waywardmarauder

[waywardmarauder]

I've Never Seen An Ask Game For D&D So I Made One

Player Asks

Backstory: Describe one of your player characters

Sword: Favorite class to play

Staff: Martial or Spellcasting class?

Axe: Class you've never played but want to

Orb: Class you've never played and don't want to

Spellbook : A character concept that you haven't gotten to play yet

Sting: Favorite weapon?

Tasha: Favorite spell?

Battlemap: Favorite adventure that you've played?

Mimic: Favorite magic item that you've acquired?

Crit: Most memorable Nat 20?

Nope: Most memorable Nat 1?

DM Asks

Castle: Adventure modules or homebrew?

Trebuchet: Favorite adventure that you've run?

Planar: What is the name and a brief description of your world/setting?

Terrain: Describe the landscape of somewhere in your world/setting?

Battlements: Describe a city in your world/setting?

Shopkeep: Describe one of your NPCs

Elvish: Favorite NPC that you've played?

Forge: Favorite magic item you've designed?

Bonus Round

Mini: Post a picture of a character mini

Dice: Post a picture of your favorite dice

Masterpiece: Post art of your characters

Screen: Favorite D&D actual play show

Gaming: Favorite non-D&D ttrpg actual play show

Dungeon: I don't know what Dungeons & Dragons is please explain it in detail

Dragons: I would like to play Dungeons & Dragons please tell me how

& : Dungeon or Dragon?

[waywardmarauder]

real

[waywardmarauder]

Hot take but "See Invisibilty" should always reveal something

Like, we only really deal with the dangerous naturally invisible creatures, but there's also species of birds and insects and plants and so forth that are invisible. There's invisible rock formations (ever trip over nothing?). Invisible clouds. Invisible works of art. You cast See Invisibility and suddenly there's an entire invisible ecosystem that you can never really interact with normally.

Also you finally find out there's actually been a gnome sitting on the barbarian's head and livetweeting your adventures this whole time

-Pencil

[waywardmarauder]

Kostas Kiriakakis: A Day At The Park

[waywardmarauder]

John Waters commencement address RISD 2015.

[waywardmarauder]

So Netflix is releasing this animated movie but here’s the thing - all backgrounds are done in AI. No actual BG artists were hired or credited for this work.

And here’s the kicker - I gave them too much credit. I realized that not even the AI users are credited apparently. Check this out:

“+Human”. No names, no nothing. 

I know it’s tempting, but please don’t hate-watch this thing. Numbers equal profit even if the people watching are just doing it to mock. Don’t give Netflix and other studios even more incentive to fire more animators and replace them with machines trained on their work and skill. 

Hilarously, the excuse used is ‘there aren’t enough artists’. That’s not true - there are more than enough artists, but the real issue is that no one wants to pay a living wage. Here’s a short video about the reality of animation in Japan.

The biggest winners in this equation at the end of the day are the AI infrastructure owners - owners of Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, etc. Do not feed this machine, it creates more monopolization of entire industries, raises a powerful few and dehumanizes the rest.

[waywardmarauder]

So, what is the OGL and why are DnD creators thoroughly screwed?

Tumblr has not been doing a great job at talking about this, but:

With OneDnD, Wizards of the Coast has decided to update the Open Game License (OGL). Said license is what allowed people to create homebrew DnD content and sell it, and even larger companies to use certain sorts of content. Pathfinder, for example, is built on said OGL. This also allows streamers and artists to exist and benefit from said content.

With OneDnD (sometimes called “dnd 6e”), WOTC wants to create a much more restrictive OGL, which will, amongst other things:

Make WOTC take a cut for any DnD-related work (according to Kickstarter, a whole 25% of the benefits)

Let WOTC cancel any project related to DnD up to their discretion

Let WOTC take ANY content made based on their system, and re-sell it without crediting you, or giving you a single cent

And most importantly, revoke the old OGL, which will harm any company or game system that used it as a base, such as Pathfinder. And it means they GET ownership over any homebrew content you may have done for 5e in the past!

It’s important to note that OGLs are supposedly irrevocable. They were planning to use it for OneDnD initially, but they want to apply it retroactively to 5e, somehow. Which is illegal, but lawyers have mentioned there’s a chance they may get away with it given the wording.

This means that anything you make based on DnD (A homebrew item? A character drawing? Even music, according to them?), can get taken and used as they deem appropiate.

These news come from a leak of the OGL, which have been confirmed by multiple reputable sources (including Kickstarter, which has confirmed that WOTC already talked with them about this), and was planned to be released next week.

So, what can we do?

Speak against it. Share the word. Reblog this post. Let people know. Tumblr hasn’t been talking much about this matter, but it’s VERY important to let people know about what is WOTC bringing. 

Boycott them. Do not buy their products. Do not buy games with their IP. Do not watch their movie. CANCEL your DnD Beyond subscription. (Btw, they ARE planning to release more subscription services too!). They do not care about the community, but they care about the money. Make sure to speak through it. 

