A dungeon master looks around the table at her players. They’ve been sorting through this “abandoned” cave for three sessions now, and have just entered the main cavern. She smiles as she describes what they see.

I didn’t grow up with The Legend of Zelda. Sure, I knew what it was; this kid in green named Link runs around fighting monsters and saving the princess Zelda from the evil Ganon. I knew that the games were adventures, that they had to do with masks and ocarinas and something called the Master Sword. I knew it took place in Hyrule, and the big source of power was the Triforce.

Sigmund Freud was born on May 6, 1856, to a Jewish merchant family in Freiberg, a small town in the Austrian empire in what is now the Czech Republic.

He was apparently a playful, curious, happy child, though his family was unusually structured. His father was married once before and brought children near in age to his new wife into the second marriage. Freud apparently always looked back on his early childhood with a great amount of fondness, being his mother’s first child and her apparent favorite.

“I recall an anecdote I often heard repeated in my childhood. At the…

There are a lot of articles out there about freelancing on Upwork. I should know — I’ve written quite a few of them. A lot focus on getting started, interacting with clients, or scheduling your time, and that’s all incredibly important information, but there are very few that focus on the brass tacks of freelance work.

For instance, I haven’t come across many articles dealing with how to determine your hourly rate as a new-to-the-field freelancer, or how that factors into applying for work. So, I thought I’d fill the void. …

So, you’re starting a new campaign. You already know the setting, the hook, and what level you’re starting at. Now it’s time to start building a character! And where do you start? Well, what race is your character? As with many other aspects of D&D, picking a race for your brand-new character looks really simple on the surface. Why should it matter? It’s just how they look and talk, right?

Alas, no. In D&D, every choice matters mechanically, including what race your character hails from. The basic gist of it is that each race, due to their inherent story, has…

A cover letter is the first image that your client’s going to have of you. It’s a bit more personal than a resume but less personal than a full bio, meaning it’s a hard balance to strike.

This might be intimidating to someone who hasn’t done it before and can feel strange, artificial, or narcissistic to write. I know it did for me when I first started writing them. Now, though, I’m so used to the format that I write solid cover letters almost automatically.

Hopefully, having a basic template to work from can make it less scary. …

Let’s assume for a moment that you are a person wanting to enter fandom for the first time. You’ve found a piece of media that you adore, and you’re desperate to talk to other people about it! That’s wonderful, and I’m happy for you.

So once you’ve learned what all the lingo means, where should you go to engage in your fandom of choice? Lucky for you, you’ve got a lot of options.

Sit down, buckle your seatbelt, and please, keep all hands, feet, and cosplay weapons inside the vehicle at all times. …

When we talk about D&D, we love to talk about mid-adventure things. Characters triumphant in battle, mourning the loss of a friend in a fight, chatting up dragons and negotiating peace treaties, or thwarting the big bad at every turn, are the subject of more players’ fantasies in this fantasy world.

But how did they get there? What brought these characters together, and what drives them to keep going? This is your plot hook, and it can be difficult to figure out when you’re running your first campaign.

Now, the excellent thing about hooks is that they don’t have to…