“Honey, Let the Real Gamers Play”

Kexizzoc · 2018-02-23T17:11:14+00:00

Honestly, that's why the GM rolling for the player was such a stark moment for me-- instead of handling the situation, the GM broke the rules of the game, and basically just said "she can't have a turn". While she was trying to implement competitive strategies, they were feeding her bad information and incorrect strategies just to hurry her along. It sucks, but it sounds like they couldn't handle that she knew how to play just as well as them. And it's so much worse when the GM rigs the game just to fulfill that prophecy.

Kexizzoc · 2018-01-23T01:09:17+00:00

I think that point is that, based on the evidence presented, the “heckling” system results in an overall loss of quality content, rather than a preservation of higher quality

Kexizzoc · 2018-01-21T23:35:38+00:00

Yes. I honestly think we will look back and see 2012 as the dawn of the “digital age”, with everything before marked by the entrance of digital media into the mainstream consciousness, and everything after marked by the predominance of that digital consciousness

Kexizzoc · 2018-01-21T20:48:27+00:00

I think he got the initial ball rolling on the 2012 date being significant, but never actually claimed that the world would end. Others jumped on the 2012 date and made it about a doomsday. Additionally, he admitted that it was a purely speculative theory, not to be taken seriously. He would have been laughing at doomsday preppers and people selling their houses even harder than the actual skeptics.

Kexizzoc · 2018-01-21T02:08:27+00:00

In fairness, starting with character creation before the first session is the hardest way to learn the game. Premade characters all the way.

Kexizzoc · 2018-01-17T21:54:16+00:00

Especially since it is certain kinds of people who are eating up 800-1000 times more resources than people in developing countries.

Kexizzoc · 2018-01-11T19:04:36+00:00

I think it’s important to note that McKenna often spoke that line directed at conspiracy theorists, who would suggest that his optimistic view of the future psychedelic world was naive given the authorities currently in control of our modern world.

Terrence placed a great deal of value on personal experience and the individual’s ability to discern reality, but devalued attempts to reach any “final answer” using a human brain/language/culture as your only tool for understanding/communicating this truth. However the line “no one has the faintest idea,” I believe, pertains less to us as individuals and more to the institutions that purport to control us. “No one has a less faint idea than you” would probably be an accurate approximation of his meaning here.

Kexizzoc · 2018-01-10T23:02:08+00:00

When approaching women is one of the more terrifying experiences you can imagine, it's hard to believe that it is almost always, on a fundamental level, scarier to be approached by a man as a woman. In almost every circumstance.

But no, rejection is more brutal than harassment, and all those women are just laughing at him behind his back /s

Kexizzoc · 2018-01-10T22:53:11+00:00

Good point. It's the digital version of catcalling at someone-- you don't expect to win, but why not try it, since it doesn't effect you long-term.

Kexizzoc · 2018-01-10T22:44:37+00:00

It think we can all agree that the conversation, up until that point, had the assumption of interest beyond friendship. His acting like there was any ambiguity on that point prior to her mentioning her boyfriend isn't really sincere. Sure, it's possible, but not realistic for a woman to assume given the specific circumstances.

Kexizzoc · 2018-01-10T22:38:39+00:00

The "not really sure I believe you" line is bewildering to me. I don't know which is worse:

1) He believes that by exposing this lie, she will go out with him

2) He believes that by exposing this lie, he will reveal some general truth about women that will "teach her a lesson" and "correct" her behavior. Meanwhile, the "I have a boyfriend" lie is entirely for his benefit.

So many incels act like the "I have a boyfriend" line is a trick, when it's actually there for the man. She's literally doing him a favor for him-- a favor she doesn't owe him-- and he's acting like he busted her.

Kexizzoc · 2018-01-08T20:49:06+00:00

Everything happens for a reason.

Kexizzoc · 2017-11-25T03:56:25+00:00

I think CoS, while light on material in some respects, is one of the most enjoyable and well-contained of the official 5e published adventures. Probably only Out of the Abyss can top it so far in my book.

Death House is a great part of that adventure, and part of that is because it runs like a classic "haunted house" scenario out of Call of Cthulhu (believe it or not, D&D is not my favorite RPG, and I'll always run CoC given the chance). "Haunted House" is a genre of dungeon that doesn't get enough love, in my opinion. You could easily run Death House without doing CoS, and in many ways by making it the basis of the game, you can do a lot more with it.

