#feel free to provide as goofy/Obvious a joke answer as you like here

[2oul2ilver]

Can someone explain to me why Blue motherfucking Oak has this whole hourglass waist situation going on. Where do those Hips come from. I gotta know

[words-writ-in-starlight]

Hey do you have any advice for DM's or players? My friends and I are fairly new to this and I would appreciate any advice! Sorry for the bother

IN FACT I DO.  Now, again, my DM style could generously be called “freewheeling” and “unprepared” so like...go elsewhere if you want to learn The Numbers.  (Can someone explain how to use challenge rating usefully to design my encounters please I’m begging.)  However.

IN GENERAL

DnD is a collaborative effort.  I’m gonna harp on this one a little, but seriously.  DnD, or any other RPG, is a group effort.  That means everyone should be having fun, no single person should be controlling everything, no one should be wildly out of tone with the others, and no one should be playing with the intent to fuck over the group.  

Host provides the snacks.  Traditionally this is the DM, and it’s still sort of generally agreed that, in lieu of a host, the DM is still Snack Bearer, but no matter who you are, if you’re hosting DnD then give your party something to eat.  This is partly because there’s a long history of enjoying a salty snack while killin’ dragons, and partly because your average DnD session runs three or four hours and if you don’t eat a meal immediately beforehand or provide snacks, people will get pretty cranky at some point.  Everyone needs to be thinking clearly while they fight Y’gathon the Ravenous or whatever.

Loosen up a little.  Playing pretend feels awkward at first, and there’s an inclination to make the whole thing a joke as a defense against feeling like you’re being a dumbass.  And you’re totally free to make your campaign as goofy and joke-filled as you want!  But also try to embrace your character, try to embrace the fantasy world, try to just generally set aside the need to be a “grown up” and just play pretend.  Especially if you’re looking to hit some emotional beats, or hit a more serious note than “dick jokes, the DnD party”, it’ll take a little doing to get people to stop feeling shy and awkward about it.  This is going to come up again in the DM section.

PLAYERS

Party balance does matter--yeah, seriously.  That’s not to say you shouldn’t play exactly the character you want to play!  Make that dark elf prince DeviantArt OC you swore would never see the light of day!  Indulge your lifelong desire to Animorph--Druids do that!  Give your character the angstiest backstory and the most overdramatic appearance you’ve ever discarded for Real Writing!  The world is your oyster!  But if you party doesn’t have at least a healer and maybe at least one person with more than fifteen hit points (looking at you, All Spellcaster Parties), you may find yourself in a bit of a pinch and your DM may not be sympathetic.  If your group is big enough, I’d suggest trying to hit the classic four-person RPG starter party at bare minimum: Healer, Tank, Rogue, Damage-dealer (probably a caster).  That’ll cover most situations, both in and out of combat.  Get creative from there.  If you don’t have enough people (party of three), see if your DM will give you an NPC to fill out that roster--if they won’t, maybe drop the healer and blow 100% of your cash on healing potions.  IDK, that’s not my problem.  Which brings me to...

There’s no such thing as a boring class.  I know, I know, some dude’s about to show up and give me a bunch of crap about paladins.  I know.  But honestly there are so many options to mod the fuck out of DnD classes that everyone needs to calm down.  Homebrew your shit and stop whining.  Specifically, this is regarding two categories: Tank and Healer.  Nobody wants to be the guy casting Punch when everyone else can cast Wall of Fire, or making sure that your delicate little thief doesn’t get one-shotted before they can net those sweet sweet Sneak Attacks, but honestly the builds are still pretty fun.  If your cleric build is boring you, look for a cleric build that’s more interesting!  If you don’t like the classic Fighter or Barbarian, rummage around in the alternative paths!  Especially the 5e builds have a lot of really cool options right there in the Player’s Handbook, and if those aren’t doing it for you, the Internet has your back.  Finally, if what you really want is to be able to just fucking 1v1 the boss or to be Deeply Beloved by your party, Tank and (useful) Healer are your respective tickets to those outcomes.  And if you really, really still want to be an arcane spellcaster, try a Warlock for your kinda delicate tank and a Bard for your healer.

