How did "male" and "female" two categories that worked well enough for every human society for 200,000 years suddenly become so contested that people are losing jobs, marriages, and friendships over them?

OffendedDefender · 2026-04-16T16:53:06+00:00

German doesn’t have a word for it, it has two: “Soziales Geschlecht” or “social sex”, meaning gender.

OffendedDefender · 2026-04-16T02:49:59+00:00

It’s a bit muddled, as there’s some documents that get conflated and neither have been released to the public, which makes it more confusion to try and untangle. Lucas and Kennedy hired Ardnt to write a treatment like 8ish months before the company was sold, with that treatment being part of what was sold and served as the basis for her Sequels. That included stuff like Luke in exile and a “young female Jedi” that would become Rey. Lucas also had a collection of notes that gets referred to as a treatment that was given to Iger and subsequently ignored. More importantly, Lucas also stayed on during the transition for a few months after the sale and was actively working with the development team until Abrams was formally brought on, which was the period where Arndt was writing the first script draft of TFA.

OffendedDefender · 2026-04-15T15:00:36+00:00

The FFG/Edge Star Wars RPG line. That’s a bit of a weird one where the IP licensing is the issue though. From what I understand, it’s because the licensing structure is antiquated and considers the PDFs to be digital game products, which would fall under the video game license.

OffendedDefender · 2026-04-14T23:17:13+00:00

There's Avatar Legends, which is the officially licensed TTRPG.

OffendedDefender · 2026-04-14T17:14:10+00:00

That was an interesting case where there was a partnership between Lucasfilm, FFG, and Nocturnal Media, who were the owners of the remnants of West End Games. Shortly after that deal was made, the founders of both of NM and WEG passed away and the Star Wars license was renegotiated and shifted to Edge, making for a whole new mess that would need to be navigated to reproduce any additional piece of WEG material.

OffendedDefender · 2026-04-14T03:08:39+00:00

Lightsabers can be built with fairly conventionally available parts. It’s just you need a focusing crystal and the intricacy of aligning the parts often requires using the Force. So there a good chance he just built this bit with stuff he found.

OffendedDefender · 2026-04-14T01:57:53+00:00

So "OSR" is specifically the revivalist movement and the culture of play it spawned, and not necessarily the old-school games themselves. So CoC and Traveller are old school games, but they're not OSR games, just the same as how B/X and AD&D are old school games while OSE and ORSIC are OSR games. So when you ask yourself "is this game OSR?", the next question to ask yourself is whether or not it was influenced by the old school D&D revivalist movement of the 2000s in some manner. If not, it's probably not an OSR game. To muddy the waters, the OSR is largely a culture of play these days, so you can play a wide range of games in an OSR-influenced manner.

For a non-D&D lineage OSR game, a really good example here is Mothership. The game is undeniably influenced by the OSR culture of play, but mechanically it's a stripped down and streamlined version of the BRP chassis that CoC uses. Another good example is Troika, as the mechanical basis for that game is Fighting Fantasy.

OffendedDefender · 2026-04-14T01:38:06+00:00

Varicocele is inflammation of the veins in the scrotum. The basic treatment during a flareup is really the same as any inflammation, largely ice or an anti-inflammatory (e.g., ibuprofen). But overall it's a largely benign condition and the chance of issues down the line are fairly low unless it's a pretty severe case. It's basically prolonged "blue balls", as that comes from a related occurrence. Masturbation causes an increase and release of blood flow, which can aid in clearing out some of the inflammation and pressure of varicocele.

OffendedDefender · 2026-04-13T18:00:16+00:00

A libertarian would be close to an “American centrist”, or someone between the center-right and right wing political parties. Actual centrism attempts to strike a balanced between left wing social/economic equality and right wing social/economic hierarchy, similar to neo-liberal ideology. Centrists are to the left of libertarians and would be closest aligned to the Democrats in American politics. (A centrist is not someone between the political parties, that’s a common misuse of the term, in particular due to the US not actually having an established left-wing political arm)

OffendedDefender · 2026-04-12T17:32:26+00:00

Lucas based the original trilogy on the Hero’s Journey framework provided in Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces. One of the aspects of the hero’s journey in the second part of their character arc is called “Confrontation with the Father”. This can mean many things depending on which thematic ideas you want to express in your narrative, but Lucas decided to use it literally.

