Cassandra Nine-Toes

People are unsalvageable.

Finally done with work for the day. Things picked up and I stayed a bit later once my coworker and I were able to actually get some honest-to-goodness WORK done, moving stuff around and editing things in our system. Felt good.

Everything else today was shit tho.

I am so tired of Pokemon. I am so tired of people.

Every single interaction I've had at work today has tried my fucking patience and it's been busy.

I still read the “What Is An RPG?” section of every RPG book I read, partly out of respect for the effort the author(s) put into it and partly because hey, I may still learn something.

"Watch out for the bear, Graham!" in Zohran Mamdani's campaign text template

[sigh]

“Your demands are ridiculous! Begone, adventurers! Majordomo, find me adventurers who won’t attempt to bankrupt me!”

Also where I learned the word “majordomo”.

YouTube video by Robert Green Track 1 - First Quest Audio CD - Introduction To AD&D

This box set was an immeasurably formative experience for a young Cassandra, and I listened to it the same way you’d listen to a music album. I can still quote large chunks of it.

I am reading through my copy of Adventures in Faerûn and there is an adventure called THE TOMB OF DAMARA in which you battle the undead corpse of BONEGNASHER THE OGRE and my sleeper agent phrase was activated so I am listening to the audio of 1995’s Introduction to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2E.

i loved the potential depth and complex angst of AIs demanding personhood. but living in a reality where companies want to get away with "creating AIs" for every conceivable reason related to labor, i can't enjoy the concept cuz it feels like propaganda

im not gonna lie, techbros have ruined the scifi concept of AIs for me

Rude Rude or impolite, including crude language and disrespectful comments, without constructive purpose. Highlighted Off, darkened Warn, and darkened Hide buttons.

If you aren't seeing skeets from some of your fave people, they might have been labeled "Rude" by bsky mods. Idk what they are thinking, I don't need a mommy to tell me who to be buddies with. Anyway, go into Settings > moderation > bluesky moderation (advanced) and turn Rude off.

I see the comments have forced you into avant-garde performance art now. Amazing!

But… but I live here!

A Land once magic title logo

A feast for a sphinx cover

Echo from the dark icon exploration

Hello gamers I'm opening *emergency* graphic design commissions, to help me keep my healthcare due this friday. Flexible pricing, I'll do:
-Title typography
-Iconography
-flyers
Looking forl ow effort/stress (ie not suited for short turnarounds and big expectations), great for mockups and prototypes

The others are willing to—let’s be frank—cheat through passivity.

So don’t be passive. Keep records.

I know we’re not supposed to have an adversarial relationship with the players, but here are the brakes:

Unless you are blessed with a godsend of a group, you will have at best one player who actually bothers to track their resources between sessions. Maybe even DURING sessions.

Without a rest, the only way you are getting your spell slots back is FROM MY CORPSE.

I am not letting PCs have a 5-minute adventuring day between sessions due to their poor bookkeeping.

Too many groups that finish a session mid-dungeon/dangerous area come back and the PCs are like, “Oops, we can’t remember what we used! DM can we just have it all back?”

And the DM usually agrees, which is wild to me. Absolutely bonkers.

I think as a DM at the end of each session you should note each PC’s hit points, hit dice, if they have Heroic Inspiration, and any spell slots or other resources they’ve burned.

(Feast for a Sphinx is for Mörk Borg as written, which is much more daring a game.)

Reading Feast for a Sphinx and one of the random encounters is an old huntress who offers “some advice: ‘Turn back.’”

I like it, but if you put this in front of a modern D&D party they’d be like “We need to listen to the old woman.” Despite their characters being nigh-invincible demigods.

I had nearly forgotten good things can happen

Ten copies of Feast for a Sphinx, fanned out on a wooden table. The cover is black with an armless sphinx in a golden ring.

Aww yeah look what came to the shop today @evlynmoreau.bsky.social

The piss tank on the ISS is now 69% full.

I think i accidentally gave the tattoo artist a furry awakening 💀💀

PC risk aversion has grown continually worse in my years of gaming.

“Have we leveled up?”

No, you do not level up at the Keep. You can go adventure if you want.

“Well we just need to finish visiting all the locations first.”

I maintain my thesis that most D&D players are severely allergic to having an actual adventure.

The one major issue I’ve run into with Heroes on the Borderlands is that I’ve yet to experience a group of PCs that do not just stripmine the Keep of Encounters.

They must visit every location and do every quest before setting out to adventure at all. This is persistent behavior across three groups