#that's mad men this is different

[fantasyfantasygames]

Made Men

Made Men, Employee Games, 2016

I sure do have a lot of games about playing robots on my list.

The term "made man" comes from the Mafia - it means you're officially in the club, as it were. Here, there's a double meaning, because you're also playing an android. You look basically human, but were built at a secret Mafia robot factory. The game is set in the futuristic year 2008, so the authors are clearly just putting a lampshade on the fact that we still can't make androids today.

The basic setup involves your crew creating a conspiracy-within-a-conspiracy. You balance doing successful jobs, knocking off those above you, and not getting caught (of course). You slowly take over the Mafia and run it, thus making your creator the de facto head of the whole operation. Unless you all decide to turn on him. Your characters are all male-presenting, which is presented as a choice on the part of the androids' creator to make it easier to infiltrate the Mafia.

The art and layout are the best things in the book. It's a softcover, but designed to look like printed sheets with photos attached by paperclip. The photos are subtly 'shopped to give people duplicate faces, especially in the background of some of the major figures' photos. There are pieces of Delta Green that do this to good effect, and Made Men does it even slightly better.

The rules are uninspired. They aren't tailored to the setting, so everyone has a set of generic stats (Physical, Mental, and Social), a set of skills, and a few options for Advantages and Disadvantages. Some of the skills, like Biology or Painting, seem totally unhelpful in a mafia game. It's point-buy. There's an "Iron Stomach" advantage in a game where your characters don't eat. Combat is a boring back-and-forth roll-off until someone runs out of HP. I think this was someone's Tri-Stat-meets-HERO house system that they just slapped onto an interesting concept.

The game includes tons of NPCs with fairly good plot hooks. It's another game where it's worth throwing out the system and playing it in whatever generic system you prefer.

The first edition of Made Men was published back to back with another game, Maid Men. The second edition is a stand-alone. I'm not sure what the story is there.

[stuckinapril]

OK I’ve been having bicurious thoughts and tumblr has to know first

[xmimikyuusx]

Being a gay trans man means every sliver of representation in media you get for any facet of your identity lays under this crushing layer of "we can't say it out loud, it has to be a secret, it has to have a layer of doubt so that the people who are uncomfortable with your existence can comfortably ignore and deny it" and then other people will happily say you should love your gay and trans rep being so deep in the closet you're under the damn floor.

[antigonenikk]

hoosier and leckie are actually not cringe to me at all....at any modern day university leckie is the super hot dude in your english lit class who u see around town on dates with actual models. hes kind of annoying when it comes to literary analysis, but will always open the door for you and is polite to the professor. not cringe. meanwhile hoosier is the most desired man on campus. definition of nonchalant. faded on dabs 24/7, chain smoking cigarillos, blasting the loudest rap in the world from the speakers he smuggled into the dorms. always has on a ripped vetements hoodie he stole from bucky's dorm room to piss him off. invites to every frat party on campus. opposite of cringe.

[dailyjermasparkle]

mcu has gone from sparkle on to sparkle off :[

[cuntstable]

its like if youre gonna use sa as a repeat Thing that happens in your story, thats more or less an inescabable thing for the characters (particularily women) in it then one would hope you as the author would have like something to say about the subject. like maybe a point to make about it or the lasting trauma of it or the process of recovering from it. if the characters it keeps happening to just sort of freak out and then move on OR their struggles with it are off screen while the actual assault was shown in full detail then idk. is it worth putting in there? death and hell on you as a writer

[fun-k-boards]

All I'm gonna say is that if you don't like it when Kurt is known or written about by some fans as his evolution or movie version, more strictly christian, a teenager, shyer, etc. Then you shouldn't be okay with X-23 being more commonly known as an adult and treated almost exclusively as one by fans and comics 🤷

[abrahamvanhelsings]

"goodsir is neoliberalism bc he tried to kill those guys blah blah blah" they kidnapped him and then they made him cut up men to be consumed as an act of control and pure humiliation by threatening to kill probably the last man he still liked in that party, forcing him to be complicit in an act he is viciously against, and to be complicit in the survival of the very men who betrayed the whole expedition and who are using him like a tool. and then the guy he's trying to protect comes up to him to sob and monologue at him about cannibalism and religion and acts of survival and belief as some kind of justification for the fact that he's an absolute pussy ass bitch who'd rather lie down and take it than stand up in the face of acts and circumstances he finds abhorrent. and goodsir was supposed to not be a cunt abt that? lol

[bigothteddies]

I think every time I see a “girls do x boys do y” post in 2024 I take 500 damage

[echoes-solace]

GUNS 'N ROSES

wdym, im not obsessed with sherjeb at all. i totally dont think that the second coming of christ and fake cowboy would be something beyond friends. why would you ever think that

anyways. hi. yes. sherjeb fuels my heart and soul and i was too damn tired to actually shade this.

OH! ALSO! I MADE A PLAYLIST FOR THESE TWO. you should totally check it out:

[eff-plays]

Yes yes women writing Astarion with women isn't inherently homo/bi/panphobic but he's not bottoming enough in your fics and I'm tired of it.

He deserves to get dicked down. I have not once seen a fic where he bottoms. Do I have to do everything around here myself 🙄

[innocet]

calling 14 your babygirl is not a replacement for the very real need dr who has for more female doctors

[mad-hunts]

i know no one necessarily asked for this information, BUT yes, barton did do masks with marcy while she was still around and also... yes, he might've looked a little bit like this self-care garfield while doing it. and honestly, he still puts on masks sometimes. so here's a little advice for y'all... if your muse is trying to talk to barton about anything that might possibly trouble him / make him angry — they might wanna do it while barton's doing his thing here, because it is pretty much a FACT that he can not be in a bad mood while he's like this LOL

[area51-escapee]

I guess that what I wish people understood is that “trans men often spent years being perceived as, treated as, and possibly even identifying as women” and “trans men are not just women who happen to look like men” are both very true statements

[cam-the-orange-cat]

okay

so i'm writing a DCU fan fiction, and (as I often do) I got so stuck in my own head about writing the DCU characters "accurately" that I ran myself straight into a creative brick wall. To combat this, I started reading the comics of the characters I'm using and oh my god...

I've made a lot of jokes that DC "writes fan fiction of their fan fiction"—like, it shouldn't be called The Detective Comics Universe. It should be called the Detective Comics Alternative Universes. But I had forgotten how truly inconsistent and difficult to track some of these stories and arcs are. Don't get me wrong—I absolutely love DC. I'm a die-hard DC fan, always have been and always will be.

BUT OH MY GOD

I SWEAR

I'm convinced the writers have like, a singular piece of scratch paper and they're essentially playing a game of narrative telephone between comic issues. It's absolute whiplash sometimes. I got through a major arc and am still not entirely sure what I just read.

And I feel much better about writing these characters.

[idonthaveacontract]

I'm not even going to reblog this I just want to say this website is so deeply oversaturated by incredibly contrived "have you _____" polls like as if you can make money off them or something. somehow it reminds me of the cbd and vape stores that opened in every abandoned Arby's in the months before they put medical marijuana on the ballot here. it's the internet equivalent of frozen yogurt in 2009