Don’t play to sabotage.  This sounds obvious, but this is “it’s a collaborative effort” for players, and it’s extremely important.  You shouldn’t be playing to sabotage the group and you shouldn’t be playing to sabotage the DM.  It’s not going to endear you to them, it’s not going to be funny, and it’s probably going to make your party turn on you in-game at some point, at which point it won’t even be fun for you.  If you’re not going into DnD with the honest desire to have a good time and do your best to work with everyone so you all have a collective good time, then let me ask for the sake of your future party that you maybe...don’t.  As far as the DM goes, your DM puts a lot of work into your sessions!  Probably more than you’re aware of!  That doesn’t mean you have to let them put your campaign on rails, but it does mean you shouldn’t go out actively looking for ways to upend their work.  That’s just rude.

Share the spotlight.  You’re not always going to be the center of attention.  Learn to love the other characters in your party and get invested in their arcs!  Build emotional connections between your character and the others, so that when they get plot advancement, you get plot advancement!  Above all, don’t try to hurry things along so that the narrative gets back to you, if someone else is getting a moment in the sun.  A good DM will get to everyone.  Just go with it.

You’re gonna have a dump stat--make it narratively interesting.  A “dump stat” is that one stat you put your lowest ability score into and subsequently become known for being Absolutely Shit with.  Mine is almost always Charisma.  My mother is playing a Barbarian: her character is as dumb as a sack of hammers, with the Intelligence score to match.  Play into that dump stat!  In fact, play into all your stats!  Why is your character so uncharismatic--are they brusque or just shy?  What part of their backstory informs that?  Why are they buff (Strength) and tough (Constitution)?  How did they decide to get that way?  Why do they have the skills you chose for them?  Stats aren’t just numbers on a page, they’re the core of the character you’re building, so make them part of the story.  And on a related note, my final bit of player advice...

Give! Your! Character! A! Backstory!  Your character DID NOT spring fully formed from the ether (I mean, unless, of course, they did, which is a pretty interesting backstory to be going on with), and the more you buff out your character’s backstory and tell your DM about it, the more they’ll be able to work you into the story they’re telling.  I would personally suggest having, like, a couple people who might still be alive out of that backstory, so that your DM has some easy stuff to work with, but bare bones you need to answer the question “why are you [CLASS] and what event brought you to that?”

DM (Under the cut because, like, trade secrets and also this is pretty long already)

You are all-powerful.  Not even the rules can tell you what to do.  If you want elevators, include elevators.  If you want to include house rules, distribute those motherfuckers and use them.  If you want a nat 20 to always, always succeed, regardless of circumstances, then it always succeeds, no questions.  If you like the Dawn War pantheon but not the Dawn War universe, stuff some deities in your pockets and make a hasty escape to your homebrew setting.  You are the DM and at the end of the day, nobody can stop you from changing the rules to suit you.  This means that, if you don’t know the rules as well as you would like to, a confident tone of voice and some degree of consistency is just as good!  It also means that, until you say it aloud, absolutely everything is in flux--if your characters just are not making progress on the mystery you set up and are continuously interrogating the wrong people, you’re totally free to just give one of those people some relevant information!  It’s easy to feel beholden to whatever you previously decided on, but seriously, you’re a god, you can just change stuff to make it work.  On the other hand...

You are ultimately responsible for the narrative--and therefore everyone’s good time.  That might sound like a lot of pressure, but it’s the truth.  With great power comes great responsibility.  This means not abusing your power as DM to target someone, to manipulate events to match your preferred outcome, or to dramatically alter the narrative your players are constructing.  Ultimately, you are there to give them a sandbox, they’re not here to play out your story.  Sometimes in order to let your players do what the party really wants to do, you need to give up some narrative threads that you spent time and effort plotting out.  That’s not to say it’s never worth it to put things on rails--especially in shorter campaigns, a party might really benefit from the DM keeping them on track--but a narrative will always be more fun if you build it together, rather than trying to sabotage their attempts to keep them to your planned path.  Moreover, as DM, you are the authority figure, so if you see something in-universe or out-of-character you’re not comfortable with or seems in bad faith, say something.  I know the rule of improv is “say yes” and DnD is, at its heart, an improv-based story, but you have the responsibility as the DM to ensure that everyone is having fun and sometimes that means saying “fuck no.”

