It feels like the only one of the great overblown operatic rock singers left now is Andrew Eldritch.

RIP Bonnie Tyler. I've always had a soft spot for musicians with a taste for theater and Bonnie was always the Queen of that style. www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWcA...

Far left news: CPGB are making noises about standing a "working class candidate" in Clacton although I'm not sure if they mean under their name, Yorp or maybe supporting someone like TUSC.

Partly based on recent convos on here, 4 things I think the RPG community should be way more comfortable saying. 1. RPGs are not something you can engage with on a completely casual level. Any more than you can learn to play guitar that way. If you want that, this is not the right hobby for you.

I like Reigns take on this. Anyone has the potential to do magic. Lots of people can do at least a little bit of magic. Powerful magic users are rare for the same reason there's a lot of people who are first aiders but couldn't do open heart surgery.

More seriously, I have a *strong* feeling not standing in Farage is going to backfire which is why I genuinely hope the Greens do. Farage: I am not part of the establishment, I'm being attacked by it. The three mainstream parties: We aren't going to stand against you!

TUSC, your moment has come.

The funniest outcome in Clacton would be if it's Greens versus Reform and Greens win it.

I'm actually an expert on football. You want to know about terrace culture, chanting, football firms, world cup songs, I'm yer man. Just don't expect me to watch a game.

I'm impressed by the fact that people whose previous timelines would have implied they had as little interest in and knowledge of football as me are now experts on the finer details of FIFA regulations. Possibly while still not knowing what "offside" is.

Congratulations to the Home Nations for winning the tournament that truly matters.

(It should be noted that I do actually hate Eurogames although I do get on alright with the mad lads who play econsims. I'm not joining in obviously. I'm not allowed to because I like polisims. It's like the sharks and the jets).

Also this. Catan is what you bring out when a non gaming relative goes "oh, go on then we'll play one of your games as it's Christmas". That and Ticket to Ride.

I'm absolutely convinced that if Musk played Risk with my standard gaming group we'd have to deal with a full table flip. Let alone Diplomacy or Republic of Rome.

‪ Day 6 #musicchallenge #shortandquick The Ruts - Criminal Mind www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rfyl...

Managed to catch up with this although I'm maybe a week behind. Week 2: How to Get Filthy Rich is Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid Recommend by @mfelps.bsky.social A mixed experience for me. I found the second person narrative difficult to gel with.

I'm going to be hardline on this and say it's fraudulent.

Look, if it distracts them from posting about food the Americans can make as many annoying football posts as they want.

God, you have sex to the Teletubbies theme ONCE and people think you're capable of anything.

My big concerns round AI, writing, false positives and creativity are this. AI slop is entirely unwelcome and a threat to livelihoods, obviously. DrivethruRPG allowing it has made the whole site worse. But the amount of false accusations that fly around isn't going to fix that.

The brutal truth is that the only thing likely to spot AI writing is humans who have been professionally trained to do so. That's statistically the only group with a high success rate. Most people have 50%-60% success rate; not much higher than a coin flip.

Day 5 #musicchallenge #shortandquick The Divine Comedy - Geronimo www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYin...

This surely can not be true because the nineties was only 10 years ago.

I think the highest is Bristol at number 7.

The Green Party refused to vote for me for their leader solely based on my "fuck the planet, I think we should pave it over" position. It's an outrage.

Kate Forbes entire complaint seems to be "people found out what my views were and then they chose not to vote for me for SNP leader solely on the basis of those views". Not convinced the press would be this sympathetic if the views in question were "ACAB" or something.

I was slam dunk for Pope until I came out as an agnostic.

Petty 36 year old grudges. Rick Swan was the worst thing to ever happen to RPGs. "the lack of magic, monsters, and other elements common to fantasy settings severely limits the game's appeal." Fuck you. This makes me think the D&D hating wargame grognards were correct.

Early retroclones were useful because of the copyright situation and supplemental material. But these days I require you to have a solid answer to "why do I need this when I own both OSE and Labyrinth Lord?".

(I already know how to make D&D feel like the games of my student days and I refuse to spend that much money on drugs).

There are many divides in the OSR but I think the important one is what of two questions it asks. "How do I make this feel like the D&D games of my youth?" versus "What if D&D had gone in a different direction?" Increasingly I am only interested in the latter.

I'm trying to get better about finishing projects rather than having lots on the go at once, so a *very* rough priority list currently. Feel free to say if any of these particuarly grab you and it *might* shift priority around; this is very lazy market research.

This is a brilliantly written and eloquently argued blogpost that I am against in its entirety. Because I am FOR replicability and I am FOR restrictions and I am FOR repeatability and I think that it is an underutilised technique in the RPG design space.

Day 4 #musicchallenge #shortandquick Bob Vylan - Turn off the Radio www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS09...

I think one thing that a combination of the rise of 5e-as-cultural-reference and successful APs has possibly obfuscated is that there's likely a hard cap on how many people are actually going to want RPGs as a hobby. It has too much commitment for a truly casual approach.

Honestly, the biggest success we've had at getting video game people over to TTRPGs hasn't been anything designers have done. It's been the fact that a lot of bundle sites do TTRPGs as well, giving people low cost entry points and higher visibility for not 5e.

This is also an important lesson for TTRPG designers. You're either marketing to the fandom or to groups that play. If it's the former, good luck (never worked out how personally outside "license a big IP). But it's important to understand who your audience are.

Some Pokemon Tabletop Adventure players have started calling it "PTA" and that is going to cause so many comedy misunderstanding hijinks.

r/lfg is amazing because it's 9/10 "We are a group of six players who want someone to run 5e for us. Here is two pages of the world setting you should run in, we already have PCs made" and 1/10 "I'm a GM running a game that's like Rifts, but sexy and historically plausible. Please DM if interested".

Day 2 #shortandquick Lydia Loveless - Song About You www.youtube.com/watch?v=hr_j...

"Politicians talking to people they disagree with is part of the job" So we're going to see Forbes attend Marxism 2026 tomorrow are we?

If wrestling is fake explain THIS.

Day 2. #Short&Quick It's a tradition or an old charter or something. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj1l...

Day 1. This is too easy, so I'll not be doing anything over 2 minutes. www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-yw... It's going to be really hard not just posting Napalm Death for a month as a bit though.

I am glad to say I trust the local kids to rob every single one of these they see and then use them as fancy skateboards. (This is probably why I haven't seen one yet).

I look forward to the Guardian supporting the Harrying of the North as part of their Norman Yoke era.

I fear that I am basically Dietrich and should probably stop fighting it.

Only one game can do all three.