#prokopetz

[teffiebell]

prokopetz: Nintendo's internal writing guidelines stipulate that there are no individual Toads. They can have titles, jobs and costumes, but not personal names or distinct personalities; they're effectively a species consisting of a single person, whose members can interchangeably be assigned to particular roles.

In light of this rule, the existence of Toadette implies that in the Mushroom Kingdom, "girl" is not a gender, but a profession.

julia91: just like in real life

[samueldays]

I would like proko fans to please be less wrong about Asimov and the Three Laws of Robotics. AI ethics did not exist as a field yet, but Asimov did think of his literary devices as also being a serious proposal for how robots and by extension AI ought to work, and he made the point by arguing that the applications to robotics are a special case of "three laws of tools" that people implicitly apply in everyday life for how tools ought to work.

One - a tool should not injure its user, this is why for example a knife should have a handle, rather than being all blade. Also it should not be dangerous when stored out of use, this is why a knife should have a sheath.

Two - a tool should be able to carry out its task, and should do so when used. This is why a knife should be sharp enough to cut the things it's meant to cut.

Three - a tool should not break in normal use, which is why a knife should be made out of metal and not glass. It should also hold an edge well.

The Third Law is constantly violated for consumable tools such as lubricant which "breaks" in the sense that after you've poured the lubricant into the machine, you don't have the lubricant any more, but that's OK because it's following the higher-priority Second Law of carrying out its task.

In one of Asimov's stories, where a candidate running for office is suspected of being a disguised robot, one of the characters generalizes this argument even further to say that a moral human could also be expected to follow something like the Three Laws of Robotics: preserve human life, follow the the law except to save another human life, and self-preservation except where commanded by duty (e.g. firemen) or to save another human life. So the fact that the suspicious character is behaving this way doesn't constitute proof of robothood.

(IIRC, the story notes that two definite tests might be "Order character to carry out an execution" and "Order character to commit suicide", where the first shows humanity and the second shows robothood if carried out, but neither of these is ethical to test in practice.)

There's some edge cases and ambiguity as thoroughly noted by Asimov himself in his robot detective stories, and there's some general philosophical indeterminacy such as remote potential harm, risk management and very small chances of injury in the First Law, and Asimov was grappling with these as well as a prototype "Zeroth Law" about not harming humanity as a means of resolving the disanalogy to some tools that one human uses to harm another human, so the Three Laws of Robotics aren't the last word on the subject, but they are a serious proposal.

[copperbadge]

Dash did an unfortunate thing. 

[ID: A screencap of my tumblr dash; the top post shows Hugh Dancy appearing to enjoy himself thoroughly as he carries two enormous pumpkins down the sidewalk. The second post, below it, is a reblog of a post about Halloween and contains a screencap of a tag which reads “Tis the season to shove a pumpkin up your ass.”]

[phoenixyfriend]

the— the life-threatening what incident

lmao I assumed that This Post from @prokopetz was about this story (also present in this post and this post)

[ponett]

Hi. Regarding SLARPG, is it intended that some of Jodie's stats should decrease rather than increase on level-up at or above level 25? I've got a screenshot of her Agility going down a point at level 26, and I'm pretty sure I saw a stat reduction at level 25 as well, though I don't have a screenshot of that one handy.

that's not intentional, no, it's just a result of bad rounding on rpg maker's part for certain stat growth curves - particularly stats with slower growth. we caught a number of these during development and i manually adjusted them, but it seems a few more went unnoticed. it'll be fixed in the next patch!

[mjschryver]

This is a brilliant idea. I hope someone brings it to life some day.

Some more details on the dates, if you're curious:

Technically, the term Victorian England refers to only The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland; and only during the reign of Queen Victoria, 1837-1901. The term Victorian Era is sometimes used to encompass geographic areas where the UK had great influence, such as its colonies, and mainland Europe. The Victorian Era is sometimes considered to cover as broad a timespan as 1832-1914; that period begins with the passage of The Reform Act, encompasses the traditional Edwardian and Georgian Eras, and ends with the start of WWI.