Be a fan of your party.  I boosted this one from the Powered By The Apocalypse games, because I think it’s a great rule.  Basically, you, as the person running the game, should be a fan of the characters!  That means giving them lots of chances for badass moments, emotional connections, and interesting personal plots.  The more you as the DM spread around the narrative love and the exciting beats between your party members, the more your players will enjoy seeing each other in the spotlight.

Get in touch with your inner sadist.  Remember those backstories I encouraged players to create?  Make them tell you every detail.  And then make them bleed.  Your character has a long-lost brother?  Sounds like you just got a convenient villain!  Your character’s village was burned down and they’re the sole survivor?  Mmm, what tasty opportunities for necromancy.  Your character spent their whole life loyal to their king and lost everything defending the throne?  Guess who just became the Big Bad?  Every person your character includes in their backstory is a leverage point, every place they’ve ever cried is now a destination on the party map, every tragedy they’ve ever suffered is a gift that they’ve given to you personally.  The more angst they include in their backstory, the less work you have to do coming up with personal plot arcs.  They’ll hand you that shit, all you have to do is take merciless advantage.  Have fun.

Make NPCs, and then make your players love them.  A helpful tavern keeper!  A beautiful guardswoman!  A stablehand with a secret!  An ornately detailed world is all well and good, but good NPCs are what will make your players get into the game.  Are you low on ideas?  Spend an hour thinking about supporting characters you love, and then insert them wholesale if your players are unfamiliar with the source media.  If you can’t get away with that, rename them, give them a new face, and now you have an NPC.  Example: I just met Gilmore in Critical Role!  I love him!  Now my players have a flirty shopkeep friend named Renwick who’s a tiefling but is otherwise indistinguishable from Gilmore.  No one has caught on yet.  I’m looking forward to putting his life in danger again to make them Upset.  (Did I not mention?  The full text of this rule in my mind is “make NPCs, make your characters love them, and then brutally kill them off” but then I’m told I’m a very angsty DM, so YMMV.)

Make failure narratively interesting.  This one is pretty straightforward--if your players fail at a task that’s plot-relevant, the failure should be as interesting as success would have been.  It may mean your characters spend a lot of time breaking out of prisons, but it’ll also mean that your players will be less likely to fudge dice rolls in order to “win” DnD.

The dice are your friends.  Someday your characters will try to fight something they really shouldn’t fight.  They will try to enchant something you didn’t give stats to.  They will try to do some dumb shit.  When all else fails, just roll a fistful of dice, assign purposes to each at random as needed, and wing it.  You didn’t give that character a Dex stat and now your cleric is casting Sacred Flame?  Roll a d6, that’s their brand new Dex stat, add it to a d20 and confidently report the outcome.  Which brings me to my last point...

Confidence is better than actual knowledge.  Not even Matt Mercer is right all the time about DnD rules.  There is literally too much information and too many myriad ways to tweak it in order to know everything about even a single edition of DnD, let alone the many other RPGs in the world.  Keep a computer near at hand for quick rule checks when needed, admit when you’re wrong when applicable, but if you can’t find something quickly and don’t know the answer, make a command decision and then stick to it.  As long as you’re consistent, confident, and fair, I guarantee you your players will not complain.

