Podcasting

I was involved in a podcast for a couple of years, it was a fun experience and I would definitely do it again. Unfortunately we fell into the many of the same traps other hobbyist podcasts fall into that made it unsustainable. Now don't get me wrong, I think we did a pretty good job and I had a fun time doing it and again, I would do it again in a heartbeat. However, if I were going to do it again, there are several things I would do differently.

The things we did wrong:

• Technology: We almost always had technical issues, and all of this was due to bad planning on our part. We were using Skype when we definitely should not have been using Skype. For the first few episodes, I used my webcam microphone instead of investing in a decent headset, this led to poor quality sound. There were other issues as well.
• Planning: We had no structure to the podcast, we basically got on and started talking about random stuff. Sure we had a general focus of the podcast, but episode to episode, there was no planning involved. More often than not, I had no idea what we were going to talk about until we started recording. We also fell into talking about the same things from week to week
• Unscripted: Okay, I am not saying we should have scripted every episode, but we should have had outlines of what we were going to talk about along with bullet points of subtopics. The problem with what we were doing is often we would end up rambling aimlessly from topic to topic with no focus.
• Unedited: We posted our stream of consciousness unedited and raw, this was a bad idea. We should have had a third party editing the podcast, taking out the awkward pauses, unintelligible rants and the dumb in jokes that no one else was going to get. I am certain a good editor could have cut 30% of every episode and we would have been better for it.

The things we did right:

• Personality: I think the podcast had a great personality, Leigh and I bounced off of each other really well and we had a really good working relationship. I think we both contributed to the podcast in a positive way. In spite of what I said earlier, unscripted and unedited does have its advantages, we were our real selves as rough and unpolished as that was. We are good friends and that came through on the podcast.
• Informational: I think the podcast put out a lot of good information and a variety of topics, we answered a lot of questions, when we did not know the answer, we said so and when we were wrong about something, we admitted it and corrected ourselves.
• Dedication: Leigh and I were dedicated to what we were doing. We recorded pretty much every week for over 2 years. Sure, we missed a few here and there, but usually that was because of planned vacations and things of that nature. We recorded even when neither of us really wanted to. We both thought what we were doing was important and we did not falter from that.
• Community involvement: We had a couple of interesting guests, who spoke intelligently about important topics. We also had a couple of episodes we did in Discord where our regular listeners, as few as there were, got in on the action, so it was not always just Leigh and I talking.

Overall, I think this was a positive experience and I think all or most of our issues were that we did not really know what we were doing. I learned a lot from the experience and I think if we restarted doing it or if I decided to do my own, I would require some moderate amount of production time for each episode. There is no reason not to have 2 or 3 episodes in pre-production at any given time and once a topic has been covered, it should not be covered again for at least 4 episodes, unless something radical comes up. I would also like to see a standard format for each episode, even if it is as simple as; Intro (5 minutes), Primary Topic (30 minutes), Secondary Topic (15 minutes), Finishing Up (5 Minutes), Post Production additions (5 minutes). This would obviously make for more work, I think doing these things would make for a more professional production.

Summer is before us

 It is Memorial Day weekend, as always I am pretty optimistic about the summer, but I know in my heart it is probably going to be a total bust and another summer will pass. Okay, so now I am not optimistic, I am feeling a bit depressed about it. I think instead of dwelling on summer, I am going post my newest D&D Character.

This is a character concept I have been thinking about for a while. The basic idea is Inrid Grimm is not actually Indrid Grimm, he is actually the thing that killed Indrid Grimm. At some point, Indrid was attacked and killed and replaced by an Intellect Devourer. Indrid was chosen because he had been selected to go to Candlekeep and study on a scholarship, this allows Indrid to infiltrate Candlekeep for his Mind Flayer masters.

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Indrid Grimm
Male, Intellect Devourer, Wizard 1
Medium Aberration, lawful evil

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Armor Class 10
Hit Point 6 (1d6)
Speed 30 ft.