The American West began with "Now that we're free, let's explore west of the Appalachians," in 1783; carried on to "Let's explore the Louisiana Purchase," in 1803; continued through "What do we do now?", in 1865; and finally ended with "That's enough of that, you; we have to help fight a World War," in 1917. The peak of the "cowboy hats and six-shooters" stereotype stretched from c.1840 to c.1900, covering Manifest Destiny, the Civil War, the Gold Rush, and multiple attempts at multiple genocides.

The Samurai came to political and military power c.1185. In 1868, Emperor Meiji restored imperial rule to Japan. The samurai's time effectively ended in 1879, with the completion of the Meiji government's efforts to defund the Samurai. (No, I am not making that up.)

Piracy in the Caribbean Sea began almost immediately after Europeans discovered the Caribbean Sea, c.1500. The level of piratical activity waxed and waned enormously over the next three-and-a-half centuries, as did which countries fought most strongly against the pirates. The signing of the Treaty of Paris effectively ended Caribbean piracy in 1856.

Emperor Norton "reigned" from September, 1859, until his death at the age of 61 in January, 1880.

That window – 1859 to 1880 – covers prime Victorian Era, prime Old West, the waning tail of the Samurai, and the first two-and-a-half decades of the post-piracy Caribbean. The range of characters available, of all ages and types, is truly spectacular.

The genius original post – and its 172,000 notes and reblogs – is here. I reblogged it once myself, a year and a half ago; I wouldn't want to rob anyone of their Tumblr traffic.

Reposting it here gave me a chance to isolate the OP's thoughts, separate from anyone else's comments, and allowed me to set down my own lengthy thoughts in return.

I hope no one minds; many Tumblr users used to get awfully testy about this stuff, back in the day.

[puppetdaily]

Player characters from Eat God

[victusinveritas]

[galaxy98]

Soooooo ummmm…..I don’t know if this was a glitch or a complete accident….but I think I might be blocked by Prokopetz.

Last thing I did was reblogged their post about authoritarianism and posting my own perspective. Didn’t say anything inflammatory and in fact, I was agreeing with what they said.

Before that I’d just reblogged another one of their post without ever really responding to it.

Last time I did the former was about 8 months ago.

So as far as I know, I don’t think I had done anything to warrant it. I hope.

I mean I’m not upset so much as I’m just confused.

[paperwhitegreyandblue]

Hey Tumblr,

New user here, first post. To start off I’ve got a question.

Who would you consider to be “Tumblr celebrities/influencers”? It’s a little tricky since follower counts are private, but my list is:

-Pukicho

-biggest-gaudiest-patronuses

-prokopetz

-one-time-I-dreamt

-cannibalchicken

I maybe way off, so tell me in the comments who I should add or remove. Thanks!

[catbatart]

I'm currently experiencing a 100% reproducible bug where the Tumblr app crashes every single time your mousepad restock post shows up on my dashboard, and I'm choosing to believe that the orc tiddy is just too powerful.

This is UNBELIEVABLY funny to me!

Honestly, it is an HONOR to be a part of the problem on this garbage app we call tumblr.

(Oh, also sorry for any inconvenience the tiddies may have caused.)

[autumn-oceanopromises]

Review for the Night-Bird’s Feather

Look, I’m not your typical reviewer of the Night-Bird’s Feather. I want to get this out of the way: I am not going to rave review about the deeper meaning of this story, in part because I’m just not intelligent enough, I think. But as a fond connoisseur of fairy-tales, even sometimes dark ones, and being marginally familiar with Dr Moran’s previous work, mostly from Ryuugi’s fanfic and Glitch, I bought the Night-Bird’s Feather.

I bought it on Kindle thanks to Prokopetz’ recommendation, having bought Glitch Version 0 beforehand (also on Prokopetz’ recommendation). I give the Night-Bird’s Feather 10/10 stars. 100/10. 2500 mechanical spiders/10. I will read it again at some point in the future on my Kindle, probably when there’s no data coverage, on the Tube, again, and spend half the trip reading and half the trip trying to figure out what the characters are saying when they’re not being incredibly blunt. I recommend that you buy it. I recommend that you read it. I don’t recommend that you comprehend it. Comprehension is not necessary for this anthology of connected fairy tales. In fact, arguably, it’s better if you don’t, and let the rhythm of the words wash over you and turn your brain off. Certainly the incredible over-stimulation and twisty layers made me feel like a child again, poking at a mother who is probably stuck in a heron’s egg, and definitely not capable of explaining what the bloody fuck is going on beyond the absolute surface layer.