[tinymixtapes]

Column: Favorite Rap Mixtapes of October 2017

With a cascade of releases spewing from the likes of DatPiff, LiveMixtapes, Bandcamp, and SoundCloud, it can be difficult to keep up with the overbearing yet increasingly vital mixtape game. In this column, we aim to immerse ourselves in this hyper-prolific world and share our favorite releases each month. The focus will primarily be on rap mixtapes — loosely defined here as free (or sometimes free-to-stream) digital releases — but we’ll keep things loose enough to branch out if/when we feel it necessary. (Check out last month’s installment here.) --- Trippie Redd - A Love Letter To You 2 [STREAM · DOWNLOAD] All those Lil Uzi Vert comparisons notwithstanding, Ohio’s Trippie Redd is doing a fine job carving out his own lane as hip-hop’s closest thing to an opera singer. I mean, sure, there’s crooning, but then there’s Trippie Redd’s emotive bellow that erupts like a bat out of hell on the pre-hook for In Too Deep (I see the future in my plans / I’m gonna be good, it’s in God’s hands). Redd’s consistently ariose flow is the major draw for me: he’s got an amazing ear for melody, particularly those that instill sadness. While not entirely morose, the tape does embody themes of loneliness, nostalgia, and heartbreak (Baby wish me well / You know that I live in hell / I’m hellboy, I live in hell). Using autotune and endlessly-alluring, eerie, and ambient instrumentals as his brush, Trippie paints a world of vivid, lush euphony. And he does it effortlessly, with genuine affect. –Alex Brown --- Antwon - Sunnyvale Gardens [STREAM · DOWNLOAD] There’s a lot of talk about potential in the rap game these days. With infinite, uh, clout at stake for those early champions of the next to claim their fifteen minutes, rap nerdery can feel more than a little obsessed with the obscure. But what exactly are we hoping that these teenagers might turn into? With Sunnyvale Gardens, underground veteran Antwon provides one possible answer, summarizing the year in Soundcloud while retaining the form of an actual, polished album. It’s a reassuring step forward, a promise that the genre’s core tenets - unabashed emo influence, guitar front and center, gargled autotune melody - can carry weight even in the absence of minute-and-a-half runtimes and blown out mastering. In spanning seemingly the entire history of rap since 2010, Sunnyvale Gardens can certainly feel a bit uneven; more often than not, however, it’s worth your while - Antwon is the ideal auteur for the goofy sincerity of rap’s current moment. –Corrigan B --- Grandmilly & Shozae - Motel Six [STREAM · DOWNLOAD] The desk clerk hardly takes her eyes off the TV, absolutely never shoots you a straight glance, but make no mistake, she’ll scan her peripherals enough times to piece together a mental image. So it pays for you to look around too, giving her as little as possible without making it obvious. The game plays out perpetually. That’s what passes for hospitality here — that and musty carpets and buckled wallboards and busted heat pumps and penitentiary-level shower pressure and springy mattresses and HBO — because they know you’re only here on business. Bring your own amenities. –Samuel Diamond --- Evil Haze x CowboyKiller - Western Haze EP [STREAM · DOWNLOAD] Cowpokin’ ain’t a far cry from trappin’. Texan/Pennsylvanian tag-team Evil Haze and CowboyKiller ride foreign horses and tote big irons, shooting hissed bars from the hip atop oppressively crusty bass lines. Their first three-track collab, Western Haze is a desert heat wave, warping its cracking samples on the scorched horizon: it stifles in the biblical sense, drying my throat like baked clay as my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. Lay me in the dust of death and ride off, pistols blazing. I hear the whine of slide guitar against the lens flare in the pale blue sky. “I’m causing damage while you on the internet spamming,” CowboyKiller whispers from a distance so great that I’m unnerved to hear him at all. It cuts deep. –Jude Noel --- YoungBoy Never Broke Again - Ain’t Too Long [STREAM · DOWNLOAD] Ain’t Too Long, the latest chapter in Baton Rouge rapper YoungBoy Never Broke Again’s rapid ascent to hip-hop’s front page, arrived early October in peculiar form: a playlist of 8 YouTube videos on YoungBoy’s official page, not accessible via the usual mixtape sites nor the main-channel streaming services. This very unceremoniousness is exactly what makes the 18 year-old rapper so refreshing: his melodic, repetitive storytelling bears equal imprints of gen Z stylistic cues and Kevin Gates-esque confessionalism, and this latest tape finds him pensive and morose even in the face of great success. “Pour