Bundle of Holding Heavy Gear RPG 4E bundle is $20 static-price for:

Heavy Gear RPG 4E Rulebook ($30, 480 pages)
Heavy Gear RPG 4E Director Screen and Terra Nova Map ($9)

Tempest Winds ($19, 68 pages) - mercenary adventure book with 12 scenarios and 12 Blitz wargame scenarios
One Minute to Midnight ($20, 50 pages) - high-powered adventure book with 6 scenarios + 6 Blitz scenarios

Art of Heavy Gear V4 ($19, 222 pages)


This uses their updated Silhoutte system. IIRC it was d6 die pools where you only count the highest die but if there are multiple 6's then each extra 6 adds 1 to the total result. Skills (+1 to +4 or so) add to the total result. Kind of like the ICON system for Star Trek RPGs. Didn't particularly like it because it's hard to gauge difficulties.

On the other hand Heavy Gear has always had cool Mecha art and a cool universe since these guys (now Dream Pod 9) were fans of Mecha anime and started out doing anime fanzines (I still have some Protoculture Addicts in paper and PDF formats). I never got around to the HG Mecha combat so don't know how good it is.

I'm tempted to buy this because I do like Mecha games, though in general HG has small Mecha not giant robot Mecha.

Sat Sep 19 2026

Sleep 0200 to 0800 (6 hours)

• Just realized that instead of three romantic movies I've watched three bittersweet romantic movies on Netflix, probably due to the recommendation system. Must find more cheerful fare.

Sun Sep 20 2026

Sleep 0145 to 1030 (8-3/4 hours)

• My experience is using torrents to download Humble Bundle files is a lot slower than downloading from HB servers.

Mon Sep 21 2026

Sleep 0145 to 0845 (7 hours)

• In DriveThruRPG app I changed the library folder but it wouldn't use it even after restarting the app (I copied the old folder to the new location but if you clock on an entry it opens the file in the old location). After a system reboot it finally started using the new folder.

Tue Sep 2026

Sleep 0530 to 1300 (7-1/2 hours)

• Beats 360 headphones ($350) announced. Kind of equivalent to AirPods Max but Beats 360 has IPX4 water resistance so it should not short out if you sweat a lot like my two AirPods Max did. AirPods Max have great Active Noise Cancellation so I hope Beats 360 are about as good.

Wed Sep 23 2026

Sleep 0330 to 1200 (8-1/2 hours)

• Rakuten Viki email about terms of use changes. Link goes to the whole terms of use page. 9k+ words, figure out the changes yourself. Some companies are nice and have a summary or at least which sections changed in the email notice.

Thu Sep 25 2026

Sleep 0130 to 1000 (8-1/2 hours)

• Today's Daily Illuminator shines a light on the upcoming Pocket RPG from Yarro Studios. It's a tiny miniatures set with magnetic maps and metallic 15mm figures. Draw your dungeon and let your PCs explore. Possibly too small -- a map is like two TCG cards big. But it does look cool even though I rarely use miniatures or dice to show PCs the battle area.
• Fire alarm testing. Judy was helping although I didn't think we were doing floor managers.
• HOA Meeting. Rep from CL Sigler & Associates joined to discuss our needs. We just need someone to ride herd over the project so less than they usually do. He'll get back to us next week.

Fri Sep 25 2026

Sleep 0245 to 0845 (6 hours)

• Gloomhaven for the first time in a couple of months. Took us like 4 hours to do one quest. Barely managed to win as three of us were down to 1-3 turns worth of cards.

I received an email out of the blue asking me if I'd like to try Glimshelf, an iOS/iPadOS comic book reader currently in Beta. It can read comics books from a server or local files. For server it mentions Komga, Kavita, or generic OPDS.


Komga - "A media server for your comics, mangas, BDs, magazines and eBooks"

It's been around for six years. UI is basic but workable. The demo does have a link to try the new UI which is a little more modern.

Kavita - "Lightning fast and privacy-friendly, Kavita is a self‑hosted digital library for EPUB, PDF, comics and manga — with built‑in readers (single, double page, and webtoon mode), OPDS, and rich metadata. Install and share your server in minutes."

