ysabetwordsmith: A blue sheep holding a quill dreams of Dreamwidth (Dreamsheep)
ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-12-22 02:10 am
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Monday Update 12-22-25

These are some posts from the later part of last week in case you missed them:
Poem: "The Unicorn Door"
Poem: "The Coracle in the Forest"
Poem: "The Unknown Depths of Our Lives"
Climate Change
Birdfeeding
Climate Change
Today's Adventures
Poem: "Creativity, Ingenuity, Compassion, and Perseverance"
Space Exploration
Birdfeeding
Philosophical Questions: Economy
Poem: "The Community Couch"
Poetry Fishbowl Report for December 2, 2025
Poem: "Mamalokshen"
Unsold Poems for the December 2, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl
Crafts
Safety
Wildlife
Birdfeeding
Follow Friday 12-19-25: Languages and Linguistics
Dinosaurs
Moment of Silence: Gil Gerard
Birdfeeding
History
Birdfeeding
Today's Adventures
Three for the Memories Coming Back Next Month!
Early Humans
Hard Things

Food has 47 comments. Trauma has 46 comments. Affordable Housing has 78 comments. Robotics has 119 comments.


The 2025 Holiday Poetry Sale has closed, with a massive amount of material to post. It will take me a long time to get it all online, so please keep an eye on the sale page.


Winterfaire 2025 is still open!.List a Booth for anything you sell that would make good holiday gifts, or comment with what you're shopping for to crowdsource ideas. There are links to two similar shopping events online. if you know others, please pass the word.


"An Inkling of Things to Come" belongs to Polychrome: Shiv. It needs $72 to be complete. Shiv and his classmates discuss magical weather, magical geography, natural resources, plants and animals, history, and other aspects of worldbuilding.


The weather has been cold and snowy here. Seen at the birdfeeders this week: a large mixed flock of sparrows and house finches, a pair of cardinals, and two mourning doves.
Daily Illuminator ([syndicated profile] daily_illuminator_feed) wrote2025-12-22 06:47 am

December 22, 2025: Quick And Easy Idea: Locks

For tabletop gamers in a mystery-type campaign, here's a simple and probably cheap way to add some tactile and visual pizzazz to your game: common locks.

If you've lived as long as I have, you've quite possibly acquired a drawer of various locking-type mechanisms over the years . . . hopefully with the appropriate keys or combinations. If so, you can hand out locks to represent in the physical world actual "locked" elements of the game. For example:
  • "The evil henchman's office has a door that would be impossible to blast open. It seems to need an elaborate passcode system." (The GM hands the players a lock secured around a piece of cardboard that says "Henchman's Office.")
  • "The computer system requires a password to enter. If you understand the security system correctly, you're pretty sure you only get two tries before it locks up the system entirely." (The GM hands over a closed lock labeled "Computer System.")
Later in the game, the players can acquire, say, a mysterious key or a lock combination. You know what that means . . . right?

There are a few "tricks" to making this work (in my mind). First, in most campaigns, the lock should not be a representation of the lock itself, because most household locks are ludicrously trivial to overcome – anyone who's spent time perusing Facebook has probably seen videos along the lines of "I'm going to open this lock using a piece of cheese and a toy dinosaur . . ." If you give the players (or the heroes) the opportunity to just brute-force their way into those locks, they probably will. Honestly, those type of barriers are best represented abstractly: "Make your Burglar! roll . . ."

Rather, this technique is best suited for gaming situations where there's no good way for the adventurers to get through the locking mechanism without finding an actual key or combination (or whatever the real-world key or combination represents in game).

It's also worth noting that just because the players have access to a lock at the gaming table (to serve as a tantalizing reminder), the heroes may not have access to the same lock. (If you use a corkboard or other method to represent locations, the physical locks might be placed on those areas as a reminder.) This can be especially tense if the players end up with, say, six mystery locks, all in different locations, and only one unlabeled key . . . Where do they go next?

As an alternative idea, for those serving bagels at the gaming table, you might consider lox.

Steven Marsh

Warehouse 23 News: The City Never Sleeps Because Of All The Action

There are a million stories in the city, and they're all exciting! GURPS Action 9: The City shows how you can add GURPS City Stats to your GURPS Action campaigns. It also features six sample cities to use with your own action-packed adventures. Download it today from Warehouse 23!
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-12-22 12:27 am

Poem: "The Unicorn Door"

This poem was written outside the regular prompt calls. It was inspired by the "Twilight" square in my 11-1-25 card for the Fairy Tales and Fantasy Stories Bingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by a pool with [personal profile] fuzzyred. It belongs to the series Coracle Shores and follows "The Coracle in the Forest."

