Why is it so seemingly common to see crunchy gamebooks (not just D&D, lots of games) follow a method of writing where game terms that are invoked dozens or even hundreds of times will have only one passing mention of the term's definition.
Never repeated, never pointed to by any other passage, not even given in an index or glossary, just secreted away in a seemingly random spot like a game of Where's Waldo in a 200+ page text.
This isn't meant to be venting, it's genuinely perplexing that an approach so specific and so counterproductive seems to happen so often. What's the deal?
Most tabletop game designers are very bad technical writers.
(This isn't a knock against game designers in particular; most people in general are very bad technical writers, even among those whose job is to be good at it. It turns out that assessing how your own writing will read from the perspective of someone who doesn't know the things you know is an extremely difficult skill to learn!)
If you're bent in a very particular way, it can be a fun exercise to go through independently published tabletop RPGs and count how many times they just plain forgot to explicitly define some critical piece of jargon the text uses constantly. For most that number is higher than zero!
At least one RPG kept telling you how many dice to roll and how many successes you need for things without ever defining what kind of dice or which results constituted "a success".
You might be surprised how many games will instruct you to roll "dice" without thinking to specify at any point whatsoever how many sides the dice in question are meant to have, in a medium famously associated with dice with variable numbers of sides.
(One may be inclined to assume that a game that just says "dice" without further qualifiers must be talking about conventional six-sided dice. If so, one would assume wrongly.)
#i'm guessing the other most popular assumtion is a d10 from people who came from wod? (via @moon-of-curses)
In my experience it's a three-way tie between "the unqualified die is a d6 because that's what 'dice' means in everyday language", "the unqualified die is a d20 because the author assumes all games are basically identical to Dungeons & Dragons unless otherwise specified", and "the unqualified die is a d10 because it's a dice pool system and the author has never played a game with dice pools constructed from any other kind of dice (and also the text employs but does not define the term 'dice pool')".
Man, how do you fuck up telling people what kind of dice to use??? We have a standard notation for it!!! Even teenage me making awful fantasy RPGs attempts knew to write "roll 3d6"
Tell that to every iteration of Dungeons & Dragons prior to Third Edition, which would often do daft shit like stating the range of a random number without specifying how to obtain it. Just busting out "4–18 goblins" and leaving the GM to work out what combination of dice and modifiers yields those bounds.
#(and as we know 2d8+2 and 1d6+3d4 are totally equivalent and interchangeable :) ) (via @morkaischosen)
Oh, that's not the worst of it – I picked this specific example for a reason. We also need to consider the possibilities that it's an off-by-one typo for "3–18", implying 3d6, or that it's a confusion-of-similar-glyphs typo for "4–16", implying 4d4!
watching youtube in the 18th century: goddddddd could you skip through the 20 minutes of thanks for your ~most gracious patron her grace the duchess of D--shire, a new maecenas & the loveliest of ladies~ and get to your handel tier listing
#yall in the 18th century are spoiled as fuck 15th century youtube SUCKS#yeah dedication to the patron of the work and the local nobility is one thing but imagine that PLUS a ten miniute prayer for the virgin#mother's intercession AND the fucking guild ads that play for half the fucking runtime#and dont even get me started on these “Raid” and “Clash of Clans” ads like I KNOW THE CLANS ARE RAIDING AND CLASHING dont remind me#like fucking hell im just switching back to the book of hours at this point
Whoever it was that posted about Anthropeum on here, I just want you to know you have caused irrevocable damage to my family group chat AND the break room at the museum I work at
Tip for anyone who's caught up with the Turning novel and is feeling a bit burnt out from reading.
It might be better to read chapters in bunches rather than reading them immediately when they come out.
In my personal experience, the reason Turning was so enjoyable when I first read it was because of the overarching storyline. When binging it, callbacks to certain storylines felt more intriguing & exiting.
But they can feel tedious when you want immediate gratification from point A to point B
Reading in bunches makes things less confusing and more fun for me
6. Spread conspiracy theories that the Democrats have deliberately sabotaged the pool and arrest whoever pulls out the floating paint chunks as vandals.
I like finding out what people my age and older had as their first cell phone. Anybody younger and their answer is a generic Android or iPhone. Phones from the 2000s were some wacky device like the sidekick or samsung x83 or lg env2
Happy migraine and headache awareness month. This may seem like a minor terminology nitpick, but it’s a serious misconception about migraine: nausea is an actual migraine symptom, not a thing that happens because of the headache. When people with migraine experience nausea during attacks, it’s not because the pain is so bad (the idea that migraine is always excruciatingly painful is also a myth), it’s because migraine causes a lot of symptoms that aren’t pain, including nausea.
