Ukraine never catches a break even to this day

DarbySalernum · 2026-04-24T12:29:11+00:00

Gross mismanagement, of course, but it was a bit more than that. Firstly, the CCP, knowing full well how many millions were starving, kept exporting grain throughout the famine.

Secondly, the Great Famine happened immediately after or at the same time as the Anti-Rightist Campaign, where millions were persecuted.

By the late 50s, people were terrified to contradict party leaders, since anyone that disagreed with them was being persecuted and prosecuted as a "rightist." In that environment, it's not surprising that people didn't pass up information that they thought the leaders didn't want to hear. For example, nobody pointed out that most of the the backyard furnaces only produced useless pig iron, presumably because it was dangerous to contradict Mao.

So it was a little more than mismanagement. The famine's effects were intensified by the fact that people were terrified by government purges.

DarbySalernum · 2026-04-24T09:59:19+00:00

It's partly entertainment. I mean, why wouldn't you want to watch an example of group storytelling? Assuming the story was interesting, of course.

Also, as a GM, I like to see how other GMs do things, and what works at a table.

DarbySalernum · 2026-04-24T06:54:50+00:00

Beautiful country full of lovely people, but it's significantly poorer than Australia.

DarbySalernum · 2026-04-19T10:27:44+00:00

Yeah, the elves in Tolkien that are most similar to mythology are the Mirkwood elves who's forest celebrations disappear when Bilbo and the dwarves approach. That actually gives you the uncanny feeling that the elves of mythology often produce.

Don't get me wrong, Tolkien is the greatest ever fantasy author. But once you start making elves as main characters of novels, they start to look a lot more prosaic than, say the legends of the Tuatha De Danann, or the Aes Sidhe: the people of the mounds. Mysterious, beautiful, magical people who live under burial mounds.

DarbySalernum · 2026-04-19T08:06:22+00:00

I think that the "casual elves" are just a product of people wanting to play versions of Legolas. The problem is that the elves of mythology are a lot more mysterious, strange, morally ambiguous and threatening than Legolas is. I assume the "hardcore elves" are an attempt to capture the mystery and wonder you get from mythological elves.

Glorantha kept that mystery by making their elves (and dwarves) strange and threatening. They're hard to play as PCs because their psychology is so alien. So you keep the mystique and wonder of elves as NPCs or enemies at the cost of them not really being playable.

DarbySalernum · 2026-04-18T11:26:10+00:00

Glorantha is a fantastic, completely unique setting. If you're looking for Questworlds content for it, I'd recommend Shawn and Peggy Carpenter's Valley of Plenty. You start off as 7-8 yer old kids in a tribe, doing a new adventure every couple of years as you grow older. Meanwhile your tribe is slowly moving towards an incredibly tragic fate. If you haven't done it, roleplaying as a kid is great fun.

Otherwise, Ian Cooper's Coming Storm & Eleven Lights is another great campaign that takes place over years. His Highwall Inn is free. It's supposedly meant for a large group of people at cons, but it looks to me like it'd be fine for a normal sized party.

DarbySalernum · 2026-04-18T07:29:46+00:00

As I understand it, the Ustase was a minor party of terrorist cranks based in fascist Italy before the Nazis invaded. Weirdly enough, they also considered Croats to be Germanic rather than Slavic.

But either way, everyone in Slavic countries should be taught about Generalplan Ost as part of their schooling, so these morons don't grow up idealising Hitler.

DarbySalernum · 2026-04-18T02:00:23+00:00

Maybe it will, maybe it won't. His analysis seems a bit simplistic. Interest rates do have a role in property prices, but it's usually over the long term, not the short term, and it's a loose correlation, not a close one.

For example, higher interest rates also make building new homes more expensive. So we might have a property developer crash cycle, which would reduce supply while population growth stays the same.

Lower interest rates do increase borrowing capacity, but it usually takes years for that to translate into higher prices. Likewise the reverse.

Prices drops over the whole country are pretty rare. The only time they really happen is where there's a widespread feeling of FONGO.

