On becoming technologically competent

I was working out a computer problem and got to thinking about what I was doing.

Pretty much anybody who uses a computer on the regular would benefit from becoming more of a power user. Most people would like to work more efficiently to free up time for the things they want to do. Luckily, it's never too late to learn.

How, though?

You can just take it one step at a time, applying the miraculous human reasoning power of 'breaking a complex problem down into components which can be tackled'.

1. Identify a laborious part of your workflow.
2. Find a tool that will help.
3. Learn to use the new tool.
4. Add it to your workflow.

If a component task seems too onerous, you can break it down further.

For example, if 'learn to use the new tool' seems imposing, it is possible to:

• plan how to approach it
• learn to read documentation
• find a tutorial which works for you
• set time aside to read documentation and follow tutorials
• search for specific information in today's search-hostile web
• establish what the best forum is to ask questions in

Finding tools

Being a power user is not a binary thing. It's a gradient. When I first used a computer back in the dusty old yesteryears, I was not competent with it. Now I'm competent in many technological domains, and an expert in one or two. Some of that was acquired naturally and some through deliberate effort.

Right now, if I ever need to write a batch file or mess with the registry or write my own css, I have to re-familiarise myself, because I've let pieces of competence degrade. For some other tech questions, I still have no competence at all. Fortunately, it doesn't really come up, because...

Having a genuinely unique problem is vanishingly rare. 

You can be pretty sure that lots of clever technical people have already come up with solutions for whatever it is that you're doing. It's just a matter of finding their solution, learning to use it, and then actually using it.

There's tons of (free!) software which gives you batch processing or shortcuts or streamlining or other efficiency gains for all manner of otherwise-laborious tasks. It's a matter of identifying the need, discovering the tool, and learning its use.

Need to impose a complicated naming schema on a bunch of files? There's Bulk Rename Utility.

Need to strip audio tracks from videos? VLC does it.

Running out of disk space due to a regrettable history of erratic, poorly-labelled, manual backups made in arbitrary locations? SpaceSniffer + Duplicate Files Finder.

I could go on. I have bucketloads of discrete tools that I use either regularly, as part of my workflow, or intermittently, as part of problem-solving or error remediation or unusual tasks.

(We unfortunately live in the 'app era', the 'cloud era', the 'SAAS era'. People seem not to think of software programs as tools that you download and use to improve the ease, efficacy, or efficiency of specific things they do. I think they're missing out.)

Living means learning

If you put your mind to sliding yourself up the 'power user' scale, you'll almost certainly succeed, and you'll find that you can improve your workflow incrementally. As you learn and develop expertise with your tools, you will learn their best use cases, and find yourself getting judicious, and seeking more methods, more approaches, more tools.

A long time ago I set down the largely-worthless Windows file management tools, and picked up Everything and SyncBackFree. I learned mass image editing back in university using some tool I don't even remember the name of, then worked out how to do it in Gimp when that was my go-to image manipulation software, and have since found ImageMagick is better for many tasks.

I'll almost certainly find even better ways to do the tasks I currently do, using new and better tools. But that's a good thing, not a bad thing. I'm still in a better spot right now than I would be if I'd never heard of batch processing.

If there's a moral, it's this:

Don't avoid trying things because you don't think you're capable. Capability not only can be but is learned.

Craft wizards out of Wiki articles

I'm excited! The Kickstarter campaign for my weird 2025 Zine Quest contribution is just a day away from completion, and I'm blown away with the level of support.

Wiki Articles Are Wizards [citation needed] is mostly about making bizarre wizards from wiki articles and showing them off in duels. In this note which I'm cross-posting from a Kickstarter update, I'll show you how it works.

Step one: Find an article.

Any decently long article will do. Let’s choose the Wikipedia article on ‘puzzles’.

Step two: Generate some wizard aspects.

Amongst the zine's many tables, some give you templates which turn wiki article content into wizard features. Roll or choose a template, then fill in its blanks by picking something out of the article.

For example, sometimes you'll be asked to use a description or adjective from the article. Other times you'll compress and mangle names from the article’s references into a fantastic name.

Article content: ‘riddle of the Sphinx’, ‘hangman’, ‘missing square’, ‘used the resulting pieces as an aid for teaching’, ‘16th century’

• Kangdell the Sphinx’s Hangman was cast down into this world from the Great Dreaming sixteen centuries ago. From head to toe, his body is missing squares; he uses the pieces as an aid for teaching.

