Today’s poem is called ‘The Power of a Homophone’.

Fill in the blanks: One's a _______________. The other's a ___________. Together, they fight crime!

We didn't deserve this day.

I've been working on something shiny recently:

Ezri once told Worf, "The Klingon Empire is dying, and I think it deserves to die … I know this sounds harsh, but the truth is you have been willing to accept a government that you know is corrupt. Gowron is just the latest example." Later that day, Worf killed Gowron. This is a post about DS9.

The most accurate recreation of DS9 I've seen.

everything is terrible so here’s the swedish chef doing rapper’s delight

There was a plan in motion to defenestrate our target, but unfortunately we missed the window.

as ever, if you ask people if they think art should exist for their enjoyment they will say yes, and then if you ask them if the people making the art should get paid for it they'll tell you "no that's a fake job"

"Generative AI" systems do not care about facts and truth, they care about you liking their output, and when the don't know the correct answer they will make shit up. This is not the right tool for anything regarding naturalistic identification.

In my geeky hands! I did my usual editing/canon review on the Star Trek Adventures Technical Manual. Shout-out to the all the writers: Michael Dismuke, @n01h3r3.bsky.social, @ineti.bsky.social, Aaron M. Pollyea, @gmadmiral.bsky.social, and @daytonward.bsky.social, and the artists too many to list!

dear new TTTRPG designers: Charge for your games. They are good enough! It's easy to feel like you're an amateur and no one will be interested if you don't make them free, but don't sell yourself short. Also, you're not just selling YOURSELF short when you do this!

On Tuesday we're launching the crowdfunder for Blades in the Dark: Deep Cuts. Today we're offering a preview as a free, direct download. But don't delay, the download link expires in less than 24 hours: www.backerkit.com/call_to_acti...

Stop calling A.I. slop “art” and real human-created works “content”

Fandoms obsession with Canon Policing is a set of concrete boots around the very content they profess to love.

A couple of years back companies started using AI voiceover and my voiceover gigs disappeared. And then they realised it wasn't quite working...and started using VO artists again. You can create something that is passably a human voice but you can't create something that's even passably human.

We are proud signatories of this letter to the PM. Good to see powerful names speaking out to protect the rights of all creators, and continuing to keep this issue in the news. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The problems in our society are not caused by migrants or refugees. They are caused by an economic system rigged in favour of corporations and billionaires. If the government wanted to improve people’s lives, it would tax the rich and build an economy that works for us all.

#TTRPGQuestion Something that's been on my mind recently: To what extent has the RPG market been influenced by the popularity of streaming and actual plays, as the most visible format of the hobby?

ICYMI: An amendment backed by creatives that would ensure AI models obey copyright law has been defeated in parliament as the contentious Data Bill proceeds towards its final stages 👇 #BookSky

There it is…

So basically just sort of banning people who enjoy a sport for fun really?

I wish people would understand the difference between analytical "AI" and generative algorithms using LLMs. The former is used for pattern recognition at high rates and precision humans can't replicate and highly useful in medicine and science. The latter is autocomplete with delusions of grandeur.

Increasingly I have come around to the perspective that "hackability" of TRPGs is not actually a positive of the medium and is instead an overall neutral aspect that often dips into the negatives when used to justify Bethesda-esque "it's fine that the game is bad because YOU can fix it!" stances

it's a bad mentality too, imo, because it...fuckin' ruined generations of gamers so that they now don't know how to engage with mechanics and *use* them - a huge number of people don't even think that mechanics are real, or that you can design them, which is a little fucked up if you think about it

Absolutely right. If you know how movie financing works you know they were popping champagne corks Monday morning at the studio, and that was *without* this insane second weekend. All this “concerned” coverage is bullshit.

By this fall we'll have several hundred peer reviewed studies showing UBI saves money and produces great results and one janky "vaccines cause autism" paper by a non-doctor longtime anti-vaxx grifter and the result will be the US government will immediately ban vaccines. Because we live in hell.

Putting the FFS back into tariffs.

If you're in an area with a local election please vote If you're not drawn to a particular party, good on you. Maybe try to meet some candidates & vote for someone *kind*. Someone who you'd trust to babysit your kids. If none of the candidates qualify write a note on the ballot paper. They read em

This reinforces that todays billionaires could easily (see Parton, Dolly) become internationally beloved figures but they are *so fundamentally broken and evil* that they can’t conceive of how to even *pretend* to care about others. convincingly.

That’s how alienated from humanity they’ve become, and I use that word specifically.

Remember, everyone: March has 32 days, and April begins with the 2nd for mysterious reasons. There's no such thing as April 1st.

I get why techbros and their ilk like gen-AI: artists and writers to them are just an obstacle to be bypassed. But I'll never get an author/artist/musician who uses it. "I want to be a writer." No you don't. You fetishize ideas but hate the work. You don't respect the craft or its practitioners.

1. WFRP 1e 2. WFRP 1e 3. Advanced Fighting Fantasy 4. Star Trek Adventures 5. Marvel Heroic Roleplay 6. D&D 5e 7. Star Trek Adventures 1. First #ttrpg you ever played? 2. First you ever ran? 3. Played the most? 4. Run the most? 5. Favourite? 6. Most recently played? 7. Most recently run?

If consumers are prepared to wait 50 years and pay £200 for a 100 page pdf of a fully tested RPG. Then maybe it is possible. Although even then I am not 100% convinced it would cover all bases.

I suggest it is impossible to "fully" playtest a RPG. Especially a very complex one. However, that doesn't mean no playtesting at all. I am pretty sure most games get some form of playtesting.

#TTRPG ADDED MORE GAMES AND NOW IT'S TO THE TUNE OF THE SONG AND EVEN SORTA RHYMES A LITTLE BIT ⬇️🧵

If you see this, post a GIF from one of your comfort shows.

Really good to see my work getting recommended by someone whose work I've admired over the years.

For the curious

[Generic festive sentiment]

Some shiny new additions to my collection from @modiphius.bsky.social

Adobe users: it’s the most beautiful time of the year, where you can threaten to cancel your plan and get the price cut down from $59.99 to $29.99 for the next 12 months ✨ Manage plan-> cancel my plan -> continue and then you get this offer: (more)

This.

One well known challenge in writing RPGs is that the rulebook needs to serve multiple purposes. It needs to convey information about the game fiction/setting, instruct the reader how to play AND serve as a reference for the rules once play begins. That's a tall order.