Site Update

Almanac is in the RPG Utilities area of the main site. It's Mythosa-specific (see earlier postings as to why this is), but we'll see what the future holds. I have started mentally planning my next PalmOS utilities, and thus far what I have in mind will be both generic and probably free. Of course, by "generic" I mean non-world specific. Since I play D&D 3.5, they'll be designed for that. Well, technically, for d20. But without the d20 logo. I can still use the OGL for d20-based software, but using the logo with software is too much of a grey area in some cases, outright prohibited in others. I don't want to with that, so they'll be OGL. The source will be available as well, of course, so you can see what's open and what's not. Of course, you'll need to use CASL if you want to modify the code...

I also added a Trivia page, to capture the little items that I want to get posted somewhere. The Detailed Climate Zone map is something I created for myself as a reference for the Almanac program. The weather system was originally based on latitude, but the results didn't quite match what I wanted for particular areas of my world. So, like any good Hollywood writer or junk scientist, I changed the data to fit my desired outcome. Hey, it's a fantasy world, and it works. It's one of those things that fits my philosophy of "it doesn't matter if it's realistic, just if it's realistic enough".

Threw a couple of things into the Timeline that came up when I was putting in the Trivia page. I also modified my "House Rules" based on some recent observations in my campaign. The main one is dumping "Armor as Damage Reduction" (ADR) from Unearthed Arcana. I like the idea, and my initial analysis of it indicated that it was workable, but I've since found some holes in it that I didn't see initially. Suffice to say, the idea being this variant is that you get hit more often but take less damage. Unfortunately, I've found situations where you end up getting hit more often and taking more damage. If I find some time I'll post the scenario I came up with that shows this. Rather than change the rules even further to accommodate ADR, I've decided to go back to the standard way of doing armor class.