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Str 10 (+0), Dex 10 (+0), Con 10 (+0), Int 18 (+4), Wis 14 (+2), Cha 14 (+2)

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Saving Throws: Intelligence +6, Wisdom +4

Skills: Arcana +6, Deception +4, Perception +4, Stealth +2
Tools: Dragonchess Set, Thieves' Tools
Languages: Common, Deep Speech, Telepathy

Attacks:
Firebolt, Ranged +6 to hit, damage 1d10 Fire damage.
Dagger, Melee +2 to hit, damage 1d4 Piercing
Staff, Melee +2 to hit, damage 1d6 Bludgeoning

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Feats:

Telepathic (TCoE 81), Intelligence, Increase your Intelligence score by 1, to a maximum of 20. The spell’s spellcasting ability is Intelligence. 

Actor (PHB 165 ),  You gain +1 CHA, you have advantage on Deception and Performance checks when trying to pass yourself off as a different person, and you can mimic the speech of another person or the sounds made by other creatures that you have heard (for at least 1 minute).

Wizard features:

Spellcasting (PHB 114 ), You can cast prepared wizard spells using INT as your spellcasting modifier (Spell DC 14, Spell Attack +6) and wizard spells in your spellbook as rituals if they have the ritual tag. You can use an arcane focus as a spellcasting focus. 

Arcane Recovery (PHB 115 ), Once per day when you finish a short rest, you can choose expended spell slots to recover - up to a combined level of 1, and none of the slots can be 6th level or higher. 

Spells:

Cantrips: Firebolt, Light, Minor Illusion

1st Level: Comprehend Languages, Disguise Self, Expeditious Retreat, Find Familiar, Silent Image, Silvery Barbs

2nd Level: Detect Thoughts (1 per Long Rest)

Racial Features:

Tasha's Custom Lineage

Creature Type, (TCoE 9)

You are a humanoid. You determine your appearance and whether you resemble any of your kin. 

Size (TCoE 8), Medium 

Ability Score Increase (TCoE 9), +2 to Intellegence

Feat (TCoE 8), Telepathic

Variable Trait (TCoE 8), Proficiency Perception 

Languages (TCoE 8), Deep Speech

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Side note: Campaign allows each character a free feat at 1st level.

Review: Deathbringer RPG

 The Deathbringer RPG was written by Professor Dungeon Master, a Youtube content creator, as a stripped down version of D&D. The rules take up a single double sided page, however it does require some edition of D&D to provide monsters, spells and magic items. At face value Deathbringer appears to be just what it says it is, a stripped down grimdark version of D&D that plays fast and easy. It replaces many of the D&D class features, feats and special abilities with Deathbringer dice, a d6 that you can roll and add to any other die roll you please. This is a cool mechanic that does work well. Deathbringer also removes the 3-18 attribute levels in favor of just using the 0-4 modifier scores.

The problem Deathbringer has is it plays a bit flat. In D&D, even a 1st level character has some options for things to do on any given turn. Deathbring has the same issue early editions of D&D had. The only real option a fighter has is to attack, once the Wizard blows his wad in spells, all they can do is throw daggers and this does not improve much as the game progresses. Characters do not really improve much between 1st and 10th level. I really think most game groups would be better served by another game, like Shadowdark or perhaps just playing D&D 5E, but limiting players to using the Basic Rules.

I love the idea of Deathbringer, I do not love actually playing it, although I do not especially hate it either. I think Professor Dungeon Master had the right idea, but I think execution was not nearly as good as it could have been. I have to give this one a 2 out of 5.

RE: DOSBox Trials

 I got some feedback asking me why I setup a Linux machine to boot straight into DOSBox instead of just restoring and using old hardware, since I have experience doing this and why waste modern hardware by completely dedicating it to running old games and such. This is an interesting question.

First old hardware is getting harder to find and is getting more expensive. Anyone who has went looking for Sound Blaster card recently will know this pain, if you can find one, it could easily cost you $300. On top of that, running 30 or 40 year old hardware is a gamble on how long it will last. Every time you turn it on might be the last time. The tiny amounts of memory and hard drive space is also a problem. With DOSBox I can configure as much RAM as DOS will support and I am not stuck with a 200 MB hard drive on the verge of failure, I can use a 500 GB drive and DOSBox will happily let me use it all.

