Jtskywalker

Debian on a base model 2013 MacBook air checking in. Runs better than it ever did on Mac OS. Battery life is still fine. I did have to use proprietary drivers for some things (wifi and webcam) but other than that it was pretty much plug and play.

Lots of replacement parts are on ebay for cheap, and there are a lot of repair tutorials on YouTube (and piped.video) I replaced keyboard and trackpad cheaply, and some of the internal cables.

As far as drawbacks, if you have to replace the storage or or logic board, those are expensive. I have a sound issue which I haven't been able to fix and from searching around it looks like a logic board would be required. Bluetooth headphones work fine though so I'm just dealing with it.

I love the Genesys system because it's designed specifically to homebrew any genre of setting you want (including custom magic systems), along with multiple official settings.

It is so easy to take NPCs, items, etc, from fantasy to sci-fi to current day, to post apocalyptic, etc. Since the rules and stats are intentionally setting agnostic.

And I absolutely love the narrative dice system.

If OP likes plating a variety of settings it's worth checking out. Or one of the billion other games out there

Inspiring

Oh sweet! I haven't heard of that one. I'll check it out

Draw is great, and I've been able to use it for most of what I used Acrobat for before, but it has issues with converting certain documents, especially when they have special fonts. Also there's the issue of not being able to just fill out some fields and then share it back as a PDF

I'm not opposed to paying for software, especially if it's good. I'll try that out and see how it is. Thanks!

Are you talking about the adapters that let you run network through your electrical circuits? Because that's different from PoE. PoE is running power through the network cables so you get power and network with one plug, so kind of the opposite of that.

I can confirm that using electrical infrastructure for network is really not great.

It's like credit card churning but for brain chemicals

Finish your current project

"What project?" I say, as I start a third project after getting bored with the second project and completely forgetting that the first project ever existed.

I do, I try to do as much creation as I can to exercise those skills, but having some prepared adventures to steal things from makes it a lot easier. Like going to the gym with a professionally made program before learning to write your own programming. And I don't want stuff so pre-prepared that I don't ever learn to make my own stuff - I'm not so much just running the pre-made stuff as I am dissecting it, trying to understand it, and taking what I like to plug into my game.

When I have prompt or encounter ideas I write them down in a notebook and flesh them out later, but a lot of the time when I sit down to prep it's hard to think of things out of thin air. I'm getting a lot better at creating new things and integrating things the more we play.

So yeah, any resources on how to better design stuff is very welcome too. I have watched a lot of the Matthew Colville running the game videos that have helped a lot (especially the "Prep Can Be Literally Easy and Actually Fun" video)

Something like Storycaster looks interesting. I have heard of some other story prompt / plot cards (Fabula and Narata) and I might look into those too... That kind of thing is exactly what I'm looking for. Something that can help me generate ideas to flesh out into encounters or side quests that I can keep in my GM notes and stick in different locations so when the players decide to go into the mountains instead of the forests I have a general idea of what might be there...

That is fantastic. That don't prep plots makes a lot of sense and is very helpful. I will bookmark these.

Thank you!

This is awesome and I will definitely save this for reference as there are a few 2d6 systems I want to try out, but Hero Kids is even more basic than a 2d6 system, at least as far as I understand them.

Your stat pools are basically just the number of d6 you get to roll, and you just take the higher number. Every successful hit deals 1 damage (health pools are between 1-4, 1 being like a weak minion or a spider egg or something, 4 being a leveled up hero or a boss). So higher stat just means you are basically rolling with more advantage, more chances to get a higher number, but you always only use the highest dice.

So a hero with 3 melee attack would roll 3 d6 and take the highest number, and that is their attack roll. If they are attacking a creature with 1 defense, the GM would roll 1 d6 - if the attackers highest dice is equal to or higher than the defenders dice, the attack hits and the target takes 1 damage. Otherwise nothing happens.

I think the best way to convert something like 5e stat blocks into this would be to just say - is this monster supposed to be easy, medium, or hard - and then just copy a stat block from a hero kids monster that is similar to what you want. There is a pretty good monster compendium for hero kids so for a lot of creatures I can just use those directly.

I'm less concerned about copying stat blocks directly than I am about just having good narrative / story content, like NPCs and locations. Having never read any other RPG content besides Hero Kids (and perusing a D&D Players handbook a bit) I don't know how much of the adventures are story content that works everywhere vs just "This place has monsters with these stat blocks" that is D&D specific or requires conversion.

I didn't realize that DnD Beyond had free adventures, so I will definitely check that out, and that will probably give me the information I need on whether or not I'd like to spend money on other 5e adventures.