#book--wyrm

[farminglesbian]

29 pages into Cocaine Blues and there've been voiced two passionate intentions of killing a man so far

This is Book Dot and Phryne then proceeds to cut off the bastard’s suspenders and make him expose himself in public, which, FAIR

This is Book Mac lamenting a back-alley abortionist and I gotta tell you, I LOVE HER A LOT

[imunbreakabledude]

i don't have super strong opinions about the spade rework bc i'm not gonna get it for another few years (ironman) but i kind of feel like on main accounts, if the spade is tradable, it really won't matter if it's locked to an end game boss or not?

I can see the logic of "it's end game just give me qol" on irons, but like. I can get Jagex being wary of these things becoming fairly common among mains in a year or whatever once enough of these things are in the economy.

Esp since they are gonna roll out new farming stuff with sailing, they probably don't want to fuck over balancing and reward space and such.

it's true that (tradable) item sources don't directly dictate accessibility for mains the same way they do for irons. however, the fact that the spade would come from an endgame boss absolutely would make a difference in its accessibility for mains - via its price.

it's totally fine to have powerful, tradable items introduced to the game... we do it all the time. and the rarity of the item factors into supply & demand which helps create the price point and thus its accessibility.

now, it's obviously possible that given enough time, if this spade is powerful and non-degradable, it would crash in price as more come into the game faster than new players make accounts to need them. that happens to a lot of gear in the game, to varying degrees. but given that we can't know exactly how the price will go over time, i'm fine with saying that's a later problem to address if needed? either via rebalancing later on, or the GE tax being adjusted to remove them from the game, etc, whatever seems appropriate.

the main thing that would dictate if these stay expensive enough to be a suitably powerful, expensive buff is the droprate (as well as the length/difficulty of the bossfight). since jagex doesn't tell us these things until items are already in the game, I can't react to what I don't know. my desire for the spade to keep the instant harvest mechanic is based in an assumption/hope that they would balance its rarity appropriately according to its power. it's fine i guess if they nerf the power and make it more common... but it feels... less hype.

idk if you have played long enough to remember when the dragon harpoon was on the CoX loot table. but the revised version of the spade kinda feels like that. 2x harvest speed is... good, but feels low-impact enough that it feels kinda weird to come from a very difficult boss.

btw i would not call the spade a "QOL" feature for endgame, and I would disagree with anyone calling it QOL. I suppose you could call it "QOL" if it gave 0xp but instant harvests (which i would still prefer to the revised proposal of full xp/2x speed, personally). as originally proposed, it is a buff to farming. i believe that it is an exciting buff that I would like to see possible to earn in the game, with suitable rarity from suitably hard content. idk how else to explain it than that. like yes, the revised version would still be a buff to farming, and would still be nice to get. but i see the revised version and think, "oh, that's... kinda nice to have, i guess." versus the original version that made me think, "oh wow, that's really good. I would be pumped to get that drop from this difficult boss."

also, i'm not opposed to other tweaks if they felt the original was too powerful. I just really, really wanted the significant harvest speed buff. instant to 2x is effectively cutting the boost the item provides by a factor of 4x-10x, if you imagine that it fills your inventory with however many harvests you'd get (a typical herb patch gets you ~8 herbs, so 8x at once down to 2x speed is a 4x reduction, whereas an allotment that might fill your ~20 free inventory slots is getting the ~10x reduction by being brought down to 2x speed).

I would be fine with 0xp or reduced XP in exchange for the instant harvest. I would be fine with regular XP but a bigger speed buff of 4x or 5x harvests at a time. I would be fine with the spade requiring charges of some sort (i know chargescape is generally unpopular, but it does work well for balancing powerful effects). I also think there are other options they could explore to temper its power/accessibility for mains such that it wouldn't completely upend the farming meta - such as a high skill requirement to use (like 85 or so - infernal tools already have 85 skill reqs to balance out their power, as an example). or, I've seen threads on 07scape proposing that the harvest buff could scale with farming level, from 2x at low levels up to instant (or a large factor like 8x or 10x) at 99. there are so many other options to create balance besides nerfing the main draw of the item by such a significant factor.

and it's not the end of the world if the spade ends up with just the 2x speed, but it's disappointing, since it's one of the first proposed skilling buff rewards that's gotten me genuinely excited - not to mention, excited about a skill i already have 99 in!

also i don't think sailing or hypothetical future farming updates have anything to do with this seeing as jagex themselves didn't even give that as a reason for the change; they said it was about relative XP rates and 'preserving the meta' of tree seeds.

[mylittleredgirl]

So D&D(tm) does have a lot of reading, to be fair, and groups where you play d&d without reading basically offload the reading to the GM which does mean you need a GM who is very familiar with the game.

SO if you want a gateway drug, you could try Tricube Tales. The system is free, simple, functional, and only needs three 6 sided dice (so no need to buy a dice set before you’re sure you wanna commit). If you can gather up a bunch of friends who also wanna try, GMing tricube tales is pretty easy if you are good at improv.

If you aren’t good at improv, don’t want to Gm, or can’t get 2-4 friends (do not try to GM for more your first time btw) you could try finding a local group, ideally one that does oneshots to get a sense of how games work before you jump into a campaign.

If all the above are infeasible there are solo games that randomly generate scenarios for you to RP in. I don’t know much about them but they exist.

