I've been thinking about this all day. It's not the first time! I've always intensely loved the dream-like, myth-heavy world of old fantasy. King Arthur; fairy tales of all sorts; witches and hauntings; knights and damsels. I have the King of Elfland's Daughter right next to me at this moment--

I'm only a little tiny small bit horrified that because I'm taking classes online people are going to think my degree is fake and worthless and all the effort I'm putting into it will be basically ignored. Only a little. Tiny bit. Doesn't help that tons of my classmates clearly are just using AI...

I need a mere 200 dollars

Aaaahhh my classmates are clearly using AI in their stupid posts aaaahhh I hate them and I hate it how do I even respond to this it is TEN PERCENT OF MY GRADE TO RESPOND TO IT they aren't even using it well it's just "highlighting the complex interplay" copy-paste AI aaahhhh IM PAYING FOR THIS

Okay to learn the history of Greek philosophy I taped index cards to my wall and strung them together to make a diagram of ideas and schools. Someone needs to do that for ttrpgs because I'm starting to see the shape but a lot of it is still beyond me

oh my god I want more stories it turns out I love reading stories

How do people feel about progression systems that aren't XP? No character levels at all, in fact. Skills might improve, abilities can be trained or gained over time, but wealth, not XP, is the primary reward. And contacts, maps; stuff related to the game world rather than the abstract character.

I need to get up and start prepping for my Saturday game but I still have this and I don't want to put it down. I'm still not sure how playing this works but I kinda get what people man when they say just reading a game is kind of like playing it, in a way. It's so beautiful...

this article's been going around today and it's just one Hell Description after another, highly recommended harpers.org/archive/2026...

LOOK WHAT I FOUND

I don't think I've ever really loved a book that was less than fifty years old. I never would have made it past 9th grade if they did this.

In my last year of hs I had a teacher who was okay overall, but simply could not figure out kids at all. He insisted we call him doctor, for one, which is ig fine but didn't combine well with his generally irritable, pretentious nature. He knew English literature but was otherwise annoying.

On god I never know what is going on in my favorite hobby (Not asking to have anyone to explain! I ask enough questions! Just can't get past how much there is to learn 💀)

Unironically, I think if I've learned anything from being on this site it's that the ttrpg world is strangely understudied for how literate, and culturally-visible, it is! There really aren't people discussing established schools of thought, except maybe "OSR" in a vague sense?

Yesterday was Valentine's Day so I ended up seeing Wuthering Heights. It was never going to be good, but it could have been not awful? It wasn't. Bizarre in weird ways! Too much sex without anything being sexy! It wasn't pleasingly cruel and insane, just gossipy and lame.

I found a neat thing! Not that I need another system to learn, but this one feels like it might be going somewhere.

Game todaaay! Is it rude to start slowly inserting homemade mechanics into a pre-existing game purely so I can test how they work for my own system? I don't think they'd care, as it shouldn't change the story much and they're pretty small adjustments, at least this time. Anyone ever do this?

Ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew who talks like this about their own students ewww

Cyberpunk Red combines one of the coolest settings imaginable with, somehow, some of the most bizarre ideas I've ever seen. Corporations have..."faces?" Like a literal human who can be held personally responsible for crimes? They...they are EXPLICITLY NOT FACELESS megacorporations?

Entire game came to a screeching halt because of a sudden disagreement over calculating an extremely byzantine dice hypothetical. We are writing out probabilities on paper. my friends are neeeeeerds

People keep posting Epstein emails and they're horrifying, but also not particularly surprising. Girls get harassed by old men all the time from like seventh grade on. Rich ones *would* be even worse. Blegh. But why do they all sound illiterate? Aren't these people supposed to be "elite?"

At a party and this guy pulled out his phone and he's playing his AI-generated music and it's the worst stuff I've ever heard ...since the last time this happened.

Having discovered I can get basically every Call of Cthulhu book for 30 bucks, I drag myself to my job: pricing old, basically useless books with no online market. After the third hour of this, one starts to get really good campaign ideas, at least. 💀 Anyone want a list of long dead horses?

I'm going to buy @cartoonshateher.bsky.social a trophy. I'm used to getting yelled at but I know she hates it so thanks for saying the thing that got me incessantly yelled at (and still does).

