I Guess I Don’t Post Sketches

Wherein I fail to post a sketch page every day (in order to motivate me to actually do a sketch page every day) and reblog whatever I want.

[uss-edsall]

At 1 PM on a Friday I get an email from my boss. I'm busy as hell so I don't check it immediately. Then I get a phone call from my boss, which has almost never happened before. I'm a white collar worker, a historian. There's never a 'historical emergency' requiring a phone call to kick me in the ass and get to work.

The request is so urgent my boss needs it by the end of the work week. Which, y'know, is 5 PM on a Friday. So I have four hours to do it.

It's a forwarded request. Somebody contacted a member of the donation team asking for help, "I need a map from the Vietnam War to use for a presentation." It's somebody she's trying to coax into giving a five figure donation to the museum.

The request was asked to the donation team member, who then emailed my boss, who then emailed and called me urgently.

This map required:

North and South Vietnam in it

All four areas that South Vietnam was divided into for military purposes ('Corps') clearly delineated

Four cities, all of them horrifically misspelled, and only identifiable because I know what battle the requester is asking about (it’s in III Corps on the border with Cambodia) (the requester danced around the battle but I’m knowledgeable enough to identify it)

Has Laos and Cambodia in it

Has the Ho Chi Minh Trail in it

So. I was mad about the 'you have literally four hours to find a map with a lot of requirements.'

I was then mad at myself about finding a copyright free map from Texas Tech University within half an hour, proving her right for asking me to do it.

Then, after I found a map that perfectly met the requirements, I was equally amazed, baffled, and horrified when I read further into the forwarded email chain.

The donation team team member they were speaking to used AI to generate a map.

The above put half of North Vietnam in South Vietnam, made the Ho Chi Minh Trail a country, made 60% of Cambodia part of South Vietnam, put the DMZ extremely high up in North Vietnam, completely disconnected the southern tip of Vietnam, misplaced all of the Corps zones, etc etc

At the very last second the donation team member had a moment of divine clarity, remembering there's three historians on payroll to ask for this kind of thing from. So she contacted my boss while saying, "I had fun with this, but I decided I should check for accuracy before I send it to the donor! I need a fact check by the end of the day, then I send it"

My boss, while not the most knowledgeable on the Vietnam War, does know her geography. She took one look, and knew it was so off she called me to tell me how urgent it is that I look at the email and respond

good fucking god, jesus tap dancing goddamn christ, I'm glad I was asked to look at it and then find a real map

[the-murmuration-project]

My fear has never been that AI would replace human intelligence. My fear has been that the people who Know Things and the people who Make The Decisions are almost never the same people.

We’re throwing real intelligence out on the street to starve while worshipping the shambling Frankenstein-ed corpse of knowledge puppeteered by those who see us as disposable assets.

[orteil42]

given the current climate this pride especially i feel i must mention that i love my trans friends, i stand with trans people in the fight against transphobic legislation and those who would enforce it, and this blog is not a good place for you to be if you do not vibe with that

[prokopetz]

If you'd asked me a decade ago which contemporary tabletop RPG was most likely to do the AD&D-versus-BD&D "two versions of the same game being published simultaneously, one of which is ostensibly a stripped down version of the other, but in practice they're really two separate forks of the same core system that fundamentally disagree with each other about what kind of game that system should be" thing, I definitely wouldn't have guessed "Exalted", but in retrospect it seems almost inevitable.

[theningaraf]

Ok, I have not been paying attention to new Exalted after 2.5 stopped - what in the world is happening over there?

[prokopetz]

In brief, there are currently two separate versions of Exalted in active publication: Exalted 3rd Edition, and Exalted: Essence. The latter's marketing kind of positions it as a lightweight or introductory version of the former, but in practice the two are just totally incompatible visions of what the game is supposed to be, and familiarity with one isn't necessarily transferable to the other. They even disagree with one another on the level of basic setting worldbuilding that has no implications for the game mechanics, which is actually kind of remarkable.

