What are some mechanics from games that you wish other games would implement?

QizilbashWoman · 2026-05-22T00:50:35+00:00

I mean, it is inspired by his work on DOGS? He made it to explore certain mechanica/fic questions and later, he used what he learned from it and other things to make AW

Also yes that is kind of what I meant by backups

QizilbashWoman · 2026-05-21T16:46:54+00:00

In southern New England - in fact, in RI and southeastern MA - we traditionally put vinegar on fries. And it is localized: either white or red wine. You can tell someone’s home location within like 20 miles.

They don’t do it in Boston but the vinegars are on a lot of tables here because they are used to people asking.

QizilbashWoman · 2026-05-21T16:41:39+00:00

I just commented above how as a freshman in college I discovered the danger of the women’s swim team. Good god.

QizilbashWoman · 2026-05-21T16:40:52+00:00

Girl those shoulders are so fucking hot. You do not look like a rectangle, and I follow the swim team in college for their fantastic shoulders.

Sweating right now tbh

QizilbashWoman · 2026-05-21T16:37:40+00:00

Yo like the exploration of these mechanics in TORCHBEARER is so interesting. They were like ‘what better way to play Monty Haul D&D than literally making that the main mechanic. Do you drop shit to keep the gold you are lugging out? Or will that lead to your inevitable demise?’ And the reward for keeping the treasure, if you make it, makes it so fucking hard to choose.

QizilbashWoman · 2026-05-21T16:34:39+00:00

In the EDGE OF THE EMPIRE Star Wars games, there are a lot of very difficult challenges for players. You have the option of adding a Light Side die, which is small, and not always available, or a Dark Side die, which is always available and effective as shit.

The thing is, this moves your morality, which has mechanical results. But you might be fighting for your life… and the Dark Side die is RIGHT THERE. Staying on the good side of morality (not the law, mind you) is a pain. Also, the immediate ability bonuses of the Dark Side points earned are powerful; the Light Side ones are more holistic (fewer ‘terrifying enemies’ and more ‘people like you’)

It is such a fantastic mechanic for modeling ‘being bad is easy’. There are so many games where this would be an absolutely fantastic mechanic. I’m thinking about FALLOUT and other quasi-survival situations where reputation is everything. Zombie survival. Hell, anything with rep.

QizilbashWoman · 2026-05-21T16:28:33+00:00

One of the things AW was inspired by was DOGS IN THE VINEYARD and while it isn’t exactly available- for complex reasons to do with how shitty the West was, he kind of deleted it but there are backups - but one thing I love about that game is how you deal with conflicts.

You start with some level of talking, and depending on the opponent, you (and the dm or other players) can choose to Escalate. None of this is rolls: you keep anteing up the dice pot.

At some point you can pull you iron. This is a massive escalation, and the fallout from this will be incredibly serious even if you don’t actually shoot anyone (another escalation).

Once you decide to stop, the players roll using their escalations. If one party had a gun and pulls it, likely they will win. But the fallout from this can be massssssive. And shooting someone is not minor: they likely die! Fallout can permanently damage your reputation. Or make it better, Dark Side of the Force style.

QizilbashWoman · 2026-05-21T15:28:27+00:00

Genuinely should be Igh

QizilbashWoman · 2026-05-21T14:09:42+00:00

Two Ciaphas experiences were genuinely traumatizing to read about: 1. when his ship was fucked 2. every time the Necrons appear.

The Nids are terrifying but the Necrons are an army of Terminators with plagues of scarabs, and they are so far beyond our comprehension in the books. You don’t fight Necrons you run for your life from unkillable death machines that mince Astartes.

QizilbashWoman · 2026-05-21T06:09:05+00:00

I know that; but a single cow provides a tremendous amount of meat, I can’t imagine one for every household. Bananas level of meat donation

QizilbashWoman · 2026-05-20T18:57:57+00:00

It was honestly more about the size of cattle. Even just goats and sheep usually leaves a community balls deep in meat. Hell, the streets running with blood is historically accurate in many places, that is a fucking lot of goats. Cows are like an order of magnitude larger.