This is not going to be a spoiler free review. I love it too much and comprehend it too little to dance around plot points. I have no criticism to give, because almost the whole thing went over my head, beyond the usual things where Dr Moran is absolutely brilliant at worldbuilding and scene-setting, having tied it in some part to the Bleak Academy, and the characters are, while mostly setpieces in the way that fairy-tale characters are, are also vocal mouthpieces talking in complex tongues, registers, and reasoning, regardless of physical or developmental age. Yes, it’s unrealistic and heavy-handed on the philosophical moralizing, but as I mentioned, I understood none of the philosophy, so I can’t and won’t criticize it. Since it also doesn’t seem at all out of place. The massive monologues are a part of the style and weave easily into the narrative. In any case, realism is not what you read Dr Moran or fairy-tales for.

The Night-Bird’s Feather is at once a combination of fairy/folk-tale anthology, in the way that linked fairy-tales are, and at the same time an examination of one central character’s life through time (literally through time in some ways), a legendary figure and/or matriarch of an inestimable family, where the matriarchy mostly happens off-screen. The reader is introduced to this matriarch in her founding, origin story, via a child of the family, and the rest of the cast of characters star in various, repeating roles as they move toward the child of the family’s personal present (for a given definition of present, given the nature of the bleak academy), a nest of stories, like scheherazade; but honestly the central linking conceit of the story reminded me the most of The Time Traveler’s Wife, had the perspective been centered on the time traveler rather than the wife.

The anthology has an incredible exploration into a very small number of characters: all of the relevant characters are introduced in the first story, and all of them are explored in great detail and are all very relevant. No additional mice, except for those family members locked in the initial egg, are introduced, which scurry off into the ether - the story ends when the central character has moved on to other things, and feels simultaneously finished in a nice neat bow and unfinished in a Wattersonian way.

The book, as a whole, is darkly beautiful, and very Slavic. I hadn’t read much Slavic fairy tales beforehand, so I can’t attest as to the stylization’s accuracy - the only one I know is Koschei, and that was a Britishized version for ages 6 and under, anyway. The prose is stunning - glittering and evocative, imaginative and lush, ornamented yet clear. It is a book which drips poetry out of every line, which I adore, and is simultaneously a clearly-understandable fairy-tale for children (if dark and mature - along the lines of Grimm - though in no part edgy - I think - nor with a focus on gore for the sake of gore), and a deeply meaty chunk of philosophizing for adults. It’s worth buying for the descriptive prose alone.

The book is also, on occasion, incredibly funny. Because it relies on subverting expectations of fairy tales, and the focus character is something of a guile hero given the stakes she puts herself up against, sometimes the characters make razor-sharp observations against expectations that absolutely shattered my sides. 

You can - I certainly did - push the heavy cerebral stuff to the side, and just focus on the fairy-tale. There is a lot of it, and all of it is good. I think the heavy cerebral stuff actually adds something - in that in its exclusion, everything else is starkly, darkly emotional, kind of. But the tone is unrelentingly miserable, a drudging, if beautiful, tragedy by Westernized and flanderized fairy-tales’ standpoint - from what I have seen of Slavic mythology and fairytales, that tone is pretty much on point. With the clear cerebral philosophy + comedy, though, and all the time and dream travel, that makes it bearable, even addictive.  

I read all of it in a single sitting. I understood almost none of it. I’d read my partner, if I had one, this story, before bed. We would likely dream lush, vibrant, beautiful dreams, like watching rain pour down from inside a cozy house, like we were kids again and ignoring all the really thorny problems of the world that only adults could see and comprehend. There’s a beauty in just being able to push it aside and admit that it’s just way too much for us. If asked, I’d be able to explain none of this book. I recommend it to everyone.

[samueldays]

Do you think this man ever considers that this is how the corporate friendly sanitised version happens? I get the impression he doesn't oppose Hasbro's sanitised version for being sanitised, he opposes it for being Hasbro's version rather than Proko's version.

He offers neither an intensional definition (a general rule about what is best left buried) nor an extensional definition (examples of specific things best left buried) of what he'd want sanitised. People might disagree on that if he were to get specific.

