paradoxius

[paradoxius]

Incidentally, a 5e campaign I was in for a while had an interlude set 10 years before the main campaign where we were trying to solve a mystery playing as court functionaries of a city state on the eve of its destruction, and it turned out that we each independently decided our character would be evil actually.

The result is that we were playing a gaggle of real bastards unraveling a conspiracy that threatened to topple the tyrannical kingdom we all loved and/or had material interest in, running around doing messy-as-hell raids on squalid hideouts and arguing about whether or not to summarily execute prisoners.

We also created our characters knowing they would exist for a short time in a specific context, so they were all weird builds that were capable of some crazy stuff. The finale was supposed to be a TPK, but we somehow managed to speedrun-strat our way out of the besieged palace.

So, anyway, I think we maybe stumbled upon the kind of play that 5e is actually good for. Probably still would have played better in BitD, though.

So there is a pretty clear shift in playstyle between TSR D&D and WotC D&D: for better and for worse, D&D 3e introduced the idea of encounter balance, de-emphasized mechanics that had previously encouraged the GM to think of the monsters as real living creatures (reaction rolls, morale, etc.), and it had the effect of making D&D a much more combat-focused game. D&D has always been a game that's opinionated about combat, it's basically the most expressive and detailed form of play regardless of edition, but combat in the TSR editions was not exactly zoomed in and tactical. The WotC editions purposefully made combat zoomed in, granular, and tactical.

And this has had an effect on playstyle: since combat is now the main form of player expression what players actually want is for their characters to get into combat. Because combat is the most fun part of the game. But the game has also changed from the largely amoral dungeon-crawling game into a game of fantasy heroics (even though a lot of the trappings of the amoral dungeon-crawling still remain, which contributes to the dissonance), so you can't just have the player characters going into combat for the sake of it. That would frame the player characters as kind of Fucked Up, and we can't have that in our supposedly heroic fantasy.

What you end up with is a variety of contrivances like "they're bandits," "they're cultists," or, my all-time favorite, "they attacked first" to make the action seem morally justifiable, even though gameplay is still motivated by a desire to fight. The monsters fight to the death and, importantly, can often not be reasoned and negotiated with, partly because combat is supposed to be the fun, engaging part everyone is here to do, but also because if they actually acted like reasonable people it could cause dissonance with the whole "the player characters are the goodest heroes."

As my friend @tenleaguesbeneath once called it: what is actually going on is that the player characters are hunting people and monsters who have been programmed to fight to the death and never negotiate for sport, while justifying it as self-defence.

It's a simple power fantasy, and I don't think there's anything wrong with it. Sometimes you want to play a morally uncomplicated game about killing guys with cool magic swords. But I think it's also fun to think about what the specific types of monsters players end up fighting reveals about Society the invisible, unexamined ideology lying under the surface that the designers of even modern D&D have failed to examine. And to me it often reads like a frontier justice fantasy. None of that is to detract from anyone's joy of the game, and for me it's just fun to think about and post about this stuff while Still Enjoying the Game, but if someone expressing that opinion makes you feel uncomfortable, why? That's pretty silly imo.

[paradoxius]

I recognise that putting important rules in obscure or unintuitive places is bad practice in almost all cases, but I have to confess a certain affection for that one edition of Shadowrun that decided to stick a piece of its combat mechanics in a parenthetical aside to a piece of chapter-opening microfiction. Like, not even a worked example of play – there's a chunk of the rules which appears exclusively in a sidebar to a short story and nowhere else. I don't understand the thought process that concluded this was a good idea, but I'd like to.

[paradoxius]

Tumblr:

Tumblr's algorithm has decided that I occupy the intersection of a very specific Venn diagram.

[paradoxius]

This is where we are. Anti-trans pogroms have begun and the community is living in fear. Things are so bad that some of us are unable to live anymore.

Where is the left? Where are our allies?

#TDoR2024

[paradoxius]

I'm pretty sure it's a Wizard if it comes from the Tower, a Warlock if it comes from the Dungeon, and a Sorcerer if it comes from the Dragon.

