I've been using Tumblr too much and it's disconnecting me from my life so I'm going to uninstall it from my phone at the end of today but if anyone wants to keep in touch just send me a message and we can work something out
My daughter's always staring at me like I'm the most interesting thing in the world and I'm like ??? What's going on in that silly little brain? The lights are on, is anyone home?
continuing on yesterday's theme of 'games that make you re-engage with books in new ways' today's game for bundletober, the cool series everyone si doing where i talk about . a ttrpg, that i got in a bundle, is the books were wrong by chivu.
the first time i tried to paste this image into my post there were like four lines of space before it i couldn't delete. web site. anyways this is a very short game. one-page, in fact, and none of that duplicitous and scurrilous 'one spread but you call it one page' bull shit. no this is the real deal, one a4 page with barely any formatting to speak of. and it's brilliant.
like the rpgs in lit rpg set, the books were wrong needs a book to play with. unlike those rpgs, it can't be any (or nearly any) book -- instead, it has to be a wiki page for the lore of a fantasy series. which is already a fascinating constraint. i think it could also easily be played with any splatbook or sourcebook for a fantasy rpg -- and would only require minor tweaks for a non-fantasy setting.
they require you to do the exact thing i criticize fantasy and ttrpg lore for not doing all the time, and realize that this lore has a perspective. the books were wrong specifically casts you as an anticolonialist scholar, reading through anthropolohical accounts of peoples and cultures and disputing the colonialist and othering narratives woven into them.
it does this by giving you a selection of prompts to answer while going over different parts of the text you're playing with. the sort of questions that increasingly have been asked in anthropological and historical scholarship over the last century as decolonial perspectives have made their voices heard.
it's a real triumph--taking lazy worldbuilding that often (as i've talked about on this silly little blog) employs the vernacular and format of colonial scholarship and actually engaging with that--not just critiquing it, which is easy to do, but engaging with it and asking you play with it and treat it as malleable. one game like this is worth a million 'um you can just ignore the parts of the lore yo udon't like if you're the DM' disclaimers, in my opinion. it's deliberate, clever, and invites you to do something really cool.
the books were wrong is available for free as a digital download through itch.io
now that's one lit rpg set. am i right. roll to smoke weed. nah the lit in this title is obviously short for 'literary', sorry to disappoint. today's entry for bundletober, (the cool rpg gimmick where rpgs fans post about an rpg they got off an itch bundle a couple years ago and never got around to reading and that everyone does and is like inktober and basically everyone, is doing it, and i didnt arbitrarily make it up at 11 pm on october the 1st this year), is xander hinners' lit rpg set.
okay so this is a very short (two pages!) game. or--as the name of the game implies--set of games! that's right, these two pages are actually four double-sided bookmarks, each containing a game to be played with the text (and sometimes physical paper) of the book you're marking. now i'm often kind of skeptical of ultra-short rpgs but i'm an absolute sucker for this elegant combination of subject matter and form. the bookmark format is not just an arbitrary formal constraint¹ but intimiately bound up² in the subject matter and play pattern of the games within. incredible stuff!
what i love about the games in lit rpg set is that they go all in in being games about books. you play them with books -- picking or redacting or interpreting words from the text are all made into key game mecahnics -- but they all also represent feelings you have about books. subtext treats reading a book as an adventure in a literal, rpg sense--shred treats the anger and frustration of reading a shitty book as a real actual psychic battle against the author.
what i really like about the four games in lit rpg set is that they do the best thing an rpg can do, which is make you think and ask interesting questions--they make you approach books as objects capable of something other than just being read, make you interrogate and interact with the book as a physical object, as a collection of words--or invite you to read actively, to take the passive setting of expectations and make a game of it. it invites you to create new and interesting relationships with books you love and/or hate, and i think that's really valuable. i'm honestly tempted towards an act of guerilla game promotion here--how cool would it be to just print these bookmarks out and leave them in random books in a bookstore? a book that comes with an invitation to play with it? i think it'd be magical tbh
lit rpg set and its free plaintext demo can be purchased as a digital download from itch.io
¹ which can be super fun and lead to really cool things, to be clear! but can just as easily end up being aimless and unfocused
today's bundletober is a game i've already read but wanted to reread and talk about because i think it's neat and also wanted to do something easier since yesterday's bundletober diverged midway through into a mini-essay on sex and romance in rpgs. idle cartulary's blow up hamlet is a profoundly silly game, and i say that as deepest praise.