Incidentally, if you're wondering how I got to be this way, the answer probably lies in this just beautiful version of 3 Musketeers I was raised with. My grandpa gave it to me and I fell in love with it. The illustrations were dazzling and the sword fights and the scheming and the romance... ❤️

Minneapolis is winning. The tide is shifting. Can you feel it? It’s their Gettysburg. The first Minnesota is charging down the hill, bayonets drawn. This is their furthest advance and they will go no further. WE ARE GOING TO WIN

My maps don't *always* look like this, but sometimes, I have a few minutes before we start. I think we spent 40 or so minutes here.

Politics is horrifying and frightening but on the plus side the first White Dwarf issue's cover art is an illustration of an evil wizard's head being sliced not-so-clean off by a by a dwarf, as I have just learned.

Prepping for my Saturday game, where the party will probaby be finding their first trove of magic items. I don't love magic systems or playing casters, but man, I love magic items. Best treasures there are. I feel pretty robbed in that not a single one of my actual accessories are enchanted...

I had 800 hundred followers on tt before I shut it down. I did because it was killing me but it's somehow become an even better idea anyhow. I'm prescient.

Aaaaaaaaahhhh

You can always give *me* books.

Watching this for multiple reasons, one of which is so I can compare myself to this DM. Immediate thought: do most people speak this quickly?

So I'm realizing that Elden Ring is in MANY ways like my favorite movie, Blade Runner 2049. It's meandering, opaque, almost hostile to the audience, always beautiful, always hinting at hidden depths, horrendously and crushingly sad. But most of all you have to *earn* every single interesting idea.

I like to use real-world naming conventions for the various cultures in my RPG worlds; It makes them feel more realistic. The major human population in my game use Babylonian and Sumerian names. But I thought I'd look at other options, and in doing so found SO MANY BETTER SPELLINGS FOR MY NAME

I don't really like eating, but I do like cooking. And when I'm anxious I find it weirdly soothing. Which is why tonight my dad is eating french onion soup. This might be my favorite recipe to make; even the part where I babysit the onions for like 45 minutes. In fact, that might be the best part.

So the president might blow up Europe and keep me from going on a trip I've worked for for two years and I missed a deadline I didn't remember having and my former best friend is hanging out with my ex. But I live in a really pretty city and I have 7 books to read. And some guy built a weird boat?

😭

You don't. It's MLK day. He was a hero for many reasons, and one of them is that he realized that this imagery is the best tool against injustice there is. ICE will lose *because* of their rampant violence against peaceful Americans, not in spite of it.

I hope everyone who spent the time to give me advice and share their experience know how much it meant to me. I barely slept last night I was so excited, my mind was a blur of ideas. This is a really incredible community and I'm really touched. ... And it's 6 AM and I just want to write more! ❤️

Today I've learned 1% of how Thac0 works, downloaded 6 different zines and mini-rulebooks, and I'm *still* trying to finish this beast. Good thing my bed is very comfortable...

Breakfast today: one waffle, nearly finished. Progress, ig.

Well, that's enough Elden Ring for the night. What a gorgeous world; I had no idea. Everyone says souls games are hard but I didn't realize how breathtaking the world was. The cave with the false night sky overhead? Actually gasped. But wow, it is hard. Time to unwind with some relaxing reading.

Reading people discussing TTRPG rules, systems, theories, etc, really makes me realize how little I know. People talking about Thaco and PTU and dice pools...How has everyone played so many game systems? Where do you even find them? I thought I was at least kind of experienced...wrongly, it'd seem!

Monday is MLK day. He understood that violence is a weapon, of course: but the ones who use it, brazenly and unjustly, suffer for it. If you want to prove how tough you are, don't wave guns around--go put yourself on the line like this guy. It's less macho but it's clearly the more heroic option.

Okay, I think that's enough Elden Ring for one night. One can only die so many times before they have to look their goat-horse in the face and realize they're cooked. Time to retire to bed with some intense research material:

It's Friday night. I have friends. I could go do things. ON THE OTHER HAND: some absolute JERK wants me to put my foolish ambitions to rest. Intolerable.

Immediate thoughts on Elden Ring: -Beautiful, just beautiful world. Perfect. Never seen anything like it. I can't get into the nightmare spike castle yet but just seeing it up there? Wooooff. -Backstabbing and scampering are my only strategies, so it's in many ways like 8th grade.

Thinking about trying Dark Souls. Never played them, but I've heard a lot! Unsure where to start: 1 is apparently a classic, but pretty old; 3 seems to be the popular choice. 2 is apparently weird and alienating; opaque and irritating and mysterious ...I'm drawn to 2. Is this a mistake?

I try to resist the urge, but sometimes I feel it rising. There are, you understand, so many colors I don't have...so many outfits I can't make...