And maybe consider other TTRPG systems for the time being, Pathfinder’s Paizo has been much nicer to the community, their workers are unionized and are far more healthy overall

[waywardmarauder]

This could potentially be big. Screenshots from someone in a Facebook group providing his professionally-affected opinion:

Basically, if any of this is true, you could expect Paizo et al to sue WotC/Hasbro. I would love to see that happen, personally, but it all depends on how likely any of the above actually is to work. Like, if 5.5/6e turns out to be as crappy as 4e was, this will just be WotC shooting itself in the foot again (though probably not enough to kill it). So far, I've only heard good things mechanically and bad things for the playerbase, but they have all been vague suggestions with no concrete details.

A Concrete Example

The Hypertext d20 SRD began was constructed under 3.5 as exactly what its name suggests: a self-interlinked reference document for everything in the system. Prior to its existence, the SRD was a collection of (possibly rich) text documents without page numbers or other means of easy reference. It included all OGL material from print sources it could find, so includes ~85% of the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, Monster Manual, Expanded Psionics Handbook, Epic Level Handbook, Arcana Unearthed, and some bits from Deities & Demigods. It has other useful tools, like an encounter calculator and spell search. For the longest time, it was the only thing like it. Other sites (DnD Tools, Forgotten Realms Helps) eventually sprang up with more content; DnD Tools has been taken down numerous times for violating the OGL, while Realms Helps has stayed under the radar for some reason.

At some point, the d20srd webmaster updated it to include Pathfinder (seemingly all, but arranged by book like how Paizo's PRD was, which is deeply unhelpful) and some 5e (limited entirely to the core three books). This was long after d20pfsrd launched; that site is modeled off of the 3.5 d20srd site in organization and is amazeballs.

Since this webmaster has published 5e material on this site and since the new OGL possibly interprets that as accepting its terms, if this new OGL were legal, he could be sued to take down his entire site (or at least the perennially helpful portions) because it is no longer valid. (Per the screenshots, this is only half hypothetical: I know WotC did do this when 4e came out to fanpages that had 3.5 and 4e material because they didn't want competition from their own product.) This would leave only unauthorized (DnD Tools) or status unclear (Forgotten Realms Helps) archives. We've already lost reams of 3.5 material because WotC deleted its 3rd ed. archives (they used to publish stuff online regularly).

[waywardmarauder]

“Pain doesn't make people, it's love that makes people. The pain is inconsequential. It's love that saves them.” -  Caduceus Clay. Critical Role Season 2

Pain is what broke it. Love is the glue.

My dad and I once had a disagreement over him using the adage "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

I said, "That's just not true. Sometimes what doesn't kill you leaves you brittle and injured or traumatized."

He stopped and thought about that for a while. He came back later, and said, "It's like wood glue."

He pointed to my bookshelf, which he helped me salvage a while ago. He said, "Do you remember how I explained that, once we used the wood glue on them, the shelves would actually be stronger than they were before they broke?"

I did.

"But before we used the wood glue, those shelves were broken. They couldn't hold up shit. If you had put books on them, they would have collapsed. And that wood glue had to set awhile. If we put anything on them too early, they would have collapsed just the same as if we'd never fixed them at all. You've got to give these things time to set."

It sounded like a pretty good metaphor to me, but one thing I did pick up on was that whatever broke those shelves, that's not the thing that made them stronger. That just broke them. It was being fixed that made them stronger. It was the glue.

So my dad and I agreed, what doesn't kill you doesn't actually make you stronger, but healing does. And if you feel like healing hasn't made you stronger than you were before, you're probably not done healing. You've got to give these things time to set.

[waywardmarauder]

[waywardmarauder]

Here’s a Health to the Company (Youtube link)

I’m not even halfway through Critical Role Campaign 2, and already a new story is starting. I’ve grown incredibly attached to these characters already, and their pirate arc has been a fun mess of so many emotions. What better way to deal with that than sea shanties? 

(you can find more of my cr fanart at #chekhov-draws-critical-role)

[waywardmarauder]

>First, we’ve discovered that about a quarter of all the internet connection in or out of the house were ad related. In a few hours, that’s about 10,000 out of 40,000 processed.

>We also discovered that every link on Twitter was blocked. This was solved by whitelisting the https://t.co domain.

>Once out browsing the Web, everything is loading pretty much instantly. It turns out most of that Page Loading malarkey we’ve been accustomed to is related to sites running auctions to sell Ad space to show you before the page loads. All gone now.

>We then found that the Samsung TV (which I really like) is very fond of yapping all about itself to Samsung HQ. All stopped now. No sign of any breakages in its function, so I’m happy enough with that.

>The primary source of distress came from the habitual Lemmings player in the house, who found they could no longer watch ads to build up their in-app gold. A workaround is being considered for this.

>The next ambition is to advance the Ad blocking so that it seamlessly removed YouTube Ads. This is the subject of ongoing research, and tinkering continues. All in all, a very successful experiment.

>Certainly this exceeds my equivalent childhood project of disassembling and assembling our rotary dial telephone. A project whose only utility was finding out how to make the phone ring when nobody was calling.