[stephenleasheppard]

In theory, Exalted: Essence sort of positions itself as "Exalted, but friendlier." So, lighter rules, all the Exalt types are (in theory) mechanically balanced instead of Solars having a huge power advantage over everyone else (this is supposed to be a non-diegetic concession to play experience), but also the Essence setting has kind of... had a bunch of its edges sanded off. You are far less likely to encounter something that makes it clear that plagues happen in an Essence book, or that gender-based bigotry is normative in Creation even though it takes different form than it does on Earth. And this is confusing because it is ostensibly the same setting to the point where most of the setting books are written for Exalted 3rd Edition and Essence points you at the 3rd Edition books for more setting info.

[prokopetz]

I wouldn't even necessarily agree that Essence has lighter rules. Some of its individual subsystems are lighter than their 3E counterparts, yes, but other subsystems are substantially elaborated upon where Essence's authors seem to have felt 3E's are lacking – and some of those subsystems which have received greater elaboration are sitting right in the middle of core components, like action declaration timing.

[stephenleasheppard]

You're right, but also, no, because Exalted: Essence lets you do full charm sets for every Exalt type out of one book. Next to cutting out six or seven extra hardcovers' worth of custom charm systems (several of which are at this point still hypothetical, I believe), more fiddly action declaration is not, on balance, more rules-heavy.

[prokopetz]

I've never found the argument from page count terribly persuasive. It feels like arguing that playing a wizard in Dungeons & Dragons is more complicated than playing a wizard in Ars Magica because if you include every published supplement, the D&D wizard has a longer spell list. Certainly, having a Charm list with less needless verbosity and more willingness to collapse obvious redundancies makes character creation much quicker, but I'm not convinced its impact on active play is sufficient to overwhelm every other factor put together.

[stephenleasheppard]

It’s not about page count in this case. Exalted is a game where you can reasonably expect to have four or five players each playing a character archetype with a completely bespoke power set, carefully designed with a bunch of synergies both obvious and inobvious, and in the case of Exalted 3rd Edition it’s some of the densest mechanical writing in the line’s history. In D&D even if your starting lineup is all spellcasters, at level 1 they may have fewer spells between them than one starting Exalt has Charms. Essence does an end-run around that. The core mechanics can be more complex in places but the density of bespoke powers in active play is vastly less.

[prokopetz]

If you'd asked me a decade ago which contemporary tabletop RPG was most likely to do the AD&D-versus-BD&D "two versions of the same game being published simultaneously, one of which is ostensibly a stripped down version of the other, but in practice they're really two separate forks of the same core system that fundamentally disagree with each other about what kind of game that system should be" thing, I definitely wouldn't have guessed "Exalted", but in retrospect it seems almost inevitable.

[theningaraf]

Ok, I have not been paying attention to new Exalted after 2.5 stopped - what in the world is happening over there?

[prokopetz]

In brief, there are currently two separate versions of Exalted in active publication: Exalted 3rd Edition, and Exalted: Essence. The latter's marketing kind of positions it as a lightweight or introductory version of the former, but in practice the two are just totally incompatible visions of what the game is supposed to be, and familiarity with one isn't necessarily transferable to the other. They even disagree with one another on the level of basic setting worldbuilding that has no implications for the game mechanics, which is actually kind of remarkable.

[stephenleasheppard]

In theory, Exalted: Essence sort of positions itself as "Exalted, but friendlier." So, lighter rules, all the Exalt types are (in theory) mechanically balanced instead of Solars having a huge power advantage over everyone else (this is supposed to be a non-diegetic concession to play experience), but also the Essence setting has kind of... had a bunch of its edges sanded off. You are far less likely to encounter something that makes it clear that plagues happen in an Essence book, or that gender-based bigotry is normative in Creation even though it takes different form than it does on Earth. And this is confusing because it is ostensibly the same setting to the point where most of the setting books are written for Exalted 3rd Edition and Essence points you at the 3rd Edition books for more setting info.

