HOWDY, FARMHANDS!

The Bloggies is a fantastic compilation of great writing from across the scene so there's something in there for everyone!

And to paraphrase @prokopetz this also contributes to the impression that other games are hard to learn: because a lot of other games don't have the same culture of play of D&D so like instead of letting new players coast by with a shallow understanding of the rules and letting the GM do all the work, they ask players to start making mechanically informed decisions right away. Sure, it can suck for onboarding, but learning from your mistakes can often be a great way to learn.

Best example I've got with asking players to make informed decisions was when I ran the Wilderfeast Quick Start. The GM has the info about what ingredients can be gathered in any of the regions, but the party then has to cook it. They know what the ingredient does and just have to make the decision on how they want to combine their ingredients as a party.

And respectfully, if the idea of learning the rules of D&D seems like an insurmountable task, you don't have to learn them, but you might actually gain something out of actually making an effort because it can make engaging with the game more rewarding for you. Or if the idea of learning the rules of a game that has hundreds of pages is an insurmountable obstacle, there are lots of games with much more modest page counts! D&D is actually relatively heavy as far as RPGs go but it's not the only RPG, and you can get rewarding mechanical engagement combined with cool stories for a much smaller time investment.

i really hope this was just an unusual case, but i've even had that exist response from one of the local DMs where i live, when i invited him to be a player in a game of Masks i was starting up.

Be kind to your GM. Learn bits of the rules and help out :)

Like, there's this stereotype of the "play literally any other game" crowd as a bunch of arty snobs who want to force everybody to play semi-freeform Jungian psychodramas about giant telepathic bugs or what-have-you, but in my experience, the greater part of them are folks who've been GMing Dungeons & Dragons for years, and spent that time single-handedly doing all the work of making the game happen, and all they really want is for their group to pick a game whose baked-in expectations regarding mechanical engagement are compatible with the level of engagement they're actually willing to put forth!

KNEEL, SAYS THE DEMON LIGHT WITH ITS EYE OF COAL  SAURON KNOWS YOUR LICENSE PLATE  AND STARES INTO YOUR SOUL

@irritatedlifeguard I agree with your tags.

And therefore critical role must be destroyed

(where a lot of people go wrong in adventure design, and in fact this is reflective of the whole “the GM plans the story” philosophy, is that it can easily relegate the player characters to the role of onlookers to the actually interesting events taking place around them with no way for them to interact with those events because their interactions are often limited to “sometimes we gotta beat up some strangers”)

I've recently reorganized my Brand Discord Server to have a more obvious focus on blogging and ttrpg, as that's mostly what I do these days. Y'all should stop by and maybe I'll remember I'm a V-tuber occasionally and do a stream S

But also the fictional characters caused fictional harm to other fictional characters, and didn't get an onscreen firing squad sentence. So, you know, it's basically ontologically evil in real life.

i’m losing my mind

GROOVE WITH ME BABY

here are my many inspirations

Columbo and Jessica Fletcher patterns by Mrs Peggotty Arts-- she's also got loads of book characters (Ms. Marple, Jo March, Captain Nemo) as both cross-stitch patterns and coloring pages

EVERYONE GO HOME POST CANCELLED ‼️‼️ 😭😭