanic called Mighty Deeds of Arms. Instead of giving them a flat ascending to-hit bonus that’s just numerically better than the other classes get, Fighters in DCC roll a separate Deed die that scales with level alongside the attack roll and add the Deed die to the to-hit roll and damage, and if the Deed die comes up 3 or higher they also pull off a maneuver that improves their immediate tactical situation.

Swashbuckling chandelier swings, disarms, feints, coating your foe in lamp oil, and basically anything Jackie Chan has ever done besides just hit guys count as Deeds, and the only things you need to make them happen are your own imagination, GM fiat, and the will of the dice—just so long as the effect isn’t “do more damage.”

Altogether, the method requires even less bookkeeping than your standard D&D fighter, while being way more versatile and giving the player something to actively play with and find new implementations for every time their class role is relevant.

Spellcasters in DCC similarly put some wrinkles in the Vancian procedures by getting rid of conventional spell levels, turning each spell into a range of effects keyed to the results of a casting check, and letting casters burn their physical stats temporarily to pump up a single casting attempt—and that’s before we get into mutations and faustian pacts. The role falls into some of the same pitfalls it always has: spellcaster players have to juggle a lot more functions than fighters or thieves and at the top of their game they’re still going to make wilder shit happen than the other classes, though it balances out a bit by making casting itself a higher-risk affair.

The trouble with DCC’s classes is it tries to spread about 2.75 really good player toys across five classes, and when it comes to thief stuff it can’t really come up with anything all that good.

So Digression 1: What makes a really good player toy? How do we fill out those empty spaces in the party roster with cool stuff for players to use that isn’t a headache to keep track of?

In my humble onion, a good player toy needs to be flexible, haptically engaging, low-bookkeeping, and freely usable but not strictly predictable. To be flexible, a player needs to be able to apply the toy in a range of play situations—getting too attached to pre-defined mechanical effects is toxic to flexibility. A haptically engaging toy prompts the player to engage with something physically at the table to use it; die rolls are the most obvious but there’s lots of options ranging from the nifty to the balls-out bizarre.

There’s also some mechanics that I think are inherently more satisfying because the things they make you do with numbers has kind of an inherent pleasure that feels kinesthetic—I get warm, kind of stimmy feelings thinking about roll-high-but-not-too-high dice pool systems.

Low-bookkeeping toys are pretty self-explanatory; if it requires resource management or tracking multiple modifiers across different locations on the character sheet, those elements need to be doing extra work to make themselves memorable. The Goblin Laws of Gaming’s spellcasting system introduces a bookkeeping element in that you have to track your caster’s accumulated Dooms, but any caster only ever gets 3, the last one is pretty final, and they all translate into memorable moments of play.

When I say that a good toy is freely usable but unpredictable, I mean that the mechanic should tempt the player to use it often—because it’s powerful, because the results are exciting or cool—and temper that eagerness to toy with it less with anxiety over whether they’re going to blow one of their limited uses on a whiff or a no-sell when they could need it later and more with the question of whether it might blow up in their faces this time. Spellcasters in DCC or GLOG are way more equipped to cast all day long compared to their D&D brethren, and that leaves caster players in a position to have more fun with their role, but there’s always the lingering possibility a spell might pop off wrong and now you’ve got a lobster hand. Even when a PC gimmick doesn’t work in the player’s favor, it should make the next moment more exciting. Non-events are poison to gameplay.

Something to keep in mind in reference to player toys: nothing obligates you to make these toys all fit into a single coherent reference frame or “preserve game balance.” What you’re looking to do here is create what game devs over on the digital side of things call Incomparables—play elements that you can’t meaningfully “balance” because you can’t meaningfully convert one into the terms of another.

All of this is building up to point 2. Monsters are self-contained toys for the GM to play with. Like how you’re not obligated to have player toys all fit together neatly into a balanced and 100% shared language of play, monsters can and should operate on their own distinct mechanical plane, and not every monster will be able to fit within the same framework of rules matter.

By that token, I strongly encourage anyone looking to break out of the framework of play you’ll find in a WotC book to ditch as much of the content  in your statblock that carries over into the character sheet as you can. Give ‘em hit dice and hp totals, sure, give ‘em an AC rating and I won’t complain, to-hit bonuses even if you’re feeling nasty, but skip the ability scores and saving throws and proficiencies, and remember that there’s a special circle in hell for designers who give monsters big piles of feats that you have to dig back and forth through the damn book to find and make spot play decisions around (admittedly that’s not the problem it used to be back when 3e was what everyone was doing, but damned if I’m going to let anyone forget that it was a thing).

