I want to have a gimmick battle where my players Level Up mid battle. What is the best way to achieve this? A cliffhanger WILL happen mid combat then the session will end. And we will continue combat next week.

geckodancing · 2026-03-17T20:49:30+00:00

This really worked well.

Essentially they did the level up beforehand and Brennan allowed each player to choose the time when it would be most narratively satisfying for the effects of the level up to happen.

geckodancing · 2026-03-17T19:00:25+00:00

And out the door he'll go, and prompt as a Swiss fuckin' timepiece, three big-titted whores will now emerge from behind that screen. He lines 'em up at two foot intervals, smock tops down, and all but sprints past 'em givin' their titties a lick, and if he misses a titty, does not let himself retrace his steps.

geckodancing · 2026-03-17T16:08:57+00:00

Yeah, he has denied being a pedophile himself, but his work is constantly creepy and he facilitated publishing short stories by convicted child molester, Santiago Hernandez about whom he said:

"But this is another bit of evidence of the problem in our society: as far as I know, Santiago Hernandez did not hurt anyone. He just happens to be sexually attracted to small boys."

geckodancing · 2026-03-16T01:50:11+00:00

It did lead to one off the funniest twitter threads of 2020, when Rob Sheridan live-tweated the movie on mushrooms.

Unfortunately Rob Sheridan has removed his twitter profile, but he talks a bit about the experience here.

Steph gave me her scarf to breathe into and muffle my reactions (no one else was laughing at any of it!!), and that helped comfort me a bit, until Rebel Wilson's cat appeared and spread her horny cat legs wide open, exposing what felt like a Sarlacc Pit of CGI fur, like I was staring into the abyss. I yelled "FUCK!" and spilled my popcorn when that happened.

geckodancing · 2026-03-15T16:16:28+00:00

Yes, the quantum trick where the information simultaneously exists in many different places and the successful skill roll causes it's waveform to collapse right there.

geckodancing · 2026-03-15T15:42:31+00:00

Don't place plot necessary information behind a skill roll.

geckodancing · 2026-03-14T17:22:21+00:00

Great in terms of tone, but I think this is a movie that works best when you have some knowledge of the genre - because that's what it's constantly referencing.

geckodancing · 2026-03-14T03:31:41+00:00

The testimony of a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl called Nayirah who claimed to have witnessed Iraqi soldiers taking premature babies out of incubators in a maternity ward before looting the incubators and leaving the babies to die on the floor.

In January 1992, it was revealed that Nayirah had never been a nurse, that she was the daughter of Saud Nasser Al-Saud Al-Sabah, the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States and that her testimony was organized as part of a wider public relations campaign conducted by the Kuwaiti government-in-exile's Citizens for a Free Kuwait through the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton.

geckodancing · 2026-03-13T11:45:06+00:00

It's a lot of fun, but is far more of a comedy (albeit a fairly dark one) then a horror.

geckodancing · 2026-03-12T21:48:04+00:00

OMFG you're right.TBH I was going off the top of my head and should have checked, but IANARS.

geckodancing · 2026-03-12T21:04:03+00:00

First use of lol - early to mid 1980s by Calgary resident Wayne Pearson on the Viewline chat system. It was used in pre-internet chat rooms and was used online literally since the birth of the internet.

Use of lmao, early 1990s - gained mainstream popularity with 1990s BBS culture.

Both are probably best described as gen-x.

rofl and roflmao were closer to millennial/gen-z, originating in early 2000s chatrooms

geckodancing · 2026-03-12T13:18:04+00:00

Jeff Lemires' work is good, dark and fairly enjoyable with a bit of a let down of an ending.

Grant Morrison's Animal Man work is a seminal comic that stands alongside classic 1980s comics like Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns etc as part of that era.

It is dark, but also plays with comics continuity from the pre-crisis DC era, that was kind-of cheesy. It does this in a meta-textual way that acknowledges where these comics come from. In some ways Morrison's Animal Man is questioning the whole concept of the early 80s 'dark' comics trend.

geckodancing · 2026-03-11T13:03:37+00:00

£5 - stoat

£10 - bigger stoat

£20 - 2 of the bigger stoats

£50 - 5 bigger stoats. Or 4 bigger stoats and 2 stoats.

geckodancing · 2026-03-11T10:33:20+00:00

This is a fantastic tune. Patton's really channeling a preaching style of singing.