Go forth and adventure!

i missed this in my inbox from ages ago, which is sad because more people should see this! the next time the invitation crosses my path, i will now be braver about accepting :)

[specialagentartemis]

tell me more about classic filk i know a few songs but never got deep into it

Heck YEAH

"Filk" is music (often but not always folk music-style, often but not always song parodies to the tune of famous pre-existing songs) about sci-fi, fantasy, and other fannish topics. Filk circles are popular events at science fiction conventions, and that's really where the genre started. The word "filk" actually arose from a typo in a convention program once, and people just rolled with it ever since!

Some of the most iconic albums in the filk world are the anthology albums "Minus Ten And Counting" (songs about space exploration and the real-life space program), "Carmen Miranda's Ghost" (songs about sci-fi space shenanigans and space ghosts), and "Finity's End: Songs of the Station Trade" (songs set in the world of CJ Cherryh's Alliance-Union novels, and my personal favorite. I've never read any of CJ Cherryh's books, but these songs paint such a vivid world.) "Space Heroes and Other Fools" is another big one, it's more hit-or-miss for me but it's iconic. Other really good and foundational ones are "Divine Intervention" by Julia Ecklar, "Avalon is Risen" by Leslie Fish, and "We Are Who We Are" by Vixy & Tony.

I lean more towards sci-fi and space than fantasy, but fantasy and paganism are huuuugely popular filk topics too.

Some of the most popular names to look into include Leslie Fish (intensely prolific, barely a fraction of her work is on any streaming or music service), Julia Ecklar (famous for her "ose," the filk-world word for sad songs - because they're "ose, more-ose, and even more-ose), Juanita Coulson, Kristoph Klover, Vic Tyler (who just recently died :( rest in peace), Duane Elms, Kathy Mar, Bob Kanefsky, Alexander James (trans, with lots of filk under his previous name as well), Vixy & Tony, and Seanan McGuire. (I like Seanan McGuire's filk music better than her books, hah.) Some other great ones include Cat Faber (most acapella), Astrisoni, The PDX Broadsides, Kari Maaren, and Sassafrass (also mostly acapella. Includes Ada Palmer). Heather Dale, Tom Lehrer, and Jonathan Coulton are kind of honorary filkers too haha.

The best place to get the ones from 80s and 90s cassettes are on the Internet Archive or Youtube; a few filkers who are more currently active have their stuff on Bandcamp.

And I'll leave you with a few of my Favorite Ever filk songs:

"Sam Jones" by CJ Cherryh and Leslie Fish

"Pushin' the Speed of Light" by Julia Ecklar and Anne Prather

"Chickasaw Mountain" by Leslie Fish

"Fire in the Sky" by Jordan Kare

"The Phoenix" by Julia Ecklar

"Freedom of the Snow" by Leslie Fish

"Burn it Down" by Vixy & Tony

"Hope Eyrie" by Leslie Fish, or this Minus Ten And Counting version

"Rocket Rider's Prayer" by Kristoph Klover, Ernie Mansfield, and Cecilia Eng

"Dawson's Christian" by Duane Elms, performed by Vic Tyler or Vixy & Tony

"Somebody Will" by Sassafrass

"Chances & Choices & Fortunes & Fates" by Astrisoni

... my tastes lean sentimental and ose but I swear there's a lot of very funny filk out there too

"Never Set the Cat on Fire" by Frank Hayes (a famous one)

"Banned From Argo" by Leslie Fish (an INFAMOUS one)

"Don't Push That Button" by Duane Elms and Larry Warner

"No More SF Cons" by Juanita Coulson

"One More Ose Song" by B. J. Willinger

everything Bob Kanefsky writes

[davinciae]

Hey, OP here. I learned how to glitch polls and immediately decided to make it everyone's problem

thank you for your hard work i'm in pain <3

[gretchensinister]

Heyo I'm looking for a fic you wrote some time ago where jack accidentally kills bunny and then talks to his reincarnation

The fic is Not For Hate, have a great evening!

[pumpkinpaix]

I don't suppose you have a link to that Chinese diaspora discord server? Sorry if it's weird to ask I'm just losing my mind being alone in america right now.

hey friendo!! hit up @mxtxdiaspora. that’s a chinese diaspora creatives (but it’s pretty open) who are mxtx fans. they’ll be able to get you an invite into that one :D

[thatgirlonstage]

@book--wyrm replied to your post “My DM and I had a disagreement several weeks ago about whether I...”

I feel like if that's the way you wanna play RPGs d&d is not the best option for you; the fact that you say there's a feat you can take to do exactly what you want means that what you're asking for is a free feat, which unbalances a game as numbers driven as d&d. Like, I totally get you, doing cool shit that you think of on the spot is great, just not in these circumstances

Actually in this specific circumstance I’m arguing that the rules as they exist are stupid and DND should change them. Shields should inherently have weapon damage. You don’t have to be PROFICIENT in them without a feat, that’s fine. But you should be allowed to use them to do more damage than you can when you slap someone. (I also think the fact that there’s no variance in the amount of damage you can do with an unarmed strike unless you’re a monk or have some other feature that makes you good at unarmed combat is extremely stupid because there is a wild amount of difference between me open-handed slapping someone and driving my knee into someone’s groin like I’m trying to send their lungs out their mouth no matter HOW strong I am, but that’s another whole conversation.)

More broadly I agree that I would probably enjoy some other game systems more, but I’m playing with a group of irl friends, this is not me seeking out gaming groups in particular, so that’s a moot point.