Here There Be Bullshit @jamesmusicus - Tumblr Blog

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Hey check out my game at https://anvilofstrife.com/ It's got the juice. (true) Whenever you roll max damage you roll more dice and add them together. (mostly accurate) Your attacks never miss. (mostly accurate but when they do it's not because you rolled bad) It'll make your parents approve of your choice of partner. (unsubstantiated) It'll make your local government approve public transit projects. (unsubstatiated) It'll make you taller and more attractive. (anecdotal and subjective) It has more than a million possible characters you can create, and we're adding more options every month. (true) The rules are free online, forever. (at least so long as we pay the lease on the website)

#indie ttrpg #ttrpg #fantasy #rpg

pocket-deer-belly

idc what people think christianity is "actually" about. idc that you think jesus is a socialist or that you think it aligns with restorative justice. historically christianity has shaped itself around (and in turn shaped) the dominant western culture. christianity is about colonialism, subjugation, punishment and cultural domination. fuck your stupid shitty religion i don't care!!!

alphafromomega

i may be an atheist but this is a dogshit reason to hate on religion. using this logic we can say scientific progress has also shaped itself around western culture. Science has been repeatedly used to justify the abhorrent treatment of minorities. Eugenics is the most obvious example, where it was used to justify colonialism and persecute the disabled due to the west's "superior genes". Medically invasive procedures and essentially torture were used (and still are to some respects) on all parts of the queer spectrum in order to make them act "normal" from chemically castrating gay men to reduce queer thoughts, putting suspected trans people (as well as a lot of other queer people and even some straight people who police or doctors deemed queer) essentially under interrogation and stress to as a method to convince them they were not trans/gay. Phrenology was used as an extension of eugenics to justify mental superiority over non whites as well as to support the idea the women should have been obedient submissive partners. Even when these were disproved people would and still use this reasoning under the guise of science. You can just google scientific racism for more examples if you wish but what I'm getting at is if christianity is evil when only looking at the worse parts so is science cause to this day there is bias to western culture in scientific studies and reasoning.

jamesmusicus

This is a false dichotomy. "Science" is not an institution that engages in social control, it's a process for discovering which ideas have a basis in reality. You can hold scientific institutions, like papers, universities, or labs, accountable for the things they do (and we have in a lot of cases), but science can't really be treated the way religious groups can. We absolutely do hold people responsible for the harm they do when it's things like promoting phrenology and the like (they usually get fired pretty fast from respectable institutions) in a way we don't hold many religious groups accountable, at least in the US.

Scientific institutions also do things like develop blight-resistant crops that massively benefit impoverished peoples in ways religious charity could never hope to rival. Most of the "harm that science has done" you bring up was not done by scientific institutions, but by political institutions using the guise of science for the express purpose of political oppression. Eugenics was not a subject of study, it was an ad-hoc rationalization by already politically powerful racists who wanted to seem more legitimate in the public eye.

I don't say this to exalt science though. I believe science is a morally value-neutral subject. What science is is an extremely powerful tool for understanding the universe, and that fact means people will always try and use it to boost their own legitimacy.

Don't treat science like an institution that has a "will" the way political and religious institutions are, because it's not. It's a tool these institutions will try to use to legitimize themselves.

The purpose of a system is what it does - Wikipedia https://share.google/jJWpWe5f5umHISGjm

pocket-deer-belly

jamesmusicus

The purpose of a system is what it does - Wikipedia https://share.google/jJWpWe5f5umHISGjm

^ An important concept to understand for anyone that doubts this.

tieflingkisser

rubydreamsuwu

just checked and this doesn't seem to be a thing on windows 10, looks like you only have to worry if you're using windows 11

This may be the worst use of LLMs anyone has attempted, ever. Up there with recognizing mushrooms.

ashenmind

softieskywalker

i think the key difference between george lucas’s star wars and disney’s star wars is that lucas is a man with an ideology. someone with a point of view, and all that entails. which comes with ideas of revolution, anti-imperialism, challenging the status quo, cultural appropriation and racist stereotypes. complex and contradictory ideas because that’s how artists are: complex and complicated people. disney is not. disney is a corporation. a corporation can’t have ideology, because ideology defeats the purpose of profit. and when the only thing you do is to turn on the movie manufacturing machine before you sit down and plan what ideas are you trying to convey to the audience, then your results are going to be washed out corporate garbage. and because when you’re a giant corporation who only cares about selling to the widest audience possible, you can’t take sides. you can’t decide on an idea. because you want to sell your product to people who are on the entire political spectrum. which results in movies without ideology, without purpose, without soul.

david-talks-sw

I have been looking for this post for years after I came across it and it’s finally here and I need to reblog this because it is absolutely and entirely accurate.