Seems more feature rich and slicker UI. Requires SSE4.2 (for rendering I guess) so newer Intel/AMD CPUs and not Mac (Komga is Java and has a macOS application so just download and run). Does have a subscription add-on though the added stuff seems very optional and I guess the money helps support active development.

Both can run on QNAP (I checked that my QNAP has a CPU with SSE4.2). Both are available on My QNAP (a third party repository). Komga is a one-click install. Kavita has several installs since it needs to run on Apache, Qbase or QMultimedia Q6) and there's a manual step.


So if I wanted to run a server I can run it on my Mac mini with Komga or the QNAP still with Komga as that seems easier to install. And if I use a third party reader then a cool UI is less important.

Pirate Borg Bundle from Bundle of Holding is $25 incrementing price. Pirate Borg is a variant of Mork Borg and popular enough to have multiple supplements, some from third parties.

Pirate Borg RPG ($20, OWN) - 166 page digest-sized rules

Pirate org Starter Set ($20) - Player's Guidebook, 60 pages. Trapped in the Tropics, adventure.
Cabin Fever (free) - 172-page supplement from various authors
Dark Caribbean Port Generator - random tables
Pirate Borg Printable GM Screen
Terror in Tortuga - adventure

Buried in the Bahamas ($8) - 24-page adventure
The Battle of Dead Man's Cove (2pp, retail price $3)- small adventure
Cavern of Cursed Tears (6pp, retail $8)- small adventure
The Sinking of C'Thagn (2pp, retail $5)- small adventure

Faction Relics (16pp, retail price $3)
The Repentant (12pp, retail $3) - one shot scenario
Tangled in Shrouds (27pp, retail $8) - adventure

Blood in the Water (2pp, retail price $4) - small adventure
Raise the Black (2pp, retail $4) - optional rules
Sweet Tusk (6pp, retail $7) - location

Since I already have the core rules the remaining is $60 for a $25 price so not too bad. Not sure if I'll buy this as it's not one of my favorite genres.

Sat Sep 12 2026

Sleep 0430 to 1130 (7 hours)

• Still can't cancel audible.ca account so I submitted a support request.
• That was quick. Like an hour I got a response and they cancelled the membership.

Sun Sep 13 2026

Sleep 0315 to 1115 (8 hours)

• Kimi Antonelli wins his 8th race which is great for him. With 9 races left (plus some sprints) he has an 81 point lead over second. He could DNF two races and still be up at least 31 points. It is less interesting when there's such a commanding lead, which I guess is a drawback of how the F1 scoring and final standings are done.

Mon Sep 14 2026

Sleep 0530 to 1115 (5-3/4 hours)

• Went to get teeth cleaned. Was thinking of getting lunch afterwards but decided to stop by Trader Joe's and go home.
• I used Xoom (owned by PayPal) to send money to a person in Ethiopia who doesn't have PayPal. You can send to a bank account, some digital thing, or have them pick up the money. I used bank account so you need their name, address, phone, bank account info. But having that information the process was easy and Xoom sends me emails to keep me updated. Integrated with PayPal so I could use whatever payment methods I have setup there.

Tue Sep 15 2026

Sleep 2330 to 0500, 1230 to 1445 (7-3/4 hours)

• Woke up early. Termite tech arrived late but we did get 2nd floor inspected in less than hour, total of 14 units he could inspect.
• Just ate a can of cream style sweet corn that had a best by 2021 date so if I die from botulism this is why.
• Hit this weird problem in Apple Music app. In default view I can't play certain albums. It's like Play is disabled. But if I go to song list view then I can play those songs.

Wed Sep 16 2026

Sleep 0330 to 1030 (7 hours)

• Was thinking of logging a service request to Republic Services to get my phone number off their service call list. But looks like I can only either call customer service or chat, no email. Maybe another day.

Thu Sep 17 2026

Sleep 0400 to 1100 (7 hours)

• Xoom payment to Ethiopian bank took three days. Seems like a reasonable speed.

