Just saw someone on YouTube say that their problem with Severance is it's "not rewarding to watch." The video essayists long for the skinner box.
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Just saw someone on YouTube say that their problem with Severance is it's "not rewarding to watch." The video essayists long for the skinner box.

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Started season 2 of Severance finally and was thinking about how much I liked the the sequence in the break room in Episode 1. Specifically, about how their new training video turns the struggles of season 1 into a historical moment, a piece of archival research, and in doing so, takes out all of the bite of the characters' struggles, turning it into more of a myth, something more digestible, something that Lumon can more readily integrate into their workplace culture. It's almost paradoxical, but by giving it more weight, by blowing up the importance of the "Macrodat Uprising," it feels less real.
Pretty obsessed with Tsutomu Nihei series Tower Dungeon at the moment. There's a lot to love, but I am definitely partial to the melancholic mood dripping off the page. There is an ever-present sadness in the brick work of the dungeon, and I am living for it.
Really surprised that the search "Jerma Good Luck Babe Fancam" resulted in zero results. Something's amiss.
On the Removal of Orcs from the Monster Manual
So the new Monster Manual is out and about, and one of the big talking points is how orcs have been removed from it completely. I'm in two minds on the whole thing.
First and foremost, its a good thing that orcs are being treated less like brutal savages that are just predisposed to evil and more like a culture with its own practices, social norms, and economic factors. People much smarter than me have done extensive writing on the biological essentialism that underpinned a lot of DND's early monster design, so I won't poorly rehash all that, but what's important here is that now, a DM (and WOTC's adventure writers) have to think a little bit more when they drop a green skin brigade into their hex crawl. You can't handwave an orc raid on a mining camp by going "They're evil, its what they do." You gotta think a little more, think about motivations, social pressures, ECONOMICS! Horrific, I know. It will be more challenging for newer DM's, but it will make them better in the process.
With that in mind, I am still negative on the deletion as a whole because I am usually against the removal of rules to solve a problem when the addition of rules would have solved it just as much, if not more. The problem is that the removal of orcs solves none of the problems it set out to do, reinforces the bad stereotypes it sought to combat, and along the way, limits new DMs on the types of monsters they can throw out. If orcs are being removed because they aren't monsters anymore, then why are goblins, githyanki, all these creatures who are clearly just as sapient as orcs, still considered monsters and are seen as acceptable fodder for a party of adventurers? I understand that Orcs have achieved full PC ancestry status, but in the fiction of the game, that doesn't really exist.
Now, imagine this alternative; a new monster manual that has stat blocks for orcs, yes, but also stat blocks for fighting humans, dwarves, elves, gnomes, etc. If its a player race, there are stats for fighting them. Not only does this combat the idea that orcs and goblins are monsters that are okay to kill, but it also gives the DM more tools to use, not less.
Now, I'm not (horribly) stupid, I understand these books have a limited page count and WOTC doesn't have infinite money to expend on creature design. They gotta save some funds for designing their AI Dungeon Masters. So, here's an idea straight from one of my favorite games, Lancer. Instead of dedicating multiple pages to every single sapient race, you have NPC monsters (bandits, druids, archmages, etc.) that you then modify with ancestry templates. Want to run a group of goblin bandits. They all can disengage as a bonus action. Want to take those same low level bandits but use them in a campaign set on the astral sea? They're now all Gith and they have limited Psionics. Want to then start a campaign where the main enemy is a group of wood-elf eco-terrorists? Same bandits, but with limited druidic spellcasting and some magical resistances. I can't think of a way this system wouldn't solve anyone's problems.
And to get ahead of people saying, "If you like orcs, just use the old books," WOTC has already shown a willingness to gate off old material, especially in their new digitally focused landscape. They've already removed material from DND Beyond, and there is no indication they will stop this behavior. It is okay to complain about the things you like, especially when the company that makes the stuff keeps making dumb decisions.

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For all my forever DM's, may this be the year where your ultimate fantasy comes true: one of your players offering to run a mini-campaign set in your world.
I hate how rpghorrorstories is one of if not the most popular pillar of TTRPG content out there.
I get it, some people are bad at running the game, some people are bad players, and some people use these games as an excuse to let their worst behaviors express themselves. That last group especially deserves a little social ostracization, just to humble them. But I can imagine a scenario where a new DM turns to youtube for advice, only to be met with a wall of videos titled "The DM from Hell (Their Ideas Sucked Dick)."