comebackali

#as I always say: lucas was making a samurai film and a ww2 flying ace film and a western film and adding laser swords#because he fundamentally LIKED samurai films and dambusters films and westerns and 40’s adventure serials#but disney are making a ‘star wars film’ and adding nothing because it already had laser swords and they have nothing else to say#xerox of a xerox baybeeeee (via harrietvane)

fwizard

all i need is a sweet treat. and six thousand dollars

hometoursandotherstuff

beese-churger

Imagine if sometimes some fucking Ț̷̡͂̀̎͠h̸̜̅͐̄ì̸̩̮̃̃̆n̸̗̰̟͉͐̑͋͆͜g̸̮̻͔̼̬͌ could just crash through the shimmering veil of reality with a trail of fragments from the suffocating void enveloping it, grab whoever's unlucky enough to be closest, and swoop back out like it was nothing. And this was just one of your everyday hazards to worry about. Incredible cosmic horror concept

escuerzoresucitado

neosilverthorn

So. For those of you who didn't pay attention to the details of the legal spat between Krafton and Unknown Worlds, allow me to give you some details of the finest legal comedy of a generation.

Krafton CEO looks at the hype surrounding Subnautica 2, goes over the contract between Krafton and Unknown Worlds, realizes he'll have to pay out bonuses and freaks out because shelling out those bonuses will make him look like a pushover.

CEO goes to his legal department, asks them to come up with a plan to weasel out of paying bonuses. Legal tells him the contract is iron-clad and to accept the loss.

CEO refuses to take the loss, asks ChatGPT for a plan. ChatGPT says the exact same thing the legal department did.

CEO demands a plan from ChatGPT, which dutifully spits out a plan at this point because clearly the CEO is a goddamn idiot.

CEO deletes the chat logs, failing to understand that 'delete' doesn't permanently remove things.

CEO follows plan, and is surprised when Unknown Worlds sues for breach of contract despite being told by both humans and an LLM that is exactly what would happen.

Court does not go well for Krafton's legal department. It comes out that after ignoring the sound legal advice of human beings, the CEO went to ChatGPT and asked for a plan. When asked for the logs by the court, Krafton's legal team states they were deleted, thus that it's simply herersay. Judge goes "Oh, that's okay, we'll have our IT folks recover them." Krafton's legal team is astounded that's even possible.

The chat logs are recovered. It comes out that even ChatGPT was in agreement with Krafton's legal department, and only spat out a plan after being asked a second time.

The judge, now thoroughly done with the stupidity of Krafton's CEO at this point, rules in favor of Unknown Worlds. Her ruling doesn't simply undo the scheme, but effectively leaves all control over Subnautica 2's development in the hands of Unknown Worlds, including the early access release date, reducing Krafton to just publishing out of contractual obligation. Krafton must also return all social media platforms for Unknown Worlds and Subnautica 2 to Unknown Worlds' control. Financial damages will be determined at a later date.

Krafton proceeds to violate the court order in less than 72 hours by trying to set an early access release date before returning Unknown Worlds' social media platforms.

Summary: In trying not to look like a pushover, Krafton's CEO now looks like a complete idiot who's going to have to fork over bonuses, plus court-mandated damages, plus whatever comes out of violating the court's orders. Krafton's legal department may as well come to court dressed as clowns after this. I suspect Unknown Worlds might buy the rights to Subnautica back after all this and either relegate Krafton to just publishing or find a different publisher for future games altogether.

captain-price-returns

thefloatingstone

btw, Steam is currently having an "ocean fest" where they showcase all the ocean themed games on the store

which they obviously decided to do by complete coincidence and didn't mean to say anything by this or anything 🙂

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?

jamesmusicus

Texas, USA, Gundam Wing, 7 years old.

prokopetz

Wait, so...Why DID 4E underperform? Or is that outside your expertise here? (No shame if so, you're a game designer, not a market analyst. You can tell by the having a soul).

(With reference to this post here.)

There were a couple of major factors in play there.

First, a big chunk of Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition's popularity had come about due to robust third-party support, published under the auspices of Open Game License (OGL). Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, however, was not licensed under the OGL, being subject to a much more restrictive license imaginatively titled the Game System License, or GSL. Hasbro reportedly refused to negotiate with existing third-party publishers to get them on board with the GSL, or to offer transition support of any kind; instead, they simply demanded an immediate halt to the publication of all 3E material, and attempted to bludgeon publishers into compliance by threatening to yank their trademark authorisations (i.e., the agreements which allowed them to put the "D&D compatible" logo on the covers of their books).