Fri Sep 18 2026

Sleep 0500 to 1115 (6-1/4 hours)

• DDO. Doing Grip of the Hidden Hand to get favor for the last PC to get to 5000 favor then we can reincarnate. Should be done in another session or two.

I realized that Cloud Storage is maybe too flexible hence the cost. What if I only needed an off-site backup and I don't expect to ever need to restore from it?

• Acronis - $300 for 10 TB, unsure if this includes external HDs.
• Backblaze - $100 per year for all data on your computer and connected external drives
• Carbonite - $80 for one computer and one external HD.

Doesn't seem to be a lot of choices. Backblaze and Carbonite have been around forever. I think I've heard of Acronis.

Backblaze seems to be the best choice here and at that price I should research more and consider it.

Caverns of Thracia Humble Bundle from Goodman Games is $18 for the PDFs with the centerpiece being GG's reprint and expansion of Jennell Jaquays' mega-dungeon, a version of which was one of the early D&D third party products.

One thing to note is that there are a loot of duplicates because Goodman Games often releases the same adventure or supplement for both DCC RPG and D&D 5E -- few products are dual-statted. Although to be fair both RPGs have fairly significant stat blocks.

I do own some of this but both Dark Tower and Caverns of Thracia are enough reason to buy for a low price.

DCC RPG Core Rulebook [OWN]
DCC RPG Core Rulebook (Sanjulian Cover) [essential OWN]
DCC RPG Character Folio [OWN]
DCC Reference Booklet [OWN]
DCC Judges Screen - Space Van Art [OWN a version]

Original Adventures Reincarnated #7 Dark Tower (3-volume set, D&D 5E version)
Original Adventures Reincarnated #8 Grimtooth's Old School Traps
Original Adventures Reincarnated #9 The Caverns of Thracia (D&D 5E, deluxe book)
Original Adventures Reincarnated #9.5: Hellpits of Nightfang

DCC Against the Thieves Guild
DCC Dark Tower (3-volume set, DCC version)
DCC RPG: The Caverns of Thracia
DCC RPG: Monsters & Magic of Dark Tower
Fifth Edition Fantasy: Monsters & Magic of Dark Tower
Dark Tower Map: The Lostlands
Dark Tower Map: Redmoon Pass
DCC Hellpits of Nightfang

Monsters & Magic of Thracia

DCC #84 Peril on the Purple Planet (boxed set) [OWN]
DCC #84.1 The Rock Awakens [OWN]
DCC #84.2 Synthetic Swordsmen of the Purple Planet [OWN]
DCC #84.3 Sky Masters of the Purple Planet [OWN]

DCC #97 The Queen of Elfland's Son [OWN]
DCC #98 Imprisoned in the God-Skull [OWN]

DCC #106 By Mitra's Bones, Meet Thy Doom!
DCC #106 Trials of the Trapmaster's Tomb
DCC #107 Forgotten Dangers
DCC #108 The Seventh Thrall of Sezrekan
DCC #109 Beneath the Isle of the Serpents
DCC #110 The Sacrificial Pyre of Thracia
DCC #111 Grave Robbers of Thracia

DCC Annual

Gen Con 2013 Program Book [OWN]
Gen Con 2014 Program Book [OWN]
Gen Con 2015 Program Guide [OWN]
Gen Con 2016 Program Guide
Gen Con 2017 Program Guide
Gen Con 2018 Program Guide

Yearbook #8: The Year That Shall Not Be Named
Yearbook #11
2019 Yearbook: Riders on the Phlogiston [OWN]
2021 Yearbook [OWN]
2022 Yearbook [OWN]

Fifth Edition Fantasy: The Sunken Temple of Set (Free RPG Day 2021)

Fifth Edition Fantasy #25: Seven Days of the Serpent God (Dark Tower)
Fifth Edition Fantasy #26: Against the Thieves Guild
Fifth Edition Fantasy #27: Sacrificial Pyre of Thracia
Fifth Edition Fantasy #28: Beneath the Isle of the Serpents
Fifth Edition Fantasy #29: The Alabaster Tower of Thracia

Dark Tower VTT Pack
DCC Character Class Token Pack (VTT)
DCC 0-Level Funnel Character Token Pack (VTT)

Sat Sep 05 2026

Sleep 0400 to 1200 (8 hours)

• Oops, forgot to cancel my Audible.ca account. It supposed to renew today and when I click cancel subscription it goes to an error page (but not displaying an error so it's mostly blank content). Guess I'll do another month and try to cancel next week.

