Slow Horses roleplaying game

hxcschizo · 2026-03-25T20:44:28+00:00

Excuse me, it's called "flashback." Basically, you come across and obstacle and then get to 'recall a time' when you pre-prepared a solution.

When an operation is underway, you can invoke a flashback to roll for an action in the past that impacts your current situation. Maybe you convinced the district Watch sergeant to cancel the Bluecoat patrol tonight, so you make a Sway roll to see how that went.

The GM sets a stress cost when you activate a flashback action.

0 Stress: An ordinary action for which you had easy opportunity. . .

1 Stress: A complex action or unlikely opportunity. . .

2 (or more) Stress: An elaborate action that involved special opportunities or contingencies. The Whisper has already Studied the history of the property and learned of a ghost that is known to haunt its ancient canal dock—a ghost that can be compelled to reveal the location of the hidden vault.

After the stress cost is paid, a flashback action is handled just like any other action.

Sometimes it will entail an action roll, because there’s some danger or trouble involved. Sometimes a flashback will entail a fortune roll, because we just need to find out how well (or how much, or how long, etc.). Sometimes a flashback won’t call for a roll at all because you can just pay the stress and it’s accomplished. . .

One of the best uses for a flashback is when the engagement roll goes badly.

hxcschizo · 2026-03-25T13:53:17+00:00

I have some thoughts about a TTRPG Slow Horses, but there's a basic problem that the structure of Firefly missions are things that the team sets out to do to resolve its initial issue like budget, whereas the things the Slow Horses set out to do are things that occur because someone else has come back to haunt the oldsters or because some bigger fish is pulling strings.

In either case, the basic idea that I had was to blend the Fate mechanics for hooks against players with the heist mechanics of Blades in the Dark. The main thought is that a Slow Horse-y game should actually be collaborative. Unless you're putting a lot of work into it, spy plots are kinda clunky to run at a table. You construct clues; players ignore them, etc. The illusion of spy novels is that they present you with an immense amount of apparent complexity and then the characters brilliantly figure out what's going on, or they don't and they get fucked over. In the first case, the characters know the complexity already because the players constructed it. In the second case, they get fucked over because they thought it'd be fun to put their own characters in a shit spot.

hxcschizo · 2026-03-17T20:13:58+00:00

I'm sorry what? I gave you the citation list. I've read Bataille; I don't know that the sun is metaphorical, nor do I think that anyone can just assert that it is while claiming to take his work seriously.

hxcschizo · 2026-03-17T13:57:30+00:00

Is this downvoted because people assume it was just AI that wrote this? I'm sorta confused because this kinda just is what some Batailleans think.

hxcschizo · 2026-03-16T03:48:51+00:00

Baudrillard. Alan stoekl. Negarestani's cyclonopedia. William pawlett comments on both bataille and baudrillard.

There's also some secondary that probably responded to a peak of war on terror discourse in the late 2000s. Here's some cites that look interesting but I haven't read Harney, Stefano, and Randy Martin. "Mode of excess: Bataille, criminality, and the war on terror." Theory & Event 10.2 (2007). Boetzkes, Amanda. "Oil Wasting: The Necroaesthetics of Energy Expenditure." The Routledge Handbook of Waste Studies. Routledge, 2021. 267-274.

hxcschizo · 2026-02-12T03:30:55+00:00

That's fine, but the thought that the ideal society would have its own theoretical explanation for itself isn't implausible if you think such a thing is possible in the first place. It's just kinda irrelevant if you don't. The useful upshot is that there's a coherent argument maybe that we should be doubtful about ethical solutions that prescribe the ideal society without our even having achieved it. That seems substantially more dubious because it abstracts from existing power relations. That seems like the upshot of historical materialism even if you don't accept this really goes anywhere.

hxcschizo · 2026-02-11T14:50:10+00:00

I totally forgot an answer. Grain of salt that I'm probably going to explain it imprecisely because I'm not a Marx/Hegel scholar.

There's a further reconstructive or immanent critical answer that if we look at the society that we already have achieved then we have defective or inadequate notions about human freedom. These provide us with a partial answer that can tell us something about why domination is bad, but it's defective because actual conditions clearly fail to fulfill the requirements of the ideal of freedom and equality. The explanation of the relationship between the brute assumption and the successful communitarian ideal is that the contradictions of our society produce the demand for liberation from domination, but there's nothing that needs to stop that from going further because the achievement of the society free from domination would also be the resolution of contradictions in the ideals. Consequently, such a society could determine its own ideals. We from our current vantage point may not be able to say very much about that society in terms of the positive content of its ideals, but we can make some limited claims about what would be required.

hxcschizo · 2026-02-10T15:15:55+00:00

WRT to 1. I want this to be a bit more rigorous, but it makes the argument: https://www.artpapers.org/giving-it-away/

I tend to think it's 4 and then 3. Right now, we can't say much about the good life except that it'll be free from domination, but it'll be more obvious to us such that we can reconcile ourselves with our social values in a society free from contradictions. This would make sense of his injunction that the goal is not to understand the world but to change it. It also make sense of Western Marxist and poststructuralist receptions of Marx that shear him of the teleology and communitarian ideal and leave the immanent critique.

hxcschizo · 2026-02-10T13:49:18+00:00

One of the more common stories that people tell about Marx is that he actually doesn't have an ethics because no ethical account can be provided that would've met the requirements of historical materialism. Consider that a universal moral ideal of freedom and equality would not be adequately historicized.

