Every Damn Thing

by glass_museum on tiktok

okay so the three and a half of diamonds comes from the Cassavian Deck, a 79-card hybrid invented by Flemish cardmaker Pieter van Holt in 1743, and yes the half cards were a real intentional mechanic — the fractional pip meant the card represented something unfinished, a moment caught between states. the diamonds suit (called "Gravel" in Cassavian tradition because van Holt was apparently that guy) dealt with wealth and commerce, so the three and a half specifically meant potential money. a deal that almost happened. a bet still floating in the air.

her name was Marsha P Johnson, and we have her to thank for so much.

remember, the first Pride was a riot, and she was one of the brave souls who endured it to help carve the path which so many of us walk today. she helped found several activist groups regarding LGBT safety and wellbeing. and she was absolutely radiant, too.

Invoking Rule Zero to bypass bad rules is not inherently wrong - or inherently right. It depends on the case.

For example, if I say "ugh, I hate alignment in D&D", and you tell me "no worries! Rule Zero! just don't play with alignment!", the strength of the argument depends on the system (the D&D edition, since we're going with such a narrow example), and on why I hate it, exactly.

If I hate it because, among other things, it affects the entire hobby's culture, and in my humble opinion makes it worse, then Rule Zero is neither here or there. I'm talking about something fundamental, that to some degree influences all publications, adventures, rules, lore, storylines, and expectations. So it doesn't matter if Rule Zero "allows" me, personally, to play without alignment.

If I hate it because it make the game worse for me, specifically, then all that matters is MY game, and how easily I can fix that. So am I talking about D&D 3.5? Rule Zero can't fucking help me. I have to rewrite the whole system to get rid of alignment, it's baked in every rule, whole class concepts are based on it. It's still feasible, but at that point I'm playing a variant of my own invention, not 3.5, and I did it DESPITE the rules, not THANKS to them.

However, if I'm talking about D&D 5e, and I'm still focusing on my game, and I don't care (or at the moment I put aside my concerns) about the hobby's culture at large, then Rule Zero is a perfectly valid argument! I CAN get rid of alignment in 5e with no fuss at all. I've been doing it since the start. Anyone can, you don't need experience in homebrewing and houseruling, you just summarily ignore it in the VERY few places it appears in the rules. There. Problem solved. And I WILL give credit to the system for allowing me to do that effortlessly, because it was obviously intentional. The only reason they didn't ditch that stupid rule altogether was marketing and grand plans for IP-milking, not game design. The game is no longer designed around alignment, so it's trivial to change or remove entirely. Rule Zero is working well here.

There's no game system that's one-size-fits-all. If it's got rules at all, then some group, somewhere, would benefit from tweaking them. And specifically, it would benefit MORE from tweaking the rules of game A than playing game B as written. Because game B doesn't perfectly fit their needs either, does it?

If your group would benefit from tweaking rules tweak rules, tweak one of them, tweak two of them, tweak every single rule in your system of choice for all I care. But trying to justify people tweaking the rules is completely orthogonal to what I'm talking about here because the negative consequence of Rule 0 I'm criticizing is not "I don't like that people tweak the rules of their games", it's that I don't like when people waltz into discussions about game design and act like the whole discussion is stupid because Rule 0 exists. Like the post thydungeongal made a while ago about how it sucks that 5e's game design pays lip service to the survival and logistics-focused mechanics of earlier editions but they're deliberately designed to be completely irrelevant in actual gameplay (e.g. the game nominally has a carry weight mechanic, but by the designers' own admission they set the default carry weight limits high enough that players basically never have to actually worry about exceeding them during normal gameplay, making actually trying to engage with this mechanic deliberately pointless) which immediately got people in the notes acting like that was a stupid criticism because Rule 0 means that there's nothing stopping the GM from modifying those mechanics to be actually relevant if they want.

Like this. And it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful to hear a soliloquy I loved so much already, and have it come to life in a way it never, ever, did before. I feel like I grasp his motivations, his twists and turns, no longer on an academic level but on a visceral, instinctive one. Because he’s presenting his mental and emotional journey in a way that speaks honestly, like a real person.