Category: Geek

#REVIEW: The Monsters Know What They’re Doing: Combat Tactics for Dungeon Masters, by Keith Ammann

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, Reading, Reviews5 Comments

This is a new one: I’ve started reviews before by pointing out that I know the author, but in this case, I really know the author, as in “he knows my real name, was in my ed school grad program, and he’s been to my apartment.” Keith and I essentially had the exact same day-to-day schedule for two solid years, and while we’ve fallen out of touch other than occasional social media interactions since graduating in 2005, it’s simply not possible for me to leave my relationship with him aside while talking about this book. The Monsters Know is, in a lot of ways, possibly the Keith Ammanniest thing Keith Ammann could possibly have written, and while that’s a compliment, it’s very likely not one that’s going to be salient to anyone other than me.

Here’s the tl;dr: If you play Dungeons & Dragons, and especially if you’re a DM, you’re highly likely to really enjoy this book. If you do any sort of fantasy roleplaying that isn’t exactly D&D but is D&D adjacent, it’s probably going to be useful anyway. The book– five hundred-plus pages– is filled with essays on what feels like the entire Monster Manual (it probably isn’t, but still) breaking down various fantasy monsters based on their provided stat blocks, and providing suggestions on how they might act, what tactics they might use, and how they might react to any number of possible actions by your player characters.

There is also math. I’ll get to that in a bit.

Now, to be clear, I did not read this entire book. Why? Because it’s more of a sourcebook than something you sit down and read straight through, and if I have a criticism of it it’s not of the writing or the subject matter but the physical format of the book, which looks like a novel or, like, a “regular” book, when I really feel like it ought to be formatted more like a roleplaying sourcebook of some sort. I probably read … half of the entire thing, skipping around to different monsters I was interested in and occasionally occasionally passing over sections that were a little more power gamey than I’m interested in. Ordinarily I wouldn’t review something if I hadn’t read all of it, unless it was an actual DNF, but again: that’s not what this book is. The section on the kuo-toa will be there whenever you actually decide to include kuo-toa in your game; you don’t really need to read every word of that to appreciate what the book is doing. I am fairly certain that if I told Keith, word for word, “I liked your book but I didn’t read all of it,” he would not be a bit surprised, nor should he be.

Let’s be a touch more specific, though: based on, for example, the description of a species as being high Dexterity but low Strength and medium Intelligence, and the different combat abilities that a species or monster might have, The Monsters Know might suggest that this species prefers to attack from ambush, using sniping tactics and a high likelihood of retreat once injured. From there the section might move more specifically into D&D language, suggesting that Dash and Disengage actions might be used frequently in combat, and sometimes it’ll go so far as to map out a model encounter of sorts. A lot of the time it’ll then get into the actual mathematics behind various attacks, spells, etc, using those numbers to suggest which abilities a monster might prefer to use and which would provide a bit more utility and a higher reward to risk ratio. A lot of the time it’ll suggest a hit point threshold at which point a monster might retreat, too. I haven’t DMed much at all, really, but this was still fascinating to read and to think about, and I may suggest my son look through it, as he’s starting his first homebrew campaign soon. The book loses me a bit when it gets super granular about the numbers behind the abilities, but that’s the beauty of a sourcebook; you can ignore the stuff you aren’t as interested in. I was never a power gamer, and was always more interested in the abilities that felt fun or cool than whatever might be strictly the most effective move at any given time, so that stuff isn’t for me as much.

So yeah. My buddy wrote a book. If you’re into the same kind of nerdery we are, you should definitely check it out, and you can also go to Keith’s blog (the source of a lot of this material) at themonstersknow.com. If you’re in, he’s on his … fourth or fifth book by now, I think, so there’s a lot more where this came from.

On Stephen Mitchell’s GILGAMESH: A NEW ENGLISH TRANSLATION

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, Reading, Reviews1 Comment

This is very much not a book review. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still gonna tag it under “Reviews,” but the Epic of Gilgamesh is four thousand years old and the notion of putting a star rating on it is kind of ludicrous. Now, Stephen Mitchell’s new translation includes a decently long introduction and 80 or so pages of translation notes, so I could “review” that, but I did not pick this up to read his notes or his introduction; I picked it up because I realized I didn’t have a decent translation of the epic in the house anywhere and I got a wild hair up my ass about it.