People who treat D&D's classes as like being in any way representative of fiction outside of D&D are my nemesis, I just saw a post that was like "remember the difference between a Sorcerer a Warlock and a Wizard is this" and treating like those words as if their very D&D specific meanings were like universally accepted I'm going to start taking hostages

[paradoxius]

"Jingo" is a minced oath for "Jesus" as in swearing "by Jingo." Probably the term jingoism comes from a particular patriotic song sung in Britain swearing that, "by Jingo," they'd fight the Crimean War. So to answer your question, Jingo is an appellation of Jesus called upon in belligerent British nationalistic oaths.

And, frankly, if Jesus didn't want the -ism named after him he shouldn't have let the British Empire happen.

Undialectical, Revisionist, Petty Bourgeois, Reactionary, Opportunist, Individualist, Idealist, Insurrectionist, Adventurist, Ultraleftist, Vulgar, Empiricist, Denigrative, Counterfactual, Anti-Marxist, Unscientific, Liberal, Positivist, Revanchist, Decadent, Ahistorical, Relativist, Proundhonist, Standpoint Theorist, Renegade, Dogmatist, Sophist, Collaborationist, Counter-Revolutionary, Reformist, Modernist, Vain, Ignorant, Kautskyite, Right Deviationist, Philistine, Labor Aristocratic, Imperialist, Infantile, Reductionist, Chauvinistic, Fetishist, Uneducated, Legalist, Establishment, Utopian, Apologist, Cryptofascist, Lassallean, Interventionist, Campist, Electoralist, Bootlicking, Naive, Restorationist, Philosophizing, Arrogant, Preposterous, Capitalist, Jingoist, Asocial, Uncritical, Incoherent, Class Traitor, Corrupted, Illiterate, Colonialist, Comprador, Anti-Communist, Metaphysical, Mechanist, Essentialist, Sneedian, Moralist, Nationalist, Erroneous, Negationist, Denialist, Demagogue, Formalist, Patronizing, Defeatist, Unsubstantiated, Emotional, Particularist, Doctrinairist, Profane, Déclassé, Rightist, Fallacious, Capitalist Roader, Denouncable, Factionalist, Vandalizing, Unserious, Commandist, Careerist,

[paradoxius]

Gwyn can't touch this

[paradoxius]

[paradoxius]

Theres also a pretty significant overlap between the kind of people who think that society will crumble if people are bad at interpreting fiction and the kind of people who will get mad when someone suggests they need to read theory if they want their political opinions to be taken seriously. Which to me suggests less of an actual concern with literacy and critical thought and more of just a desire to jerk one's self off about being high minded. But I digress.

[paradoxius]

Left-wing populism is, and always was, the answer

[paradoxius]

Damn, if only there was some kind of theory of society as a complex system of relations determined by material conditions that could help us find an answer here. Something capable of both seeing through liberal idealism and contesting the popular appeal of fascism. Some kind of -ism that could help us reshape social relations for the common good. Hmm...

Whats the deal with Sorkin? I never watched West Wing, but it sounds like some kind of liberal political fantasy. What makes it so screwy?

People far smarter than me have deconstructed what is so poisonous about The West Wing.

It presents a fantasy where centrist liberals are able to fix everything about the American government, simply by giving compassion speeches where they destroy their enemies with facts and logic. At which point, the enemies graciously give up and set aside their fangs. They realize they have been defeated in the marketplace of ideas. They were factually incorrect, the foundations of their ideology have been shaken. Has it all been for naught? Yes. Yes it has.

[paradoxius]

girl: ahh i've just been dealing with a lot y'know? it's like the world wants me dead haha

me (completely stonefaced): i will be your shield

her: what?