That sounds like heresy, but here’s the wild thing: there’s a whole armature of play to D&D that nobody uses and it would make the whole affair so, so much simpler if we did, because D&D is built to be a player-facing system, despite appearances. The original mechanic’s been buried under ability score modifiers, saving throws, attack rolls, and skill DCs, but it’s still there, baked into the dice and the stat spread.  Roll a d20 and compare the result against the relevant ability score; if it’s equal to or lower than the stat in question, you done did the thing. High rolls within the margin of success are better than low ones; use this to determine who comes out on top in a contested action when there’s a tie.

Bam, you’re done. That’s your core task resolution mechanic. The great thing about this is that it takes a huge amount of pressure off the GM to pin down extraneous numbers. Your monster doesn’t need an AC score, just a penalty it applies to a player’s attack check. Same with to-hit bonuses, just applied to the roll the player’s making to avoid or resist the attacks it has. Same with exceptional (or exceptionally shitty) base abilities like strength, speed, and intelligence. You don’t need to so much as think the phrase “Passive Perception.” All of that lets you pare down a monster’s statblock to a pretty spare couple of lines that you can fit on a notecard, leaving you room and time to come up with mechanical texture that’s actually fun.

Additionally, using stats this way leaves plenty of room to come up with fun implementations on the players’ end. Stat damage rules begin to make a lot more sense when you strip away all the derived values and re-center your players’ attention on those 5% probability increments. Rolling high but shooting for less than a target number is one of those mechanics that’s really satisfying to then carry over into some kind of direct numeric result. Just narrowing things down to a smattering of possibilities for martial characters, n this framework you can set up mechanics for defensive fighters to convert a failing attack roll into a substitute AC score for the next round, while a more buckwild berserker type who plays more for risk/reward sets their hp total to whatever the die result is—that 1 hits, but now your timetable for the fight’s shifted drastically, but if you hit high, you can pull in a killer second wind. In short, you have an infinite canvas for crunch if that’s what your players are into.

[supperellaine]

SUSD0001 week 4 Journal 01

10 March 2022

Social Housing in NSW 

I learned two key points this week.We derived the topic of the impact of climate change, and the following research discussed the application of affordable housing in Australia. 

In my mind，the focus of my learning this week was the NSW Government's measures and progress on affordable housing. New South Wales social households are now increasingly adopting products and services that both reduce the cost of living and protect the environment.

At the same time，the significant impact is on air pollution as well as carbon emissions, both directly and indirectly, through the type of housing chosen and the services provided through it. And through Sarath's presentation and the reading material this week, I learned that over the past eight years, the government and community housing providers have worked together to promote sustainable development and universal access to affordable and social housing, although the goals have not been met. However, social  housing has been transferred to the community housing sector and the sustainability of affordable housing has been improved.

Finally， deep understanding research has shown that affordable housing can bring more amenities to tenants and occupiers in the future. I believe that flexible community management can provide a more flexible and targeted service, but we need to clearly define the criteria and measure the outcomes. In addition, for the planning of affordable housing, I believe that site selection can be considered on a site-specific basis, choosing the most appropriate model of affordable housing and the corresponding households based on different types of climate change, topography and geography.

In the subsequent construction of affordable housing, the government has adopted a performance assessment model, which I think is very worthwhile, and the key stages are mainly divided into planning, fieldwork and reporting, while the audit team understands and determines the objectives and scope of the organization's activities to select the audit, and the criteria can be based on best practice, combining objective theory and practice to achieve a win-win situation. I see this as a reminder and a way to address the issues I need to encounter in my future career.

According to my view, in the future, the government needs to continue to expand community housing, as a higher proportion of social housing is a good thing for community housing. Management models can improve tenant satisfaction and competition between different community centers and differences in management models can promote community progress, which is good for both tenants and the social housing sector.

Through this phase of my studies, I have continued to practice my creative thinking. From researching projects and finding ideas to thinking outside the box, I have been experimenting and exploring. By constantly improving my learning, I have gained a different perspective on things and gained more social recognition.

Reference

https://media.opengov.nsw.gov.au/pairtree_root/09/e9/f2/6a/27/3e/4a/37/82/9d/36/e1/7a/30/59/a3/obj/01_Community_Housing_Full_Report.pdf

 https://www.facs.nsw.gov.au/housing/help/ways/renting-affordable-housing

https://innersydneyvoice.org.au/our-resources/resources-waterloo-community-capacity-building-project/social-housing-types/

[vintagerpg]

In 2000, Wizards of the Coast created the Open Gaming License, which allows publishers to use portions of D&D, particularly mechanics from older iterations of the game, in their own games. This sparked a revival of interest in early D&D rules and an explosion of retro clones, hacks and reimaginings. Most of these games use concepts from the ’74 D&D/Moldvay basic/BECMI rule modified with some of the modernizations brought by D&D 3E (like progresive armor class).