Sun Sep 06 2026

Sleep 0300 to 0815 (5-1/4 hours)

• DDO: We finished Myth Drannor. CSr's alt is at 4700 favor so would like to get him to 5k before reincarnation.

Mon Sep 07 2026

Sleep 0630 to 1230 (6 hours)

• DDO. We did like five quests at R1/R2 so it was running through quests. Gives my solo alt some XP to catch up to my solo main.

Tue Sep 08 2026

Sleep 0030 to 0930 (9 hours)

• Renewing my SSL cert through certbot. Was giving me failure for "NXDOMAIN looking up A for www2.tgd-inc.com". I ended up changing the DNS record from CNAME back to A, run certbot, then change the record back. Doing some searches, certbot should have handled going through CNAME though perhaps a weird DNS error somewhere.
• Always forget GoFundMe is a bit dumb about PayPal in that if you choose that as payment it takes the funds from (I assume) the last PayPal funding source. One of the reasons I like PayPal is that I get to choose funding source at time of payment so GoFundMe's setup defeats that.

Wed Sep 09 2026

Sleep 0445 to 1145 (7 hours)

• Rather warm today. High of 95 degrees and still 80 at 2030. Tomorrow's high will be 80 then cooling off the rest of the week. Visiting parents this weekend and Elk Grove will be in the low 80's.

Thu Sep 10 2026

Sleep 0600 to 1300 (7 hours)

• I had a thought that maybe my AMEX HYSA supports international wire transfers, but apparently not for consumer accounts.

Fri Sep 11 2026

Sleep 0115 to 1000 (8-3/4 hours)

• Flex Friday winner would like to be paid via Airtm which I had never heard of. It seems to be catered to users living in countries where the currency can suffer high inflation. Funds are kept in USDT (stable coin) and at time of payout your USDT is converted to local currency (using a network so it's not like Airtm itself is setting conversion prices). But I also looked at reviews and a lot of people complain with problems getting money out (which does seem to be a theme with crypto funds -- the nature of wildly fluctuating prices means sometimes an exchange has to halt trading to prevent serious losses). Anyway signing up requires verifying your ID and I'd rather not just to use it once.
• I was also looking to send an ACH since Airtm gives each user a virtual ACH (for freelancers to get paid). But sending ACH from my bank requires a business account and verification. I suspect that's normal.

Thinking about whether or not I want cloud storage.

Apple iCloud+

5 GB free, 50 GB for $12, 200 GB for $36, 2 TB for $120, 6 TB for $360, 12 TB for $720

Not really meant for backup storage but to store your data files and have them available everywhere. Integrates well with the OS and apps.


Microsoft OneDrive

100 GB for $20, 1 TB for $100, up to 10 TB but couldn't find prices

1TB includes Microsoft 365 applications. It's not as integrated with Apple ecosystem and Microsoft is not known for clear documentation as I found out trying to get prices.


Google One

15 GB free, 400 GB for $60, 5 TB for $240, 20 TB for $1200, 30 TB for $2400

Since it goes from 5 TB to 20 TB that's a big price jump. You get Google AI whether you want it or not.


Tom's Guide: Best Cloud Storage in 2026

I kind of trust Tom's Guide and they did a better job of getting prices. I have 20 to 25 TB of data in total.

