i cannot hate myself into a version of me i will love.

i cannot punish myself in any way that will unmake the past.

A woman demonstrating use of a guandao, also formally known as a yanyuedao (偃月刀; reclining moon blade).

Putting all tabletop players into a college level ethics class and forcing them to turn in a paper on moral philosophy before buying a new book

This is…. An interesting thing to say… on this post in particular….

I think a lot of people reblogging this from @probablybadrpgideas are interpreting this as “this would be such a funny wacky way to make the table soooo complicated” but I mean this as a complaint about the way that so many tabletop players seem to just. completely lack an understanding of ethics. what it actually means to behave ethically and treat others ethically. and i dont mean this as "why do people want to be mean and play as villains? :(" i mean "why are there so many tabletop players that sympathize with outright fascist factions to the point of wondering why theyre listed as 'Lawful Evil' in the book"

can you talk me through why this was a particularly bad or challenging thing for your party to have done

Goblins were in fact, for me, a turning point on this concept. I had a player who wanted to be a goblin, and I forgot about this fact up to the point that the party got a quest to kill goblins. As soon as I was announcing the quest I realized it would be a problem, though I didn't have anything else ready so I went with it. And it was! The players immediately questioned why the mayor was paying mercenaries to kill goblins, and then further questioned his justifications, at which point I realized it would be a better story if the goblins were a scapegoat and not an actual villain. This turned into a terse interrogation where the mayor threatened to put them in jail once their questions got pointed enough that he would have to either field accusations or lie; they then went CSI on the situation and drilled through his political cabinet to get answers. I had to improv pretty much all of it and I don't remember the actual ending (I know they sided with the goblins and the mayor was guilty), but this helped me realize that the Gary Gygax writing style of "certain races are just BAD and that's why they hang out in dungeons" was very short-sighted.

D&D writing, by and large, encourages a lack of questions. The surface runs deep. "Go into a cave and chop up goblins." Why are we doing this? "Goblins are bad." All goblins? "Yes."

I think the question of "why are there players comfortable siding with fascist factions and wondering why they're called 'lawful evil'" is pretty easily answered with... because D&D itself is inherently kind of fascist. And it's the most insidious kind of fascist, too- its villains are fascists, so how could you point fingers at the book?

Fire Giants are dwarf slavers. Drow are a megalomaniacal theocracy who hate men. Orcs are violent tribes of marauding killers. Illithids want to destroy all life and keep an entire civilization to scrub their floors. But these narratives still push the idea that "evil" is a racial trait. The players are not only justified in their campaign to destroy these cultures, they're encouraged to do it.

They let the cat out of the bag by making these playable races; because now, they're not cut-and-dry villanous societies. They're people. There are Drow accountants whose lives are about balancing taxes, not worshipping Lolth. There are Yuan-Ti who don't sacrifice babies on altars, and much prefer playing the lute or sewing blankets. Yet we're still expected to read "Chaotic Evil" under the Monster Manual entry for a bugbear and take it seriously.

Reblogging again to add a quick take: as a DM introducing ethics makes your game so much better.

I had an intro to my campaign that involved a mad scientist kidnapping someone and turning them into a wererat. I didn't think much of it and I spent way more time fleshing out the other NPCs, I just wanted to use that wererat as a boss fight.

Once the party encountered him though they immediately saw what I totally missed: the guy who became the wererat was absolutely the victim of this story. I did my best at thinking on my feet and made the wererat this defeated guy who only followed the mad scientist because he felt like his life was ruined. So they, through good rolls, convinced him to help them fight the mad scientist and it made for such a better story.

The moral I'm trying to convey is that you need to treat every NPC in your game as a world within themselves. And I mean EVERY NPC. Why are the wolves attacking people? Are they desperately hungry? Mind controlled? Territorial due to poachers? Why are the goblins working for the wizard? Extortion? Promise of riches? If the bandits see that everyone is in armor, why wouldn't they just let the party pass and wait for easier prey? If one of the bandits die, why wouldn't the rest of them run for the hills?

here’s a couple of articles on the history of racism + xenophobia in tolkien & how that influenced dnd

anyone interested in the subject should definitely also check out the whole Three Black Halflings podcast, which talks about being black in nerdy spaces. a lot of times they’ll have on guests talking about their intersections and experiences in nerdy spaces. they have an episode with the author of the articles above.

they’ve also played a ttrpg based on african mythologies rather than mostly european ones like most mainstream fantasy.

highly recommend!!

[Image descriptions:

2. Tumblr tags from "grad-school-fool" that read: "do you know how hard it is to DM a party with MORALS"; "their first dungeon they unionized the goblins"; "because thats what happens when you treat sentient species as sentient". /End ID]

Straight guys who use tumblr are the funniest people ever literally how did you end up here

Dei hire

it must be so fun to be a bird and go into a hedge 😆

This Day in Buster… January 18, 1926 “Seven Chances,” with the title “Busters miljoner,” opens in Sweden.

Film Made in (1925) With Rosalind Byrne

absolutely magnificent Fuck You, Pay Me energy from ms byrne

Actually all depictions of robots being cold to the touch are wrong. Those things have got to be super warm, if my laptop can almost burn my thighs then .. I mean... I mean.

I’m not gonna stop till this breaks containment genuinely this is my only good post

who’s gonna tell tumblr that executive dysfunction is more than Not Doing Things?

okay

these are the executive functions. impairment of these functions is executive dysfunction

Oh.

OH

Girl, help. None of my executives are functioning

Today I made Eliot’s sandwich from The Office Job. It was very good, totally understandable why Hardison stole it. XD

) <- super parenthesis. reblog to close all parentheticals you opened and forgot to close in your life and return to equilibrium

they Expect you to Pass but they dont expect you to pass

"I actually think this character is better as a feminine boy than a trans girl" is like the trans equivalent to "strong platonic relationships between boys is more important than gay relationships in fiction"

Continuation of the pattern of "its more subversive to be gender non conforming than to transition, actually"

The status quo is not transitioning. The status quo is keeping transgender people as odd examples of their AGAB.

“Normal” test results are not the relief people think they are. When you wake up in pain and continue to be in pain for hours every day and your tests come back normal you don’t stop being in pain.

Leverage Redemption S02E09 The Pyramid Job.

Scientist bakes sourdough bread with yeast derived from 4500 year old Egyptian pottery

i'm losing my mind @ this thread......historie......

also please note that this scientist is in fact the retired man who invented the xbox.

oh fuck i listened to a podcast that was interviewing him and the process he went through to make this bread, ologies with allie ward like he went through full on clean room levels of prep to ensure that this was 100% yeast from old egypt and had to bend over backwards to ensure everything involved was uncontaminated he then revealed that the original xbox logo...

is a sourdough boule

@isalisewrites @wolfjackle @hailsatanacab

Hat tip @eldriwolf what a cool story!