…sandy petersen, greg vaghan, and alex kammer have all published great fifth-edition material based on the king in yellow: take a look at cthulhu mythos, aegis of empires, and the end of everything for inspiration…

feet.

…it’s a tarantino thing…

…yeah, i think that’s an essential cultural distinction between tabletop and videogame backgrounds; i started seeing the transition in campaign styles in parallel with the advent of structured narratives around the mid-eighties leading into the nineties…

…by contrast, our groups routinely swap DM roles across multiple tables which all share the same more-or-less persistent world, although individual character and DM experiences can vary within the boundaries of narrative coherence…that sustained investment is the fundamental point of of our tabletop campaigns; it distinguishes freeform from prescribed gameplay and is why we chose open-ended campaigns over closed-form boardgames…

…are you familiar with the old RPGA living campaigns?..ignoring the structured campaign setting, that style of pickup game used to be how most folks played…

…if player characters aren’t at liberty to move between campaigns, then ultimately no, they don’t have agency: they’re just ephemeral labor playing-out the DM’s narrative with nothing to show for it afterward…

…mind, i’m not damning that arrangement - some folks enjoy the transient experience - but i have no interest in investing my own creative energy toward anything that i don’t keep…

^{(i already deal with that sixty-five hours every week and remuneration barely suffices to stay my contempt)}

…hot tub time machine; absurdly better film than its pitch had any right to be…

…fair enough; i don’t invest my time in campaigns where players don’t retain agency over their own characters…

…west marches vs. one-shot campaigns, plenty of tables for both styles…

…nah, i have plenty of characters from other campaigns available when the opportunity arises…

…i’m not big on contrived replacements; i may rejoin organically at some point in the indeterminate future but if i’m out i’m out…

…nah man, i’m here for casual conversation; nothing at all shameful about honest ignorance, only willful ignorance…

…because it’s a plainly ignorant statement akin to “i don’t like french music”: do you just dislike music malt whisky?..that’s a fair statement, but one which would apply to all malt whiskies regardless of nation of origin, as there’s no unifying style distinguishing scotch in particular…

…conversely, if you don’t mind other malt whiskies but dislike something specific about scotch, that’s indicative of narrow experience coloring your expectation of a vast ecology of styles and expressions which have little in common other than being based on barley, water, distillation, and age…

…“i don’t like scotch” is a common statement from folks who’ve only sampled peated malts; your listerine comment sounds like medicinal peat notes, which are a divisive style…

…i generally prefer windows open to the world but i’ll concede that it’s niiiiice, though: i never sleep better than nestled underneath a blasting window-box on a hot summer night…

…‘scotch’ encompasses such a vast diversity of spirits that i presume anyone who blanket-dislikes it either 1) doesn’t like malt whisky in general, fair enough, or 2) mis-apprehends a specific style as endemic to scotch whisky as a whole…

…the latter folks typically dislike peated malts, often after sampling bottom-shelf blends…

…i went to school in the tropics without air conditioning, neither in the classrooms nor dormitories, and it still feels like self-indulgent opulence to me every time i come home to air conditioning, even four decades later…

…well maybe there’s just the one and she’s not doing so well…

^(petite)

(and these days it feels like a matter time until i hear sabbath playing in home depot)

…not in fifth-edition dungeons + dragons: knowledge checks are intelligence, judgement is wisdom…

…any service which requires a mobile phone, really: i like to remain unencumbered and only carry my phone if i intend to use it…

…for me it was the first time i heard ozzy in a grocery store, twenty-something years ago…