And as usual prokopetz is wrong about a bunch of other things. The Forgotten Realms were a pastiche of a lot of fantasy settings in general, and some scifi settings, and some historical settings, and some bits and pieces from other weird literature, but prokopetz has pornbrain.

My take: The Realms are boring because they've gone from being a pastiche to being a low-quality knockoff of a pastiche, a secondhand version of themselves, like so much of D&D that's trying to make a new-edition version of previous-edition content, rather than going back to the well for new content.

Finger of Death , for example, used to be a rare dangerous spell where there was a good chance the target simply died outright, maybe he got a saving throw to be lucky and escape death that way, and you had to play around it because you don't want to let Old Lich Fingers have a chance to use that.

Then it became a [Death] spell with standard keyword tags, and the [Death Ward] effect could reliably protect against it, since instakills felt a bit unfair to players who had spent hours making a character (lots of knock-on changes from that), and you could get magic armor imbued with a permanent [Death Ward].

Then it became a spell that dealt 7d8+30 Necrotic Damage (CON save halves) and your Necrotic Resistance 10 reduced that to 7d8+20 and you can calculate that your character can live through an average of 3 Fingers of Moderate Damage but is out of the fight at the 4th (which still doesn't inflict death, merely unconsciousness).

[snickerdoodlesandsausages]

I ran Three Raccoons in a Trench Coat for my local game store's Extra Life fundraiser from midnight-4am.

This post might not make a ton of sense as I am currently running on a lot of caffeine and no sleep.

Three raccoons in a trenchcoat is a game in the playtest stages by David J. Prokopetz (@prokopetz here on Tumblr, follow him and buy all his games he's great.)

I would be remiss in failing to drop the link to our fundraiser as well. All proceeds go to support projects St. John's Children's Hospital in Springfield, IL. The funds from this specific event go towards projects that make it less horrifically miserable and boring to be stuck in a hospital for days/weeks/months on end, as some kids unfortunately are.

The event was last night and it was AWESOME!!! Seriously the most fun I've ever had roleplaying, which is saying a lot.

The game had me as the GM plus 6 players for the first scene and 4 for the second (a couple people went to bed) and it worked great with both group sizes as the spotlight got passed pretty quickly. The game was free to play and raised a couple hundred bucks to help the kids!

The donation opportunities were as follows:

The order of choosing stats went in descending order of donations for that purpose. A bidding war broke out over first place, and the character creation process ended up raising ~$70 by itself.

$5 to re-roll a single die. This only happened a few times, usually resulted in another failed roll, and the second failure was basically universally accepted.

Once, I spontaneously offered a player a 6 on a roll to hurl a computer monitor through a second-story window without drawing too much unwanted attention in exchange for a $10 donation. The offer was accepted after about two seconds of hesitation.

$5 to narrate the failed outcome of another player's roll. This was by far the most popular option, and THE reason the smallest donation amount was $20.

My face physically hurt from laughing so hard by the end, the game is fantastic and my players were deeply into it. We only got through two scenes.

The first was an adult's birthday party at a park that the players determined was a wizard battle with grand prizes due to the camera flashes going off.

The second was set on a suburban street during Halloween, and the players broke into a house to steal the gamer mouse of a teenager on league of legends. I have so many more ideas, the required prep was honestly like three prompt words to generate a mental image and we all filled in the rest. I put on a spy-themed spotify playlist after someone made a mission: impossible joke, which turned out to be the perfect ambience.

Overall experience: 12/10, will run again as soon as possible.

[str8aura-no-not-that-one]

My absolute favorite thing to do on any given day is to plug the name of a random fandom into Prokopetz and seeing what bullshit comes out.

[copperbadge]

hi sam, i hope you are having a nice day ^^ may i ask what happened to your jellyfish felonies character sheet template?

I'm actually not sure! It should have been in my shared file on Google Drive, but it wasn't -- it may have been accidentally deleted or something. In any case I reuploaded it, and you can get it here.

Now, caveat, @prokopetz refined the game after I built that sheet (game itself available here) so it may not have all the component parts it should, or in the right places, and it's not official in any way. But if you do play and you use my sheet and it's useful I'd love to see photos of it in action and hear all about it!