Aaron A. Reed

@aaronareed.bsky.social

753 Followers 287 Following

Maker of books, games, games about books, and books about games. Social media content syndicated to multiple platforms: https://linktr.ee/aaronareed

Cropped cover for "The Drizzle Depths" showing woodcut art of a flooded Victorian street, rain drizzling down and faint stalactites dimly visible on a distant roof above.
Wait, No, Hear Me Out: Simulating Encounter AI in Slay the Spire with SQL. Bring your best warding potions, safety sigils, and blessings: this talk is a light dip of some cursed queries to show how to simulate Slay the Spire's encounter AI with nothing more than SQL (and a lot of free time). Along the way, we'll go over some basic data structures for simulation, declarative vs imperative programming and how (with a little probability) even simple systems can lead to memorable, complex AI.
Screenshot of DriveThruRPG showing the Downcrawl Deck and other recent RPG titles at a 20% discount.
Cover art for Where the Rock Stops, a Downcrawl adventure zine, showing black-and-white woodcut-style art of a zeppelin floating beneath a rocky ceiling with huge dangling stalactites.
Selfie of Aaron in his kitchen wearing a backpacking pack and a slightly nervous smile.
An entire table filled with sundry arts and crafts supplies
Portion of a printout in a basic unstyled font reading "The Mountain Dream, Jank Edition," and the start of a character creation section.
Cover art for The Hypogean Solution showing a black-and-white sketch of two strange travelers camped under giant mushrooms by the bank of a glowing underworld river.
Black cover with stark red and white text in the style of the original Traveller RPG release, with white words reading "This is Free Forager Kharis, scribbling this note to anyone who might find it. A sentient slime mold with fuzzy purple tendrils is taking over the Down. My last Journey ended in disaster. All Volumes, lock down your borders. Ration Tack. Guard your Map Rooms. It is coming. Mayday."
Triangular metal coins with antique bronze finish showing cave passageways and runes.
The Downcrawl rulebook and Downcrawl Deck, with cover art showing weird wanderers overlooking a stalactite city suspended over lava.
A very full bookshelf
Scan of flier: see link for transcription.
Triangular metal Tack coins custom made for Downcrawl 2E
Some Downcrawl card decks placed on bubble wrap and a book mailer, ready to be folded up and addressed.
Thumb held up with band-aid against background of coins.
Green d6 dice with large gold numerals, lined up and getting ready to be shipped from the makers. Pic courtesy Dice Extractions.
Montage of Downcrawl bonus material covers, featuring mushroom art and an array of fonts
"Now,” said Perfect, "count the failed worlds." Again, Ord knew the exact number. Memories encoded in a tireless net flowed into him. He saw Perfect tracking whispers through a wilderness of stars. Some whispers vanished, while some grew stronger, but all ended with a technological world freshly killed. Wars had done the damage, mostly. Sometimes there were accidental plagues or machines run amuck, or a battered ecosystem would collapse back to the microbes. Nothing with a voice remained, save the occasional computer or automated antenna still pointed at the sky, begging the stars for help, for alliances, for second chances, for God. Counting was easy; remembering took an age. Images struck at Ord, leaving him spent and sore, and sorry. And Perfect had suffered far worse. His hopes were ruined each time; nothing but ruin was waiting for him. Armed with a Chamberlain's skills, he would sift through the gruesome traces—bone shards and burnt cities and oceans of encoded data—then he would build phantoms of the dead, complete with voices and desires, and their telltale flaws. These examples lent insights. Perfect could ask the phantoms why and how they had so willingly pushed their homes into oblivion.