Now, that said: Mitchell’s translation– well, his adaptation, and I’ll get to the distinction in a bit– is in fact a lovely read, and it combines being compulsively readable in English with a fine poetic feel that makes reading it out loud flow beautifully. I’m not an expert here by any means– I considered shifting my Master’s degree away from Hebrew Bible and more toward Babylonian studies in grad school before deciding to abandon the entire affair, but that’s as close as I get.

The problem is neither is Stephen Mitchell, who openly admits that he “doesn’t read cuneiform and has no knowledge of Akkadian.” Which makes the decision to publish a new translation, or adaptation, or version, which is his word … interesting? He basically sat down with a bunch of English versions (of, remember, fragmentary texts in one of the oldest languages that humanity can still understand) and some scholarly treatments of the work and pulled together his text from that, first doing a prose pass and then converting it to English verse.

(There’s a whole post or maybe a series of them in here about how one translates poetry from one language to another; needless to say it’s hellaciously complicated and requires a lot of expertise in both of the languages involved and in writing poetry. I could never.)

Fun fact: the Epic of Gilgamesh contains the oldest reference to blowjobs I’m aware of. From Book VI:

‘Sweet Ishullanu, let me suck your rod,
touch my vagina, caress my jewel.‘

Except! In the translation notes at the end, Mitchell states that the literal translation is “eat your vigor,” which … okay, that sounds like a blowjob too, but since he doesn’t know any Akkadian it’s hard to say how reasonable that leap is, right? An actual scholar of the language and the culture might be able to provide some details there that led to that specific choice of words; for Mitchell it’s basically just vibes. This bothers the nearly-dead Bible scholar in me; it may not be especially relevant to other people.

There’s a bit where Enkidu tears the “thigh” off of a bull and throws it at Ishtar, and she takes it and puts it on an altar and makes it a centerpiece, and I’m thinking that maybe it wasn’t the thigh he actually tore off? Would love to see what a scholar had to say about that. But that’s not this version!

Anyway. I enjoyed reading this even if I had some issues with it, and maybe I’ll take a deep breath and find something more academic about the work and maybe a more traditional translation to compare the two. Or maybe not! It’s not like I don’t have a shitton of other stuff (including, remember, a whole other book called Gilgamesh) to read.

…okay, Marvel? Let’s not.

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, PoliticsLeave a comment

I am fully fucking aware that, lead times being what they are on comic books, this was definitely written, if perhaps not completely drawn, before the Current Unpleasantness actually began. But once we realized we were going to publish it during the Current Unpleasantness, and that it scans as really fucking unsubtle given the Current Unpleasantness, maybe we reconsider the entire fucking thing? Because I don’t need this shit in my life at all, much less in a medium that’s supposed to be fucking escapism:

And fuck me dead if this very same Fantastic Four comic book doesn’t use vampires as a persecuted minority that Doom is scapegoating later on in the damn issue. Using Doom as a stand-in for the shitgibbon is one thing. Using vampires as a stand-in for trans people is deeply fucked up.

I recognize that there is literally no way that Marvel is gonna reconsider or reschedule any of this, but I wanted to register my protest anyway.

In which I have a disease

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, idiocyLeave a comment

…both in the literal and metaphorical sense. The wonderful news is that my ear abruptly partially cleared on the way home from work today, as I was actually on my way to urgent care to have it looked at again. It’s not 100% yet; there’s still some tinnitus and a little bit of pressure, but it’s not remotely as bad as it was yesterday and the transition from one phase to the other took all of thirty seconds. Hopefully it’ll continue to improve over the next day or two; I have about five doses of my antibiotic left.

The metaphorical sense? Do I need to explain, since you presumably have eyes and can see the image at the top of this post? Because God damn if I didn’t involuntarily start to reach for my wallet the second this image appeared on my phone, only to realize that the presale doesn’t start until the end of March so I have plenty of time to talk myself into buying four books that I didn’t like by an author who I genuinely dislike just because holy shit they’re pretty.

(They actually come with two dust covers each, those above and another set that is a slightly upscaled version of the original covers. I already have all four of these damn things with the original covers, so it’ll be these.)

Don’t ask the price. The set will cost roughly $texas; Broken Binding editions are expensive. They appreciate like motherfuckers, so I could pretend that I was going to hold on to them for a year and then sell them, I suppose, but I’ve got to buy them first. Nonetheless! Daddy can do this, all day, every day, no problem. But when is it going to stop?

