Recent content in Michael J Peters on petersmj
AD&D 1e psionics are a mixed bag, and that’s putting it generously. At minimum, the scattered nature of the psionics rules in the PHB and DMG makes it difficult for an aspiring 1e DM to use them. There exist some great, comprehensive resources written by more dedicated people than me (see Anthony Huso’s post here and someone else’s follow-up post to it here ). My goal isn’t…
Psionic blast is the only psionic ability available to a psionists for use against non-psionic creatures. Each use of psionic blast costs 20 points and has one of the effects on the psionic blast table. Range is 20’/40’/60’ cone (5’ base, 60’ length, 20’ terminus). The psionist must have at least 100 PS available to use psionic blast . Saving Throw vs. Psionics…
This is the first in what I assume will be the occasional meta-post on blogging and general content creation. As each week rolls around, I sit down and wonder what to write about for the Monday blog post, and as I do so many topics come to mind: D&D, academia, philosophy, technology, personal struggles, and so on. For every thought I have I often have a counter-thought or perspective that enters…
This is something of a follow-up to this post. The first post was on the first thing I ever created and made public. I felt then that I had something to prove to myself, that I could make something that people could actually use, love, and hate. I don’t think anyone but me has ever read and used it, but it’s the idea that counts. Since then, I can feel those muscles strengthening. I…
I write an essay every week or so on a topic of interest with the intent of publishing them here. A friend of mine is kind enough to always proofread them, we have a great conversation about each one… and then I never end up publishing here. The reason for that is a whole different topic. I mention this because I’m working on another one of those essays, this time about AI 1 . AI essays are…
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that…
You can reach the 80-20 rule of internet privacy on your computer in under five minutes by following this guide, starting now. (See after for equivalent phone guide.) On your computer, download Firefox browser here: link Go to Settings > Search, set your default search engine to DuckDuckGo. In Additional search engines, remove all other search engines but DuckDuckGo. Firefox has built in settings…
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I’ve learned a lot since starting graduate school. I thought it might be helpful to post some of the lessons I’ve learned throughout the course of my research so far. Many of these takeaways are also applicable outside of research. Some may seem obvious and you’ve heard them before, but I’ve found there is a colossal difference between hearing something and agreeing with it…
This adventure is designed for five to eight characters of levels 3-6. Background The Glittering Cave was once a mine in very old days, broken through in part by fire-setting. Historically, it’s thought that copper may have first been identified as a byproduct of extracting and processing malachite and azurite. In this sense, it was a foundational cave for copper mining and held spiritual…
Last week I published The Sanctuary of the Servant . This week I bring to you another module of mine: The Glittering Cave . When I read modules, I tend to skip the pages of introductions. I just want the sauce, you know? So while the module itself is light on background details, I thought I would give a little background here for those interested. After saving the life of a friend to a borderlands…
Player characters should be at least third level before attempting this dungeon. Intro The quest is given by a mysterious, cloaked figure that quickly hands them the letter as soon as they get into town. Adventurers, Due East 3 days, then 1 day North. Great Treasure or terrible Doom awaits. Signed, P Original Map These are the original maps used for Sanctuary of the Servant. You can download these…
Years ago when I had no idea how to make fun campaigns and any success was merely stumbled upon, the players and I were disgruntled with the current state of the game. We had a good first couple, but something was off after about ten sessions. Roundtable discussion after another followed, and eventually I threw up my hands, plopped them somewhere else in the world, and handed them an adventure…
One of those hard days came again. Tough meeting. Questioning what I’m doing. Doubting my abilities. Feeling lost. The spiral begins. Everyone has been here before. I’m used to these moments, and so I returned to my tried-and-true method: take a day. No matter how much you think you can’t, take the day. You get twenty-four hours to feel sorry for yourself and wallow in self-pity.…
Organizing and indexing my notes has paid off time and time again throughout my research and personal projects. There are likely as many ways to organize your notes as there are notes, but I thought I’d share how I organize my notes anyway. Some friends have found use in this system. I will only include the bare necessities of what you need to operate this system, but note that I do have…
I am trying to understand my “relationship” with generative AI, as I’m sure a lot of people are. It’s not good at everything. Promises are being made that will never be realized, about how this will be some silver bullet—an every-tool. I believe that there will be great consequences when the music stops and reality comes crashing down. I believe that it is being used…
The Artist wants to create. They want to bring something new into existence and express themselves through their work. Often (I hesitate to say always) they wish to share this work with others. When they don’t, it is often out of a fear of exposing the most central parts of the self to scrutiny. The Artist wants people to have a reaction to their work, a great one if possible. They want to…