This goes for other symptoms as well: although pain can definitely contribute to people’s experiences of these symptoms, fatigue and brain fog are actual migraine symptoms, not just pain symptoms.
This is also your friendly PSA that nausea is not a normal tension headache symptom, if you frequently get nauseous with your headaches, you almost certainly have migraine.
For the americans out there, 1kg is about 2lbs. Rewriting this bost gives:
"To answer a lot of people's question: this package is [4lbs] there's also, [10lbs] and [20lbs] ones (which used to be sold in most stores, but you can find them only in specialized ones nowadays). There are some tiny ones, like 1lb! Those are the ones you buy to carry when you travel."
Croatians apparently take a pound of toothpast with them when they travel.
Happy pride month everyone always remember that the sinkhole has an ecosystem large enough to house not only insects but likely several species of small birds or mammals
A daily game that challenges our understanding of human cultures. Ten objects. 5,000 years of human history. Guess where and when each artif
An interesting game where you are presented with 10 artifacts from the MET. You have to place where the artifact is from and what time period it is from. Each artifact scores up to 10,000 points, and you lose points the further away your guess is and how far off in time you are. You can only play once a day. Thanks to @baebeylik for showing this to me.
Today I scored really well. Yesterday ... not so much.
Anthropeum.com · Jun 8 2026
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79,001 · top 3% of players today!
Here's some of the notes, starting with the things multiple people brought up:
SHRIMP COCKTAIL:
banahbanah: #flashback to that one fic where Peter Parker frets about drinking shrimp cocktail because of the alcohol
generaldeliciousness: adding: what a prawn/shrimp cocktail is
#why is your character turning it down because they're under 21 #do you think prawn cocktail is a cocktail #this lives in my brain rent-free constantly #the rest of the fic was so normal #and good enough that i'll still re-read it #but bro
And then many, MANY, people wondering if this was actually authour mistake, since Peter really would do this!
POMEGRANATES:
zhajhassa: #haha where's that post that was like someone describing someone eating a pomegranate but they ate it like an apple
thornhands: #once someone wrote persephone biting into a whole Pomegranate #had to stop and stare at a wall for a minute
sungsingsanguine: I once saw someone very confidently write about a character eating slices of pomegranate.
FRUIT TREES:
zagreuses-toast: #given a very endearing glimpse into a writers blindspots by seeing them describe someone sitting under a ''pineapple tree''
salatrash: I remember something about picking watermelons... OF A FUCKING TREE
baander: #cranberry trees
DOUGH/BATTER:
maycelium: #I'm a chef so I'm really used to people not accurately describing how to cook food #But I was surprisingly flabbergasted when someone was writing making a cake and was kneading it. Which uh #Not necessary for cake. It was interesting for sure but just bizarre
livebloggingmydescentintomadness: #the one that drove me nuts was when a character set aside a batch of PASTA DOUGH 'to rise' #pasta doesn't have yeast!! #it does need to REST but it will never RISE #you do not want an airy crumb on your noodles
lovesodeepandwideandwell: #THE ONE WHERE THEY MADE COOKIES BY LADLING BATTER INTO A TRAY
Some other topics:
ANIMALS:
catenarwhal: #mandatory 'how cows produce milk' mention#i'll never recover from that one I fear
piromantic: #one time i saw someone fake their way through describing how spiders behave
pluto-lichen: horses
misskittypotter: #stardew valley faking its way through what fresh fish smell like
pa-pa-plasma: #saw someone faking their way through knowing what a seal is once #i still am fucked up over that one to this day. they just straight up did not know #& they were NOT good at guessing it either like it was clear they had never googled that animal ever #& was only just now realizing via answering questions from anons that seals are not!! what they assumed. initially
SEX:
dykevandyke: #what a prostate is #and where it is located #as in. external.
dreamyeyedrose: #I remember back in the ff.net days reading an Ichigo/Renji fic where the writer assumed the penises go inside each other #and I was like “I mean I don't know how it works for sure I don't have one but idk if that's how it works”
SOME OTHER FOOD STUFF:
thetrekkiehasthephonebox: #add another one to the list bloggers#this character is cooking a salad
shosta: #still baffled about the published work that didn't know food could freeze
sun-dari: #once i read a fic where the author didn't understand cinnamon
alto-tenure: #read something recently where the author was just. blatantly wrong about spices
dramatic-dolphin: #i saw someone try to fake their way through what ramen is once. like 14 years ago.#but i remember.#i was very confused about ramen for a few months. they were writing it so authoritatively.