blow up hamlet is played with playing cards (this is not that uncommon for a ttrpg) and the full text of william shakespeare's hamlet (this is quite uncommon for a ttrpg). i often talk about ttrpgs as an excercise in collaborative storytelling and the rules text as a co-author -- i don't think that's a comprehensive or universal definition, to be clear, but it's a lens that's useful to me in playing, designing, and reading rpgs. many people feel like the central activity in an rpg is playing, or acting, or embodying, rather than storytelling, and i get where they're coming from and respect those ways of playing. however. blow up hamlet is in the most literal sense a game about collaborative storytelling (you are telling the story of william shakespeare's hamlet) in which the rules text is in the most literal sense a co-author (the co-author is william shakespeare, whom you may know from his beloved play troils and cressida).
the core gameplay of blow up hamlet goes like this: you and your friends perform hamlet. you're given a hand of playing cards, which you may reveal (sometimes discarding them afterwards, sometimes not) in order to alter your line, changing anything from the tone of the scene to the direction of the plot to whether or not hamlet is a talking tyrannosaurus rex. it's very simple. but that simple conceit is presented stylishly, with several optional setup choices provided to tweak your table's personal performance of hamlet however you personally prefer.
ultimately i like blow up hamlet a whole lot, because it poses really interesting questions. questions like 'can a performance of hamlet be a roleplaying game? what if you change the lines? what if you change the plot? what's the difference between changing the lines and changing how they're delivered? are you roleplaying, or are you telling a story, or are you acting?' because you could, rules-as-written, all sit down and soberly play out hamlet beginning to end without making any changes, as per the rules of this game. at that point, would you still be playing blow up hamlet?
i like games that make you ask these questions and seriously think about them in the process of reading about and playing them. blow up hamlet isn't complex, but it pushes the boundaries of the format in a way that's still fun to engage with directly, and it does it with style.
blow up hamlet can be purchased as a digital download through itch.io
Yes, it was a crass marketing for a sugar cereal made of chintzy plastic
Today you're just expected to eat Capn Crunch because that's what you do as a child, that's what breakfast looks like. Which is... fine, I guess. Sugar still tastes good. That's still a pleasure you're otherwise asked to disavow by the protein shake nutribottles advertised on podcasts.
But it also means the idle minor joy of getting a random toy present, as a reward for nothing, just because you exist, is stripped. That random spark of joy is gone, replaced with nothing.
Where did the public pool go? the neighborhood park? the atrium food court public place to gather?
Same thing. All of them were just replaced with nothing.
Kids today have many good things. But it shouldn't be a trade off. They should get to have instant messages with friends and go skating at the park. They should get to play amazing modern video games at home and go trick or treating for halloween. They should be able to have stickers and markers and macaroni art as well as youtube and streaming libraries and fortnite dances.
Also. Kids now are just used to people constantly trying to sell them stuff.
When I was a kid, we had advertising on TV, radio, magazines, and billboards. It was easy to recognize and you could work around it. There were certain types of TV, like PBS or cable, that did not have commercials.
Now, kids are inundated with advertising constantly. YouTube and social media have replaced TV and radio for a lot of families, where in addition to ads every 1-3 minutes, many YT stars have sponsored bits in their videos. Social media constantly tries to sell you things. They have found a way to put advertising into the pumps at gas stations. There are so many things, like access to TV shows and Disney movies, that are locked behind a paywall. They can't even read a newspaper if they wanted to.
I did a school visit a while back to a group of about 100 fourth graders to tell them about the library's upcoming Summer Reading Program. They were totally unimpressed by me telling them cheerfully that if they met their reading goals, we would give them books for free. I thought they were just tired because it was close to the end of the day, and then one kid raised his hand to resignedly ask the question they were all thinking:
Kid: How much does this cost?
Me: Nothing. It's a free library program.
Kid: Uh huh, like you are going to give us books for free. How much does it really cost?
Me, confused: ... nothing. You don't have to give us any money at all. You just have to do the reading and fill out your reading log, and you will have earned the books to take home and keep forever.
Kid, in disbelief: Oh come on. If you don't charge us, how are you gonna make money?
Me, taken aback: We don't make money, we're a library.
Kid, exasperated: What do you mean you don't make money?
Me: We're a public service, like the fire department or schools. You don't have to pay to use those either.
There is a ripple in the crowd as 100 disbelieving 9 year olds take this in.
Other kid: How do you afford to do anything if you don't make money? Like where do you get the money to do stuff if we don't have to pay you?
