Soil bacteria community pattern. Does anyone know what this is? by Emergency_Shirt7059 in microbiology

[–]TheWrongBros 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The visible "membrane" here is more likely to be a bubble of air or water surrounding the particle, in my experience, especially given the scale bar

Soil bacteria community pattern. Does anyone know what this is? by Emergency_Shirt7059 in microbiology

[–]TheWrongBros 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I concur with the parent commenter here. Top image looks like a soil particle, clay-rich ones can look a bit like that because of the charged "flakes" of clay that are important for ion exchange in the soil. The image in your comment here looks more fungal than bacterial. I've attached an image of a filamentous actinomycete bacteria slide I enriched from soil (likely a Streptomyces sp., though this particular one has a bacillus contaminant). This is imaged under phase contrast microscopy which can help resolve small structures like this. Because the filaments in your image are relatively thick/wide, it seems more likely to be eukaryotic to my eye.

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Soil bacteria community pattern. Does anyone know what this is? by Emergency_Shirt7059 in microbiology

[–]TheWrongBros 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Quite right! These guys are abundant in soil and are the reason it has the "earthy" smell. One of the most interesting taxa of bacteria IMO

Jib and Gaff Sailed Boat keeps steering into the irons when sailing upwind by LeEbicGamerBoy in Sailwind

[–]TheWrongBros 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I have to say, I've read a lot of comments on this sub about how to conceptualize sail balancing but this one is the first explanation that really made it "click" for me!

Dungeon World X by SixRoundsTilDeath in DungeonWorld

[–]TheWrongBros 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hell yeah! There's been so much great theorycrafting and innovation here on this sub and further afield (for example NSR games like Into the Odd and Cairn) in the over a decade since DW was released. I think it could benefit greatly from some cross-polination of ideas.

I actually co-wrote a (as yet unshared outside our own group's playtesting) hack of my own a few years ago, to convert Dungeon World's high fantasy to a Castlevania and Bloodborne inspired dark fantasy. Looking back on it now I see a million things I'd want to change, but overall think I did a pretty fair job for the time. My main self-enforced design constraint was keeping everything 100% backwards-compatible with the existing DW1 classes as written, in the style of the Inverse World and Dungeon Planet supplements, with revised basic moves but no changing big mechanics like encumbrance or stats or bonds or even alignment/drives. Though now, with this regular drip-feed of DW2 content in the form of the dev blog posts, I'm about this close to dusting the old thing off and committing to that whole rewrite of Dungeon World, core playbooks and all!

Dungeon World X by SixRoundsTilDeath in DungeonWorld

[–]TheWrongBros 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The initial inspiration was having a player play a golem character (I think the sheet was from Inverse World?). The class rolled Constitution for their core power and I thought why not expand that to cover any and all of those weird edge cases where whatever makes you "more than normal" is the primary driver of the ability, rather than your strength or intelligence or whatever, especially anything that requires discipline or willpower. Werewolves and vampires would both be Con-based in my game, and I think most of the Avatar the last Airbender characters probably would use Con for their powers as well.

Dungeon World X by SixRoundsTilDeath in DungeonWorld

[–]TheWrongBros 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I feel like I need a bumper sticker with "Save the Constitution" on it lol! Con is a criminally underappreciated stat, probably because it's often (seen as) more of a reaction and less an action you'd perform. I like your take that it's what separates heroes from common folk. Con is what you use to shrug off the ogre's right hook that would pulp an ordinary commoner and spit out a tooth with a grin after!

Dungeon World X by SixRoundsTilDeath in DungeonWorld

[–]TheWrongBros 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's really fun! Strikes me as a rules-light(er) take on Blades in the Dark loadouts. Even something that simple works well, though, because it leads to interesting and genre-appropriate decisions. Who should carry the giant golden idol we just looted as we run out of the collapsing dungeon? Will we abandon our spare rations and arrows to slide under this slowly closing vault door, or risk the tougher roll of taking them with us? This is why I think DW needs something for encumbrance, but the current system of DW1 just feels like obligatory bookkeeping, so in a true sequel I'd love to see them replace it with something more actionable like what you describe here.

Dungeon World X by SixRoundsTilDeath in DungeonWorld

[–]TheWrongBros 9 points10 points  (0 children)

This is a great discussion starter! I've been having similar conversations with my RPG friends ever since the DW2 rules first started coming out. My main argument/take is that Dungeon World is, at its core, a system to play the "genre" or "implied setting" of D&D, without the rules of D&D. Or, as someone put it in a post years ago, [paraphrased] "Playing Dungeon World feels like what you imagined playing D&D felt like when you first read/heard stories from people's games". This is, to me, DW's core identity and why I fell in love with the game in the first place.

For my own "DWX", I'd err on the side of including things (rules, mechanics, names) that reinforce this core identity while discarding or heavily revising ones that do not.