Let’s start with one I fell in love with at first sight of the cover: Torchbearer. Despite being a thematic love letter to early D&D rules, this is actually a simpler, modified version of Luke Crane’s Burning Wheel system (designer Thor Olavsrud characterizes it as “advanced Mouseguard”). While the ideas behind most of the systems will be familiar to long-time roleplayers, their execution is very different.

Burning Wheel is an elegant system that seeks to create atmosphere through the application of its rules rather than through detailed campaign settings. In the case of Torchbearer, the focus is firmly on the physical hardship of exploration. Resources, including light, are scarce. Managing encumbrance and movement is critical. Even resting in camp is a process. Some RPGs are about sweeping heroic stories, others are about killing monsters, still other focus on finding treasure. Torchbearer is about surviving in a dark, hostile place, where hunger and fatigue are as much a danger as undead guardians or deadly traps. To have a character live through a session of Torchbearer is not just the point, it’s the entire challenge of the game. Its grim and fatalistic and I love it.

You’ll note, of course, that there is an entire D&D rulebook called The Dungeoneer’s Survival Guide (Torchbearer has a chapter with the same name, in fact) full of optional rules to insert into an AD&D game. This is something I find fascinating about many retro games: rather than cloning the sprawl of D&D in its entirety, they take a small slice of the rules and create a lean, mean and entirely new game out of it.  

[breakingnews-fr]

Union Africaine : Roll Stéphane Ngomat suspendu de l’ECOSOCC pour faute présumée

Le président du Cluster Paix et Sécurité du Conseil économique, social et culturel de l’Union Africaine, le Gabonais Rouler Stéphane Ngomat est depuis le 21 juin dernier, suspendu indéfiniment en tant que membre de l’ECOSOCC pour faute et violation de l’article 8 du Règlement intérieur de l’ECOSOCC et des dispositions du Code d’éthique et de conduite de l’UA par un panel mis en place par l’union continentale.

Le président du Cluster Paix et Sécurité du Conseil économique, social et culturel de l’Union Africaine, suspendu indéfiniment en tant que membre de l’ECOSOCC, Rouler Stéphane Ngomat. © D.R.

Au terme d’une enquête conduite par le Bureau de contrôle interne (OIO) de l’ECOSOCC, conformément à la décision du Conseil exécutif de février 2021, le président du Cluster Paix et Sécurité du Conseil économique, social et culturel, le compatriote Rouler Stéphane Ngomat et six autres membres ont été reconnus coupables de fautes et de violation des normes juridiques de la commission de l’UA.

Selon un avis public signé le 21 juin 2022 et publié sur le site de la Commission le 28 juin, Rouler Stéphane Ngomat a été impliqué dans les cas de mauvaise conduite ci-après, tel que spécifié : abus d’autorité / de fonction et signature illégale de protocoles d’accord avec des tiers au nom de l’ECOSOCC de l’UA ; Convocation illégale de l’Assemblée générale et déstabilisation de l’ECOSOCC ; Utilisation abusive des en-têtes de lettres, du logo, du cachet et du sceau de l’ECOSOCC.

En conséquence, le président du Cluster Paix et Sécurité de l’ECOSOCC et ses six compères ne peuvent représenter l’ECOSOCC à quelque titre que ce soit, ni prendre part aux activités de l’Union africaine et de tous ses organes et institutions pendant la période de suspension. «Conformément à l’article 8 du règlement intérieur de l’ECOSOCC, cette question sera soumise au comité de discipline de l’ECOSOCC afin de mener une enquête sur leur conduite et de déterminer les sanctions appropriées à leur imposer», souligne l’avis public de l’Union africaine.

Les six autres membres suspendus de l’ECOSOCC sont : Tunji Asaolu (Nigeria), John Oba (Nigeria), Abozer Elligai Elmana (Soudan), Abdurrahman Mokhtar (Libye), El Hacene Abdallah Bah Mbareck (Mauritanie) et Shem Ochuodho (Kenya ).

Rouler Stéphane Ngomat a été élu président du Cluster Paix et Sécurité à l’ECOSOCC de l’Union Africaine le 11 décembre 2018, lors de la 2e session ordinaire de la 3e Assemblée générale permanente de l’ECOSOCC tenue à Lusaka, en Zambi. Il a été membre du cluster des affaires politiques et représentant du Gabon à l’UA-ECOSOCC de 2017 à 2018, il est observateur électoral de l’Union africaine dans de nombreux pays africains, il est conseiller en investissement pour la Global Business Roundtable (GBR) pour l’Afrique de l’Ouest et du Centre depuis 2015, et est consultant chez Ciel-resources international depuis 2015 et Housing Africa Management depuis 2016. Il a été l’ancien secrétaire général de l’Association gabonaise à Johannesburg de janvier 2012 à décembre 2014.