girlfailure extraordinaire @thewill0wtree - Tumblr Blog

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hello

my name is willow/ chelsea/ emily/ envy/ rose, they all work

im a trans catgirl with ADHD, depression and probably a few other things.

i like video games, punk rock, metal and having a good time with my freinds.

i am over 18 so dont be shocked if i talk about mature topics

im also a streamer so if you thinks im fun to talk to maybe give my twitch a look

Watch this video on Twitch Live

im also on bluesky

1000% eepy girl

that's it for now, remember that birds and other cool things exist

#vermins thoughts

winters-r0se

*hands you a cheeseburger*

Woaaaa

Yay :)

thewill0wtree

burgre

literally-black-jesus

I hate how it's always "stop letting your teenagers drink energy drinks!!!" And never "stop letting energy drink companies put dangerous amounts of caffeine into their drinks and stop letting them market to teenagers" or "stop forcing teenagers to be at constant sleep deficits because of early wake ups and absurd homework and stress loads" but hey who cares why not blame the literal child for trying to stay awake enough to match the absurd expectations y'all have for us now

prokopetz

I've had a couple of people ask for a digestible version of the whole "the real problem with Dungeons & Dragons is false advertising, not anything that's present in its text" thing I keep alluding to, so here's the bullet point version of that argument:

Dungeons & Dragons is owned by Hasbro. Yes, the same Hasbro that owns Monopoly and My Little Pony.

Hasbro wants D&D to be the only tabletop RPG that anyone plays.

In order to accomplish this, Hasbro needs D&D to be a universal entry-level game.

D&D is not a universal entry-level game.

All game rules are opinionated about how the game ought to be played, and as tabletop RPGs go, D&D's rules are more opinionated than most. This is not a flaw, but it's not what Hasbro needs.

D&D is also on the high end of complexity as far as tabletop RPGs go, and it's complex in a way that strongly rewards system mastery, so it's pretty far from "entry level".

Hasbro could produce a version of D&D that's at the very least less opinionated and more entry-level than it presently is, but they don't want to, because they've determined that certain rules features which run counter to both of those goals are critical to D&D's brand identity.

They also don't want to produce multiple versions of D&D tailored for different audiences, because they want every single D&D group to be a potential purchaser of every single D&D product; they'd be effectively competing with themselves for their own customer base if the published game was actually modular in any meaningful way.

So how does Hasbro square that circle?

Simple: they lie. They insist that D&D is in fact a universal entry-level game in spite of all evidence to the contrary, and back their advertising up with sponsored thinkpieces and podcasts and such to "prove" it.

Further, they've spent decades fostering a culture of play which conceals the gap between the game they're advertising and the game they're selling by ascribing any appearance that D&D isn't a universal entry-level game to the incompetence or malice of individual GMs.

The game the rules want to produce disagrees with the game the group wants to play? Nonsense – even the rankest beginner should be able to produce any experience of play using any set of rules, and if your GM can't, they're a Bad GM.

The game is hard to learn? No, it isn't – your GM is merely gatekeeping you. This wouldn't be a problem with a Good GM.

The upshot is that the published rules are more or less irrelevant with respect to achieving the desired experience of play, because they're operating within a culture of play which dumps 100% of the work of making that desired experience of play happen on the GM.

Indeed, much of what modern D&D presents as GMing best practices are really methods of working around the fact that the rules you're using disagree with you about what kind of game you're playing.

(It's not a coincidence that D&D's entrenched culture of play also insists that it's normal for GMs to be miserably overworked and treats GM burnout as a big funny joke, then turns around and loudly wonders why there's a constant GM shortage.)

The trick is, because you're still at least notionally using the rules of D&D, the fruits of all that GM labour are perceived as the product of "playing D&D", not of the GM's hard work.

In essence, Hasbro's business model for Dungeons & Dragons is selling you your own GM's labour with a D&D sticker on it.

It's a very neat trick, if you can pull it off.

Now, at this point some readers may be asking: well, sure, but not all GMs are doormats. What about "killer" GMs who do gatekeep and railroad their players and otherwise act like complete tyrants? I hear horror stories about them all the time.

That's the second trick: these are not opposites. The GM as human Xbox and the GM as tyrant of the table both represent the GM doing all the actual work of making the game happen. The latter isn't the outcome that Hasbro wants, but it's a logical conclusion of the position they want the GM to be in.

prokopetz

I've seen a few folks in the notes respond "okay, but if that's true, why is D&D so much more flexible than most indie RPGs?", and the answer is that it's not. That's part of the sleight of hand I've talked about where the GM's labour is framed as part of the product. To break it down:

As noted above, all game rules are opinionated about what kind of game they wanted to produce. This isn't just a matter of setting (though setting-neutral games are often misleadingly called "universal" games), but also a matter of the basic structure of the narrative which emerges when you follow the rules.

