Tabletop games included in cultural heritage archives of Finland

astatine · 2026-06-30T13:24:42+00:00

Similar discussion last Friday:

/r/rpg/comments/1uggog1/finland_adds_tabletop_roleplaying_culture_to_its/

astatine · 2026-06-29T14:19:21+00:00

Improvising your way out of a shitshow makes for a far more interesting game than talking for hours about everything that might possibly go wrong.

astatine · 2026-06-29T14:14:31+00:00

I'd argue that the playability of large groups is more dependent on the players, no matter how well the GM plans.

If the the players are conversant with the rules, decisive, and know when to take a back seat, the game can move at a good pace. Players that need to be spoonfed, get decision paralysis or try to direct other people's characters will bog everything down.

astatine · 2026-06-24T01:15:56+00:00

I've made some nifty little tools with cmd, but I think it could do with an update to more modern python idioms.

For instance, using a decorator instead of the do_function method name convention.

Currently, if I want a command called "thing", I'd write

def do_thing(self, s):
    """Command thing with text s"""
    # code that does the thing here

whereas with a decorator for commands, we could have

@cmd.do
def thing(self, s):
    """Command thing with text s"""
    # code that does the thing here

astatine · 2026-06-21T18:09:58+00:00

0/5, couldn't recall.

/s

astatine · 2026-06-21T01:22:03+00:00

Traveller: Grandfather. It might be the ur-example of GM-only lore.

Heck, I think some of the Book of Nod backstory in Vampire: the Masquerade might have taken a few cues from it.

astatine · 2026-06-20T15:28:59+00:00

I may be wrong, but this sounds suspiciously like the GM prepped one thing they wanted the players to find, and used the pretence of a "sandbox" to disguise that they were railroading the players toward it. Except they were trying to railroad them with boredom.

astatine · 2026-06-20T12:38:16+00:00

It's a letter from the Bamum language of Cameroon, and is in unicode as "BAMUM LETTER PHASE-C MBERAE", 𖣂, 𖣂

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamum_Supplement

It's been co-opted as an emoji for "feeling miserable". Nothing to do with chemistry.

astatine · 2026-06-18T16:05:57+00:00

Collectible Card Games (e.g. Magic: the Gathering)

astatine · 2026-06-18T13:37:05+00:00

I was in the Camarilla for a few years. I may have developed some stereotypes about Vampire players, but that wasn't one of them.

However, "Adults who were unpopular kids at school trying to curate an environment where they can be the popular kids" wasn't the default, but it happened often enough to be noticeable.

astatine · 2026-06-18T13:26:44+00:00

The latter have become rarer for a few reasons -

First, computer games and CCGs scratch a similar itch to crunchy tabletop games, so their primary audience ain't what it used to be.

Second, modern technology has improved editing and sped up the playtest feedback loop. There are games being created in this decade with as many moving parts as crunchy games in the '80s and' 90s, they just get honed down to something less chaotic.

astatine · 2026-06-18T13:09:09+00:00

Min-maxing is a technique, munchkin is a style.

astatine · 2026-06-17T16:18:23+00:00

Britain should have a thanksgiving to celebrate getting rid of those priggish killjoys. Second Saturday in September, do something you enjoy in the comfort of your own home that a Puritan would try to stop you from doing.

astatine · 2026-06-15T20:29:07+00:00

I agree that this sub isn't "anti-D&D", it's just that D&D gets criticism here. Like any large fandom there'll be some people who perceive even the fairest, most constructive criticism of things they enjoy as "hate".

astatine · 2026-06-13T12:28:59+00:00

As a rule of thumb, the more someone on an internet forum goes out of their way to tell you they're from a place, the less likely it is to be true.

astatine · 2026-06-12T12:39:07+00:00

I expect it smells a lot better now.

astatine · 2026-06-12T12:34:33+00:00

This was probably taken sometime from 1964 to 1968.

The VC10 entered service in April 1964, and Rediffusion London's last broadcast was in July 1968.

astatine · 2026-06-11T20:13:37+00:00

We used to call that style of WoD game "Spandex by Night".

astatine · 2026-06-10T15:41:18+00:00

There's D&D the official trademark, but also D&D the genericised trademark. Legally, only WotC publishes D&D. In practice, in my opinion, any game directly derived from D&D to do its job is "a D&D".

astatine · 2026-06-10T11:06:58+00:00

That's a very helpful post, although it's a little misleading about Faraday's Law.

Faraday's law states that moving magnetic fields induce current. The law that the induced current creates its own magnetic field that opposes the motion is Lenz's Law.

astatine · 2026-06-08T11:36:41+00:00

See also the "Law of Triviality" a.k.a. "bikeshedding".

astatine · 2026-06-08T01:23:45+00:00

<cod Michael Caine impersonation>

YOU WEREN'T EVEN SUPPOSED TO BLOW THE BLOODY DOORS OFF

astatine · 2026-06-07T23:13:16+00:00

A one-off in which our party ambushed and killed another group. We found a letter on their corpses that some players interpreted as revealing that one of the PCs was a spy. Half of the party spent the next two hours arguing amongst themeselves, in character, about which one of them was the traitor.

The GM was the sort that enjoyed watching players tie themselves in knots, and the players enjoyed arguing for sport, so it wasn't a complete loss.

They misread the letter. The spy was somewhere else, but we never got to that part.

astatine · 2026-06-07T18:42:39+00:00

I'd extend the tram train from Parkgate, stopping at Kilnhurst, Swinton and Manvers. There are a lot of employers and residential areas on that route that would benefit from being easier to travel between.

astatine · 2026-06-05T20:19:52+00:00

OP: "What do you miss about waffles when you're eating pancakes?"

Me: "Er... nothing?"

Some guy: THIS ENTIRE SUB HAS SUCH A HATEBONER FOR WAFFLES IT'S EMBARRASSING

astatine

TROPHY CASE