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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • Here’s my thoughts from when I ran GoSM:

    Ghosts isn’t really a campaign. It’s a really un-connected series of individual mini-dungeon crawls. In particular, if you were hoping for a focus to be on the three factions within Saltmarsh itself, I will warn you that almost none of the modules have anything to do with that. The leadership divisions in Saltmarsh are just kind of there to help DMs build on their own homebrew stuff. Despite much being made of the Sea Princes, they’re more or less unmentioned in the rest of the campaign, as are the other two factions.

    Notably, the modules’ antagonists break down into two major categories:

    • Underwater creatures (Sahuagin in ‘The Final Enemy’, S’gothgah the Aboleth in ‘The Styes’, and a giant octopus that’s more of an environmental hazard in ‘Salvage Operation’).
    • Undead (Isle of the Abbey, Tammeraut’s Fate).
    • There’s also some unconnected pirates in Danger at Dunwater and a random priest of Lolth in Salvage Operation. The mini-encounters (Cove Reef, Wreck of the Marshal, Warthalkeel) are kind of just there. You might notice there’s no real theme here. Like I said, this is very open to homebrewing.

    In my case, I decided I liked undead as a final antagonist better than an Aboleth. The entire thing became a plot by Orcus - my ultimate BBEG - to drown and slaughter everything in the Saltmarsh region. Everyone else - Syrgaul Tammeraut, the Aboleth S’gothgah, the Sahuagin - were either intentionally or unintentionally working towards Orcus’ goals, some being duped into doing so. This required some reskinning - the generic evil cult in ‘Isle of the Abbey’ and the Lolth priest in ‘Salvage Operation’ became Orcus worshippers.

    In your case, if you want to focus on the three factions of Saltmarsh, I think you could go two ways:

    • Have reach of the modules be a task or threat created by each faction. For instance, maybe the Loyalists send you on the Salvage Operation, hoping to get some dirt on Anders Solmor’s mysterious missing parents. Maybe the Sea Princes are stirring up the Sahuagin to attack Saltmarsh to break the King’s control, etc.
    • Have one BBEG running all three factions. In this case, again, I would encourage you to look to either S’gothgah the Aboleth, or whoever Syrgaul Tammeraut’s magical patron is. Perhaps they are simply playing all three groups against each other to leave Saltmarsh depleted and ruined, at which point they will move in.

    In either case, the political side of Saltmarsh is relatively undeveloped, giving you lots of room to work in, but also lots of work to do if that’s what you want.




  • I’m frankly rather concerned about the idea of crowdsourcing or voting on “reliability”, because - let’s be honest here - Lemmy’s population can have highly skewed perspectives on what constitutes “accurate”, “unbiased”, or “reliable” reporting of events. I’m concerned that opening this to influence by users’ preconceived notions would result in a reinforced echo chamber, where only sources which already agree with their perspectives are listed as “accurate”. It’d effectively turning this into a bias bot rather than a bias fact checking bot.

    Aggregating from a number of rigorous, widely-accepted, and outside sources would seem to be a more suitable solution, although I can’t comment on how much programming it would take to produce an aggregate result. Perhaps just briefly listing results from a number of fact checkers?



    • Economic points are limited to plans gestures about taxes. Nothing about tackling corporate-induced inflation / shrinkflation.

    • Nothing about supporting workers’ rights and aiding labor organizations.

    • Nothing about building a stronger regulatory framework and tackling loophole use by corporations and ultrawealthy.

    • Nothing here on continuing to support US allies and build international partnerships.

    I recognize none of these are exactly keystone domestic culture war issues, and also all more or less reflect where she stood on Biden’s major pushes. But I’m still disappointed these all go unmentioned.





  • Like the other comment says, concrete is rocks of various sizes (called “aggregate”) mixed with a cement and other additives to change its particular properties.

    The cement is the really important point, because once water is added to the cement, it undergoes a chemical reaction which hardens it. Saying cement “dries” isn’t quite correct - yes, it stops being wet, but some of the water actually ends up incorporated into the molecules of the final cement. This is also why cement is really hard to recycle - you have to undo that chemical reaction, as opposed to asphalt which stays the same material.

    Fun fact: When concrete is mixed at a big plant, it begins curing immediately. Concrete being carried in those big mixer trucks needs to be delivered before it cures in the truck!



  • Specifically talking about asphalt vs. concrete:

    • Asphalt is relatively cheap vs. concrete. This is partly because asphalt is a whole lot easier to recycle than concrete, which is almost un-recyclable, but also because asphalt is a relatively “simple” material - it’s mostly petroleum byproducts and gravel.

    • Concrete doesn’t grip very well, compared to the relatively textured surface of asphalt. Especially when wet! This is why you often see concrete formed with “ridges” or “bumps” cast into it. However…

    • This also makes concrete noisier and bumpier to drive over, making drivers less happy. It’s why it’s often used for short, low-speed uses like driveways, parking lots, or side streets.

    Just about the only thing concrete has going for it is it’s endurance, which it definitely wins handily.

    Every few years another engineered road solution is conceived - I’ve seen variations that would use glass which could be ‘re-fused’, concepts for recycling plastic waste, and many more. Most of these run into the issue that they’re either less ‘grippy’, or that they simply cost more even accounting for the longer lifespan.