• iDrive: 20 TB for $300, 50 TB for $600.
• Google: Oh, since I'm a "company" account storage upgrade is through the company so this is a no go. Or I can create a separate Google account for cloud storage, which seems inconvenient.
• Dropbox: 2 TB for $120 and I couldn't find prices for additional storage (you have to subscribe first)
• Sync: 1 TB for $72, 5 TB for $168; teams 10 TB for $270.
• Microsoft: same as what I found above

Anyways, this was more a thought experiment to see that getting a lot of cloud storage is quite expensive so a local NAS is not that bad at all.

Shadowrun Anarchy Bundle of Holding. Anarchy is a separate RPG based on the Cue System used in MechWarrior: Destiny and Valiant Universe RPG. A set price of $15 gets you:

• Shadowrun Anarchy 1E (218 pages, $15)
• Shadowrun Anarchy 2050 (159 pages, $20) - "With new character archetypes, shadow amps, world information, and a whole bunch of contract briefs, Anarchy 2050 lets you play classic adventures in a new way."
• Shadowrun Anarchy: Chicago Chaos (130 pages, $20) - "Contract Briefs, characters, and plot information for Shadowrun: Anarchy"

There is a fair amount of other books from Catalyst for Shadowrun Anarchy and there is even a 2nd edition released this year.

I would say this bundle is more for if you want a light rule system to play with your existing Shadowrun collection. So does not seem appropriate for me.

Sat Aug 30 2026

Sleep 0330 to 0730, 0830 to 1130 (7 hours)

• DS joined Discord last night. He's like a week or two from finishing his hike. Then he and Julie will drive around the country for a few weeks.
• DDO with just DW and I. Last night we did Search and Rescue which is the last Legendary that I don't have a Last Played record. Tonight we did Through the Tulgey Wood and One Dame Thing After Another which I haven't played since Nov 2022 and DW said he never played -- could be true I know I played them with DS on Heroic and probably with CSr.

Sun Aug 30 2026

Sleep 0230 to 0900 (6-1/2 hours)

• I decided to do MBP Time Machine backups to my Airport Time Capsule now that it has SMB 4 support. Even though the Airport is connected to the WiFi router via Ethernet Cat 5e cable (so it should be a 1000 Gb connection) the upload speed is about 8 MB per second. Several days ETA for the first backup (I excluded many folders that are either already backed up to the QNAP (i.e. TV and Music) or, for games, that I can easily reinstall to bring it down to about 850 GB to backup).

Mon Aug 31 2026

Sleep 0345 to 1215 (8-1/2 hours)

• Went to Kaiser San Mateo and got two vaccinations. Pretty easy process to both schedule and do the appointment.
• I do feel like I'm getting sick though but that's expected.

Tue Sep 01 2026

Sleep 0245 to 1045 (8 hours)

• Felt pretty down today up through going to sleep.
• Roger wants me to call project management company since I know about what's been going on with our current court yard testing. It's a logical decision but still sucks for me. I happened to be here therefore I spent two days helping therefore I know what's been going on so I'm the subject expert therefore I get more tasks. Actually I guess kind of like a normal job except I'm not getting paid. This is because our HOA manager had to take bereavement leave.

Wed Sep 02 2026

Sleep 0615 to 1415 (8 hours)

• Woke up and feel ok, though my shoulder still hurts (Tdap vaccine side-effect).
• QNAP. Finally tested all the drives. Now I can use the last slot for a 14TB drive and add mirroring to that storage pool.
• First Time Machine backup to my Airport Time Capsule finally finished. Good thing that if it's interrupted it'll continue from where it left off since it's backing up a snapshot not the current file system. I set it to daily since I expect incremental backups will take an hour or two. And then if I ever have to restore... But I will keep weekly backups on regular external hard drives.
• Anyway that first backup is 838.35 GB. With the Mac mini backups that still leaves 2 TB free on the Time Capsule drive. Once that HD drives I can finally retire the Time Capsule. Not sure if I'd move daily backups to QNAP -- it does have an option to set a share for Time Machine backups.

Thu Sep 03 2026

Sleep 0515 to 1145 (6-1/2 hours).

