Rob Couture

God willing, my goal for the new year is to finish making #AtlanteanExodus ttrpg—at least the final ruleset—the art will take longer to commission.

“Do you not know that we will judge angels? Then why not everyday matters?” – 1 Corinthians 6:3

Last night, I had a dream I was getting on a bus. One detail that struck me: often, the buses in my dreams have no windows. Not even front windows for the driver to see through—he usually uses some kind of radar screen to navigate.

@micpewpew What have they done to gnolls. 😩

2,500 people think this is D&D

What would WotC have to do to bring me back? Honestly, I don’t think they can. And I’m not saying that to be dramatic, I’m saying it because I’ve been here since Moldvay B/X. I’ve played every edition. I know what this game felt like when it had teeth. AD&D and 3rd Edition felt like worlds you had to survive in. You weren’t special because you showed up, you were special if you managed not to die. Classes actually meant something. Races had strengths and weaknesses that mattered. The world didn’t give a damn about you and that’s exactly what made it feel real. Then it just kept drifting. 2nd got bloated and lost some bite. 4th tried to turn the whole thing into some kind of tabletop MMO and stripped out the soul in the process. And 5th… that’s where I checked out completely. Everything got flattened, sanded down, homogenized. Everyone’s a hero, nothing is that dangerous, and the edges that made the game interesting got filed off so nobody feels bad. It stopped feeling like a world and started feeling like a curated experience. And yeah, I’ll say it, the culture around the game now plays into that. There’s this constant push to make everything safe, comfortable, and inoffensive, and in doing that they sucked a lot of the danger and mystery out of the setting. I don’t sit down at a table for a padded, HR-approved fantasy experience. I want risk. I want consequences. I want the possibility that things go horribly wrong because that’s what makes the good moments actually matter. The funny part is, refusing to get on board with 5E was the best thing that ever happened to my gaming. I found Kevin Crawford’s Without Number stuff, dug into OSR, and suddenly it was like oh, this is what I’ve been missing. Systems that trust you. Worlds that don’t bend over backwards for the party. Tools instead of guardrails. You can see the DNA of old D&D in there, but it’s not afraid to actually use it. So what would WotC have to do to get me back? It’s not just fix the rules. It’s the whole philosophy. They’d have to stop sanding everything down, stop treating players like they need to be protected from the game, and actually trust tables to handle their own tone without corporate babysitting. They’d have to bring back risk, bring back consequences, and stop homogenizing everything into the same bland sludge. But more than that? They’d have to actually want people like me back. Not as a revenue stream, not as a “lapsed demographic,” but as part of the game again. And I’m not convinced they can do that, or even want to. Because right now it doesn’t feel like I walked away from D&D. It feels like D&D walked away from me.

@OVTweetmarck Interesting. The Straussian-Hegelian dimension surprises me.

Hmm

I like John Noble as Dr Bishop—a modern-day "mad scientist". My wife said he reminds her of Vincent Price; I agree.

Starting to watch Fringe (2008). Not sure how I missed this show. Free on PlutoTV.

Planscape: Torment is the best game I ever read

A shame I'll probably have to sell the house because the neighborhood is going to crap. Lord, help me to love my neighbor, but break their party speakers!

@FrothyFriar It is currently in Dubai.

"The black fortress moves. Sometimes it is in the mountains, sometimes in the desert, sometimes in the sea. Never the same place twice"

@inkblotistan He about to "Awawa!"

monitoring the situation

Insofar as I have been required to use AI in my field (technical writer), it has not saved time but added an extra step to my work process. And the inaccuracy of AI in my field so far has been measured at a 25% error rate at best, so it isn't helping with accuracy either.

I was told AI was going to improve efficiency. AI has always been just snake oil and hype and you were an idiot if you thought it would revolutionize anything beyond making people more idiotic.

Yeah but at least your energy bill costs more so tech retards can talk to computers.

@derpo377 The Bunkhouse Boys of Arrakis.

it’s so funny that Stilgar is played by Big Ed Hurley

Admit it. You can hear that ear worm of a theme.

St. Patrick's Breastplate in honor of his feast day today.

'For Sooth I would have escaped the fire forbye I missed the younglings..'

@bymarcolinomaps There also isn't a wizard or sorcerer in the party to fireball the riff-raff.

@bymarcolinomaps 5e. The rounds themselves were quick, but there was no stopping between waves of drow.

Yesterday, session 37 of Dungeon of the Mad Mage also took an unexpected turn—a 3-hour long battle between the PCs and dozens of drow—on foot and mounted on lizards—warriors, wizards, a priest, a yochlol (sp?), and a spider-shaped stone golem.