Housekeeping

This past spring I pruned a couple thousand dead or outdated bookmarks from my BattleTech folder. More to go; not yet halfway.  Not to worry! Still working on 3025 production numbers. Light 'Mechs are solved, heavy and assault are trickier. More on that in a week or two.

[Edit, Aug 1: checking my other folders for webrot and it looks like some haven't been cleaned in over a decade. Did you know Real Ultimate Power is still up?! /Edit]

My natural pace is to blog about three times per month. I'd rather post twice a week - BattleTech on Sundays and fantasy RPGs on Thursdays - but every time I try, I end up posting less. Que sera sera.

Would like to rebuild my "archive" widget so it shows more posts at a time. Should probably also shuffle my "labels" a bit, I'm sure some of them are redundant. Today is just housekeeping though - chopping links I don't use from the sidebars (and stashing them below the cut so I can find them again if I need to).

CUT

I wanted to write today

Them: "We've been invited to dinner. Want to go? It's about an hour's drive."
Me: "Uh, sure."
Them: "Okay, we'll go as soon as I've showered."
Me: "...but it's not even 1pm yet."
Them: "Three o'clock is a completely sensible time to eat dinner."
Me: "I don't think that adds up, and I don't think that's what the invitation is."
...later...
Me: "Is this sunscreen? Why are we putting on sunscreen?"
...seven hours of wandering shop to shop in a tourist trap later...
Them: "Isn't this fun? Aren't all of these things SO NEAT?"
Me, internally: "I don't care about any of these things and you know I don't enjoy this."
Me, externally: "The river is nice, and the crust on that meat pie was excellent."
Them: "Glad you came! It's fun to hang out on vacation."
Me: "...we've visited a bunch this month, the last no more than a week ago."
Them: "Yes, but this time I'm on vacation! I'm not thinking about work or whatever responsible things I should be doing with my day."
Me: thinks about responsible things I had planned to do with my day
Me: twitches

Adventurers in Charge of a Town

Finishing my "Skull of God" series with a bunch of NPCs so I can pretend it's a coherent setting I could run out of the box.

Imagine a town like the one our old Pathfinder mercs settled in: the temple to the god of commerce had been infiltrated and replaced by clerics of the god of pestilence, the local aristocrats all became undead and trapped in their manor, and the two nearest seaside villages have been demolished by sea people and slavers and plague.

The most influential of the survivors act as an informal city council. They meet once a week in the crumbling temple, whose stony feet hold everything of value left in the town and can only be reached through unassuming alleys and garden paths, as though the neighborhood has turned its back and forgotten it; its seclusion isn't obvious. A strange weather vane - a laser rifle hammered flat - tops its steeple.

The Council