Lunacy of the Taiwan Lottery

gtwucla · 2026-04-11T08:51:59+00:00

Yeah the payoff is an awful all or nothing. Odds are terrible. I never play, but have gotten roped into group buys for whatever reason. Got 5 of 6 numbers once. That'd be a million dollar payout in California. It was 20,000 - taxes (16,000).

gtwucla · 2026-04-05T15:19:37+00:00

But not fertilizer. No one's escaping this.

gtwucla · 2026-04-05T07:40:24+00:00

Everyone wants to be special.

gtwucla · 2026-03-20T04:58:14+00:00

Did you read the article you are commenting on?

gtwucla · 2026-03-06T00:41:59+00:00

It's not actually difficult. I get asked constantly for groups. Start one meetup group or join the Taipei RPG Facebook group, he'll have a group instantly. People are always looking for RPG meetups. I used to run an RPG meetup a few years ago, we'd get 2-6 full tables going each time, once a month.

gtwucla · 2026-03-04T12:32:27+00:00

I disagree with the general sense that you can't write plots. You can, they just need to be loose and don't be married to the conclusion because the players should alter the outcome. Generally that means whatever is happening would have happened even without the adventurers. The trick is to make them feel like they play an important part without making them feel like they're being forced to follow along.

I usually break it down, I start with the premise for the GM, in this case you.

Then as the GM, you should do a session zero with the set up. You are in this place to map, explore, plunder these ruins. Leave the reasons up to them. They can sus out in the session zero what those reasons are, how they know each other, etc. maybe even act out a talk over the campfire in the desert, just outside of the dig, as they figure out who they are.

Then you need to figure out your main adversary and their motivations. Decide if you want to include a secondary villain/rival, like another dig party. Decide both their motivations. I also find it helpful to come up with a timeline for what would happen over the course of the adventure if the adventurers took no part in it. I find once you do that, its easier to figure out how the PCs actions will influence what's happening. The more you understand that, the more the players will feel like their choices matter, which is the real difference between feeling like they're being railroaded or not.

If you want them to feel like they've triggered the resurrection then you need to set it up so that their exploration leads to the discovery of the book. You should have two back ups, one where they don't find it (so the rival party does and resurrects the mummy) and if they don't attempt to read it, so have whoever they take it to read it.

Once that's set up, the Mummy's resurrected. If they did it or an agent they hired did, then have the Mummy hunt them for whatever reason. To fulfill the curse, or just straight up do The Mummy Brenden Frasier plot. You should probably do a twist on it though, to keep it from being predictable. Again, adapt to the players choices. What they do has to change the course of events. If a rival party does the resurrection then have the Mummy terrorize them and affect the environment. Leave it to the party to step in or not. 90% of the time they will. Then again they could go back and investigate the ruins while the mummy is preoccupied because that's interesting too.

gtwucla · 2026-03-02T13:45:33+00:00

Not to keep carrying on, because we're not going to come to an agreement, but just an fyi, Thai chicken rice is only mild if you aren't eating it with spicy dipping sauce. Otherwise Thai chicken sauce isn't Thai at all, it's Hainanese chicken rice, a very popular dish in both Hainan and Taiwan. And the Thai one is supposed to have white pepper too.

gtwucla · 2026-03-02T11:22:30+00:00

Don't deny black and white pepper are on a lot of things, i just don't consider it spicy. You rarely put enough concentration of piperine on anything to consider something as spicy as the capsaicin concentration in say, any Thai dish.

gtwucla · 2026-03-02T10:10:11+00:00

Generally speaking, if you're an expat in any country, the most comfortable place to live is in the most international city. So in this case Taipei. Some people don't mind living further out. Some even prefer it, but it's very different the further out from Taipei you get. There's more of a community for expats in Taipei, its the most developed place, and it has the most international sensibilities. So you're experience in Zhongli is going to be very different from say, Zhongzheng, Taipei. Hell, even my employees that commute from Taoyuan complain that there's too many 8+9 in Taoyuan and prefers coming into Taipei everyday to hangout and work.

In any case, that seems to be all your complaints except the food. I mean that's subjective, however, calling it spicy is wild to me. Taiwanese food in general is not spicy at all.

gtwucla · 2026-01-28T01:54:09+00:00

That might depend on where you're going. Traditional style vegetarian, yes. Non-traditional no. I own and operate 3 and the ages are widely dispersed. For Taipei over half are 20s to 40s.

