Art Work - Planets So, a lot of stuff happening here in the land of Sarah Darkmagic. First, I recently joined a local artists' group and we had our first show at a local cafe. For those who may not have seen my other social media stuff, I've been working with various media for several years now. It's been my main source of creative outlet after some of the events in the mid 2010s. At the opening reception, I sold my first piece! As I was chatting with the buyer, it turns out he is a gamer too and said my piece reminded him of Traveller. I have a website with examples of my artwork at TracyHurl ..read more

First, I am not a lawyer. I’ve checked a few things with lawyers, I learned how to read court rulings in college, and this is an area I’m interested in. That said, nothing I write here should be construed as legal advice. If you take away anything, I suggest getting advice from a lawyer in your area to understand how things are done where you live. Second, the allegations are quite difficult stuff involving descriptions of events that could fall into potential sexual assault territory and/or could at the very least be triggering. For the most part, I’m not going to include the statements thems ..read more

First, I am not a lawyer. I’ve checked a few things with lawyers, I learned how to read court rulings in college, and this is an area I’m interested in. That said, nothing I write here should be construed as legal advice. If you take away anything, I suggest getting advice from a lawyer in your area to understand how things are done where you live. Second, the allegations are quite difficult stuff involving descriptions of events that could fall into potential sexual assault territory and/or could at the very least be triggering. For the most part, I’m not going to include the statements thems ..read more

My day job is in tech. I spent about 10 years working as a full-stack engineer at start ups which really meant I did a bit of everything. Javascript, CSS, backend programming and configuration, etc. For the past 10 years or so, I’ve worked more on the DevOps, cloud engineer, and now security side of things. An issue I see is that while things are less complex in many ways than they used to be, they are still complex and some spaces have gotten even more so. For cloud platforms like AWS and GCP, the more you make things simple for end users by offering higher level services, the more important ..read more

Cleaning has never been my strong point and after I was diagnosed with ADHD, my issues with it made a lot more sense. A lot of the things folks tell you to do, like creating routines, magically remembering to do things, etc, are just…a lot harder if not nigh impossible. And what works for one person (even someone with ADHD) might not work well for another. We have a cleaner who comes in every other week but stuff was easily getting out of hand between visits from our cleaning fairy. All of this has been a hurdle to getting back to gaming. I decided to do something about it. So…it’s only be two ..read more

Now that we’ve taken a look at the changes to the fantasy races (Part 1, Part 2), let’s look at the backgrounds. Clearly this is one of the biggest areas of change since the start of 5e. There are a number of facets to look at these changes and I’m likely going to miss a few of them. One D&D Context First, let’s look at what a background looks like from the start of 5e. I will leave out the flavor text You have spent your life in the service of a temple to a specific god or pantheon of gods. You act as an intermediary between the realm of the holy and the mortal world, performing sacred r ..read more

So, let’s continue checking out what’s in the Arcana Unearthed regarding fantasy races. In Part 1, we looked at the more traditional classes of Dwarf, Elf, Halfling, and Human. This time we’ll take a look at Dragonborn, Gnome, Orc, and Tiefling as well as the brand new race of Ardling. One D&D Dragonborn Players Handbook Unearthed Arcana Ability Score Increase. Your Strength score increases by 2, and your Charisma score increases by 1. — Age. Young dragonborn grow quickly. They walk hours after hatching, attain the size and development of a 10-year-old human child by the ag ..read more

I’ve been seeing a lot about the new Unearthed Arcana and the associated announcement of One D&D and want to explore what changes are being made. One D&D My understanding of what they are trying to do with the fantasy races is make sure that any crunch associated with each race is something that a member of that race would have even if they were raised by a different race and/or outside of the culture typically associated with that fantasy race. This lets them do a few things: Under the theme of One D&D, a halfling in Forgotten Realms shares the overwhelming majority if not all of ..read more

I'll be honest, trying to write, especially here, over the past few years has been a challenge. A LOT has happened to me and, well, everyone, over the past 6 years. Thinking about this site and who I was gives me imposter syndrome something fierce. But I really miss writing and sharing myself, so let's give it a shot. LEGO Owl First, my tech career sort of took a rapid incline. I've made it all the way to Sr Principal Engineer at this point and over the 6 years, I've sat in operations, development, and now security. My job takes a significant portion of my time and I haven't had as much to upd ..read more

Right around when the pandemic started, I had decided to make some significant changes to my life in an attempt to tackle my type 2 diabetes and sleep apnea. As I was talking about the changes I was making, Jeff thought it might make for an interesting podcast and we started Fit for D&D. I had just changed my work schedule, going in slightly earlier so that I could have time to use the walking treadmill desk first thing and getting home in time to cook a meal that concentrated on vegetables and proteins. It also allowed me to get up early and hit the gym in the apartment complex we had rec ..read more