maaszeltov

[maaszeltov]

HELP US GET MORE GROCERIES THIS LESBIAN WEEK! WE GOT PAID BUT AS USUAL ITS NOT ENOUGH TO SURVIVE ON. WE DIDNT EVEN MEET OUR INITIAL GOAL OF 200 BUCKS FOR A LONG WHILE’S WORTH OF SHOPPING LAST TIME SO WE ONLY GOT BARE ESSENTIALS, WE NEED PROTEIN. WE NEED PRETTY MUCH EVERYTHING.

C: $voidhex

V: ccheung333

KO-FI.COM/THEGASH

DO NOT TAG THIS.

BUY FROM MY BANDCAMP IF YOU WANT SOMETHING IN RETURN.

[maaszeltov]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#ttrpgs #indie ttrpgs #game design

[maaszeltov]

Lord I see what you have done for others. Get me out of this state !

Me and my boyfriend (butch) are finally leaving Texas for Washington in June, we have everything planned out but we desperately need funding to secure housing once we get up there, and money for the 3000 mile drive from here to there

Please reblog and share!

[maaszeltov]

Lord I see what you have done for others. Get me out of this state !

Me and my boyfriend (butch) are finally leaving Texas for Washington in June, we have everything planned out but we desperately need funding to secure housing once we get up there, and money for the 3000 mile drive from here to there

Please reblog and share!

[maaszeltov]

Lord I see what you have done for others. Get me out of this state !

Me and my boyfriend (butch) are finally leaving Texas for Washington in June, we have everything planned out but we desperately need funding to secure housing once we get up there, and money for the 3000 mile drive from here to there

Please reblog and share!

[maaszeltov]

no options for "they wouldn't fight" or "they would kiss", they are fighting and that is FINAL

#my url is me and would die so quick to a wizard

[maaszeltov]

@martianworder asked me about this on my Forged in the Dark post, so here we go!

Clocks

So Clocks have been a tool that have been used before and outside of Blades in the Dark, but BitD was where I think they were made really popular.

Golem Clocks designed by cmartins on Itch.io

For all intents and purposes, a Clock is just a track that you fill, but in some cases it's preferred over a track because it fills less space, and it's easy to just draw a clock on a piece of paper to help you keep track of something as you play.

A Clock can be more than just a track. It can be a countdown, a timer, or a representation of a person or faction's goals. The larger the Clock, the bigger task it is. Here are some examples of how you could use them.

A Healing project clock from Blades in the Dark.

A player could have a project Clock that they fill over the course of many sessions. Perhaps they want to research a cure for a vampire virus that is threatening a loved one. The GM would ask them to make a research roll every downtime, and how successful they are indicates how many slices they fill - effectively, how much progress they make towards finding a cure.

Rebellion and Sedition Clocks for Brinkwood: Blood of Tyrants.

A play group might use a Clock to track a common goal, such as winning over a number of anarchists to help take down a mega-corporation. If this is a campaign-long goal, you might use a series of linked clocks to represent the jailbreak you need to assist before you can win over a computer hacker, and then the massive hacking project you need to support before you can overwhelm the corpo servers.

Faction Clocks from Scum & Villainy.

A GM might use a Clock to track the work a Faction makes towards their goal. Every downtime section, they GM might roll to see how successful the Faction is, or simply tick one slice of the clock if the Faction has no reason not to be able to do what they want. If the Faction is allowed to work unimpeded by the PC's, they might eventually do something that changes the world around them, for better or worse.

Mission Clock from External Containment Bureau and Doomsday Clock from Apocalypse Keys.

Clocks might also be used as a timer, to indicate when something terrible might happen, or when the group's time is up. This might be the amount of time before a murderer next strikes, before the haunted house claims another victim, or before the world begins to end. In some games, specific points in the clock (such as halfway, or a quarter of the way through) may trigger special events that give the PC's more information, or remind the group that the pressure is really on.

Clocks for Protect the Child.

All in all, Clocks are a great visual tool to help you and your game group keep track of what's going on in the fiction, and it can also help you keep track of a number of narrative threads in a fairly condensed space. Even if they're not built into the game you're currently running or playing, I think they're a fairly easy addition, and can certainly help with bookkeeping!

#resources #mechanics explained #game design

[maaszeltov]

thank you BarBar for publishing my story Within the Wall! this is such an odd story i truly didn’t think i would ever find a home for it. if you like rats, religious themes, and anthropomorphized animal stories like Watership Down and Warriors, i would appreciate your reads :)

this story contains depictions of violence, animal death, and religious imagery. please read at your own discretion!