[prokopetz]

I wouldn't even necessarily agree that Essence has lighter rules. Some of its individual subsystems are lighter than their 3E counterparts, yes, but other subsystems are substantially elaborated upon where Essence's authors seem to have felt 3E's are lacking – and some of those subsystems which have received greater elaboration are sitting right in the middle of core components, like action declaration timing.

[stephenleasheppard]

You're right, but also, no, because Exalted: Essence lets you do full charm sets for every Exalt type out of one book. Next to cutting out six or seven extra hardcovers' worth of custom charm systems (several of which are at this point still hypothetical, I believe), more fiddly action declaration is not, on balance, more rules-heavy.

[prokopetz]

If you'd asked me a decade ago which contemporary tabletop RPG was most likely to do the AD&D-versus-BD&D "two versions of the same game being published simultaneously, one of which is ostensibly a stripped down version of the other, but in practice they're really two separate forks of the same core system that fundamentally disagree with each other about what kind of game that system should be" thing, I definitely wouldn't have guessed "Exalted", but in retrospect it seems almost inevitable.

[theningaraf]

Ok, I have not been paying attention to new Exalted after 2.5 stopped - what in the world is happening over there?

[prokopetz]

In brief, there are currently two separate versions of Exalted in active publication: Exalted 3rd Edition, and Exalted: Essence. The latter's marketing kind of positions it as a lightweight or introductory version of the former, but in practice the two are just totally incompatible visions of what the game is supposed to be, and familiarity with one isn't necessarily transferable to the other. They even disagree with one another on the level of basic setting worldbuilding that has no implications for the game mechanics, which is actually kind of remarkable.

[stephenleasheppard]

In theory, Exalted: Essence sort of positions itself as "Exalted, but friendlier." So, lighter rules, all the Exalt types are (in theory) mechanically balanced instead of Solars having a huge power advantage over everyone else (this is supposed to be a non-diegetic concession to play experience), but also the Essence setting has kind of... had a bunch of its edges sanded off. You are far less likely to encounter something that makes it clear that plagues happen in an Essence book, or that gender-based bigotry is normative in Creation even though it takes different form than it does on Earth. And this is confusing because it is ostensibly the same setting to the point where most of the setting books are written for Exalted 3rd Edition and Essence points you at the 3rd Edition books for more setting info.

[prokopetz]

Did you play AD&D? I can't remember how old you are, so hopefully that's not too offensive. If so, was a typical game really as hostile as people say it was?

That's one of those question where the answer hovers somewhere between "no, with a couple of massive caveats" and "yes, but not in the way most people think".

A lot of AD&D 1st Edition's GMing practices are pretty hardass by modern standards; however, they need to be understood in the context that the game's authors were writing for a target audience who mainly played the game in college wargaming clubs, where players would frequently transfer between groups and group sizes tended to be very large – six players per GM was considered a bare minimum, and up to a dozen player characters in a single party was by no means unheard of!

In particular, players would often bring their character sheets with them when hopping between groups, and it was considered a faux pas for a GM to reject an incoming player's existing character or request any substantive changes be made, so managing expectations could be quite challenging; even as late as 2nd Edition, the Dungeon Master's Guide contains extensive discussion of how to gracefully handle players bringing existing characters with them who aren't necessarily a good fit for the present game's tone or resource economy.

The upshot is that the culture of play these iterations of Dungeons & Dragons are targeting inherently obliges the GM to take a much firmer hand to keep things on track than a pickup game that draws players exclusively from within the GM's established friend group might – and to be sure, some GMs abused these expectations to act like petty tyrants, but some contemporary GMs do that, too.

A big part of the modern perception that 1E and 2E were extraordinarily player hostile, meanwhile, has nothing to do with the previously discussed GMing practices; rather, it emerges from the transition away from that culture of play in a slightly unexpected way.

