Jesse Burneko @jburneko@dice.camp

Hey, @PaulCzege Ron used Bacchanal in Session 1 of his Numeracy class, so your streak is maintained.

The prereq on this course has been dropped. If you’re interested in the historical interplay between Fantasy Literature and Fantasy RPGs, it’s worth checking out: https://payhip.com/b/5vNHa

I realized I have a backlog of games I want to play mostly related to Sorcerer.

Dictionary of Mu
Mork Borg Sorcerer & Sword Experiment
Brotherhood of the Wolf inspired Sorcerer & Sword
Nightcrawler inspired Sorcerer
Carnival inspired Sorcerer

It is not possible to turn your authentic self into a profitable persona. We all adopt a bit of a persona in public spaces, but the more we rely on that for income the more dangerous it becomes. People really need to review the lesson of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (the actual original story).

If you're interested in learning about how to think about RPG play at an atomic level (like learning chords), I recommend looking at these courses: https://adeptplay.com/seminar/july-coursework-registration I've taken 4 of them. They are refreshingly free of commercial concerns.

When you start thinking about game design in terms of building tools for addressing a topic, but with the added underlying assumption that the players are interested, knowledgeable, and eager to engage the topic, it is both incredibly freeing and utterly depressing.

There was a production of Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf with Zachary Quinto and Calista Flockhart this month, and now I find out there's a production of Sleuth next month. These are a couple of my favorite plays. The local theater scene is working overtime to kill me this year.

This is the last day to stream this play: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/on-demand-graves-by-ellie-pyle-tickets-339752126757

Sometimes I see a show and think, "I have lived this." This one was basically my 20s. I know all these characters. I have said and done these things.

Was making notes about something and wrote down the phrase "entropic soap opera" and now the phrase won't leave my head.

I saw a take elsewhere that said "art isn't focus tested" in reference to corporate mass media. I realized that sentiment is linked to ideas I have about playtesting. I am pro-playtesting in terms of a designer playing their game and refining it into the thing they want it to be. I'm anti-playtesting as a form of marketing, focus testing, and performance review.

So, it turns out the original Swedish/Danish version of The Bridge is the show I was hoping Gotham was going to be.

Finished up another one of Ron Edwards RPG classes today. At least one of @PaulCzege's games has been featured prominently in all of them.

In other news, there appear to be wasps spawning out of one of my bathrooms.

Anyone who has ever thought, "It's no fun to fail to solve a mystery" has never engaged Nordic crime media.

Me: I think Spelljammer is kind of dumb.

Also me: Here’s a map for my current campaign that that might as well be a star destroyer.

My charitable read of paid DMing: “It’s kind of rad that this is a viable source of supplemental income now.”

My uncharitable read: “Who the fuck is trolling the back alleys of the internet paying for D&D?”

This brought to you by my 15 year old self who never understood why the Drow were "evil" even if you left their culture entirely intact as described.

Nuance: I was willing to accept the idea that LOLTH was evil but it's not the Drow's fault their patron goddess has some questionable asks of her chosen people. All divine bargains are a protection racket by definition.

It looks like the argument about inherently evil races has come around again. For what it's worth I think inherently evil races are dumb BEFORE we even start talking about racist ideas because a big part of play for me is moral judgment. Why take that dimension out of the hands of the players? However, this has led me to some thoughts about mythic beings and divine purpose which I might be compelled to write a blog post about.

While I'm at it.... Does anyone know an artist who can do B&W approximations of 30s-40s pulp detective magazine covers. They don't need to be this level of detail as I suspect that would be a tremendous amount of work. I'm interested more in tone than literal recreation. #ttrpg #art

In general, I have bunch of less polished experimental stuff at my itch site: https://jburneko.itch.io/ Including a text adventure based on the first 5 chapters of Franz Kafka's The Castle.