Me: Through things like government grants and taxes.
Third kid: So let me get this straight. That means that if some people don't pay their taxes --
Teacher: Friend, this is a great conversation for Social Studies and not during library time! Ms. Intrepidheroine, would you like to show us the LEGOs you brought?
And that's the story of how I realized that children absolutely expect you to try to sell them something if you come in to do a "special talk" even if it's for a library.
Nothing annoys me more lately than "Going to the gym isn't a personality" like yes??? it is???
People talk about the things they care about, that they spend time on, that they put effort into. That includes their bodies?
I work with a lot of athletes. Like more than your typical amount. And they will happily debate protein powders, tell you they're doing a new training regimen, talk about Lat Pulls like having opinions on them is something obviously I have as well. Going to the gym is exciting for them- they tell me they hit a new personal best bench press, or are trying to hit a specific weight class, or are working on knee strength after their surgery. They compare times they threw up or got too dizzy.
The same way when I talk to MTG players they tell me about their new EDH deck, or talk about that one wombo combo they pulled in Draft, or this asshole at FNM. It's all just nuts and bolts for a thing they care about. I don't know much of anything about Knitting but a lot of my friends do, and I would NEVER tell them that "Knitting isn't a personality" just because I personally find it boring or whatever. Because I would be an asshole.
Going to the gym is a ~personality~, it's just not one you want to talk about. You don't care about machine vs. free weights. You don't want to know how long they spent working out this morning. Frankly, you want them to do the work at the gym and not give you a peek behind the curtain. You want people to look good, look fit, look how you want to, but not talk about how much work and effort it takes to do so. Working out to you is a chore, and an unpleasant one at that, so you'd rather they not remind you of it.
But exercising your body shouldn't be a chore, it should be something you enjoy- your favorite rock climbing place, the dance class you and your friends take, etc. These people LIKE going to the gym. They would gladly tell you about it. And if for some reason you are talking to someone who works out religiously but hates every second of it- first of all, yikes, buddy you don't have to live that way- but second of all, that person will not talk to you about the gym. They will talk to you about what they are actually passionate about.
You don't have to enjoy their hobby! You can think the gym is boring, or exercise isn't interesting. But like. say that. The gym can be a personality. Anything can be a personality.
Ok I have decided that I don't have the stamina for an october drawing challenge I am going to start #REPOSTOBER where I just repost old art that I like every day 💁♀️ JOIN ME IF YOUR DARE 🎃
I saw a post saying that Boromir looked too scruffy in FotR for a Captain of Gondor, and I tried to move on, but I’m hyperfixating. Has anyone ever solo backpacked? I have. By the end, not only did I look like shit, but by day two I was talking to myself. On another occasion I did fourteen days’ backcountry as the lone woman in a group of twelve men, no showers, no deodorant, and brother, by the end of that we were all EXTREMELY feral. You think we looked like heirs to the throne of anywhere? We were thirteen wolverines in ripstop.
My boy Boromir? Spent FOUR MONTHS in the wilderness! Alone! No roads! High floods! His horse died! I’m amazed he showed up to Imladris wearing clothes, let alone with a decent haircut. I’m fully convinced that he left Gondor looking like Richard Sharpe being presented to the Prince Regent in 1813
*electric guitar riff*
And then rocked up to Imladris a hundred ten days later like
My friend. My colleague. My brother my captain my king. I too have been pondering this question, and in my mind there can be only one ultimate outcome.
general tag: #oc-tober / my prompts: #bweirdOCtober
F.A.Q:
Do I have to draw EVERY DAY?
NO! I highly encourage skipping as many days as you need to avoid burnout! There are 10 main days in the event (marked with a ⭐ star) that you can focus on if you don't feel up to doing every day, or you can choose your own adventure and just do the prompts you personally like!
Do I have to DRAW?
NO! You can also write fanfiction snippets, repost older art that fits the theme, tweet headcanons/backstory, roleplay in-character as your oc ... genuinely anything that fits the theme is OK!!
Can I start early?
YES! I understand some people work at a slower pace and might need a head start! So long as you wait until October to post it, you can start working as early as you need!
I missed the start of the event .. do I have to catch up?
NO! Please don't stress about days you missed, you're allowed to just skip to the current prompt!
RULES:
1. MAKE FRIENDS! The community is the best part of this event .. please try to follow new people, ask questions about ocs you like, compliment people's styles, ask friends to create with you, etc!
2. TAKE IT EASY! Skip a day if you're tired, busy or just not interested in the prompt. You don't have to catch up on it later. This is supposed to be fun, not work!