In brief, back when D&D was mainly played by wargaming clubs, it was fashionable to run pre-written adventure modules competitively at conventions; the competition wasn't between players, but between parties, with multiple groups running the same adventure in parallel to contend for prizes. Tournament play sometimes chose its winners based on the fastest real-time completion of the module in question, or set specific objectives within the module which would award points when completed, a bit like speed-running or achievement-hunting in a video game (though neither practice existed yet at the time).

It was the survival module, however, that quickly emerged as the most popular tournament format. In a survival tournament, each player would provide or was furnished with a binder containing a fixed number of pre-generated character sheets, switching to the next character sheet in the set as each preceding character died; the winning group was the one whose last surviving character's corpse hit the dirt furthest from the dungeon entrance.

Many of 1E's most popular adventure modules, including the infamous Tomb of Horrors, were originally written as survival modules to be run at tournaments in conventions. As such, they were designed to kill off player characters both quickly and efficiently, so as to reduce the likelihood that the tournament would run overtime and get kicked out of the convention venue. When they were later cleanup and repackaged as commercial adventure modules, their text rarely bothered to explain any of this – who doesn't recognise a survival module when they see one?

The answer to that question, of course, is kids who didn't come up through the mentorship system of the college wargaming clubs, but taught themselves how to play D&D from first principles using books they bought at their local hobby stores – and when D&D's popularity unexpectedly exploded in the early 1980s, there were suddenly rather a lot of them!

These kids purchased the repackaged survival modules along with all their other D&D books; having no frame of reference, they assumed that these represented what a "standard" D&D adventure was supposed to look like – and since they weren't experienced players with whole binders full of pre-generated backup characters at their fingertips, the result was a lot of seemingly unfair total party kills, and a lot of kids concluding that the previous generation's GMs must have been objectively insane.

[stephenleasheppard]

There is an additional amusing point of order here, which is the answer to the following two questions. I once had a discussion with someone in Gary Gygax's gaming group, who was involved in early TSR work a bit. Allow me to paraphrase my questions and his answers.

Why publish survival modules as your primary format of published adventure?

"Because that's what we had -- they were already laid out for publication. Why not publish them and make some money off it?"

Did it ever occur to you at the time that publishing adventures like these would shape the larger D&D culture's expectations of what play was supposed to look like?

"No, why would it?"

[toskarin]

rip to john blanche, not even cracking a joke about it, he was one of the coolest to ever do it

[argumate]

LLM psychosis is simply the democratisation of being surrounded by yes-men and unctuous toadies, an experience previously only accessible to dictators and kings and cult leaders and venture capitalists

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Sam Handwich.

[sufficientlylargen]

If Pikiwedia says it it must be true.

[zooperdoopers]

I made Pikiwedia real. Works for any Wikipedia page. Use this wisely :)‌

[sufficientlylargen]

Oh, wary dell vone

[sexhaver]

it's extremely funny reading historical accounts of Spontaneous Human Combustion because it follows the normal historical trend of other 1800s paranormal phenomena where it stopped happening as much right around the time cameras were invented and stopped happening entirely when everyone started carrying mini cameras in their pockets, but unlike most others of its ilk, it was effectively replaced by this mysterious phenomena where alocoholics would spill liqour on themselves and then fall asleep smoking a cigarette and turn into a fireball. nobody knows if these two things are related

[lizmitches]

you can be peeling a boiled egg and think to yourself wow. that was so simple. and then you peel another one and it’s like being in the throes of war. shell everywhere. egg mangled. tears in your eyes. that’s how god keeps you humble

[narwa]

[april]

ⓘ Tip If you feel unfulfilled by how you spent your time today, you can stay up late to try to combat the sense of dissatisfaction. This will ensure that you feel even worse tomorrow.

[famicom]

[cringe-writing-overlord]

big day for the unemployed

[stephenleasheppard]

Technically Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff had an existence prior to Homestuck on the Penny Arcade forums; Hussie wrote them into Homestuck as Dave’s webcomic after the fact. So this might just be a SBaHJ reference.

