End Days Engine

(Formerly Daily Planscape) Welcome to the show! Here we explore RPGs and wargames with plot hooks, world building, and occassional math. Questions or comments? Send them to planescape.bestiary (at) gmail.com!

[enddaysengine]

Reblog-free Index

Time for a new and improved pinned post. 

My name is Chris. I’ve been blogging about RPGs (and other stuff) on Tumblr since the spring of 2013 and eventually turned that into a really freelancing gig for Scion and Chronicles of Darkness. 

And yet I’m still here because I love sharing and interacting with everyone on the hellsite. 

Obligatory plug, if you like what I write, tips are on and you can also support on my Patreon. Neither are required, but both mean the world to me, even if its just a buck. 

I’ve collected everything that I have written in a series of short posts, linked below. 

Current Projects

Chronicles of Darkness

Eberron (Pathfinder)

Paths Beyond (Pathfinder)

Scion 

Archived Projects

Planescape Articles

Planscape Monsters (A) (Pathfinder)

Planescape Monsters (B-Z) (Pathfinder)

Starfinder Wars

Reasons for this: 

It makes it easier to search up an article easily if you know what you are looking for. 

I find this easier to read than Tumblr’s autogenerated archive.

It makes it easier for prospective employers to browse my work and not have to wade through my reblogs

It lets me visualize how far I’ve come and how much I’ve improved. 

If you also enjoy writing and may want to go pro yourself, I strongly encourage you to do this as well. 

[depsidase]

[reagan-slayer69]

“but what if you abort the baby who’ll cure cancer?!” sir the baby who will cure cancer is an organic chemistry major who works at a Home Depot because you use AI to go through your resumes

[mel-155-a]

"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." - Stephen Jay Gould, The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History

[explorerrowan]

What if someone who died of COVID because your stupid ass refused to mask up or get vaccinated was going to cure cancer?

What if someone who shot themselves as a teenager because you refused to let them transition genders would have cured cancer?

What if one of the kids in an Iranian school that the US recently bombed was going to cure cancer?

What if some teenager whose body wasn't ready but who you made carry to term anyway and who died giving birth to the resulting child was destined to cure cancer?

There are so many other ways lives and progress are cut short for such stupid reasons. Maybe we should work on those before trying to predict the future about what a zygote might do?

[shoogachi]

🎭 HEXADECIMAL 🎭

[iconuk01]

Just to note that Hexadecimal's introductory episode: The Medusa Bug, has been cleaned up, and is now available in HD format remastered from it's original master tapes by the fine folk at the ReBoot ReWind project, and it looks AWESOME!

[thefingerfuckingfemalefury]

AHHHHHHHH AWESOME :D

[demi-shoggoth]

@tyrantisterror

[mangled-by-disuse]

in happier pride news i actually found this deeply heartwarming

that's solidarity baybeeee

[lgbtlaughs]

Further context: Durham city council (Reform UK) cut funding and support for Pride. The Durham Miner's Association and other trade unions raised enough money for Durham Pride 2026 to go ahead - a direct call back to when Lesbian and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) raised money for mining communities when Margaret Thatcher seized union funding during the miner strikes of 1984-85.

At the 1985 Labour party meet, the motion to support LGBT rights as a party was passed due to a block vote from mining unions.

Stephen Guy, the chair of the Durham Miners’ Association, said that when it became apparent Durham Pride was under threat, he took it upon himself to “encourage the trade union movement to step up and do the right thing, and stand shoulder to shoulder with the LGBT+ community […] They not only raised funds for us, but came to our communities, uplifted our spirits when they were down, and showed their solidarity.”

[explorerrowan]

An injury to one is an injury to all.

[historicity-was-already-taken]

Something that's come up again and again in these "fleeing Europe" Holocaust memoirs, is the presence of passionate Nazis who seem incapable of grasping why Jews might not want to socialize with them. They can't seem to comprehend the impact of their politics on these very real people, and some behave in a confused, even hurt manner.

It is highly reminiscent of Trump voters who can't comprehend why people who do not support Donald Trump no longer wish to maintain those relationships. "It's just politics; I can't believe they'd end a friendship over politics" is the refrain, with no comprehension of the impact those "politics" are having on ordinary people.

I suppose there is some psychology of authoritarianism etc here, but, woof.

And in case someone is about to get Big Mad about my comparing Nazis to Trump voters: you're not a National Socialist, that is correct. You are a homegrown American fascist. I suggest that you either own it, or think really hard about why you're feeling so righteously indignant upon reading this.