The other problem is, an old system running DOS or even Windows 3.1, lacks many features of modern operating systems. For instance usable networking and USB support. Since this setup is using Linux underneath, it can function as a modern machine, so for instance getting files onto the machine can be done via FTP, ssh or even a USB key. I can also setup multiple monitors, keyboard and mice, along with different logins, so multiple people can use one machine and play games together

DOSBox is highly configurable. Besides setting RAM, if I want it to emulate a 386, 486 or Pentium, depending on what programs I am running, I don't even have to reboot, hitting a key combo will slow the machine down or speed it up. I can also setup different configurations for different purposes, like a pure DOS environment, one for Windows 3.1 and one for Windows 98.

Finally, why would I dedicate a whole machine to this, when I can just run DOSBox on my main machine? This is a bit trickier. The big reason is simply, because I can. Beyond that, it is something to do with an old computer. Who doesn't have an old computer or laptop laying around these days. Why not put it to use playing Doom, Civilization or Lemmings. This use case has very low system requirement, even  1 GB is more than enough RAM for this project, and integrated graphics is perfectly okay. Heck, this can all be done on a Raspberry Pi. Who knows, maybe Granddad's old 386 just gave up on life, but that is where all of his important stuff is and he has no desire to learn anything beyond Windows 3.1, this is a perfect solution for him, with a bit of work, he might not even see the difference.

DOSBox Trials

 I was thinking it might be cool to have a Linux machine that booted straight into DOSBox. For those who don't know, DOSBox is a stripped down emulator designed specifically to run old DOS games on modern equipment. I figured this would be an easy project, doable in an hour or two, which was true enough, except I got the hair brained idea that I wanted to run Windows 3.1 in it as well. This caused me to tumble down a massive rabbit hole that cost me more than a day of my life to get working.

Honestly, it is not worth it. The return on investment just is not there. I mean having a Linux machine boot straight into DOSBox is mildly cool, but you really do not gain much by doing it. I suspect most people are not going dedicate an entire machine to this endeavor. If you find yourself wanting to do this and you absolutely want Windows 3.1 support, go get DOSBox-X and compile it from source. This version gives you as many bells and whistles as possible, including networking. If all you want is DOS and no Windows 3.1 support, here are the basic steps;

1. Install Debian with no Xorg, DE or WM

2. Reboot and log in root and install sudo

    2a. apt install sudo

    2b. edit /etc/sudoers and add your user account

    2c. logout and log in under your user

3. sudo apt install dosbox xorg xinit twm xdm

4. Type startx to enter into X, open a terminal and run dosbox, then exit out

5. mkdir dosbox

6. nano .dosbox/dosbox-0.74-3.conf

    6a. Change the following lines to;

        fullscreen=true

        fulldouble=true

        fullresolution=800x600

        windowresolution=800x600

    6b. Add the following lines after [autoexec]

            PATH=Z:\;C:\WINDOWS

            mount c ~/dosbox

            c:

    6c. Save and exit

7. nano .xsession and add

    7a. exec dosbox

    7b. save and exit the file

8. Rebbot the system and when you login, you should go straight to DOSBox.

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Edit: For those of you wish to use DOSBox-x, a more up to date and feature rich fork of DOSBox, I have the steps for compile from source here;

https://github.com/cjstoddard/dosbox-conf

I got my Nabu PC

 I received my Nabu PC last week. I was very happy I went through the process of figuring out how to make all the software work with an emulator first, this saved me a lot of screwing around when all I wanted to do was mess around with CP/M. The first thing you are going to need is the RS 422 serial adapter and a DIN cable. There are several videos on how to make them, but really, it is best just to go buy one already made, they cost like $15, it is just not worth the hassle of doing it yourself.

The really interesting thing about the Nabu is, it was the first cloud based home computer to be released, predating Chrome OS by several decades. The Nabu was released in 1983 before anyone even knew what the "Cloud" was. Amazingly, it works pretty well, I would say it is right on par with the other 8 bit computers of the time, obviously its boot time was a little longer when compared to instant on machines like the Commodore 64, but once loaded it performs very well.

