Vermin
@LegendaryVermin
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Game Designer @bungie , TTRPG streamer, She/It, white I talk TTRPG here, so follow or skip accordingly Washington's Worst
Seattle Enough
Joined January 2014
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Pinned Tweet
Fuck it. Try the game, tell me what you think.
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i saw the meme template released and I'm sorry but this is gonna be the same category as "One Fear" where the original is so much funnier than any subsequent version
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Your game master/dungeon master is tired. Run a game for them. They will appreciate it so much.
It doesn't have to be good.
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I'm in this one! 😱
The Final Shape is near.
Our second and final part of the Becoming Legend ViDoc series is now live - giving you a behind-the-scenes look at the new weapons, supers, subclass, and more arriving in The Final Shape.
🎥
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When an orange tabby has the most punk backstory you ever heard.
@Kinsella_Finn
@PossumEveryHour
Yeah I was a cold outside cat and someone started feeding me after Jean saw me through the window and called their attention to me. We used to talk through the window and I always wanted love and pets. They took me to the vet and then let me come inside, and here we are
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Big news!
I started as a Designer at Bungie today. Yeah, that Bungie.😳
I wouldn't have gotten here without the support I've gotten from folks in the TTRPG scene, near and far, so thanks to everyone out here who taught and learned with me, especially over this past year.
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Love how they keep the zeroes for 8,000,000 but not 10,000,000,000,000.
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I firmly believe that one of the signs of a healthy TTRPG group is that the players are willing to load guns pointed at their character, and their facilitator is willing to find creative times and places to pull the triggers for everyone.
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@tomaytohat
This is some "if you haven't heard of me that's on you" energy and it's life giving.
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*Big sigh*
The reason that people are mad about this and not about the shows comes down to the fact that the games say things via their mechanics.
How many words, total, do you think 5e has devoted to aspects of the game that let you kill things?
you know what is really baffling me, the crowd who are harping on about 'a book of gay D&D villains is just promoting gaybashing because its violent' seem to have forgotten that some of the most benign queer media out there is also based in flashy gay combat with weapons
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So, to contrast, Friends at the Table has been naming the games that they've played and the designers who made them since season 1.
Several designers have gone from "some kid" to household name because of that spotlight.
Friends at the Table has 1/13th of the audience of TAZ.
The Adventure Zone's next season starts in a week.
They're using The Quiet Year as a world-generation tool... for a game of D&D.
They called it "Quiet Year" and, you guessed it, did not credit the author or say where it can be found.
NEAT.
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Lebanon and its people are hurting real bad right now, and some folks in the TTRPG scene put together yet another stunner of a bundle to raise money to support. Support it for the games, sure, but also because things are ROUGH right now.
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@robbysoave
@NickClairmont1
Every trans person I know who isn't making software is living paycheck to paycheck.
This ain't it Bob.
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I fuckin hate having to do it but Here We Go Again!
I hear Lukalock and Andrew Harrison have been making attempts to work their way back into the TTRPG space! Maybe even got on the cover of a magazine!
If you want your friends and community to stay safe, be ultra cautious!
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@Burning_Luke
Trying to sneak Adam Koebel in the author list, huh?
Why?
I thought the community at large made it clear how we felt about him.
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I keep turning this tweet, a response to another tweet about D&D's prevalence over in my head.
And I think I've finally landed on what _precisely_ is bothering me about the way it frames the situation.
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So I was recently introduced to the idea that some works of art (theatre was the specific example) exist in two forms: static, a fixed version of the work, and dynamic, a work that is put on in a specific time and place and is, in one sense or another, live.
It got me thinking.
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"Rules elide" sucks for a multitude of reasons (not least of which is the name, which completely fucks comprehension for most people), but it's definition conflates two different things: scoping and abstraction.
One thing always happens, the other does not.
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Your game is fine! Probably great, once your table is safe and everyone's needs are met!
I just want to stop hearing that you can't learn freeze tag because American football is what you're comfortable with.
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The indie community keeps beating the drum at D&D about this because like... Damn, that's what we're up against!
People can't even conceive of a game you can run within 10 minutes of buying it!!!
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And that's not even getting started about folks who think we're somehow uppity or insular or gatekeepy for saying "hey, actually there are tons of ways to play!", all of whom somehow keep hearing "your game is wrong!"
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Let's talk about No Amount of Armor, my game of Razor's Edge Mecha Roleplay!
I have a little mecha game that may be ready for a playtest soon, anyone wanna hear about it?
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Stuff like this is a symptom of 2 things:
1) A system that puts all world building/pace management on one player
2) A system that doesn't give players tools to build out new things meaningfully on the fly.