[rederiswrites]

There really really ought to be a book about how the staple crops of different civilizations shape and influence those civilizations, and I really want to read it.

[alexseanchai]

Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky and A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage (three are alcohol, three have caffeine) are not quite that, but may still be of interest?

[rederiswrites]

I read Salt back in the day and it's so so good, second the rec. I have heard of 6 Glasses and not read it but I am sure I would probably love it. Gotta see if the library has it. Thank you!

[pandorasquillandquotes]

Gonna throw Empire of Cotton by Sven Beckert in the ring here! You'll never see the modern world the same way again.

[vaspider]

A Short History Of The World According To Sheep by Sally Coulthard blew my mind. So many things are tied to wool and sheep and weaving and so many words and phrases are tied to wool, people have no idea.

Example words which come from textiles/weaving, if not specifically wool (go look them up!): subtle, shoddy, tabby, Brazil, rocket, twit, warped, going batty, on tenterhooks, text...

[foxofninetales]

I'll throw in a rec for Pickled, Potted, and Canned by Sue Shephard - a very interesting look at food preservation and how the availability of different types of food preservation shaped cultures and cuisines.

[electronsprotonscroutons]

Sweetness and Power is this but for the topic of sugar

[magneticdeclination]

The Lost Supper: Searching for the Future of Food in the Flavors of the Past might also be up your alley. It's about "forgotten" foods and staples. They talk about different types of wheat, sauces, veggies, etc and a little about the cultures from whence they come

[doctornerdington]

Also: Much Depends on Dinner by Margaret Visser. One of my favourite books.

[bitchwhoyoukiddin]

DO I HAVE A SERIES FOR YOU. University of California Press has a gift for you and it is a 80+ book series on food studies. There are even some that are open access (legally free), but the rest are in libraries.

I also highly recommend Frostbite by Nicola Twilley. It’s about the impact refrigeration has had/is having on food preservation and culture, globally. It was one of my favorite books of this last year.

[calystarose]

Also, The Rice Theory of Culture https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1172&context=orpc By Thomas Talhelm

[ariaste]

Can't believe no one's mentioned Consider the Fork yet, which is about how environment/resources shape our ways of eating, which shapes both our culture and our concepts of politeness. So interesting, really recommend!

[great-art-and-a-purple-tongue]

Seven Flowers and How They Shaped Our World by Jennifer Potter

It isn't so much about edible plants as it is about decorative ones, but I think it fits the theme of this growing list enough for me to add it.

[lurks-no-more]

The only book here that I've read is Salt, and I definitely vouch for it. Makes me want to find and read the rest of the ones mentioned here!

[stephenleasheppard]

I mean I really enjoyed Against the Grain by James C. Scott but that’s less about grain and more about the various peoples who’ve gone “Oh fuck this centrally administered agriculture for legible, easily taxed crops thing, let’s go live in the hills and grow easily-hidden-from-the-tax-man root vegetables and be ungovernable.”

Also if you’re reading James C. Scott you should read Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes To Improve The Human Condition Have Failed, the title alone of which should sell you on it.

[epilepticsaints]

[if-you-see-gay-me]

[magnetictapedatastorage]

[heatandapathy]

Needs the last part

[captainscarletsc]

[scoundrellyfeline]

@heatandapathy you forgot the best part

[tsamired]

you are never living this down

[fleshdyke]

godawful post i made when i was 14. let me escape it please god

[richcrazydad]

Never!

[somecallmekay]

NOT EVEN IN DEATH

[tropics777]

And in these next 50 years you will eat so many delicious meals, laugh so many times with so many people you love, shout and scream and sing and cry and smile so hard your face hurts. And you will see such beautiful sunsets and feel fresh cold air on your face and feel warm and safe wrapped up in your favourite winter coat.

[wizard-council-bureaucrat]

I wrap this blessing around you like a shroud, so that no ill can find you, and every warmth is held close