Wandering Adventure Party

I also protest the idea that there was no sense for “balance” in these old school games. Rather, there was just a greater weight of that weird faux-realism game designers can’t shake.

Andre talks about “fairness” in several passages and grant’s rules based on it. So it’s not like the idea doesn’t exist. It’s more that St. Andre thinks that dwarves are a clearly superior species to humans and that’s reflected in their stat line.

I had a good laugh at ~“we wanted to add a glossary, but we decided to leave it to you to save space. If you don’t know what [a weapon] is, look it up”

Finally an RPG writer honest about being lazy and leaving work to the GM.

I can’t really imagine playing a campaign with this rule set. Lots of hand waving, incomplete explanations, some bonkers decisions, and poor layout

But it is an interesting piece of history, and there are a couple of fun ideas. It definitely exists in the space of “games before people knew what the game was” products.

I appreciate that there is a 2013 reprinting of Tunnels & Trolls 1E.

But I hate that it appears to be a scan of type written document. The fading, artifacts, and wacky weight from an undisciplined typist make reading this very unpleasant and hard on the eye.

@Elizafox@social.treehouse.systems You may not wish to answer, because I'm probably going to be annoying by turning to this answer over and over again: So what? Find a place to insert that life. Gaps always exist somewhere.

@sludgecatheter@outerheaven.club

This isn't your bad at all, I'm just neurotic about gassing up my friends since I have so few lol

I do not judge you or myself here. I only know them by this one action. They're a Strawman to me. This is sorta the implicit assumption in all online stories. You're forced to make judgements on the character of a story rather than the actual multifaceted individual, because what else can you do? If all I can know is based on that one interaction then I feel my assessment is fair in isolation. Just as is yours with the greater context.

either you hurt them and they end up nursing a hidden pain that they can't tell you about, or else they tell you the truth and you wind up feeling like a real prick. Winner loses

Totally agree. Insecurity is often self-defeating like this. It forces you into impossible win-conditions.

since if you're like me and prone to self-flagellating over your unforced errors you can end up feeling the whip months later.

This is definitely a problem I face. There are certain things I will hold onto for years, especially if they're unpleasant for me. It's part of why I find this kind of action detestable; it's tricking someone into doing something they would not knowingly choose to do. It's duplicitous, agency-stealing, and can cause real harm. All for a selfish desire or nagging doubt. I'd say you shouldn't feel bad about it, but that's selling a magazine I don't subscribe to.

I wonder if it takes as much effort for everyone else as it evidently does for us.

I have complicated feelings about this. For some people it doesn't take as much effort, not because it is effortless for them, but because they don't put effort into it. They just kinda coast on reflex and desire and don't think about it, and what happens, happens. Like touching a hot stove and thinking a sky-wizard God air-fried your hand, rather than figuring out cause-and-effect. For others, I think they went through the right school of hard knocks enough as kids to learn a feral instinct. For others it is a massive effort. But I feel there is kinda an unhealthy tendency to ascribe some kind of 'it' factor or magic to it in some circles.

@Elizafox@social.treehouse.systems I don't think the goal is necessary to undo. Maybe it's a bit full of myself: but sometimes resistance - even fruitless and otherwise pointless - to the anti-life is the only space you create for a life.

I understand the despondency, but since I seek moments of life, it goes to a place I can't quite follow. I feel its important to have some level of detachment from the outcome, and to be able to subsist on a few moments of because fuck you, world spite.

So yeah, it probably won't work. Maybe it's just pissing into the gears of society for no real gain. So what? Fuck'em. Make some no-name functionary's life miserable, or cut the bottom line a tiny fraction. Fuck'em. Live that life.

@sludgecatheter@outerheaven.club People constantly trying to ambush me like this is what part of what gave me my paranoid defense mechanisms, why I have to think about everyone's motives.

I totally get the desire for honest feedback, but this isn't the way. People only do this when they're insecure about your 'actual' thoughts, and so they often don't have a plan B when it goes wrong for them and they usually end up lashing out over it. It's incredibly unfair for someone to put their friends into a position where they might be tricked or forced into hurting them.

You may have accidentally gone scorched earth on them, but it's exactly what they deserved. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. It's just unfortunate that you had to be hurt in the process.

I need another bookshelf.

I once cleared our 90% of my book collection once when I moved. I came to regret it.

Part of it was that I missed that I couldn’t lend out books. Another is I figured out that books are the flora of my comfort space. Even when they’re not being read, I kinda feel anxious when there aren’t piles of them around.

…of course now they’re starting to overflow though. ​:floofLurk:​

… I don’t understand why my remote colleagues cannot respect my working hours. It’s clearly marked in the calendar. We have overlapping hours. Why are you comfortable making me get up an hour early to be in on time? What kind of goblin are you?

@literalgrill@sakurajima.moe indeed. I’d laugh, but since I work in the tech industry I’m going to be standing right next to the blast site when this bomb goes off.

So that should be fun.

My only comfort is the hope that all these techbro assholes are over leveraged and will be financially vaporized in the ensuing crash

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/15/allbirds-bird-stock-shoes-ai.html

Seriously, what the fuck even is this world? What does a fucking shoe company know about LLMs?

Staycation over. It is time to return to the mines…

I complained about this like a year ago. It remains a problem.

Good to know that mainstreams app like Discord still cannot get calendar times right.

I have a recurring event every week. It has to be fixed every time there is a DST. It sometimes just needs to be fixed randomly, because fuck you, that's why. I checked on it, and my 6PM weekly event was set for ... 10AM. I assume they have some stupid database migration that just YOLO's the timestamp fields.

@whitequark@social.treehouse.systems

Employment law

The fuck would the Earl of Devon know about holding a normal job? He went to the best schools, landed in a massive law firm, and then inherited a massive estate. That's ignoring that this reform has been in the work for ~25 years.

And what is 'The Hereditary Principle'? Is it the embodiment of being shat out into a powdered existence where one can marry baywatch actresses and get a complimentary castle? I doubt England will miss any of these assholes in the long run.

@sludgecatheter@outerheaven.club

if I sent you into an introspective spiral lol

that's my secret, captain. I'm always in an introspective spiral.

I think, to impose, and to think deeply about the consequences, even if it causes us a lot of short-term pain.

I generally agree. While I struggle with some aspects personally, one my painful realizations of the last ... 7 odd years is that the best world is mutual. It is immoral to just take; it is insufficient to just give. The fact that every one of our actions teaches other people how to treat us means even as we give, we have to take something, or impose, in kind.

Always appreciate the conversation, Slug.

@yon@sakurajima.moe As I understand it, all these ants were from the same colony. They'd just fall down into a hole where they were forced to act as their own colony and live in the torment nexus.

These ants would still be 'sisters' to the original colony though, so they probably fell right back into line as soon as they escaped. And as the author points out, cannibalism isn't unknown to the species.

@ielenia@ck.catwithaclari.net We’re never going to recover from this.

And they apparently primarily subsisted on cannibalism.

There was nothing for the ants to eat in the pitch-dark bunker; in 2016, the scientists hypothesized that the insects survived by cannibalizing their dead comrades.

But before you get worried about an ant cannibalism society, the humans decided to end the ant torment nexus rather than pursue curiosity.

The study authors also wondered if they could help the trapped ants find their way home, and in 2016, they installed a vertical "boardwalk" — a wooden beam extending from the floor to the entrance of the pipe.

And most of the ants left.

https://www.livescience.com/nuclear-bunker-cannibal-ants.html

RE: https://jorts.horse/users/blursedtexts/statuses/116395349133962872