#Cost per action marketing | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

finance-pro · 1 year

Text

What is the best way to get traffic for CPA marketing?

When it comes to gaining traffic for CPA marketing, the level of difficulty can vary depending on a number of factors. While there are many effective strategies for driving traffic to your offers, it can be challenging to generate high-quality traffic that is likely to convert.

One of the main challenges is that the competition in the digital marketing space is fierce, with many businesses vying for the same audience. This means that it can take significant effort and resources to stand out and get noticed. Additionally, the constantly evolving digital landscape means that what works today may not work tomorrow, and staying up-to-date with the latest marketing trends and techniques is crucial for success.

However, with a well-defined target audience and a strategic approach, gaining traffic for CPA marketing is certainly achievable. By leveraging a combination of paid and organic methods, businesses can reach the right people at the right time, driving conversions and achieving their marketing goals.

In this little guide, I'll show you how to gain traffic for your website step by step. And because I know how important time is for you, I'll summarize the most important steps so you can learn this strategy in just one minute and start using it in the second. So keep following me.

1. Step: Define Your Target Audience

Before you can start generating traffic for your CPA offers, it's important to have a clear understanding of who your target audience is. This will help you identify the best marketing channels to reach them and create targeted messaging that resonates with their needs and interests. Learn more about audience here.

Step 2: Choose the Right CPA Offer

Not all CPA offers are created equal, and it's important to choose the right offer that is well-suited for your target audience. Look for offers that align with your audience's interests and needs, and that have a high conversion rate.

Step 3: Develop a Content Marketing Strategy

Creating high-quality, engaging content that resonates with your audience is key to driving traffic for CPA marketing. Develop a content marketing strategy that includes blog posts, social media posts, infographics, and other types of content that provide value to your audience and promote your CPA offers.

Step 4: Leverage Paid Advertising

Paid advertising can be an effective way to drive traffic to your CPA offers, especially if you're just starting out or need to quickly scale your traffic. Consider using channels such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads, or native advertising platforms to reach your target audience. You can use YouTube for inspiration.

Step 5: Utilize Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an important strategy for driving organic traffic to your CPA offers. Optimize your website and content for relevant keywords and use link building and other tactics to improve your search engine rankings.

Step 6: Utilize Social Media Marketing

Social media can be a powerful tool for driving traffic to your CPA offers, especially if you have an engaged following on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Develop a social media marketing strategy that includes regular posts, paid advertising, and influencer partnerships. You can write me on Instagram if you need help.

Step 7: Utilize Email Marketing

Email marketing is a great way to reach your target audience and promote your CPA offers directly. Build an email list of interested subscribers, and send regular newsletters, promotions, and other types of content that encourage them to take action on your offers.

Remember, gaining traffic for CPA marketing requires time, effort, and a strategic approach. It's important to be patient and persistent, and to regularly evaluate and adjust your marketing tactics as needed. While the competition may be fierce and the digital landscape constantly evolving, the potential rewards of a successful CPA marketing campaign can be significant. By staying focused on your target audience and leveraging the right combination of marketing channels, you can drive high-quality traffic to your CPA offers, increase conversions, and achieve your marketing goals. So keep pushing forward, stay creative, and always strive to improve your marketing strategies. Success is just around the corner! Now go and build your own empire. And if you still have doubts about this strategies just watch this video

#CPA marketing #Cost per action marketing #Traffic generation #Digital marketing #Content marketing #Paid advertising #SEO #Social media marketing #Email marketing #Target audience #CRO #Marketing strategy #Online advertising #Affiliate marketing #Lead generation

2 notes · View notes

clicktotstechnologies · 6 months

Text

CPA Marketing | Clicktots Technologies

In the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing, Cost-Per-Action (CPA) marketing has emerged as a game-changer. Clicktots Technologies, a frontrunner in Digital marketing services, brings its expertise to the forefront with comprehensive CPA marketing solutions designed to propel businesses toward unparalleled success.

Key Components of Clicktots’ CPA Marketing Strategy:

Strategic Campaign Planning: Clicktots begins by understanding your business objectives, target audience, and key performance indicators. This information forms the foundation for crafting a bespoke CPA marketing campaign that aligns seamlessly with your goals.

Precise Audience Targeting: Our team leverages advanced analytics and demographic insights to identify and target audiences most likely to engage with your CPA campaigns. This targeted approach ensures optimal conversion rates and a higher return on investment.

Continuous Performance Optimization: Clicktots doesn’t settle for mediocrity. We continuously monitor and optimize your CPA campaigns based on real-time performance data. This iterative process ensures that your marketing budget is allocated to the most effective channels.

Comprehensive Reporting: Transparency is paramount. Clicktots provides detailed reports on CPA campaign performance, conversion rates, and other crucial metrics. Our transparent reporting empowers you to make informed decisions and track the tangible impact of your investment.

Advantages of Choosing Clicktots for CPA Marketing:

Proven Expertise: Clicktots has a proven track record of success in CPA marketing, having delivered impactful results for a diverse range of clients.

Innovative Approach: We stay ahead of industry trends, incorporating innovative strategies and cutting-edge technologies into our CPA marketing services to ensure your brand stays relevant and competitive.

Scalable Solutions: Whether you’re a startup or an enterprise, Clicktots CPA marketing solutions are scalable, adapting to the unique needs and aspirations of your business.

With Clicktots Technologies as your CPA marketing partner, you unlock a world of possibilities to drive conversions, enhance brand visibility, and achieve a substantial return on your marketing investment.

Harness the power of CPA marketing with Clicktots and elevate your digital marketing strategy to new heights.

Call Us : +91 99623 48666

#digital marketing #seo marketing #ppc agency #web design #web development #internet marketing #online marketing #seo services #website #ppc services #cpamarketing #cost per action #affiliatemarketing #affiliate program

0 notes

reasonsforhope · 2 months

Text

Less than three months after U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin and her colleagues launched an investigation into the four major American manufacturers of inhalers, three of the companies have relented, making commitments to cap costs for their inhalers at $35 for patients who now pay much more.

25 million Americans have asthma and 16 million Americans have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), meaning over 40 million Americans rely on inhalers to breathe.

Inhalers have been available since the 1950s, and most of the drugs they use have been on the market for more than 25 years.

According to a statement from the Wisconsin Senator’s office, inhaler manufacturers sell the exact same products at a much lower costs in other countries. One of AstraZeneca’s inhalers, Breztri Aerosphere, costs $645 in the U.S.—but just $49 in the UK. Inhalers made by Boehringer Ingelheim, GlaxoSmithKline, and Teva have similar disparities.

Baldwin and her Democratic colleagues—New Mexico Sen. Ben Ray Luján, Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders—pressured the companies to lower their prices by writing letters to GSK, Boehringer Ingelheim, Teva, and AstraZeneca requesting a variety of documents that show why such higher prices are charged in America compared to Europe.

As a ranking member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, Baldwin recently announced that as a result of the letters they had secured commitments from three of the four to lower the out-of-pocket costs of inhalers to a fixed $35.00 rate.

“For the millions of Americans who rely on inhalers to breathe, this news is a major step in the right direction as we work to lower costs and hold big drug companies accountable,” said Senator Baldwin.

A full list of the inhalers and associated drugs can be viewed here.

It’s the second time in the last year that pharmaceutical companies were forced to provide reasonable prices—after the cost of insulin was similarly capped successfully at $35 per month thanks to Congressional actions led by the White House.

