Aro of Light

Her example was in call centers, where an agent might take 1 difficult call in 10, which is stressful, but the person has the 9 easy calls to offset that stress and recalibrate their nervous system. But when 'AI agents' take those 9 easy calls, you, the human, are left with 100% difficult calls. What used to be a small, unpleasant portion of your day now becomes your entire day, all day, every day.

And to make things worse, your boss fired all the other humans, so rather than spreading out the bad amongst a team of people who could commiserate and provide support, it's just you, absorbing the stress, alone, forever.

That's one of those question where the answer hovers somewhere between "no, with a couple of massive caveats" and "yes, but not in the way most people think".

A lot of AD&D 1st Edition's GMing practices are pretty hardass by modern standards; however, they need to be understood in the context that the game's authors were writing for a target audience who mainly played the game in college wargaming clubs, where players would frequently transfer between groups and group sizes tended to be very large – six players per GM was considered a bare minimum, and up to a dozen player characters in a single party was by no means unheard of!

In particular, players would often bring their character sheets with them when hopping between groups, and it was considered a faux pas for a GM to reject an incoming player's existing character or request any substantive changes be made, so managing expectations could be quite challenging; even as late as 2nd Edition, the Dungeon Master's Guide contains extensive discussion of how to gracefully handle players bringing existing characters with them who aren't necessarily a good fit for the present game's tone or resource economy.

The upshot is that the culture of play these iterations of Dungeons & Dragons are targeting inherently obliges the GM to take a much firmer hand to keep things on track than a pickup game that draws players exclusively from within the GM's established friend group might – and to be sure, some GMs abused these expectations to act like petty tyrants, but some contemporary GMs do that, too.

A big part of the modern perception that 1E and 2E were extraordinarily player hostile, meanwhile, has nothing to do with the previously discussed GMing practices; rather, it emerges from the transition away from that culture of play in a slightly unexpected way.

In brief, back when D&D was mainly played by wargaming clubs, it was fashionable to run pre-written adventure modules competitively at conventions; the competition wasn't between players, but between parties, with multiple groups running the same adventure in parallel to contend for prizes. Tournament play sometimes chose its winners based on the fastest real-time completion of the module in question, or set specific objectives within the module which would award points when completed, a bit like speed-running or achievement-hunting in a video game (though neither practice existed yet at the time).

It was the survival module, however, that quickly emerged as the most popular tournament format. In a survival tournament, each player would provide or was furnished with a binder containing a fixed number of pre-generated character sheets, switching to the next character sheet in the set as each preceding character died; the winning group was the one whose last surviving character's corpse hit the dirt furthest from the dungeon entrance.

Many of 1E's most popular adventure modules, including the infamous Tomb of Horrors, were originally written as survival modules to be run at tournaments in conventions. As such, they were designed to kill off player characters both quickly and efficiently, so as to reduce the likelihood that the tournament would run overtime and get kicked out of the convention venue. When they were later cleanup and repackaged as commercial adventure modules, their text rarely bothered to explain any of this – who doesn't recognise a survival module when they see one?

The answer to that question, of course, is kids who didn't come up through the mentorship system of the college wargaming clubs, but taught themselves how to play D&D from first principles using books they bought at their local hobby stores – and when D&D's popularity unexpectedly exploded in the early 1980s, there were suddenly rather a lot of them!

Why publish survival modules as your primary format of published adventure?

"Because that's what we had -- they were already laid out for publication. Why not publish them and make some money off it?"

Did it ever occur to you at the time that publishing adventures like these would shape the larger D&D culture's expectations of what play was supposed to look like?

"It’s hard to get that context just from reading the original Dungeons and Dragons books. If nine groups learned D&D from the books, they’d end up playing nine different games.

"Mornard told us about an early D&D tournament game – possibly in the first Gen Con in Parkside in 1978? Gary Gygax was DMing nine tournament teams successively through the same module, and whoever got the furthest in the dungeon would win. You’d expect this to take all day, and so Mike was surprised to see Gary, looking shaken, wandering through the hallways at about 2 PM. Mike bought Gary a beer and asked him what had happened – wasn’t he supposed to be DMing right now?

“It’s over!” replied a stunned Gary Gygax.

"Gary described how the first group had fared. Walking down the first staircase into the dungeon, the first rank of fighters suddenly disappeared through a black wall. There was a quiet whoosh, and a quiet thud. The players conferred, and then they sent the second rank forward, who disappeared too. The rest of the players followed.

"The same thing happened to the next tournament team, and the next. Players filed into the unknown, one after another. And they were all killed. The wall was an illusion, and behind it was a pit. Eight out of the nine groups had thrown themselves like lemmings over a cliff; only one group had thought to tap around with a ten foot pole. That group passed the first obstacle, so they won the tournament.

The Wretched of the Earth

Discourse On Colonialism

Making Space for Indigenous Feminism

Settlers: The Mythology Of The White Proletariat from Mayflower to Modern

Red Skin, White Masks : Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition

Borderlands/La Frontera

As We Have Always Done

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

Books I couldn't find on the archive but still recommend you purchase or check out at the library:

He returns one night to his humble apartment, which is known to have vermin, and comes across a rat, which he could easily kill or set loose on the street.

But the rat- it is special. It seems to speak to him. Promises him every little thing he desires- talent, fame, and fortune. Recognition and esteem like he has only ever seen from afar; fine company like the wealthy men and women whose scraps he picks at over the sink.

Put me on your head, the rat says. Put me on your head and think of nothing.

It is strange at first, yes. Strange to feel another take control of his life and live it better than he ever could. To see miraculous things created with his own two hands, to feel his feet move in graceful and fantastic ways with a confidence he has never had.

