Unsaying
Lord, have mercy.
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User ID: 2188
Unsaying
Lord, have mercy.
6d ago
What exactly do you mean by Tolkienesque?
I’m curious as to which systems you think get closest.
Well there are several overtly based in Middle-Earth. MERP is the OG here, with more modern versions such as The One Ring and even a series of supplements for playing in Middle Earth using the 5E rules. I want to run a One Ring game but haven't found the time or people for it. Hopefully in a decade I'll be able to do it with my kids.
Point is, neither of these groups seem like they’d end up at Tolkien, and I can’t think of any systems that really try to implement such a style. Maybe a low-magic variant of 2e?
Yeah, I really like 2E for this, with 1E attitudes toward magic, i.e. it's very rare. A +1 sword is a big deal for even mid-level characters, and giving a magic weapon of any kind to a minion is a huge deal.
There's a style of play called 'E6' (idk why) where the basic premise is that characters can ascend to level 6 as normal but advancement stops there. This keeps them feeling roughly mortal which I think counts for a lot. Beyond that point in normal campaigns it becomes more and more difficult to give them real challenges beyond simply enemies with comparably-scaling stats, which feels clicky to me. In E6, as the campaign goes on, they continue to accumulate wealth and prestige, which opens the door to interesting options. And of course magic items, while hard-won, gradually serve to give them a sense of legendary prowess. But at the end of the day, one bad encounter with a gang of low-level enemies can still wreck them entirely. And they never really get the sense of being able to walk into combat without concern.
In one game I tried something out where beyond level 6 they could only attain further advancement in levels by eating dragon hearts, and dragons were as difficult to find and kill as you'd expect. I liked this approach because it really slowed down advancement and provided some kind of justification for why normal people could get so superhumanly powerful. Also it ends up feeling a little bit like Birthright, which I've always loved.
Haven't tried it, but I bet that Westeros campaign setting from... 20 or so years ago? probably would be a good fit as well. IIRC it was partly based on the idea that the players are, and only ever will be, eminently vulnerable. And it seems to be very low-magic, in keeping with the setting.
Unsaying
Lord, have mercy.
6d ago
I like my rpgs to be as Tolkienesque and possible and have collected about all of the relevant systems, but I find that it's difficult to get a group together which shares that aesthetic taste. By and large, people really do seem to prefer pop-fantasy. Damn millennials. They ruined the millennium!
Unsaying
Lord, have mercy.
11d ago
Idk about good but it certainly was eye-opening. Did you catch the username? I was confused about how cocaine comes from scorpions and wanted to follow up via PM.
Unsaying
Lord, have mercy.
14d ago
Here is the problem with advocating censorship of "bad" ideas: If it is permissible make rules about what ideas can be expressed, then someone has to make those rules. And who will that be, people with power, or people without power. Obviously the former.
I don't see why that's a problem, though I can certainly see why it would seem problematic to people with certain assumptions.
Unsaying
Lord, have mercy.
18d ago
I remember being astonished to learn that Vietnamese tourists will generally bring their own dried food to eat during their travels. Asia really is a foreign country.
There have absolutely been times and places where unionization was necessary, unless one has basically zero consideration for human misery and abuse. Martyrmade has an excellent piece on the topic, "Whose America? (Part One)". But yes, like any other institution they can go rotten, and clearly have in many cases.
EDIT: Here's the link. https://martyrmade.com/22-whose-america-ep-1-rough-extraction/
Unsaying
Lord, have mercy.
20d ago
there’s simply no way to have biological creatures cross interstellar space within less than twenty or so generations.
Some organisms can go dormant for long periods. Perhaps indefinitely.
Unsaying
Lord, have mercy.
28d ago
I'd like to hear more. So far in my experience when people say that they're just talking about game theory.
Unsaying
Lord, have mercy.
1mo ago
There's a reason most parenting guides say "don't beat your kids". It really screws them up
Do you have any sources on this which attempt to control for the causation possibly running in the other direction? I.e. low-quality children simply more likely to be beaten.
This could be fine with some commentary. As Incanto said below it would be good to enumerate some examples that occur to you, and ideally offer some additional insight beyond the quote itself.
Personally I think there's some truth to it. Arcane language certainly is handy for bamboozling the peasants. It even works on the managerial class, since they're often a particular combination of embarrassed to call the speaker out, thus admitting that they're ignorant of the subject, and unwilling or unable to go to the effort of educating themselves on the particulars. C.f. how few people have any idea regarding the basics of how the financial system works. It's just something for the professionals to handle, I guess. Hope they're competent, honest, selfless public servants!