-via Good News Network, March 25, 2024

#united states #us politics #us senate #tammy baldwin #bernie sanders #big pharma #health care #us healthcare #inhaler #asthma #pulmonary disease #healthcare access #affordability #disability #good news #hope

4K notes · View notes

iisindia · 11 months

Text

PERFORMANCE MARKETING

In the highly competitive landscape of digital marketing, businesses are constantly seeking strategies that can deliver maximum results and generate revenue. Performance marketing has emerged as a dynamic and effective approach to achieving these goals. By leveraging data-driven strategies, targeting specific audiences, and measuring outcomes, performance marketing offers a powerful framework for businesses to optimize their marketing efforts and drive tangible results.

The AIDA Framework for Performance Marketing:

Attention: Grabbing the Spotlight The first step in capturing the attention of potential customers is by creating attention-grabbing content and advertisements. Engaging headlines, captivating visuals, and intriguing storytelling can help businesses stand out in the crowded digital landscape. By understanding the target audience and their pain points, businesses can tailor their messages to resonate with the viewers and entice them to learn more.

Interest: Fueling Curiosity Once the attention of the audience is captured, the next step is to foster their interest. This can be achieved by highlighting the unique value proposition of products or services, showcasing customer testimonials, or providing informative content that addresses their needs. By delivering relevant and valuable information, businesses can build trust and establish themselves as industry experts.

Desire: Igniting the Desire to Act Having piqued the audience's interest, the next goal is to ignite their desire to take action. This can be accomplished by showcasing the benefits, features, and competitive advantages of the products or services. Leveraging persuasive language, testimonials, and social proof can help amplify the desire to make a purchase or engage further with the brand.

Action: Sealing the Deal The final stage of the AIDA framework is to facilitate the desired action. This could be making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, requesting a quote, or any other conversion goal. By creating seamless user experiences, optimizing landing pages, and providing clear calls to action, businesses can encourage their audience to take the desired actions.

Performance Marketing Channels and Tactics

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Affiliate Marketing

Social Media Advertising

Email Marketing

Display Advertising

Influencer Marketing

The Benefits of Performance Marketing

Cost Efficiency

Measurable Results

Flexibility and Scalability

Enhanced ROI

In today's digital age, performance marketing has become a game-changer for businesses looking to drive results and revenue. When it comes to performance marketing, Instant Info Solutions stands out as a true game changer. With their innovative strategies and data-driven approach, they have redefined the digital marketing landscape. Instant Info Solutions leverages cutting-edge technologies to optimize campaigns, ensuring maximum results and ROI. Their precise targeting, personalized messaging, and in-depth analytics empower businesses to achieve unparalleled success. Instant Info Solutions sets a new standard for performance marketing excellence. Trust them to unlock your business's full potential and surpass your marketing goals.

Resource_Url: https://www.iisindia.net/55-Tactics-for-picking-up-the-perfect-Performance-Marketing-Agency-in-Delhi

Website: https://www.iisindia.net/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/instantinfosolutions/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/instantinfosolutions/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/InstantInfoSol

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/instant-info-solutions

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsRBchwU3zca7CzCy9RmQfA

Location: https://www.google.com/search?ei=QRbSX7OdHtjnz7sPxKKR2A0&q=instant+info+solutions&oq=instant+info+solutions&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQAzIOCC4QxwEQrwEQyQMQkwIyAggmOgQIABBHUIO1AViDtQFg8LcBaABwAngAgAG_AYgBvwGSAQMwLjGYAQCgAQGqAQdnd3Mtd2l6yAEIwAEB&sclient=psy-ab&ved=0ahUKEwjzwePgtsPtAhXY83MBHURRBNsQ4dUDCA0&uact=5#lpstate=pid:-1

#PerformanceMarketing #DigitalMarketing #AffiliateMarketing #ConversionRateOptimization #PPC (Pay-Per-Click)#SEO (Search Engine Optimization)#SEM (Search Engine Marketing)#CPA (Cost Per Action)#ROI (Return on Investment)#EcommerceMarketing #SocialMediaMarketing #InfluencerMarketing #ContentMarketing #EmailMarketing #DigitalAdvertising

0 notes

miguel5219 · 1 year

Text

How To Start Affiliate Marketing For Beginners https://cutt.ly/f5TMeER

In this video, I'm going to show you how to start affiliate marketing for beginners. This is the perfect video for anyone who wants to learn how to start an online business and make money from home. I'll show you all the steps you need to take to get started with affiliate marketing, from finding a niche market to setting up your affiliate marketing account. By the end of this video, you'll have everything you need to start making money from your first affiliate sales!

1 note · View note

madhukumarc · 1 year

Text

Does CPA marketing work?

Yes, CPA marketing can definitely work. CPA stands for Cost Per Action, and it is a type of affiliate marketing where an advertiser [business entity] pays a commission to an affiliate for a particular action (like a sale or lead) that the affiliate generates.

As a business owner, if you plan to have this strategy, it's an effective way to generate leads and revenue for your business and can be done on a variety of platforms and in many different ways.

“With changing consumer preferences, shifting buying behaviours, and rising customer expectations, marketers remain future-focused and cite “experimenting with new marketing strategies” as their #2 priority” – Salesforce Research [State of Marketing, 8th Edition, 2022]

It also has the potential to be very cost-effective. You set the amount you’re willing to pay for each lead or sale, and you only end up paying for successful conversions. The more conversions you have, the more revenue you generate.

If you are an affiliate or a digital marketer in general, it can be a great way to make money online. The advertiser pays the affiliate whenever a specific action is taken. This could be an email signup, a purchase, a survey, a download, or a lead generated.

The amount of money you can make from CPA marketing depends on the type of action and the amount of traffic you are able to bring to the advertiser's website.

One key thing to keep in mind with CPA marketing is that you need to be able to drive targeted traffic to the advertiser's website in order for it to be successful. You also need to be able to track conversions accurately in order to ensure that you are being paid correctly.

if you are planning to advertise as a business, before you get started with CPA marketing, it’s important to do your research and find the right affiliate partners who can help promote your product or service effectively.

You should also consider creating a well-crafted landing page to increase conversions and make sure your campaigns are targeted at the right audience. Copywriters can assist you with this by creating persuasive content depending on your industry niche.

Overall, as a business owner or advertiser, CPA marketing can be a great way to generate leads and revenue for your business. Just make sure to do your research and find the right affiliates who can help you reach your goals.

As an affiliate or internet marketer, it can be a great way to make money online if done correctly. You just need to make sure that you have the right skills and knowledge in order to drive targeted traffic and boost conversions.

Here's related information that you may find helpful – Creativity in Digital Marketing – Is it really important?

#cpa marketing #Affiliate #digital marketing #internet marketing #cost per action

1 note · View note

afflearn · 1 year

Text

PPL(pay per lead)Price Model

Hi, welcome back pay per the sale model of affiliate marketing we discussed read here for more about the affiliate price model PPS(pay-per-sale). Now this article, will help figure out PPL(pay per lead). will get in this article, PPL What is lead? What is PPL(pay per lead) Lead refers here to captured potential customers’ information that is nurtured into a result. Leads capturing are a…

View On WordPress

#affiliates earnings #affiliates marketing #coo #cost per action #cost per impression #cost per installation #cost per lead #CPA lead #Doberman media #kuku fm #online earnings #Ppl

1 note · View note

mostlysignssomeportents · 6 months

Text

The moral injury of having your work enshittified

This Monday (November 27), I'm appearing at the Toronto Metro Reference Library with Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen.

On November 29, I'm at NYC's Strand Books with my novel The Lost Cause, a solarpunk tale of hope and danger that Rebecca Solnit called "completely delightful."