But the rat delivers as he had promised: he receives promotions, notoriety, admiration. He is noticed. Envied. Every day is a waking dream, rubbing elbows with beautiful women and handsome men and influential personalities who lavish him with praise. It is addictive, this lifestyle- never mind that he is only ever truly conscious of it as a passenger of in own brain.

It is when he has reached heights few can ever conceive, with all that the rat had ever promised- a beautiful wife in a beautiful house with all the world in his palm, in possession of all the wealth and success a man could ever want, that the rat says that it is leaving.

Leaving? The rat cannot leave. Everything he is, the rat has provided.

"I have delivered on our bargain", the rat says. "I have brought to you all that you have ever dreamed. What more could you desire? I must live my own life, now."

The man is furious. He is terrified. He destroys the rat, in all of the ways that a rat can be destroyed, until nothing is left of it but a fine smear of marinara sauce.

He returns to the restaurant the next day moving like the shell of something hollowed-out and brittle. He cooks well- his fingers remember the movements, his eyes recognize the patterns, his mouth knows without his asking what orders to speak and what platitudes make patrons smile pleasantly with their straight white teeth.

He retains the talents of the rat. The charm of the rat. All the worldly pleasures the rat had provided him.

Still, it seems, he is little more than a vessel for the talents of the rat.

But the rat is gone.

09/04/2026 • every time @softinvasions writes a villanelle about how sonnets suck i write another suckful sonnet*. metrical malpractice!

Land-creature watching.

As requested by @im-bad-at-names-okay :)

Happy Pride Month! If Cosmere characters wanted to "come out," here is how they would do so.

1. Renarin: A series of unsigned letters

Lore drop: I came out via a letter to my parents when I was in high school.

Dalinar: The first note said, "Someone is gay." Dalinar: The second note said, "Someone you know." Dalinar: The third note said, "Someone in your family." Dalinar: The fourth note said, "One of your sons." Dalinar: ... Dalinar: I think I can predict what the fifth note will say.

2. Adolin: Tells people face-to-face

He just figures that telling people in person is the right thing to do.

Adolin: ...So anyway, I like men as well as women. May: Yes. I am aware. Adolin: Y-You are?? Did someone tell you?? May: You stare at a lot of butts. Adolin: ... Adolin: Yeah, okay, that makes sense.

3. Kaladin: The most dramatic moment possible

Think about every time Kaladin let someone know he was Radiant. Now apply that logic to Kaladin coming out.

Kaladin: [Glowing with stormlight, descending slowly from the sky] Kaladin: Romance. Sex. Gender. None of it--none of it--is compulsory, and none of it is for me! Lirin: You literally could have told us this normally at dinner last night. Hesina (elbowing him): Shhhh!

4. Wayne: Casually, conversationally

Wayne drops the lore as if it's no big deal, although he is admittedly a bit anxious the first time (when he tells Wax).

Wax: Listen, Wayne, if you want to be a good man... Wayne: Actually, I'm a girl today. Wax: [processing very quickly] Just today? Wayne: Well, we'll see, I guess. Sometimes it's just for a day. Sometimes it's a girl week. Wax: Noted. Wax: Listen, Wayne, if you want to be a good woman...

5. Rlain: Matter-of-factly

Rlain knows he has to make humans accept him as a person. Sometimes he tells them that he plays cards. Sometimes he tells them that he is gay.

Rlain: I'm Rlain. And this is my boyfriend, Renarin. The Alethi guy who was just talking shit about Singers: Uh... Rlain: Now you know something else about me. Rlain: Namely, I can pull.

6. Shallan: Eventually and with difficulty

Look, Shallan does not like to reveal lore about herself. Sometimes it takes being trapped in a cave in a high storm. Sometimes she makes her alters do it. It's a process.

Shallan (currently huddled with Kaladin in the little nook while the high storm rages outside) Shallan: ....A-And also, I think I have a crush on Jasnah! Shallan: Does that mean I like women??? Kaladin: Even worse, you might have bad taste in women! Shallan: What Kaladin: I shouldn't say my first thought.

7. Sazed: Makes Wax do it

This is always the Sazed-Harmony strategy.

Sazed: [communicating with Wax via his earring] Please tell everyone that my pronouns are now "they/them" so if they could stop using "he" for me, I'd appreciate it. Sazed: I know that there are other things going on, but it has been annoying me for hundreds of years now. Wax: ...You sent a kandra to command me to put in my earring for this...? Couldn't the kandra just do it...? Sazed: You try explaining pronouns to a kandra!

8. Vivenna: Just kinda assumed people knew

The short hair and the sword aren't enough??

Beard: Captain, we've been talking... Beard: And we've come up with a list of just three guys in all of Kholinar who we think MIGHT be worthy of going on a date with you! Vivenna: ...Try again, but with women. Beard: .... Beard: Oh! Vivenna (to herself): How much more obvious could I make it?

9. Jasnah: Writes a truly groundbreaking treatise

Jasnah is not going to bother coming out if it's not also scholarship.

Ethid: Your treatise on asexuality will truly have a lasting effect on scholarship. Jochi: I predict that the undertext referring to your own experiences will promote much speculation in future generations. Jasnah: Thank you, both. Jasnah: ...Glad that relationship was worth something.

10. Nikaro: Tells no one until they all figure it out for themselves

Nikaro can't shake the fear that everyone will leave if they know the truth, groundless as that fear may be.

Akane: Last week you had a boyfriend. Yumi: Correct. Akane: Today you have a girlfriend. Yumi: I do. Akane: Your girlfriend looks quite a bit like my old friend, Nikaro. Yumi: Fancy that. Akane: ... Akane: Congrats on the gender, Painter! Painter: ...It's that easy?

11. Dalinar: Unintentional lore drop

Dalinar is one of Those dads.

mission on swamp planet<3