This is a response to Minas Karamanis’ excellent post on AI. You can find it here . I’ve been working on my physics analysis for about a year. Part of my PhD is looking at a particular particle (the eta meson) and trying to make a better measurement on the probability it decays in a particular way (into two muons), among other information about it. The process for doing a typical…
I’m back again with some more AD&D 1e resources. This time, I present to you a (by-the-book) equipment list derived from the values listed in both the PHB and DMG. You can find the spreadsheet here . Not everything has an encumbrance value given in 1e; unless I found it absolutely necessary to give an approximate value based on other entries, I left that entry blank. Let me know if you catch…
Not everyone wants my opinionated 1e revised rules , so I went ahead and made a by-the-book version of the AD&D 1e character sheet. You can find it here . It includes an automated and printer-friendly version. The pdf for the printer-friendly version can also be directly viewed and downloaded below. I haven’t updated this version in a while. It uses a slightly different (older) design of…
Someone else has probably already done this, but I was working on my research and have been working on some statistics that would be useful for my upcoming game. We need to convert B/X ability scores (generated with six 3d6 rolls) to ARM ability scores (six 4d6 rolls, drop lowest die for each). It was a good exercise in learning Probability Mass Functions (PMFs), Cumulative Distribution Functions…
This is starting at the middle of the story. I hope to make more posts about what exactly CODEX-beta is , my contributions to the project, and the takeaways from the project, but for now I just want to mark a milestone in the progression of CODEX-beta, and the greater CODEX-b project and collaboration as a whole: we have managed to successfully take our first data. Now… the data has…
I love the concept of wargaming. When I was a kid I used to think I’d go to West Point. Kids sure are crazy. Of all strange things to be interested in, military strategy has always been one of mine. I used to read military strategy books, military history, play Total War, Europa Universalis IV, and the like. So when I started to get deep into the TTRPG hobby, war games such as Chainmail…
Donate This stuff takes a lot of time to make, and most everything I put on this website is free. If you’ve found anything useful and would like to support what I do, you can use the link below to donate. Ko-fi link
Edit: Here ’s the link to the rules. When you’re going through a store or shopping for products online, you might feel like the items you see are somehow “official”. That’s how I feel, anyway. They have a level of polish, some nice coat of paint on it that makes it feel like a product in a way that might have you feel like anything you create can never measure up to…
You can read the associated blog post for this here , or just go straight to the sauce below. v1.1 Changed accent color to blue Updated Alignment definition v1.1.1 Dexterity 19 Major Test: 5:6 -> 7:8 Constitution 19 Major Test: 5:6 -> 7:8 v1.1.2 Minor syntax changes in Downtime Added “Research” as a downtime activity Added small note on Encumbrance for non-player characters Minor…
One of the things I learned from Anthony Huso’s wonderful blog is that in order to run a (long-standing) 1e campaign, you need really good resources. To that end, I put together a character sheet for my revised 1e rules, ARM , here (using Google Sheets) that is quite powerful. I’ve done everything I can to automate the complex bits that slow the game down. When it comes to preparing…
Reymar - Official Guide For Players of Our Advanced Campaign Foreword This campaign is a chronicle of a dying world. This story is not about your character. It is not about a band of destined heroes. This is a story about a world where empires fall, city-states battle for survival, and forgotten horrors stir once more, pressing against the edges of civilization. I will lay the groundwork for this…
Mass Combat — The War Machine The War Machine is a system of game rules designed to resolve large battles. It will work with any number of troops; it is recommended for any force with more than ten combatants. All you need is a pencil and paper, plus some knowledge of simple arithmetic. Assumptions All troops have a “level of quality” that can improve or drop with time and experience.…
Chapter 9: Mass Combat — The War Machine The War Machine is a system of game rules designed to resolve large battles in the D&D game. It will work with any number of troops; it is recommended for any force with more than ten combatants. All you need is a pencil and paper, plus some knowledge of simple arithmetic. Assumptions All troops have a “level of quality” that can improve or drop…
By casting this spell, the priest summons an aerial servant to do his or her bidding. The aerial servant will not fight, but will find and bring to the caster whatever creature or object the caster describes (provided the task is within the aerial servant’s capacity to complete). The aerial servant will return to its native plane of existence at the end of the spell’s duration, and…
With arcane words and gestures, the magic user may command small fires, up to a limit of 1½-ft in radius, to grow smaller or larger. Any fire within the spell’s size limitations may be made as small as a candle flame or turned into a bonfire up to 3-ft in diameter. An affected fire only consumes fuel appropriate to its new size, but will continue to radiate the same heat as a fire of its…
This spell transforms water or other non-magical liquids into a bubble of air in the area surrounding the caster. The bubble has the same density as water and will not support the magic user in the water; he or she will sink or float as normal, surrounded by the bubble’s atmosphere. The oxygen content of the air in the bubble does not run out until the spell expires.