Article content: ‘the Maze of Games’, ‘the World’s Biggest Puzzle’, ‘put pieces together (or take them apart)’

• They call his lair the Maze of Games. His minions are automata which put pieces together (and take things apart) without cease. The work currently open on his lectern is titled: The World’s Biggest Puzzle.

We use the first and last letter of the article title ‘puzzles’, plus some random rolls, to look up personality descriptors from the extensive random tables. We find that Kangdell is 'particularly proud', and 'somewhat spiteful'.

Article content: ‘requiring strict adherence to a particular kind of order’, ‘Category: List of impossible puzzles’, ‘Category: List of puzzle types’, ‘Category: Mechanical disentanglement’

• People find Kangdell the Sphinx’s Hangman to be particularly proud and somewhat spiteful. He requires strict adherence to his particular kind of order. He amuses himself by disentangling types of impossible puzzles.

Step three: Create spells, defences, and artefacts.

We create Kangdell’s magical arsenal from article content, using some simple guidelines for spell names.

Article content: ‘becoming’, ‘hidden object’, ‘the size of a sand grain’, ‘sawed around’, ‘many riddles’

Magic spells:

• Swilsnor’s Hidden Saw
• Spoerork’s Many Riddles
• Become The Size Of A Sand Grain

Article content: ‘World Cube’, ‘three cups’, ‘unite the elements’, ‘enigmatology’, ‘disentanglement puzzles’, ‘the outline’

Magic defences:

• Eymaugladoun’s Three Cups of Disentanglement
• Pftpievandal’s Enigmatic Outline
• Uniting of the World Cube’s Elements

Our wizard should also have some magical treasures and objects of power!

Article content: ‘nine linked-rings’, ‘temple tablets’, ‘cartographer’, ‘a perplexing problem’, ‘folding problem’, ‘advanced device’

Kangdell secretly possesses three artefacts:

• Botesmackar the Cartographer’s Advanced Device
• The Nine Linked Rings of Folding
• The Perplexingly Problematic Temple Tablets

Step four: Pick extra lore and traits.

We can add detail to Kangdell the Sphinx’s Hangman by sprinkling in lore and special powers from the zine’s extra tables. Here are some possibilities:

• Should his staff ever be broken, Kangdell breaks into the same number of pieces (and is mildly inconvenienced as a result).
• He has fragmented memories of four centuries in the jar, bored out of his brain (which was all he was at the time).
• Kangdell wears socks and sandals and carries a little grimoire in his deep-pocketed robe.
• His tower is cuboid, and moves when nobody is watching. Its stones are lined with symbol-inscribed tiles.

There's lots to do with Kangdell!

Our wizard is prone to petty grudges, magical disputes, and ego clashes, and as a result, his cabal will be duelling in the Great Wizard-Off. For information on this and so much more, check out the zine!

What if every D&D power could be used at will?

Seriously, what would happen?

I think that in D&D 5e:

• Resource tracking is fiddly, takes valuably game time, and isn't particularly fun.
  
• The game's built-in resource management is one of its weakest design elements. So much hinges on the long rest mechanic that resources feel all-or-nothing. Between published adventure content and the relative lack of 'living world' rules under the hood, resting tends to be either impossible or unpunished, with little middle ground, depending on the situation. The DM gets little guidance on making it work.
• Resource management decisions are only sometimes important, and seldom very engaging or fun, compared to the other decisions made during play. You learn good spells and tactics, and it's seldom important to change them. You may sometimes have intel leading to an opportunity to prepare differently, but the game isn't so difficult that doing so is necessary, and there isn't much in the way of DM guidance or built-in mechanics for getting intel into the PCs' hands.
• Most of the game's rules are about tactical life-or-death combat, and therefore the game itself is about tactical life-or-death combat (although of course not everyone plays it this way). Trying to conserve resources in combat is a big gamble. After the particularly resource-limited early levels, play styles tend to converge on 'open with full broadside' and not be punished for that.
• It is a game where characters don't just have 'powers' but extravagant superpowers, and it's highly character-focused.
• Character classes all have a fairly similarly design, considered in the abstract. They get an array of at-will small superpowers plus various rate-limited superpowers, almost all of which can be used a low-single-digit number of times between rests. Other limiters on powers (e.g. HP or GP costs) are rare.
• The game's balance is precarious and a DM needs to develop skill to tread the line between 'feeling dangerous' and 'being unfair'.