One of my favorite words to hear in normie discourse is "the economy". It's fascinating to imagine what internal understandings people are referencing when they say that. Got particularly interesting during the covid crisis, which imo revealed some of the enormous gaps in popular understanding of such matters. Particularly frustrating to me was the notion that we need to prioritize "lives" over "the economy". One wonders what they imagine is responsible for producing things like modern healthcare.
So I guess the insight I want to add here is that higher-ups will throw such words around to keep their inferiors convinced that smart people are in control, sure, but also that those inferiors will do their best to bluff by mimicking what they've heard so as to bolster their arguments, all the while swallowing the fear that someone will call them out and force them to explain precisely what those words mean.
Try asking someone who complains about 'capitalism' exactly what that is, sometime.
Probably a much earlier antecedent would be religions, which were often founded on a model where the people in charge had access to special knowledge which justified their position and which would explicitly not be shared with the followers. Many exceptions, of course.
(EDIT to continue) Occurs to me that this dynamic is particularly troublesome in the sort of democracy-ish model most modern nations seem to be pursuing. How can an electorate be expected to make good decisions when the key to securing votes is a confident smile and the ability to plausibly throw out a bunch of power-words in pleasant-sounding ways?
Unsaying
Lord, have mercy.
1mo ago
The Chinese government isn't sufficiently based or red-pilled to do that, hence the imprisonment of the scientist who used CRISPR on humans.
If dystopian sci-fi has taught me anything, his "imprisonment" involved working on a similar program at some kind of black site. Show us you can cooperate, and someday you'll be able to go back to your normal life. Or, maybe not.
the Chinese are mostly happy to follow western norms in these matters.
Well, they're happy to do so in Western-public-facing matters. I believe they still have organ theft vans rolling around, yeah?
Unsaying
Lord, have mercy.
1mo ago
But this one will have grizzly bears, which could be pretty awesome.
Unsaying
Lord, have mercy.
2mo ago
What’s stopping you from doing that now?
Well they're not teenagers now.
Unsaying
Lord, have mercy.
2mo ago
Gaston is by any measure the hero of the movie. He's a paragon, the absolute image, of his people, and they adore him. He is the bringer of benefit, the one who is capable of moving them to action as a body.
I think this is a great point.
Edit: though, upon reflection, Tangled played this pretty straight.
Unsaying
Lord, have mercy.
2mo ago
Unsaying
Lord, have mercy.
3mo ago
As a theistic person, your post reads to me thus:
I am asexual. I cannot comprehend how sexual people like the way they are and I regard it as a sickness rather than recognizing myself as the one who is sick. If I can, I will fix the flaw in human beings which causes them to desire romance with each other. That is disgusting and it is clear to me that so much unnecessary pain could simply be avoided. I know so much better.
What I'm saying here isn't an argument. It's an apology. Best wishes to you.
Unsaying
Lord, have mercy.
3mo ago
People can stand what is true, for they are already enduring it.
I don't really buy this. For one, plenty of people aren't enduring it because they've already killed themselves. For another, 'truth' itself is a funny thing in that all maps are wrong, and a more accurate map may actually be a less-useful map. But even this pushes us to consider what 'usefulness' means as it seems to imply some kind of overriding telos, which is, as far as I've ever been able to tell, not a matter easily able to be decided conclusively.
In regard to OP, there's also a matter of intelligibility. Perhaps there is a frequency of sound, for example, which is unbearable to hear. Those exposed to it are in such torment that they almost always end their own lives sooner or later, even if perhaps after years or decades of resistance. Only, most people can't hear this frequency. Does it make sense to tell those who can hear it that everything is fine because others are enduring it? Is this an appropriate thing to tell such a person if one is, oneself, unable to hear it?
Unsaying
Lord, have mercy.
3mo ago
My goodness but that article is incredibly nakedly biased. Little context, multiple scare quotes from the Left, basically zero indication as to why the majority might think what it does. Is this the news Americans are getting?
Unsaying
Lord, have mercy.
3mo ago
Yeah, no, the presumption of good faith is gone here. You do not have the attitude of someone interested in learning and I won't be snookered into wasting more time on you.
Sir, I believe you have erred in your placement of this post, and that it was intended as a response to the one below.
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