let's see the size of the finger

The system mastery cute twinks get what they fricking deserve this episode

Scientific American?

Dungeons & Dragons now reigns as a cultural powerhouse, the OG of tabletop role-playing. In its 50th anniversary year, the storied fantasy role-playing game is now making a long-overdue, and noteworthy, correction to its scientifically benighted treatment of race.

Attacked by religious figures for supposed demonic ties in the 1980s (part of a broader trend in that decade termed the "Satanic panic"), the game and its trappings now rule popular culture. You sit at a table with some pizza, dice and friends, and collectively engage with a story wherein you are a warrior or wizard out on a tale of heroism in a sword-and-sorcery world. What's new is that in September, the game's owner, Wizards of the Coast, will release a "Player's Handbook" that changes the terminology of its character's physiological types, previously referred to as races, and replace them with the term species.

Announced in 2022, the company's action was motivated by a view that species is "a term that didn't require explanation and that highlighted the fantastical nature of the game's nonhuman options," according to Jeremy Crawford, game director of Dungeons & Dragons.

Wizards of the Coast should be congratulated for the move, both for the company's stated reasons and, scientifically, as a correction from the long-running error of describing species as races. Kids playing a fun game will no longer pick up a botched, eugenical notion of race alongside their 20-sided dice.

Some players welcomed the change and the rationale behind the shift to species. However, others felt insulted, arguing Wizards of the Coast was giving into a "woke" mentality, fearful of invoking the word race. Still others appreciated the move but felt it didn't go far enough. They recommended the removal of other material that could be deemed offensive. This last group is highly critical of the biological essentialism, parroting scientific and evolutionary language to explain marked social and cultural differences between groups, that comes with the use of terms like race to distinguish between humans and others like elves, dwarves and orcs, particularly because of stereotyped real-world associations made at times to these fantasy species.

As a social scientist who studies male-dominated subcultures, I have done research that put me in spaces where I delved into reactions to issues of race in gaming. A key question is this: Given how charged the term race has been, why would games use it to discuss differences that have nothing to do with the way we traditionally use the word? Dungeons & Dragons is not the only game to use the term in this way; so have many other digital and analog fantasy offerings. But the celebrated game, created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson in 1973, arguably set the standard that these others have followed. Gygax and Arneson leaned heavily on popular fiction and folklore to construct their game world, and links to fantasy author J.R.R. Tolkien's works, which were first penned in an age of colonial racism, are undeniable. In his Lord of the Rings trilogy, Tolkien commonly used the word race to characterize differences among humans, elves, hobbits—all of the societies that populated his novels. Because this was familiar territory for so-called sword-and-sorcery fans, the creators of Dungeons & Dragons simply co-opted it, as it would create a recognizable point of reference for potential g*mers.

So biological essentialism ran deep in the game. In its earliest versions, the authors distinguished between humans and other groups, collectively called "demihumans." Notably, players who chose to be dwarves, elves, halflings or other demihumans had limits that humans did not have. They were lesser beings. They could only have certain professions in the game (referred to as classes), could only progress so far, and had built-in limitations (for example, sturdy but somewhat slow and dour dwarves had constitution advantages, but limits on their dexterity and charisma). Further, all demihumans had some form of seeing in the dark, which marked them as something in between humans and animals.

The most often cited element of biological determinism in the early game, however, was a table created in the first edition of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game that dictated which demihuman cultures would get along easily or have a natural dislike. Elves and dwarves had antipathy, by fiat. Neither liked half-orcs. And gnomes for some reason only tolerated half-elves.

This was often discussed in the same breath of "evil races," as different species were assigned an overall cultural moral stance, with some—such as orcs—deemed inherently evil. Particularly since the influx of new fans with the fourth edition of Dungeons & Dragons, these ideas were roundly criticized by scholars and others as reinforcing a sense of "nature not nurture" in terms of racism, discrimination and morality, echoing human genetics' origins in white supremacy, marking some groups as inherently "bad." Scholars such as Benjamin Carpenter of the University of East Anglia have noted that the races labeled as "evil" had analogues that were sometimes associated with real-world racial and ethnic minority groups, essentially smuggling old prejudices and stereotypes through a game.

