changelingrain - Tumblr blog

[changelingrain]

Whatever I hauve it's a lot stronger than covid

[changelingrain]

I think the most fucked up thing about intrusive thoughts is it's really difficult to discuss them without discussing their content, because without a discussion of their content it's impossible to get across just how distressing and debilitating they are. "Oh, you have unpleasant thoughts sometimes? Yeah we all have that, I guess."

But if you discuss their content there's this huge risk of people just pulling away in disgust. "Oh god, you have THOSE sorts of thoughts? They should lock freaks like you the fuck up!" As if they think people act on every single thought they have.

[changelingrain]

[changelingrain]

Now, in the clear light of the post-combat situation report I grant that it was perhaps not the most tactically efficient course to expend a once-per-mission cooldown and incur sufficient excess heat to melt my own reactor core twice over in order to inflict 45 points of damage upon a target with 8 HP, but I strongly feel any assessment of the soundness of my decision should take into account that fucker had it coming.

[changelingrain]

[changelingrain]

It is in fact very funny that a couple of dudes got so sick of waiting for Animusic 3 that they figured out how Animusic's technique of procedurally animating rigged instrument models based on MIDI input worked, wrote their own software, and started making their own original Animusic-style videos.

[changelingrain]

The flip side of the post-World War II cries of “Never again” was an unspoken “Never before.” The insistence on lifting the Holocaust out of history, the failure to recognize these patterns, and the refusal to see where the Nazis fit inside the arc of colonial genocides have all come at a high cost. The countries that defeated Hitler did not have to confront the uncomfortable fact that Hitler had taken pointers and inspiration on race-making and on human containment from them, leaving their innocence not only undisturbed but also significantly strengthened by what was indeed a righteous victory.

Naomi Klein, Doppelganger

[changelingrain]

Read today's update on kiddcommander.com!

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[changelingrain]

i already have a job and it's called keeping myself alive. why do i have to be employed on top of that

[changelingrain]

I don’t think Laios would fuck his clone, because I don’t really see him as having any interest in that. However, Laios’s clone, upon realizing he is a clone, would enthusiastically pester Laios to eat him because he wants to know what he tastes like.

[changelingrain]

I think a lot of folks in indie RPG spaces misunderstand what's going on when people who've only ever played Dungeons & Dragons claim that indie RPGs are categorically "too complicated". Yes, it's sometimes the case that they're making the unjustified assumption that all games are as complicated as Dungeons & Dragons and shying away from the possibility of having to brave a steep learning cure a second time, but that's not the whole picture.

A big part of it is that there's a substantial chunk of the D&D fandom – not a majority by any means, but certainly a very significant minority – who are into D&D because they like its vibes or they enjoy its default setting or whatever, but they have no interest in actually playing the kind of game that D&D is... so they don't.

Oh, they'll show up at your table, and if you're very lucky they might even provide their own character sheet (though whether it adheres to the character creation guidelines is anyone's guess!), but their actual engagement with the process of play consists of dicking around until the GM tells them to roll some dice, then reporting what number they rolled and letting the GM figure out what that means.

Basically, they're putting the GM in the position of acting as their personal assistant, onto whom they can offload any parts of the process of play that they're not interested in – and for some players, that's essentially everything except the physical act of rolling the dice, made possible by the fact most of D&D's mechanics are either GM-facing or amenable to being treated as such.*

Now, let's take this player and present them with a game whose design is informed by a culture of play where mechanics are strongly player facing, often to the extent that the GM doesn't need to familiarise themselves with the players' character sheets and never rolls any dice, and... well, you can see where the wires get crossed, right?

And the worst part is that it's not these players' fault – not really. Heck, it's not even a problem with D&D as a system. The problem is D&D's marketing-decreed position as a universal entry-level game means that neither the text nor the culture of play are ever allowed to admit that it might be a bad fit for any player, so total disengagement from the processes of play has to be framed as a personal preference and not a sign of basic incompatibility between the kind of game a player wants to be playing and the kind of game they're actually playing.

(Of course, from the GM's perspective, having even one player who expects you to do all the work represents a huge increase to the GM's workload, let alone a whole group full of them – but we can't admit that, either, so we're left with a culture of play whose received wisdom holds that it's just normal for GMs to be constantly riding the ragged edge of creative burnout. Fun!)

* Which, to be clear, is not a flaw in itself; a rules-heavy game ideally needs a mechanism for introducing its processes of play gradually.

[changelingrain]

The landlord fears the urban oyster mushroom farmer

[changelingrain]

Congratulations! You are now a Magic-User!!

[changelingrain]

can you see me?

[changelingrain]

hey guys ive been getting into signalis recently and uhhhhh im normal abt this game

closeups

okay back to my hole now

[changelingrain]

Signalis doodles because I am obsessed with the game

[changelingrain]

in my thoughts always all the time!!!!