i love april fools day

The problem with having a caller in D&D is that the guy who wants to be caller is always the worst at it. Better that the referee watch the group, identify the player who best coaxes consensus from the others, then direct questions to them. Something something also society

christ millennials we have got to let the younger generations break our balls about our dumb bullshit. epic bacon garbage and so forth. did none of you learn the golden rule of ballbreaking: the more you gripe about it the more of it you bring rightly down on yourself

Worst day of the year for trans rogues.

There is something evil within me, so that whenever someone says a mechanic in abstract is "bad game design," I am compelled to list ways that mechanic could be fun productive.

Goddamn, Ian. Knife through my heart.

An excerpt of an interview with art historian and critic David Sylvester which i think feels relevant to the environment artists find themselves in the digital/social media/algorithmic content age

In all seriousness though, elder millennial jokes aside, I think it’s important to resist the media framing of any mainstream resistance to the status quo as just the shrill nonsense of middle-aged women with nothing better to do. This isn’t the first time they’ve run out this playbook.

Life hack: wear makeup so you force yourself to wash your face

I've said it before: I genuinely consider it a moral imperative that people my age and up bang the drum about what the Internet used to be so those younger know that there's nothing inherent about what it is now. The Internet doesn't have to be this; its culture can and has belonged to people.

opus magnum dlc :3

Ain't that the fuckin' truth. Goddamn.

...absolutely incredible. Here's what Medieval Bologna would have looked like when all its towers were intact. Florence didn't have so many but did have dozens, so the richest part of the city center would have looked much like this. Much to the despair of the city fire brigade! 11/?

No one has a bigger grindset mindset than an adventurer with a downtime turn.

Also, here's a sneaky peaky at part of one of my procedures, which articulate this process decently (I hope):

Seven-Part Pact, my fantastical and ornate TTRPG about the seven most powerful wizards in a fantasy world, is coming this summer to kickstarter!! www.kickstarter.com/projects/sjg...

While working on a more substantive project, I got to thinking about a maladaption I've noticed in many referees. Then a few hours later, a friend of mine did the exact thing I was thinking of right in front of me. So I wrote about it. www.paperspencils.com/referee-sabo...

@bakenshake.bsky.social I was just reading your "Welcome to the Blogosphere" post. What a fun goof on flux space! I'm tempted to roll that event die for myself.

There is no amount of explaining a technical problem on a help forum that won't prompt either "There's no reason for you to do the thing you want to do," or "I'm not reading all of that explanation."

The pun in the title of this woodworking show is so obscure I'm baffled who it's for.

During a big 10-person D&D session last night, 4 casters were working together to craft a single illusion. Someone joked that they should need to craft it as a one-word-story. Someone else said "Yes actually, make them do that." It was rad. Great fun.

In 2012 there was a short-lived sitcom called Go On, about a grief support group. This week I revisited it 14 years later (💀), and I'm kinda surprised how well it holds up. If it'd had another season to polish itself I think it would have become a real gem.

One thing I miss about windows is how easy it was to find a .exe written by some nerd with a cool website which does whatever weird task you need help with. That said, there really is nothing like the satisfaction of successfully automating a task with a bash scrip in linux.

I once played a sprawling game of Star Wars: Empire at War with a friend. Ideally we would have used the auto-resolve function for minor skirmishes, but I discovered that if I insisted we play through them I won 100% of the time. It might take 2 hours, but I always won.

me reading games: eugh, i'd rather not need to reference the books at the table, just give me rules simple enough to play with me writing games: THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN HAVE A MEANINGFUL PLAY EXPERIENCE IS BY CROSS REFERENCING MY MATRICIES

The accomplishment of "We Read the Bloggies" is incredible. In just a few weeks they produces nearly the same number of episodes as Blogs on Tape has in almost 9 years. Bravo to everyone involved, that's incredible.

MAGIC ITEM: "Out of Order" sign. Anything that this object is affixed to will break. This effect typically ends when the sign is removed. If you affix it to a bridge, the bridge won't instantly collapse, but the next wagon that goes over it will probably fall through it.

I've noticed the first 10% of a historical essay is usually the most challenging. It's where the author addresses themselves to the context in which they're writing--one they assume the reader is familiar with, but which no longer exists. I wonder how this is reflected in contemporary RPG blogs.

Why does "ergo" get treated like a big / pretentious word? Its short! It has a fun sound! It rolls off the to gue so much more pleasantly than "therefore."

An idea that's bounced around my head forever is character creation as branching paths mediated by random tables. "Should your character be more X, Y, Z?" with each leading to a different table, and to different choices. Enough to feel labyrinthine, but few enough to be done quickly.

As a youth, I remember hearing stories about how fucked Perl's syntax was. Today I had to write some Perl, and I felt my father's anger vibrating out of my body from the deep place where it is entombed. Perl really is The Infernal Speech of the number box.

Maybe 6 months since I touched an audio editor, and I've already completely forgotten all the keyboard shortcuts. blogsontape.paperspencils.com/2026/02/11/a...

Been listening to a lot of PC-98 music compilations. It's in that sweet spot where we had enough processing power to make complex compositions, yet it's still all chiptunes Though for some strange reason I feel compelled to quickly shut it off whenever someone enters the room

About time someone came for my throne. I've grown fat and complacent, I'll be easy to overthrow.

I must kill the supply-hoarding, dumpster-diving tech child who lives in my heart. I do not need these cases that AOL trial disks came in anymore. The last time I had to trade pirated media on CDs was 2007

Logicians silly jism.

In my Windows days, typing special characters required memorizing random strings of numbers. Thus, at most, I knew how to type three or four of them (EM dash <3) Now, in Linux, typing special characters is so easy that I can usually just guess ones I don't know and get it right on the first try.

some of you

"Generations" are bullshit, and I avoid them as a category. But goddamn sometimes ya encounter somebody who is utterly trapped in a perspective and mode of humor that was hip when they were 20

apolgy for bad english where were u wen Grobbulus RP-PVP die i was at house eating poutine when phone ring "Grobby is kil" "no" RIP 2019-2026. #worldofwarcraft #warcraft #warcraftclassic #worldofwarcraftclassic

My loathing of Blizzard Entertainment runs deep, but my affection for Grobbulus RPPVP is eternal. It was a good run grobmob. Fuck every one of you, and have a good life. ❤️

I'll just keep coming up with my own passwords. And not using a Ring camera.

💯💯💯

I grew up in North Dakota going to gun shows. The ways I hate Americans would make the average Frenchman's head explode.

There is a moment in Peacemaker season 2 when John Cena erupts in child emotions. He fully ceases to be an adult in his suffering, and it hurts to watch. Good actin' I tells ya what

The full "etcetera" is superior to "etc." for most writing.

Playing an osr game at a local bar. My WIS is low, so the referee told me that I mistakenly believe I can detect evil at will, which I have interpreted as my character being racist. Theres been an ongoing drama between my PC and his woke hireling. Then the giant ants came...

The art practiced by today's magicians is but a grisly caricature of that which the ancient Nör invented the golden art of Sorcery. #lore #incunabuli #ttrpg