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But like, I could sit down right now with just about anyone and teach and then run a game of Mork Borg or Ribbon Drive or Locomotive or [Bxllet> without having to bat an eye, because all of those games clock in at way more manageable page counts. And they're all great!!!
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Here's a thought: a TTRPG with a randomization method so protracted, complicated and math heavy that people find any excuse they can to avoid using it after the first dozen or so times.
Like it takes almost 3 minutes to accomplish a single roll.
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Just wrote something in the No Amount of Armor GM tips section that I think should be included in most GM'd games: Say "I don't know"
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@elle_hunt
@utherlives
Not to pull out my Gender here, but body horror doesn't require an "other". Having your own body betray you is a very common theme in trans-adjacent horror narrative.
I mean hell, the Jekyll/Hyde dynamic is an exploration of distrusting your own body and mind, it's from 1886.
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Getting ready for my home RP group's annual spooky session with a conversion of
@diogo_oldskull
's Halls of the Blood King into
@MorkBorg
!!
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And like... Sure some of what people call the indie scene make those, but it's by no means the norm.
And tbh I don't blame this person for having the perception that that's what games are! That's what WotC and a lot of other companies have pushed as "reputable" games for ages.
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Thinking about how there are essentially two dominant playbook/class philosophies among TTRPG designers right now and knowing which one a designer is using in any particular game tells you a ton about the focus of the game mechanically
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Because here's the thing: this seems like the kind of thing that poses a problem when you have a very specific kind of TRPG book on your shelf.
It's probably ~8.5" by 11". It's probably around 300 pages with succulent art. It probably cost around $60 usd.
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Excited for Luke Crane to spin this to make himself the victim, never take any real responsibility, and eventually start writing for LotFP.
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There are no _mechanics_ in d&d for convincing an npc to see the error of their ways sans brainwashing.
No mechanics that let you be influenced by them in turn.
No built in way to have them grow and change.
Those shows? They see those villains change a lot.
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So I saw a post earlier today about what TTRPGs are available at Game Stores.
I had the day off, so I decided to do an informal survey of a few places near me that sell ttrpg's.
I started with my favorite indie bookstore!
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Sure, queer stories need queer villains. But when the most mechanically nuanced way to interact with them is a fight, and you bill your book as a list of high powered queer villains, it's hard not to see it as putting those characters in front of a gleeful firing squad.
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Writing GM advice sections that read like ADHD propaganda:
- Work Less
- Fuck it, Steal Something From Another Book
- The Players are right there, you don't have to do it all
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You ever asked this question? You a new game designer? You wanna make money but also have your work be available to hack?
Let's talk licenses! First off, ofc, I'm not a gad damned lawyer. I've looked into this before, but if I say something WRONG please let me know!
So, I made a game. Should I use CC licenses in order to allow others to make Homebrew content based on it, or should I actually get a copyright on it?
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Game design, particularly the art of teaching a player mechanics without a pamphlet (which I strongly urge us to consider bringing back) is a weird fucking house of cards.
Like, sure, to the experienced game liker this takes some of the fun out of navigation- 1/?
I wish games would STOP PAINTING LEDGES YELLOW
This level of hand-holding just drives me mad.
And apparently, somehow this bothers people less than color grading, because googling "dying light 2 disable yellow paint" only gives me results for "no yellow tint" reshades
argh
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We have a personal responsibility as creators, I think, to carefully consider what our content says. And even if we hack a game beyond recognition at our own table, we have to remember that people will still play it as written.
And as written, villains are there to be killed.
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Saw a mutual and game designer talking about how discouraging it is to be creating TTRPGs as an indie out here, and I want to say to folks generally: it's super hard to work on creative projects that have such opaque channels for success.
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And look dude, I like violence in my games. I'm gearing up to run Mork Borg for my friends, and it's gonna be gruesome as hell.
But I'm aware of the text of the game, and the reality that on some level, if I put a queer monster in the PCs path, I'm giving them the ok to kill it.
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That's a serious question Oliver.
Think about the number of words involved in the text.
Now how many words are devoted to swaying an npc, with words?
That disparity means something.
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Weird how he puts indies as ego first here when this tweet is just him publicly beating off.
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For those who don't know, Lukalock and Harrison took over a long running Actual Play community about a year ago, and in the course of a few months their toxicity and poor management skills ran the community into the ground.
They, and I do not say this lightly, were abusive.
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I disagree emphatically.
The Adventure Zone makes money off of the work of these designers. If they don't redirect traffic back to the designer, which again, could be life changing money, that's poor behavior.
@cfunk1
@mspurgeon20
@LegendaryVermin
For real. I get that they absolutely could have done a better job with this whole thing...but people are getting overly weird about this. It’s not their job to do full scale PR and advertisement for the systems they use.
