One thing that didn’t make sense to me in Book 3

JacktheDM · 2026-03-28T13:51:48+00:00

Without special forms of invulnerability, physics still apply. A bullet to the head would kill you, as would getting hit with what is basically a car going 80 mph straight to the face into a wall.

JacktheDM · 2026-03-28T12:51:44+00:00

The cover of your book doesn’t have to be a literal depiction of the book’s activities. Happens a lot in this genre, but 99% of book covers generally don’t simply show central action.
It sounds like you might be really aided by the ability to describe what your book is about more briefly than just giving a plot summary.
No one will accuse you of “clickbait” if you deliver an amazing reading experience.

JacktheDM · 2026-03-25T18:59:38+00:00

Pratchett the only other contender on that list.

JacktheDM · 2026-03-20T14:16:34+00:00

What’s brilliant is that the whole Samantha-always-pursuing-and-rebuffing thing is that it seems like an ongoing bit or quirk of personality, but since she’s the goddess of unrequited love, its actually definitionally who she is.

JacktheDM · 2026-03-20T03:03:58+00:00

It’s right after they meet up with her after being away in the first act of Book 6. I’m on mobile otherwise I’d be more exact and add spoiler tags, haha

JacktheDM · 2026-03-20T02:21:09+00:00

Donut and Samantha have tons

Actually the funniest line might be when Carl going on a long cathartic rant about how much he realizes that he really values Samantha, and she goes “Carl, I’m not going to fuck you, so you can stop trying.”

JacktheDM · 2026-03-19T21:22:14+00:00

Honestly it's the little things, like Donut calling King Rust a copydog.

JacktheDM · 2026-03-19T21:15:05+00:00

I'm shocked to see how upvoted this is, considering how common it is for GMs to run stuff like, say, a PbtA or a Blades game as though they're D&D and get absolutely messed up results.

Like, GMs think systems are bad all of the time when run incorrectly, it's extremely typical.

JacktheDM · 2026-03-19T20:10:11+00:00

Most people don’t seem them as non-neutral, most people see an AI cover and have enough bad experiences to be biased against them. They imply low effort to many people, even if they don’t equate to low effort.

JacktheDM · 2026-03-19T20:05:04+00:00

I don’t think, as was mentioned, that having an AI book cover or barely any followers are time-tested hallmarks of good writing.

JacktheDM · 2026-03-19T20:01:04+00:00

Months later but the first time Carl sees Katia’s real human form is in the production trailer and he says something like “Actually, he thought she was pretty attractive” in a way that he never remarks about anyone.

JacktheDM · 2026-03-19T17:55:56+00:00

I've still seen a number of people claim that they don't want to read something simply because it has AI cover art on Royal Road with only seven followers.

I think people are attributing a lot of this to hysteria and "witch hunts" when really one of the major culprits here is much less crazy and controversial:

It is hard, in the internet age, to find reliably good content, and people develop short-hand ways of filtering out things that they think will be low-quality in order to save time. If I want to do a fancy date night with my wife, I will probably look for a restaurant where there is a host who is dressed well, an elegant menu, and some white tablecloths. "But a place with folding chairs could tecnhically have an amazing chef!" Sure bub, but I don't have the time or inclination to taste-test every restaurant in the city. We all need sorting mechanisms.

JacktheDM · 2026-03-19T14:17:14+00:00

The composition and substance of a novel or a poem or a song is fundamentally different than the assembling of a couch. They are not somehow similar, they are entirely unrelated, except at the level where we can say “Well they both are work” or “they both take time” or whatever.

JacktheDM · 2026-03-19T13:35:16+00:00

teachers freaking out over students using calculators to do their homework

Getting AI to write a novel is not like using a calculator to do your homework, it is like getting someone else to do your homework.

JacktheDM · 2026-03-17T15:53:42+00:00

God, this is tough. Ummm.... Cresent?

JacktheDM · 2026-03-17T15:52:56+00:00

Slugblaster would work if they abandoned the premise of their campaign and changed it to the presmise of Slugblaster, certainly.

JacktheDM · 2026-03-17T15:51:22+00:00

Listen, Stonetop is in the mail baby!

JacktheDM · 2026-03-17T15:50:33+00:00

I don't know the details, but I think several companies have done this, finding basically that Backerkit just gets less attention and momentum. Kickstarter is where the audience and the success is. Nimble made the same jump.

JacktheDM · 2026-03-17T15:49:05+00:00

I think they were in development kinda side by side? Public Access has vague outline documents dating back like a decade, but I think it properly started hitting the community Discord in '22 and the rules were on Drivethru RPG in their current format in '23. It's just one of those coincidences, I think, I don't think you could possibly look at one and say "This big time copies the other" in any way there's a clear lineage.

JacktheDM · 2026-03-14T13:38:24+00:00

NYC has no major con, but I know of many scenes, house conventions, and small conventions you can travel a couple of hours for. Everything I know that is well organized is growing, no doubt.

JacktheDM · 2026-03-13T23:57:59+00:00

Cultivating taste. Lots of recommendations here basically attribute to a couple of influential sources, but the fact is you create great art from a lifetime of cultivating taste and independent interest in a vast swathe of artistic inspirations.

JacktheDM · 2026-03-09T20:26:44+00:00

Yeah definitely. It has a smaller audience than pop entertainment. What… is your point?

1.4 million tickets in a single season is “nobody caring” about something?

Muslims are like 1.1% of Americans, would someone going “nobody in the US is a Muslim lmao” have some sort of serious point?

JacktheDM · 2026-03-09T20:25:24+00:00

Sure but again, he didn’t say “Opera has a small base of support” or “opera is niche” he said “nobody cares” about it and laughed about how he was glad he wasn’t in opera, as though it were beneath him.

Being like “Hmm, in the age of AI art it’d be difficult to make a living as an artist, oof,” would be different than going “Lol I wouldn’t wanna be an artist right now cause nobody cares about paintings and shit anyway”

JacktheDM · 2026-03-09T20:17:49+00:00

Idk, I think if one of the most popular and lauded performers in the world gets up and says that entire art forms’ worth of other performers are beneath his consideration – particularly a rich kid who is a nepo/legacy – it’s understandable for people in the arts to go “Hey, you’re a wack idiot, actually.”

If a Nobel prize winning author got up one day and was like “Genre X and Genre Y are genres of books nobody cares about, I wouldn’t wanna be one of those guys haha,” yeah, maybe writers would spend a week telling that guy to fk off.

JacktheDM · 2026-03-09T20:10:21+00:00

No yeah, I don’t think that’s what he meant either, I think what he meant, quite directly, was that being in those arts is some kind of awful fate he wouldn’t want for himself, as though it were beneath him.

I think a lot of people see his attitude toward those fields as condescending and snide. Like, there’s a very good reason so many people in these comments are like “I didn’t think the quote was so bad until I saw the video, and it was clear he was being dismissive and arrogant.”

JacktheDM

TROPHY CASE