Let's say you mostly agree with these premises. I think it follows that making all D&D 5e powers at-will – that is, removing their rate limits...

• Would remove part of the game, but not an important one
  
• Wouldn't get rid of interesting choices
• Would work for all classes without changing typical playstyles
• Would lean into the existing superpowered and character-focused feeling of the game
• Would make gameplay much faster
• Wouldn't upset a perfect game balance that doesn't exist.

Spam spells all you like. Action surge on every turn. Put ki points on every attack; metamagic on every spell; enter rage or confer bardic inspiration whenever you can spare a bonus action.

This is an idle fancy – I've never seen it done. But I'd be fascinated to see how it played out. Extrapolating some consequences that seem plausible:

1. The DM could then abandon CR and offer challenges which would otherwise be completely unfair, then see what the players come up with.
2. If the DM created a 'too easy' encounter as a result, it wouldn't matter, because the power disparity and lack of resource tracking means the encounter gets settled in a fraction of the time that combat, spell-based trickery, or the various resource-conserving hedges usually take at the table.
3. The DM could alternatively keep CR but remove all the rate limiters on adversaries' resources: recharges, dailies, slots, etc. (But unlike character classes, this would affect some creatures much more than others)
4. PCs wouldn't need to keep lesser powers and spell choices for backup offense. With normal ideas of challenge abandoned there should be more situations where a particular utility spell or defence is desperately needed. That suggests that spell selection might become a more interesting decision!

Now, historically this sort of thing would lead to a worsening of 'linear fighters, quadratic wizards', but I don't think the difference would be as large in this edition of the game, at least before the highest levels. Fighters getting two actions every turn via action surge is pretty huge, for example. The biggest difference might be in high-level utility powers, the kind where you normally have one use of a valuable high-level spell slot and have to consider whether to save it for a fight. Now you could Fabricate or create a permanent Wall of stone every ten minutes, Mind blank the whole party, spam divination spells, and so on.

What other issues would you need to navigate?

• A few character powers stop mattering. For example, second-rate but 'cheap' healing features are mostly obviated by having lay on hands or a decent healing spell. You might need to introduce some 'alternative features' available to all classes.
• Some character powers would become irrelevant as the character increased in level. This wouldn't matter except that I doubt they're evenly distributed over character classes. You'd want to add a mechanic for swapping defunct powers out once you grow out of them, for those classes that don't already have one.
• There are some slightly more or less resource-limited classes, and they become slightly better or worse choices respectively as a result. I don't think this matters except for warlocks, who deviate from the overarching class design patterns. They'd keep their major disadvantage (few powers) while everyone gets a better version of their major advantage (powers usable more often).
• At the highest levels, powers (and spells especially) can become absurdly strong. But having poked around, I think only a few of them would be real trouble. It might literally just be Wish and Divine Intervention!
• If you're abandoning material costs from spells as well as spell slots, you'd want to look at the few spells that are highly constrained by GP cost: Forcecage, Clone, Sequester, Gate, etc.
• I might be wrong; maybe top-tier spellcasting really does outcompete other classes. You could make level 8-9 spells the sole exception to the 'infinite resources' rule, perhaps sticking to slots or limiting them in some other way (once per hour?).
• Rogues would now get infinite Stroke of Luck as their capstone: their attacks always hit and their ability checks always succeed. I don't think this actually outshines having infinite spells, but it might be boring.
• If the PCs' opponents also have no constraints, there might be a risk at high levels of the game devolving into win-initiative-to-win-combat, but hopefully it would lead to unique solutions.

Implications for the world

Obviously things would get absurd, especially if this is the norm for all people in the setting. But I already think the implied and official D&D settings don't actually develop most of the implications of the things that are canonically possible within them. All sorts of things (technologies, prices, lifestyles, community structures, social structures, etc) ought to look completely alien on the basis of low-level spells alone, and yet the setting (with its dramatic mixture of tech levels, dramatic mixture of society types, dramatic mixture of stakes, etc) stands unaffected.

But overall, losing even more immersion in a typical fantasy setting does strike me as a glaring issue, yes. Maybe abandoning rate limits would work in a more (post-)apocalyptic setting? One where everything is chaotic and in flux, where huge changes happen in the world very quickly, where absurdly spectacular powers are harnessed to mundane ends, and where nightmarishly powerful entities regularly make an appearance?

