🍁 Levi Kornelsen

Running a charm offensive on Trump is intelligent, do-able, and pragmatic, but like, sweet fuck it's got to feel greasy to succeed.

I suspect it's likely to stick even *better* than it ever did to techno musicians, because it's more visibly true.

There are for sure people deploying these things as just one new tool in their drawer, with skill (whatever opinion of their ethic applies), but the amateur slop rush IS lazy.

Makes me think of Uwe Boll. You get all the shots you want, if you're doing comedy. But, like, genuine anger about how bad he is and disparaging of people having fun watching his stuff... Wouldn't make *him* look bad.

Like, I'm used to the *moments* of "My god, so many our arguments are about absurdly small shit" that anyone buried in discourse has, but rolling around in the grass a bit sure drives that fucking point home.

One thing a little distance clarifies:

Being angry about a TTRPG you don't play because it's badly made looks IDENTICAL to being mad at a video game you don't play for the same reason - unless you're extremely close to the issue, or the rant is VERY funny, it just looks weird verging on creeper-y.

I'm getting a LOT of Minecraft time with the kiddo of late, but basically no TTRPG play for the last two (almost three!) months, so if it seems like I'm fading on saying stuff about that, well, yeah.

Starting to feel the drift of "I'm not 100% this is a real play thing, or a filtered memory thing".

"If a corporation explicitly says 'We don't use this to train AI!', then they do." is not a clear statement of fact, but damn if it's not getting to feel that way. There's just no cause for trust on this front.

They say.

It very much appears that "we don't train AI on this!" has, at this point, surpassed greenwashing as a topic of corporate lying.

This *should* go without saying, but still.

I'm unsure if it's genuinely trivial or Y2K: No big deal because we were ready.

Every so often the universe reminds us that hey, a whole lot of stuff we rely on and treat as certain is actually quite fragile, and the critical question is always "Does that XKCD comic apply to this one?"

Huh... ".games" is usually a more expensive tld, but now I see there is a ".quest" at similar pricing to ".com"

Some of you might find that useful info

"Ah, wizard school. A fabulous place to learn, with spell refraction all around you to consider and study. But there's a reason *tricky* spellwork is done in isolation.... It's damned distracting!"

Spell level, cubed, in (10 foot increments? Maybe a bit more, and give it a fancy name).

L1: 1 increment
L2: 8 increments
L3: 27 increments
...
L9: 729 increments

Then, make the "hum" of extreme magical places a *problem* or a *feature,* do it drives casters to congregate, isolate, or vary.

I always drop in a little oil, to the point I forgot to say...

Yeah, I should have gone for a smaller can of V8, and more broth, though mostly to bring up the Umami take the tomato dominance down to "just right".

It wasn't *too* salty, but for sure didn't need any more.

Properly, this:

- Brown rice
- 1 Small Can V8, then Chicken Bouillon + Water (or just broth) to cook amount.
- Can of peas, drained
- Cumin, Minced Dried Onion, Minced Dried Garlic, and Flaked peppers to taste.
- A teaspoon or two of vegetable oil.

Probably to serve with chicken.

So that works fine, but would have been improved with one of those little cans of V8, more chicken bouillon, maybe some flaked peppers.

Me: I would like some of that good Spanish-Mexican rice.

Also Me: *Dumps brown rice, a can of V8, water, bouillon, cumin, onion and garlic powders, and a can of peas in the rice cooker.*

Still Me: Let's see how that works.

Seeing people going "This just looks like cosplay" and, like.

First, I'm not sure exactly what they could be doing to wow people? Making the costumes elaborate just to prove a point? Providing final shots on day one of filming?

And second, yes, because cosplayers are fucking amazing these days.

I'm not sure if they can capture the whole "Link is an impossible one-man army who only LOOKS like the twinkiest lad you've ever met" thing, but they're doing well on the looks-like, anyway.

The internet, collectively ticking a box marked "I mean, I guess I won't be deeply annoyed by how the actors look?", and then opening debate on all other matters.

Turns out "Marrying Benny Blanco" is tickets by Ticketmaster. Shit.

Is there, like, a waiting list?

I think a lot about “default” expectations in our time — how often they are of very recent construction. (We have dates for when umpires were introduced to kriegsspiel)

If I do my job right, my students don’t assume roleplaying games have a “master” — any more than that games have a win condition.

For my compendium of TTRPG bits, I had to dig pretty hard to find okay names for all the different "forms of guidance", but managed a nice meaty list. The number of times people have been, like, but why bother? Is... Okay, it's probably about nine. But that's way more than any other section.

Tak! Bloody autocorrupt.

I am almost certain Take would make my list if I could get more games of it....

Wait, with Catan, that IS ten. Huh.

Top 9:

Abalone
Santorini
Onitama
Congo (Chess Variant)
King's Valley
Amazons
Love Letter
Boss Monster
Roborally
And probably Catan?

After that, it's a lot of pyramid / icehouse stuff and other weirdass chess variants, then Descent, Warhammer Quest, and then a lot of popular stuff.

It's now *two* game - Legends and Kingdoms - both still in active development.