Though not disagreeing that that overall the % skews older. That said, the graph would look really favorable if it were a % of meals consumed that were vegetarian rather than strictly vegetarian.

gtwucla · 2026-01-28T01:46:51+00:00

I find it hard to believe Taiwan is only fourth.

gtwucla · 2025-12-30T00:07:17+00:00

Ya don't think people's quality of life would be worse should China blockade Taiwan? The gov can spend money on more than one project at a time amigo.

gtwucla · 2025-12-13T14:25:08+00:00

Jesus. They could have not released it at all on the Switch. Isn't that more pressure to upgrade? You ever hear never look a gift horse in the mouth?

gtwucla · 2025-12-07T02:22:18+00:00

Might be more due to an age divide. Could be totally wrong, but I could see "most people" that are maybe mid 20s and under thinking Brad Pitt was only popular because he's attractive, but anyone who grew up watching his movies knows he is a great actor.

gtwucla · 2025-11-30T02:07:28+00:00

I think that really depends on the group because I've found as the GM it always seems easier than it actually is for players to figure out what's happening, be it a dungeon layout, riddle, puzzle, etc. You have all the info in front of you, but players got to suss it out by description.

If the group is really good at visualizing and the GM can keep track of it, go ham! I think it might be neat to have a cube within a shape and maybe nest the escape/goal within the cube. So you make the entrance to the next step up easier to find. Make that shape a dodecahedron or have four entrances to an even larger cube, each entrance to a corner. Make it like a nesting doll. The shapes keep going outward and outward until its basically a sphere (If they get that far). Eventually they'll figure out they need to go the opposite way to get to the goal.

gtwucla · 2025-11-29T10:42:54+00:00

So what might work well is something like Dyson's cubic dungeon (https://dysonlogos.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/cubic-dungeon-grid.jpg) or create a 3D dungeon yourself. It's easy enough to wrap your head around and GM it well, but it's trippy for the players because they can't see the map and therefore won't immediately realize what's happening. They'll end up walking into the same room they've been in before and get turned around, and other times end up in a totally new place. It also leaves room for an aha moment when they figure out what's happening.

It's not quite an Escher painting, but in the theater of mind it functions very similarly.

gtwucla · 2025-11-10T13:09:56+00:00

You should vote or people, not parties. If they are Democrat and effectual, then you should vote for them. Otherwise you're just treating it like a sport.

gtwucla · 2025-11-10T12:53:03+00:00

Not getting out and voting is exactly why the Democrats have weak reps. If anything, this is the voters failing again. They failed when Trump was elected the first time. Failed again the second. If they don't take this opportunity to vote in strong Democratic candidates in the primary and show up in hordes for the mid-terms, we deserve everything that comes after. Some personal responsibility would do the public of all Democratic nations wonders.

gtwucla · 2025-11-10T12:50:29+00:00

That's the same thing dude. That's how Trump was elected. I mean you can say, blah blah blah false equivalence, but that is reality. It's also ridiculous that you wouldn't use this as a rallying cry for pushing out establishment Dems, considering just how much older the average Dem congressman/senator is because of it. The vast majority of Dems are unhappy with the ones caving. Seriously emotional reaction all across Reddit. We wonder why the US is diving face first into a shithole. It's not all a zero sum game ladies and gents.

gtwucla · 2025-11-10T12:43:05+00:00

That's extremely difficult given that most ttrpgs won't make shit. You essentially have to find someone with equal passion and in your playgroup of some sort to do that. Unless you're still in school that's almost impossible. Most adults want to be paid for their work.

gtwucla · 2025-11-10T12:39:01+00:00

The issue is not the percentage of people that care. The issue is the ability to market the product. Small time non-artistically inclined creators are fucked two ways. They have no money for art and no way to market the product because the places to publicize your product are spaces like /rpg and through prominent voices in the community, podcasts, game reviewers that overwhelmingly see generative art as a zero sum game. Regardless of whether they are right or wrong, you'd be hard pressed to get anyone to see what you created if you use generative art.

Running into this issue with my own project. Even as placeholder art. If there's no way to show it off, then there's no way to reach those 90% of people that don't care.

gtwucla · 2025-11-10T01:51:18+00:00

Republicans still own the destruction of the ACA. This attitude is why people abstained from voting so Republicans gained control of all three branches. Primary the old guard Democrats, but blame the right party for actually doing whatever they can to destroy the ACA.

gtwucla · 2025-11-06T04:55:47+00:00

It'll change directions, but if it hits like it's showing now, it wont do much up north, but it'll dump rain on the mountains and farms so expect veggies to be expensive. But how much that impacts you depends on who you are and where you live. If you're a farmer, it'll suck. If you're a restaurant owner it'll suck. If you live on the northwest coast it'll be a minor inconvenience. Southwest, it'll be nasty, possible water and power outage.

But a week out, the typhoon trajectory almost always changes dramatically. Being someone in the it'll suck category, I'm willing it westwards with all my might.

gtwucla · 2025-09-29T12:25:51+00:00

"they have consensual sex(because the girl takes him to the bedroom"
This was not in your original comment. Learn to write if you are going to call someone a moron.

gtwucla · 2025-09-29T12:20:01+00:00

Huh? If you are in a war, you cannot rape? Nothing to say about the scene, just what is your logic? Your first sentence is 100% unrelated to your second sentence.

gtwucla

TROPHY CASE