TVSTRANGERTHINGS
Monterey Bay Aquarium
taylor price
Claire Keane
One Nice Bug Per Day
Peter Solarz

Product Placement

Origami Around
Aqua Utopia|海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
Cosmic Funnies
$LAYYYTER

❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
Game of Thrones Daily
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open

shark vs the universe

祝日 / Permanent Vacation

#extradirty
Three Goblin Art

roma★
Stranger Things

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@rynncoherent
'being single sucks because youll be lonely' lame and untrue. 'being single sucks because a lot of groceries are portioned to make food for more than one person and you cant really take advantage of buying in bulk because it'll go bad before you use it all' this i cannot deny.
I don't disagree with the observation that a lot of folks in tabletop roleplaying spaces don't believe that game design is real (i.e., in the sense that they believe any GM should be able to achieve any experience of play using any system, and refuse to recognise that rules are opinionated about what sort of games they want to produce), but I feel like putting that at the forefront is confusing the symptom for the disease. A lot of folks in tabletop roleplaying spaces don't believe game design is real because they don't believe that games are real.
I've talked in the past about how Hasbro's efforts to deceptively market Dungeons & Dragons as universal entry-level game have fostered a culture of play in which any appearance that D&D isn't a universal entry-level game is regarded as evidence that you have a "bad GM", and how, in order to avoid being a "bad GM", it's necessary to treat it as a normal part of the GM's responsibilities to constantly monitor the outputs of the rules and quickly paper over any gaps between the game the rules want to produce and the game the group wants to play, like a cartoon train conductor frantically constructing the very tracks along which the train they're conducting is riding.
The trouble is that most players aren't stupid, and readily see through the act. They (correctly!) observe that the particulars of the rules don't actually seem to matter all that much, because most of the desired experience of play is the product of the GM's constant interventions, rather than the product of interpreting the outputs of the rules – but instead of identifying this as a problem, they conclude (again, quite reasonably, as they've probably never seen it done differently) that this is what tabletop roleplaying is. The GM merely pretends to be moderating a game; in truth, they're a pantomime-leader whose job is to maintain the illusion that we're playing a game with rules, when in fact what we're really doing is guided improv theatre.
And of course there's nothing wrong with guided improv theatre – it's a fine pastime, and one I've enjoyed myself on many occasions. However, it does put folks who really do want to play a game in a bind, because now there's this insurmountable communication barrier. You can say "I want to play a game, and these are the rules of that game", and receive what seems to be enthusiastic agreement with that premise; however, a significant portion of the people expressing that agreement think they're participating in a bit of kayfabe, like very dedicated professional wrestlers who stay in character even outside the ring.
Critically, nobody is necessarily acting in bad faith in this equation. The folks who don't bother to learn the rules because they think games aren't real mostly aren't fucking with you on purpose; they honestly thought they were yes-anding your improv prompt by pretending to care about the mechanics of play, and when they discover that you really do expect them to do all that fiddly dice math, from their perspective it genuinely looks like you were the one misleading them. It's just a fucked up culture of play garbling all the signals in both directions.
(Note that, while I've identified Hasbro's deceptive marketing as the ultimate source of this culture of play, indie RPGs are hardly innocent of perpetuating it. You only need cast a critical eye on the "Rule Zero" sections of many popular indie games to notice that their authors are all in on the idea that games aren't real!)
I think there may also be a misconception among players (and some DMs who may think they're just not good at it) that the process of adjudicating "Rule Zero," or making on-the-fly rulings in a game with extensive written rules, is a simple or one-time process. It's really very complex!
The decision-making feedback loop for altering/fudging/discarding/inventing a rule has to be evaluated every single time it comes up. It's something few people can do well. Even if someone can do it well, that doesn't make it easy.
Let's say a player proposes something that isn't immediately addressed by the rules-as-remembered:
Is there a rule-as-written that covers the Thing? If no, should the Thing simply be allowed, or is it better to fudge it into an existing rule, or is this a case where a DM should push back?
If there is a written rule, does it allow for the player's Thing? If no, should that be enforced, or does it have to be Rule-Zero'd? Is it fair to discard/enforce the rule now, if it's been enforced/discarded in the past? Is that fair to everyone at the table?
If the rule is modified somehow, is the modification consistent with past rulings? Will the modification have unintended consequences for other situations?