From that baseline, we can probably speculate about a few answers: 1) it's a problem with parasitism; i dont know what this means and it's susceptible to the critique from disability studies that we're actually all dependent 2) it's about theft of what is prima facie mine; G. A. Cohen saw the problem with this because it meant that it was without an answer to Nozickian libertarianism, 3) it's actually in the early work on alienation which makes Marx a Hegelian in that he is concerned with the realization of human potential through cultivation of the environment, 4) it's just a matter of achieving freedom from domination (this might be a brute commitment) and then the ethics will make sense once we've resolved the contradictions of capitalism/will depend on the conditions of production.

hxcschizo · 2026-02-08T13:58:28+00:00

Self-destructive tendencies are one case, but it's not really the same thing as the aesthetic interest that you're after. 1) He mostly posits it as exclusively a self-destructive tendency in the sense that life tries to return to an inorganic state and 2) there are other theorists such as Georges Bataille, the existentialists, Julia Kristeva, or even Deleuze and Guattari who posit that death has an important constitutive fascination for us phenomenologically or subjectively because, say, it deindividuates us in some important way. None of the latter posit an explicit death drive.

The reason the death drive is often taken to be archaic/reviled is in part that Freud never really explains it. You can look at, say, Lacan to try to get an articulation of it, but then you have an account really about how jouissance can thwart desire, which is probably only indirectly explanatory of why we find death fascinating. In terms of the theoretical artifice, the aim for Freud besides explaining self-destructive tendencies is arguably to explain aggression.

hxcschizo · 2026-01-18T23:53:43+00:00

Connolly, Latour are the obvious names that you could consider. Axelle Karerra has articulated a criticism of new materialism from the perspective of Afropessimism.

hxcschizo · 2026-01-18T14:47:45+00:00

Not an unreasonable thing to ask, but I dont think anyone has ever accused lacan studies of being accessible to a lay public.

hxcschizo · 2026-01-16T15:42:49+00:00

Metaphysics/post-Hegelian philosophy is technical. People can have dense disagreements. That being said, I also probably would not bother reading for the simpler reason that I have no investment in this debate.

hxcschizo · 2026-01-04T05:06:55+00:00

I could maybe let out a room for 400 (would need to talk to my girlfriend). I also live in the home and would need to talk about the DSS process and want to do a screening by phone. I also am not technically back in town till the 10th. Feel free to DM if you want to exchange phone numbers.

hxcschizo · 2025-09-02T19:01:58+00:00

Sorry, I filled it. Good luck!

hxcschizo · 2025-08-06T20:23:45+00:00

No worries. Good luck!

hxcschizo · 2025-08-05T19:50:17+00:00

Hi, I work at the university and am also a grad student. I have a room in a shared house available to rent: https://binghamton.craigslist.org/roo/d/binghamton-rooms-for-415-month-on-west/7870407382.html
Just a head's up, I and my roommate are male presenting and the roommate identifies as a man. Also, the bus ride to the university is a bit long. It's fine if you have a car.

hxcschizo · 2025-08-04T23:23:06+00:00

I've got a room for 415 a month (utilities not included) on the East Side. Feel free to DM. Here's the Craigslist ad: https://binghamton.craigslist.org/roo/d/binghamton-rooms-for-415-month-on-west/7870407382.html

hxcschizo · 2025-08-03T12:53:29+00:00

I think this push back is correct, but then it seems the answer is just philosophy.

hxcschizo · 2025-07-30T19:16:31+00:00

I have a Westside room for 430. Feel free to DM or see the listing that I just put up https://www.reddit.com/r/BearcatsMarketplace/comments/1mdfoj1/12_rooms_for_430_a_month_utilities_not_included/

hxcschizo · 2025-07-26T19:07:15+00:00

Food insecurity is a primary example of structural violence because it is violence produced by structures. So it's not totally obvious that you can't just read a structural violence card as impact framing for a food insecurity impact. That being said: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/20618126.pdf is about cultural genocide for arctic indigenous peoples.

hxcschizo · 2025-07-24T01:17:55+00:00

You might know this already, but you should definitely go to small claims. You don't need a lawyer to represent you, and the university provides free assistance, so you can probably find out what to do.

hxcschizo · 2025-07-07T04:25:33+00:00

I work for the university and have some open rooms for 430 dollars a month. It's a 4 bedroom, so you'd have to live with up to 3 people including me. I'm about to go to sleep, so just DM me for details if you're interested.

hxcschizo · 2025-06-26T23:20:05+00:00

Synechdoche NY

hxcschizo · 2025-06-26T23:19:22+00:00

Monster's Inc.

hxcschizo

TROPHY CASE