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Side note, while we are here: eat shit for "downshifting from tech"
Tech is not somehow harder, nor does it require a smarter person than any other fucking job.
You mould your brain to the problems you're solving, it's 100% an interest thing not a capability thing.
Daniel D. Fox has me blocked so I don't give a shit exposing his hypocrisy...
Here he is joining the Gripnr discord server. Yes, the NFT D&D thing
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or otherwise, are _not missed sales_. There are a hundred reasons that someone might choose to get something without buying it, but let's talk real quick about the two most relevant:
1) They don't have the money
2) They are consuming media for research
2/
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Look man, I'm gonna put incentives in my game. Not because I'm trying to impose a strict structure of right vs wrong, but because incentive is an interesting lever to pull when it comes to creating narrative.
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Love that this thread opens with "a rising tide lifts all boats" and almost instantly pivots to "without a game that is so ubiquitous it's practically synonymous with the hobby even in hardcore circles, everyone will suffer horribly".
The Golden Age of TTRPGs is Dead
We are watching a bright and special time in the TTRPG industry pass away before our eyes.
Around the start of the 2010s, we saw the dawn of a new golden age of tabletop roleplaying games.
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Lara is right! If TAZ played and named small designers whose games they liked, that designer would almost assuredly get attention that would translate to life changing money.
They would also have a great fuckin time because the indie scene has thousands of excellent games!
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Hey, I have a potentially huge opportunity coming my way, and I could use a spirit bomb from folks to give me the courage and energy to go for it. If you've got a second could you pump me up?
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Whenever someone posts a thing about ttrpg rules being mind control I'm just going to ask them about how their philosophy applies to soccer until they cry or block me.
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Actually, fuck it, I have more to say!
If you are profiting off of something that someone else made, ESPECIALLY if they have a smaller audience than you, the LEAST you can do is properly link to them and shout them out.
The Quiet Year PDF costs $10!
I disagree emphatically.
The Adventure Zone makes money off of the work of these designers. If they don't redirect traffic back to the designer, which again, could be life changing money, that's poor behavior.
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So I beg! Think about what your work means in the context of the games and frameworks you work within!
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@HazelMonforton
Guide to eliksni text emotes:
Kind of surprised: oo-oo
Very surprised: oO-Oo
Extremely surprised: OOoOO
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Kinda resent the implications that itch designers:
1) Aren't Professionals
2) Aren't As Skilled
3) Don't Invest Much in their Games
Just cause we aren't all making 200 page bound books doesn't mean the quality of the product is lower.
@MikeRiverso
@ZweihanderRPG
There must always be a punk creative space where the rules don’t apply. Where art is just art. But it is a different space than professional spaces due to the investment and skill honing. Art house is rad. It isn’t tenable.
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System begins at conception.
i am going to start another eternal discourse to supplant system matters: where and when does system begin? how many words, how many concepts, before you consider it system
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for every like I get on this post I'll tell you something about my upcoming mecha game.
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If Dan Fox has data showing that sales of zweihander improved suddenly after the the Trove went down.
Surely, if it were as simple as "no public access equals better sales" the rpg industry would have seen a measurable bump once people realized it wasn't coming back.
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When I say "I want to play a mecha game" this is what I mean.
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NGL this smacks of D Fox's "indie is ego first" take.
"Design Rigor" is a pretty arbitrary set of goalposts that can point any which way, and the framing here definitely says to other designers "I don't think your work is valuable or valid".
continually flabbergasted at the lack of design rigor in ttrpg spaces lol
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No irony: please use your mouth organs or your finger bones to say trans people deserve human rights.
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Hey! I've made some posts about this in closed communities but like,
If you keep following these folks after things like this come out I don't really have words. The world doesn't get better when we preemptively forgive or worse, ignore, this kind of behavior.
It was never my intention to release this experience because I did not want to make my footprint in this industry this way. But in light of two dangerous people threatening and slandering some of my closest friends . It’s time I share my experience… a thread …
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In the first case, you weren't going to get a sale anyway. Tons of books get checked out from libraries (and yes, "stolen" online) for this reason, but saying that by getting rid of public repositories of media you somehow improve sales won't hold water.
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There is so much bad in the world but guys, STOP THROWING YOU WEIGHT BEHIND FOLKS WHO WILL MAKE THE WORLD WORSE.
Publishing companies won't pay you more because they don't "lose sales to libraries".
They'll find a way to make you pay rent to them too.
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@percyjourno
@DiceQueenDi
Defining leaked legal documents as "intellectual property" is astounding.
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STREISAND EFFECT, STREISAND EFFECT!
since Joanne filed a report against my shop and made it so that I cannot access my income for the next 45 days, I designed a sticker in her honor.
