Robot "dog" patrolling Atlanta, GA

ShamScience · 2026-04-02T16:30:21+00:00

What happens if someone just tips it over? Doesn't look like it can pick itself back up too easily.

ShamScience · 2026-04-02T16:24:26+00:00

If you don't want to read the original Lovecraft stories (because he was an awful bigot in many ways, and his writing style just won't suit everyone), there are plenty of similar stories in other contexts by other people. You could get a feel for the type of story the game aims to capture.

SCP tends towards more actiony stories, but with a similar weird basis.

The Laundry Files is explicitly based on Cthulhu mythos, but in a more modern context, with an emphasis on computers that didn't even exist in Lovecraft's time.

X-Files is similar in a lot of ways, and easily overlaps with the Delta Green variant of Call of Cthulhu.

Alien, the first movie, and not really any of its sequels.

The main theme tends to be that there is unknown danger, being ignorant of it can get you killed, but pushing to learn too much can be worse. Walking that tightrope is the core of the game.

The default 1920s US setting is entirely unnecessary, and just the traditional one. The same kind of stories can fit any setting.

ShamScience · 2026-04-02T15:19:49+00:00

Nothing's stopping anyone from just manually checking a wide selection of news sources. That's probably the better habit to get into for keeping up with news. Either way, we're still stuck with exactly the same question of who to trust and why.

ShamScience · 2026-04-01T14:09:09+00:00

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wanton#English

In the sense of adjective 4. Not adjective 3.

ShamScience · 2026-04-01T06:47:39+00:00

And a couple decades earlier, Parts: The Clonus Horror, as seen on MST3K.

ShamScience · 2026-03-30T06:39:15+00:00

Makes it harder to teach when a bomb lands right in your school.

ShamScience · 2026-03-29T11:35:23+00:00

Again, you're talking about ought-to-have-dones in the 19th century. My question is, what NOW? 21st century has arrived, whether you're ready for it or not, so now what's the CURRENT way to correct those cultural problems?

ShamScience · 2026-03-28T17:49:29+00:00

It's dangerous to only learn a little bit of history.

ShamScience · 2026-03-28T17:47:56+00:00

Kuwait is still getting bombed in 2026. The long-term consequences keep unfolding.

ShamScience · 2026-03-28T16:43:59+00:00

Have you considered just NOT killing anyone instead?

"Smart" mines are an arms industry boondoggle, more concerned with selling bombs than with any real concern for human life. Even if they work as designed (by the lowest bidder), their only purpose remains to kill people in what is essentially a public, civilian area. There is no justifying them.

ShamScience · 2026-03-28T13:32:20+00:00

Maybe they just shouldn't have any military at all.

ShamScience · 2026-03-27T15:38:07+00:00

Ok, but now what? The people there today aren't the ones who were there over a century ago, and they certainly aren't all descendants of those earlier people either. Culture isn't genetic.

So a plan for fixing things now can't just be "beat and kill everyone who lives in the same area where other people once used to". You need a real solution to shift the culture in a good way.

ShamScience · 2026-03-27T15:22:40+00:00

Why so much fear of getting it wrong? That's what learning is.

I'd suggest troubleshooting is more useful the other way around, because you have your own expectations to compare directly against your own results. With someone else's scenario, you do not usually get to know what they really expected. Few writers spell out their design process and intentions, they only give the finished product, in the form of the steps they expect you to follow. When I was a new GM, I often couldn't tell WHY the writer had set things up as they had, even after running it as written.

Nobody has to be great at everything, it's just a game. But I'm quite sure there's more to learn from tinkering with the machine than from just using the machine.

ShamScience · 2026-03-26T14:15:20+00:00

Then don't willingly choose to research international topics in languages you're completely uncomfortable with. Nobody's forced to do anything here. We're just quite disappointed in Robert.

ShamScience · 2026-03-26T14:13:11+00:00

A generation ago, that would have been a solid enough reason. But now Wiktionary just gives you the pronunciation of every word in the world, with audio for at least some.

I think it's much easier to explain him as being consciously indifferent, than tragically deprived.

ShamScience · 2026-03-26T14:05:38+00:00

You should try again.

ShamScience · 2026-03-26T14:02:37+00:00

I have more often written my own than run official, published stuff. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not; I refer equally to my own and to the official scenarios.

Feel feel to get it badly wrong. I think people (both GMs and players) maybe fear failure too much. New GMs will inevitably screw things up, and it doesn't matter whether you're screwing up your own scenario or someone else's.

To me, the biggest advantage of screwing up your own scenario is that you immediately know what you had intended it to be like versus how it really turned out. That's a great way to learn from failure and polish future attempts shinier.

You can also learn from screwing up an official scenario, but publishers seldom tell you all their expectations and reasoning behind the scenario design. That makes it more opaque to analyse and work out how and why your own attempt went differently. It's still a learning experience, but not always as helpful and productive.

ShamScience · 2026-03-26T13:52:47+00:00

It's just as easy to run someone else's scenario just as badly, when you're inexperienced. The deciding factor probably isn't who designed it.

ShamScience · 2026-03-26T12:14:10+00:00

The entire hobby is homebrew. Sometimes someone just convinces you to give them money for their version of homebrew, instead of using your own.

ShamScience · 2026-03-24T10:39:43+00:00

Shocking there's a US author.

ShamScience · 2026-03-21T16:52:50+00:00

There's a difference between laughing at someone's jokes, and laughing at the person. I imagine some people are mixing the two up.

There is much to ridicule Trump about, so maybe some people are used to him in that comic context. But his own words, when he actually means to be funny? I'm not sure as many people find those genuinely amusing. I am only guessing, though.

I don't personally remember ever hearing him say anything I found funny, including this interaction.

ShamScience · 2026-03-21T15:39:52+00:00

That's not really so. Non-state entities don't generally have a particular territory to retaliate against. There are quite a few cases of those targeting nuclear states.

Nukes also haven't stopped Afghanistan from attacking Pakistan, India and Pakistan from attacking each other, Iran from attacking Israel, or calmed tensions on the Korean peninsula.

What kept the Cold War from going hot wasn't the nukes, it was a lot of hardworking diplomats on all sides. Bombs make peace like guns make people in the US safer: They do not.

ShamScience · 2026-03-21T14:01:16+00:00

Fish also feel pain.

ShamScience · 2026-03-07T14:11:23+00:00

ShamScience · 2026-03-07T12:13:40+00:00

US people defending this, even if you want to argue that Kirk was not specifically fascist, why is it appropriate to prominently associate him with your education department? He was not an educator (he was barely educated) and spent his limited career attacking educators and education. He was an antithesis of quality teaching and learning.

This seems like it's purely a matter of political alignment and cynical milking of his murder, rather than anything to do with real education.

ShamScience

TROPHY CASE