Throughout the years, different editions of Dungeons & Dragons have reconsidered some of these components of essentialism. Level limitations for different racial groups were removed along with gaming stat limitations on nonhuman species, providing different systems to explain their advantages and disadvantages. Wizards of the Coast has reworked the game's system of morality, called alignment, in recent editions, and eliminated the concept of evil races. The fifth edition and 2024 modification reintroduced species like orcs and dark elves in a manner that pushes back on their historical characterizations as evil cultures and inherently "bad" species. Social media voices, such as the Slovenly Trulls podcast, are discussing other game components that might need to be reconsidered, like misogyny and discrimination.

However, as someone who studies social structure, I can say that, in the gaming world, all this is a first step in a marathon. Significant numbers of role-playing game systems persist with race to distinguish between "humans" and "others." Some g*mers still loudly protest any change and continue to use race as it was in the past.

Nostalgia and persistence are powerful; they both have a hand in the continued success of Dungeons & Dragons. But they also hamper the possibility of change, even for the right reasons. Sometimes even fantasy games should look to a brighter future, rather than a glittering past.

Isn't this s**t ticklish? Idiot virgin speaking here but ain't no way this is actually pleasurable, p0rn has simply destroyed people's brains into thinking this feels good. https://t.co/cGliiW57bL

— ChaoticMeatball (@ChaoticMeatball) July 31, 2024

We don't need Guantanamo anymore; Twitter does its job without the inhumane torture.

Even the OP of the thread has to step in and say "bro, please take this down"

https://x.com/MBTYuGiOh/status/1818791138935161220

Context: MBT is a painfully white Yugioh youtuber and has the straightest relationship ever known to man, but still acts bisexual for the camera for clout. Good guy though, I like his videos.

Nothing says feminine activity like painting ork commandos.

Here's a character generator for it to mess around with, its also the linked thing in the post

https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/maidrpg.html

Here's the site

https://www.maidrpg.com/order.shtml

And I learned about this gem from some video this guy made

I decided it'd be a bit fun so I rolled a maid

My maid is a boozer druggie lucky dwarfmaxxer running around with a halberd

technically this was incorrect since all that stuff like hair is random so I set it properly then thought it'd be funny to see what kind of maids other users would be.

Here's carp,

a greedy hacker with typical anime looks running around with a gun who just ended up a maid somehow.

And here's Aevann too

who rocks a fitting pride maid getup and speaks like an Egyptian, throwing random religious symbols at anybody he's fighting. I guess it works if he's muslim since it's just a knife.

And whenever he gets a bit too angry he runs off and cries

If your players aren't scared of deep ones you aren't running this right. Deep ones aren't dumb animals or savage brutes. They're intelligent and have access to sorceries and sciences that humans can only dream of. They're also an ancient race on the verge of extinction and getting desperate. One scenario I'm going to run for Call of Cthulhu is what I call the Clinic of the Drowned. The players were terminally ill patients in the postwar 1940s who're receiving miraculous treatment at the Marsh Memorial clinic. Tumors disappear, neural degeneration reverses itself, and decayed flesh springs back to life and health. The strange bug-eyed doctors are insistent on everyone talking their pills, however. Patients who leave always seem troubled as if they've been told a horrible truth, and a few have needed to be institutionalized. If the players break into the mental ward they discover a perfectly ordinary mental hospital. Better actually. This place has won awards for patient care. There isn't anything strange going on in the mental ward.

