Monday 6 November 2023

The Sunday Seven, 5th November 2023

In this new feature, I'll be posting seven links to items of interest each Sunday - and I'll be calling it, unimaginatively-but-appealingly-alliteratively, the Sunday Seven. Here are this week's:

1. 'How Difficulty Class and the d20 Engine Ruined Roleplaying', at Mythlands of Erce. This is a blast from the past - an echo of those great blogposts from long ago whose calls still reverberate in the sunset-lit mountains of our memory. It's also funny. Worth reading.

2. Mythic Bastionland will soon be released on Kickstarter. I don't normally go in for hype, but this one seems like it may be worth it.

3. A commenter, Nick, recommended an old Ravenloft adventure to me, called Castle Forlorn - which among other things apparently included time travel as a significant feature. I am persuaded this one is worth buying and reviewing. 

4. At Methods & Madness, the author is carefully and dutifully re-reading the AD&D 1st edition DMG (the latest post being this one). People used to do this sort of thing more, and there is value in it; I learned today that AD&D assumes a 1% backfire rate on the use of wands - something which I had never noticed before, and will I think implement. 

5. I have just finished reading William Goulding's The Inheritors after it was recommended by a commenter on the blog. It is a phenomenal read, and perhaps the best example I can think of of an author grappling convincingly with the task of plausibly representing non-human consciousness.

6. I tend to put Freddie de Boer into the 'fevered egos tainting our collective subconscious' category, but a recent(ish) post by him makes some interesting points about AI art

7. On the other hand, this piece from The Spectator, on broadly the same subject, makes terrifying ones

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