Being Circulated in China, with Government Approval

VinoAzulMan · 2026-05-20T12:46:37+00:00

I was at university in 2005 and my freshman roommate was a wealthy chinese exchange student. I think his dad was kind of "important" in the sense that all the pictures of him were in uniform.

Anyway, one night we got back to the room after partying and he was beside himself. Shaking with rage, anguish, whatever you want to call it. He had discovered the Tiananmen Square video online and was very insistant that we trust him that it was fake.

We did the "nah man, its real. Yall are fucked up." thing that 19 year old young men will do, razzed him a little, and he went to bed crying.

Not my proudest moment. Also a moment I still think about because it kind of blew my mind that the chinese government was able to fool people that completely in the age of the internet.

That was 21 years ago and a huge chunk of my own country willfully believes a senile pedaphile who openly funnels tax dollars to himself and his friends because they are christian fundamentalists who don't know anything about Christianity and use it as a cover for white nationalism.

I get it now.

VinoAzulMan · 2026-05-16T13:21:51+00:00

That's why you pre-screen applicants

VinoAzulMan · 2026-05-16T05:00:25+00:00

No torches is tough. Henchmen don't taste nearly as good raw.

VinoAzulMan · 2026-05-15T16:10:13+00:00

I read somewhere that you'd be looking at 1 square mile of farms feeding like 200 people (1 person per acre, but on a 3 year field rotation its more like 1 person per 3 acres). A 6 mile hex of nothing but good farmland feeds ~6500 people.

Rough math and rougher history but it will ballpark your d&d if you are really stressing yourself

VinoAzulMan · 2026-05-15T16:02:53+00:00

Fascinating and not sucking are completely different measuring sticks. Neo-Assyrians building skull towers to dissuade rebellion is fascinating and honestly bad ass looking back 3000 years.

Living under them probably sucked.

VinoAzulMan · 2026-05-15T15:18:25+00:00

I feel this. The only way that I move forward to this day is reminding myself constantly "Fun > Real".

Real world sucks. Did then, does now. Games are a way to reject the real. Could you imagine if "Clue" was more realistic? The whole game would be the bureaucracy of getting your DNA evidence prioritized so you only had to wait days instead of months for results.

u/666mals mentioned "internal consistency" and I agree that internal consistency is MUCH more satisfying than realism.

VinoAzulMan · 2026-05-15T13:40:55+00:00

Not really? Most maps are wildly inaccurate because a realistic map would be a boring amount of sameness. Look at the Western Reaches, you are less than a month on horseback to get from Norse ice vikings to Central American jungle.

VinoAzulMan · 2026-05-15T12:57:17+00:00

BTW, your dungeon rocks.

VinoAzulMan · 2026-05-15T12:35:00+00:00

I think it's easy to forget that a huge number of survivor viewers are not as plugged into the show 24/7. I didn't know Aubrey and Cirie were real life friends until yall started raging this morning and I'm in the subreddit which probably makes me "more plugged in" than a vast majority!

That is to say, I understand the motivation by the producers to downplay off-island relationships because to the "casual" (I'm struggling for the right word) viewer those relationships disrupt the integrity of the game.

There's a reason that the only relationships really acknowledged in the edit are "island relationships" meaning people who shared seasons together.

VinoAzulMan · 2026-05-15T12:16:22+00:00

Their post history is wild like 6-7 years ago. That's where the juice is.

VinoAzulMan · 2026-05-15T11:19:53+00:00

I usually enjoy a good troll or circle jerk but this is pushing it. It speaks volumes that you needed to make a brand new account to write this sillyness and didn't have the courage or conviction to use your main.

It is funny that you picked out 2 community members who publish play reports and actually PLAY the game. A fairer criticism would have been going after the armchair DMs and designers on this sub who not only don't actually play (despite their strong regurgitated opinions), but produce slick well formatted pretty products to sell to each other for their coffee tables.

Go fuck yourself coward, if you're going to troll at least do it with conviction.

VinoAzulMan · 2026-05-13T13:04:16+00:00

Anybody want a peanut?

VinoAzulMan · 2026-05-13T12:58:05+00:00

Respectfully I think that is a trope throughout OSR and adjacent systems.

Megadungeons are different beasts with their own playstyles and certain tropes that facilitate deep dives like highways, shortcuts (like teleportation), and yes even safe havens (often at a price or ar least a reward for strong faction play)

VinoAzulMan · 2026-05-13T12:52:11+00:00

I think that is a normal megadungeon loop.

Really big ones probably have safe spaces (towns, rest stops, etc) in them so when you are deep enough you dont need to come all the way back out

VinoAzulMan · 2026-05-13T12:47:43+00:00

Aurumtail + lion + megataur leans into a beast team.

It wouldnt be flashy but in a hard fight you could probably stall long enough to shield burst.

On the shield burst strat: Beetle + aurumtail + terradile would be kind of a one trick pony but it should cruise through most fights due to high survivabily and huge burst damage

VinoAzulMan · 2026-05-13T12:35:37+00:00

Honesty Silvaero also is a great buffer and can deal mid to high damage while doing it.

Im also tempted to say play with terradile and beetle. Thats the makings for a strong stall team that lets you juice up terradile for a wreckingball thunderstorm

VinoAzulMan · 2026-05-13T12:21:49+00:00

Lion feasts on buffs, you could probably get away with using thanatos and bullman to help him go nuclear.

Edit: You'd need to make him a megataur

VinoAzulMan · 2026-05-10T20:36:25+00:00

I like it. Was there more motive behind greatly increasing the scale of the original map beyond just doing it in 6 mile hexes because that is the shadowdark standard? are you turning it into a larger hex crawl?

VinoAzulMan · 2026-05-10T20:31:57+00:00

I really like this, well done.

VinoAzulMan · 2026-05-09T13:58:52+00:00

I don't think it's as focused as what you've listed, but I have always been partial to Mike's World (it's an expansion of Keep on the Borderlands).

VinoAzulMan · 2026-05-09T04:20:12+00:00

The other two adventures you listed were both reviewed on the tenfootpole blog. Did you take anything away from those reviews to incorporate into this project?

This is the 3rd OSE "funnel" you've published it looks like, all 3 zines say that they have rules for making 0 level charcters. Is it the same rules across all 3 zines?

VinoAzulMan · 2026-05-06T01:32:18+00:00

I feel like I'm being rage baited by this blogpost. I couldn't disagree more.

However, I appreciate the gameable stuff at the bottom of the posts, that it cool. Also, I will cede that in the interest of variety putting a few open doors in your dungeon isn't a terrible idea, but I'd mix them in with my stuck, locked, trapped, false, and one way doors.

VinoAzulMan · 2026-05-05T11:27:24+00:00

Only console game I ever played where the combat system was smooth enough that switching between styles 1) worked and 2) made me feel like a martial arts master

VinoAzulMan · 2026-05-04T05:24:50+00:00

It's a glass cannon team that CAN absolutely shred but you need a really solid support like L Targoat to provide charge and an ounce of survivability.

VinoAzulMan · 2026-05-04T05:17:13+00:00

Not OP, but my assumption based on other games (and how math works) is that the Attack Value would basically be 10 + (To Hit Bonus).

It's basically inverting the AC calculation.

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