At this point, I am not particularly sure what I want to do with it, I was hoping to get some time to sit down with it while I was on vacation to do something cool with it, but I got busy with other things. I may just box it up and resell it in a few years when they are no longer readily available. Right now anyone who wants one can get them for under a $100 if they are will to wait a little while, but in a few years after the warehouse find is gone, I am pretty sure these will be selling for $500+ dollars, especially for a tested and working machine.

Mame-Nabu under Linux

I bought a Nabu PC, a new batch has went up for sale. I missed the first batch and decided I was not going to buy one, but as usual, I find my impulse control to be lacking. It is going to be a while before it arrives, so I decided to check out the Nabu PC Mame emulator, so I could check out the Nabu Internet Adapter software so I could sort that out before I got my machine and maybe do some programming on it. I am not going to go into how to set that up, it is easy enough to do. You can get it at https://nabu.ca/

The problem I did run into was getting the emulator. The only pre compiled binaries were for Windows and there were no instructions on what you needed to get it running under Linux. It was not just a matter of install it from a repo or downloading the code and compiling it, Nabu support is new and is not available in the mainline code. I am going to assume you have some experience in using Linux, otherwise you would not be doing this.

Goto https://github.com/brijohn/mame/tree/nabupc_wip, click on the <>Code button and click on Download zip. Do not use git to retrieve the code, for some reason the nabupc code is not included in the git repository, but is included in the zip file. Once you have it downloaded, extract the file and cd into the folder containing the code.

To compile Mame, you will need some dependencies, install them using this command;

sudo apt-get install git build-essential python3 libsdl2-dev libsdl2-ttf-dev libfontconfig-dev libpulse-dev qtbase5-dev qtbase5-dev-tools qtchooser qt5-qmake

You can just type "make" at this point and it will build, however this will build Mame with everything and will take a while to do, we really only need it to build the Nabu emulator, so we start the compile process with;

make SOURCES=src/mame/nabu/nabupc.cpp REGENIE=1

Next go grab the Windows Nabu Mame file from here, https://gtamp.com/nabu/nabu-mame.zip. This file has everything needed including the ROM files and disk images, this will save you a bit of time in figuring out what you need and where to put it. Extract it to where you plan to run the emulator from. Delete mame.exe, floppy-boot.cmd and nabu.cmd, you will not need these files. Next copy the mame executable you just built into this new folder.  Run the Nabu Internet Adapter, and start the TCP service, you must do this before you start the emulator, or it will crash. You can now run the emulator with this command.

./mame nabupc -window -kbd nabu_hle -hcca null_modem -bitb socket.127.0.0.1:5816

That is it, the emulator should come up and connect automatically.

Thoughts on Mastodon

 When Elon Mush took control of Twitter, a couple of million people went to Mastodon, an alternative to Twitter, built to be a decentralized platform that no single person controlled and didn't vacuum up your personal data or push advertisements into you feed. The hypothesis was solid, it is a good idea, so I decided to dip my toe in and see if reality matched the hypothesis.

My first issue was getting signed up, you have to find a server to sign up with, I did what any reasonably competent internet user would do, I googled the most popular servers and found several lists all nearly identical. I started at the top and tired to sign up. The first one was not taking any new users, same with the second and 3rd. The fourth put me on a waiting list and on it went. I found a few more, but the servers were either not accepting new users or simply did not exist anymore. If I were a Twitter refugee, i would have gotten very frustrated at this point and been done with it.

I am however, not a Twitter refugee, I am a nerd with home lab infrastructure, so I decided I would simply setup my own Mastodon instance. I am not going to get into the process I went through to build it. It was not particularly difficult and I had very few problems, but again, I already had everything I needed, I could fire up a virtual machine, I had a domain name with DNS redirection, so it was just a matter of following some instructions on getting the software up and running, it took me the better part of a Sunday to get everything the way I wanted, but it has been humming along perfectly since then. I provided an overview of this process just after I did it, you can read it here.