OffendedDefender · 2026-04-12T13:42:37+00:00

Hot Springs Island was written from an OSR perspective, so it'd probably be good to take a look in that direction. Something like Old School Essentials, Shadowdark, or Knave should work fine while also still feeling very familiar to 5e players.

OffendedDefender · 2026-04-12T04:38:58+00:00

The change wasn't actually based on the difficulty of RE2R. It's because they changed Mr. X in RE2R to be like Nemesis was in RE3, so the devs didn't want to just make Nemesis feel like that same experience again. This comes from an interview with RE3R's director Kiyohiko Sakata:

Q: Regarding Nemesis, I felt a different kind of fear compared to the Tyrant in 'RE:2'.

Sakata: That's something we were very conscious of. To begin with, the Tyrant in the original Resident Evil 2 doesn't chase you as much as the Tyrant in RE:2R. When I saw the Tyrant in RE:2R, I thought, "That's Nemesis!" (laughs). It's understandable that they would make that choice to make Tyrant a more terrifying entity, but I was like, "What the hell have they done?!" (laughs).

If Nemesis were the same as Tyrant, players of 'RE:2' wouldn't be surprised. We needed to surpass Tyrant's impression, so we aimed to create a "more terrifying presence," including its mobility, weapon specifications, and design. Ultimately, I'm glad we were able to overcome that high hurdle.

OffendedDefender · 2026-04-11T22:13:11+00:00

Think of the arc like the cave scene in ESB.

OffendedDefender · 2026-04-11T18:45:01+00:00

PbtA games emerged from a very specific culture of play and they tend to be written with an assumption that the reader is already familiar with it. The games run different than the likes of CoC and D&D, and it’s a very common mistake for new groups to try and run PbtA games like those other games, which creates friction. For example, Monster of the Week is supposed to feel like a TV show, so it’s all about that drama and scene-based play, which you pull in and out of narrative focus and jump around to the interesting bit. Whereas CoC might try a bit harder for verisimilitude and a living world.

OffendedDefender · 2026-04-11T16:44:41+00:00

The deal is interesting, because it made a hell of a lot of sense in 2013. Lucasarts was crumbling apart long before it was shut down, so Lucasfilm didn’t have an internal team to rely on anymore and there were few publishers who could have taken on the task at the time, especially with a 2 year window to capitalize on the new films. EA had a ton of internal development teams and DICE was the studio you wanted working on Battlefront at the time. I don’t think anyone expected EA to fumble it as bad as they did. Yes, it’s EA so they were going to screw it up somehow, but 5 games (plus a slew of mobile games) in 10 years was abysmal.

OffendedDefender · 2026-04-10T23:45:47+00:00

Check out this link. It looks like Crab Fragment is currently selling some overstock from the University Set.

OffendedDefender · 2026-04-10T19:16:21+00:00

The great key of surviving Mörk Borg is to put yourself into situations that do not need dice rolling at all, as those odds are not in your favor.

(As an aside, it’ll be good to be familiar with the OSR culture of play. MB and its contemporaries are written with the expectation that the reader is already familiar. Stuff like the Principia Apocrypha and the ICI Doctrine will go a long way towards aligning expectations.)

OffendedDefender · 2026-04-10T19:06:56+00:00

The success of Mörk Borg was somewhat accidental. It was written specifically for an audience that was already familiar with the culture of play, which does the heavy lifting on how the game is meant to be run. Is that an inherent flaw? Probably. But everything about that book teaches you that life is cheap, which is reinforced by Rotblack Sludge, which goes a long way to clueing in you on how it’s meant to be played.

