Joshua A.C. Newman @JoshuaACNewman@dice.camp

Good rule of thumb: “Nobody here is trying to be racist on purpose, it’s just our rules have a racist outcome and that’s not our fault!” is not a strong defense

Hint: there can be bad laws, and bad policies, and bad rules, not just bad people

Hey I wrote a thing that makes calling your elected representatives slightly less awful: Phones of Glory. It is free because I want you to make some calls! https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/252320/Phones-of-Glory

ok i admit it. the Warm Manifesto is my excuse for working on an album for so long that by the time it’s released it will be out of fashion, twice as long as necessary and full of oblique but extremely personal references to the past few years of my life and the creation of the album itself

RT @bedouralagraa@twitter.com
almost 1000 inmates were left to die in Orleans Parish prison during hurricane Katrina. The CO’s evacuated themselves and inmates spent 5 days in chest-high water, with no food or water. The generator had blown leaving them in pitch darkness. 517 of them were never found https://twitter.com/bsonenstein/status/1039554418214150145

The European Parliament is about to vote on the #LinkTax and #CensorshipMachine proposals—#Article11 and #Article13. Follow us @EFFLive for our live coverage of the voting on these dangerous bills, which could completely wreck the Internet.

I just wrote a big rant to my #roleplaying group on some thoughts I've been mulling on randomness, dice mechanics, narrative control, yes-and and what feels good. I might talk about them here once they're more ordered (which I expect to fall out of hearing back what they think of my ramble).

Lots of came from thinking more about Swords Without Master by @Epidiah and MF0: Firebrands (which I have yet to play, but super need to now!) by @lumpley (based in a universe created by @JoshuaACNewman).

Undead are cautionary tales. Monsters preach that undead are the inevitable disease that occurs when you give humans too much power. Humans are too delicate to rule and so they seek out powers they cannot control in order to hold on to power.

Hm, this will likely be a blog post sooner rather than later...

Starting the game:

Name the monsters who:

rules this duchy
wears the the crown and who rules over the dukes
enforces laws and collects taxes
puts down rebellions
sees over local religious services, sermons blessings and marriages
executes villains

Or start the game in a fort on the edge of civilization, a democratic human enclave struggling to survive...

Adventurers are called villains, a throwback to when the word meant low-born...

"villain, n." OED Online, Oxford University Press, July 2018, oed.com/view/Entry/223…. Accessed 8 September 2018.

Yes, human merchants still pay big money to marry into monstrous noble families in hopes that their children can have monsters/noble blood.

Monster/Noble's coats of arms are symbols or stylized humans giving them what they want.

It re-contextualizes half-orcs, fer sure.

Elves? Gnomes? Dwarves? Monsters see them as human subjects with enough of a drop of interesting monster blood to make them interesting.

All facets of Those Who Fight (nobles, knights, crowns) and Those Who Pray (nuns, monks, priests, popes) in the medieval world are monsters. Kick down the doors of castles and cathedrals for loot b/c these fuckers aren't human - fuck them.

Clerics gain power from living saints, humans who have cobbled together enough power to give spells to clerics but otherwise the human gods are either dead or never existed.

#dnd

US Senator Cory Booker risked both his career and freedom to publish these "committee confidential" documents about Kavanaugh. Loudly and in public. To demonstrate that executive privilege is being exercised inappropriately and in a partisan manner.

Respect.

https://www.scribd.com/document/387988906/Booker-Confidential-Kavanaugh-Hearing

this is such a good sermon
---
In advance of Rosh Hashana, I want to unpack one of the most loaded bits of liturgy in the tradition.

“Who will live and who will die? Who by the length of their days, and who before their time?”

Thread 1/x

https://forward.com/life/faith/383080/what-this-rosh-hashanah-liturgical-poem-means-in-trumps-america/
https://twitter.com/TheRaDR/status/1037335949531930625

legs for your ass

4. You reach someone else's mind, who is near you at that future time. It may or may not be evident to you whose mind you reach.

5. You and your future self swap consciousness. You carry on from that future time, and your future self is doomed to repeat the intervening hour from now on.

And in big letters:

ELLIOT DOES NOT APPROVE THIS SPELL.

A spell found in an old notebook:

You extend a plasmic tendril into your own mind, an hour into the future. You may ask the GM one question and, if you like, one or two followup questions. The GM must answer them truthfully from the point of view of your future self.

1. You may ask one question, but no followup questions.

2. Your future self is disoriented by your contact and query, and must regather themself.

3. You reach yourself 10 minutes hence, not an hour hence.

(cont)

when i was a kid i got a CD-ROM in a box of cereal that was full of disney wallpapers and screensavers, and immediately installed them all onto my dads computer, and in the ensuing attempt to remove it all when he found out, i broke something, and for the next 5 years every time you started up the computer, it would produce 20+ identical error messages that each said something like "101dalmatians.exe has performed an illegal operation"