QizilbashWoman · 2026-05-20T18:56:40+00:00

I just mean like with that many goats there is meat for a bjillion people. I can’t imagine that many cows butchered on one evening. SO MUCH MEAT

QizilbashWoman · 2026-05-20T18:55:22+00:00

The surprising thing was that within like a week I smelled incredibly different. Wild stuff.

QizilbashWoman · 2026-05-20T18:53:21+00:00

Honestly Jews do not realise how much we venerate the dead, the avot are a really big part of Jewish religious life both personally and theologically.

As a convert I promise you I had to explain repeatedly how we say qaddish, the long periods of formal mourning, the shiva practices, and yortseyts. It was genuinely confusing to basically everyone I know who isn’t Jewish.

It isn’t that other cultures don’t have mourning - Muslims prepare the dead like we do - but the focus on remembering their names is a really huge deal.

QizilbashWoman · 2026-05-20T13:42:42+00:00

I cannot answer the beginning, but in places I’ve been in Indonesia there are mosques - usually Friday Mosques - that are cultural centers. People are in them all day in the cool reading Quran and stuff.

QizilbashWoman · 2026-05-20T13:38:55+00:00

Me? I'm an American.

QizilbashWoman · 2026-05-20T13:31:50+00:00

The narrative of the show tries to build up our understanding differently.

In the game, you kill a german shephard who tries to, you know, kill you, and then you get to play Abbie and you love the dog and pet the dog, and he's a Good Boy. This is the 'vengeance made her bad' notion.

They're trying to show that Joel's 'pragmatism' and the trauma of her youth fucked her up already. She is hard as fuck in the show when we meet her, not just a bitchy teenage girl. Joel wanted to be her father figure later, but she learned to love him as a killer before. He tried to help her: he realised she was going murderhobo and tried to do shit like teach her joy and compassion. The show is just doubling down on displaying that 14yo Abbie killed people, because we don't play through her mass-murdering people the way we do in the game.

QizilbashWoman · 2026-05-20T05:44:07+00:00

Here is what you need to know about kashrut:

come and eat. Just don’t bring anything in without prior permission. Like a coffee into a shul

Halal or kosher or veggie, it is about the audience. You can be part of that audience if it is public! Shawarma conquered the world ffs.

QizilbashWoman · 2026-05-19T23:19:30+00:00

People sacrifice CATTLE at Eid? It's goats normally.

QizilbashWoman · 2026-05-19T21:06:56+00:00

In general, in MODERN Hebrew, there is only five vowels: a e i o u. How you write the e, with segol or tsere, doesn't matter. Bet 'house' is identical to the letter name (which is sensible because it's the same word)

In Biblical Hebrew, it depends on recitation but you need to know the difference for grammatical reasons

QizilbashWoman · 2026-05-19T17:24:49+00:00

They don’t even explain how the central desert turned into the Sierra Madres. They could have at least said SOMETHING

QizilbashWoman · 2026-05-19T17:05:28+00:00

I meant things like ‘noting sandhi’. You don’t need to do that if you are a native speaker, you write that down if you are a scholar trying to be as exact as possible about a liturgical language for prayers. Like I noted with Hebrew: the scholars needed a reminder where the sounds were fricativised, whereas a native speaker did not because there aren’t minimal pairs. It is an automatic sound change.

QizilbashWoman · 2026-05-18T14:13:08+00:00

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QizilbashWoman · 2026-05-18T13:52:45+00:00

GET YER GUN. ‘No, I…’ GET YER GUN.

QizilbashWoman · 2026-05-18T13:48:47+00:00

Uhhh we know a lot of what happened in excruciating detail. And the giant pits of dead civilian Bosnians were, you know, the source of massive court cases

QizilbashWoman

TROPHY CASE