the-celery-stalks-at-midnight: #i will never ever forget someone putting leftover fries in the microwave to reheat them and setting the timer for five minutes
typeghost: #this sparked a memory of a hannibal fic where the author had to fake their way through writing about gravy
draculin: #the one fanfic where the author knows about coffee only as a concept wrote a character as a coffee drinker#was very interesting#I don't remember the fandom or the plot but I was mesmerized by the coffee actions and choices
11235811235811: #there's a lot of faking their way thru congee in the svsss fandom i'll also note
fishali3n: #read one where the person clearly didnt know what tofu is
emmy-everafter: #in the aftermath of shadow and bone s2 i saw a lot of people pretending to know what stroopwafels are #babes they are more like cookies than breakfast waffles #like yes there is a waffle pattern but you're not gonna cut into a stack of them with syrup and sugar#🤣🤣🤣
NON-FOOD STUFF:
red-umbrella-811: Shoutout to Dame Agatha Christie for faking her way through what a wrench is in a very popular published work.
bluebeetle: #once saw someone have a character put an entire phone book in their pocket
nonametis: #- sex talk in languages other than english #<- or just the petnames in a different language other than English
sadisticpony: #the fanfiction i saw this week where op DIDNT KNOW HOW AUTOMATIC DOORS WORKED #and that they arent in peoples homes!!! of course. also opening the automatic door for someone is unironically very funny but its not #its not like. grabbing the door handle to let someone in. helpppp
danmeichael: #reminds me of the fic with the figure drawing class where the character started with the feet. #i love you feet first figure drawing author
meowmix1100blr: #me watching this one fic absolutely obliterate what the board of directors does
vexedhexes: #one time i read an architect character making a doorway bigger by building a bigger door #what a beautiful world. #OH. also gravity falls fic where they go 'oh piedmont is in california so its warm all year round'
leveragehunters: #characters going to a beer garden #And it's literally a garden outside the pub#It was a very cute mistake
fitofpique: #yes! #grown men do not get blind drunk off two beers #but i am possibly guilty of the hypothermia one #assuming it does not make you very horny?
dadvans-likes: #always thinking abt the soup kitchen fic #the entire setting of the fic was 'soup kitchen' #and i very quickly realized #the author did not know what a soup kitchen was #and they thought that soup kitchens only served soup #fic
msmargaretmurry: #i love fanfiction #once read a fic where the characters played 20 questions #but the author seemed to not know how to play 20 questions and was just kind of winging it........ #immaculate
shakespeareaddict: #Look I know not all of us are hockey experts #But it takes about ten seconds of research or any attention paid to the show to realize #That the Stanley cup playoffs are not in fucking September
baejax-the-great: #the funniest one i saw #was someone faking what church is like #like 1. they really didn't have to write an entire church experience for their fic #and 2. they had clearly never even watched a show where people went to church #it was bonkers weird
twosunson: #things ive seen authors faking #knowing how to unclog a drain #knowing. literally any history #knowing what ketamine looks like (apparently- oregano) #(you know who you are)
waterhorseyblues-ao3: #beltane being celebrated in winter #wales being portrayed as a completely separated land from england (i wish) #characters getting up after weeks of bedrest like that dosnt completely fuck you up
violetfairydust: #i once read a fic where the flight time from london to seattle was 3 hours
purekesseltrash: One time, in a fic set specifically in Des Moines, IA, two of the characters casually drove 20 minutes to the ocean. The memory continues to delight me. I want to know where that author thought that Iowa was.
I just want to take a minute to address the folks in the audience who are worried that this man’s final wishes cannot be honoured. I saw a lot of people say that this would be desecration of a corpse or that human remains can’t be bought and sold like that.
This is not true. There are sites you can go on right now to buy human remains, like skulls and organs and even human teeth. Human bodies get put up in museums and dissected in hotel conference rooms more often than you might like to think. And that’s with DONATED bodies, people who donate their bodies to science for whatever reason. And though they may have signed up to be used after death, I don’t think any of them expected to be used like this.
Emphatically, this case is different. The deceased has expressly told his family what to do with his remains, and indeed, those companies that make jewelry out of human ashes are real and aren’t even hard to find. This is why cannibalism is not expressly illegal in the US.
It’s more that his wishes might not be honored because it would be hard to find someone who’d actually do it. Defleshing a skull is not a common skill and quite often from an ethical standpoint the few businesses who know how wouldn’t do it. If they don’t have proof that it’s donated depending on the state it could be desecration of a corpse. Basically he needs to get it in writing, preferably in a will or similar document, that this is in fact consensual and what he wants.
Source-wrote a paper on human remains law in the U.S. once.