So now I had a Mastodon account, so what to do now. Well I needed to find people to follow, so once again I went to google and found some lists of interesting accounts to follow. Once again, all of these lists were nearly identical and I was only really interested in a couple of them. I also found a couple of Youtube content creators who use Mastodon. Once I had some posts coming into my feed, I found some other folks who were posting mildly interesting things, so I followed them as well. Then I got to where I was following about 20 accounts and I had a steady stream of posts, but I was not seeing any new people to follow.

I had no trouble finding other Tech nerds interested in Retro computers, Linux, home labs, that sort of thing. What I found difficult, was finding people interested in Science Fiction/Fantasy Literature, Dungeons & Dragons, Comic Books, or any of my other interests. The problem is, to get these things into my feed, I need to know who to follow. There are of course lists of people by subject matter floating around and I even found one for RPG's with a good 30 accounts listed. When I started going through those accounts, many were just flatly gone, hadn't posted in months/years or were posting cat pictures and nothing else. I am use to being able to curate my feed, which I can do easily in Facebook and Twitter, it seems nearly impossible to get a nice balance of posts about a variety of topics unless you already know at least a few people already on Mastodon.

Now for the BIG problem with Mastodon, and this is not Mastodon's fault really. No one I personally know uses Mastodon. Sure, my wife signed up on my server when I was testing it and I had 1 friend also sign up, but neither of them use it. The reason I use social media is to interact with friends and family. If my Nephew was not using Twitter as his only social media platform, I probably would not have a Twitter account. On Facebook, I have maybe 40 friends, all of whom I know personally and have an active relationship with. By comparison, my Mastodon feed is very flat, there is nothing personalized about it, there are no people I know post about their lives or sending me messages. It feels like I am reading a blog written by multiple strangers. Yes, there are interesting posts, but there is no personal connection or depth.

All in all, I don't really think setting up my own instance is worth the trouble, simply because if you don't have a built in group of followers, it is just too difficult to get an interesting balanced feed going. If you can get onto a big server with lots of people, you get access to their local feed and better access to other large federated sites. Otherwise, I think you will just be wasting your time.

My Atheism

 Officially, I have been an atheist since my early 20's. I grew up in a Christian house hold, my Mother took us to church every Sunday, we sang in the choir and went to bible study during the week. My Mother did not have any of us baptized, she felt baptism was more meaningful if it was done as a teenager with acceptance and intent, rather than being forced on an infant. I was the first and only of her children to refuse to be baptized, she was disappointed in me and asked me to reconsider, but she abide by my decision and never said another word to me about it.

I bring this up because recently online I was told "You were never a true Christian!", and I had to agree with the person making the statement. I think even at a very young age, I knew the god concept was incorrect. I remember one Sunday morning in Church School, the instructor was telling us about Noah's ark and at the end they had us draw pictures about the story. I drew a picture of Superman saving innocent people from drowning in the flood and taking them to another planet where they would be safe. When asked about it, I said Superman would never let people die if he could do something about it. I could not have been older than 8 at the time and even then, I understood that mass murder was morally reprehensible.

I hear stories from other atheists about how difficult their deconversions were, how they struggled to let go of these life long deeply held beliefs. It was not like that for me, I am not going to say it was an overnight experience, it took a few years, but it was not at all a difficult transition for me. I think it started in Bible Study, the Minister challenged us to read the Bible over the summer. He knew damn good and well we wouldn't. What he didn't understand was, I can and will read anything. This was the beginning of the end.

When the Bible is spoon fed to you, it is easy to make it all sound just the way they want it to sound. It is easy to gloss over contradictions, by talking about those things months or years apart, so no one questions them. It is easy to lift those passages out of the original context and add your own meaning to it. But when you read the whole thing yourself and the Bible itself is its own context, it becomes very clear, or it should become clear that these stories were told by bronze age people trying to make some sort of sense about the world they lived in. It is much easier to see contradictions, when you are reading a passage and realize this contradicts a passage I read a couple of days ago.