• Looking to see if QNAP has a wiki server I can install. App Center, their official "App Store" though it's not really a store but I guess just official QNAP apps and vetted 3rd party apps, doesn't have one. I did a search which pointed me to a Reddit thread which pointed me to a blog page, Configure MediaWiki on QNAP with Docker. MediaWiki is fairly heavyweight so not crazy about going that route, though I'm sure there is a module for the drawing tool that Wiki.js uses.

Fri Sep 04 2026

Sleep 0130 to 0830, 1330 to 1430 (8 hours)

• DDO. We did two Myth Drannor quests, leaving two left. Starting to get excited about reincarnating.

Now that everything is pretty much setup this is what I have:

QNAP NAS

• Storage 1: two 8-TB HDs in a RAID 1. Videos. 2.94 TB Used, 2.69 TB free. In general I tend to add 1 or 2 TB and then start trimming down as low as I can.

• Storage 2: two 2TB HDs in a RAID 1. System (QNAP applications) + Downloads (which I also use for temp work). Used 319 GB, free 1.04 TB.
• Storage 3: two 14-TB HDs in a RAID 1. Nemo VODs (for reference), TV app files (which means when I want to watch them I need to copy them back to the main drive), Music files mirror (backups since I still don't trust Music and it's cloud syncing / auto-categorization to not someday blow up my music collection), Software (less important nowadays). 7.82 TB used, 2.08 TB free. This storage had the standard 80% warning threshold which it hit so I raised it to 90%.

MacBook Pro M4 Pro

• Main drive: 285 GB used, 230 GB free.
• Attached SSD: 1.37 TB used, 2.64 TB free.

Offline Storage

• 4TB HD: Anna Cramling VODs (full)
• 4TB HD: BotezLive VODs (full)
• 6TB HD: more Anna Cramling VODs (a bit), more BotezLive VODs (2 TB), Miscellaneous VODs

Offline Storage (Backups)

• 14TB HD (iffy HD): Mirror Anna Cramling, Miscellaneous
• 14TB HD (iffy HD): Mirror BotezLive
• 18TB HD: Weekly backups MBP/Mac mini. Backup of QNAP Storage 1.
• 18TB HD: Monthly backups MBP/Mac mini. Backup of QNAP Storage 3.

In the end all my data has a backup. Even RAID data because RAID is not a backup solution. (Although ideally you want two backups so you can keep one set off site and rotate).

I have 2 spare 2TB HDs, 1 spare 8TB HD for the NAS. Also have 6+ 4TB HDs for use later (kind of hoping if I use the 2TBs regularly they'll die then I'll upgrade Storage 2 to two 4TB HDs).

If Storage 3 overflows I'll take the oldest 4 TB of Nemo VODs and offline storage them. Storage 2 I'd rather not move any of that to offline storage.

Mysterious Maze KS is the latest Deadlands supplement. $120 for the new stuff as physical product ($50 digital only).

The Mysterious Maze Source Book (180 pages, digest sized) - "everything you need to know about the locations, people, and events surrounding California and the shattered coastline now known as the Great Maze"

Curse of the Maze Queen (Boxed Set) - "adventure following the poker tournament of the century aboard a stately river boat in the perilous waters of the Maze. Whether the posse is there to play for the prize, protect it from low-down varmints, or take it for themselves the Maze Queen is the place to be!" Includes a plot point adventure, archetypes and NPC cards, pawns for enemies and maps of important locations, two double-sided foldout maps of the Maze Queen.

Red Tide (96 pages plot point campaign, digest sized) - "the bloody tale of the one-and-only Dracula's trip to the Weird West. He has the Twilight Legion in his sights, and it's going to take the best of the West and some serious luck to stop his evil plan!"

Weird West Pawns 3 - boxed set of cardboard standup counters useful for the material in this KS.

I was thinking I skipped the last Deadlands KS. But looking at their KS's I guess it was 30th Anniversary Celebration where I only bought the new edition of Deadlands RPG, and Deadlands Dark Ages which I totally skipped. I didn't mind Hell on Earth or Lost Colony as they're more sci-fi but historical stuff I'm less into.

So I will be backing this at $120 plus shipping.