50¢ from each one sold will directly benefit trans women of color in need. I hope she likes it!✨
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The other side is something that I do all the time: reading for research.
I'm by no means a supergenius game designer, but I *do* have what I would consider to be a healthy understanding of the modern trpg design landscape.
And that's cause I've read at least 100+ games.
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They spied on people who they thought were threats, gaslit folks, verbally abused others, and never made amens for their behavior. It was A LOT of harm.
I know more, but there are a lot of stories that aren't mine to tell. You don't need to listen to just me tho.
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Tracking money is one of my least favorite things in RPGs.
Please, stop making me track money unless it's extremely systemized like in The Sprawl.
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Hey new followers, do not be surprised when you find out this account is mostly for personal and trpg stuff.
Depending on how long number goes up for this most recent bungie post, I may lock and start soft blocking, just know it's not personal, I just don't want celebrity.
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Me, yesterday: Thirst traps, definitely can't put these on my introduction slides for work.
Me, today: DO THESE INSPIRE ENOUGH THIRST!??!?!
#ThirstTrapRPG
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could it be the kind of person who chooses to enact the kind of violence that lets them accumulate millions of dollars, might have to hold some beliefs that are antithetical to seeing other people as human?
No. Women Must Be Unpleaseable.
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Hey, long story short, Friday Afternoon tea is a wonderful space in Seattle that I love dearly, and right now their sales are being held hostage by their old bank.
If you like tea, their blends are second to none, and they can be helped to recover just by buying tea.
Dear
#ThirstyNerds
, our tea shop is in trouble due to ongoing banking complications and we need your help to recover!
Our successful business model is framed around a desire to support and uplift our communitea, and we want to continue to serve you!
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Wow, looking at the new 5e patch and they somehow made everything worse and more racist???
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I should say, the two philosophies being action/job/what do you do focused vs story/deal/what is your arc focused.
Most of the OSR is the former, and a lot of recent games the came out of BoB and PbtA (see Monster hearts and Masks) are the latter.
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I hate .webp
I hate .webp
I hate .webp
I hate .webp
I hate .webp
I hate .webp
I hate .webp
I hate .webp
I hate .webp
I hate .webp
I hate .webp
I hate .webp
I hate .webp
I hate .webp
I hate .webp
I hate .webp
I hate .webp
I hate .webp
I hate .webp
I hate .webp
I hate .webp
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They may have blanket blocked everyone from the community that they co-obliterated, but a lot of people had Shit To Say in March.
When people traumatize other people in a community they run, I do not want those people in my community or working on my products.
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@spaceybones
@whitneyarner
@kateleth
The author glances furtively around the public library, sweats one golden pitstain, and hurls the computer to the ground.
"Oh no, it's broken," he says in relief.
"Don't worry, all your work is backed up to a publicly accessible drive."
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@eloquentsquid
I literally started stacking the bug and fish containers outside the future museum because my inventory is full and my house is tiny.
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As of right now, Alley-Oop! is officially available on itch and Drive Thru RPG!!!
Play Basketball! Go Pro! Kiss Your Rival! Star In An Outrageous Commercial!
All this and more, in Alley-Oop! A Game of Hoops and Heartthrobs!
LINKS BELOW!!!!
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Misheard today during The Sprawl:
"The Met Gala" became "The Mech Gala"
And I'm just saying: I want to see a TTRPG about that gala.
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Ah, here seems to be a man who can't conceive of a game being a success without the word financial coming first.
MtG in the profile as if to remind us "yes, I _will_ burn thru almost 30 years of customer good will to pad my earnings".
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This is like, wildly exciting for me, and I know I'm gonna learn a whole heckuva lot through this job, but the thing sticking with me is that I owe a lot of people for getting to this place, and I'm looking to paying it forward to y'all any way I can.
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but for someone like my wife (borat voice), who hasn't played and learned new games mechanics for 3 decades, anything subtler would drive her up the wall.
I heard an interesting thing yesterday: privilege is obliviousness. Someone's who's good at games (or has played one or more
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Wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the data that backs that narrative, tbqh.
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Ask your players before dangerous situations: "which of y'all are okay dying for this cause/fight?"
That kind of question, asked regularly, keeps you from feeling like you took something away from the players, and makes it feel safer to risk those nasty high rolls.
New DM question:
How the hell do you get over the fear of killing your players? I keep pulling hard punches and I NEED TO STOP.
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Oh man, let's play a fuckin game, shall we?
One of the biggest, most regular complaints about the way Lukalock and Andrew Harrison ran TPK was that 1) it was always D&D and 2) they didn't make an effort to include people of color in their games.
Did they listen and learn?
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