QuietSheepy

Happy Pride Month to everyone who gets this joke, laughed at it, or isn’t a homophobic or transphobic etc asshole.

Happy Pride Everyone.

my brother and his friends in this field trip group were truly great kids. but they were not above run of the mill teenage boy shenanigans. it’s the end of senior year, you and all your buddies are at the amusement park, you’re naturally going to want to act like a complete moron

there was one kid in the group who was especially prone to goofing around. committed to the bit, some may say. my mom knew that if nonsense was going to break out, he’d likely be at the center of it

so she goes up to this kid at the very start of the trip and says “hey, i’m kinda worried about this chaperoning thing. this might be a lot to ask, but can you help me keep an eye on everyone? you wouldn’t have to do anything big, just be an extra set of eyes for me.”

friends, this kid proceeded to run their field trip group like the fucking us marines. everyone is at the meet up spots at the designated time. everyone waits in line for the rides like a bunch of boy scouts. the second the horseplay gets too out of hand, this kid is getting it back under control

it’s incredible how differently people act based on the expectations you set. instead of going to this kid and saying “hey, i know you’re trouble, so i’ve got my eye on you,” my mom went “hey, i know you have influence in your peer group, so i think you can help me.”

slow down for your disabled friends. thats like a bare minimum kindness that we shouldnt have to ask for. i love that youre so quirky and walking fast is a cool personality trait to you and all that but i bet you can count your physically disabled friends on less than one hand

So nintendy is tryin to cover its ass on account of it givin all yous freaks ab-see-lute freedom to make DICK CITY a reality? yous wannas be able to upload your screenshots from your switch? Yous need to get one of these bad boys:

then you take the microSD card outta the switch and do one of these

den yous go like so

den i think yous can handle da rest ;)

anyways if anyone asks, you were never here

*slinks away into the darkness*

*slinks back from the darkness*

okays okays, i hear yous der in the back, yeah theres the...

(ominous pause)

other way

(distant rumble of thunder, wind starts whistling)

looks like we gotta spit some about the "usb-c to usb-a" cable maneuver

so if you know a guy who knows a guy who can put one of these in yer hot lil hands-

den ya gotta do the ol "one two skeedoo-it" if you know watta i mean

then you do like so

then you give 'em the ol applesauce

don't say i never did nothin for y-

WHAT DA

DAMMIT YOUS WAS FOLLOWED!

SHIT ITS THE BIG MAN!

RUN FER IT, HE'S THE MEANIST SONAVA BITCH THIS SIDE OF-

D&D writing, by and large, encourages a lack of questions. The surface runs deep. "Go into a cave and chop up goblins." Why are we doing this? "Goblins are bad." All goblins? "Yes."

I think the question of "why are there players comfortable siding with fascist factions and wondering why they're called 'lawful evil'" is pretty easily answered with... because D&D itself is inherently kind of fascist. And it's the most insidious kind of fascist, too- its villains are fascists, so how could you point fingers at the book?

Fire Giants are dwarf slavers. Drow are a megalomaniacal theocracy who hate men. Orcs are violent tribes of marauding killers. Illithids want to destroy all life and keep an entire civilization to scrub their floors. But these narratives still push the idea that "evil" is a racial trait. The players are not only justified in their campaign to destroy these cultures, they're encouraged to do it.

I had an intro to my campaign that involved a mad scientist kidnapping someone and turning them into a wererat. I didn't think much of it and I spent way more time fleshing out the other NPCs, I just wanted to use that wererat as a boss fight.

Once the party encountered him though they immediately saw what I totally missed: the guy who became the wererat was absolutely the victim of this story. I did my best at thinking on my feet and made the wererat this defeated guy who only followed the mad scientist because he felt like his life was ruined. So they, through good rolls, convinced him to help them fight the mad scientist and it made for such a better story.

anyone interested in the subject should definitely also check out the whole Three Black Halflings podcast, which talks about being black in nerdy spaces. a lot of times they’ll have on guests talking about their intersections and experiences in nerdy spaces. they have an episode with the author of the articles above.

they’ve also played a ttrpg based on african mythologies rather than mostly european ones like most mainstream fantasy.