This is all a fragment of the decision-making a DM who feels pressured to frequently modify or ignore rules is doing. When the fallback of "the rules say X and I want to abide by that" is disallowed because the play culture says only bad DMs do that, every DM has to become a slapdash game designer instead of the game's facilitator. That's exhausting and, frequently, very un-enjoyable.
What do you have against people who like to GM?
It's not me that has anything against GMs. There's a pervasive disrespect for the time, energy, and enjoyment of GMs present in the majority of TTRPG spaces.
People love to say “it’s just a game” while stacking more and more work onto the GM’s shoulders. It’s selfishness, and often a contempt for TTRPGs in general.
The purpose of a GM isn’t completely universal across all TTRPGs that use a GM role, hell a lot of TTRPGs don’t even seem to know why they have them in the first place, but usually the purpose of a GM is to handle scenarios that the game rules don’t account for, and handle procedures that the other players are not supposed to be privy to.
Over the years, more and more responsibilities have been put on the generalized GM role: sole rules memorizor, level designer, bespoke world creator, bespoke storyteller, scheduler, host, etc.. It has morphed into being a job as much if not more so than an activity to do with your friends. GMs have been dropping like flies to “GM/DM Burnout” for a decade or more and people willing to even go near the GM role are an endangered species.
What a lot of people don’t realize is that while, yes, the rules of a TTRPG are technically changeable and nobody is going to kick down your door if you don’t play them correctly, they do serve a purpose, and that is, simplified, to produce certain outcomes of gameplay.
A game’s rules cannot account for every possible situation that may come up in something so open as a tabletop roleplaying game, and one of the strengths of TTRPGs is that when the rules don’t account for something, human players can pick up the slack. In a traditional challenge game like every edition of D&D, this slack and the privilege to pick it up is by default handed over to the GM. This is because in a traditional challenge game that slack is often only handlable with that knowledge that other players are not meant to be privy to.
Since so many people are allergic to playing anything but D&D, even when they clearly don’t want the gameplay which D&D is geared to produce, this privilege instead becomes a curse for the GM. All of the scenarios and characters that D&D(or any TTRPG) is simply not intended to be built to accommodate are seen as “the slack for the GM to pick up” instead of “things that are outside the scope of the game.” It’s going to a coffee shop and telling the barista, who hasn’t trained in pizza, to make you a pizza. “A good barista could make it work, this is a food vendor so I’m supposed to be served the food i order,” even though the barista isn’t trained to make pizza, and the coffee shop does not stock the necessary ingredients for it.
Except the GM isn’t even getting paid minimum wage, they’re voluntarily taking on the most high-responsibility role of a group activity for you. Even if you do convince them through the shame of thousands of “a good GM could make it work, a good GM never says no to what a player wants” posts to make you a pizza, it won’t be a good pizza and it won’t go well with the other items on the menu. And even if it turns out to be a good pizza (because bad pizza is still usually pretty good pizza, not because it’s actually a good pizza) it won’t really be the coffee shop’s pizza, it’s the barista’s pizza. Once you go far enough, creating so much slack for the GM to pick up, you aren’t playing D&D anymore, you’re playing The GM. After a certain point the GM is doing way more work than the rules.
Saying "the GM should be allowed to just say no to something that isn't in the rules and/or they just don't want play" is, like, the opposite of having something against GMs.
And the worst part of it all is that I enjoy making my friends happy. Even the graces they give for my mistakes or the like don't cure the desire I had to deliver the vision just so. In this way, I am effectively self policing myself for thought crimes that no one but me knows. I still love to DM but I just never feel like enough, even to myself.
The smiles of my friends are what keeps me going. If I didn't have such kind friends, theres no way I could sustain it.
calvin and hobbes
"You misspelled Weltanschauung" is one of the funniest punchlines I've ever encountered.
one of my faves
is there anything as good as lying in a sunbeam
telling the truth in a sunbeam #honesty
what is Elric of Melniboné if not a pinup boy for goths and metalheads
The binturong who knows when you will die
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Hi, I have a site and a Webshop now :) you can buy physical copies of my zines here. I'll be putting up stickers, pins, prints and more shirts soon
I know things aren’t very Fergalicious right now dude but hang in there
Could you maybe reblog this post if you think respecting trans peoples' names and identities is a basic right and not a political opinion?
No pressure. Just seeking some validation of my sentiment. Due to some. people
everybody go home the best tag on this post just dropped
if i could say anything to my 14 year old self it would be "please dont stop playing tf2, when youre an adult woman youll try to get back into it but youll have forgotten all the soldier rollouts and youll only be good at the hitscan classes and itll hurt your Gamer Cred". and my 14 year old self would say "when im a what,"
guess what I'm fucking makingggg
first time making crab rangoons, sorry
... :D ?