I feel a tension sometimes between my negative outlook on things, which is pretty reality-based, and the equal reality that quite a lot of the ways we've been handling being depressed on the internet are pointlessly self-reinforcing

People of Earth Check This Out

Do you guys remember when I wrote this post, and multiple people responded to it, saying they found it valuable and wanted to use it in their teaching methods? @sethdmichaels.bsky.social I think you were one of them. www.leahreich.com/maybe-stop-b...

“A whole civilization will die tonight” is the most vile thing a US president has ever said, certainly during the post-1945 era when they’ve had the power to kill civilizations with the dropping of a bomb. I’m staring into the darkness. May this not be one of the most fateful days in human history.

The President of the USA declaring that "a whole civilisation will die tonight" is not something that arrives out of a vacuum. It is precipitated by the widespread international failure to hold USA, Israel, and their allies including the UK, accountable for their actions for many decades

Let me say this plainly: Iranian children have as much of a right to live and thrive as American children. Their babies MUST be as precious to me as my 6 niblings and my baby grandnib are IF I want them to have a future. If I want a future for my kin AND humanity, I MUST act like it. So must you.

That is another conversation entirely. And yes, largely I enjoy going through that specific era is because of how experimental things are. But that has nothing to do with nostalgia. And I certainly don't agree with "everything being so sterile". Just have to dig deeper to find things you like.

Character I'm running in a Stars without Number game had "Good Question" under his Home Planet section on his sheet, because I didn't have an answer at the time. That spiraled out into a character essentially dedicated to never giving a straight answer about his own backstory, until very recently.

An RP technique that's been popular in tabletop, and kind of neglected in CRPGs, is giving players options to pick that are specific but unexplained instead of generic. Like instead of "Origin: Mean Streets" it's "a city watchman gave you a scar once," and you decide why (then or later)

based on those Glassdoor reviews, shit would have been straight The Lighthouse

I've never actually watched Nine Inch Nails stuff before and my feeling, as a taxpaying adult, is that it's the artistic equivalent of pulling 115% into a parking space. You were headed somewhere promising with this, but now you're just short an engine block

You know, I'm a fan of the OSR—not because it's better than other ways of playing RPGs, but because it offers unique insights into them that apply to every genre—and I frankly wish more OSR players realized they could talk about these games without coming off like the fucking Eltingville Club

Like do you want your starter adventure to be poking around a gray dwarf ruin looking at cobwebs and dodging dart traps or do you want to fight THESE fucking guys. COME ON.

Been in a great Dungeon Crawl Classics campaign the last few years. It's a retroclone of the Basic D&D set, but acknowledges that the game's period-accurate tone was like 50% kickass, 30% funny on accident, and 20% funny on purpose. DCC doubles down on every category equally. (look at this shit)

I don't think art can only be evaluated by what its worst fans like about it. But it feels worth arguing that fascists are not, meaninfully, "missing the point" of 40k. 1/3

Gonna give Fallout: London a shot

I once joked that when I died, the last thought to run through my head would be the "pænis cupCAKE" soundclip from GMod shitposts. At the time I made that joke, fifteen years ago, it was very unlikely to be true. Except I've thought about it unbidden, at least once, every year since. Stay tuned?

Not to get too mean girl about it but this is exactly what I, someone who hates Doug Walker, thinks a Doug Walker plush face should look like. I see it and think "this is a portrait that captures his soul"

I know I'm late to the party, but this is the interview equivalent of Agent 47 assassinating somebody and them not even noticing.

draft dump

PEEP SHOW x FALLOUT: E1: Mark provokes a centurion by correcting him about Roman history and, to spare himself, pretends to be an undercover frumentarius. He is saved when an undercover frumentarius kills the centurion, a deserter.

That the illegal destruction of USAID will kill more than *20 million people* in the next five years, & has ALREADY KILLED 600,000 in just one year, is a world-historical crime that Americans aren't being told about in the terms & with the repetition necessary for them to believe it.

DCC Demo Con, our FREE online con for new players, has begun! There are still some spots left for demo games throughout the weekend! Register now to learn Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG by playing with experienced game masters this weekend (February 6-8). #DCCRPG tabletop.events/conventions/...