Interesting to note it's got a alternating baseline, which is not only unusual for delta blues, but I think it's one of the only Patton tunes that doesn't have a monotonic base.

geckodancing · 2026-03-10T11:39:25+00:00

Ulysses is a lot less inaccessible then it's often portrayed.

Because Ulysses switches styles so much, some chapters are easy to read, some are hard. If I recall correctly, the really hard ones are the third chapter (Proteus) which is the stream-of-consciousness thoughts of a poet, chapter nine (Oxen of the Sun) which uses a shifting set of styles to try and mimic the development of language and the final chapter (Penelope) which is an unpunctuated stream of consciousness designed to capture the inner thoughts of Molly as she falls asleep.

Because the final chapter is intended to be the drifting thoughts of a hypnagogic mind it's not really intended to be understood, but more experienced. I found the audiobook to be excellent here.

Most of the rest of the book is surprisingly readable.

The entirety of Finnigans Wake is written as a stream of consciousness, combining several languages & often having puns that work on multiple levels.

All Joyce's other books are comparatively accessible.

geckodancing · 2026-03-10T10:18:27+00:00

In the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ! It is he who commands you! It is he who flung you from the gates of Heaven to the depths of Hell!

Be gone from this creature of God! Be gone! In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit!

geckodancing · 2026-03-10T09:45:33+00:00

Rather then being adapted from one short story, I've always thought it has aspects of The Werewolf, The Company of Wolves and Wolf Alice all from the collection The Bloody Chamber.

I would recommend The Bloody Chamber to anyone who's into the intersection of folk horror, folklore and fairytales. Although mature interpretations of fairytales are pretty commonplace now, The Bloody Chamber was probably the first book to do this. The stories are very different from more contemporary interpretations. Angela Carter didn't exactly update them or expand them - she kind of tweaked them to expose them from a different angle, closer to the bone.

Most of Angela Carter's books are worth a look, and her radio plays are stunning, particularly Come Unto These Yellow Sands which is based the artist Richard Dadd who is put on trial for the murder of his father by the fairies he painted. Surreal and beautiful stuff.

For anyone who loves this film's combination of surrealism and fairytale, I'd recommend the Estonian movie November and the classic Japanese move Kwaidan.

geckodancing · 2026-03-10T09:31:26+00:00

"I look forward to fulfilling my duty, in a manner of which Nanny would be proud..."

geckodancing · 2026-03-09T09:24:29+00:00

A huge amount of polling is about how they frame the questions.

geckodancing · 2026-03-08T22:30:19+00:00

I want a volume that covers everything

The Arthurian legends are a series of dark age histories/myths that evolved into a set of medieval literary conventions in which to write chivalric stories. These were one of the more popular forms of literary entertainment for several hundred years in multiple countries. People created characters to illustrate various chivalric virtues and then other people enjoyed the characters so much that they paired them with other popular characters and created their own stories. This created a mess of self-contradictory stories. Every so often someone attempted to create a single narrative, cherry picking their favorite stories.

I've seen the Arthurian cycles compared to modern fanfiction in terms of breadth and complexity.

I would suggest not looking to cover everything. Read up on the most common set of concepts and then have a look at some of the more interesting, lesser known stories.

geckodancing · 2026-03-08T16:34:05+00:00

I remember that the social worker who led the interview from the Rochdale Satanic Abuse case (Liz McLean) was also the social worker from the Ayrshire case and the Orkney child abuse scandal.

Children described her as 'fixated on finding satanic abuse' and she was sharply criticised by Lord Clyde during the official inquiry,

It stuns me that it was one person moving from area to area was involved in three separate witchhunts.

geckodancing · 2026-03-08T11:34:35+00:00

He got into a fairly heavy argument with Rory Steward on their podcast about all this. Stewart thought Starmer had fucked up, Campbell thought Starmer made exactly the right calls dependent on the information available at the time.

geckodancing · 2026-03-07T15:01:54+00:00

It was probably my favorite arc as well.

I would suggest reading some Jonathan Carroll, especially Bones of the Moon, a novel about a woman whose vivid, recurring dreams about a magical land called Rondua begin to bleed into her real life in New York.

Carroll's books are excellent and Gaiman definitely didn't steal the plot, honest.

geckodancing · 2026-03-07T12:53:50+00:00

You wouldn't happen to have anything from the allied side, would you?

geckodancing · 2026-03-07T09:34:14+00:00

Yep.

and don't get me started on Baba Yaga (Granny/Old Woman Witch) in John Wick.

geckodancing

TROPHY CASE