This spell has the same effect as the magic user spell limited wish , but requires the creation of a phantasmal force prior to casting, which serves as a focus for the spell.
The animal friendship spell enchants a normal animal of neutral alignment to become the druid’s faithful friend and companion. The animal to be enchanted must not be completely unintelligent but cannot be of greater than animal intelligence. If the animal fails its saving throw (made at the beginning of the spell’s casting), it will remain docile for the remainder of the casting time.…
Reverse: Reduce Animal This spell causes up to 8 animals in the area of effect to grow to twice normal size, doubling their hit dice and the damage they inflict. The spell does not influence the animals’ attitude toward the druid, so it is advisable to ensure ahead of time that they are friendly. The reverse of the spell halves their size and damage inflicted.
A druid may use this spell to summon normal or giant animals of a specified type. The animals must be within the spell’s range to be summoned. Up to three summoning attempts may be made if animals of the specified type do not appear. Assuming that the summoned type of animal is within the spell’s range, up to 8 animals will appear, of no more than 4 hit dice each. These animals will…
This spell is similar to animal summoning I , but is more powerful. The spell will summon a maximum of six animals, each no greater than 8 HD, or up to 12 animals, each no greater than 4 HD.
This spell is similar to animal summoning I , but is more powerful. The spell will summon up to 4 animals of no more than 16 HD each, or 16 animals of no more than 4 HD each.
By casting this spell, the priest calls the bones or bodies of dead humans or humanoids to rise and become lesser undead (skeletons or zombies). The undead will obey their creator’s simple commands, following him or her, or perhaps guarding a location he or she designates against any creature (or not guarding it against certain creatures) that might enter. The spell’s effects are…
By means of this spell, the priest “brings to life” an inanimate object, allowing it to move and follow the priest’s simple commands. The GM will determine an object’s speed and combat specifics. An object’s mode of locomotion will determine its speed: rocking (a pedestal or bookshelf) at 10-ft/round, slithering (rope, carpet) at 10-30-ft per round, walking (statue, table) at…
This spell allows the druid to animate and command a stone object in the same way that a priest commands an animated object with the animate object spell. The object to be animated cannot be part of a larger stone structure.
This spell creates an immobile field of force that hedges out all animal matter. Note that undead and beings not of the material plane are not considered animal matter. The druid’s allies must, of course, be within the field at the time it is conjured forth, for they themselves are presumably of animal matter.
An anti-magic shell is a bubble of space around the magic user that completely prevents all magic from operating within its confines. Spell effects do not enter or function within the shell, providing the caster with complete protection from gaze attacks, hostile spells, and even the entrance of conjured or summoned creatures into his or her vicinity. The drawback of an anti-magic shell, of…
When the druid finishes casting this spell, an invisible barrier forms in an 80-ft radius around the caster and is immobile thereafter. No vegetable matter (including missiles formed of vegetable matter, such as wooden arrows) can penetrate the barrier.
This spell affects an area or an object with a magical aura that repels or attracts a certain, specified type of being. Either a race of creature or an alignment must be specified. Note that if the spell is cast upon an object rather than an area, the targeted type of creature will have a penalty of -2 on the saving throw. If the magic user creates an antipathy for the area or object, the targeted…