I'm opening a Discord server

Alright folks, I've been hanging around Discord a while and thinking about what kind of server I'd like to be in, and I think it's time I made it happen. Link after the jump.

Boosting the signal: "Transgender representation in OSR cyberpunk games," by Evlyn M

First, if you're somehow reading my blog and aren't already following Evlyn M at Le Chaudron Chromatique, you should be. Her artwork is some of the most beautiful and original on the RPG scene right now, her writing is bursting with fresh ideas, and her work ethic is enviable and inspiring.

Yesterday she published this excellent overview of trans representation in OSR cyberpunk games. I am first deeply appreciative of Evlyn's efforts to contribute an OSR* perspective to the discussion on queer issues on the RPG scene, and secondly really impressed by the rigour with which she carries out her research.

Back in the Days Of G+ there was a discussion of sorts as to whether the scene needed more critical voices. The prevailing position was that no we don't because those might make someone feel Bad** but I maintain that hell yes we do and this is exactly the sort of work I had in mind. I think Evlyn does such a great job at focalizing an important question, surveying the area, analyzing and drawing intelligent conclusions leading to helpful advice - that is, of being critical though not polemical. Hell yes, more of this please, and thank you.

*or whatever we're calling it these days
**This is an oversimplification and possibly a strawman but I'm blogging from my phone so

The Recursive Encounter Calculator: for checking encounters over many turns

Peter's recent post on the enduring difficulty of running travel in RPGs has motivated me to make a little tool I'd been thinking about for a while. It is not a complete solution to his problem, but I hope it can at be helpful to a few GMs out there. I'll explain further, but first, the tool:

Latest Frankenrules

It's come to my attention that in the Year of Our Lord 2019 someone is linking to this - which is flattering and also fine, however not exactly representative of how I'm running my D&D games nowadays. So I figure it's time for an update on that front.

These are the rules I've been using over the past year+ in my ongoing Red & Pleasant Land campaign. Two major sources pillaged are the LotFP playtest rules in Eldritch Cock, and Evey Lockhart's Broken Wilds setting.

There's maybe room for reflection here on how my approach to running D&D has evolved since I wrote up those older houserules in 2014. However it is already past my bedtime, so those thoughts will have to wait.

A-here we go:

Do I Miss Google Plus? The Answer May Surprise You

Patrick has asked about how people are taking the demise of G+. I'm writing this post partially because it seems too long to dump in his comment section, but also because an accidental button
click led me to lose an in-progress response multiple paragraphs long. Twice.

I'm mostly on Discord now, lurking on about a dozen servers and active on 3 or 4. The ones I'm active on are small, the largest with members numbering around 100. I do not even lurk the big OSR server because I simply can't keep up. I mention this because those servers are my main point of comparison.

I miss G+ but not as much as I'd expected. Frankly, I'd grown tired with a number of aspects of the platform by the end. The crowdedness of G+ made a constant chore of just keeping the platform bearable, and the conversations I was interested in having seemed mostly to have played out. The conversations that were happening felt increasingly dominated by chatter, or like rehashes of last year's topics. I also felt that the culture on G+ (reinforced by the site's UX design) created an emphasis on "making", whether the thing made was a blog post or a game product or what have you. As my life got busier that pressure felt more limiting as I sought more casual avenues for my hobby. Furthermore, as my interests branched out into other RPGs that weren't D&D, I found my community there increasingly unresponsive and occasionally outright hostile.

The gaming experience on Discord has been refreshing. I was initially drawn to G+ by ConstantCon and the promise of easy access to games on a whim. As far as I can tell, those days were already over by the time I signed up. On Discord I have found games in abundance and varied in kind. Tellingly, after years of intermittent, utterly failed attempts to get a Monsterhearts game going on G+, I managed to wind up running one in Discord almost by accident, and have had to take some creative measures just to keep player numbers under control.

The social experience has been superior, straight up. I spend much less time thinking about who to avoid and how to avoid them. My communities feel more intimate and trusting. What I lose in granularity of control over my social circle I make up for in a sense of conviviality. I've also had some really enjoyable exchanges with people I doubt I'd have ever much engaged with on G+. While the language for relationships on the Internet remains fraught as ever, I do believe I have quickly made friends on Discord.

As a queer person I also want to shout out to a couple servers in particular that have provided what feels like a distinctly queer space for RPGs - something I never would have asked for but am so, so happy to have. This is not to say that G+ was hostile, exactly, but I did always have a sense of speaking to a more mixed group, even in cases where I may not have wanted to. Discord, I suppose, offers a sense of movement between intimacies, rather than shouting from a fixed position.

Discord is not perfect. For all my talk about the shallowness of "the conversation" on G+, on Discord it's downright impossible to have a comparable, extended discussion of a given topic. G+ was good at creating space for an exchange of ideas, decentralized, spread out over time, but connected. Part of the reason a lot of blogs went dormant (including this one) is because it was just easier on G+, and it rendered blogs redundant except as dumping grounds for overlong posts (like this one). Without G+ as a hub, many seem to be returning to their blogs. My RSS feed (I use Inoreader) has done a good enough job of keeping me abreast. "Good enough" feels key here. It's not the same, it's perhaps not as excellent, but I am satisfied.

I'll close this with a quick thought on "the conversation" after G+. If we're returning to blogs, we'll probably find ourselves looking for ways to recreate the sense of continuity and connectivity that generated so much energy in our old home. I think it will be increasingly important to regard blogs as key nodes in a network that extends into a variety of platforms and communities. That means we'll need to be mindful of linking back to other posts, and helping our readers follow the conversations we're taking part in.

To answer Patrick's question: Do I miss G+? Sure, of course I do. Rest in peace. Thank god it's gone.

The Conch Tower (30-Minute Dungeon)

Tristan Tanner has created a really compelling 30-minute Dungeon Challenge. This is both an attempt to make one of those, and to flesh out part of a sort-of-secret project I'm trying not to promise too much about.

This took me well over 30 minutes. In fact, it took me several hours, but Tristan's template (in the link above) was really helpful keeping me on track. The dungeon is rough around the edges, but I'm going to post it now or I'll second guess myself and it will never see the light of day. Hopefully I will get around to cleaning it up and throwing together in the coming days. I would also like to write some brief reflections on making this thing, but that's another post.

Without further ado, here is the dungeon:

THE CONCH TOWER

Max Ernst, Europe After the Rain II, c. 1940 - 1942

new post 2019

i am NEVER HAPPIER than when i'm rolling some kawaii ass player character with a Magic School Bus voice rolling on a death & dismemberment table