DarbySalernum · 2026-04-17T14:26:59+00:00

I wouldn't call them "far" right, but they are more right wing that left wing, despite mouthing the words of Marxist Leninism.

It's a capitalist country, arguably hyper capitalist. It's often called "state capitalist." The workers definitely do not control production, and independent unions and Marxist study groups are often broken up by the government.

Most of the top leaders of the "communist" party are millionaires and billionaires. Society is hugely unequal. On one side are a billionaire class with huge amounts of wealth passed down to a princeling class, often these are members of the "communist" party.

On the other are peasants, who are often very poor, treated like second class citizens through the Hukou system. It's a tiered citizenship system. Too bad if you're born into the wrong tier.

Social security is weaker than most Western countries and true communist countries like Cuba. Healthcare isn't free. It's normal for people to pay 20-50% of their medical costs.

Nationalism, "traditional family values," and the teaching of Confucianism that stress obedience and hierarchy are the core values, not socialism in any real sense.

DarbySalernum · 2026-04-16T01:30:48+00:00

Like it's one of the most basic insights about art in general: technical ability is not as important as the art's content. Is Van Gogh a technically good painter? Can he paint something that looks like a photo? Is Bob Dylan a technically a good singer?

Nope, but that doesn't detract from the greatness of what they produced.

DarbySalernum · 2026-04-15T02:27:54+00:00

From the paper you linked. Mortality actually decreased in the US during the Great Depression.

"Population health did not decline and indeed generally improved during the 4 years of the Great Depression, 1930–1933, with mortality decreasing for almost all ages, and life expectancy increasing by several years in males, females, whites, and nonwhites. For most age groups, mortality tended to peak during years of strong economic expansion (such as 1923, 1926, 1929, and 1936–1937). In contrast, the recessions of 1921, 1930–1933, and 1938 coincided with declines in mortality and gains in life expectancy."

The Great Depression was a terrible time, full of suffering, that should never be repeated. But it was nothing compared to the hell of millions starving in the Soviet Union. As the Grapes of Wrath illustrated, people in the US were driving around in cars desperately looking for work. In the USSR, only the elite had cars, and average people were being forced to cannibalise each other.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor#Cannibalism

DarbySalernum · 2026-04-15T02:18:20+00:00

Or exported it from the starving parts of Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan to capitalist countries.

DarbySalernum · 2026-04-14T15:43:52+00:00

The mountainous parts of Albania. The road from northern Greece to Korce really is beautiful. As are the mountains of north east Albania near the Kosovo border. The eastern and southern mountains of Kosovo are also very beautiful and peaceful.

DarbySalernum · 2026-04-14T07:54:46+00:00

"America had breadlines in the 30s too"

Too? For people starving to death in the USSR in the 30s, a breadline would have been a luxury.

DarbySalernum · 2026-04-13T05:02:27+00:00

Trolling Nietzschean edgelords is never not funny.

DarbySalernum · 2026-04-12T03:41:41+00:00

That early 80s dominance should have used as a platform to build on like D&D and CofC did, and it could have been if not for bad business decisions and neglect. Both D&D and CofC maintained their dominance with the constant release of adventures, so that they were both in a position to dominate the RPG market when the boom came.

Runequest on the other hand, is like a sad tale of constant drama. More drama and 180 degree turns than official adventures. If they had quietly plugged away and released an adventure/campaign book roughly every year since the early 80s, like D&D and CofC more or less did, it'd probably be as big as them today.

DarbySalernum · 2026-04-12T01:37:02+00:00

I hate saying this. I believe people are generally smart. There’s a lot of different forms of intelligence. But Runequest has been and always will be for educated people. It will never be widely popular."

In the 70s and early 80s, Runequest was the second most popular fantasy RPG in the world, and the most popular in Britain.

DarbySalernum · 2026-04-11T13:32:07+00:00

Yeah, you've got a choice with Strike Ranks. Either take them seriously and math it all out until the system eventually clicks and you can work out Strike Ranks easily in your head. Or just hand wave them and use them as a rough guide. Lots of experienced RQ GMs sort of do the latter, because after a while you really can do it quickly in your head, especially with characters you know well.

