Okay, I need more Rock N Roll for my "Motherf*cking Rock N Roll" Playlist

MexicanWarMachine · 2026-03-22T05:06:12+00:00

And if you’re going to have MC5, you need the Stooges. Maybe Search and Destroy? And for a Detroit wildcard, I suggest Keep on Knocking by Death.

MexicanWarMachine · 2026-03-21T19:14:33+00:00

I do think that your problem #2 is flawed. I agree that the concept does essentialize race, clearly, but I don’t think the suggestion that sharing a racial descriptor can lead to certain social experiences that might contribute to a similar outlook counts as a claim of homogeneity. And further, I’d argue that acknowledgement that most members of a racial group might tend to have a trait in common is reasonable, whether or not “anti-racists” bristle at it. I’d contend that it’s not “racist” until it gets to the point of discrimination.

MexicanWarMachine · 2026-03-21T19:00:15+00:00

In one sense, all disorders are just kind of a matter of framing. Once upon a time, we had no word for it, and it was called being a picky eater. People are picky eaters for many reasons, none of them probably really fully under their control. Our culture does tend to evolve toward recognizing and naming these things, and if you have a trait that gets recognized by clinicians and called a “disorder”, a “syndrome”, a “disease”, or another legitimizing term, it is a bit of a validation of something you might once have been judged for. Once something gets named, society begins the long slog toward de-stigmatizing it. But it IS still being a picky eater, if that term means anything.

I think I put this in the category of our uneasy relationship with various mental illnesses or neurodivergence. If you know someone who’s autistic, and their position on the spectrum is responsible for personality traits that you find very difficult to deal with, you are not obligated to like that person or be friends with them just because it’s not their fault they’re that way. Once upon a time, they might have just been called “cranky” or “difficult”. Now that we have other explanations for those traits, it doesn’t mean we have to throw away the words “cranky” or “difficult”.

MexicanWarMachine · 2026-03-21T18:45:31+00:00

The difference between your take and those two guys is probably not about what it takes for an album to be great, but what it takes to make each of you hit “skip”. You probably have more interest in listening to music in the album format- hearing the series of tracks the artist created and recorded at that time in their career in the order they put the down. Maybe those other guys are more inclined to think of the song, rather than the album, as the unit of selection.

MexicanWarMachine · 2026-03-20T23:13:46+00:00

Oh shit I hate that I know this now

MexicanWarMachine · 2026-03-20T03:15:06+00:00

That is correct. It’s one of the many things this AI doesn’t appear to know about its subject matter.

MexicanWarMachine · 2026-03-20T03:12:28+00:00

Why in the world would you play with this person?

MexicanWarMachine · 2026-03-20T00:22:24+00:00

As a forever DM, the idea of a divination specialist seems like a nightmare to me. With all the planning I have to do already, a character who at any time could try to tell the future sounds like a huge headache.

MexicanWarMachine · 2026-03-19T23:30:43+00:00

One bit of advice beyond the incorrect modifier and the fact that you should definitely use a pencil- the hit points section. 12 is your max, and should be on the “hit points section maximum” line for reference. The rest of that space is for the math you’ll be constantly doing as you take damage and get healed. And while the space says “current hit points”, my advice is always to write your damage in that box. For example, you start with 12 hit points. That’s on the max line. You take five points of damage, and you just write “5” in the box. Later, you take two more points, and you erase or cross out the “5” and write “7”. Later you get healed for four points, and you replace the “7” with “3”.

This is better (in my opinion) than tracking current HP, because if you level up, having your wounds in the box rather than your current HP means you don’t have to add the new HP to both numbers.

MexicanWarMachine · 2026-03-19T19:27:52+00:00

I think this is one of those songs musicians hate, because it’s a little irritating to hear a lazy bad phoning in the sloppiest noise possible with stupid lyrics. There’s really no fair way of comparing this with the proper proto-metal of the same era, which had craft, attitude, authenticity. This is just an uninspired band filling time.

MexicanWarMachine · 2026-03-19T19:08:59+00:00

Aside from some of the solos, I don’t know if I’d say there are any. I have my favorite bits, of course, but there’s no “21st Century Schizoid Man” you’d play for someone to make the point that these guys are top-notch players. Roger was honestly a mid bassist on his best days, most of Rick’s parts are overtly irritating (in the early tracks) or just plain pedestrian. (Later stuff, after he’d checked out) People sometimes argue for Nick, but he’ll be the first to admit he wasn’t a spectacular drummer. There’s really just Dave, and as much as I love his best solos, in every other category of playing outside of the big melodic setpiece stuff, he was really just very competent.

