u/DiscountMusings

Oh this one fucks with me. Something about the eyes...

Fuck I hate this. Profoundly unsettling. 

Not sure if you're the artist, but if so: excellent work! 

I've got some Chinese food that's been in the work fridge for a few days... I keep forgetting it's there lol.

Whatd you end up grabbing? 

I'm at work, but due a lunch break. Gonna heat up some leftovers and I'll join you. 

Genuine question, no snark, one human to another, have you ever read the Bible cover to cover?

Kind of a survey question I ask the devout. And the profane too, now that I think about it.

Extraordinary claims need evidence, sure.

Then we're done here. You have none.

If we take the Bible at face value (and I'd argue that enough Christianity is based around the Bible that it's a reasonable examination), the big hints that it's made up are items like the following:

• The talking donkey
• Orbital strikes on unbelievers
• Spontaneous creation of matter
• Reversing death
• Instantaneous material transmutation
• Immortality
• Asexual reproduction in humans
• Various magical artifacts
• Literal superheroes
• Control over animals
• Various impossible or exagerrated sexual fantasies

If you read a book and it contains all these things, it is a fictional, made-up story. At the very least, it is a book of extraordinary claims that would require clear, explicit proof to be believed. All of these are pure magic that no one would EVER accept as true if they were presented devoid of their context as a holy text. If someone told you that god talked to them through their livestock, you'd say that they were lying, crazy, or high. Hell, that's more or less the exact assertion that Joseph Smith made, and Christians don't seem to be willing to accept his account as proof of the BoM (despite similar levels of evidence).

None of these are particularly unique stories either. Talking animals, returning from death, immortality... every culture has stories that incorporate a at least a few of these tropes. Why would I apply any weight to any one mythology, when all of them have the same stories and the same level of proof? How do I determine the reality of Christianity vs the cult of Zeus vs The God-Emperor of All Mankind? For that matter, how do you?

Christianity is made up because it's entirely composed of absurd claims and provides no evidence for any of them. That's it.

And no, my post contains no proof that God doesn't exist, not that either of us can conceive what that might look like. But you're already talking about Russell's Teapot elsewhere in the thread, so I don't feel the need to address that.

'Utopian Pillars' is the name of her favorite stripper. 

Please keep writing these. I'm loving them.

The way you have Lamen and Lemuel speaking with aggressive tact is just so hilarious. 

So many baffling decisions made by talented people. 

It's right up there with The Room, for sure. It has that perfect combination of artistic pretension and unassailable self-confidence. It's utterly incoherent and yet certain that it's a masterpiece. It has the budget for some wild sets and effects, some amazing talent (hamstrung by a frankly sophomoric mess of a script), and it's still just. So. BAD.

The fact that it's made by Francis Ford fuckin Coppola is just insane. 

I can't look away. 

First question: "Whaddya think of this boner I got?"

logs onto reddit

opens /r/rpg

full of people discussing rpgs

shuts laptop in disgust

I suspect it's because the main designer, Peter Lee, has been working with Wizards since like 2010. His most well-known work is likely Lords of Waterdeep, but he's done five or six other DnD/MtG related boardgames as well. 

Once the first few Horrified games did well, it makes perfect sense for WotC to partner up with him to make some DnD stuff. It seems like a pretty safe bet for both parties. 

The Crooked Moon campaign setting is supposed to be excellent, though I've not had a chance to try it yet. 5e with a folk-horror kind of vibe.

I've enjoyed the DnD MtG campaign settings: Ravnica, Theros, and Strixhaven are all very distinct, flavorful places with lots of unique story opportunities.  Ravnica is an eternal city run by ten guilds, Theros is ancient greek/roman coded, and Strixhaven is a magic college run by dragons. Lots of options to add some variety to a campaign.

I also recently found a really odd system-agnostic book just called The Weird. Not a campaign, not a setting, just a shit-ton of d100 tables full of bizarre ideas. Tables for NPCs, dungeons, artifacts, curses, mounts, buildings... there's some fun stuff in there.

Tbf I love me some baby slaughter style bad guys every now and then. Hags are great for that... no complex motivations, no tragic backstory. They really do just like being hateful and cruel. That's great cause it's easy for the players and DM both; this is a Bad Guy (tm), and we're Heroes (tm).

But for like goblins or orcs, I want to know how and why they got to the baby murder. Are they raiders looking for supplies? Conquerors looking to occupy? Are they the orcish equivalent of a biker gang, or do they represent orcs as a whole?