The aesthetic of 3D-era Fallout is probably a design masterpiece, and is objectively a home run from a brand standpoint, but I'm kinda cold on it. It makes the pre-bomb era feel like one big Halloween costume.

If I was cast as the Riddler in anything I would thereafter respond to all interview question with a dogshit impression of the Riddler. Grinch fingers, spinning chair, "wwWOULDn't YOU like to know?"

Times are scary. I hope everyone out there can stay safe and the violence and abduction can end soon. I'm thinking about it and I care too. act.indivisible.org/sign/ice-out...

This is interesting without being in any way surprising. www.pcgamer.com/games/the-el...

It tickles me that in theory, British panel shows are about seeing the guy you know from the thing doing some light banter out-of-character. Except I mostly watch panel shows, so every time I catch a scripted program I feel like I'm watching a clip of a fake movie from a show where the MC's an actor

Think I'm gonna do alright this year

Most of us did not choose to write or draw or design so that we could put products on the shelf. We chose to do it because it’s a set of skills we enjoy exercising, that give us fulfillment. It’s like asking a pro pitcher to just let a machine pitch for them. Fuck off and give me the ball.

This is such a misunderstanding of why writers, artists, and designers do research to begin with, which is to find something unexpected, not capture the average or find reference for the default. And, as always, the biggest misapprehension: We don’t want to NOT do this part. It’s fun to learn shit

Remembering when Succession ended and you'd run into takes like "I am crushed that Siobhan did not get her dream job, which was foreman of her dad's sexism factory"

Been writing a series on running D&D games this year, and this point feels like something I've been trying to sum up for a lot longer than that

About to play in a second edition campaign and I'm messaging the GM how he feels about Player's Option: Skills and Powers. For reference, this is like if he said "let's go get brunch" and I said "sounds good, and afterwards let's ram-raid a gun store"

People should use whatever skill or stat for any check they can justify, to be honest. "But what happens when everyone's rolling Bluff to attack by feinting or Stealth to hide their smirk from the crowd or Arcana to magically light a fire" It fucking kicks ass? Do you hear this shit?

JUST FOUND A FULL REPORT OF DEATHS IN NEW YORK CITY IN 1856, BABY, LET'S FUCKING GO

I thought I liked old documents. Then I started working on a project about old documents, and it turns out I'm eerily passionate about them in a way I'm struggling to process

Fucking howling imagining actually trying to play this. Like you're having a stroke while driving a bumper car

Honestly I think a GM who sucks when they make unfair rulings kinda just sucks anyway. By extension, I think unfair rulings don't really matter. I honestly don't know if this is just me or what

Something I find mildly but increasingly annoying is when we say someone's doing something for "views" or "clicks" or as though the value of these things was intangible. It's not! It's money! They are, most of the time, doing it for money!

One of the things that's so dumb about everyone wanting their own streaming channel is that it depreciates content super, super quickly. Like I would've said "The Da Vinci Code" was worth a few bucks until it was put behind a thin curtain and vanished completely

Been working on more of these lately and the WIP thumbnail haunts me

Sometimes people get the mistaken idea that an old-school campaign means there's no "GM kayfabe" happening. Lethal games benefit from showmanship as much as story games! Whatever the actual threat level is, a canny GM learns to sell it as well as possible.

This here: GM Kayfabe is a whole, extensive thing, to the point that some games ought to address it way more directly.

When I'm feeling well, I watch mysteries so I can try to work out the solution. When I'm sick, I watch mysteries because the solution gets worked out even if I nap through most of it. Two very different fantasies at work here

I've discovered an exercise routine that works for me, and it is, unfortunately, swinging free weights in front of a mirror while blasting fantasy metal

The best tabletop RPG dungeons are, basically, environmental storytelling puzzles. They're testing how well you can put yourself in the scene and ask yourself: "What should I do to avoid being killed?"

These days when you say a game is "experimental," it means it's like soup-flavored ice cream. Daggerfall was experimental like the first caveman to eat a mushroom.