One of the things I really like about Fate as a rules system, is that is built in. Every character has a Trouble and other aspects. So if your trouble is like “Manners of a goat”, you can be like “Wouldn’t it be fun if I completely insulted the Baron at this dinner??” If everyone agrees, you get a fate point.

The DM can also “compel” you on aspects in a similar way.

One of my players has an outstanding bounty and there’s been a lot of “You know what this scene needs? Razor to show up.” compels.

This looks perfect, and my library has a copy. Adding it to my to-read list.

That sounds neat. But also reminds me of a related peeve: Where non-monogamy is depicted, it’s always like a group. A throuple.

In real life, I’m dating a woman. She has a wife. I am not dating her wife. I am friendly with her wife, but that’s it. My date is also dating another man. We’re friendly. We talk about video games. But we’re not a thing together.

The polycule looks something like this. I know there’s more people further removed from me, but I don’t know them well (or in some cases at all). That’s okay.

L   ?   B    N       T - ?
|   |   |    |       |
C - S - Me - A - E - R
|   |
?   ?
    |
    ?

Non-monogamy doesn’t have to be a triangle. There’s a reason “polycule” is a really good pun.

I don’t know if this has been depicted in media other than like niche fanfiction.

That’s what I always say. Targeted advertising should be illegal. Contextual advertising is acceptable.

If I’m on the star trek wiki, serve me ads for star trek, sci-fi, and whatever. You don’t need to know anything about me specifically.

We’d still need to do something about like ads that take up too much space, hurt page performance, or introduce malware, but removing the stalking would be an improvement

It’s not limited to sci-fi/fantasy, but anything around monogamy, love triangles, heteronormativity.

If humans on earth today can form a wide variety of relationships other than a man + woman nuclear family, so can aliens and such living in completely different cultures.

“I love Alex and Bryan how can I choose just one??” You don’t have to. Stop it.

One of the reasons I left my old DND group. Everyone else was happy to play out a “put the baby boy on the throne currently occupied by the adult woman” plot without batting an eye. I’m like, first off monarchy is awful and second off why are you trying to make us support literal patriarchy?

I don’t think anyone literally said “why are you making this political?” but that was the energy I was reading.

I’m more of a Himedere, and it’s a lot of fun when the group is into it.

I did a really good dungeon with a puzzle once. Part of how it worked resulted in players unexpectedly getting split up and not being able to find their way back, while also being at risk of freezing to death. One of the players was like “I’ve never been so stressed in my life”, but like in a good way, and I took that as the highest praise. I was so proud of them when they figured out the dungeon

I had fun with my warlock familiar, Vincenzo. He had the “Vincenzo Special” where he’d invisibly fly up to someone in combat and rip one straight from the depths of hell to flavor his Help action. I’m still a little bit a teenage boy I guess.

This is what I always say. Put the tickets in order and we’ll do them.

Management always pushes back.

There are Chinese ghouls in one of the games, but I think they’re feral.

And apparently this guy that I missed https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Zao

Yeah I don’t think this covers externalized costs

I don’t think all games are emulating slot machines. Chess, for example, has no random factor and no hidden information.

Many games use random factors and other tricks to feel rewarding.

I have a thesis that there’s a difference between s good game and a fun game. Something can be one, the other, both, or neither.

I understood that reference

That’s mostly what the dark souls games do. The rotting zombie soldier that can hardly stand up straight is less of a threat than the giant black knight, and you can tell by looking at them.

Unfortunately, it seems a lot of people don’t really care about it, and so the people making games don’t really spend the effort.

I dislike levels in action games. Just pick one. Either I click on his face and he dies, or you abstract the attacks and use the stats to determine the results.

It was bad in Morrowind 20+ years ago. And yet people keep doing it.

Ass creed Vikings had archers on this side of the river: easy, identical archers that side of the river but 30 levels higher: deadly. Garbage.

Friend of mine never got their driver’s license. They live in NYC and don’t need one. They also were concerned about safety- they have ADHD and are prone to inattentiveness, and they didn’t want to be driving a car when that manifested.

I have a license but I also live in NYC. I don’t need to drive. It’s pretty great. It’s expensive in time money space and externalized costs, and it’s often less effective than just taking public transit.

Unfortunately most of the US is resistant to investing in mass transit and density, so it’s going to be shitty car-first spaces for a while.

I had someone in a tabletop RPG group say to me with a straight face that critical analysis is stupid. “Sometimes a story is just a story and there’s no other meaning.” Like, as if Dracula is just a story about a guy that bites people and that’s it. Or Animal Farm is just about talking animals.

I got the impression that she had taken from her literature classes the idea that you have to “find” the “correct” meaning in the text. As in, it’s there and you have to solve it like a puzzle, and there’s only a small set of correct answers. That’s kind of a fundamental misunderstanding of how it all works. You have the text, and any meaning you can explain and defend is there. Many popular texts already have a lot of stuff already written about it, but that doesn’t mean those are the only possible answers. You can easily write an essay that examines Dracula through a feminist lens.

She really just seemed kind of sad and incurious overall. I think about this a lot. I think a lot of people are like her.

I don’t really know how to fix this. Probably spending a lot more money on education would help.

A verbal secret passphrase to identify yourself to your family would be pretty smart.

Most of the subway smells fine.

I’m just going to go scream into the void for a while.