This week, I wrote about how the Great Enshittening – in which all the digital services we rely on become unusable, extractive piles of shit – did not result from the decay of the morals of tech company leadership, but rather, from the collapse of the forces that discipline corporate wrongdoing:

https://locusmag.com/2023/11/commentary-by-cory-doctorow-dont-be-evil/

The failure to enforce competition law allowed a few companies to buy out their rivals, or sell goods below cost until their rivals collapsed, or bribe key parts of their supply chain not to allow rivals to participate:

https://www.engadget.com/google-reportedly-pays-apple-36-percent-of-ad-search-revenues-from-safari-191730783.html

The resulting concentration of the tech sector meant that the surviving firms were stupendously wealthy, and cozy enough that they could agree on a common legislative agenda. That regulatory capture has allowed tech companies to violate labor, privacy and consumer protection laws by arguing that the law doesn't apply when you use an app to violate it:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

But the regulatory capture isn't just about preventing regulation: it's also about creating regulation – laws that make it illegal to reverse-engineer, scrape, and otherwise mod, hack or reconfigure existing services to claw back value that has been taken away from users and business customers. This gives rise to Jay Freeman's perfectly named doctrine of "felony contempt of business-model," in which it is illegal to use your own property in ways that anger the shareholders of the company that sold it to you:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

Undisciplined by the threat of competition, regulation, or unilateral modification by users, companies are free to enshittify their products. But what does that actually look like? I say that enshittification is always precipitated by a lost argument.

It starts when someone around a board-room table proposes doing something that's bad for users but good for the company. If the company faces the discipline of competition, regulation or self-help measures, then the workers who are disgusted by this course of action can say, "I think doing this would be gross, and what's more, it's going to make the company poorer," and so they win the argument.

But when you take away that discipline, the argument gets reduced to, "Don't do this because it would make me ashamed to work here, even though it will make the company richer." Money talks, bullshit walks. Let the enshittification begin!

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/22/who-wins-the-argument/#corporations-are-people-my-friend

But why do workers care at all? That's where phrases like "don't be evil" come into the picture. Until very recently, tech workers participated in one of history's tightest labor markets, in which multiple companies with gigantic war-chests bid on their labor. Even low-level employees routinely fielded calls from recruiters who dangled offers of higher salaries and larger stock grants if they would jump ship for a company's rival.

Employers built "campuses" filled with lavish perks: massages, sports facilities, daycare, gourmet cafeterias. They offered workers generous benefit packages, including exotic health benefits like having your eggs frozen so you could delay fertility while offsetting the risks normally associated with conceiving at a later age.

But all of this was a transparent ruse: the business-case for free meals, gyms, dry-cleaning, catering and massages was to keep workers at their laptops for 10, 12, or even 16 hours per day. That egg-freezing perk wasn't about helping workers plan their families: it was about thumbing the scales in favor of working through your entire twenties and thirties without taking any parental leave.

In other words, tech employers valued their employees as a means to an end: they wanted to get the best geeks on the payroll and then work them like government mules. The perks and pay weren't the result of comradeship between management and labor: they were the result of the discipline of competition for labor.

This wasn't really a secret, of course. Big Tech workers are split into two camps: blue badges (salaried employees) and green badges (contractors). Whenever there is a slack labor market for a specific job or skill, it is converted from a blue badge job to a green badge job. Green badges don't get the food or the massages or the kombucha. They don't get stock or daycare. They don't get to freeze their eggs. They also work long hours, but they are incentivized by the fear of poverty.

Tech giants went to great lengths to shield blue badges from green badges – at some Google campuses, these workforces actually used different entrances and worked in different facilities or on different floors. Sometimes, green badge working hours would be staggered so that the armies of ragged clickworkers would not be lined up to badge in when their social betters swanned off the luxury bus and into their airy adult kindergartens.

But Big Tech worked hard to convince those blue badges that they were truly valued. Companies hosted regular town halls where employees could ask impertinent questions of their CEOs. They maintained freewheeling internal social media sites where techies could rail against corporate foolishness and make Dilbert references.

And they came up with mottoes.

Apple told its employees it was a sound environmental steward that cared about privacy. Apple also deliberately turned old devices into e-waste by shredding them to ensure that they wouldn't be repaired and compete with new devices:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently

And even as they were blocking Facebook's surveillance tools, they quietly built their own nonconsensual mass surveillance program and lied to customers about it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Facebook told employees they were on a "mission to connect every person in the world," but instead deliberately sowed discontent among its users and trapped them in silos that meant that anyone who left Facebook lost all their friends:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

And Google promised its employees that they would not "be evil" if they worked at Google. For many googlers, that mattered. They wanted to do something good with their lives, and they had a choice about who they would work for. What's more, they did make things that were good. At their high points, Google Maps, Google Mail, and of course, Google Search were incredible.

My own life was totally transformed by Maps: I have very poor spatial sense, need to actually stop and think to tell my right from my left, and I spent more of my life at least a little lost and often very lost. Google Maps is the cognitive prosthesis I needed to become someone who can go anywhere. I'm profoundly grateful to the people who built that service.

There's a name for phenomenon in which you care so much about your job that you endure poor conditions and abuse: it's called "vocational awe," as coined by Fobazi Ettarh:

https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/

Ettarh uses the term to apply to traditionally low-waged workers like librarians, teachers and nurses. In our book Chokepoint Capitalism, Rebecca Giblin and I talked about how it applies to artists and other creative workers, too:

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

But vocational awe is also omnipresent in tech. The grandiose claims to be on a mission to make the world a better place are not just puffery – they're a vital means of motivating workers who can easily quit their jobs and find a new one to put in 16-hour days. The massages and kombucha and egg-freezing are not framed as perks, but as logistical supports, provided so that techies on an important mission can pursue a shared social goal without being distracted by their balky, inconvenient meatsuits.

Steve Jobs was a master of instilling vocational awe. He was full of aphorisms like "we're here to make a dent in the universe, otherwise why even be here?" Or his infamous line to John Sculley, whom he lured away from Pepsi: "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or come with me and change the world?"

Vocational awe cuts both ways. If your workforce actually believes in all that high-minded stuff, if they actually sacrifice their health, family lives and self-care to further the mission, they will defend it. That brings me back to enshittification, and the argument: "If we do this bad thing to the product I work on, it will make me hate myself."

The decline in market discipline for large tech companies has been accompanied by a decline in labor discipline, as the market for technical work grew less and less competitive. Since the dotcom collapse, the ability of tech giants to starve new entrants of market oxygen has shrunk techies' dreams.

Tech workers once dreamed of working for a big, unwieldy firm for a few years before setting out on their own to topple it with a startup. Then, the dream shrank: work for that big, clumsy firm for a few years, then do a fake startup that makes a fake product that is acquihired by your old employer, as an incredibly inefficient and roundabout way to get a raise and a bonus.

Then the dream shrank again: work for a big, ugly firm for life, but get those perks, the massages and the kombucha and the stock options and the gourmet cafeteria and the egg-freezing. Then it shrank again: work for Google for a while, but then get laid off along with 12,000 co-workers, just months after the company does a stock buyback that would cover all those salaries for the next 27 years:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/10/the-proletarianization-of-tech-workers/

Tech workers' power was fundamentally individual. In a tight labor market, tech workers could personally stand up to their bosses. They got "workplace democracy" by mouthing off at town hall meetings. They didn't have a union, and they thought they didn't need one. Of course, they did need one, because there were limits to individual power, even for the most in-demand workers, especially when it came to ghastly, long-running sexual abuse from high-ranking executives:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/technology/google-sexual-harassment-andy-rubin.html

Today, atomized tech workers who are ordered to enshittify the products they take pride in are losing the argument. Workers who put in long hours, missed funerals and school plays and little league games and anniversaries and family vacations are being ordered to flush that sacrifice down the toilet to grind out a few basis points towards a KPI.