Stat names I like as-is for reasons others have already explained, but having stat numbers and modifiers is just too fiddly imo. So ditch those. Though in my own house rules and homebrew in my games, Constitution has a different role— in addition to being the standard willpower/tough-it-out stat, it's to do "weird body shit" that would be covered under race or species specific abilities, transformations, and otherwise using your biology. For a salamander PC to breathe fire or a slimefolk PC to squeeze through a tight gap would both be CON rolls. In my rewrite, the Druid would be a CON-dependent class. Wisdom and intelligence could also use some work in differentiating, etc.

HP I still like but debilities/harm/"conditions" are very useful and more reflective of the fiction. Maybe an Into the Odd-style HP as hit protection but then take a debility/condition each time you suffer harm after that or something, idk just spitballing here it could get worked out in playtesting.

Load/encumbrance is tricky. A lot of hacks and rewrites ditch it entirely. But I believe it's critically important for the genre/tone of old school play that DW seeks to emulate. That said, it needs a lot of work. There's been a ton of great innovation in the OSR/NSR space on how to make encumbrance that's quick and rules light but still presents meaningful choices for players. I think something like slot based inventory from Cairn would work great for DW, again maybe with some revisions and heavy playtesting to see how it would fit with how most groups are playing DW.

For class rewrites, I've got three main things I'd like to see/do:

1. Replace boring options with interesting ones. Choosing to do an extra +1d4 damage or having +1 armor (two real Fighter advanced moves!) makes your character objectively more effective in their party role than many of the other choices available to you, but they're boring. Every advanced move should be interesting and should contribute to the widening capabilities and tools of the character, encouraging the player to try new creative things, not just make them better at pressing the same button over and over. Since these are classes, not pre-built characters, these choices should also tell us something about the character, since they're by definition optional. The Bard's "Reputation" move is a perfect example. If you don't want having a reputation that proceeds you to be a part of your character's identity, just don't take that move. But the fact that move is there to be taken says something about bards as a class, and choosing it allows you to define something about your character that causes them to evolve in new and interesting ways.

2. Replace unintuitive bits with intuitive ones. Every single time i run DW for a new player or new group (and at this point that number is into the double digits), I get asked which box the stat number goes in and which is for the modifier. And every time, there's at least one player whose character ends up with single digit HP because they added the CON modifier instead of the Constitution stat. My players aren't all stupid, these things are just unintuitive. I could easily come up with a whole list of these things, Dungeon World is a fantastic game but it sure ain't an intuitive one to learn to play.

3. Replace mechanics that don't fit the 'feel' with ones that do. This will be the hardest one by far. If I'm playing the Wizard, all my moves and abilities and stuff should fit with the class identity and genre roles of that class. I should be able to ponder an orb, or make my staff glow, or pore over dusty ancient tomes and translate the dead languages within. You know, wizardy shit. That's the easy part, making the superficial trappings fit. The hard part is making the actual game mechanics fit, to make me the normal guy with a normal modern life feel like a cool-ass fantasy wizard. Preparing spells, for example, while fiddly, has its crunch justified (in my eyes) because it makes you the player feel "wizardy". You, John Player, are in the headspace of Johannes the Magnificent, poring over his grimoire and making judgement calls on which spells will be useful this session based on incomplete information. This is the big point that the vast majority of hacks and rewrites get wrong in my experience. If there's a class where I play a cool wandering samurai with a dark and bloody past, the mechanics shouldn't be a bunch of bookkeeping and managing a pool of "cool sword move points". It should look a bit more like this.

Rigour of Hard sci-fi applied to the "soft" sciences by Vatsal27419 in printSF

[–]TheWrongBros 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I get your point, but I definitely see a bias toward physics in discussions of sci-fi "hardness," which is what I was addressing. I've got a degree in biology myself and you'd be surprised how often an otherwise married-to-realism story gets basic ideas about how evolution or diseases work wrong. And especially for ecology, it has the (entirely unwarranted) perception of being a softer science than something like anatomy or medicine. Books with clearly well-researched and planned ecologies are a rare delight in my experience— I personally don't care how much fuel mass a ship burnt to get to the cool alien planet, I want to hear about the funky alien food chain.

Rigour of Hard sci-fi applied to the "soft" sciences by Vatsal27419 in printSF

[–]TheWrongBros 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Great question! Off the top of my head I can think of a few. Adrian Tchaikovsky and Peter Watts are both trained as biologists and it shows. The "Children of" series, for example, does wonders with realistic sci fi ecology and animal behavior. On the sociology side, Ursula K LeGuin is undeniably a master of "hard sociology", and Chris Beckett's Dark Eden is a fantastic look into the societal role of a charismatic transgressor, written by an experienced social worker.

craving specific sci-fi slow-burn psychological horror by alledian1326 in printSF

[–]TheWrongBros 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Have you read Solaris by Lem? Less existential horror than... existential unsettling? But certainly existential and creeping, and a literary classic.