3. BE KIND! Please think about the people around you - don't give people unwarranted harsh criticism, content warn for themes/imagery in your work that could trigger someone, don't create anything hateful, etc
MORE:
text version / tips and ideas on bweird.art or below ↓
star = main prompts | no star = optional
INTRO WEEK
1: FAVE OC ⭐
-Which of your characters is your favourite right now?
2: NEW OC
-Who is your newest OC?
-Design a new OC right now
3: OLD OC ⭐
-Do you remember the first OC you ever made?
-Is there an OC you haven't drawn in a long time?
4: RE-DESIGN
-An OC who has changed a lot over the years
-Take an old OC and update their design right now
BACKSTORY WEEK
5: RELATIONSHIPS ⭐
-Who is important to your OC?
-Do they have a partner?
-Do they have a best friend?
-Are they close to their family?
6: SYMBOL
-What imagery do you associate with your oc?
-Are there any colours, flowers, animals or concepts that symbolize them?
7: PERSONALITY ⭐
-How does your OC behave?
-What are their positive traits?
-What are their negative traits?
-Are they extroverted or introverted?
8: PAST
-What was your OC like as a child?
-Where did they grow up?
-Are there any significant moments from their past that shaped who they are?
9: FUTURE ⭐
-Does your OC have a goal they're working towards?
-What will your OC look like when they get older
-Do you have a planned ending for their story?
14: haunted house palette
#552506 #6E25AA #ED690B #F925A0 #8F8BA7 #A6C1AA
FUN + GAMES WEEK
15: MEME ⭐
-Post memes that remind you of your OC
-Draw your OC as a meme
-Fill out a character meme (classic deviantart style)
16: FOOD
-What is your OC's favourite food?
-What is their least favourite?
-Can they cook?
17: EYES-CLOSED ⭐
-Draw your OC with your eyes closed! No cheating!
-Write a scene without looking at the keyboard! Keep the typos in!
18: SWAP
-Swap the style or aesthetic of two of your OCs
-Species or gender swap AU
-Invert an OC's colour scheme
19: INSPIRATION ⭐
-Is your OC inspired by any pre-existing characters?
-Are there any particular songs/lyrics that inspired something about one of your OCs
-Do you have a dedicated pinterest moodboard for your character?
20: INVENTORY
-What does your OC carry around with them on a daily basis?
-Are there any objects that have sentimental value for them?
-Loot drop for your DnD OC
FRIENDS WEEK
21-25:
There's no specific daily prompts for this week, but here are some ideas you can try ...
-Art trades with friends who are doing the event with you
-Your OC interacting with a friend's OC
-Gift art for someone whose OCs you like
-Work together and collaborate on something with a friend
-Roleplay an OC scene together with someone
HALLOWEEN WEEK
26: FEAR ⭐
-What is your OC scared of?
-Draw one of your OCs trying to scare the others
27: MONSTER
-Do you have any monster OCs? (eg: vampires, werewolves, creatures, ghosts...)
-Draw a human OC as a monster
-Design a new monster
28: TRICK
-Play a trick on an OC
-Do you have an OC who would play tricks on people?
29: TREAT
-What is your OC's favourite halloween candy?
-Give an OC a special treat to make up for yesterday's trick
30: MAGIC
-Do any of your characters have magical powers?
-Give an OC a magical or cursed artifact
-Create a magic-using OC like a witch or wizard
27: COSTUME ⭐
-What is your OC dressing as for halloween?
From 2020 to 2022, I ran a Monster of the Week game called Hell's Princes '87, about a metal band traveling the USA and finding horror at every stop. Today I've got another double feature of past mysteries for you...
REAL STOPPING POWER - Real Suspense. Real Danger. Real Terror. A blown tire puts the Hell's Princes tour in the sights of a maniacal sniper, holed up in an old Gothic mansion that holds secrets more terrifying than any gunman.
HOUSE OF GOD - Don't follow the preacher! An old friend of the Hell's Princes tour may pay the ultimate price for meddling with necromancy, unless the band can prevent the coming of Father Dante Rosewood and his High Church of Revenge.
Interested in these terrifying tales? I'm running Hell's Princes '87 on StartPlaying; 3 seats open!
1987. BELLE GUNNESS, the Scream King of the Hair Scene, is taking his heavy metal horror show on the road...and you're coming with him. Bell
baratheonpilled
ellievsbear
andulkaphoto
dededos
vaporwave
