I love the level-0 “funnels” from Goodman Games. If I have to pick one, let’s say the classic, Sailors on the Starless Sea.

They’re easy to pitch, and really help establish a tone, especially for players who bring a lot of preconceptions from 5e.

Hey, remember how right-wingers all laughed at What is a Woman? Reveling in their willful ignorance by laughing at anyone who dared to have a nuanced answer? Now they had a chance to define it for themselves, and immediately sat on their own (legally feminine) balls.

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

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

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

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

I should go back and actually beat the game.

I’m not sure if they deleted it or I just can’t find it, but there was a post on the LW destination that said the mods talked about the near-universal, overwhelmingly negative response, and were split 2-2 on what to do: either cancel the plans, or keep going anyway. They only made this post after considering the aforementioned near-universal, overwhelmingly response a tiebreaker.

I think that really encapsulates the problem.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s bending the rules, since it’s a camping meal, but I have made it at home, too, since it makes a great depression meal. I got it from backpackers, who I’m pretty sure got it from prison inmates:

The Ramen Bomb.

Cook a crushed up packet of instant ramen noodles, maybe with a little more water than usual. Add like half a packet of instant mashed potatoes. You can also add a protein, like… chopped up Spam. Maybe some hot sauce or other fixings if you’re feeling fancy.

I hated how much I enjoyed it. Granted, that was when I was really tired and hungry, but that hit the spot.

Also, I’ve heard meals like the ones in this thread affectionately referred to as “glop,” by a fellow glop-enjoyer.

Minus the egg, that’s also a popular backpacking meal.

Personally, I also like genericizing D&D.

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

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

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

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

Oh, another one: anti-vaccination was pushed by health insurance companies to dampen public perception of government-run healthcare.

Vaccine development and implementation fucking worked. If people were happy with the results, they might end up swayed towards publicly-funded healthcare. So… put a lid on that by whipping up a bunch of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Some folks will no longer see the vaccination programs as successful efforts to protect public health, but as a conspiracy to… do something. And instead of pointing to it as an example of a public healthcare program, you’ve first got to spend time defending evidence-based medicine, which takes up so much fucking time and energy, and ultimately won’t convince people who bored too deeply into that alternate-reality tunnel.

It turned a public health initiative into a fucking tar pit, and now the once-free vaccinations cost over a hundred bucks if you don’t have insurance.

Paper straws were pushed by big corporate polluters to build a negative association with environmentalism.

Plastic straws are single-use plastics, but seem unexceptional by those standards. It’s almost a meme that they’re being singled out like they’re the single greatest source of plastic waste, or uniquely damaging to ocean life.

On top of that, there are way better ways of reducing straw usage. I’ve used bioplastics that seemed way better. You could redesign the lids. You can do the plastic bag thing and charge people a nickel for a straw or whatever. Hell, you could just not give straws with every drink, and plenty of people will just drink from their cups and glasses. Instead, we get paper straws, something that is so obviously a bad idea it sounds like a joke, or a metaphor for a useless invention. Often served with cups and lids made entirely out of plastic.

So you get a bunch of people who have their drinks kind of ruined by a frustrating straw. It’s a small thing, but it’s just a little nudge away from environmentalism. You build an association with disappointment and inconvenience. Maybe it doesn’t cause a big sway, but it makes people maybe a little more anti-environmentalist than they already were, or just less passionate about environmentalism.

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

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

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

Also, this paragraph stuck out to me:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy to help! It’s worked great for me, and a buddy of mine also liked it, so I’m fairly sure it’s not a fluke. :P

Also, my ratios were by weight. That’s only relevant because that’s what makes me push up against the maximum solubility. If you go volumetric, you have more wiggle room. The second point will be less relevant, but it’s still faster and easier than heating it in a pot, IMO.

Oh, and as a bonus: you don’t need to wait for the syrup to cool down.