What has this become?

[What has this become?]

[cartograffiti]

If you want to run a Court of Fey & Flowers Game, dnd isn't what you need

...because it's not what the Dimension 20 cast played, either.

I talked about this a little bit once before, very early in the season, but now that it's done, it's really clear to me that they played Good Society by Storybrewers with a few Dungeons & Dragons elements hacked in, not the other way around. Aabria Iyengar loves Good Society, and it really shows. She merged the systems really beautifully to suit the expectations of D20, and that's why I think players at home will get a better experience by starting with GS materials than by trying to reverse engineer the mechanics Iyengar showed in action.

Things they got from DnD:

-Skill levels/stats.

-Rolling dice to determine success.

-The game master/facilitator (Aabria) playing most characters.

-Some creatures and spells (the dog that has an old man's face, the telepathy spell I can never remember the name of).

-Aabria giving out Inspiration.

Things they got from Good Society:

-The principle of having a character goal that may be kept secret. (In fact, some of D20's specific goals were probably even chosen from Good Society materials. The player character with a secret spouse? There's a card for that.)

-Social reputation tracked by degrees, conferring descriptions and perks. (They did not use GS's exact system. Whether it was a hack or a mix with a game system I haven't played, I don't know.)

-Trading tokens that can be burned to make strong moves. (Again, not GS's exact mechanic--GS uses tokens throughout instead of dice. That game lets you decide what your character is capable of. Tokens make sure everyone has fair chances to act, especially when players have conflicting goals.)

-Additional guidelines and mechanics for agreeing on how the table wants social events to work, as well as how to navigate the varying dynamics of relatives, friends, and rivals.

-Rumors and epistolary phases. (There's a fun post going around about Brennan asking about these because "he wanted to get a good grade in dnd," but I think he was sincerely curious how they worked, because they aren't dnd!)

-The overall cycle of play, dictating the order of phases and pace.

-Some mechanics for the reputations and interactions of fae courts as entities were taken from Good Society's Fae Courts mini-expansion.

-Monologue tokens. (D20 has Aabria as the only one who can use these, GS allows anyone in the game to ask someone to monologue.)

-Additional guidelines for determining world state, character creation, and keeping the story within a consistent style and tone that feels like a recognizably Regency story...even when giant owlbears can get gay married.

-Other flavoring and approach details.

Things Good Society has that Dimension 20 didn't get to show off:

-The ability for players to also choose a secondary character to control, allowing them to participate in more roleplay and experience multiple personalities or social roles in the same game.

-A really rich and thoughtful collaboration phase, before the story begins.

-The ability to share facilitator duties among the table, and to allow the facilitator to play a main character as well as supporting cast.

-Advice and expansions for adjusting the game to various tones, genres, and other historical periods.

So you're looking at buying Good Society:

What you need is pdfs. Definitely grab the base game for $21.00, that has most of what I just described. If you're excited to see their Fae Court specific materials, it's included in the Expanded Acquaintance bundle with many other pieces of content, or there's a bundle of the base game and every expansion they've produced. You do not need to buy the more expensive bundles that include physical books and cards unless professional physical versions delight you, the pdfs are designed to be printable. Storybrewers also made and provide spreadsheet templates for sessions meeting online, so you can all see your worksheet choices.

Good Society is a really fun and flexible system, and it's most of what we loved about how A Court of Fey and Flowers was structured. It's your best route to a recreation, and well worth playing in its original form. I love that it doesn't have stats and dice--if you've never played a ttrpg that doesn't make you do math, this is a great introduction. I'm so glad Aabria featured it on the show!

[What has this become?]

[archived-highintensity-dyke]

You weren’t awarded butch at the end of a great queer race. You cannot hang it in your living room or shine it on your mantle. You dug it up from the ground. You were on your knees, scraping at the soil with your short nails and your bloody hands. You found ‘butch’ in your own bones and you sucked out the marrow until your tongue knew the word by heart. And there are other names and other terms that were just as hard to find as yours, and you’re not to ever assume that the hole you made in the ground was deeper than anyone else’s. You had best promise me that right now.

excerpt from Butch Please: A Letter to Baby Butches

[What has this become?]

Anonymous asked:

you say youre queer but youve blocked multiple queer blogs. whats the truth?

wizardpotions answered:

I hate to break it to you but queer people are still capable of being annoying

[What has this become?]

[ultra-baklan-the-ovosh]

the end of the game be like

[What has this become?]

Two-Headed Calf

[apoemaday]

by Laura Gilpin

Tomorrow when the farm boys find this
freak of nature, they will wrap his body
in newspaper and carry him to the museum.

But tonight he is alive and in the north
field with his mother. It is a perfect
summer evening: the moon rising over
the orchard, the wind in the grass. And
as he stares into the sky, there are
twice as many stars as usual.

[What has this become?]

[boombox-fuckboy]

Wavelength

So, Dead Signals (Archive 81, The Deep Vault) just announced a new podcast.

In “Wavelength,” after investigating a mysterious incident at a tech company, two government agents are drawn into a strange conspiracy involving secretive billionaires, eccentric artists, college professors –and otherworldly entities. Like “Archive 81,” the series uses a “found-footage” conceit. “Wavelength” is a mystery “about the monsters we create, and the people who have to fight them,” 

And not long to wait.

The 10-episode first season of “Wavelength” is set to premiere Feb. 16, 2022, on all major podcast platforms. 

