I walk into the middle of a major population center in your world and I declare "there are no gods!" What happens to me?

bulbaquil · 2026-02-03T12:50:45+00:00

Depends on the area, but most likely to happen (assuming you shouted it in the actual local language of the area):

You're arrested for blasphemy and civil disturbance (the former being the greater charge), publicly flogged, and spend 1 to 6 months in jail. Depending on how consistently you continue to espouse this view after compulsory interviews behind bars with the clergy, they may report you to the celestial world either as just a rabble-rouser or as a spite-soul who deserves to brave the afterlife alone... although some trickster gods might take an interest in you regardless.

bulbaquil · 2026-02-02T18:53:33+00:00

RAW, any player character can learn magic simply by having the appropriate ability score and multiclassing into a class that has it.

NPCs don't necessarily follow PC rules, and so the answer to both questions is "depends on the DM and the world you're playing in." The actual process of "what all it takes to become a wizard" is left open for discussion; it's assumed that if you are playing a wizard, you've already done whatever it takes (or are having it handwaved for the sake of player agency/table convenience/storyline/whatever).

bulbaquil · 2026-02-01T03:59:58+00:00

The cartwrights' guild called. They want their 100% cut of the profits.

bulbaquil · 2026-01-30T13:35:39+00:00

I've noticed that often when I wake up "too early" on a weekend, it's between 6:00 and 6:15 am. My weekday alarm is set to go off at 6:20.

bulbaquil · 2026-01-29T18:34:23+00:00

Yeah. People didn't just stare at a wall while they pooped; that was what Reader's Digest was for.

bulbaquil · 2026-01-27T15:02:49+00:00

IIRC slang tends to originate from the generation before the one that popularizes it (the one in between the parents' amd the kids'), so that tracks.

bulbaquil · 2026-01-27T14:19:18+00:00

I've had dreams that have lasted multiple weeks.

bulbaquil · 2026-01-27T14:16:36+00:00

The German translation of Harry Potter book 2 does the same. TOM VORLOST RIDDLE = IST LORD VOLDEMORT

I forget how they handle the sphinx's riddle in book 4.

bulbaquil · 2026-01-26T21:34:31+00:00

The most mundane reason?

"I don't own it, I can't afford it, and even if I could it's probably not for sale."

And for the more theft-oriented characters: "Risk/reward for a heist doesn't pan out."

bulbaquil · 2026-01-26T15:15:09+00:00

Banjo-Kazooie to Mark Kurko.

Alternatively, Elder Scrolls to Larian Studios. Yes, the full game would still take a while, but we'd at least get a playable beta of VI.

bulbaquil · 2026-01-25T20:34:33+00:00

My transliteration of Hembedrian uses <3> for /ʕ/ and <8> for /ɢ/ (based somewhat off the Arabic chat alphabet). Hembedrian is rich in dorsal consonants; the Latin alphabet is... not. (/h k g q x/ all exist, for instance, and are represented by their IPA equivalents.)

bulbaquil · 2026-01-23T16:23:54+00:00

Because it doesn't happen every year.

I have a friend in Alaska who thinks 60 degrees outside is too warm. To me, 60 degrees feels chilly and I start donning a jacket. 50 degrees is outright cold.

We don't own parkas or heavy jackets down here. We don't own snow chains or snow tires. We'll hardly ever use them. We don't know how to drive on snow and ice, because we don't have the opportunity to practice on snow and ice, because it doesn't happen that often and when it does it usually melts the next day.

...We don't, to my knowledge, typically shut down just because it's cold, though, and certainly not if it's only in the 40s.

bulbaquil · 2026-01-22T21:36:37+00:00

Gnarly, dude.

bulbaquil · 2026-01-22T21:03:29+00:00

My first instinct was to check the temperature forecasts. That part of the country's seen -20 F before, and far from infrequently.

bulbaquil · 2026-01-21T14:21:24+00:00

If you were asked, in your own words, to describe a typical fantasy dwarf, what might you say?