Thou shalt not kill. —Exodus 20:13

Thus sayeth the Lord God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side. and slay every man his brother…companion…neighbor. —Exodus 32:27

and

Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord. —Proverbs 12:22

The Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets, and the Lord hath spoken evil concerning thee. —I Kings 22:23

 and

Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he began to reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem three months. —2 Kings 24:8

Jehoiachin was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned three months and ten days in Jerusalem… —2 Chronicles 36:9  

These are just the contradictions I remember off the top of my head, there were dozens more. Added in to that mix, there were passages that simply do not comport with reality as we know it today. in Genesis 1, God created the Earth, Genesis 2 says he created Light. This is not how planets are formed, the stars always come first. Over the last hundred years, we have watched many stars form and planetary objects forming around them. In none of these instances has a planet appeared first and then a star. The Bible also speaks about firmament, a dome that covers the Earth, we have put satellites into orbit, we have been to the Moon, we have sent drones to mars and we know for a fact the earth is not flat and is not shrouded in a firmament dome.

Anyway, after reading the Bible, I became an agnostic theist. I still believed there was a supreme being, but I no longer claimed to know what said supreme being was. It was at this point, I stopped going to bible study and refused to be baptized. I often wonder if that minister regrets challenging me to read the Bible. Just a few years later, I simply stopped pretending. So yes, I was never a true Christian, I think even as I child I recognized that god does not exist and we are all just pretending that he does.

OGL Controversy

 Apparently a copy of the new OGL (1.1) has been leaked and there seems to be a large backlash going on. If you do not know what the OGL is, to put it as simply as possible, the Open Game License (OGL) is a license Wizards of the Coast (WotC) provides to 3rd party creators so they can create content for Dungeons & Dragons (D&D). For the last 20+ years this license has been used widely to create a shit ton of content that WotC could never have or would never have created on its own, it has been the backbone of the hobby. The new version of the OGL takes away a lot of the power creators had and sets up a royalty requirement, which never existed before. Needless to say, a lot of people make their living doing this and it is now going to be infeasible or a lot more difficult to make a living doing it.

I can understand the frustration of these creators, having the carpet pulled out from under them has to be rough. My question here is, why is this becoming apparent only now? This license has been around for 22 years. During that time I have seen it said over and over, the OGL cannot be revoked, this license has to have been looked over by dozens if not hundred of lawyers by now. Why is it only now that these creators are being told that yes in fact it can be revoked and yes WotC can force you to comply with the new license. This seems weird to me that not a single lawyer in 22 years has popped up and said, this is not a good idea. But apparently, here we are.

From my point of view, very little changes. I have never used the OGL for anything I create and I don't use anything WotC can claim as their copyrighted intellectual property. Everything I have created is mine and mine alone. Of course I also do not sell anything for profit, I pretty much allow anyone to use what I create for whatever purpose they choose and the only time I would step in is if someone tried to keep another person from using my creations. I don't care if someone steals the Gauntlets of Zardon and uses it or a variation in their own book, even if they intent to sell it at a profit, but the second they try to block someone else from doing the same, I would claim prior art. Certainly the Hand and Eye of Kevin is derivative work and WotC could make a stink about it, but unfortunately fro them, this would be protected as satire and parody and I would tell them to go fuck themselves.

As for the next version of D&D, known as OneD&D, I don't know yet. I am not taking part in the beta test and I have no real interest in what is going on with it, so I am not following it at all. I have no plans to switch over to it when it is released. Like D&D 5E, I will probably take a year or two to consider the move and in fact I may never move. 80% of what I run in my own campaign is my own home brewed stuff. I have collected enough 5E stuff, both WotC and other creators, that I could probably run 5E campaigns for the rest of my life, even if I never wrote another adventure.

If for some reason, giving money to WotC became so distasteful that I could no longer even look at those books, there are a ton of other games out there that could easily be drop in replacements. Pathfinder and Castles & Crusades or I could go way out in the field use Savage Worlds, Dungeon World or Blades in the Dark, not to mention all the old games I could go back to like Call of Cthulhu, GURPS or HackMaster. The best part of this hobby is that all I really need is my imagination and a few friends to put up with my shit for a couple of hours a week.