[goth-queen]

[qillermeme]

[nitashinori]

That post about death note being "everyone's first anime" (untrue statement) made me curious and now I want to gather data for science

Can you reblog this and tell me where are you from and what was your starter anime?

[depsidase]

[hotvampireadjacent]

I’ve been trying to share this since I found out. They are moving onto harassing people in Memphis.

Memphis is “under full-blown occupation” by ICE. Here’s why you may not know that.

Community members face retaliation for trying to spread the word out, a lawsuit alleges.

Everyone was lovely in getting the word out about Chicago and Minnesota. I want to spread that awareness for folk in tennessee.

[000l]

[shrewreadings]

like to charge, reblog to cast.

[daysleftofsecondterm]

980 days left

[galvanizedfriend]

Chloé Zhao, who just won an Oscar for best director, writes fanfiction.

That's the kind of validation I needed in my life. Thank you, ma'am.

[absurdthirst]

To all those that think there is an age limit to fanfiction or you “have to be this” to write fanfiction — fuck off.

[fadinggalaxysalad]

I hope this reaches every author on this site. If they haven’t written a word in years, only are writing in their head and haven’t put it down yet, are hip deep in their own War and Peace wordcount fic. 

[mothsprout]

Had a dream that I saw this ad in a paper

[delestre]

please stop this looks like a real tumblr ad

[undeadentropy]

I literally didn't question it until I read the post. I was just about to be happy the tumblr shitpost ad ecosystem was beginning to heal.

[dominaexmachina]

The Label Is the Work

There is a study. Duke University, published 2023. Researchers showed participants a set of paintings and labeled them either “human-created” or “AI-created.” The twist: every single painting in the set was AI-generated. Same images. Different labels. Different ratings — across liking, beauty, profundity, and perceived worth — every time, in favor of the “human” ones. The effect wasn’t visual. It was entirely top-down: the label rewired the experience of the object itself.

This is not a niche academic finding. This is a description of how aesthetic judgment actually works for most people, most of the time. You don’t encounter a work in a vacuum. You encounter it with a story attached. The story is part of the work.

Which makes the following cases interesting.

2023. Miles Astray, photographer. He submitted a real photograph of a flamingo — taken on film, no AI involved — to a photography competition’s AI-generated category. To make a point. The image won both jury and public vote. Contest organizers disqualified it when Astray revealed it was real. The photo was too good to be human, apparently. Until it was.

2023. Suzi Dougherty, Sydney. She shot a photograph of her son mid-stride in a Gucci exhibition, mannequins in the background. Entered a local photo contest. Disqualified for being AI-generated. The judge said the image felt “too perfect to be true”. It was a phone photo taken in ten minutes. The mannequins read as uncanny. The son was just photogenic.

2025. The Velvet Sundown. AI folk rock band. Over a million Spotify streams before anyone publicly questioned the source. People added the music to playlists. Then someone noticed the promo photos looked off. Not the music — the photos. The music still sounded the same after the reveal. Only people’s relationship to it changed.

Three cases. Three different directions of the same error. Human work flagged as AI. AI work enjoyed as human. The detector isn’t running on aesthetics — it’s running on suspicion, context, and whatever story arrived first.

The post from Tumblr says AI is always noticeable. Saturation gives it away. Movement gives it away. It’s just so easy to spot.

The data says otherwise. The data says you spot what you’re looking for, and you find what you expect.

[enddaysengine]

Me at the end of my teens: I am depressed and bitter because I have trauma that I haven’t even begun to unpack.

Me at the end of my 20s: I spent a lot of time working on myself and resolving these issues. Life is looking up.

Me at the end of my 30s: I have so much to be grateful for, but I am also bitter and angry because I have spent more time than I spent in my depression trying to advocate for a sustainable workload and I am unwilling to keep sacrificing my days on the alter of burnout

[enddaysengine]

Me at the end of my teens: I am depressed and bitter because I have trauma that I haven’t even begun to unpack.

Me at the end of my 20s: I spent a lot of time working on myself and resolving these issues. Life is looking up.

Me at the end of my 30s: I have so much to be grateful for, but I am also bitter and angry because I have spent more time than I spent in my depression trying to advocate for a sustainable workload and I am unwilling to keep sacrificing my days on the alter of burnout

[collegeoftheholyspirit]

HERE

A young woman who has inherited the care of ere ibeji from her father’s mother. The figures were carved by Oje of Aga’s compound, Ila-Orangun, about 1925.

Isedo Quarter, Ila-Orangun, Nigeria, 1974.

Photograph by J. Pemberton 3rd.

Scanned from • Yoruba, Nine centuries of African art and thought, 1989.