     When the players get into the basement what they discover is a massive tank of fish flesh tended by strange fishman scientists. After they've been restrained and stopped screaming a deep one with gold-rimmed coral encrusted spectacles explains that they've been implanted with healthy regenerative cell culture harvested from Dagon's bone marrow. The pills are to prevent their full transformation and will be cut off if they tell anyone about this. As for why they're doing this "Humans fear death more than anything. As the years pass you will voluntarily forsake the weakness of prairie ape meat for the eternal strength and youth of the Ocean folk's flesh. The final pill bottle will sit unopened and you will join us beneath the waves to dance in splendour and joy forevermore. Our race will rise again, and the towers of Ghudigbx will above the ocean and make the cities of New Yahk and San France-Sisko seem as the mud huts of the Etruscans."

magic the gathering?

Anon pretty much says it all about the big 3 at least.

Yugioh: I still play yugioh with my buddies from college from time to time. None of us play meta decks and sometimes we get 3-4 of us playing at the same time commander style. Speaking of…

MTG: I've been playing commander for some time ever since a friend ordered me a commander Precon. In my opinion, this is the most fun casual card game around. I still wouldn't be caught dead playing with sweaty randoms at an LGS, though.

Flesh and Blood: This is probably the most fun and most competitive card game I've ever played. The 1v1 format can't be beat in terms of balance. Because each card has attack value, resource value and block value, you never have an unplayable hand. That partnered with the fact you draw up to 4 cards in hand at the end of each of your turns means you're never truly out of the game and almost no games become an absolute steam roll.

idk some nerds on something awful did some shit about a tabletop rpg or something (the game is called n-word I think). He got banned in 2008:

Here's the initial gag:

He then issues a statement about how shitposting is like a person experiencing homelessness wrecking a bathroom:

Dude seems to be quite the nerd, ends with this:

Since this is now making the news: I do not grant permission for the above copyrighted work to be reproduced. Just because it's online doesn't mean it's free to use.

However, in exchange for an agreed donation to a homelessness charity, I'll grant limited usage rights. Contact me to arrange

I will honour this disclaimer (but note he's soliciting emails ). The google doc is linked so just click through.

Also I think the janny appeared from their cave:

Teo fat cute twinks debate police

classic wizards of the coast quality control

There's no reason to fear a typical deep one. The worst depiction of deep ones is as stupid animal male feminists in neonomicon. That's not what they're like at all. The average deep One is smarter than a human, but is a harmless eccentric who wants to pursue his or her studies and craft in peace. He also has been doing this long enough that the average deep one sculptor makes Michaelangelo seem like a talented amateur who might amount to something in a couple of centuries of apprenticeship.

That's not who's going to be chasing you around a lighthouse, however. The Deep ones are a race on the verge of extinction and, to some, this is intolerable. There aren't deep one nations anymore, but only isolated city-states. Outbreeding with unrelated species, such as humans, sharks, and whales, is just a desperate attempt to stave off the inevitable end. This doesn't bother the typical deep one because they're immortal and so they don't see what all the fuss about since most of their ancestors eight generations back are still alive and fine, but certain fanatics see the passing of the great race and will do anything to bring about it's return or drag humanity down with them.

A deep one isn't the creature from the black lagoon: it's the creature from the black lagoon as a dangerous psychic sorcerer-scientist with a chip on their shoulder and a well-deserved sense of racial superiority over the stupid prairie apes, a biongeneered body far superior to a human, and all the bitterness of a fallen empire, a decayed and degenerate culture, and a species nearing extinction.

In a straight-up fight a human with a gun can kill an unarmed deep one fairly easily, but that's why they never engage in a straight-up fight. They're smarter than the players and respect humans just enough to make their hatred personal.

Also they know a method for drowning a human that takes nine agonizing hours.

He has cancer and it took a turn for the worse so they're naming the player of the year trophy after him :(

“Your investigators stumble into the Aberghast mansion's dining room after bashing open the locked door. There's been no sign of Sweetheart, Mr. Multz, the pitbull, or Frederick, your ghoul friends, despite the strange call you received from Frederick, and the locked dining room is the last place you have to look. You really should have just given up and gone home.

