To The Stars, My Love

Astra, 20s, They/He pronouns. Not really a blog about anything anymore. Ask me about Mola Molas.

[titsay]

[demilypyro]

[demilypyro]

It's what he would've wanted

[lindleland]

[trainwrrck]

[pokemonheritageposts]

Pokemon Heritage Post

[tpwrtrmnky]

Ok, thought experiment:

You have two TTRPGs, Adventures & Aberrations, and Brigands & Bloodshed.

A&A has a well-known, glaring flaw in its rules as written, which results in critical hits being worse across the board for every player character, always, despite the rules presenting critical hits as particularly damaging. The solution is well-known and a standard house rule the entire community knows about.

B&B has the exact same rules, except that the critical hit rules have been fixed.

In both games, you are instructed that you can change the rules if you wish.

Is B&B a better game than A&A, or does the fact that you can houserule away the difference mean that they are equally good games?

[tpwrtrmnky]

Suppose, for the sake of the thought experiment, that "I like when critical hits suck" is an incorrect opinion for these games.

[vriska-coded]

My personal opinion, except my opinions about ttrpg design are always correct (obvious /j there)

B&B is better. Here are the reasons:

- A game “instructing you that you may change the rules” is frankly irrelevant because you can do that with any tabletop game. Nobody asks Hasbro if they can play Uno with stacking +2s and +4s.

-Not everybody that plays a game is a part of whatever nebulous “community” exists around it, especially in the modern era of TTRPGs where you can buy a game online and play with your friends while never speaking to a single other person about it. Those players are deprived of the house rule, especially if they are not adept enough at game design to fix it themselves.

-Fundamentally, a game which more competently achieves its design goals is a “better game” if we are trying to assess something as subjective as game design by objective standards.

TLDR: if I buy a game and it’s not a playtest draft, I shouldn’t need to go on reddit or join a discord for it to function properly.

[hotvampireadjacent]

[marisatomay]

the “i had a good time” factor still the unbeatable metric in deciding if media is good

[wizardpepsi]

baseball players in the 20s were all named shit like Dipsy Doodle and Crunch Johnson

[sistertaxon]

[sistertaxon]

[humming-fly]

#they named them like cats in a shelter

[lavendersalve]

[sistertaxon]

[playthings2007]

Completely lost all concepts of joke comprehension for a moment because my instinct was to register this as a new type of kitchencel

[souperluminal]

05.29 - Blue Blade

[unchildhood]

MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI

House of Leaves (2000);

photos by George Ngayu, or @monstertalent

[chick-it-out]

you're doin great & i'm glad ur around

[sukinapan]

cards i have so far o( ❛ᴗ❛ )o

some i'm adapting from older illustrations and some are new

[black-quadrant]

ADHD affects how I experience time, not how I experience attachment. I love you. I miss you. I just don't realize how long it’s been since I last said that, let alone messaged.

I understand that most normal functioning brains need regular engagement to maintain a bond. Absence doesn’t diminish my affection. My silence isn’t neglect or disinterest. It’s time blindness and object impermanence. The contact gap is purely neurological, not emotional. Thank you for being patient with my inconsistency and holding a seat in your heart for me.

[beesmygod]

HARMFUL GAY STEREOTYPES EMBODIED BY MOHG

lives in sewer

kidnaps children actually he was cleared of this one

blood magic

[hexdrake]

never stops being funny

[estrogenpatchnotes]

My job? I’m the bat enemy in 2D games that flies at you from a diagonal angle you can’t shoot in, it’s an under appreciated role but really serves to test the player’s understanding of the mechanics leading up to harder challenges. I also receive an intense smug satisfaction when they can’t hit me.

[achillesinhighheels]

A Statement of Pride" by Nigerian artist and photographer Favour Jonathan

[aflo]

I'm imagining a world where RPGMaker somehow made it as the de facto codebase for software and you have to navigate your banking app by walking around in a huge room full of NPCs named "make deposit" and "make withdrawal" etc and there's loud as fuck stock music playing

[aflo]

[cheaphalloweencostume]

legit about to cry laughing because i tried digital sculpting for the very first time and accidentally made a weird scary hag

[cheaphalloweencostume]

what did i do