Encroaching Divinity

See you in the hell we created together

[mr-deep-downer]

this is how I see us, brothers in arms united by the struggle against the cruelty of this cold and unforgiving world.

we move forward still.

[sandmandaddy69]

[mr-deep-downer]

what’s even funnier is her spook sister is on tumblr and has probably seen my posts

[mr-deep-downer]

it’s kind of funny I got us a four loko apiece because she said she would drink whatever I drank despite me insisting on my tolerance being much higher than hers and well, fuck those things are miserable to consume

[eebie]

[animentality]

[the-ms-meep]

[dogpuppy]

[kinuko]

Part 2

[mr-deep-downer]

working shopping a narrative skirmish game that’s urban fantasy in nature with the idea that it revolves around the three attributes of body, mind, and spirit in a sort of east meets west kind of vibe

[beweep]

via

[frailgun]

an unsung favorite of mine

[mr-deep-downer]

One big thing, is the difference between TLA and LoK is the narrative structure. TLA has a single overarching plot while ToK switches it up every season to both its benefit and detriment. Korra as a character is given more of an opportunity to do “Avatar” things as both a political and spiritual figure of great importance. However because each season was on the short side, it does sort of feel rushed.

Plus too, bringing up elements of like non-bender oppression or conflicts of light vs dark only to not really do shit with them is why a lot of people find the writing to be a lot worse.

[imsobadatnicknames2]

I want to make a dungeon game but I'm not sure how I should handle the settler-colonial implications of "going into an Unexplored location, killing its inhabitants and robbing them". Any tips?

If I'm being completely honest, I just don't think I'm the right person to ask about it because, while I do have a bunch of thoughts about the underlying political implications of the gameplay structure of dungeon games, I'm not particularly inclined to try to fix them.

I have accepted that a lot of the elements of dungeon games whose underlying implications I find to be ideologically questionable are the exact same elements that make dungeon games fun for me from a gameplay perspective. The entire shtick of PCs in a dungeon game is essentially "get rich by plundering Uncivilized places and bringing that wealth back to Civilized places", and some of the most fun gameplay happens when you lean into that job description. The entire dichotomy between "wilderness" vs. "civilization" where Civilized places are small havens of safety in a sea of untamed wilderness, which is dangerous and unexplored and waiting for brave adventurers to plunder it and extract wealth from it which they then bring back to a Civilized place is like. Dripping with settler-colonial implications no matter how you slice it, and yet it makes for a very satisfying baked-in gameplay loop.

Simply put, a lot of the things that make dungeon games fun for me as *games* come from things that, at the core, don't align with my real-world politics, and will never align with them even if I were to try to spend all my creative efforts trying to hammer them into that shape. And I'm fine with that. It's not even like dungeon games are unique in that regard. You could say the same about like. The vast majority of shooters. Or survival crafting games. Or like almost every single action movie I have ever enjoyed. I choose to simply acknowledge this and sit with that discomfort rather than spending my creative efforts trying to square that particular circle.

Now, if you *want* to try to square the circle of making a dungeon game with Good Politics I think the most I can give you is advice about what NOT to do: A surefire way to end up with a game that has just as (if not more) fucked up implications is to acknowledge the fucked-up amoral nature of the actions the a standard dungeon game has the PCs engage in, and go "okay but what if they were targeting all those fucked up actions at people/creatures who Deserve It". You will *not* solve the problem of making a dungeon game with Good Politics if you go the route of trying to find the correct Ontologically Evil target, all you're going to do is show your ass about your unexamined ideologically questionable politics. Whatever idea you can come up with on this front has already been tried and turns out it had equally (if not more) fucked up implications, and we know this because unfortunately this is the route that most people trying to square the circle of Dungeon Game But With Good Politics end up deciding to go.

[impossiblepackage]

the closest you’re gonna get to a dungeon game minus the colonialist vibes is like. “there used to be a wizard and somebody’s gotta go clear out their tower before the fucked up wizard experiments get loose”. which is a perfectly fine premise, but also it’s one premise for a dungeon. and for a good dungeon game, you need lots of different sorts of dungeons.

but ultimately, you’re trying to find a woke version of breaking into somewhere in order to kill and rob the inhabitants. which uh. might be difficult. even if you cut out any intelligent or otherwise person-ish enemies, you’re still left with “break into a rare ecosystem in order to slaughter the local wildlife and plunder the resources available”.

[dwarvendiaries]

Decolonising the dungeoncrawl... Yeah, I think first thing you're going to have to do is let go of the idea of PCs being generally morally good (or even neutral).

Most deconstructions avoid the dungeon crawl structure altogether. For example in Spire(by Grant Howitt and Christopher Taylor), characters are a racialised Drow underclass in a colonised society, taking physical and mental damage to achieve their goals through political manipulation and paramilitary resistance.

Heart (also by Howitt and Taylor) takes a slightly different approach. It tackles the dungeon crawl head on by deliberately leaning further into the darkness. Character advancement is guided by amoral, immaterial Callings. While Heart follows the dungeoncrawl in setting and character classes, (like Spire) it is more a story-driven game than a challenge game. Scenes are connected pointcrawl-style. That said, Heart's survival horror mechanics still need players to manage their resources carefully if they want to make it. Heart also bakes the PCs' relationship with adventuring environment into its rules, with the mechanics for securing Connections between dungeon Landmarks.

There's still issues with these games of course, but I think they serve as a good starting point for where you'd begin to write an anti-colonial dungeoncrawler.

[zorbakpants]

A Torch In The Dark by NotWriting has a slightly different dungeon crawling premise of "the old Royals were cavorting with demons and now the Old Town district of the city is real fucking cursed. Go sort that out" which is like the wizard tower idea but different enough to me that I wanted to point it out (and plug a really fantastic game)

[imsobadatnicknames2]

I truly do very do much enjoy A Torch In The Dark, so don't take this as being rude or dismissive of you or the game you're trying to plug, but I think if we're talking about game tropes and genres with unsavory ideological underpinings, I think "our old political enemies were cavorting with literal demons" is kind of its own can of worms from a meta-textual perspective. And that's also fine, I like engaging with media with messy politics ultimately.

[ominous-signs]

Sign I saw near a beach in California a few years ago.

[mr-deep-downer]

my girl is so fucking cool

[3l1z4b3th4n]

get webbed loser

[astragifs]