Sitting at the bloodsoaked table in a blasphemous parody of the last supper are thirteen ghouls you don't recognize, dressed in the finest clothes they could plunder from graves. You spot a magnificent Victorian suit stained with the juices of a corpse, a delicate wedding dress bleached white, an eighties shoulderpad suit still smeared with cocaine, blood, and brain juice, an American general's uniform caked with the mud of the trenches, and even the costume of an Egyptian noble. The faces glaring at you from above this faded finery display the worst aspect of beast and man. Dull malicious eyes glimmer with an obscene hunger and a razor-sharp intellect and wormlike tongues gently caress lipless mouths filled with far too many sharp bloody teeth. The worst horror is what they have been eating however: you recognize, among the far too fresh corpses, the remains of your friends. You can see Pitbull's weirdly squashed and elongated skull through the chunks they've ripped off her head. The ten thousand plundered wedding rings and love tokens of Sweetheart lie scattered among his half-devoured remains. They used Mr.Multz's shovel to crack open his skull and shucked his brain out like an oyster. Frederick's head lies on a plate in the center of the table. The expression on his face is a mixture of stark terror and seething rage. You can see the fancy ghoul had been ripping chunks and eating bits of his face.

“Oh save us brave human heroes! Save us !” the ghoul in the center says. In Frederick's voice. You didn't notice before, but the cell phone you bought Frederick, never Fred, is right by his right hand. Almost as one they step onto the table and begin to advance on you. Roll for sanity. “

The article is intended primarily for Game Masters who play games in systems inspired by Lovecraft's works, such as Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green. However, I hope that other fans of cosmic horror will also find something for themselves here. The interesting facts presented here may also be entertaining for people who do not know the work of The Loner of Providence, but some of the references may be unclear to them.

The article contains several anecdotes – either from real history or from beliefs that exist in the real world, and suggestions on how they can be related to the Cthulhu mythology.

So read about:

• Sea Peoples, bane of ancient civilizations,

• a forgotten Eldritch abomination from Greek mythology,

• Jan Twardowski, the first man on the Moon,

• mathematicians and physicists who wanted to know the structure of reality and lost their minds,

• one of the most mysterious characters from the Bible and a dark, occult ritual that underlies monotheism.

• Invasion of the Sea Peoples

Ancient, super-advanced, fallen civilizations are one of the favorite motifs of fantasy. And truth be told, something similar happened in real history. Of course, in reality, the fallen civilizations did not have sci-fi supertechnology at their disposal, but their collapse still led to great destabilization. We are talking about the invasion of the so-called Sea Peoples, which took place at the turn of the 13th and 12th centuries BC. The Sea Peoples were mobile and warlike groups of people of unknown origin. They caused the collapse of several advanced cultures, including: Mycenaean and Hittite. Only the Egyptians managed to defeat them in a great battle. Well, the material for Lovecraftian inspiration is obvious. A mysterious army, coming out of nowhere, called the „Sea Peoples”, leading to the fall of the most powerful human civilizations at that time? Let us add that, according to some historians, the descendants of the Sea Peoples destroyed by the Egyptians were the Philistines. Yes, the same Philistines, one of whose main deities was the well-known Dagon to Lovecraftomaniacs… Deep Ones say hello. Let us also add that, according to Egyptian records, the tribes of the Sea Peoples had names such as Ekvesh, Teresh, Lucki, Sherden, Shekelesh, Tekel and Peleset. Sounds suitably dark, blasphemous and filthy? If we want to dig deeper, one of the pharaohs who ruled Egypt was Akhenaten – yes, that heretic who tried to replace the worship of traditional Egyptian gods with the religion of the Aten and who is very much liked by conspiracy theorists.