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APOD ([syndicated profile] apod_feed) wrote2025-12-22 06:06 am

(no subject)

Can you tell that today is a solstice by the tilt of the Earth? Can you tell that today is a solstice by the tilt of the Earth?


ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-12-21 11:24 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-12-21 11:13 pm

Poem: "The Coracle in the Forest"

This poem came out of the November 4, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from [personal profile] helgatwb. It also fills the "Journey" square in my 11-1-25 card for the Fairy Tales and Fantasy Stories Bingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by a pool with [personal profile] fuzzyred. It begins the new series Coracle Shores. Its sequel is "The Unicorn Door."

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kelkyag ([personal profile] kelkyag) wrote in [community profile] girlgenius_lair2025-12-22 12:19 am
El Goonish Shive ([syndicated profile] egs_comic_feed) wrote2025-12-22 12:00 am

El Goonish Shive - falsekings-084


New comic!

Today's News:

- KITTY! (from 2003)

- Staying with the Dunkels

I felt Jeremy absolutely had to be on-panel and properly acknowledged for his good kitty heroism before the end of part 4.

Unfortunately for Jeremy, the best way I could think to do that was, well, this.

One more page for part 4 before Christmas break, and I'm sure there won't be a single ominous thing it. I mean, an ominous page? On Christmas Eve? The very idea!

--

- Saturday EGSNP

ysabetwordsmith: (muse)
ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-12-21 10:23 pm

Happy Yule

We did our Yule ritual tonight. :D


Yule banner

ysabetwordsmith: A paint roller creates an American flag, with the text Arts and Crafts America. (Arts and Crafts America)
ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-12-21 10:15 pm
ysabetwordsmith: A paint roller creates an American flag, with the text Arts and Crafts America. (Arts and Crafts America)
ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-12-21 08:47 pm
dialecticdreamer: My work (Default)
dialecticdreamer ([personal profile] dialecticdreamer) wrote2025-12-21 10:54 pm

Exceptional Return (part 1 of 1, complete)

Exceptional Return
By Dialecticdreamer/Sarah Williams
Part 1 of 1, complete
Word count (story only): 1568
[21 December 2016]


:: An hour after Summer left the diner, the teleporter returned. She couldn’t have predicted that, so everything that followed was utterly flabbergasting, in the best of ways. Part of the Polychrome Heroics universe, and written for the December of 2025 Giftmas event. This is a gift for the solstice, on the solstice. This is for all those readers who hate getting lumped in with “Well it’s almost Christmas anyway.” ::




Summer Longacre was still trying to wring the water out of her hair after her fifteen-minute shower, when the distinctive z-z-z-zziiip echoed through the front door. She peered through the peephole at the broad concrete landing where snow and ice clung to the black enameled railing made of common square stock. The winter breeze pushed through the area so fiercely that no one was allowed to leave outdoor gear next to the entryway.

She looked down, checking her long teal caftan and nodded. Someone rapped on the door just as her fingers brushed the knob, making her jump back. “Right here,” she called through the door. Her breath whistled in the back of her throat.
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Girls With Slingshots ([syndicated profile] gws_feed) wrote2025-12-21 10:00 pm

Girls With Slingshots - GWS Hair of the Dog #800


New comic!

Today's News:

It's not that Maureen and Jameson didn't want to sleep in a hotel bed, it's just that they didn't want to have to bring ALL their books with them to choose from. This was easier and cheaper.

Here's the original post, and the chaser post!

ysabetwordsmith: A paint roller creates an American flag, with the text Arts and Crafts America. (Arts and Crafts America)
ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-12-21 08:39 pm
ysabetwordsmith: A paint roller creates an American flag, with the text Arts and Crafts America. (Arts and Crafts America)
ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-12-21 08:09 pm

Poem: "The Unknown Depths of Our Lives"

This poem came out of the January 7, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from [personal profile] readera. It also fills the "After the Fog" square in my 1-1-25 card for the Public Domain Day Bingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by a pool with [personal profile] fuzzyred. It belongs to the series Arts and Crafts America.

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conuly: (Default)
conuly ([personal profile] conuly) wrote2025-12-21 05:51 pm

Finally got around to watching Kpop Demon Hunters with E

The music is great, but the plot + worldbuilding raises some issues that they don't bother to even attempt to address properly.

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