It's a form of moral injury, and it's palpable in the first-person accounts of former workers who've exited these large firms or the entire field. The viral "Reflecting on 18 years at Google," written by Ian Hixie, vibrates with it:

https://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1700627373

Hixie describes the sense of mission he brought to his job, the workplace democracy he experienced as employees' views were both solicited and heeded. He describes the positive contributions he was able to make to a commons of technical standards that rippled out beyond Google – and then, he says, "Google's culture eroded":

Decisions went from being made for the benefit of users, to the benefit of Google, to the benefit of whoever was making the decision.

In other words, techies started losing the argument. Layoffs weakened worker power – not just to defend their own interest, but to defend the users interests. Worker power is always about more than workers – think of how the 2019 LA teachers' strike won greenspace for every school, a ban on immigration sweeps of students' parents at the school gates and other community benefits:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/23/a-collective-bargain/

Hixie attributes the changes to a change in leadership, but I respectfully disagree. Hixie points to the original shareholder letter from the Google founders, in which they informed investors contemplating their IPO that they were retaining a controlling interest in the company's governance so that they could ignore their shareholders' priorities in favor of a vision of Google as a positive force in the world:

https://abc.xyz/investor/founders-letters/ipo-letter/

Hixie says that the leadership that succeeded the founders lost sight of this vision – but the whole point of that letter is that the founders never fully ceded control to subsequent executive teams. Yes, those executive teams were accountable to the shareholders, but the largest block of voting shares were retained by the founders.

I don't think the enshittification of Google was due to a change in leadership – I think it was due to a change in discipline, the discipline imposed by competition, regulation and the threat of self-help measures. Take ads: when Google had to contend with one-click adblocker installation, it had to constantly balance the risk of making users so fed up that they googled "how do I block ads?" and then never saw another ad ever again.

But once Google seized the majority of the mobile market, it was able to funnel users into apps, and reverse-engineering an app is a felony (felony contempt of business-model) under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a crime to install an ad-blocker.

And as Google acquired control over the browser market, it was likewise able to reduce the self-help measures available to browser users who found ads sufficiently obnoxious to trigger googling "how do I block ads?" The apotheosis of this is the yearslong campaign to block adblockers in Chrome, which the company has sworn it will finally do this coming June:

https://www.tumblr.com/tevruden/734352367416410112/you-have-until-june-to-dump-chrome

My contention here is not that Google's enshittification was precipitated by a change in personnel via the promotion of managers who have shitty ideas. Google's enshittification was precipitated by a change in discipline, as the negative consequences of heeding those shitty ideas were abolished thanks to monopoly.

This is bad news for people like me, who rely on services like Google Maps as cognitive prostheses. Elizabeth Laraki, one of the original Google Maps designers, has published a scorching critique of the latest GMaps design:

https://twitter.com/elizlaraki/status/1727351922254852182

Laraki calls out numerous enshittificatory design-choices that have left Maps screens covered in "crud" – multiple revenue-maximizing elements that come at the expense of usability, shifting value from users to Google.

What Laraki doesn't say is that these UI elements are auctioned off to merchants, which means that the business that gives Google the most money gets the greatest prominence in Maps, even if it's not the best merchant. That's a recurring motif in enshittified tech platforms, most notoriously Amazon, which makes $31b/year auctioning off top search placement to companies whose products aren't relevant enough to your query to command that position on their own:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos

Enshittification begets enshittification. To succeed on Amazon, you must divert funds from product quality to auction placement, which means that the top results are the worst products:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

The exception is searches for Apple products: Apple and Amazon have a cozy arrangement that means that searches for Apple products are a timewarp back to the pre-enshittification Amazon, when the company worried enough about losing your business to heed the employees who objected to sacrificing search quality as part of a merchant extortion racket:

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-gives-apple-special-treatment-while-others-suffer-junk-ads-2023-11

Not every tech worker is a tech bro, in other words. Many workers care deeply about making your life better. But the microeconomics of the boardroom in a monopolized tech sector rewards the worst people and continuously promotes them. Forget the Peter Principle: tech is ruled by the Sam Principle.

As OpenAI went through four CEOs in a single week, lots of commentators remarked on Sam Altman's rise and fall and rise, but I only found one commentator who really had Altman's number. Writing in Today in Tabs, Rusty Foster nailed Altman to the wall:

https://www.todayintabs.com/p/defective-accelerationism

Altman's history goes like this: first, he founded a useless startup that raised $30m, only to be acquired and shuttered. Then Altman got a job running Y Combinator, where he somehow failed at taking huge tranches of equity from "every Stanford dropout with an idea for software to replace something Mommy used to do." After that, he founded OpenAI, a company that he claims to believe presents an existential risk to the entire human risk – which he structured so incompetently that he was then forced out of it.

His reward for this string of farcical, mounting failures? He was put back in charge of the company he mis-structured despite his claimed belief that it will destroy the human race if not properly managed.

Altman's been around for a long time. He founded his startup in 2005. There've always been Sams – of both the Bankman-Fried varietal and the Altman genus – in tech. But they didn't get to run amok. They were disciplined by their competitors, regulators, users and workers. The collapse of competition led to an across-the-board collapse in all of those forms of discipline, revealing the executives for the mediocre sociopaths they always were, and exposing tech workers' vocational awe for the shabby trick it was from the start.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification

#pluralistic #moral injury #enshittification #worker power #google #dont be evil #monopoly #sam altman #openai #vocational awe #making a dent in the universe

558 notes · View notes

the-masked-ram · 6 days

Text

Fics for Gaza

Here I am taking the plunge. I'm a small blog but fast writer even when it comes to my slower times. So might as well put it to good use.

Planning on joining this fundraiser run by @ficsforgaza and help make everyone happy with some content in the process. Here is my plan of action for my wip and donation costs.

To participate- please make a donation to a vetted fundraiser and send a screenshot/proof of your donation to me in a DM. PLEASE MAKES SURE TO CENSOR ALL YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION. (internet safety and all that jazz). In the message also let me know what fic you are donating to and I will adjust expected word counts. These screenshots are merely for keeping things as honest as possible and will be shared with @ficsforgaza

-I obviously will not be taking the money myself. Please send it to one of the vetted fundraisers mentioned in the link below.

$5.00 per 800 words or a full drabble series installment

Link to vetted places to donate here!

As soon as 50% of any of the fics are sponsored I will automatically start on them.

Drabble series-

Sweet and Sour- Ren Kaji x Fem Reader Drabble Series

Your the new girl in the city. You are tough, sassy, but don't know a lick about the gangs, and if your honest you couldn't care less. But something about Ren Kaji catches your eye. He may snap and bark like a feral dog, but you can see through it and he knows it too. Slowly, you become his sanctuary even though you are the one person he's most afraid won't accept him. And he thought he was past all that. (NSFW) 5.00 for full installment

Read Part One here!

False Immunity- Hiei x Fem Reader Drabble Series

Where Hiei learns the ins and out of human courtship. (NSFW)

Find Part One-Six on my masterlist here! 5.00 for full installment

Multichap Fics-

Flawed Hope- Astarion x OC (BG3)

Brit was a paralegal, someone who had a normal life and enjoyed what she did for the most part. Yet, the only true excitement she felt lately was when she played Baldur's Gate Three. A simple video game brought her more joy than her friends or fleeting romances. One night as depression crushes her she wishes to live one day in BG3. Her wish is granted, however the world of BG3 needs her far longer than her wish had originally intended. And the worst part? She does not get along with her favorite vampire in the slightest. (NSFW)

Read the first four chaps here! WC: 558/4000

Falling for Frogs- Sebastian x Fem Reader (SDV)

You are game developer about to make their debut into the market. The world you are about to venture into isn't exactly friendly to those of the feminine persuasion and as such you have flown under the radar using a masculine alias online. After a complete mental break down at a very important convention in Zuzu you realize you need to get away from the city for a bit so you can finish your game. Your best friend who runs a farm in Stardew Valley invites you to come stay with her. However as you stay there and get to know the locals, you realize the cute boy you saw at the con is her neighbor. What's even worse is he remembers you and just to add salt to the wound, he's one of your Kickstarters. (NSFW) WC: 0/3000

Read the first three chaps here!