[paradoxius]

“male loneliness epidemic” and “friendzoning” are similar concepts to me in that the conditions they describe are literally experienced by everyone at some point in their lives but when its men its some sort of profound injustice that needs to be rectified by checks notes giving them unfettered access to the public good that is Women

[paradoxius]

on this veteran's day I would like to encourage every active duty us soldier to become a veteran immediately

[paradoxius]

Since we're getting into "did you know that Santa's eight tiny reindeer are a reference to the eight legs of Odin's steed?" season once again, remember: while there are some elements of Christmas (or Hallowe'en, or Easter, or...) observations that are probably pre-Christian in origin, before one believes any of that this-is-really-100%-just-a-Pagan-holiday-with-the-serial-numbers-filed-off stuff, one must consider all of the following possibilities:

Our earliest known records of the cited pre-Christian practices were written down by some random Christian monk centuries after the fact, and we genuinely have no idea how accurate this account is, to what extent the apparent similarities with Christian practice are due to the author deliberately or unwittingly putting a Christian spin on it, or indeed, whether they were just making shit up.

The similarities between the two sets of practices have been exaggerated or misrepresented by Christian writers who were bent for prefiguration theology (i.e., the idea that the Bible echoes backwards in time and pre-Christian religious practices were unwittingly imitating future Christian practices).

The similarities between the two sets of practices have been exaggerated or misrepresented by Protestant writers who believe that all Pagan deities are Satan in disguise, so they think that if they can prove that Catholic practices are secretly Pagan in origin, that proves that Catholics are secretly Satanists.

The similarities between the two sets of practices have been exaggerated or misrepresented by overzealous mythographers trying to prove that all mythology and religion throughout all of human history is secretly a single unified monomyth; if it's pre-Victorian, expect shades of prefiguration theology, while if it's post-Victorian, expect a lot of stuff about the Collective Unconscious.

A bunch of 19th Century proto-Fascists were trying to construct a pre-Jewish cultural identity (and considered Christianity to be tainted by association), but didn't want to give up any of the fun rituals, so they made some shit up about how it was still okay to do Christmas because something something Odin, or whatever.

A bunch of early 20th Century Pagan reconstructionists filled in the gaps in their understanding of pre-Christian ritual with culturally Christian assumptions, then turned around and pointed at their own accidentally Christianised reconstructions as evidence that Christian practices are derived from them.

A bunch of late 20th Century self-help manual authors tried to break into the occult bookstore market by uncritically repeating any or all of the above.

Someone on the Internet just made it up.

[paradoxius]

seems anarchy takes on the role it does in tumblr discourse because dunking on the imagined single global Anarchist project and its standardised principles, tactics and theory are quite a useful surrogate for otherwise heterogenously minded communists to share frustrations about the failure of whatever communist element, and for projection about communist factionalism and lack of “seriousness” onto an outside entity. anarchy forms an outgroup for online communist bonding, an effective stay on outlining an actual project that still feels like doing something. how often do you think anarchy has been anywhere near the biggest barrier to your particular communist aspirations? how often do you think other communist factions have served a more pertinent role? maybe be serious about that!

[paradoxius]

Here's a legal PSA:

If you've committed a crime and a detective gathers everyone involved in the room, especially if he's not actually a detective and is instead a novelist, puzzle-setter, psychic, fake psychic, dog, chess grandmaster, etc. ...

YOU SHOULD NOT CONFESS.

Every year, hundreds of people are put away by non-traditional "detectives" who have either inserted themselves into the case or are working with the police in a dubiously legal capacity as advisor. In 99% of these cases, the murderer gives a full confession even though the evidence against them is circumstantial at best and often requires a long just-so story which can only guess at motive.

If this happens to you, stay quiet, do not attempt to defend yourself or talk your way out of it, only say "I want a lawyer".

Now if you find yourself being investigated by a boy genius, magician's assistant, anthropologist, classics scholar, or philosopher, it's likely that refusing to talk to the police (or investigator with no legal authority) is merely the end of the second act, and by the end of the third act they will have you dead to rights.

YOU SHOULD STILL NOT CONFESS.

Make them take it to court. Force the eccentric detective and his straight-laced police partner to take the stand and explain their methods to a jury of your peers. Have your lawyer look at the chain of custody on the evidence, especially if you believe it to have been handled by someone who has only bumbled into detective work through their natural charm and/or unique set of skills and outsider perspective that come in handy more often than they should.

Know your rights. Don't let eccentric detectives put you away.