I’m annoyed that I expect Hollywood executive, as always, will take the wrong lesson from it. They’ll see it underperformed and think people don’t want a D&D movie, rather than that they shouldn’t have released it between John Wick and Mario.

My theory is that having a horny bard in the party is pretty common, but it depends on how frequently and how (ahem) enthusiastically those scenes get roleplayed. :P

I played the heck out of NWN when I was a teenager!

…by which I mean I was excited by the character options, so I ended up restarting it over and over again. I’ve done the Waterdhavian Creatures quest so many times I burnt out. :P

I should go back and actually beat the game.

Top of the list, I think, is… just some old-school D&D. Technically, probably Old-Shool Essentials or Dolmenwood, both of which are retroclones of B/X D&D.

I just got into watching Dungeon Meshi and playing Caves of Qud, both of which are just dripping with old-school D&D influence. Plus I’ve never actually ran a full dungeon or hex crawl.

Honorable mention to Burning Wheel, 16-time annual winner of My Favorite Game I’ve Never Played. :P

I love that kind of history. On the topic of cooking, Tasting History is one of my favorites!

And I’m also adding that book to my reading list. I’m kicking myself for not reading enough books, but I’ve gone on a nonfiction kick out of nowhere.

I almost skipped over this video, because I thought it was about some other drama about the origins of D&D, which is mostly just outrage tourism.

Happy to be mistaken! It’s been a little bit since I watched Matt Colville, so I’ll give this a watch when I have the time. And it includes a book recommendation on top of that!

My favorite was death panels.

“The government is going to decide who lives and dies by gatekeeping access to healthcare!” Motherfucker, that’s what insurance does now. The potential failures of a collectivized system are treated with more scrutiny than capitalism working as intended.

I’ve made a habit of saying “Look, [city] was a powderkeg ready to go off before we even got there.” It’s come up in multiple campaigns.

Personally, I also like genericizing D&D.

It’s a shorthand for folks outside or new to the hobby, it skips a hurdle to talk to people about other RPGs with those people, and it weakens the brand identity. Considering how much D&D has coasted on brand identity as the game suffered, I’m all for that.

I’m less likely to do it places like here, because it causes more confusion, but still. It’s fun to say, “Pathfinder is a great way to play D&D.” :P

I didn’t see it until later, but yeah, it’s been around for years. It crops up every now and then from right-wingers trying to test the waters for being overtly anti-democracy. What I found scary was how much more common it got, and at higher levels. I remember a fucking senator repeating that line.

I also use the square vs. rectangle analogy. Granted, we’re not going to convince fascists acting in bad faith, but it plays to an audience.

I really liked that Ed Helms asked a lot of very straightforward questions about Yarvin’s ideology, which just went to show that it completely falls apart if you think about it critically for even a moment. It’s not something you come to believe after listening to the best arguments from a bunch of different positions. It’s something you come to believe because it justifies your own elitism.

FUN FACT: Five Justices of the Supreme Court were appointed by presidents who were inaugurated despite losing the popular vote! That’s a full majority! And purely by coincidence, all of them are Republicans! :D

…alright, obviously it’s not fun. I can’t believe the audacity some people have to act surprised and offended when people say the Court is illegitimate.

This is a bit off topic, but it made me nostalgic. My first argument on reddit over a decade ago was with someone, either a scalper or a contrarian, trying to argue that scalpers provided a useful service that made things more fair, rather than assholes creating scarcity so they could profit selling a solution to a problem they themselves create.

So yeah, I hope they all get fucked on this one, too.

I’m super excited to give Barkeep on the Borderlands a go! :D

Also, this paragraph stuck out to me:

Before we take a look at Barkeep, I want to drop a few quick examples to demonstrate how tone can be affected by writing, mechanics, art, etc. I firmly believe that the tone communicated by an RPG author is inteded to be replicated by the GM. So while you could run Blades in the Dark as a sexy dating game, I don’t think that would properly reflect the game’s tone.

I absolutely agree. Burning Wheel has stuck with me for a decade and a half, even though I haven’t played it yet, because it’s the first time I opened a game with a clear authorial voice, and it was explicitly explaining to you not just how, but why the rules work the way they do.

Obviously that’s an extremely explicit example, but it’s also something that clicked for me with the -Borg games. The ratio of style to substance greatly favors style. That’s not to knock the substance, but the games are light and, to be honest, pretty standard for a new-school renaissance type game. It’s not that the rule book is also, separately, an art book. It’s that, when the rule book is an art book, then the acts of bringing it to the table and opening it up to reference the rules become acts that set and reinforce a tone. It made me realize that all games do this, even if it’s sometimes unsuccessful, or negligible.

Heck, to go back to Burning Wheel, I love the digest-sized hardcover with matte pages, because it looks and feels like a novel, and I think the game intends to create that style of play. I might join a Fabula Ultima game, and that rulebook looks and feels like a manga, which had to be intentional. It works.

So I really jive with what the author says about how RPGs should communicate their intentions, especially tone in an adventure like this. Obviously any GM will put their own spin on the performance, but hey, if they’re laughing and having fun just reading through potential encounters, that’s the vibe the GM is going to cultivate in turn. :)

It was the response from a lot of people to COVID precautions that made me realize that a disturbing number of people are completely lacking in empathy, and don’t even understand it as a concept. They’re the people who truly did not understand why a person who isn’t at personal risk of complications would still do thinks like distance, wear a mask, or get vaccinated, because most of the benefits involve stopping the spread to others.

This is exactly the same thing. Not only do they not care about other people, they genuinely do not understand the others do.

/u/[email protected] is right on the money. Mana paces the game, so anything that can break that is super good. In an otherwise even matchup, if one player has a Lotus while the other doesn’t, that can easily make the game. It’s not going to win the game in and of itself, but it’s a huge enabler to play the thing that will win you the game, before your opponent can reasonably do anything about it.

On top of that, it’s literally good in all decks. It’s been banned in every format besides Vintage, where it’s restricted to one (and not including casual/fan formats). It had to be banned partly for power reasons, but also because it makes deck-building less diverse. There’s no deck that wouldn’t want a Lotus if it could have one, much less four.

It’s also part of the Reserved List. After WotC overprinted cards, they essentially promised not to reprint certain ones. I think it’s a dumb decision, but they’ve annoyingly stuck to it (and players are worse off for it). Black Lotus is on that list. And it was alreadly limited in printings, because it was a rare card, and a bit of a design mistake.

It’s also simply an iconic card. Despite being a design mistake, it’s a major part of Magic history, and gets referenced all the time. To some extent, it’s famous for being famous. That makes it the biggest prize for collectors.

So, all this together, it has an incredibly high demand, a very limited supply, and no indication of a reprint anytime soon.

So I printed off a proxy at a professional card printer for 30¢. :)

I hate how relevant this question is in so many situations.

“If you’d rather play D&D, are you willing to DM while I recharge?”

In my group, yes. :| We actually have plenty of players willing to run games.

That said, they’re also willing to try out new games, so it all works out just fine. :)

I do think the problem is rooted in Joss Whedon, or rather, movie studios looking at Avengers and thinking, “This, all the time.” People got tired of Joss Whedon himself (among other problems with him), much less more corporate, soulless imitations.

I just found it by chance a couple years ago, and its entered regular Halloween rotation. It’s also a very silly movie at times, but it has something to say. If it weren’t played straight, it would undercut the whole thing.

I can’t help but imagine that, if they tried to make it today, it’d just be noted to death by the studio. “Say less, quip more.” Then you’d get a ho-hum vampire action-comedy with a whiff that it was something better in a previous draft… like Renfield.