One” and “Better Man” start at the origin of his struggle and tell a story elliptically, looking back on betrayal and past selves with equal parts disbelief and gratitude. The circular melancholy in YoungBoy’s grates on the listener, at times unrelentingly sad even as the beat continues to bounce and fade out. What else are you looking for? –Nick Henderson --- Gunplay - Haram [STREAM · DOWNLOAD] There’s not good reason that Gunplay isn’t one of the biggest rappers in the world. He has more than enough intensity, talent, grind, uniqueness and hit-making ability to get over. Crossover appeal? C Monster and I saw him rock a noise showcase during Red Bull music week a couple years ago! Plus, Gucci Mane and DMX sustained careers through worse recidivism. Regardless, a couple years removed from a debut album that was understandably underwhelming (in that it was so needlessly belated and highly anticipated), Gunplay has sounded reinvigorated throughout 2017, powdery explosiveness complemented by a sensibility that was at the heart of his finest early works and now feels more attuned. Gunplay with precision and consistency. –Samuel Diamond --- Injury Reserve - Drive It Like It’s Stolen [STREAM · DOWNLOAD] God, these three will never get the credit they deserve. Drive It Like It’s Stolen is everything Injury Reserve fans have come to expect: beat-heavy, lyrically conscious songs drizzled with some of the silkiest flow in the game. The 23-minute mixtape showcases the dichotomy of the trio in a short amount of time. “See You Sweet” and “Boom (X3)” are tough enough to “have the landlord knocking like a burglary,” while “North Pole” and “Colors” sway slow enough to swing a room into a smoke-sesh. Jokes aside, Drive it Like It’s Stolen has moved Injury Reserve to a more permanent position in rap and lets the world know that the trio has finished flossing and is ready to eat again. –Sam Tornow --- araabMUZIK - One of One [STREAM · DOWNLOAD] In 2010, Dipset Trance Party was, as far as I was concerned, one of the coolest and most confounding things in music. Hosted by someone calling themselves “Your Boy SK,” the series of beat tapes, somehow inspired simultaneously by vocal trance and by the rhythm-focused, high-fidelity Dipset production aesthetic, introduced the world to araabMUZIK. Since the release of his debut album Electronic Dream one year later, in what was surely the biggest Dipset Trance Party success story, we haven’t heard very much from the producer, known for feverishly punching out drum sequences on his MPC as if it were a live percussion instrument. At six tracks, One of One feels like the perfect serving of his simple yet intoxicating blend of beats and emotional dance music. Nevelle Viracocha’s vocals on “Lock and Load” and “Wanted,” seated in the middle of the mix and shrouded in delay, take me back to the bygone Trance Party even more effectively than araabMUZIK’s studio efforts, while the drums hit with the swinging, hand-plucked weight I’ve come to expect from him. One of One is a nifty, powerful little collection of beats, as ready for SoundCloud freestyling as for home listening. –Will Neibergall --- Future & Young Thug - Super Slimey [STREAM · DOWNLOAD] According to the October 2017 edition of Physics Today: Allison Sweeney and her colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania now report that they may have a solution to the long-standing puzzle of how the squid lens establishes its protein-density gradient in a way that maintains uniform transparency. They found that cells at different radial positions within the lens produce different ratios of some 40 subtly different variants of S-crystallin. All the mixtures form gels — or at least a volume-spanning protein network — but at varying densities. The gelation prevents the proteins from aggregating into opaque clumps and damps local density fluctuations that could distort vision. –Samuel Diamond --- Lil Durk - Signed to the Streets 2.5 [STREAM · DOWNLOAD] I guess Lil Durk and Dej Loaf aren’t together anymore. I hope they’re ok! Really. Though never short on flexes, Lil Durk’s music has always had a believable earnestness far beyond that of his peers, neither cartoonishly immersed in his feelings nor insistent that they don’t exist. Despite never quite breaking out beyond Chicago, Durk has enjoyed massive sustained popularity there since well before drill entered (and subsequently exited) the national stage. There was a brief period this summer when it seemed like Distance was going to break through, and practically every track on Signed to the Streets 2.5 is similarly easy to imagine as a hit. Then again, that’s been the case for most of his career. –Corrigan B http://j.mp/2hruY3A