Predictably, this approach was not well received. The largest of 3E's third-party supporters, Paizo Publishing (now Paizo Inc.), elected to produce their own game which was statblock-compatible with 3E in order to provide a venue for other publishers to continue producing OGL material; many of their peers decided to gamble on Paizo's plan rather than play ball with Hasbro, and this is how we got Pathfinder. Hasbro's behaviour thus caused D&D's third-party support to crater nearly to zero with the publication of 4E and created D&D's largest competitor.

Second, 4E was badly behind the curve on digital availability. Shortly before 4E was scheduled to drop, the digital masters (i.e., the files provided to printers in order to manufacture the books) were leaked on file sharing networks. Hasbro responded by panicking and ordering an immediate and indefinite halt to e-book publication of D&D material (in spite of the fact that the leak had demonstrably originated from their print production arm rather than their e-publishing arm), even going so far as to refuse to honour pre-orders for 4E's now cancelled e-book version.

Combined with a series of mismanagement-induced delays which caused 4E's virtual tabletop tools to miss the game's publication date entirely, and a decision to paywall what few first-party resources did manage to hit their target behind a monthly subscription, this resulted in 4E being available exclusively in print for the first two full years of its lifespan, at a time when D&D's competitors – including the aforementioned Pathfinder – were literally giving their core rules away in digital form for free.

As you say, I'm no market analyst, but I have a strong suspicion that "alienating practically all third-party publishers for a game line which was critically dependent on robust third-party support", "being the first edition of the game ever to face significant direct competition", and "making a game which dropped in the middle of the worst economic recession in thirty years available exclusively as an expensive printed set" resulted in the 4E stepping up to the plate with three strikes already against it. Add to that the almost comical ineptitude of Hasbro's advertising for 4E, and the usual drama of any major edition turnover, and... well.

prokopetz

"But what about the rules" sure, there were some issues with 4E's mechanics, but you need to understand that "4E underperformed because people hated the rules" isn't just a convenient narrative for edition-warring grognards; it's also a fiction which Hasbro itself has tacitly embraced, because the alternative is acknowledging that their publishing department repeatedly shit the bed on 4E's rollout.

prokopetz

The really funny thing about folks dutifully trotting out the old "well ACTUALLY Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition commercially underperformed because it's just tabletop World of Warcraft" line every single time I discuss the economic realities of 4E's publication is the cyclical nature of those complaints.

When 4E came out in 2008, people complained it was trying to turn D&D into tabletop World of Warcraft because it has explicit class roles.

When 3E came out in 2000, people complained it was trying to turn D&D into tabletop Diablo because it has feat trees and magic item affixes.

When 1E came out in 1977, people unfavourably compared it to the then-nascent medium of computer games because the Dungeon Master's Guide contains too many tables; they probably would have called it a tabletop roguelike if not for the fact that the term "roguelike" did not yet exist, the publication of Rogue being three years in the future.

We have been doing the "[edition of D&D] in some respect vaguely resembles [computer game], and that's bad" thing for fifty goddamn years. We've been doing it since practically the very moment computer games existed for comparison to them to be made.

(For the folks about to well-actually that Rogue was technically only one year in the future on account of the fact that 1E's Dungeon Master's Guide was delayed until 1979: I see you.)

tpwrtrmnky

To be honest I don't think anyone in charge at WOTC is genuinely trying to compete with other ttrpgs when they work on 5E's business model.

I think they're trying to compete with Netflix, Tiktok and video games, in the sense that rather than making a case for why you should play D&D 5th Edition over other similar games, they're making the case for why you should sit down at a table (digital or physical) and roll a d20 sometimes while your friend does an improv performance.

The existence of ttrpgs that are not D&D is something they sort of don't want acknowledged at all.

tpwrtrmnky

Like let's be honest here the only reason why D&D's branding so much as says the phrase "tabletop roleplaying game" is that they're doing the "don't genericize our trademark" song-and-dance. They'd want "D&D" and "the ttrpg medium" to be synonymous if they could make it happen.

jamesmusicus

Yeah this is why I'm using my local Adventurer's League meetups to push other better games.

tpwrtrmnky

Ok I'm going to be honest, aquilo's frost gameplay in factorio space age really stretches my suspension of disbelief when there's a power outage because while you have several heating towers at more than five hundred degrees, you've run out of water to boil, and even though there's ice everywhere, you can't use that heat to turn the ice into water because ice melting is done in chemical plants and needs electricity.

That's

Ridiculous.

Literally just shove the ice into the pipe.

tpwrtrmnky

plugging my superheated steam into an empty pipe but the empty pipe is frozen so it can't transport the steam that is hotter than the heat sources needed to unfreeze the pipe

tpwrtrmnky

The FUSION REACTOR COOLANT used to manage MILLION-DEGREE PLASMA is being kept from passing through this pipe because it's cold.

jamesmusicus

"This planet has a liquid sea of ammonia, but that same ammonia freezes in atmosphere-temperature pipes."