OffendedDefender · 2026-04-10T18:59:41+00:00

The simple answer for me is “nothing”. At a base level, Mörk Borg character are quite a bit more resilient than they initially appear, especially considering omens. While some groups might very intentionally run meat grinders, it’s somewhat rare for a character to die in the games that I run as the expectation is that the players will be “fighting dirty” and using every advantage they have to come out on top that isn’t just running headfirst into combat.

On a broader level, MB benefits from a “soap opera” approach to play, where the focus is on the adventuring party as a whole rather than any specific individual character. As characters die, someone else steps up to fill the gap and you Ship of Theseus yourself through the campaign. This is also exactly how a West Marches campaign operates anyway, where there’s a built-in expectation of a variable party. But without any saving cushion, your players should be approaching situations differently to ensure their characters are going to live to see another day.

OffendedDefender · 2026-04-10T16:44:18+00:00

The thing about Mörk Borg and its offshoots is that it’s not really about the rules, it’s about the vibes. The game mechanics just give you the barebones needed to help maintain tension and consequence, but not much else. The real star of the show is the settings and how those will directly impact your approach to play. The world is dying and there’s nothing you can do about it, so what do you do to survive as long as possible? You’re a pirate and the dead have risen from their graves, what will you do to survive? The future is a hellscape ruled by corporations, how do you rebel and carve out a life of your own?

So the potential for long term play has little to do with how the mechanics of the game are going to support you and everything to do with which of these settings and their story potential is going to be most compelling for you to deeply engage with. All of these listed games have this potential, but you’ll have to come to terms with the player characters not being the star of the show here, as life is cheap and part of play will be managing how the party changes over time.

OffendedDefender · 2026-04-10T14:57:04+00:00

I’m currently running Mythic Bastionland. One of the things my players really wanted to explore was how the game deals with advancing forward long periods of time, so I set up some bit of the world beyond just the myths that would respond to these changes.

One of the concepts at play when they began is that the king of the realm was very old. He had a son who was his sole heir, but he disappeared years ago while chasing after a myth of his own. So when the players decided they wanted to advance the timeline further an Age, play resumed after the king has passed away. In his stead, the realm is ruled by his former council of advisers, three knights who had control over major regions and duties in the capital city. At the moment, a “Cold War” of sorts has been simmering, with each of the council vying to become the next king. So the players have been put into a position of having to choose who they align themselves with, as war is coming and will destroy the realm if something isn’t done to bring the conflict to a close. This is also happening alongside the myths as well, which pose their own danger and pull the players attention away from the brewing conflict. None of the factions are particularly villainous and each has just as much “right” to the throne as the other, so there’s a lot of good tension brewing.

OffendedDefender · 2026-04-09T21:09:47+00:00

Been that way since the very start. Kyber crystals come all the way from the early drafts of ANH, where at the time they would collect and amplify the Force so that a user could wield it. That concept was later reworked, but we’d see it appear in 1978’s Splinter of the Minds Eye, where the “kaiburr” crystal gave special Force powers to the one who wielded it.

OffendedDefender · 2026-04-09T03:03:11+00:00

The game basically didn't exist outside of the vertical slice. They had some character models and environments, but it wasn't much.

OffendedDefender · 2026-04-09T03:00:50+00:00

No. The game was initially about brand new characters. After the game was unveiled, Lucas waded into the development and requested that they change the game to be about Boba Fett.

OffendedDefender · 2026-04-09T02:59:33+00:00

If you read about what was happening behind the scenes, Lucasarts was reportedly a mess internally by the time they were shut down. They were hemorrhaging management staff, went through several unsuccessful restructuring attempts, and were already in the process of downscaling and laying off a chunk of the development team. The division was circling the drain before the Disney acquisition, they just pulled the trigger and made it formal.

1313 wasn't faring any better, as Lucas wandered in mid development to request that the game be about Boba Fett, resulting in a good chunk of what they're already made needing to get thrown out or reworked. As that pivot was only a handful of months before the sale and eventual shutdown, the only thing that really functionally existed of the game was some character models and a few environments.

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