>Update: All4 on the telly appears not to have any ads any more. Goodbye Arnold Clarke!

>Lemmings problem now solved.

>Can confirm, after small tests, that RTÉ Player ads are now gone and the player on the phone is now just delivering swift, ad free streams at first click.

>Some queries along the lines of “Are you not stealing the internet?” Firstly, this is my network, so I may set it up as I please (or, you know, my son can do it and I can give him a stupid thumbs up in response). But there is a wider question, based on the ads=internet model.

>I’m afraid I passed the You Wouldn’t Download A Car point back when I first installed ad-blocking plug-ins on a browser. But consider my chatty TV. Individual consumer choice is not the method of addressing pervasive commercial surveillance.

>Should I feel morally obliged not to mute the TV when the ads come on? No, this is a standing tension- a clash of interests. But I think my interest in my family not being under intrusive or covert surveillance at home is superior to the ad company’s wish to profile them.

>Aside: 24 hours of Pi Hole stats suggests that Samsung TVs are very chatty. 14,170 chats a day.

>YouTube blocking seems difficult, as the ads usually come from the same domain as the videos. Haven’t tried it, but all of the content can also be delivered from a no-cookies version of the YouTube domain, which doesn’t have the ads. I have asked my son to poke at that idea.

[waywardmarauder]

HOW TO TUMBLR

Unlike other social media platforms, on tumblr you can decide what to see and what NOT to see on your dash. You are not bound to an algorithm that makes that decision for you. However, this unique feature is NOT DEFAULT any more, you need to set it up. It’s a bit of a hassle if you’re on an app, but you only have to do it once, and it’s 100% worth it.

[Y’ALL, I NEED YOUR HELP TO MAKE THIS POST MORE USEFUL. I’ve stayed away from apps myself, so I can only give proper instructions for the web. If you’ve seen posts with the same instructions for iOS and Android, or if you can make such a post, and especially if you got screenshots (my goal is to make this as easy as possible for newbies), please send a link my way. Thanks!]

1. Algorithm begone

Tumblr’s “algorithm” isn’t remotely like facebook’s, but it still involves decisions you didn’t make. The option “Best stuff first” was an especially bad move that upset many artists, whose posts suddenly got buried and whose activity plummeted. Here’s how to fix this.

WEB:

click on the little person icon on the top of the screen to your right

go to Settings

go to Dashboard

scroll down to Preferences, and toggle to deselect “Best Stuff First”, “Include stuff in your orbit”, “Include ‘Based on your likes!’”, and “Include followed tag posts” [I suggest to deselect the last one because tumblr chooses which posts from your followed tags to show you, and that’s a decision you didn’t make; you can always look for tags normally]

2. Begone ads and unsolicited recommendations

Install the ad blocker add-on UBlock Origin on your Firefox. If your browser is Chrome, it is STRONGLY suggested you first switch to Firefox, for privacy but also because Chrome is out to get ad blockers, so that won’t work for long.

And/or you can install the XKit Rewritten add-on, which has a number of useful features (Quick Reblog most of all), including “Anti-Capitalism” which hides advertisement containers. This is probably redundant if you have a proper ad blocker, and also slower (X-Kit loads all these elements and then hides them, the ad blocker kills them faster), but I’m not opposed to redundancies when it comes to ads and privacy.

XKit also has a “No Recommended” feature, so you can focus only on what you follow. can You replicate this via UBlock Origin’s Block Element feature, but that’s a bit advanced for the purposes of this guide, so while I do suggest it I won’t elaborate here.

3. Unlock all content

By default, tumblr has to assume (because laws and monopolies etc) that you have the maturity of a small child, and it will therefore hide some content from you without asking you. Here’s how to fix this.

WEB:

go to Settings, as before

scroll down to “Community Labels” and select “Show” for all (current labels are Mature, Drugs and alcohol addiction, Violence, and Sexual themes)

in the same section, toggle to deselect “Hide additional potentially mature content”

ANDROID:

see this post for instructions wrapped in a rant on how needlessly complicated this process is, and see here for tumblr’s Help Center article on Community Labels; on the app it looks like this

Afterword

These were instructions for how to liberate your dashboard from external meddling by letting all content (except ads) through. The cool thing is you can also choose what to NOT let through. In your Settings you can filter tags, and you can filter content. You can choose to blur or hide Community Labels (but keep in mind that’s a brand new feature, and how it goes will depend on how the user base adopts it; it’s safe to say it doesn’t work well yet). More importantly, you can choose who to follow, who not to follow, and who to block altogether.

You can and indeed should curate your dashboard, and decide for yourself what appears there. (With the understanding that no matter what you do or anyone else does, stuff will slip through, and it’s not the end of the world. You have tools to make that happen less and less. That’s feasible. Completely and preemptively isolating yourself from stuff you don’t like is NOT feasible, on any platform. So please manage your expectations.)

[waywardmarauder]

The disturbing wooden sculptures of Nagato Iwasaki that watch over the forests

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[waywardmarauder]

Isn’t gathering a social behaviour?