Dubbing Differences: Toy Story

I'm running out of Disney classics to analyze dubs for, so let's go with a Pixar one today. Toy Story was a lot of fun to watch in Brazilian Portuguese, and there were quite a few notable differences:

Relic Short Story: How the Zebra Got His Stripes

Man, this time in my life sucks. I'm exhausted from 2½ years of trying to find a full-time job with zero success, and it's showing in my posting frequency here.

Here's a story I wrote in 7th grade. At the time, I was interested in Greek mythology, and I especially like Hermes because of his portrayal in the Disney film Hercules. I wish I could still channel this level of unhinged lack of care for story conventions. Also, as usual, Easter eggs are hidden in the story. A girl I hated at school was named Heather.

Dubbing Differences: The Princess Bride

Thank goodness The Princess Bride is on Disney+, which offers all the different audio options! This has always been one of my most treasured movies. I discovered it when I was in 6th grade, memorized the Battle of Wits, and dreamed about being Westley and rescuing Buttercup. My wife loves it too, and it turns out she shares Cary Elwes's birthday and I share Robin Wright's!

Anyway, here are the dubbing differences I found in Brazilian Portuguese. Unfortunately, it didn't have as good of an attention to detail of things like lip syncing like the Disney classics do. But there were still some gems.

Dubbing Differences: Fun & Fancy Free

 

Fun & Fancy Free is kind of an under represented Disney Classic, understandably so, but it had a few interesting dubbing differences to point out.

My Happy and Sad Boxes

In The Office, Season 7, Episode 13, "The Ultimatum," Michael has a "happy box" and a "sad box" prepared. It got me thinking, what would I have in a happy box to celebrate a happy occasion, and what would be in my sad box to help me cope?

A super simple way to run Monster Hunter-style "titan battles" in D&D 5e

 

Attacking a sack of hit points until it dies is okay for bandits, orcs, kobolds, and even larger enemies like lions or brown bears. However, it's just not as epic when fighting something towering over you with a head as big as your character's entire body.

Here's how to make Huge and Gargantuan creatures more fun to fight for your players and more fun to run as a DM. As always, I keep these homebrew mechanics super simple so that the whole table can get a grasp on them without too much reading.

The 5e Character Sheet Sucks, So I Fixed It

After my DM Quest group finished our first campaign a couple months ago, I decided to stop using D&D Beyond and play my next campaign on a paper character sheet. I had always used real dice, but from what I remembered, the paper character sheet from 5.5 was much better than the old one, and I was excited to have a more tactile experience playing D&D.

I was wrong. All the official character sheets are terrible! And the ones other people make are too fancy and still miss what makes a character sheet useful!

As usual, it's up to me to fix the problem.

Campaign Setting: Luzeon

 

Today I present to you my latest D&D setting: Luzeon! This setting is heavily based on the land of Urak in the 1997 PC game Lords of Magic, and I think it has a lot of potential. 

Bastion: Criminal Hideout

NOTE: Since these are a lot of work and I'm not sure if I'm super sold on this formula anyway, this will probably be my last class-specific Bastion. I figured since I had already done the classic Fighter, Mage, and Cleric bastions, I might as well round it out with the Rogue one. If you like this system, I hope these serve as useful templates!

You are awarded a Bastion when you reach 5th level. During downtime, you can invest gold into your Bastion to upgrade it with new facilities and services. At the end of a downtime, you can choose a number of available services equal to your proficiency bonus and gain their effects until the end of your next adventure. You can gain multiple uses of the same service unless otherwise stated. See the original post here.

Criminal Bastion: Hideout

The hideout is a refuge from the law, a place of clandestine deals, and a repository of secrets and treasure. As a criminal, you can use your Hideout to gather information and augment your arsenal with less-than-legal implements.

Lords of Magic Fansite

In my opinion, the most underrated PC game of all time is a 1997 game by Sierra called Lords of Magic. It has a beautifully organized system of factions called "Faiths," spectacular music, fascinating outside-the-box lore, and a unique gameplay style that involves a mix of turn-based exploration and real-time combat.