The Unseen and Those Forgotten- Dabi x Fem Reader (BNHA)

The age of the Greek gods is long past. Dabi is one of the few left, his name in the ancient days had been Hades. Now he skulks among the humans, as a deity at half strength. With the old gods dying, the new ones have taken control of the humans’ feeble minds. There is a storm on the horizon though, quite literally, the end of days is nipping at mortality’s heels and the key to unlocking Kronos’s resting place, the only creature strong enough to put a stop to the apocalypse, is you. Sadly you have no idea what part you will play, after all, you are just an office worker who has an affinity for plants.... WC: 0/2000

Find the first three chaps on my masterlist here! The Hellebore Rift- Hayato Suo x Fem Reader (Wind Breaker) The town of Makochi has changed and so have all the gangs within it. Gone are the days of allies and rival schools. Gone are the days of delinquents battling for top spots and coming home with happy smiles from good fist fights. Now the world has been ripped apart by rifts that tear the very dimensions in two, spewing forth gigantic blood-thirsty monsters. It has forced the gangs to protect only their parts of town from everyone. Even the civilians, even those they once called friends. With those rifts and monsters, humans were gifted with powers, yet everything good always comes with a fall out. You are one of those few, blessed with the ability to Guide, to save those Espers from the toxicity that their own powers created within themselves when they protect their parts of town. You live in a small section Makochi outside any of the gangs control with a scant few Espers to call your own… or well you did until the day Hayato Suo found you. WC 0/2000 (no chapters yet)

Oneshots-

Dog Park with Megumi (no title yet)- You don't have dogs but you find yourself at the dog park everyday because you can't have pets. That's where you meet Megumi Fushiguro (NSFW)WC: 0/15000

A Bouquet of Deadly Thorns- Hanahaki Soulmate Gojo x Fem Reader

The world now is riddled with the phenomenon known as soulmates. You don't know yours but before you can even think about finding them, you must get rid of your growing feelings for Satoru Gojo, the only problem is they've grown suffocating and you've started coughing up blood and flower petals. (NSFW) WC: 3098/8000

Tetsuro Kuroo bar night (no title yet)- The first night you meet Kuroo he was celebrating with his friends who'd just won their volley ball game. You were drinking away your sorrows yet again from another shitty date. Fate had a funny way of making you forget things when he gets dared to make a move on you. (NSFW) WC: 0/10,000

Single Drabbles- 5.00 for a full drabble

Jo Togame festival day (sfw) - fully sponsored

Jo Togame the baths (NSFW) - Link Nobara/fem! reader (jjk) (NSFW) shopping day, in the dressing room

Himuro tatsuya/male! reader (knb) (NSFW) pining, street ball rivals

Seishiro Nagi/gn!reader (blue lock) (SPICEY (not full nsfw)) comfort, lazy day, reuniting after long distance for a while

Sebastain/fem! reader (SDV) (nsfw) phone sex Astarion/male!reader (BG3) (NSFW) dry hump, semi public

82 notes · View notes

mariacallous · 4 months

Text

At the end of January, clips from a film about the housing market in Russian-occupied Mariupol began circulating on TikTok and X (formerly Twitter). After the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian army held Mariupol under siege for 85 days, all the while relentlessly pummeling the city with missile and air strikes. Mariupol was effectively reduced to rubble, and no one knows how many lives were lost — though some estimates place the number as high as 100,000. As soon as the Russian authorities had captured the city, they set about rebuilding it and erasing any trace of war crimes.

The film, titled “Shocking Prices for Apartments in Mariupol — Millions for Ruins” was released in November on the YouTube channel “Mirnyie” (the plural form of “peaceful” in Russian and the first part of “peaceful inhabitants,” a Russian term used to distinguish non-combatants from military personnel in conflict zones). The Mirnyie project is led by “war correspondent” Regina Orekhova, a journalist from the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti. In 2022, she received a special award from the Russian Union of Journalists for “courage in fulfilling journalistic duty.”

The Mirnyie project, as one might surmise from its name, explores the lives of ordinary people in the conflict zone. “These are the stories of people who found themselves caught in the crossfire — some left, while others stayed. [We share] their experiences, how they survive, and what they think about,” reads the description. Judging by the channel, Orekhova primarily works in Mariupol. Previous reports of hers cover topics such as Azovstal’s underground tunnels, the sea port, city maternity hospitals, and the drama theater, which was destroyed by a Russian airstrike while an estimated 1,000 civilians were sheltering there.

In the introduction to the half-hour film, Orekhova promises to answer the following questions: “How do you buy an apartment in Mariupol? Is it more profitable to invest in ‘ruins’ that you can resell once renovated? How do you rent commercial space for a business here and how much does it cost? What kinds of apartments are for sale and what determines the price?” Orekhova explains that in Mariupol, there are “damaged buildings” as well as “brand new and renovated ones.” “The real estate market is very unconventional. We’ve studied it in detail and we’ll tell you all about it,” she promises.

Orekhova speaks with three local realtors who show her properties for sale in different parts of the city. As it turns out, these are mostly half-destroyed apartments, hastily abandoned by residents who left all their personal belongings behind as they fled. However, even such properties, according to the realtors, are in high demand. In some cases, actual ruins, where just parts of the walls survived the bombings, are for sale. However, Russian construction companies will restore these buildings later for free, which significantly increases prices. There’s also the rare property untouched by war, or newly renovated apartments in restored buildings. Prices for these range from four to six million rubles (about $50,000-$66,000). Apartments in historic Stalin-era buildings in the center of Mariupol with surviving inner courtyards (i.e., enclosed parking), renovated entrances, and sea views are considered premium housing.

The film doesn’t explain why or, more importantly, by whom all the housing in Mariupol was destroyed. Realtors talk evasively about “all those events” or “military actions.” Orekhova asks how many real estate agencies are currently operating in Mariupol. “Well, there aren’t many surviving citizens per square meter, you could say, but they exist, of course,” a realtor answers.

Showing a damaged three-room apartment in the center of Mariupol, real estate agent Natalia remarks that “one shouldn’t focus on the consequences of what happened to the apartment but on the apartment’s potential.” There’s no electricity, the ceiling is leaking, and personal belongings, including toys and a highchair, lie strewn about — but the windows have been replaced. Natalia points out the “magnificent view” from the balcony. “These buildings have survived more than one war and, as you can see, are still standing,” Natalia says encouragingly. According to her, it would be too painful for the previous owners to come back and see their home like this, which is why they’re looking to sell the apartment in its current condition.

The realtors say that apartments are mostly bought by newcomers “from big Russia” and bemoan that locals can’t afford newly constructed housing. According to them, Russian authorities introduced a special two percent mortgage rate for people from the self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic” and “Luhansk People’s Republic” who have Russian citizenship. But locals can’t get approved because most aren’t officially employed — there are no jobs with decent salaries in Mariupol.

Luisa, the head of a real estate management company, explains that it’s virtually impossible for Mariupol residents to get an apartment without Russia’s help. She says they “can’t afford to buy back their old homes in Mariupol or to purchase new ones.” When new construction is put up where their destroyed homes used to be, the mortgage payments are out of reach. Luisa recalls how an apartment building in the center, leveled in the bombings, was cleared away to make room for new construction. Residents were offered housing somewhere on the outskirts as compensation, but they weren’t able to buy apartments in the new building being built on their property, even though they’re legally registered at the address.