#writing #fiction

[maaszeltov]

I've remarked in the past that first-wave literary cyberpunk's skepticism of body modification is typically rooted in concerns about capitalist intrusion upon bodily autonomy and ownership of human bodies, with the "prosthetics eat your soul" stuff developing later in order to allow authors to continue to write about angsty cyborgs without any political subtext which might be uncomfortable for mainstream audiences.

(Which is not to say that "prosthetics eat your soul" is, itself, apolitical, of course – it merely exchanges a potentially uncomfortable political subtext for one which able-bodied audiences found more palatable!)

While this is true as far as it goes, I think it's also important to recognise that, while first-wave literary cyberpunk did have all that bodily autonomy stuff, it was almost invariably being written by able-bodied authors who treated it as a metaphor for the artist's loss of intellectual freedom under the corporate state, rather than as a topic worth exploring in its own right. Like, give credit where credit is due, but don't give those guys too much credit; they largely weren't taking disability rights issues seriously, either.

I'm saying this because I've noticed an increasing tendency in certain circles to characterise modern self-styled "cripplepunk" incarnations of the cyberpunk genre as in some sense reactionary – i.e., like they're merely rolling back the clock to before cyberpunk sold out. The fact of the matter is that the golden age of disability-aware cyberpunk literature never existed, and folks who are taking a hard look at that aren't trying to "turn back the clock": they're giving the literal text of this shit the attention it deserves for possibly the first time.

#media #literature #cyberpunk #tropes #disability #ableism #politics #capitalism #writing

[maaszeltov]

Draconick Stream!

Doing my morning dailies: Wordle and crossword and the like-- then on to Stardewsday Tuesday!

#vtuber #envtuber #vtuber uprising #indie vtuber #vtuberen #3d vtuber #going live

[maaszeltov]

site that you can type in the definition of a word and get the word

site for when you can only remember part of a word/its definition 

site that gives you words that rhyme with a word

site that gives you synonyms and antonyms

#writing #tools #advice

[maaszeltov]

Death of the author: Treating the author’s stated interpretation of their own work as merely one opinion among many, rather than the authoritative Word of God.

Disappearance of the author: Treating the context and circumstances of the work’s authorship as entirely irrelevant with respect to its interpretation, as though the work had popped into existence fully formed just moments ago.

Taxidermy of the author: Working backwards from a particular interpretation of the work to draw conclusions about what the context and circumstances of its authorship must have been.

Undeath of the author: Holding the author personally responsible for every possible reading of their work, even ones they could not reasonably have anticipated at the time of its authorship.

Frankenstein’s Monster of the author: Drawing conclusions about authorial intent based on elements that are present only in subsequent adaptations by other authors.

Weekend at Bernie’s of the author: Insisting that the author would personally endorse your interpretation of the work if they happened to be present.

#writing #reading #media consumption #media literacy #so many of y'all do all that other shit and then act like it's everyone else's problem

[maaszeltov]

$74/360

Hello! I was robbed at gunpoint last night and need some financial help recovering from that. So, I made a bundle on itch of every one of my games. Please check it out, it's $32 worth of games for $7.50.

[maaszeltov]

i dont get why people act like one-page ttrpgs are especially easy to learn or friendly for new players — oftentimes, the way you make a 1 page ttrpg is by assuming the player already knows a lot about how ttrpgs work!

#ttrpg #ttrpg design #one page rpg #indie ttrpg

[maaszeltov]

Hello again! I haven't made further sales on the bundle but have been sent $10 to my venmo, so $64.50/360! Thank you for the support, if you could please check out the bundle. If you don't have $7.50 to spare you can also check out my free works and pay however much you want for them.

Hello! I was robbed at gunpoint last night and need some financial help recovering from that. So, I made a bundle on itch of every one of my games. Please check it out, it's $32 worth of games for $7.50.

#ttrpg #indie ttrpg #dnd #itch #itchio #itch.io #sale #bundle

[maaszeltov]

Hey guys just popping in to let you know I still need help and I have to get money to fix my car. Currently I have $54.50 out of the $360 I need. Any bit helps! This bundle contains 4 games: a sci fi war game, a card based courtly social game, a push your luck hack and slash mining game, and a two person letter writing rpg about immortality.

Hello! I was robbed at gunpoint last night and need some financial help recovering from that. So, I made a bundle on itch of every one of my games. Please check it out, it's $32 worth of games for $7.50.

#ttrpg #indie ttrpg #dnd #itch #itchio #itch.io #sale #bundle

[maaszeltov]

Lethal Company Stream!

Change of plans, I wanted to do Lethal Company, so we're doing Lethal Company. Maybe Stardew or other stuff after?

Company today is Abster and Kaizad!

#vtuber #envtuber #VTuberUprising

#vtuber #envtuber #vtuber uprising #indie vtuber #vtuberen #3d vtuber #going live