Ana Diosdado

We need to do what we can to protect the Internet Archive. Here is a petition that you can sign.

We’re mad about the new OGL, and the likelihood that it’s not going to be revised. (And maybe even if it is, we’re mad enough to move on to something new). You wanna play a tabletop game but not that one anymore. Here’s my recs!

The Wildsea RPG

Mechanically: the game uses d6s for skill rolls, and tracks for determining injuries, travel, etc. Your character build consists of an origin, bloodline, and post.

Flavorfully: You wanna sail a sea of endless trees? You want a dash of Lovecraftian horror? You want pirate vibes without the water? Try this one on for size.

Good Society

Play if: you like the social aspects of DnD, you’re a fan of Jane Austen, you loved D20′s A Court of Fae & Flowers, you like romance in your games

Monster of the Week

Mechanically: the game is driven by ‘moves’, which are like actions in combat, except they’re not usually limited to combat, and also the game is way more open-ended and rule of cool.

Flavorfully: urban fantasy monster hunters, buffy the vampire slayer or x-files or supernatural is your jam.

Coyote & Crow

Play if: you want to see a gorgeous Indigenous-designed game that focuses on a decolonized alternate history and ends up in a solarpunk future; or, you’re just bored of Shadowrun

Blades in the Dark

Mechanically: this game technically started out as Powered by the Apocalypse (aka similar to Apocalypse World) but is so distinct that it spawned a whole new genre: Forged in the Dark. Truly, you should read this even if you don’t play it because there are a ton of cool mechanics in here. My favorites are definitely Progress Clocks.

Flavorfully: you’re not a good guy. not really. you work in the shadows. you know there’s dirty work. but you’re trying, dammit. you’re really trying.

Alternatively, Spire is a similar game with somewhat lighter mechanics.

Orbital Blues

Play if: you love Cowboy Bebop, the wild west, truckers, that sort of thing. A really solid sci fi game!!

“Okay that’s cool and all, LT, but you’re not really selling me the DnD fantasy vibes.”

Hm, a tough customer. Here’s a shortlist of some fantasy alternatives I like:

Inspirisles (learn sign language while you play)

Mausritter (OSR style for the Redwall fans)

For the Dungeon! (play minions protecting their dungeon)

Icon (still in beta, by the creator of Lancer - very rules hefty)

Troika! (technically science fantasy because you’re jumping dimensions, but tomayto, tomahto)

Hungry Gnolls Eat the Rich (for no reason in particular)

Ontario has municipal elections THIS MONDAY OCTOBER 24th! And you need to show up and vote!

Just like all our regular provincial and federal elections, it is okay if you aren't sure if you are on the voters rolls or if you info got updated after you moved or whatever - YOU CAN DEFINITELY VOTE AS LONG AS YOU ARE A CANADIAN LIVING IN THAT SPOT. You just bring proof of your address to the polling place and you'll be fine, I promise. I've done it. It takes like 2 minutes to sign the paper declaring you do indeed live there.

Now you may be asking "but do these elections really matter?" And the answer is YES THEY MATTER SO MUCH. There are racists and xenophobes and transphones and sexist and antisemitic and antivax people running all over the place and the one thing we know by now is that bigots get organized to get to the polls so we have to also organize to counter them by voting!

There are probably 3 things you need to look up who to vote for in your area: mayor, councillor, and school board trustee. All three matter! Please don't only focus on mayor, if the terfs get onto the school boards, they'll do serious damage.

So what can you do?

- First, search "[your town] election" and you'll get the link to the official election page on your city website. It'll tell you the poll hours for THIS MONDAY OCTOBER 24th and you'll be able to find your polling place and a sample ballot showing all the people running for all the roles (mayor, councillor, school board) in your district.

- Check out the candidates! If you want to narrow it down, for major things like mayor you can see which 3 or 4 people have a realistic shot of getting more than 10% of the vote based on polls and then look at the platforms for just those people. For more niche things like school board, you probably need to look at every candidate but less will be running. Please check the CBC article I linked above to narrow down the obvious terfs.

- Make a plan of when you are going to vote! Know what time is best for you to go and how you will get there.

- Get your friends and family to plan to vote too! Help them out by sharing your research and let them know who you are voting for for each part. Sometimes the idea of doing the research into candidates is too daunting, but if you share your plan with them, you can get more people to the polls.

- IF YOU AREN'T IN ONTARIO: Reach out to your friends and family here and ask what their plan to vote is. Help them out with the above if you can.

So much stuff gets decided at the municipal level, but they are expecting record low turnout and low turnout is dangerous for shitty people getting into positions that matter. We are already stuck with a clown at the province level. We need to make sure people who will work against him get elected at your local level.

It's one day, probably 45 minutes of your time including travel both ways and any line at busy times. Honestly, voting usually takes me 7 minutes at most at the polls even whe I was a student and voting in weird ways. They make it so easy if you just show up.

One of the central characters in “Vikings” is an ingenious shipbuilder. But his ships apparently get their sails off the rack. The fabric is just there, like the textiles we take for granted in our 21st-century lives. The women who prepared the wool, spun it into thread, wove the fabric and sewed the sails have vanished.

In reality, from start to finish, it took longer to make a Viking sail than to build a Viking ship. So precious was a sail that one of the Icelandic sagas records how a hero wept when his was stolen. Simply spinning wool into enough thread to weave a single sail required more than a year’s work, the equivalent of about 385 eight-hour days.

King Canute, who ruled a North Sea empire in the 11th century, had a fleet comprising about a million square meters of sailcloth. For the spinning alone, those sails represented the equivalent of 10,000 work years.”

“...Picturing historical women as producers requires a change of attitude. Even today, after decades of feminist influence, we too often assume that making important things is a male domain. Women stereotypically decorate and consume. They engage with people. They don’t manufacture essential goods.

Yet from the Renaissance until the 19th century, European art represented the idea of “industry” not with smokestacks but with spinning women. Everyone understood that their never-ending labor was essential. It took at least 20 spinners to keep a single loom supplied.

“The spinners never stand still for want of work; they always have it if they please; but weavers are sometimes idle for want of yarn,” the agronomist and travel writer Arthur Young, who toured northern England in 1768, wrote.

Shortly thereafter, the spinning machines of the Industrial Revolution liberated women from their spindles and distaffs, beginning the centuries-long process that raised even the world’s poorest people to living standards our ancestors could not have imagined.

But that “great enrichment” had an unfortunate side effect. Textile abundance erased our memories of women’s historic contributions to one of humanity’s most important endeavors. It turned industry into entertainment.

“In the West,” Dr. Harlow wrote, “the production of textiles has moved from being a fundamental, indeed essential, part of the industrial economy to a predominantly female craft activity.””