Tatiana, another realtor, thinks everything in Mariupol is “getting back on track.” She says people are returning, “even those who didn’t plan to.” “The demand [for apartments] is very high, much higher than the supply,” Tatiana explains. “If an apartment is in poor condition but at a good price, it goes quickly. The interested buyers are mainly newcomers. People from Siberia are also eyeing our seaside breeze.”

Tatiana tells Orekhova that everything is “looking up” for the city:

Mariupol has never experienced such rapid growth. The city is developing before our eyes. It’s happening in such a way that even we don’t know where things will improve tomorrow, where slums will turn into upscale neighborhoods. Because our sky is blue. When I say this, everyone smiles, actually. But before, our sky used to be gray or brown, never blue. And now life is getting better; every cloud has a silver lining. You just don’t want to remember the military operations; you go numb. But when you see what’s happening in Mariupol — everything will be fine, everything will work out.

#absolutely vile and disgusting

130 notes · View notes

probablyasocialecologist · 2 months

Text

A Pivot To Video tends to arrive in stages, with each stage being more expensive and producing less interesting content as things progress. Usually it goes like this: The experimentation phase, the factory phase, and the bloat phase. A great editor I worked for during the second Pivot To Video, roughly 2013-2017, who, herself worked through the first, roughly 2003-2007, described it as a massive waste of resources that wastes more resources as it becomes clearer to everyone not directly involved how much of a waste of resources it is. I’m paraphrasing. It’s a fundamental issue with video as a medium that online platforms haven’t fixed and, I suspect, never will because it makes user-generated content platforms feel more professional and consistent. Like TV. The cost to produce video content always balloons as you add more people, more tools, more structure to the workflow, pushing out smaller creators and teams. And even with the pandemic lowering the barrier of entry for making video online considerably, it’s still happening again. We’re in the bloat phase now. The Washington Post put out a great piece last week addressing all of this, calling it the “beastification of YouTube,” which it describes as “hyper-engaging, fast-paced videos with frequent action on screen.” It’s also referred to as “retention editing” in thousands of tutorials you’ll find on YouTube. And this is, largely, a YouTube-driven trend. The importance of YouTube as a cable TV replacement and Netflix competitor is why MrBeast, the platform’s biggest star, is spending between $3-$5 million per video right now, up from around $200,000 a video just a few years ago. To put that absolutely outrageous number in perspective, a MrBeast video is roughly the same cost per video as any episode from the first five seasons of Game Of Thrones. But it’s not just YouTube that is tweaked for retention editing. It’s happening on TikTok, as well. Guides last year were saying you had to capture viewers in the first three seconds. I’ve read a few guides from this year that are now saying hooking a TikTok user has to happen in the first 1.5 seconds. There’s an oft-quoted “shoeshine boy” theory of markets, usually attributed to Joe Kennedy in the late 1920s, who said that when the boy shining his shoes had stock tips, he knew the market was about to collapse. Well, here’s a similar rule for digital video: If you’re trying to optimize your video in microseconds, the video pivot is probably already over.

#social media #video #youtube #mr beast #internet

96 notes · View notes

thehomelybrewster · 2 months

Text

1d8 "Free" Fantasy RPGs To Replace 5e At Your Table

D&D 5e sure is a roleplaying game, and it's one that I have enjoyed a lot. However, that doesn't mean that I'd recommend it automatically for other people. This has many reasons, which I won't elaborate here. It has also shaped the perception of TTRPGs significantly thanks to its market dominance, and not in a good way.

5e has a reputation for being an expensive, complex game, and 5e players fear that other RPGs might just be the same. That it's too much of a hassle and too much of a financial burden to switch systems.

So, to help 5e players pick out a different system, I've made this handy 1d8 rolling table to help them pick a fantasy TTRPG with a combat component that they can try instead!

Let's now go through these eight nine RPGs and see what's up with them, right below the "Keep reading" section!

I'll be listing some metrics like the page count for the rulebook(s), the core resolution mechanic, how complex the game is in terms of character creation & combat, and how well-supported the game is by their publisher and the community-at-large.

1. Cairn

Author: Yochai Gal

Release Year: 2020

Cost: Free PDF, printed copies cost between $3 to $10 depending on the print quality.

Page Count: 24

Website: https://cairnrpg.com/

Resolution Mechanic: 1d20 Roll Under system for ability checks/saving throws, attacks hit automatically, "fiction-first".

Action Economy: Movement + one action per round.

Characters: Random character creation, class-less and level-less, advancement based on "Scars" (suffering damage that reduces your HP exactly to 0)

Setting: Implied. Low-magic European-style fantasy; mysterious woodlands.

Other Noteworthy Mechanics: Hit Protection and Ability damage instead of HP, Slot-Based Inventory.

Degree of Support: Very high. Available in fifteen languages (e.g. Spanish, Russian, Chinese, and German); full rules text is under CC-BY-SA 4.0; multiple published third-party adventures & supplements available; some official bonus material (e.g. bestiary, magic items/relics, and spells) is available for free on the website.

Addendum: An expanded 2nd Edition is currently on Kickstarter (ends April 26th 2024); Cairn is legitimately easy to learn, however the Hit Protection system and the connected Scars system is a very different abstraction to health and advancement compared to 5e.

2. Cloud Empress

Author: worlds by watt

Release Year: 2023

Cost: Free PDF of the rulebook and the creator-written sample adventure "Last Voyage of the Bean Barge", $20 for the print edition of the rulebook, $12 for PDF supplements, $25 for print + PDF supplements; free solo rules also available as PDF only.

Page Count: 60

Website: https://cloudempress.com/

Resolution Mechanic: d100 Roll Under system for stat checks/saving throws, critical successes or failures on doubles (11, 22, 33, etc.), 5e-style advantage/disadvantage, attacks generally hit automatically.

Action Economy: Two actions per round with no free movement.

Characters: Semi-random character creation, four classes ("jobs"), no rules for character advancement in the ruleset.

Setting: Specific. "Ecological science fantasy" heavily inspired by Hayao Miyazaki's "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind"; costly magic, giant insects, dangerous mushrooms; only human player characters.

Other Noteworthy Mechanics: Damage points culminate in Wounds; Wounds and Stress as ways to track your character's physical and mental state; slot-based inventory system.

Degree of Support: Low-ish. Several official supplements exist, however third-party material is very sparse. May improve due to the recent establishment of a Cloud Empress Creators Fund, has a simple 3rd party license system.

Addendum: A supplement, "Cloud Empress: Life & Death" is currently on Kickstarter (ends April 26th 2024, yes, the same day as Cairn 2e) and as a disclaimer I even backed that current Kickstarter; Cloud Empress is built on the engine of the sci-fi horror RPG "Mothership"; clearly built for one-shots and short campaigns; has a wonderful resting system that encourages roleplay between players.

3. Iron Halberd

Author: level2janitor

Release Year: 2023

Cost: Free PDF of the rules; no print option available.

Page Count: 60

Website: https://level2janitor.itch.io/iron-halberd

Resolution Mechanic: 1d20 + Bonus Roll Over system against difficulty or armor rating, however most non-combat-related actions follow a fiction first approach without dice rolls.

Action Economy: Movement + one action per round.

Characters: Semi-random character creation, class-less but there are four different "gear kits" that nudge your character towards certain archetypes, levelling up with XP.

Setting: Essentially non-existant. General European fantasy with magic, gods may or may not exist/shape the world, various fantastic ancestries included.

Other Noteworthy Mechanics: Includes rules for building strongholds and maintaining warbands; slot-based inventory with a durability mechanic.

Degree of Support: None. The game is intended to be relatively compatible with other OSR content and the creator suggests using adventures made for the D&D retroclone Old-School Essentials if you wanna use pre-published ones. An official introductory adventure, "Sea-Spray Bay", is apparently in the works. No 3rd party license available, as far as I know.