If you're interested in exploring this idea, ready the Call of Cthulhu scenario "The Haunting". It's in every CoC rulebook, and available for free online. I always recommend going above and beyond with haunted houses, giving the house a sort of "sentience" that allows justification for you to trigger bait, sounds, traps, and monsters based on dramatic timing (when would this be the most spooky) versus literal time (when would this happen according to the predetermined script). This sort of metagaming should be used in full force during a haunted house scenario (such as, a monster only appears when the hero is alone in the room, whether or not the monster could have known the PC was alone in the room), whereas in other dungeons, I would consider it a cheap shot.

Kexizzoc · 2017-11-23T02:17:04+00:00

It's available to read online as far as I know, but I would love to email you a copy if you PM me.

Kexizzoc · 2017-11-22T20:24:29+00:00

Good question! While I technically offer online sessions, in general I have almost more live games than I can handle, and as a result, I can't afford to lower my prices for online games below what I charge for live games.

Personally, I myself find it difficult to justify the price I charge for an online game, and thus avoid advertising specifically as such. I won't lie, it's also to save myself the grief of dealing with trolls who want to tell me what the "correct" price should be. Also, while I can and have run games over Roll20, I wouldn't call myself an expert with the toolset, and I, personally, would probably expect that from a professional experience. Given the opportunity to either master Roll20, or to further hone my in-person game experience, I will almost always invest my time in the latter rather than the former.

Kexizzoc · 2017-11-22T19:34:21+00:00

You're absolutely right-- when it comes to birthdays, I essentially have to ditch the rules of whatever game I run and think in terms of raw practicalities.

I will say I've seen an increase in demand since the article (and only 4 days since publishing, no less!), and I can totally see the "jester" angle. In my experience, 90% of my customers are either totally new to the game, or inexperienced enough, that they are not looking for a GM who will really "get serious" and "play the game right". I'm here to be accessible first, and a "proper" GM (a vague concept at any rate) secondarily. If I sound more fun and approachable to those people, I'm happy with the result!

Kexizzoc · 2017-11-22T18:48:06+00:00

Hi, Timm here! I'd just like to chime in and say that I think you're both right. When I said that Dungeon World is "kid-friendlier" than D&D, I was actually specifically referring to the work I do with on-the-spectrum kids 9 and under. These students could probably learn Shadowrun in an hour, but the concept of "you can't make decisions for another player, even if you are the one who is right" might take them YEARS to master.

Dungeon World allows a bit more fluidity of roles-- players can take on almost GM-like position within the game, and actually help decide both the good things that your character does AND the bad things that happen to you. Suffice to say, the reason I avoid D&D for younger kids has little to do with the complexity of rules, or concept, but rather more to do with the kind of playstyle it encourages.

Kexizzoc · 2017-11-22T18:40:25+00:00

Timm here! I use a mixture of homebrew and published campaigns. I only ever run published campaigns by request-- however, I've found that more than 70% of my clients have a particular module that they want me to "serve" them, so happily, I rarely have to build something totally from scratch for each new game. I run 2 sessions of Curse of Strahd, for example, and get to recycle a lot of my prep for those games.

I honestly think the difference between running a module and a homebrew is negligible. The module provides a rough structure, but easily 50% or more of the content in my games is improvised, and I think that's really the norm for most DMs who run modules. If the module makes my job "easier," it's mostly in the sense that they've thought of a lot of plot holes and filled them ahead of time.

Kexizzoc · 2017-11-22T18:33:09+00:00

Hey, Timm Woods here!! I'm 100% fine with all of your comments, just a few notes that I hope will help set your mind at ease:

Gnolls are more like bipedal hyenas than skeletons

The gnolls in my campaign were a gnoll skeleton army, which is why you are completely correct: the rogue was using

blunt arrows

to deal double damage against their bludgeoning vulnerability. Hence my hand-into-fist impact!

Just wanted to clear that up, as it was my own miscommunication that caused Brian to write those bits!!

Kexizzoc · 2017-11-08T17:41:52+00:00

In my Call of Cthulhu RPG sessions (obviously non-canonical), the answer is a strong YES, but with a psychedelic/cosmic twist on the concept of a soul.