Essence Crafting: A Way to Repurpose Magic Items for Your D&D Party

In my last D&D campaign, we ended up discarding a ton of magic items. Inspired by the Enchanting skill on World of Warcraft, I made this system for players to recycle unwanted magic items and create ones they do want.

Hourly Comic Day 2025

It took me what, 8 years? to realize it's easier to do Hourly Comic Day with a printable template so I don't get those ungoshly crooked lines for the frames. Special thanks to Arlee, my daughter, for inspiring me to do this this year. I would've forgotten otherwise. Enjoy a day in my life!

Song Parody: Where Is My Dream Career?

The song "When Will My Life Begin?" on Tangled has always made me tear up. Rapunzel could have sung about feeling trapped or wishing she knew what it was like outside or something, but instead her song is about how desperately she's trying to make the best of her situation and just waiting for something outside her control to change. For some reason that hits me hard, which is probably why this song parody came about.

Infernal War Machine Tokens Remastered: Devil's Ride

Get all the new tokens for $9.49 here!

It's hard to believe it's been almost 5 years since I was playing Descent Into Avernus with a D&D group I'm not even in contact with anymore. I created these Infernal War Machine tokens as a way to make the machines easier to identify, fitted to a grid so that the player characters can man the helm and various weapons the machine has.

Dubbing Differences: Mickey's Christmas Carol

Merry Christmas! Here are the differences I found in Mickey's Christmas Carol.

Bastion: Acolyte Church

You are awarded a Bastion when you reach 5th level. During downtime, you can invest gold into your Bastion to upgrade it with new facilities and services. At the end of a downtime, you can choose a number of available services equal to your proficiency bonus and gain their effects until the end of your next adventure. You can gain multiple uses of the same service unless otherwise stated. See the original post here.

Acolyte Bastion: Church

The church is a place of worship, divine revelation, and spiritual protection where the faithful gather and miracles are performed. As an acolyte, you can use your Church to bless yourself and your allies with power from the Upper Planes.

My Thoughts on Dungeons & Dragons 5.5e: The Player's Handbook

Despite what the almighty Wizards of the Coast proclaim, and even though it's kind of backwards-compatible with 5e, the 2024 update to D&D is a new edition. Its changes are significant enough, and the phrase "the 2024 version" is clunky enough, that I'm just going to refer to it as 5.5e. Or "five-five."

Anyway, I got the 5.5e Player's Handbook for my half-birthday this year, and for the most part I'm very impressed. I'll save any further elaboration for the specific points below.

D&D Mechanics Inspired by Heroes of Might and Magic 3

Heroes of Might and Magic III Complete is and will be one of my top 5 favorite PC games of all time. It's epic. It's timeless. Its music never gets old. It's like the best board game ever invented and put into computer game form. It has an awesome map editor.

I've been on a Heroes kick this past month, and as usual, D&D has been on my mind and has been looking for inspiration. Heroes of Might and Magic III has some great mechanics that could be inspiring for D&D ideas.

How to Fix Your Bathroom's Most FRUSTRATING Problem! #homerepair #dalmatian

Just some fun making fun of the current state of YouTube influencers, while simultaneously making a useful tutorial my wife needs to watch! Ha ha! Zing! 🥁

Lords of Magic Fansite

In 1997, Sierra released a PC game called Lords of Magic. It was really hard, had some awkward bugs, and in general was forgotten among most of the PC gaming community, but it was an amazing game! The setting was classic fantasy, divided into eight faiths: Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Chaos, Order, Life, and Death. Each had a different primary race makeup and personality, and each was organized into champions (warriors, mages, and thieves), cavalry, infantry, ranged, scout, three levels of mythical creatures, and a legendary creature. I always loved the unique interactions between the barracks, the thieves guild, the mage tower, the capital, and the Great Temple of each race. Each race also had its own set of spells and artifacts, all of which fit their respective faith perfectly.

In the 2000s, several fansites were made for Lords of Magic, but the sites have since gone the way of all Geocities sites and are hard to access now. So I made my own!

lordsofmagic.wordpress.com