[What has this become?]

[grinningjackal]

Here's to the forgotten boys who were eldest daughters.

To the boys who still drag the weight of illusory responsibilities over their shoulders.

To the boys who hurt themselves in order to help everyone around them.

To the boys who listen for hours as people mistake them for therapists.

To the boys who work themselves to the bone.

The boys who have breakdowns when they don't perform to their impossibly high standards.

The boys who feel guilty for letting their parents down.

The boys who feel guilty for not being a "good role model" to their younger siblings.

The boys who are constantly de-escalating everyone's arguments.

The boys who smile even when it hurts.

The boys who bite their tongue and swallow their teeth.

Here's to the eldest daughters who became prodigal sons. You are no less of a man for your past.

[What has this become?]

[amishsicario]

[h-isforhome]

he’s gay

[elektragirlfriend]

and he’s still at it

[deadmallgoth]

I’m sure someone else added this somewhere but

[What has this become?]

[flagellant]

Someone just paid me fifteen dollars to tell y'all my opinions on white vegans so here you go.

It's bullshit. The entire premise is bullshit. Everything about veganism is bullshit just in general, but white veganism in general is the fucking SSS-tier FGO Merlin levels of bullshit.

If you're a vegan out of dietary necessity--this post is not about you, move on with your life. That includes "just don't like meat/animal products" because we protect picky eaters indiscriminately in this household.

If you're a vegan because you think it's more ethical your head is so far up your ass you might as well be eating animal products cuz that's what shit sure is.

There is not a single thing ethical about white veganism. It's ridiculous to act that way. Veganism is literally turning your diet into imperialism. What, you think that your quinoa and acai smoothie made with coconut milk and nutella isn't a horrific injustice done to pretty much every indigenous piece of land in the name of feeding your consumerist fad bullshit?

If killing cows is so bad, what's y'all's take on the palm oil plantations they're burning down the Amazon for? Sure, orangutans are really charismatic and all, but what about the 1/3rd known species of birds worldwide and a full 30,000 species of endemic plants in it as well? Where does turning once-staple foods of indigenous people, like quinoa, into massive monocultures which the people who grew it can no longer afford it since it's all getting shipped out via cargo plane to your friendly neighborhood Target factor in?

The meat industry is hurting the environment due to greenhouse gases, you say? What about all the produce that's having to be shipped in from overseas and international waters because it's not like you can fucking grow your pineapples in North Dakota? Where does that carbon footprint factor into the situation? Are you actually being vegan out of concern for the environment, or is it a meaningless gesture to be popular on social media about while refusing to examine the inherent classism and racism baked into the very foundations of your "anyone can do it" diet?

Do you dislike factory farms? Join the club! Neither do most farmers, funnily enough! But where's the exploitation in your neighbor's backyard chicken coop eggs? Is the rabbit fur an angora naturally sheds on its own being spun into high-quality yarn cruelty to the animal? Can you explain to me where the honeybees are getting the bad deal?

If your issue on ethical veganism is animal cruelty, then you campaign for more stringent animal husbandry regulations. You support your local small-scale farmers which treat their animals right that are otherwise getting shoved out of the market due to corporate farm fields. Because if you've got enough grocery money to shop exclusively vegan, you're the kind of person who can go to a farmer's market and actually support your community that way with no real issue, because again, your entire diet culture is wrapped up in needing to be seen as better than others more than anything else. You turned a type of food into evangelical protestantism.

Nothing about white veganism makes any fucking sense the second you look at it for .2 seconds. It is a performative diet made for wannabe Instagram influencers who get off on telling other people that they're evil for eating honey, graciously ignoring that their agave nectar is causing an ecological crisis of overharvesting and throwing desert ecosystems out of whack, among everything else.

It's foolish. It's ridiculous. It's literally not how any of this fucking works. I'm exhausted of people not treating veganism for what it is: Just another fad diet made to take money out of "empaths"' wallets, only this time it's actually managing to fuck over the entire global environment and multiple levels of working class citizens, rather than just being a waste of everyone's fucking time! Congrats, vegans. You have done literally nothing right. You made every single wrong choice and have to double down on it now, because just like in a cult, the second you admit to yourself that maybe this whole schtick isnt environmentally friendly in the slightest, you now have to deal with the repercussions of Literally Everything You Did!

Much easier to just talk about how much healthier you are now that you take a shot of apple cider vinegar every morning on the internet. Takes less effort that way. Get well soon.

[What has this become?]

[ms-demeanor]

By the way, the way that No Child Left Behind impacts the trade worker shortage in the US is because in about 2002 shop classes, home ec classes, auto classes, etc, had their funding diverted into teaching kids how to pass standardized tests so that the schools could continue to pay teachers and keep the library open.

It’s hard to figure out that you might be interested in plumbing as a career when you’ve spent twelve years learning how to pass multiple choice tests and having ceramics and band as the only available electives.

This is one place where I actually WILL do the generational thing and say that Millennials and Gen Z got completely fucked in a way that older generations didn’t.

It’s actually really fucking hard to repair a cabinet when you’ve never had a shop class. It’s really goddamned difficult to learn everything about car maintenance on your own through youtube videos instead of in a semester of auto shop. It’s really goddamned difficult to figure out you want to be a plumber or an electrician or a welder when you are eighteen years old, have been taught to pass tests and cajoled into applying for college, and you’ve never handled an air compressor or used a socket wrench.