Wiki Articles Are Wizards [citation needed]

Wizards are disquieting, unique, and steeped in magic. This wizard leaves a trail of fungus wherever he goes, and keeps his spells under glass. [1] That one is nine feet tall and orbited by tiny comets. [2] Another has matchboxes full of slithering tongues, which do his talking for him. [1][3][disputed – discuss]

Announcing Wiki Articles Are Wizards [citation needed], a tome of instruction for crafting such twisted sages! [clarify]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/periaptgames/wiki-articles-are-wizards-citation-needed

➡️ Step one: Take any article from Wikipedia, or another wiki

➡️ Step two: Follow some simple rules to transform it into a weird, dangerous wizard

➡️ Step three: Pit your wizards against each other, using a tournament-style mini RPG

➡️ ...Or use them as inspiration for characters or villains [ambiguous] in your own games!

Enjoy a hefty tricolour [4] zine with:

➡️ Rules for creating arsenals of spells and protective amulets! [citation needed]

➡️ The truth about true-names! [5]

➡️ More wizardly lore than you can shake a staff at! [original research?]

➡️ Random tables for wizard anatomy, habitats, peculiarities, and more! [vague]

 

 

Inspired by: Wikipedia deep dives, and wizards from old pulps and comics, GLOG, Discworld, and Dying Earth! [1][2][4]

Follow the Kickstarter to get notified when the campaign begins! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/periaptgames/wiki-articles-are-wizards-citation-needed

'Reasons for reactions' to improve random encounters

You don't want to fall into the trap of your encounters, especially random encounters, being reducible to is-it-combat-or-do-we-ignore-it.

Plenty has already been written about giving encounters extra contextual details (where are they, what are they doing, what are they hiding, etc). But it's also important to give the non-player characters (the appearance of) agency by using varied reactions.

So how do they feel about you?

🟩🟩✅ Good: The rules randomly modify how nice or nasty encountered creatures are. Most games do this.

🟩✅✅ Great: The rules specify a creature's or group's default reaction (friendly, suspicious, wary, indifferent, curious, issues challenges, hostile, fearful, neutral...), and modify this with a dice roll.

✅✅✅ Superb: The rules list plausible reasons for encountered creatures deviating from the default reaction (in case the GM struggles to tie it all together).

This last part is a very useful tool but also seems fairly rare. So, roll or pick something appropriate:

1d10 possible reasons the encounter is unusually friendly:

1. unusual individual/leader
2. need a favour
3. recently sated
4. intimidated and trying not to show it
   
5. hiding a secret
   
6. smell food on the party
7. recent festival, harvest, windfall, or celebration
   
8. hoping to steal / other deceit
9. feeling secure after recent victory
   
10. party is a reminder of old friend(s)
    

1d10 possible reasons the encounter is unusually hostile:

1. on high alert after recent attack
   
2. mistaken identity
3. resource-starved and desperate
4. rabid or maddened
5. hiding a secret
6. already in bad mood
   
7. subject to tyrannical orders
8. party inadvertently breaking taboo/custom
   
9. fear of reprisals from a greater threat
10. bandits, soldiers, hated nemeses sighted in area
    

"The minotaur is trying not to disturb a spider's web by moving, and settles for glaring at you balefully."

Signal the reasons as clearly as you can to the players, of course. It's infamously difficult to get motivations and secrets across at the table. Your encounters will have more verisimilitude, be more engaging, and be easier to improvise.

Out-of-character knowledge: A solvable problem

Note: This primarily applies to trad RPGs, played as trad RPGs. I doubt it has much relevance for story-telling games, or people running a trad TTRPG as a group story-telling exercise.

 

I often think about the player knowledge / character knowledge dichotomy, and in particular the problem of out-of-character or "meta-game" knowledge.

It boils down to this: in any game, within the world a character has capabilities (skills, powers, a viewpoint, certain possessions) that the player doesn't. But the player has information that the character doesn't.

Players, as they get experienced, inevitably end up having knowledge of X that their characters don't. Even if they learned something during the game, they'll eventually have a new, know-nothing character.

People are usually concerned about X being 'monsters' or 'enemy powers and vulnerabilities' or 'magic item properties' or the like. But it can include other, more meta-level, stuff:

• Players hear about what's happening to other player characters, even when they're not together.
• Over-arching information about the scenario, which the player has played or read a review of.
• The GM just said "oops, forget I mentioned that".
• Savviness to the genre of the universe being played in. Players know that pleasant tidy off-ramps in Call of Cthulhu won't be what they seem.
• We remember where our last characters bit the TPK, and the layout of the dungeon level.
  