Let's add to the mix that Middle Eastern cultures had quite a negative attitude towards the sea as such. Babylonian Marduk had to defeat the giant monsters of Chaos – Apsu and Tiamat, personifications of fresh and salt waters, respectively. The Bible also contains traces of the myth about the fight between Yahweh and Leviathan, and the Book of Revelation, describing the new, ideal world, emphasizes that „I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.”

Let's assume that the players are researchers of an antiquity – historians, archaeologists, etc. They conduct research on the Sea Peoples. Of course, as common sense dictates, they assume that these were human warriors. However, as time goes on, more and more evidence appears that they were not completely human again, and the evidence of their monstrosity becomes increasingly difficult to put down to the demonization that Egyptian chroniclers used against their enemies… It becomes clear that an onslaught of inhuman and semi-human monsters came from the sea. , trying to conquer the world of that time. Moreover, after their defeat at the hands of the Egyptians, this species did not become extinct, but instead of open conquest it switched to cautious infiltration. Perhaps the Deep Ones have spies in academia who are tasked with eliminating historians who find the trail of truth…

Oh, one more interesting fact connecting the history of the Sea Peoples with Lovecraft. Well, as we know, HPL liked to use the term „Cyclopean” for huge, monumental buildings. At least he didn't come up with it himself. Well, when the later (and at first more primitive) inhabitants, the Dorians, saw the ruins of destroyed castles left by the Mycenaean culture, they came to the conclusion that such huge buildings could not have been built by human hands, so they were probably the work of mythical giants – cyclopes.

Typhon – a classic but forgotten abomination

Modern works drawing on Greek mythology usually make Hades (completely senseless) or Kronos (a little more) the Big Bad, but they forget about Zeus's greatest enemy – Typhon. After defeating the titans and then the gigants, the Olympian gods had to face the main boss on the way to dominating the world – Typhon. Here is an example of its description: It was larger than the largest mountains, its head touched the stars. When he stretched out his hands, one reached the eastern ends of the world and the other reached the western ends. Instead of fingers, he had a hundred dragon heads. From the waist down he had a tangle of vipers (yay, tentacles!) and wings at his shoulders. His eyes were shooting out flames. In other versions of the myth, Typhon was a flying, hundred-headed dragon. In any case – appearance and stature worthy of the Great Old One. Typhon attacked Olympus, and all the gods except Zeus fled in panic. The supreme god took up the fight… and lost it. Only in the second duel did he manage to defeat Typhon, but not kill him – he only imprisoned him, hitting him with Etna. In the sense of a mountain. A volcano – and volcanic activity is the result of Typhon's anger, trying to break free.

Typhon equaled the lord of heaven not only in strength, but in fertility. His wife was Echidna, about whom Hesiod wrote: „She also gave birth to another creature, invincible, huge, unlike neither men nor immortal gods, in a hollow cave – the divine violent Echidna, half a sharp-eyed young girl, with beautiful cheeks, half a huge snake, a great and powerful, spotted, cruel – in the depths of the holy land. This pair spawned many, if not most, of the monsters found in Greek mythology. Their offspring were very diverse and strange, as befits the spawn of enemies of the divine order, including:

– Ladon, the hundred-headed dragon who never slept and guarded the apples that gave immortality,

– Cerberus – we all know the dog guarding the gates of heck… but not all of us know that, according to some accounts, it had not three heads, but as many as 50, it was also covered with scales, and it had a snake by its tail… so what does this have to do with a dog?

– Scylla – this lady inherited the most from the human, beautiful part of Echidna… at least initially, but eventually, as a result of various perturbations, she turned from a beautiful nymph to her siblings, becoming a six-headed sea beast, so hideous, according to Homer, that even the gods could not stand sight of her – she dwelt in a cave, from where she opened her mouth to devour the crews of ships,

– Gorgons – I mean, those ladies with snake hair, not monstrous bulls. Medusa was one of them – the story that Athena turned her priestess into a monster as punishment for being r*ped by Poseidon is an invention of later poets,

– Lernaean Hydra – a multi-headed monster with many reptilian or human heads. In place of each severed head, two others grew, and in addition, the main head was completely immortal – therefore, after chopping off the mortal heads, Heracles had to burn the stumps and bury the immortal, still hissing head underground. Hydra's breath was poisonous.