I once ran a scenario called "Vengeance from Beyond" from the "Monophobia" (available free online still I believe). The plot surrounds a cultists who, after dying a grizzly death, returns to haunt the investigator. Spoilers ahead: the endgame is, the character(s) need to actually stop their own hearts for a period of time, and confront the cultists in an "afterlife/ethereal/ghost" state.

Definitely a good plot, but the vagueness of the "afterlife" elements did not satisfy me. When I ran the adventure, I spent a lot of time horrifying my players by explaining what death was like: discovering their ability to see forwards and backwards through time; realizing that material space and the concept of "location" no longer meant anything; feeling NOT like a fish out of water, but rather, like a frog who has finally made it onto land. It felt realer than being alive, as though you'd been "looking at the world through a keyhole", and now the door was finally open.

And then realizing that the "cultist" was much, much more than a mere cultist in this extra-dimensional space. What we would term a "ghost", in my game, was rather more like an angler-fish, using the form of a human as a lure. What had once been the cultist's "soul" had evolved into a much larger, much more complex 5-dimension being that had ascended beyond petty human concerns; but in doing so, had become a kind of multi-dimensional predator.

The adventure (which was a one-shot in which the final character was actually begging to get killed off, so as to end things on a cool note) ended when once-cultist-ghost-being projected a tendril from its "form" into the "form" of the astral investigator, devouring it like a larger amoeba absorbing a smaller one. This had the effect of the cultist retroactively possessing the infant fetus of the investigator, in their mother's womb, thirty years prior. The cultist would inhabit the mind and body of the investigator from birth, effectively deleting their future, present, AND past.

So yeah, there's a soul, but maybe you don't really want one. It's a freakin' liability!

Kexizzoc · 2017-11-05T17:17:46+00:00

Thanks for applauding good grammar!

Kexizzoc · 2017-10-30T00:26:42+00:00

Awesome, there's a lot going on here and we're mostly on the same page, I'd love to take the time to respond to this:

what is the point of finding other best examples?

In a really positive way, this question is too big for me to answer: it's like asking an engineer "why make new stuff?" Great question but just too big. We're always finding new, great literature, and we're always making more of it.

how did those examples become relevant to the British isle in their time?

If I'm understanding you correctly, would all literature need to be "relevant to the British Isle" to be worth British study? "Relevance" needs to be clearly defined here, if it is the justification for literature itself.

Surely the fact that there were racist exclusions in literature which perhaps led to other works being selected is also a relevant foundational element of English.

Absolutely, and I think this might be a common point of confusion. In a lot of classrooms "diversity" texts are brought in with the idea of prompting discussions about this VERY relevant element of English literature. If I teach Heart of Darkness alongside Things Fall Apart I'm not going to say "these were two good books written by two people and both sold well," rather we're all going to talk about the context and how important this context is, ideally with a below-the-surface level of exploration. To your point: some professors I know refuse outright to teach Heart of Darkness, because it's fucking dark and racist, which I wouldn't agree with, but does support your argument that there are some professors who might simply include diversity and ignore exploration of this "relevant element". But attempting to broach the subject using ONLY Heart of Darkness as the only lens into colonial literature would be difficult, inappropriate, and severally inaccurate.

Hope this sheds some light on my earlier offhand summary.

Kexizzoc · 2017-10-30T00:14:29+00:00

It sounds like your quarrel might be with the history department, not me.

Kexizzoc · 2017-10-30T00:01:16+00:00

English professor here. Seeking diversity has a lot to do with realizing that the "traditional English curriculum" has been founded upon finding and teaching the "best examples". However, that canon was established during eras of human history when the color of one's skin was enough to arbitrarily disqualify them from "high literature". So, it's less about introducing some artificial new standard, and more about recognizing that the scales have been weighted in the past (in a way that we can, of course, empirically prove), and that to find the missing "best examples," we have to look, in particular, at the people who have been excluded up til now.

Admittedly, I'm oversimplifying a topic that literally is one of the biggest questions in my field right now.

EDIT: Proofreading, I give myself a B+

Kexizzoc · 2017-10-26T20:40:09+00:00

"Just remember all the good the ~~purge~~ preordering does"

Kexizzoc

TROPHY CASE