I shamelessly stole this from Slate Star Codex’s recent link dump, but this has cooler applications for dungeons and locations in hex crawls than just being an interesting tidbit to look at over there.
Spooky wraith variants. I’m glad I am in that G+ community or would never have found this excellent series on 5e monster variants.
Recently started a crafting channel and his wizard tower is fantastic. I’m currently working my way through his current videos, so go over there and enjoy!
Cost, Aggression, and Access to Land
This is an interesting essay on mutualism that I agree with mostly, I think it comes down to semantics of what is considered ‘used’. I disagree about people purchasing land not being considered use especially considering the fact that he talks about opportunity costs. Purchasing land to hold on to it for later is all about taking on risk and losing out on opportunity costs for the hope of a better payout to a presumably more efficient user in the future. Another point I’d like to make to steel-man anarcho-capitalism is that we generally don’t hold the literal view that land can be owned in perpetuity. Even the strictest capitalist would concede that land will become abandoned after a period of inaction on the part of the landowner (and non-maintenance) and that the time limit will depend on the community. Communities with shorter times will be seen as riskier or less stable, thus more costly for people to do business with. Ideally, this would allow a spectrum of different approaches rather than strict binaries of property rights vs. personal property rights.
I also take issue with the idea that god made nature and thus no human deserves to own it because they didn’t create it. Nature is worthless. Fish in a lake are useless until fished out. Just because i didn’t make that fish, doesn’t mean that everyone has an equal claim to the one sitting in a bucket on my boat.
Even if I grant the idea that all unearned property/value is owed equally to all humans, it does not follow that this applies to a land tax/rent to be distributed equally to everyone. Land and resources are valueless. They mean nothing until someone transforms them into useful things, even if that act is as simple as picking fruit and putting it in a basket. It is impossible to determine the price and value of the base production of land or resources because they only have value once labor has already been mixed in. The closest you could ever get would be to look at the pricing of things that took approximately similar labor and other factors, then look at the difference in price. Since price is subjective though, it’s almost impossible to distill out single factors in most goods let alone calculating price-differentials of vastly different goods across many geographic locations based purely on the productive value of the land or natural resource. Maybe you say tilling land here gets you $2 of wheat but the same hourly/caloric application with the same tools gets you $1 of wheat, but things aren’t so simple once you get outside of a single producer. The price calculation problem applies to trying to determine what the value of land is without price, since you can’t base the rent cost on price as that is subjective and relies on the after the fact price that has already mixed in the person’s labor. Unless you want to go as far as declaring subjective price invalid, but that opens up a whole other can of worms. If a community wants to set rents on land according to their subjective opinions, as long as it’s done voluntarily by agreement I see no reason to oppose it except to say that I believe it inefficient and would not participate all else equal.
Just One Cookbook Bento Giveaway Contest
KAWAII BENTO DA NE. Seeing bentos (and entering that contest to win some bento supplies because why not) got me thinking about what bentos would look like in the D&D ‘verse.
You found a Monster Bento!
| [d4] in a… | [d6] | [d8] | [d10] over a bed of… | [d12] with… | [d20] sculpted with other edibles into the shape of … | |
| 1 | cloth sack containing… | messily prepared… | pickled nightmare roots | steamed black rice | tortured beef slices | a row of tiny ducks. |
| 2 | elaborate mahogany box with… | neatly organized… | demon tongue shavings | baked magical beans | Hasted rabbit pate | a bird’s nest, complete with hungry chicks. |
| 3 | bamboo slats functionally holding… | lovingly stored… | coagulated slime drippings | fried rot grubs | dire goose foie gras | a human sacrifice. |
| 4 | gold-leafed chest guarding… | half chewed and spit out… | stardust cakes | spectral zucchini noodles | dragon heart | chibi chimeras. |
| 5 | — | magically warded… | knotted and sugared rat tails | fresh twilight greens | gorgon intestines | a magical dragon face that puffs fire when the bento is opened. |
| 6 | — | bloody… | salted skin rolls | were-sturgeon eggs | distilled magical essence crystals | a complete chapel down to the smallest detail. |
| 7 | — | — | pixie wings | mummy dust hardtack crackers | martyr backwash marinated shellfish | Modrons marching. |
| 8 | — | — | glistening marrow spears | purified blinkdog cheese curds | fried antlion | hungry owlbears. |
| 9 | — | — | — | hallowed lavender sprouts | salted kraken tentacle shavings | a tiny knight fighting a tiny dragon. |
| 10 | — | — | — | Modron nutrient paste | the collected last gasps of the dying | the living portrait of an unknown creature. |
| 11 | — | — | — | — | poached roc egg | a tiny village. |
| 12 | — | — | — | — | unicorn sausage | children that giggle and laugh. |
| 13 | — | — | — | — | — | a spell scroll, with a usable spell that is cast once eaten. |
| 14 | — | — | — | — | — | whoever is holding the bento. |
| 15 | — | — | — | — | — | a large mouth that can speak and is morose about the whole situation. |
| 16 | — | — | — | — | — | a tiny, playable game. |
| 17 | — | — | — | — | — | a ghost that haunts the eater until they make two new, haunted bentos. |
| 18 | — | — | — | — | — | incomprehensible eldritch shapes that twist and move out of the corner of your eye. |
| 19 | — | — | — | — | — | a demonic contract whose terms take effect once eaten. |
| 20 | — | — | — | — | — | an elderly face. It sees into your soul and silently judges you. |
AnarchyDice 