Just a nod towards the idea that they're part of the world and not just set dressing. 

Your edit makes me worry you're having a manic episode of some kind... You sound a lot like I do when I get way up in my head.

So first off: stop. 

Just stop. Sit down. Close your eyes, breathe deeply and steadily for a few beats. Imagine your problem is a physical object and just put it down somewhere for now. There's nothing so urgent about dnd that you need to solve it right now, so put it down for a few minutes to catch your breath and plan your next steps. 

This does NOT need to be solved immediately. You're in your head right now, and having trouble thinking clearly about the issue. Not the time to make a final decision. 

"Keeping commandments will make you happy”

Tried it for 20+ years. Didn't work; in fact, it almost drove me to suicide. Left the church, found happiness. I call bullshit, Quentin.

Wife and I were introduced to Food Chain Magnate via a pair of very enthusiastic friends. They hyped it up for weeks before we finally got to sit down and actually play it. I was excited. We sat down, they did the teach, and we started the game. The two of them then spent the entire game just kind of bullying us.

FCM is a very interactive, very cutthroat game. We were not informed of this prior to playing; somehow the weeks of hype never included that description. My wife gave up two turns in... it was clear they weren't going to let us get objectives so she just sort of just sat and did whatever. I did my best, and there came a point where I'd (finally) set myself up for a big turn... and the teacher nuked it. Just canceled it out. Everything I'd done, all the resources I'd spent, were just gone.

We'd been slogging through this for an hour and a half. We were maybe 2/3 of the way through the game, and I was just fuckin done. At this point I was just hoping to accelerate the game so we could go home. One of my opponents (finally) managed to read the room and asked if we were having fun. I said, "This is excruciating", wife just said, "No". 

We  finally called it. Utterly miserable experience, and we're never touching FCM again.  To this day, I have no idea what the two of them expected to happen. Why the hell would they expect us to want to play it ever again?

Oooooh I love the money pit idea! The steward just periodically reaches out to them to ask for more money. 

"The delivery cart broke and needs to be replaced."

"Some kind of blight hit the south orchard. We're probably going to lose the crop" 

"Daryl and Johansen both died in that goblin raid, so we need some new laborers. They also torn down some of the outer wall."

Bonus points if he's been skimming funds off the top.

Not quite. Wearing high heels puts most of the weight on your toes, yes, but you're still putting quite a bit of weight on the back heel. The higher the heel, the more pressure goes on your toe, but your weight is never resting entirely on the front of your foot. 

When walking, your weight should come down on the heel first. If you go toe first you get that slightly awkward walk that's very noticeable and people will say you 'don't know how to walk in high heels'. 

The 'pencil heel' you mentioned is called a stiletto heel, while our girl up above has what's called a block or chunky heel. The wider base gives you more stability (though it's still not practical for combat), again indicating that much of your weight goes on the back of the foot. 

Source: did drag a couple times and had to learn how to walk in six inch stilettos.

I should say, however, that I fuckin love bladed heels as a trope. It's a bit like a gunblade or a double-headed sword;  you know it's wildly impractical but it's cool so who cares. A stiletto is a type of Italian dagger; the connotation is built right into the name.

The patient is holding hands with the doctor on the far right so... I guess they know each other at least.

Creepy as hell tho

I miss weird edh. Deck design just feels more homogenous and predictable these days. There's just too many good cards now for jank decks... its so easy to tune everything. 

And that's not necessarily a bad thing, to be clear. The game flows better now and has consistent support which is great. Thanks to UB, more and more people are playing and I love that too (though I still have mixed feelings about UB overall). I'm a buggy maker lamenting the advent of the car, but  I miss the old, cumbersome, weirdness that you used to see. 

Anyway I'm off to drink some 'member-berry juice while yelling at a cloud. 

Yeah she's a geist bound to a cathedral on innistrad.

Your comment prompted me to go look up the flavor text for Thops Barrier... yeah I think you're 100% correct.

"The lifelong pursuit of Thops the Bluntstone.

Creates a magic forcefield that deflects sorceries and incantations. Hold to continuously create barriers.

Future generations will learn. They will know the foolishness of the sneering sorcerers who ridiculed this theory,  little realizing that it was in fact a discovery worthy of a new conspectus of the academy."

Damn I wanna watch this episode of Lower Decks... this feels like the kind of pep talk Boimler would give