Addendum: One thing about Iron Halberd I like especially is how it uses random tables for generating equipment. Most of the equipment is listed in a numerical order by category, and the various gear kits include references on different rolling formulas for those equipment categories. For example someone taking the "soldier's kit" rolls twice on the d20 Weapons table and takes their preferred pick, while someone taking the "sage's kit" only rolls a d4 on that table.

4. Mausritter

Author: Isaac Williams

Release Year: 2020

Cost: Free PDF of the ruleset available; box set with the rules and several goodies including an adventure costs $55; additional box set + PDFs containing eleven official adventures costs $55 (or $20 digital-only).

Page Count: 48

Website: https://mausritter.com/

Resolution Mechanic: 1d20 Roll Under system, 5e-style advantage/disadvantage, attacks always hit.

Action Economy: Movement + one action per round.

Characters: Random character creation, class-less, levelling up with XP.

Setting: Vaguely specific. You play as mice and everything is related to mouse-size; cats are the equivalents of devils or dragons; humans exist as a setting background but may or may not be present in a campaign.

Other Noteworthy Mechanics: Includes rules for recruiting warbands; slot-based inventory with a durability mechanic.

Degree of Support: Very high. Several official supplements exist, as well as loads of content, be it adventures or supplements, made by other creators. Available in seven languages (all of them however are European). Has a simple 3rd party license system.

Addendum: Mausritter uses the phrase "adventure site" instead of dungeons. On the website a free adventure site generator is available, as is a digital tool that can be used to generate your own item cards for the slot-based inventory system.

5. Maze Rats

Author: Ben Milton

Release Year: 2017

Cost: $4.99 for the PDF, no print option regularly available.

Page Count: 32

Website: https://questingbeast.substack.com/

Resolution Mechanic: 2d6 + Bonus Roll Over system; advantage system that uses 3d6 drop the lowest + Bonus.

Action Economy: Movement + one action per round.

Characters: Semi-random character creation, class-less but instead there are character features (e.g. spell slots or attack bonuses), levelling up with XP.

Setting: Essentially non-existant. Magic is very irregular (s. the section below), but otherwise it implies a vaguely European fantasy setting.

Other Noteworthy Mechanics: Spells are randomly generated each adventuring day and spell effects are negotiated between the GM and the spellcasting player; includes several fantastic d66 tables that can be used to randomly generate worlds.

Degree of Support: Decent. The rule text is licensed under CC BY 4.0 and unofficial translations are available. Some third-party content has been made specifically for the game.

Addendum: The only purchase-only game on this list. However "unofficial" distribution of the PDF is very common. Also this is the oldest game on the list. Ben "Questing Beast" Milton is a prolific OSR blogger and runs a YouTube channel on the OSR. Great dude.

6. Sherwood - A Game of Outlaws & Arcana

Author: Richard Ruane

Release Year: 2022

Cost: Free quickstart PDF titled "Sherwood - A Quickstart of Outlaws" available; digital rulebook costs $7.50 and the print edition (including PDF) costs $15.

Page Count: 25 (Quickstart), 32 (Rulebook)

Website: https://www.r-rook.studio/

Resolution Mechanic: 2d6 + Bonus Roll Over system for skill checks (including attacks), 2d6 Roll Under system for saving throws; advantage & disadvantage system that involves rolling 3d6 and using the higher/lower of the two results; almost all rolls are player-facing

Action Economy: "Conversational", assumption of movement + action.

Characters: Largely choice-based character creation. Combine two (of six) background abilities with the benefits of seven different careers. Big focus on interpersonal relationships during character creation. Limited character advancement takes place during downtime.

Setting: Specific. Takes place in a fantastical version of 13th century England, with fey and magic coexisting with outlaws and crusaders.

Other Noteworthy Mechanics: The group of outlaws possesses two shared resources (Resources and Legend) that can be spent to gain certain benefits; spellcasting is divided into two categories: arcane talents and sorcerous rites, with the former being immediate and the later taking significant time; slot-based inventory.

Degree of Support: None. No further publications exist for the game and while it is published under the CC-BY 4.0 license, no third-party content exists as far as I know. It does include a guide on how to convert D&D and Troika (N)PCs into Sherwood characters, as well as three adventure seeds (one in the Quickstart, two in the rules), which is at least something.

Addendum: Might just be the game on this list that encourages the most roleplaying; the character sheet is sadly very provisional-feeling and the Quickstart feels outdated compared to the finalized rulebook.

7. The Electrum Archive

Author: Emiel Boven

Release Year: 2022

Cost: Free Rules PDF available, zines cost $12 as digital PDFs or $24 as print + PDF combos; the first zine contains the entire contents of the Free Rules PDF

Page Count: 26 (Free Rules), 72 (Issue 01)

Website: https://www.electrumarchive.com/

Resolution Mechanic: 1d10 Roll Under system, attacks always hit.

Action Economy: Movement + one action per round.

Characters: Largely choice-based; three archetypes roughly corresponding to fighters/rangers (Vagabonds), rogues (Fixers), and spellcasters (Warlocks); player characters are presumed to be human; levelling up with XP.

Setting: Specific. Mechanics heavily tie into the lore; humanity has abundant access to minerals but requires a rare substance known as Ink to operate certain pieces of tech (like guns) and cast spells but cannot produce Ink themselves; spirits of various sorts can be foes, targets of worship, or sources of power.

Other Noteworthy Mechanics: Uses a spellcasting system for the Warlock archetype that's heavily based on the one used in Maze Rats, as in it uses randomly-generated spells whose effects are negotiated between the player and the GM; slot-based inventory with a durability mechanic.

Degree of Support: Minimal. The game consists out of the free rules and (soon) two zines; a third party license exists but content produced under it is very rare.

Addendum: I need to disclaim that I recently backed the Kickstarter campaign for the second zine for this game; the free rules feature wrong page numbers in its table of contents which is unfortunate; The Electrum Archive uses incredibly simple stats for NPCs which makes creating new ones based on other games rather simple.

8. Shadowdark RPG

Author: Kelsey Dionne

Release Year: 2023

Cost: Free player and game master quickstarts exist as PDFs and are available in print for $19, the core rules cost $28 in PDF form and $57 in a print + PDF bundle

Page Count: 68 (Player Quickstart Guide), 68 (Game Master Quickstart Guide), 332 (Core Rules)

Website: https://www.thearcanelibrary.com/

Resolution Mechanic: 1d20 + Bonus Roll Over system, 5e-style advantage/disadvantage, natural 1s are critical failures and natural 20s are critical successes.

Action Economy: Movement + one action per round.

Characters: Largely choice-based; players have a fantasy ancestry and a class; levelling up with XP; class progression largely random.

Setting: Vague. General (dark) western fantasy conventions apply; alignment is a force in this universe and a sample pantheon is provided; the most potent enemies in the rules are named individuals that fit classic TTRPG monster types; illustrations and lore snippets have recurring motifs.

Other Noteworthy Mechanics: The key mechanic of Shadowdark is how the game handles light, namely that light sources are tracked in real time (i.e. a normal torch lasts 1 hour), which increases tension; slot-based inventory; has a 0th-level character creation option using an eliminationist "Gauntlet".

Degree of Support: Fantastic. Several official supplements and offically sanctioned digital tools exist; lots of third-party content available under a generous third-party license.

Addendum: Definitely the most similar game to 5e on this list besides the next entry; very robust mechanically and the Core Rules features extensive lists of magic items, monsters, and spells; also for early play giving your players only access to the quickstart is a totally valid choice; and finally, before Dionne made Shadowdark, she made 5e adventures for years and it shows (affectionate).