Criticism against any artist is healthy and good criticism is the greatest way to spur growth, but I can't imagine this huge focus on negativity being good for attracting new people to the hobby. And I get it, not every video from an RPG youtuber can be a deep dive on how to run/play the game. Sometimes, you just need a paycheck. But there's gotta be another way, another line of easy content you can follow that doesn't rely on the mistakes one person made at a table of five being redistributed to tens of thousands of people.
Anyway, my real hot take is that, even after all that prelude, I still think min-max build guides are worse for the hobby than rpghorrorstories.
Listen, I get that "capitalism has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself," but this shit is getting ridiculous.
Has anyone made a TTRPG that is explicitly inspired by Balatro? I ask because as I play it more and more, I'm surprised at how much player expression is packed into that game. A given run definitely has a ton of optimal play, don't get me wrong, but there's also a lot of wiggle room for players to pick up pet jokers and run preferred hands. Many times, I've felt the game scream at me to play something else, but Flush Five Aces is so fun to build around that sometimes I'll force it, usually to my own detriment.
If nothing else, could someone recommend me some games that use playing cards for their primary resolution mechanic? I'd appreciate it.
Okay, I don't want my page to just be a D&D hate spot, but I posted a big thing last night about how PF2E respects the GM's time while D&D does not, and I hoped that would be the end of my thoughts on this, at least for a little while.
But this morning, a perfect example of this fell into my lap. A Screen Rant article detailing how there will be no monster creation rules included within the the 2025 Monster Manual, and, based off the language they use, there is no plan to release these rules in the near future.
In an interview with Chris Perkins and James Wyatt, lead designers for the new half-edition/remaster, both said that there were no plans for a monster creation guide, with the closest bit of advice being how to reskin other monsters for your needs. The logic behind this, according to Perkins, was that "we wanted to give the DM creature-building that was quick, that was easy, and that wouldn't cause them to create a monster that was off-CR and potentially wreck their encounter."
I'll be honest, that logic is hilarious to me because, as someone who ran the game for eight years and was very plugged into the community, everyone knows that the easiest way to wreck an encounter is to FOLLOW THE CR SYSTEM.
This whole section of the interview comes across as very condescending. Wyatt claims that the math they use to balance encounters in-house is just "too complicated to print in a book." So, instead of taking responsibility for their system, they've given the GM literally nothing to go off of if they want to design a monster. If you TPK your party, that's on you, not us. We told you it was above your paygrade.
It's getting to the point where some of the design choices are so baffling that I can't help but put a tin-foil hat on. Do they not want to print their monster making rules because there are no in-house guidelines and they just eye-ball CR? Is there an exec at WOTC that struck down putting out monster creation rules for fear that it would cut into the sale of monster books further down the line? Like, I know these ideas are conspiracy bait, and I know they have no grounding, but when the game about fighting monsters has no good reason for why they would cut monster creation rules, how can I not fall into conspiracy thought?
I don't know, am I being ridiculous here? Please tell me if I'm being ridiculous.

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The Simple Reason I Prefer PF2E
Alright, quick conditionals: I have not been a player character in a Pathfinder Second Edition game (yet), I have only ran the game and have only ran up to level 6. I have been GMing it for close to two years now, and my latest foray into a long-term campaign has been running consistently for the last ten months.
My current stance is that I have no interest in going back to running D&D Fifth Edition. If one of my friends wants to run it, I'll play, but my go to Fantasy Bullshit game is going to be PF2E for the foreseeable future. And the reason is simple: PF2E and Paizo respects the GMs time. D&D 5e and WOTC do not.
I ran 5e for close to a decade, and I remember how, anytime I prepped a session, over half of that prep was spent on homebrew. Homebrewing subsystems to make things like travel interesting. Homebrewing magic item prices because players like buying magic items. HOMEBREWING A MONSTER THAT IS INTERESTING TO FIGHT IN THE GAME ABOUT FIGHTING INTERESTING MONSTERS.
This ambivalence towards the needs of the GM grew more apparent as new releases came out, with WOTC focusing more on player facing options and less on creating rulesets the game obviously needed (see the release of Spelljammer lacking any ship-to-ship combat rules).
For a younger man, this was fine, and I learned some good game design lessons from this arrangement. But as I get older, and my free time diminishes, I have come to a realization on my relationship with Prepping the Game and Running the Game.
Good prep is needed to run a good game, but Prepping the Game will always be less fun than Running the Game.
I want to minimize my prep time as much as possible, and I want to use that time to not only prep cool encounters, but also prep the NPCs, the locations, the plot beats, and the world history.