I know I’ve said this before– hell, I’m a million and a half words deep into this site, I’ve said everything before– but I really never thought I was going to be the person I’ve become, where the more discretionary income I have, the more shit I find to buy. This obsession with special editions of books even if I don’t like the books is just the latest Goddamn symptom.

Some snippets

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek2 Comments

Got a new book from Amazon today, and the damned thing was mis-bound, with the cover a good quarter inch or more off from where it was supposed to be. Ultimately it’s no big deal, because I can just exchange it, but I’ve never seen this in a new book before. (Entirely possible that this is because Amazon specifically has never sent me one; no brick and mortar bookstore would even let these make it out to the floor; they’d have been damaged out immediately once they came out of the box.)

I survived my first day back, although I do mean “survived” in the most specific meaning of the term, certainly not one that implies any teaching took place. I foolishly neglected to take any drugs before leaving the house other than my antibiotics, which meant that the first thing I did when I left work was go to a drugstore and buy the methy kind of Sudafed, the one you have to ask for and have your ID scanned. I do actually have an ear infection, according to my school nurse, but she says the antibiotics I’m already on will take care of it. We’ll see!

Let’s see, what else? Spent the evening fighting off the urge to buy another fountain pen or two. My rapid cycling through obsessions and hobbies is fucking breathtaking, y’all. I need to become obsessed with saving money for a while. The world economy is about to tank (mental note: save $1,000 as quickly as possible, withdraw it in cash, and keep it in the house) and even if that wasn’t the case (or if I wasn’t already first against the wall as an atheist, outspokenly liberal teacher running the gay kids’ club in a rural area of a red state) my kid is gonna be driving in a couple of years. You’d think I’d at least be able to sock money away for a car.

Alternatively, we’ll be scrounging the wastelands for food in a couple of years, so why not buy fountain pens now while they’re still being manufactured?

Shit.

In which I cave

On By Luther M. SilerIn GeekLeave a comment

Dammit.

You might remember a few months ago where I went back and forth endlessly for a little while about watches. My existing Apple Watch was starting to have battery issues and I was getting tired of constantly having to pay attention to my wrist. So I ordered a nice analog watch and committed to a less connected life. Or at least I tried to.

So, yeah, I went and bought a new Apple Watch today. I’m not, like, throwing the old watch away, or anything like that, and I think I’ll continue to wear it on days where I need to dress up a little bit, but I’m going back to the Apple Watch for daily wear.

Why? Turns out the Apple Watch was useful for way more than just notifications, and part of it is definitely my fault for picking the wrong watch if I was going to walk away from a smartwatch. For example, I went super minimalistic on the new one– no visible numbers, no date, no complications at all.

I don’t think I realized, at the time, just how many times I look at my watch in a typical day, and just how often I am capable of forgetting the date in any given day. I am, as it turns out, not very bright! And I also write, with no fear of exaggeration, somewhere in the neighborhood of 20-30 hall passes each and every day, all of which must have the current time and the date on them. And that means that 20-30 times a day I’m forgetting the date and needing to look at my wall clock.

And I probably should be embarrassed about this part, but with no numbers at all it takes a second or two to parse the exact correct time on an analog watch. I’m not sure if “a second or two” makes me slow or not, but when it happens over and over again over the course of every single day it makes me regret at least not buying a watch with numbers around the outside. I didn’t think it would make a difference at the time– I can tell time on a clock– but if I’m writing a pass I want to be done writing the pass immediately because I have more important shit to be doing. Even just a couple of seconds each time adds up.

The analog watch had no light on it, and it turns out that I frequently want to look at my watch in the dark.

(I am not buying a digital watch that isn’t a smartwatch, by the way. I realize that a number of those issues could have been solved with the same kind of digital watches that have been available since I was in fourth or fifth grade. I just don’t want one of them.)

I use a data-heavy watch face, too, and it turns out that I frequently want to know what the temperature outside is. That image to the right there is my current watch face, and I genuinely after four months was unable to check my urge to look at my wrist every time I wondered what the temperature was. The Spotify song-identification app comes in handy a hell of a lot, and that’s my calendar in the top left. I feel like I had one more piece of information on the old Apple watch– my activity circles, maybe– and I might go back to that after a while, maybe instead of the Messages icon, since I’m supposed to get notifications anyway. I don’t need that on there all the time.