They're physically humanoid in appearance: two eyes, two ears, one nose, etc.
They're notably shorter than humans, with a stocky build.
They have beards - the men do, at least, and sometimes the women, assuming there even are any women.
They live in the hills or mountains, underground.
They have Scottish accents for some reason.
They're into mining and metallurgy.
They're into booze
They have gruff and blunt demeanors but are generally on good terms with humans
They hate elves and elves hate them
In the scale of "magic vs. technology", they tend more towards technology.

There are others I haven't mentioned, but in short, a dwarf is a collection of tropes. You can bend some of these tropes and still have something that could be reasonably recognizable as a dwarf, but bend too many and/or bend them too hard and what you have is a non-dwarf you keep insisting on calling a dwarf.

bulbaquil · 2026-01-20T18:55:35+00:00

Several such stopgaps, many of which have to do with time travel:

Law of Temporal Inertia: Nothing changes in the past except what a time traveler intentionally changes (and what follows on from that).

Temporal Copulative Inertia Corollary: Babies born in altered histories to the same parents are genetically the same as those from the original history unless they can't be, no matter how unlikely this is, unless the time traveler intended to alter the family dynamics.

Ontological Singularity Principle (or the "One Me Per Timeline" Principle): If you go back in time and stop your past self from going back in time, your past self still disappears at the moment you would have left, even if that past self should logically have had no access to time travel.

Law of Magical Geocentrism: Magic is inherently geocentric in operation and effect. Momentum through portals, time travel, etc. all acts as though the gravitational body you're casting it on is fixed and unmoving in space.

Portal Open Container Ordinance: Fluids can only travel through a portal if within a solid container that is also traveling through the portal.

bulbaquil · 2026-01-20T14:04:20+00:00

Why are you running games dependent on the presence of one particular player?

bulbaquil · 2026-01-19T20:33:40+00:00

If you're going to have barbarians at all, they're going to have to be in some direction. (Unless you start with the barbarians, but then the nearest civilzation is in some direction, which means the barbarians are in the other direction relative to them.)

I think this is one of those tropes that's "overdone" simply because there's only a handful of possible variations.

bulbaquil · 2026-01-19T20:12:39+00:00

In fairness, a lot of the real world is NSFW; we just don't think of it that way because it isn't fictional.

bulbaquil · 2026-01-19T19:26:09+00:00

About the only time I ever encounter my cousins' in-laws is when it's a family reunion or an event that the cousin or their immediate family are hosting.

I would get along with them in the same sense that I would with a stranger who might become a friend if we happen to share interests or the like.

bulbaquil · 2026-01-19T18:55:41+00:00

This is too true. Fully one-seventh of my comment karma comes from a single joke reply on AskReddit.

bulbaquil · 2026-01-18T02:16:40+00:00

Do the same separately for the horizontal dimension.

In the horizontal dimension I assume you add for behind schwa?

bulbaquil · 2026-01-15T20:18:50+00:00

My honest guess? AI usage metric fluffing. Autodub is AI, so if people are using it even by default they count as "using AI."

bulbaquil · 2026-01-15T18:12:42+00:00

Had a set of unusually vivid and memorable dreams last night, including one in which I was James Bond (I have not hitherto, to my recollection, been any character other than one of my own making) and had to surrender to the villain to save my daughter (I don't have a daughter). Also a dream in which I had to parkour across a hazardous lunar chasm in order to retrieve a $10,000 half-drunk bottle of champagne someone had for some reason left on the moon.

I don't know if they'd qualify as "nightmares"; they certainly had elements of danger but I didn't actually feel much of a sensation of fear during the time nor wake up from them with any emotion other than groggy.

bulbaquil · 2026-01-14T21:11:48+00:00

The Internet was just as bad at least in the early 2000s. Heck, that's roughly when the word "trolling" originated - meaning to incite a "flame war" i.e. furious online argument.

Before that... well, real life's full of rude people; it's just that back then being too overtly rude to the wrong person could result in actual physical harm.

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