Pathfinder handles all of that system work so that I can focus on the story. Almost every monster has an ability other than a punch. I can pull out a couple monsters, build a severe encounter, and know that it will not only be challenging, but will present a puzzle that my players have to solve. And if I want to change things up, add in a subsystem like Hex Crawling, I'm confident that, two thirds of the time, Paizo has already crafted a ruleset that will satisfy me. And if the rules they have made are not to my liking, I can use them as a baseline for my own homebrew, rather than designing something from the ground up.
Also, it's important to mention that, while WOTC figures out new methods to nickel and dime its user base, Paizo puts all of their rules, including classes, monsters, magic items, and subsystems, online for free. The only thing that is not freely available is their adventures.
There's a lot of other things to love, but that's the big picture. I'll leave you with one of my favorite pieces of art from the game. A piece by Halil Ural, depicting the magus Seltyiel mulling over an agreement presented by a Contract Devil.
Throwing out The Birdcage as my favorite Holiday Movie that has nothing to do with the holidays. Not a drop of Christmas in this movie, but its dedication to familial love really gets me in the spirit. Plus it's just gorgeous.
A great reason why running a TTRPG is a good exercise for up-and-coming writers is that you get to see how your ideas, characters, dialogue-writing, etc., work in real time. There's a great level of satisfaction that comes from narrating a scene and seeing three people verbally scramble over one another to respond. That level of instant feedback is tremendously useful. This, of course, also makes running TTRPG's a uniquely horrifying writing exercise, because if your writing is doing nothing but bouncing off the backboard, you will feel it, and you will feel it for four fucking hours. My god, I can't tell you how many times I have ran a game over discord, narrated a big scene, asked the players "what are y'all doing," and have been met with a solid 15 seconds of silence. This should not dissuade anyone from running a game. The affect RPG's have had on my storytelling ability is immeasurable, and its important to know that the dread you feel after a bad sesh is not exclusive to you, everyone feels that at some point. As long as you can diagnose the problems correctly and you've scheduled a game for next week, you will improve. Try again, fail again, fail better.
All this talk of Mouthwashing AU's that give Daisuke or Anya a happy ending. Where's my Swansea AU where he becomes a low-tier shock comic before transitioning to podcasting?
Was thinking about how Mouthwashing deliberately uses its retro-futurism aesthetic to highlight the nihilism inherent to its setting. I love reto-futurism, I love seeing flying cars that still play cassette tapes, but usually that is couched in amused hindsight. Look how they thought the future would look, isn't that charming?
In Mouthwashing, we see a flavor of retro-futurism that is explicitly hostile. Ship navigational screens that are monochrome. Passwords for essential functions hidden behind UV scanners. Food dispensers require flipping through a recipe book to use. When you have to cut back some of the fire foam, you don't get some high tech laser or saw, you get a classic fireman's axe. The message that the crew is being laid off is delivered by fax machine. There's not even any tech that allows you to communicate with someone on the other side of the ship, all the conversations have to happen person to person. There is next to no technology that eases the burden of the crew. It is a future where innovation is nakedly obsessed with serving corporate interests at the expense of all others.
This becomes increasingly apparent when you think about the eponymous cargo of the Tulpar. Yes, the game is quick to point out the absurdity of a spaceship loaded with nothing but mouthwash. But that acknowledgement actually buries the greater absurdity: that this is a universe where interplanetary travel is possible, and we are still bottling mouthwash with single-use plastics.

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Kinda sucks that, in the battle for art's ability to represent all facets of the human experience, including sex and sexuality, some of our staunchest allies are porn addicts.
Thinking about the Disco Elysium Witch Discourse (something I really need to stop doing) and getting hung up on the praise for the game's writing while also lamenting about Harry being another white protagonist. Like, an essential part of Harry's character is that he is white, and the game does a lot to explore that, what it means to be a white police officer in a cosmopolitan city, and how that experience contrasts with Kim's.
Imagine if Harry was black, and the knock-on effect it would have on many of your interactions with Revachol. Imagine how differently the lorry driver or Gary would treat you. Imagine the tonal shift your interactions with Measurehead would take. Imagine what Cuno would call you!
Representation is good, and representation does not need to justify itself, but valuing vapid representation over a deliberate artistic choice that asks and answers interesting questions, just because it does not represent your experiences, is bad, and leads to boring, unoriginal art rising to the surface because it has a rainbow-colored buoy attached to it.
There's definitely a joke that could be made out of the op criticizing the race of Harry, and then advocating for a game whose premise is so white it shows up under a UV light, but I'm tired of thinking about it. Pic unrelated.