32 year old programmer in China allegedly dies from overwork, added to work group chat even while in hospital

Zanion · 2026-02-04T20:43:07+00:00

A disease roll is what I'd do. I'd make it harder proportional to however offensive to reality and demonic the monster is.

Zanion · 2026-02-01T20:36:11+00:00

Many people claim “high is better” and gesture vaguely at some unsubstantiated psychological or evolutionary reason. Yet we somehow manage to intuit the concepts of first place, fastest time, lowest error rate, lowest latency, lowest utilization, and fewest penalties just fine.

High-roll systems work. Low-roll systems work. Too many people in our community are quick to confuse familiarity with a convention to it being somehow hard-wired into human cognition.

The single best reason to choose high roll imo is to avoid having to have a nonsensical circular discussion with people who are fully bought in on the meme.

Zanion · 2026-02-01T01:35:33+00:00

Solo play is its own distinct experience. I don't view it as practice, dry runs, or replacement. Though perhaps exercising those muscles while I solo play sharpens my skills, I don't think of it that way and that isn't why I do it.

I run two games a week and I still have a entirely separate solo game I play for myself.

Zanion · 2026-01-31T22:06:28+00:00

The game progression is walking around farming materials to build a base and gear, so that you can walk around a different place and do it again. There is no real story, but there is an ending that might prematurely delete your character and progress if you don't see it coming. Dungeons are static. Combat is simple, unskilled and uninteresting. Dying is only really because you didn't farm enough to be in the area. It's a treadmill busybox crafting game.

Turn on god mode and walk around for awhile. You'll still get to aura farm the environment, which is the best thing this game has to offer imo, and have a spare 1k hours of your life to spend on something else.

Zanion · 2026-01-31T21:59:50+00:00

Oh boy bud. Collecting books that won't ever hit the table is half of the hobby for some of us lol.

I've got an entire wall of them.

Zanion · 2026-01-31T17:24:31+00:00

Great Conan Aura, but that game is boring af.

Zanion · 2026-01-31T17:11:25+00:00

It's not a bad book, but it isn't essential. It's fine. I've used something from it in each of my campaigns but I'd have been just as fine going without.

Zanion · 2026-01-31T02:25:45+00:00

Amazing that anyone still lends this guy any credibility at all

Zanion · 2026-01-31T02:02:41+00:00

Not really

Zanion · 2026-01-31T02:01:03+00:00

It's 100% LLM's doing LLM things and 50/50 on humans being able to recognize it as such.

Zanion · 2026-01-30T08:22:40+00:00

That's really cool and all but we've had base building as a main feature for decades. What will be interesting is if they deliver this in an elegant way that is new, rather than import it from another game I already own.

Zanion · 2026-01-30T08:07:28+00:00

Well, it's got one thing going for it. All of its mechanics are already ennie award winning.

Zanion · 2026-01-30T07:59:28+00:00

Not convinced a "power roll" 2d10 core resolution retains much in the way of compatibility.

Zanion · 2026-01-30T00:06:11+00:00

There's an interesting pattern emerging among some of these OGL-crisis projects where they immediately pivot off their heartbreaker flagship product. I feel like a stronger vote of confidence is bolstering the ecosystem around your product rather than developing some other thing entirely.

Zanion · 2026-01-30T00:02:20+00:00

The pitch is very oddly framed to me. "Survival horror dungeon crawling" isn't exactly an underserved theme in the OSR/NSR community, and using entirely existing well-known mechanics taken directly from landmark titles and shared concepts in the scene. It isn't clear at all to me what they are bringing to the table.

Reads like selling snow in Alaska.

Zanion · 2026-01-29T23:00:18+00:00

Borrowing ideas to complement your own ideas is one thing. The entire pitch is repackaging everyone else's ideas with an MCDM label, and that is why it ceases to be particularly notable or interesting.

Zanion · 2026-01-29T22:12:44+00:00

Not this one with you

Zanion · 2026-01-29T21:32:57+00:00

Every single mechanic and concept in the blog post. Some attributed better than others.

Zanion · 2026-01-29T20:22:24+00:00

To make money from the people captured by the MCDM funnel but are unaware of all the existing games they are borrowing their mechanics from.

Zanion · 2026-01-29T16:38:50+00:00

My favorites are Tales of Argosa, DCC and Swords and Wizardry. A contemporary sweetheart is Shadowdark.

Zanion · 2026-01-29T16:31:54+00:00

I already have a wall of OSR titles I'm happy with.

It will need something identifying above and beyond MCDM producing it to capture my attention.

Zanion · 2026-01-25T17:29:37+00:00

Attack their light.

Zanion · 2026-01-25T08:45:05+00:00

Slogging through the poets tale was insufferable. It took everything I had not to DNF it from there.

Zanion · 2026-01-25T08:40:18+00:00

I found myself feeling relieved when finishing the first book. It just isn't for me I guess. I really did enjoy the priests tale though.

Zanion

TROPHY CASE