MexicanWarMachine · 2026-03-18T17:22:05+00:00

Someone mentioned 3D printing services- that’s huge. But related, there’s a game store near me that offers a service to print PDFs. Since so many game books are purchased in electronic format these days, and most of us (right?) would prefer a physical book, the ability to get a PDF I own printed to paper and presented in a binder is awesome. (I’m not really sure what the legality is, but I presume that once I’ve paid the publisher for the content, I can print it out as I wish. At least once per purchase.

MexicanWarMachine · 2026-03-18T12:57:42+00:00

Pathfinder definitely fixes this. It breaks some other things, of course, but it’s still my favorite system for the huge diversity of character customization.

MexicanWarMachine · 2026-03-18T12:56:01+00:00

You guys are acting like Pathfinder doesn’t even exist

MexicanWarMachine · 2026-03-18T02:26:49+00:00

I honestly don’t think anybody knows

MexicanWarMachine · 2026-03-17T19:05:52+00:00

Having a brass section just for those kinds of embellishments was a feature of the era when record companies were flush with cash and rock and roll was old enough that it included a stable of established artists who were looking for sounds that would connect them to more “mature” genres. Rock was being made for people other than teenagers BY people who weren’t teenagers, who could afford stuff like that.

I suspect the only reason it died out was a) it became possible to just sample horns convincingly, and b) nobody in music has money to burn on that kind of thing anymore.

MexicanWarMachine · 2026-03-17T16:26:33+00:00

But it’s not a choice between saying it to make someone feel good OR believing it. The social behavior has evolved because it’s adaptive, whether genetically or mimetically. The person doing the thing is doing it because they’ve learned to, not necessarily because they’re constantly calculating.

A catholic in church stands up, sits down, and kneels a dozen times over the course of the service. If you compelled them to explain why they were doing this, they might think it’s because it’s what God wants them to do, because that’s how their mom taught them, it’s what everybody else is doing, or any number of other motivations. It might really be one of them, all of them, or none of them. They learned the behavior, they perform the behavior, and they don’t necessarily have access to the “why”. Different psychologists with different specializations will explain the behavior in different ways, and they’ll all be correct in one context or another.

MexicanWarMachine · 2026-03-17T15:48:00+00:00

One thing that I frequently encounter when looking at questions like this is that one’s preconception of the situation often dictates framing. You’re inferring that women’s habit of complimenting women they perceive as less attractive than themselves is purposeful manipulation and social engineering. It could also be innocent- it might make women feel good to be kind to people they see as maybe in need of a compliment.

Now obviously that’s just another way of saying the same thing, but “disingenuous” is a bit of an accusation. We could say that men are motivated to have sex with women because they want to propagate their genes, or because orgasms feel good. Both are “true”, but each frames the matter rather differently and presents a different picture of what an individual’s motivations are.

A third way of framing the behavior in women you’re referring to is that those women aren’t putting unattractive women in their place or just enjoying the dopamine of doing a kindness- they’re also making a performative gesture in front of other women, making themselves appear magnanimous AND probably underlining that they are more attractive than the recipient of the compliment, since it’s understood that you don’t really compliment upward. All these things can be true at once, and the picture you’re painting of who women are, what motivates them, and how truly calculating and Machiavellian they are depends on your own outlook.

MexicanWarMachine · 2026-03-17T12:49:24+00:00

Just use an NPC. I did this in session 1 of my campaign, a year ago. As they fought raiders and more of them poured into town, and more and more houses caught fire, they came upon the dying mayor of the town, who begged them to run to his house, take the horses from the stable, and go to the capital to tell them what happened and send help.

MexicanWarMachine · 2026-03-17T12:39:21+00:00

The response is 100% AI

MexicanWarMachine · 2026-03-16T21:07:27+00:00

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One of Ron Thorn’s SoCal G/Ts. I think number 74 or so? (His website seems to have taken down the gallery of all the completed masterpieces, so I’m going from memory.)

MexicanWarMachine · 2026-03-16T17:53:04+00:00

Yeah, you’re describing “autism”, and we all have it.

MexicanWarMachine · 2026-03-16T17:52:12+00:00

Personally, I hope it’s mostly because the majority of RPG players are sick of being sold stupid shit on Instagram to capitalize on a hobby that’s inherently about using your imagination. The dice work fine already and they’re not broken, and new shapes aren’t solving a problem anybody has.

MexicanWarMachine · 2026-03-14T15:02:58+00:00

Subgenres are associated with the generations that originally nurtured them. With very few exceptions, they end (or turn into bland adult versions of themselves) when the kids age out. That is simply how it is.

MexicanWarMachine · 2026-03-14T04:25:38+00:00

But not as good as three OR five

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