• The GM brought a whole box of fire imp models to the game.
• The player has read a mathematical analysis of which spells/weapons/feats/etc are optimal.
  

 

Separating player knowledge and character knowledge

I think it's fairly obvious that at least in trad TTRPGs, it's desirable to reduce the impact of out-of-game knowledge on gameplay. Players ideally should have just the information their characters have, and make decisions accordingly.

Otherwise, why not just play with all the GM's stats and maps laid out on the table? Or better yet, given to the players to study before the game? Why not let the players roll to see whether they would succeed or fail at something before deciding whether to try it?

There are solutions, of course

I listed out all the solutions I could think of to "experienced players having knowledge about X that their characters don't". Then, as if I didn't have enough to do today, I rated and ranked them according to my

personal scoring rubric:

✅ Effective

✅ Low-effort

✅ Widely applicable

✅ Incorporates game mechanics

😠 Reduces immersion

😠 Requires doublethink

😠 Culture of play I dislike

😠 GM has to remember something

 

From best to worst, then:

👍 Players who know about X are required to put character points into character knowledge/skill relating to X.

Simple, effective, works with many but not all game engines. Aligns the character knowledge with the player knowledge neatly. Completely passive, but requires some honesty and introspection while setting up. Doesn't work with some kinds of meta-knowledge. Score: 5

👍 The GM uses mostly unique or procedurally generated new forms of X.

Unique monsters, custom-made scenarios, etc. This works well in most situations but is a lot of extra effort. Doesn't work with some kinds of meta-knowledge. Score: 4.5

👍 Any player knowledge of X is rumour, and rumours about X don't match the truth completely.

Very effective and fairly easy for grounded stuff like monsters and setting lore. Much more difficult (possible, but probably not worth doing) for other kinds of meta-knowledge. Risk of it feeling like bait-and-switch. GM has to stay on their toes. Score: 4

👍 Accept that X is well-known within the world.

Very easy, but only narrowly applicable (doesn't work with most kinds of meta-knowledge). Score: 3.5

🤏 Set things up so that knowledge of X has less impact on player decision-making. 

Difficult to do even in the best cases, but can pay off. For example, you can play with time and scene order so that players knowing what's happening with each others' characters at remote locations has less impact on play. Onerous for the GM and there are ways it can all go wrong, but impressive if it does work. Score: 3

🤏 The GM uses lots of deliberate misdirects about X, with in-world justifications.

A partial solution and one that eventually gets tiresome in practise. Technically works on a surprisingly broad set of meta-game knowledge, but doing that would take a ton of work and creativity on the GM's part. Score: 2.5

🤏 Treat the whole thing as not an issue.

I think this is pretty common, especially for sloppier/lower-stakes/beer-and-pretzels play. Players end up using doublethink or feeling vaguely guilty. As low-effort as it gets, but not great pay-off in terms of an actual solution. Score: 2

🤏 Shift the focus of gameplay into identifying that something is X.

Difficult to do, and only works on a narrow set of gameplay content; doesn't help with most meta-game knowledge. Generally requires the GM to be comfortable tinkering with the fundamentals of how the game works. Can be effective within its wheelhouse, but it's high-risk, low-reward. And what happens when players get player skill at identification and then start over at level 1? Score: 1.5

🤏 Players pretend that their characters don't know about X, but play as if they do.

Doublethink all the way. Thoroughly immersion-breaking. Leads to a narrative that seems plausible from the outside, but not from within, even done right. Is it worth it? I know some tables default to this all the time, but I'd rather keep it to just to the most necessary circumstances. Score: 1

👎 GM uses deliberate misdirects about X for no good in-world reason, so players learn they can't rely on any knowledge they have.

Yuck. Takes a lot of effort for pretty much no upside and a lot of downside. Don't do this. Score: 0.5

👎 Players have to commit to their characters not knowing about X, and therefore make deliberately bad decisions. Optional extra: Players get unrelated, perhaps even out-of-game, penalties for (seeming to) act on player knowledge of X.

The worst of all worlds. I've never seen this but I bet it happens. Score: 0

Putting it together

I recommend combining multiple 👍 solutions for best effects. I know that the 🤏 solutions work for some people/games/styles. Steer clear of 👎 solutions.

Did I miss any?