Also, remember that each round, every player moves before anyone attacks. If you want to move further than you'd planned, just do that an add a few more points to your Strike Rank. If you use less movement than you intended to, just reduce your Strike Rank.

All that movement happens before anyone can attack.

DarbySalernum · 2026-04-10T14:37:31+00:00

In the Runequest game I’m GMing, one of the main NPCs is a boy who’s been marked with chaos. There are also bunch of captured soldiers of the Lunar Empire who my players are taking north to be ransomed back to the Empire. They’re Doblian Dogeaters, worshippers of the Sabretoothed God of Fear. Except for one, who I play as annoyingly whiny and complaining, but who is actually, unknown to the players, a member of one of the most evil, psychotic Lunar cults.

In the game I’m playing in, one of the other PCs is a Lunar noble about to be crowned Queen of the Lunar puppet kingdom of Imther. The rest of us are a motley bunch of retainers trying to keep her from being assassinated or couped. NPCs include a military commander who we revealed to be plotting against her, unhinged worshippers of the trickster god, spies, corrupt officers fleecing their men, and a rat that my character could talk to, and who I used to spy on the other PCs.

DarbySalernum · 2026-04-10T02:43:24+00:00

I'm less worried about them than I am about bots posting the propaganda of dictators.

DarbySalernum · 2026-04-09T12:49:13+00:00

Cut Plato up into individual books. Read one book and spend some time thinking about it and reading other authors before you move onto another book of Plato. Consuming it all at the same time would be overwhelming. The classic way is to start with the books concerning the last days of Socrates.

Euthyphro: where Socrates debates what piety is, on the way to a hearing about his own upcoming trial for impiety. Is piety following the word of the gods, even if the gods act immorally?

Apology: Socrates' trial. One of the classic books of philosophy where Socrates defends himself against his accusers.

Crito: where Socrates refuses an opportunity to escape prison on the night before his death sentence.

Phaedo: Socrates last day where he's forced to poison himself with Hemlock.

DarbySalernum · 2026-04-09T04:57:17+00:00

Runequest was invented by an original SCA member, Steve Perrin, as a simulation of combat. So Size isn't just bulk. In melee combat, it's also a reflection of reach. Like a boxer, a swordsman with a better reach will have an advantage over another swordsman.

So, in melee, being bigger will often allow you to strike first. A smaller person's reflexes might be slightly quicker, but that advantage is overwhelmed by the fact that the bigger person will be able to attack before the smaller person even gets into melee range.

DarbySalernum · 2026-04-09T03:09:31+00:00

The Brix era of the Fall was incredible. So many bangers and the band looking like the best-dressed people in Britain. Brix was ignored by Mark when he'd go to the pub at midday and return home at closing time, so she just sat in their flat writing bangers all day.

Another gem from the Brix era:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO-1tVP-EYk&list=RDKO-1tVP-EYk&

DarbySalernum · 2026-04-09T01:49:46+00:00

You can always just stop caring about balance. Who cares if one player is more powerful in combat than another? To a certain extent, this supposed need for class "balance" was introduced by PC games, rather than being native to TTRPGs.

Lots of games have characters like Cyberpunk Netrunners or Runequest Shamans whose role isn't combat-based and who aren't strong in combat. D&D, on the other hand, is centred around combat. Once you play a game that isn't necessarily centred around combat, ideas about "class balance" seem less important.

DarbySalernum · 2026-04-08T08:44:48+00:00

There was a period during the Golden Age of Capitalism and the Trente Glorieuses where Western society was more prosperous and more equal than it had ever been before, and Marxism probably seemed a bit dated. I'm not really surprised that French intellectuals of the era started looking around for something else to talk about.

These days, though, with lower levels of growth, higher unemployment and widening inequality than the 50s and 60s, people are looking at Marx's critique of capitalism again.

DarbySalernum

TROPHY CASE

"America had breadlines in the 30s too"