theoutcastrogue

[theoutcastrogue]

[theoutcastrogue]

[theoutcastrogue]

Raven Steals the Sun a glass collaboration sculpture by Tlingit artist Preston Singletary and David Franklin.

[theoutcastrogue]

[theoutcastrogue]

[theoutcastrogue]

In The Odyssey, Odysseus is extraordinary for the flexibility with which he can inhabit many different names, or no name at all. It is this quality of being multinamed and nameless that enables him to survive. By contrast, almost all the warriors of The Iliad yearn to have a name and a story that lasts forever. Their many names and titles, as sons and brothers and comrades and fathers and rulers, are essential to their identities, their connections with one another, and their fame after death. They fear, above all, being humiliated (cursed with a negative name), or forgotten and nameless. The lists and catalogs of names are essential to the poem’s own work, of memorializing and mourning the dead. Once the bodies return to dust, these syllables are all that remain.

– Emily Wilson, Translator's note for The Iliad.

[theoutcastrogue]

this is the funniest scp and yet i've never seen anyone posting about it:

[theoutcastrogue]

Oh come on, that's not the same. Books and films are experienced passively (in the sense that you read/watch without being able to control their content in any way), roleplaying games are experienced very very actively.

Invoking Rule Zero to bypass bad rules is not inherently wrong - or inherently right. It depends on the case.

For example, if I say "ugh, I hate alignment in D&D", and you tell me "no worries! Rule Zero! just don't play with alignment!", the strength of the argument depends on the system (the D&D edition, since we're going with such a narrow example), and on why I hate it, exactly.

If I hate it because, among other things, it affects the entire hobby's culture, and in my humble opinion makes it worse, then Rule Zero is neither here or there. I'm talking about something fundamental, that to some degree influences all publications, adventures, rules, lore, storylines, and expectations. So it doesn't matter if Rule Zero "allows" me, personally, to play without alignment.

If I hate it because it make the game worse for me, specifically, then all that matters is MY game, and how easily I can fix that. So am I talking about D&D 3.5? Rule Zero can't fucking help me. I have to rewrite the whole system to get rid of alignment, it's baked in every rule, whole class concepts are based on it. It's still feasible, but at that point I'm playing a variant of my own invention, not 3.5, and I did it DESPITE the rules, not THANKS to them.

However, if I'm talking about D&D 5e, and I'm still focusing on my game, and I don't care (or at the moment I put aside my concerns) about the hobby's culture at large, then Rule Zero is a perfectly valid argument! I CAN get rid of alignment in 5e with no fuss at all. I've been doing it since the start. Anyone can, you don't need experience in homebrewing and houseruling, you just summarily ignore it in the VERY few places it appears in the rules. There. Problem solved. And I WILL give credit to the system for allowing me to do that effortlessly, because it was obviously intentional. The only reason they didn't ditch that stupid rule altogether was marketing and grand plans for IP-milking, not game design. The game is no longer designed around alignment, so it's trivial to change or remove entirely. Rule Zero is working well here.

There's no game system that's one-size-fits-all. If it's got rules at all, then some group, somewhere, would benefit from tweaking them. And specifically, it would benefit MORE from tweaking the rules of game A than playing game B as written. Because game B doesn't perfectly fit their needs either, does it?

I do encourage people to try out more systems, but when they find something with a solid chassis that pleases them on the whole, I also encourage them to fuck with it.

"The GM is the ultimate arbiter of the rules and can modify rules at will to suit their table" is a useful principle to have in mind and apply to your table on a personal basis, but it getting informally codified by the D&D community as the maxim of "Rule 0" has been a complete disaster for anyone who wants to publicly engage with tabletop rpgs on a game design level. No other single concept has been as destructive as it to the very existence of tabletop game design discussion.

[theoutcastrogue]

mistborn prints | patreon

[theoutcastrogue]

Crazy how many people want characters in fiction to speak and act like they’ve had 20 hours of intensive therapy. Could NOT be me I want these bitches fucked up insane

[theoutcastrogue]

That’s enough phone content. I’m done now.

If you support me on Patreon, I might be able to break more things in the future though!

[theoutcastrogue]

Just learned this absolutely delightful bit of etymology:

During the 15th century, the English had an endearing practice of granting common human names to the birds that lived among them. Virtually every bird in that era had a name, and most of them, like Will Wagtail and Philip Sparrow have been long forgotten. Polly Parrot has stuck around, and Tom Tit and Jenny Wren, personable companions of the English countryside, are names still sometimes found in children’s rhymes. Other human names, however, have been incorporated so durably into the common names that still grace birds as to almost entirely obscure their origin. The Magpie, a loquacious black and white bird with a penchant for snatching shiny objects, once bore the simple name “pie,” probably coming from its Roman name, “pica.” The English named these birds Margaret, which was then abbreviated to Maggie, and finally left at Mag Pie. The vocal, crow-like bird called Jackdaw was also once just a “daw” named “Jack.”  The English also gave their ubiquitous and beloved orange-bellied, orb-shaped, wren-sized bird a human name. The first recorded Anglo-Saxon name for the Eurasian Robin was ruddoc, meaning “little red one.” By the medieval period, its name evolved to redbreast (the more accurate term orange only entered the English language when the fruit of the same name reached Great Britain in the 16th century). The English chose the satisfyingly alliterative name Robert for the redbreast, which they then changed to the popular Tudor nickname Robin. Soon enough, the name Robin Redbreast became so identified with the bird that Redbreast was dropped because it seemed so redundant. 

[theoutcastrogue]

cause Im still getting money

[theoutcastrogue]

Sex Isn't Real And You Can't Have It

[theoutcastrogue]

Medieval Thieves: How They Worked – and How to Outsmart Them

Discover the clever tricks used by medieval thieves—from sticky cakes for guard dogs to candle-carrying turtles—and the inventive methods used to catch them, as revealed in The Book of Charlatans.

Click here to read

[theoutcastrogue]

Life in Hell (1977-2012) Matt Groening

[theoutcastrogue]

apparently Rus’ merchants would pretend to be Christian when they traded in Syria because Christians paid lower import duties, which I think is a funny image