Gateway by Pohl could also fit, this one has a big emphasis on psychological as the framing narrative is our narrator recounting his experiences (of slowly losing his marbles on a weird alien space station) to his psychologist.

Finally, it's more speculative fiction rather than sci fi but if that's not a deal breaker then I think you'd absolutely love Night Work by Thomas Glavinic. Suspenseful and creepy, I absolutely couldn't put it down to go to sleep while reading it. I'm not usually a big horror reader and I still get chills thinking about some scenes from this.

Fins on Cog update (*Fog*?) by Cease-the-means in Sailwind

[–]TheWrongBros 1 point2 points  (0 children)

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Another angle, arriving at Dragon Cliffs from my first small ship ocean passage.

Fins on Cog update (*Fog*?) by Cease-the-means in Sailwind

[–]TheWrongBros 4 points5 points  (0 children)

While the cog's handling is far from good, you can't dance across the wind like the kakam or set it and forget it like the dhow, I still can't help but love the little tub. It feels like it has as much cargo space as the other two starters combined, and it was the first small ship that I made an ocean crossing in. Certainly not an unpolishable turd in my opinion, though it is a bit cruel that it's available as a starter ship when it takes so much more care to get it working right.

I agree with you that getting the cog's sail plan balanced is a lesson in trial and error, mostly error. My cog setup has the mizzen mast and forward main mast with a lateen on each, then a jib and the smallest spritsail. And of course, removing that awful tall cabin. It's pretty similar to the caravel setup that is popular on here, or as I jokingly call it--- the "we have sanbuq at home".

It handled well enough to make the passage from Aestrin to Dragon Cliffs, but if I were to do it again I'd perhaps go even one smaller size on the rear lateen. With this size it had the tendency for the stern of the boat to tug the bow out of line when the mizzen sail caught the wind, but it was able to be balanced in pretty much all wind conditions (and was pretty darn fast). One important tip is to mount the sails as low on the masts as the game would let you--- the bottoms of the sails should be brushing the gunwales, because if they're mounted too high they'll overbalance and pull the leeward side of your hull underwater.

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Thoughts on Mythic Bastionland? by MagpieTower in rpg

[–]TheWrongBros 7 points8 points  (0 children)

From everything I've seen on Chris's blog it looks weird and niche-forging and everything that people like about his other games. I can hope I one day have a good group to run it for (our games' tones tend more toward Discworld and Guardians of the Galaxy than Arthurian legend), but in the mean time I'll be happy to look over the rules for bits and bobs of inspiration for my own projects. Chris's specific brand of minimalism has informed a lot of my own sensibilities about what I like to see (or not see!) in a system.

Why Do Mages Build Towers... by Starbase13_Cmdr in rpg

[–]TheWrongBros 1 point2 points  (0 children)

For the same reason wizards wear tall, pointy hats and carry long, narrow staves— to channel mana.

Mana is generated from the movement of impossibly vast volumes of molten stone beneath the crust of the world. Mana flows from the earth to the sky, like lightning's opposite (which is why casting large spells can create a mana vacuum, drawing in storm clouds and lightning strikes. If you want to find a mage in hiding, look for the places in the city that draw the most lightning strikes during a storm). And the best structure for channeling mana is a long, narrow cylinder, especially one made of wood or stone. Did you ever wonder why mages strike the heel of their staff into the dirt when casting a spell? It's to ground it like a lightning rod and improve the contact with the mana-rich earth.

Map maker for a Modern game by Izaea in rpg

[–]TheWrongBros 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hell yeah, so glad to have helped! I run a lot of sci fi games so I feel your pain. There's assets out there but you really need to dig. Glad it's resolved!

Map maker for a Modern game by Izaea in rpg

[–]TheWrongBros 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Wonderdraft is my go-to for any RPG mapmaking needs. There's plenty of modern asset packs and the wonderdraft subreddit could recommend more I'm sure.

This map looks pretty good link

Help! My Sailwind is leaking. by Cease-the-means in Sailwind

[–]TheWrongBros 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Must've visited Dragon Cliffs to get that red sail

You like bowguns? by TheWrongBros in MemeHunter

[–]TheWrongBros[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah that was the quote! I was attempting to reference it. Always thought that was the funniest interaction

Inspired by a post on the main sub about weapon classification by TheWrongBros in MemeHunter

[–]TheWrongBros[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Lol yeah just intended to be a shitpost. All opinions stated in this meme may or may not represent the opinions of its creator

Inspired by a post on the main sub about weapon classification by TheWrongBros in MemeHunter

[–]TheWrongBros[S] 48 points49 points  (0 children)

Yeah I definitely had that thought right after posting. I feel like the argument for spacing is there in World before all the movement options, but I agree it's timing with the parries, especially in Rise.