– various other creatures, such as the Sphinx, the dog Ortus, the Nemean Lion or the Chimera.

Each of these descendants has the potential to be portrayed as an Eldritch abomination in its own right. To be precise – according to some accounts, the father of these creatures (and Echidna herself) wasn't Typhon, but a monstrous, ancient (older than Poseidon) sea god, Phorcys.

How to use Typhon? Well, Typhon clearly has the potential to be a Great Old One, imprisoned by… Nodens? Some other Elder God? Weak gods of humanity? Maybe his cult is trying to free him from Etna? What if he succeeds? What might distinguish Typhon from many other Great Old Ones? I would recommend focusing on his monster progenitor aspect – if he manages to reunite with Echidna, they will immediately start spawning various blasphemous beasts in series.

Jan Twardowski – the first man on the Moon

Jan (John) Twardowski, the hero of the legend, a Polish nobleman who allegedly sold his soul to the devil and became a sorcerer. Probably a historical figure, according to legend he lived in the 16th century and became famous for summoning the spirit of the deceased queen for King Sigismund Augustus. The ghost allegedly appeared in the mirror. This mirror is still kept in the church in Węgrów. According to legend, when the terms of the pact were fulfilled, devils came to kidnap Twardowski to heck. Interestingly, instead of taking the sorcerer's soul after death, the most material demons appeared and grabbed Twardowski in order to kidnap him bodily, alive… and instead of heading towards the underground, which in legends is considered the traditional place of residence of demons and darned souls, they began to carry away up with him. At some point, Twardowski started singing religious songs, which caused the demons to escape, leaving him on the Moon, where he is said to have stayed ever since. Could the “demons” actually be extraterrestrials? Maybe mi-go? Maybe Twardowski was their agent and obtained secret knowledge and technology from them that gave him the fame of a sorcerer? As part of his studies, did he acquire knowledge of a system of sounds („religious songs”) that was able to drive away his masters when they decided that his usefulness on Earth had ended and it was time to transport him to a space base where he would be transformed into a brain in jar? Or was transportation to the Moon part of the deal from the beginning? Oh, one more interesting fact – according to legends, Twardowski used to use a rooster as a horse, which he enlarged with his magic. It's easy to imagine an abomination that, in the eyes of laymen, might have resembled a large rooster…

Examples of scenario hooks:

– Twardowski's secret mirror is still in the church in Węgrów. The local priest thinks it is just other „pagan” superstitions, but in fact it is a tool enabling contact with cosmic beings and higher realities. It may prove useful to players if they convince the priest to give it back or simply steal it.

– Players are looking for Twardowski's notes to gain knowledge about the „song” thanks to which he drove away mi-go (or other creatures that became the prototype of the „devils” from the legend). The so-called Twardowski's „School” or „Cathedral” was located in a quarry near Kraków. In fact, at the end of the 19th century, during the construction of the church of St. Józef, a cave showing traces of alchemical experiments was discovered… And it was destroyed. But perhaps there is a second, secret laboratory under the cave that escaped destruction? And there lie Twardowski's secrets… And again, potential obstacles may be placed by the local parish priest. But not only him. Maybe Twardowski's legendary „rooster” lies dormant in the laboratory and was left by the sorcerer as a guard?

– players are astronauts on the Moon. However, it turns out that someone lives here, someone who was not detected by previous expeditions and probes. Will Twardowski prove to be an ally in the fight against cosmic horrors? Or maybe their agent, or an independent villain? If he survived this long on the Moon thanks to blasphemous secrets, it's possible that he had little humanity left…

Link for the rest of the text: https://adeptusrpg.wordpress.com/2024/05/13/some-lovecraftian-inspiration-form-real-life-and-beliefs/