Dr. Steven Bruso

I can think of thousands of reasons why I wouldn't want some random AI chat bot to have access to my entire college career and all of my job prospects. I can think of literally no good reason to do this ever.

OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, has a plan to overhaul college education — by embedding its artificial intelligence tools in every facet of campus life. If the company’s strategy succeeds, universities would give students A.I. assistants to help guide and tutor them from orientation day through graduation. Professors would provide customized A.I. study bots for each class. Career services would offer recruiter chatbots for students to practice job interviews. And undergrads could turn on a chatbot’s voice mode to be quizzed aloud ahead of a test. OpenAI dubs its sales pitch “A.I.-native universities.”

Every future imagined by a tech company is worse than the previous iteration.

Folks in the gaming space: does anyone know how to get in contact with Justen Brown, the copyright holder for the 2e retroclone, For Gold & Glory?

Nice! I'll look forward to reading it when it comes out!

Is this related to your Rites of Transmutation game?

For folks who have wholly moved to blue books for student essays, how has it worked for you? I presume it would be held in-class.

That sucks. I was *really* hoping that it was one of those scenarios where the car still operates in the meantime. I've had good luck with certified pre-owned vehicles, and I second the vote for either Honda or Toyota.

Ugh, I'm sorry to hear that. What was the diagnosis? Can you still use it, until you can get something better in the meantime?

At least it was polite! 🤣

Wow! That's awesome! I'd love to talk with you about this stuff. If there are days and times that work best, let me know, and we can set up a Zoom call.

I've *always* loved it when players come up with super interesting solutions for any given scenario. If you offer open-ended problems, you encourage player agency and emergent gameplay.

I'm not a fan of either the GM = adversary or the GM = player's number one fan. I prefer to think of GMs as the person who puts obstacles in the way of the players without specific solutions. TTRPGs are, at least in part, exercises in dramatic, creative problem solving.

Last week I attended Pax East to learn more about game design, and couldn't believe how open and affirming that space is. Some academic conferences could learn a thing or two.

Long time, no post. So, what have I been up to? Researching TTRPGs, drafting my own game, and learning about book layout and design with InDesign.

Authorities say a babysitter checked under the bed for monsters — and found someone Kansas authorities say a babysitter went to refute a kid's claims of a monster under their bed, but "came face-to-face with a male suspect who was hiding there." They later arrested a 27-year-old man.

Oof, talk about bringing a horror film to life.

Kansas babysitter finds man hiding under kid's bed www.npr.org/2025/03/28/n...

This is amazing 🤣

I love this so much

I'm glad to see someone else does this!

This is all to say: I think that for independent TTRPG companies, the landscape has shifted to quickstart rules in place of starter boxed sets, which makes sense, considering how labor-intensive it is to write, design, and market your game in the first place.

I've seen lots of independent TTRPG producers creating quickstart rules to show people what the game is like before they commit to purchasing it, but I haven't seen many producing box sets of a game they have just produced. If memory serves, Arcane Library hasn't made one for Shadowdark. 1/2

Ich get unhorsed
But Ich mount up agayne
Ich am nevir goinge to lose thys joust

How are you handling Stat generation? Do you still roll per usual, but just record the modifier in the stat block?

Video Game History Foundation launches digital library for 'anyone who wants to study games' The VGHF Library is only in Early Access, but it comes with a lot of material for researchers and developers to pore through.

Game Studies folks take note: www.gamedeveloper.com/production/v...

This is what the government did with 120K+ Japanese Americans in 1942.

I know. I was there in those camps.

For folks who have taught Bram Stoker's Dracula to undergraduates, how did it go? I'm mostly concerned about length. Our composition classes at my uni have themes, and I was thinking of having mine focus on monsters, using Cohen's "Monster Theory" as a theoretical text.

The trouble with 'donating our dopamine' to our phones, not our friends "Smartphones make our alone time feel more crowded than it used to be," says journalist Derek Thompson. His article in The Atlantic is called "The Anti-Social Century."

America's loneliness problem has a cure: Leave your house, put down your phone www.npr.org/2025/01/29/n...

Indie Bookstores Will Soon Be Able to Sell E-Books (Gift Article) Bookshop, a site that lets independent, bricks-and-mortar bookshops sell their books online, is launching an app that will allow the sales of e-books, too.

VERY good news from @bookshop-org.bsky.social!!

Manuscript is Most Extensive Example of Maguey Paper in Existence A collection of sermons by sixteenth-century Franciscan missionary Bernardino de Sahagún is rare example from the Nahuas.

Really interesting discovery at the Newberry Library, where one of their Nahuatl-language manuscripts turns out to have been made using by far the largest known example of a pre-Columbian Mesoamerica paper technology known as maguey paper: www.newberry.org/news/analysi... #paperhistory

Emerging Scholars in Premodern Critical Race Studies A virtual symposium highlighting the research of emerging scholars working on race and race-making before 1800.

This is the good stuff. www.newberry.org/calendar/eme...