Finally, Another Good D&D Writer

Joel, I heard of your blog through Tao of D&D, and subscribed after reading "Space is Big...". Everything I've read since then has confirmed that that was a wise decision.

First of all, I like your style. Sarcastic but informed. Angry but not ranty. When you don't like something, you say so and you say why, and then you offer something better.

Second, it's a pleasure to find someone else out there advocating that DMs should fucking work. That they should learn from our world and its history, from deep study of reality, to make worlds richer than anything a player would ever find elsewhere. I've been loyally reading Alexis for over 10 years, and have had great successes with my own software additions to the game (many inspired by his work.) But only in the last year-ish did I fully commit myself to running in a (semi) historical Earth. That has given me nothing but positives; my game has never been better. You are absolutely on the right track with building out your Canada, and I look forward to seeing your results here. (I'll show you my map of the Canary Islands if you like.)

Third, from one software-dev-cum-DM to another, if you're interested I will link you my thesis on designing and developing software tools for augmenting how we play and run traditional RPGs. So-called "virtual tabletops" fucking suck, man. We should use our machines to support additional layers of depth in our games, not just push around virtual miniatures and play sound effects.

Fourth, I'm curious to know whether you've made, or contemplated making, scripts/apps/programs that you (and/or your players) use at the table as part of your gameplay.

Fifth, I'm not sure how much of the Tao of D&D you have read, but if you aren't familiar with his "sage" system, you're in for a real treat. That's his project to categorize all of human knowledge and skill into abilities that are (partly) randomly gained through level-ups. A lot the meat of the sage abilities offers players ways to interact with the world that take place on longer timescales or in subtler fashions than typical games rules; if you like the talking head rules from Lion and Dragon, you're gonna love these.

Cheers and well met. Thanks for writing.