The rules of Dungeons & Dragons are not less opinionated than those of your average indie RPG, and in fact are more opinionated than most. (Again, having strongly opinionated rules is not something that's wrong with D&D; it's merely something that's inconvenient for Hasbro's marketing goals in a way they're unwilling to address.)

In brief, D&D really, really wants your game to be a sword and sorcery dungeon crawl. If the GM is using the framework of play furnished by the rules at all, or if the players are responding to the rules' player-facing incentives even a little bit, it's going to squish your game into something dungeon-crawl-shaped.

(This should not be surprising; it's literally in the name!)

The rules of D&D being opinionated in this way tends to fly under the radar for a couple of reasons, one less problematic and one more so.

The relatively benign reason is that many popular RPG premises are not done any great violence by being squished into the shape of a sword and sorcery dungeon crawl.

A cyberpunk smash and grab caper? Basically a dungeon crawl already.

A special forces op in a modern military game? That doesn't need to be shaped like a sword and sorcery dungeon crawl, but it can be shaped like one and remain intelligible as what it's supposed to be.

Gritty logistics-driven survival horror? Not inherently dungeon crawl shaped, but the two genres are compatible – a game can be both at the same time, as video games like Fear & Hunger and Look Outside demonstrate. (Indeed, Look Outside's apartment building follows the structure of an old school D&D megadungeon nearly beat for beat!)

Thanks to D&D's pervasive cultural influence informing what people expect a tabletop RPG to be, as long as this kind of compatibility is present, many folks won't even notice their intended premise is being squished into the shape of a sword and sorcery dungeon crawl.

If your chosen premise isn't compatible in this way, or if the group notices what's happening and decides to push back against it, though? That's where the sleight of hand I alluded to above starts to come into play.

Remember: a Good GM™, even a total novice, ought to be able to use any set of rules to produce any desired experience of play, right?

So get to work!

i.e., just as much of the game's putative approachability is the product of Hasbro selling the players their GM's labour in a D&D-shaped box, much of D&D's putative flexibility is the product of the GM being sold their own labour in a D&D-shaped box.

To be clear, this is not militating against homebrew content or rules. Homebrew is perfectly cromulent, and certainly, some games are more or less structurally amenable to it (though modern D&D tends to fall on the "less" side).

The problem is that what we've got on our hands is a culture of play that wants to have its cake and eat it too: when doing extensive homebrew is treated as part of the GM's basic, entry-level responsibilities, it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking of the product of that labour as merely being a feature of the game.

Which is, of course, exactly what Hasbro's marketing ghouls want.

oopsabird

sailor moon kitty overseeing the mission control room in houston as we leave orbit to head for the moon??? based.

pinkcultgirl

probably some of the most self-indulgent gay shit I've drawn in a while

pinkcultgirl

This post seems to be a big hit with the transfem community awesome

chimerathingcock

the bitemarks leaving cuddler would like to kiss you in many places very safe no chomps

animentality

ntrider

noncon friendship

sonyvegas9-deactivated20241118

Coworkers

owenthetokencishet

When the male lead and female lead make it to the end of the story without kissing

i am forever not doing enough about the injustace in the world

all the people who need help who i cant give it to

all the things i should be doing but arnt

it feels terrible but its more terrible to be the one asking for help or the person asking for a change in behvoire

i should be doing more but im not

the-peoples-puppy

Does that tgirl have a 'butch haircut' because she's defying gender norms or because hair stylists don't respect her desire for a feminine haircut and nobody taught her how to cut her own hair?

Does that tgirl wear 'butch clothes' because she wants to dress ambiguously or is she too broke to wear anything other than the clothes her parents bought her in high school?

Does that tgirl have noticeable stubble because she's genderfuck or because she doesn't know where to start with buying and applying makeup?

Does that tgirl have hairy legs, feet, and belly because she's a hardline feminist or because electrolysis is $300~ a session?

Does that tgirl want to present masc or is she just poor and isolated?

the-peoples-puppy

Damn how could I forget the most important part:

DOES THAT TGIRL LOOK LIKE IF A BOY WAS A GIRL BECAUSE SHE WANTS TO OR BECAUSE SHE CAN'T GET ON FUCKING ESTROGEN?

dollbandcry

how do people hatewatch things, i can barely find the time to read and watch all the things i actively want to, how the fuck are you putting time aside to watch an entire season of dogshit telly thats just gonna make you mad

thewill0wtree

yeah i never understood that

like why give your valuble time to somthing you know you wont enjoy