9. Pathfinder

Authors: Logan Bonner, Jason Bulmahn, Stephen Radney-MacFarland, Mark Seifter

Release Year: 2019 (initial release), 2023 (remaster)

Cost: Free and comprehensive SRD available via the platform Archives of Nethys, free "Pathfinder Primer" abridged rulebook available via the Pathfinder Nexus (powered by Demiplane), Core books are priced $20 for PDFs and $30/$60 for print as a softcover/hardcover; a Beginner Box set with shortened soft-cover rules costs $45

Page Count: 464 (Player Core), 336 (GM Core), 376 (Monster Core), 160 (Combined Beginner Box Softcovers)

Website: https://paizo.com/pathfinder

Resolution Mechanic: 1d20 + Bonus Roll Over system, 5e-style advantage/disadvantage, four degrees of success based on result compared to target number.

Action Economy: Three action points per round; various actions may require more than one point; every character can use one reaction per round of combat.

Characters: Choice-based; players first pick an ancestry and a background and a class (the ABCs) and then tend to have meaningful choices after each level-up; levelling up with XP.

Setting: Important. Golarion, the game's setting, is a world that has been long in development and it shows; powerful magic and influential gods; very clear notions of what the societies of the various peoples of the world are like and how they should behave.

Other Noteworthy Mechanics: Balance between character classes and reliable combat challenge calculations are an important design goal; weight-based inventory system; archetype system for "multiclassing".

Degree of Support: Fantastic. Loads of content gets regularly produced by the game's publisher Paizo; the Pathfinder Infinite program (similar to D&D's Dungeon Master's Guild) provides lots of lore-compliant third-party content; uses the ORC third-party license for content produced outside of the Pathfinder Infinite program. Translations into other languages available but Paizo does not provide a comprehensive list of available languages (only German and French confirmed after brief personal research).

Addendum: The most popular and commercially successful of the listed games; but also by far the most complicated, though it is easier to GM for specificallty than 5e; also I dislike how certain feats create situations where fairly mundane actions get mechanics through these feats instead of being things you can generally do; anyway the reason why it's a 9 on a 1d8 table is because if you wanted to try out Pathfinder 2e you already would have and because while Paizo is better than WotC it's still a flawed big company.

...

So this was an exhausting little project. I hope you found this helpful and I hope you give at least one of these games a shot! A follow-up to this post is not out of the cards, but I don't plan on one.

Before we go, have this poll about which of these systems you're most looking forward to try! Shame it can only be open for one week...

#thehomelybrewster #dnd 5e #dnd #indie ttrpg #tabletop roleplaying #ttrpg community #Cairn #Cloud Empress #Iron Halberd #Mausritter #Maze Rats #Dungeons and Dragons #Sherwood #The Electrum Archive #shadowdark #pathfinder

68 notes · View notes

allthecanadianpolitics · 7 months

Text

Nova Scotia’s Progressive Conservative government released a housing plan Monday that it says will help address a projected shortage of 41,000 homes by 2028. A study completed by consultant Turner Drake & Partners says rapid inflation, high interest rates, shortages of labour and one of the fastest population-growth rates in the country has already created a shortage of 27,300 units in the province — along with spiraling housing costs. “Nova Scotia’s housing market is currently unsustainable and will only be exacerbated if immediate action … is not taken,” the report says. The study, based partly on survey responses from 20,000 people, says 54 per cent of respondents said they had to spend more than 30 per cent of their income on housing, and 46 per cent said they couldn’t find a place to rent in their price range.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

#Nova Scotia #Housing #housing crisis #cdnpoli #canada #canadian politics #canadian news

32 notes · View notes

miguel5219 · 1 year

Text

Your First $1000 Check 👉 https://cutt.ly/f5TMeER

are you sick and tired of being sick and tired and getting nowhere? In a free training session on Affiliate Marketing, you can expect to learn about the fundamentals of Affiliate Marketing, including how it works, how to choose the right products or services to promote, how to create effective marketing campaigns, and how to track and analyze your performance. Additionally, a free training session on Affiliate Marketing may cover more advanced topics such as optimizing landing pages, building an email list, and creating effective ad campaigns. You may also learn about the latest trends and best practices in Affiliate Marketing, as well as tips and tricks for maximizing your revenue potential. Overall, a free training session on Affiliate Marketing can be a great opportunity for individuals who are interested in learning more about this field or are looking to improve their skills and knowledge

0 notes

zephyrspace · 2 years

Note

this. I LOVE this.

thinking about scenarios like that is so fun omg 😭 I can only image the absolute FIELD DAY doc has during/after Leona's overblot during chapter 2...or small health check ups with some other characters, doc sometime low-key dotting on students and etc,,

AJSJAJS IT REALLY IS FUN

not me naming the post after a buggs bunny reference-

i kind of just let my thoughts flow in that post so everything was so out of order 😭

doc definitely requests for there to be a tri-yearly (beginning, middle and end of the school year) health checkup on both students and staff! the checkups usually take one week for each dorm and doc quite enjoys getting to know all the students no matter how brief or quick the check up is. they claim that it’s to make sure all attendees of nrc are healthy and happy, but lowkey it’s to check the progress of any medications that they experimented on the students and staff with-

“your horns have grown by four millimetres in length since last term. i’d say by the time you’re onto your fourth or fifth century, your horns would be too heavy to carry,” you joke while writing the number down. malleus lets out (what you think is) a proud huff.

“what makes you think that a lowly human like you can be that close to malleus-sama’s body!! touching him as you please- i won’t allow it!!!” sebek shrieks, pointing an accusing finger at you.

ears aching and eyes not leaving malleus’ personal profile, you retort back, a small smile still etched onto your face, “y’know, sebek, i know you’re new to this and all, so i was lenient enough to let you watch your master’s checkup despite these tests being highly confidential.” halting your note-taking for a second, you give sebek a side glance, “but as your senior and part of the staff of this school, i won’t take too kindly being lectured in my own clinic.”

watching his guard being scolded, malleus laughs, “it’s best to do as your told, sebek.”

sebek’s heart audibly shatters at his master’s words but you and malleus choose to ignore it completely. how cruel.

ruggie has been caught swiping doc’s spare vitamins and tablets for the kids at the slums, but being aware of the environment he was born in, they just let him take it. sometimes even giving him advice on how to use it. doc considers putting instructions on the bottles for him.

“make sure that you do not give this to kids under five years old. for this one, you have to chew before you swallow. and as for this one, it may look like a moisturiser but it’s supposed to be eaten, only one teaspoon for twelve and under, once a day.” you pull sticky notes from your pockets and write down exactly what you say, carefully placing the notes onto the bottles.

“thanks, medic. i really needed these.” he hugs the multiple bottles close to his body, as if someone would take them away.

you frown at his words and actions, you wish you could do more to help him. the cost of the medicine that he’s been taking has risen considerably in the market due to its ingredients becoming more difficult to obtain and even you’re having a hard time getting your hands on it. you can only imagine how unaffordable it is for the less fortunate who need it.

gently resting your hand on the top of his head, you stroke his hair reassuringly, “ruggie, you don’t have to go behind my back to take these, okay? just ask me for them and i’ll try my best to get more next time.”

leona’s overblot… oh boy.

“do you think that the headmaster would allow me to examine the outsiders?” you hug yourself to contain your excitement, body trembling with anticipation and excitement. you try to steady your breathing but it comes out shaky and harsh.

“i mean, look at some of them, scratched up, bruised and battered, utterly helpless. they need someone to treat them, right? right?!?” you try to reason with the surrounding savannahclaw and heartslabyul students, feigning compassion and empathy for those who were involved. after all, you are the only one qualified to perform proper treatments.

they could all see that practically no one from outside the school had been hurt to such an extent but they let you dream.

#medic!au #twst x reader

365 notes · View notes