Driving and using a map app with the watch on is significantly easier and safer than using the phone, and my car isn’t new enough for CarPlay or something similar.

But yeah. I feel like four months with an analog watch should have been enough to cure me of my bad habits, and it wasn’t, and on top of that I was constantly missing notifications that I wanted to get– like texts from my wife to come help her with something, for example. I kept my phone muted because I can’t stand getting a beep or a chime all the Goddamn time, and the vibrate on the actual phone itself wasn’t strong enough (and hasn’t been on any phone I’ve owned for probably a decade or more) to consistently make me notice it if it was anywhere other than on a hard surface or in the pocket of a pair of jeans. I’ve had comfy pants on for most of the last several days. I haven’t noticed a single damn notification through the pockets of those pants.

So yeah. Back to being tethered to technology, I suppose. If I get annoyed with my wrist buzzing at me all the goddamn time I’ll figure out what apps don’t need to ping the phone and go with that. But the analog watch experiment is done, unfortunately.

Sure, I can do that

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, TeachingLeave a comment

Spent the last half hour talking a high school sophomore off the ledge, which is what you expect to happen when you teach 8th grade. She’s in Algebra 2 right now, which technically I’m legally allowed to teach, and I can absolutely handle both the mathematics behind and the explanation of that second inequality up there, but she swears up and down they haven’t been working with quadratics at all. That’s the second question of the two she asked me about, and the first of the other pair of inequalities looks like this:

…which is a reasonably tricky PEMDAS problem (a parenthetical with an exponent and a multiplier on it is the stuff of 10,000-comment internet videos) even before you get to graphing quadratics by hand, which I’m capable of with intense concentration but may not be great about explaining very well at the moment. Both pairs of inequalities have a simple linear inequality and a quadrilateral, and long story short, I’m not convinced her teacher gave her the assignment that he meant to. On an e-learning day, no less? You serious, man?

This isn’t a kid who’s going to forget that they just spent a month on quadratics or something like that, by the way. She’s bright. And she took a picture of one of her assignments from last week, which was graphing absolute values. The leap in difficulty from graphing absolute values on a number line to graphing systems of inequalities where one inequality is linear and the other is a PEMDAS nightmare that turns into a quadratic is … stark. There’s gotta be something else going on here.

Anyway, we’ve got the day off tomorrow again, which was the right decision. It’s been 20 below or worse all day, and it’s supposed to warm up significantly tomorrow, but at 8:00 in the morning it’s still going to be 20 below, and even after a two-hour delay it’s still going to be fifteen below– the temperature isn’t going to be conducive to human life until after noon, and you don’t make kids walk to school in subzero wind chills, especially when a lot of them don’t have coats. We will not lose Thursday or Friday, as it will be regular Midwest January cold and not the kind that has you cursing God.

The kids will, of course, find a way to make Thursday and Friday feel like a long week.

Where to find me on the Internets: 2025 Edition

On By Luther M. SilerIn Blogwanking, Geek2 Comments

I chose that image because I am convinced that you’re supposed to see the word “fucking” in the first five logos, despite the Instagram image being in the way, and I’m trying to figure out what to do with the rest of it.

Anyway, I haven’t done a social media roundup in a while, and I keep turning things off, so in the absence of anything else to talk about (that said, I’m ranting on Bluesky right now) let’s list off my accounts.

  • Infinitefreetime.com. You’re here now. If you’re not here right now I’m very confused. This is the only one of these accounts that is never ever Going Away.
  • Microblogging is handled on Bluesky, at @infinitefreetime.com. I will probably cross over 3000 followers this weekend. Whee!
  • I really really really want more StoryGraph followers, so if you use that app, please send me a friend request at, wait for it, infinitefreetime. I’ll follow you back! I promise!
  • I’m still on Goodreads! My profile picture there is ancient and I should update it.
  • I’m not updating my YouTube channel any longer, but you can find it at lutherplaysgames.com anyway. You never know, I might get back into it eventually.

God, is that it? I think that’s it. I’m not on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, Google+. was never actually real, I don’t recognize that green app up there, and I don’t really post on TikTok so I don’t need any followers over there. I shut down my Mastodon account and was never on Threads. I’m on Reddit, but don’t post very often? I don’t even know if Reddit really has any follower/friend features.

Anyway, point is, go follow me on Bluesky and Storygraph. Please.