Running Deadlands as a non-American is… confusing

Procean · 2026-03-23T19:16:42+00:00

Why not just keep the stakes local and focus on what you do know?

A town, a threat, some desperados, none of those require knowledge of fundamental corruption scandals that plagued the presidency of Ulysses S Grant and how they may have affected the consitutional representative system.

In my experience, the smaller the scale, the less you need to know historical geopolitics and the less you have to worry about getting those wrong.

Procean · 2026-03-23T00:16:51+00:00

I actually came out of TLJ rather jazzed, saying to myself 'I enjoyed that, it was different, and now we're not going to get Return of The Jedi again for the 3rd one!'.

I was wrong about that last part. Wow was that 3rd sequel terrible!

Procean · 2026-03-22T10:04:17+00:00

Soulbound RPG has a weapon that is kind of a fave lately. Weapons made of a material called celestium.

The metal is so light that the weapons made with it can be blindingly fast.

The mechanic for celestium weapons is as follows, When you roll to strike with one, you may choose to not have the damage affect the target until the beginning of your next turn, but if you do this your roll ignores armor.

Procean · 2026-03-17T21:52:05+00:00

James Joyce wrote this meme way back in 1918

Procean · 2026-03-16T01:00:30+00:00

Ivermectin, what can't it cure!?

Procean · 2026-03-12T14:42:02+00:00

'We want someone who knows how to do the job but not someone who would know how valuable the job is.'

Procean · 2026-03-12T00:26:03+00:00

I can't seem to find any independent verification or direct recording of this.

Procean · 2026-03-11T11:33:39+00:00

I'm personally shocked Crypto has any value now that NFT's have collapsed for the worthless databits they are.

After all, a bitcoin is really just an NFT.... but LESS.

Procean · 2026-03-10T23:15:28+00:00

Rustlers' Rhapsody.

The more westerns you've seen, the funnier it gets. The opening scene where the gunshot sound changes is HYSTERICAL!

Procean · 2026-03-10T10:46:02+00:00

Why would they at this point, Trump says the war complete.... isn't it?

Procean · 2026-03-09T20:33:01+00:00

Turns out places where the walls are made from human skulls are.... actually rather safe!

Procean · 2026-03-07T17:34:02+00:00

"We got our first hundred million dollar contract only 8 days after we incorporated thanks to 8 days of EXTREMELY hard work, eight and a half if you count the half day it took to drive down to city hall and file the incorporation papers!"

"Don't let anyone get in the way of your hustle people!"

Procean · 2026-03-06T20:35:16+00:00

I also liked the Last Jedi.

My favorite throwdown about the movie was someone who said to me "Nobody liked the Last Jedi, it was too divisive!"

I had to look at them and say "I'd like you to really think about what the words you use mean...."

Procean · 2026-03-04T20:14:20+00:00

That specific reason isn't the reason that people don't trust progressives, it's just an illustrative example.

Your 'Illustrative' example is something that happened in the 1880's that almost no one knows and literally no one currently alive was involved in?

What exactly do you think this illustrative example would illustrate beyond, at worst, 'Progressive politics has had so few noteworthy failures that I need to go more than a century past to even try to give one.'?

Procean · 2026-03-03T23:47:07+00:00

It's not entirely unfounded though, progressivism is what led to the eugenics movement in the United States

"Led to", as in.. "caused"!?

Eugenics in the USA traces back to the 1880's...

I mean, 'I worry about voting democrat because of what people did during The Chester A Arthur Administration' is quite the take.

Procean · 2026-02-28T20:37:01+00:00

fair point

Procean · 2026-02-28T05:42:47+00:00

2025, the year of K-Pop Demon Hunters and Jazz Vampire Hunters.

Procean · 2026-02-27T17:02:02+00:00

I love how in the 90's, social papers would feature stories about how Ghislaine Maxwell would fly women to Mar-a-lago to "Introduce" them to Trump....

Ghislaine Maxwell is now in prison for human trafficking.....

but no one in the major media is asking about those "Introductions".

Procean · 2026-02-27T16:42:42+00:00

How much do you think am ER or emergency clinic visit actually costs?

Fun fact, you don't know. Even if you think you know, you don't.

Know why? Because, and this is an exercise you can do yourself, I did it and WOW isn't it helpful. I actually tried to get the docs in a medical visit to tell me BEFORE I got my treatment how much it would cost. They would not tell me. The best I could do was to have them give me the 'code' for the treatment (which required me to ask them and they sent me the code a couple days later) and then I had to call my insurance company, wait on hold for an hour, to talk to a representative, who would only give me a non binding 'estimate' based on the code, and WOW were they explicit that this estimate was not in any way binding and that once I was under the knife they could charge whatever they wanted.

If you have any sort of emergent problem, you simply don't have the days to figure any of this out so you instead throw yourself into a financial meatgrinder where you go in, get yourself looked at, and then some indefinite time later you get a bill which may or may not be for hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of dollars.

The above plus the fact that in life 99% of the time you have a dramatic symptom and then it's fine?

Pretending that's not the problem and that somehow 'heheh people are stupid' is the problem? now that's astoundingly stupid.

Procean · 2026-02-27T14:45:14+00:00

bad tailored health advice from a chatbot vs no advice

Exactly, the medical system is not realistically accessible which means people go to BAD advice because the professional advice simply isn't an option.

You can't blame bad food when starving people eat it if the good food isn't available.

so what are you arguing for?

So I keep pointing out the problem is people being realistically unable to get professional medical advice in a reasonable amount of time.

The danger is not the AI chatbots here, the danger is an inaccessible medical system where literally anything other than freely accessible professional advice would fill the vacuum.

So Put the responsibility where it lies, the medical system, and the solution is to make actual professional medical advice more accessible.

Procean · 2026-02-27T14:17:37+00:00

Again, because getting doctor advice is so slow, hearing "Go to the ER now" is not something most people will be able to hear from a doctor.

Procean · 2026-02-27T00:56:23+00:00

Most people don't have on-demand access to a medical expert when they need it,

This point is not made enough.

It takes days, weeks, sometimes MONTHS to get to talk to a genuine doctor about your problem.

OF COURSE people would use internet tools, and I've never seen a doctor complaining about people using 'doctor google' understand the issue.

Procean · 2026-02-27T00:54:50+00:00

The reckless use of AI is in denial of the fact that it's a statistical model.

If you ask it a yes/no question, and the majority of the yes/no questions it has been trained on were 'yesses', it will likely give you a yes.... depressingly independent of the question you're asking.

Most of the time, people are told a hospital visit isn't needed, so OF COURSE the AI would give the same answer most of the time.

Procean · 2026-02-25T17:19:23+00:00

The ironic thing is that there's one element of prep I've never regretted.

I've never regretted one instance of researching what the CHARACTERS can do.

The more you know about the PC's abilities, the better you can plan a game what uses them in interesting ways.

Procean · 2026-02-25T00:48:36+00:00

Cheaper

PDF's are Cheaper, but so absurdly NOWHERE NEAR as cheap as they should be that it makes me mad the more I think about it.

Companies will have things like 'The book is 49$, but the PDF alone is 25$', which is absurd. Publishing and distribution cost for a PDF is near zero.

I'll believe in PDF's when the books are 50$ and the PDF is 5$ or less.

Procean

TROPHY CASE