Right off the top of Kevin's head
When a player takes an action that requires a roll:
It may sound simple, but it’s not actually how most GMs resolve actions. Continue reading “GM Tip: How to create suspense in resolving actions”
Julie and I just got back from vacation in China. Amongst many other things, we saw baby pandas.
On the trip, I wasn’t carrying my MacBook Air, but I did have my iPad and iPhone, and I learned a few things about trying to do work on my mobile devices. Continue reading “Working from an iPad”
In 1996, Deep Blue played competitive Chess against world champion Garry Kasparov. In 2011, Watson beat Ken Jennings at Jeopardy. In 2016, AlphaGo played and beat Lee Sedol in Go. And in 2018, OpenAI Five played 2 games against professional Data 2 players, and the humans survived 2 very fun games. But in another year, I think that OpenAI Five will handily beat the best human Dota 2 teams.
(Disclaimer: I am neither a Dota 2 nor a Machine Learning expert, and I didn’t do much research for this blog post before diving into writing) Continue reading “Thoughts on OpenAI Figuring Out Dota 2”
After my last stint writing and publishing a tabletop adventure, I was inspired to take a shot at writing a rule system. With a few playtests and a PDF from an online Word template, I now also call myself a game designer by sharing “College Contagion.”
Continue reading “Try out “College Contagion”, my one-page RPG!”
Everyone is into podcasts these days. Here’s a common conversation I have had.
A: “So, I was in the car listening to a podcast-”
B: “Wait, you listen to podcasts? Me too!”
A: “Really, what podcasts do you listen to?”
As much as I enjoy them myself, I don’t think it is unique or surprising to find fellow podcast listeners. Podcasts aren’t a specific interest, like “90s alternative” or “lemurs with thoughtful facial expressions.” Podcasts are a medium like “TV” or “movies,” so most people probably like at least one or two. Replace “podcast” with “sport” or “music” and it will roughly make as much sense. Continue reading “My Current Podcasts”
Recently, I caught a podcast episode of The Splendid Table where “Nigella Lawson Defends the Honor of Home Cooking.” She recently wrote an article on Lenny Letter arguing that people shouldn’t say that they are “just a home cook.” The word “just” implies that home cooks are less than a chef where Lawson seems them as distinct crafts. Continue reading “What Do You Mean By “Cook” and “Chef”?”
For me, magic doesn’t usually require waking up an hour before my work day morning routine, but when you save an hour waiting in line for Space Mountain, it definitely feels like the right decision.
Since moving to the Bay Area just over 10 years ago, I have made many trips down to LA but never quite made it to Disneyland. We typically would leave at earliest on Friday afternoon and drive back to be at school or work on Monday morning, so we never found the time to make the price of admission worth it. However, my cousin Owen’s high school graduation was on a Wednesday, so since we had to dip out in the middle of the week, we extended our vacation through the following weekend and cut out a day to spend at Disneyland. Continue reading “My First Disneyland Day”
I spend a lot of time preparing for my Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) games. Not only do I plan the adventures themselves, but I also watch, read, and listen to advice about being a better Dungeon Master (DM). And for fun, I watch streams of other D&D games, which is also preparation because I am studying what the DM is doing in their game. Some DMs are amazing, and some are only okay. I can tell by watching them, and that made me wonder: which one am I? Continue reading “Watching Tape”
I had originally planned to write a movie review, but frankly, my opinion doesn’t really matter. You were either stoked and already saw it, or you don’t care and will not be convinced by me to go. Instead, I will provide my spoiler-filled thoughts to the movie covering morality, death, and cinematic determinism, but mostly just random thoughts Continue reading “Avengers: Infinity War Reaction”
The marathon continues! Here are my hot takes on Phase 2 of the MCU. Of course, there are spoilers everywhere, not only for the movie mentioned but also for other MCU movies. Beware.
I like this movie more than consensus, though I’m not sure why. I liked the twists in this movie. I like Tony having to go MacGyver and the glorification of the engineer. I like Ben Kingsley‘s role. I like seeing Tony have to work through things after the Battle of New York. And it is still funny and appropriately over-the-top to be fun.
