193 posts
Latest Posts by unkajosh - Page 4
That's a good idea, honestly. Maybe even offer both?
Instead of offering an “ad free” version of tumblr for $4.99 a month, why doesn’t Tumblr offer an adult version (age verified) for $4.99 a month? A site where adults can be adults. Imagine this, a magical place where erotic art creators would be able to display or exchange their art with others, without the fear of being harassed (deemed explicit, have their messaging ability taken away, shadow banned, or terminated). Millions of users would gladly subscribe.
Please reblog this message if you agree.
100% this!
The person I reblogged this from deserves to be happy.
For a number of years, I helped run (read "was an incredibly minor cog in the vast machine that was) an anime con at a big convention center. Being an anime con, there were, of course, tons of cosplayers, and a number of costumes that fit somewhere or another in the "Furry" spectrum. And in the con's message board, some people were *incredibly* worked up over the notions that furries would attend the convention. Like, telling us that if we didn't keep the furries out, they'd have orgies in the middle of the lobby.
It was so, so stupid.
But I can't just dismiss that as stupidity any more-- not after someone literally used chemical warfare to attack Midwest Fur Fest.
Seriously, what is WRONG with these people? Let furries be furry. I promise you that they don't have orgies in public; the hotel staff wouldn't let them and, worse, they might damage their expensive fursuits!
tired of those normies making the most reactionary videos on furries, as if the community doesn't mostly consist of queer, neurodivergent, and kink positive folks of many difficult backgrounds.
I don't have a lot of followers, but in case I can reach someone who lives in the UK, I gotta try.
more fucking petitions because this clown car country cannot stop with the bigotry for 30 seconds
uk people it takes 5 seconds and you checking your email to verify
everyone else: rebloge please
I mean, this is true. And it's silly. Don't ask me what my favorite book is, favorite song, all kinds of things like that.
why do people always only expect you to have one thing. one disorder one pet one gender one pronouns one name one favorite movie one crush one best friend. like why do I have an inventory limit
I don't have many followers, but we've gotta try, right?
All of y'all. Not here to judge. Just support.
Right, considering the current state of corporate politics on this site, and that it seems that only those affected seem to be actively speaking on the matter, it is up to I, the only fucking cishet on tumblr, to drag this out to a wider audience.
REBLOG IF YOUR ACCOUNT IS A TRANSFEM SAFE SPACE.
We need to show these higher ups how much we truly value them.
Yeah, that's the hill I'd die on, too.
I know it’s not hard to point out reactionaries hypocrisy when it comes to like safe spaces or hug boxes or whatever but genuinely how much of an echo chamber do you have to exist in for you to think this is a reasonable thing to say
Obviously
The person I reblogged this from deserves happiness and love
Y'all are amazing. Reblog to hug the person you’re reblogging from.
I love how much this one has grown; it's still such a good response to a really, really dumb meme!
I mean, we all need a break sometimes, right?
reblog to give the person you reblogged this from a fucking break
Who the hell am I to judge? Be weird here!
Right, considering the current state of corporate politics on this site, and that it seems that only those affected seem to be actively speaking on the matter, it is up to I, the only fucking cishet on tumblr, to drag this out to a wider audience.
REBLOG IF YOUR ACCOUNT IS A TRANSFEM SAFE SPACE.
We need to show these higher ups how much we truly value them.
Very true
Not Karl..
This is the only possible explanation that makes any sense at all. Headcanon accepted.
The naming of female characters in Bond movies makes a lot more sense if you headcanon them as trans women who picked their own slutty names.
Like, can I believe "Pussy Galore" is a cis woman who was named that as a baby? No. But a trans woman who got vaginaplasty and is very proud it of? Of course!
100% this.
Right, considering the current state of corporate politics on this site, and that it seems that only those affected seem to be actively speaking on the matter, it is up to I, the only fucking cishet on tumblr, to drag this out to a wider audience.
REBLOG IF YOUR ACCOUNT IS A TRANSFEM SAFE SPACE.
We need to show these higher ups how much we truly value them.
I love this and I am stealing it. I can't imagine only listening to one genre of music. Sure, there's boring or insipid or bad songs in this genre or that genre; sure, there's completely generic interchangeable trash in this style or that one. But so what? There's a lot of wonderful music out there, and if you limit the kinds of things that you listen to, you're missing out!
Drop a genre and you may be missing out on incredible emotion, on clever fast-paced wordplay, on redefining tradition, on techniques with instruments you never imagined possible, on musical instruments you didn't know existed, sounds you didn't know humans could make, rhythms you never conceived of, harmonies that would make angels blush.
I mean, like what you like, that's cool. Love a single genre beyond all comprehension? Sure, do that! But if you don't shut your ears to other styles of music, you can learn amazing things.
Sorry, but I won’t commit to one style or genre of music.
I am proudly polyjamorous.
I took developmental bio. Seriously, nothing is simple. Gender least of all, perhaps.
"there are only two sexes, it's literally third grade biology!" and pronouns are taught in kindergarten and you dont seem to understand those either
I don't have a lot of followers, but what the hell. Someone might need to hear it.
To any suicidal followers I may have: This is a sign to not kill yourself. You are loved and the world is special because you are in it. Keep holding on.
Reblog this when it’s on your dash. You will save someone’s life.
I don't know if I reblogged this before, but it's worth doing because it's such a great analogy.
[Tweet from @/fozmeadows: "human gender and sexuality are very much like animal taxonomy, in that both look structured and simple on the surface, but once you start investigating, it turns out there's actually no such thing as a fish despite the fact that we all know what a fish is, and that's okay"]
This is so 100% true that my jaw hit the floor.
Attn: police
If they feel shy about it, they could always cover Blue Moon!
Good lord. We're back where we were when I got into anime-- piracy, all the way down! And it's like they WANT us to do it!
Oh…. Well, it’s over for Crunchyroll I guess
This research is hugely important to the community!
It's *ALSO* important for science, however-- put things to the test!
Honestly, this so badly needs to be spread out there. This is how it works. Acceptance is how you help.
This is it
This is it, right here.
I feel like the psyops are back…
A special feeling of joy
There is a very special feeling of joy when you write a game, pour your heart and soul into it, then take it to a convention, and play it with a bunch of strangers... and they tell you that they want to play it next year! That's IT, right there. It's wonderful.
SO much validation!
Not Equal At All
Not Equal At All
Game Design Essay
Introduction
Many game systems offer a variety of choices or options during character creation; the general thinking among these options is that they are, in theory, “equal” to one another. In other words, while there may be specific reasons to pick one or another for certain purposes, they can all be chosen without fear of one choice being clearly superior to the others, or at least close enough to not hinder gameplay and player enjoyment. But this isn’t always the case, and in some games where very coarse-grained choices are part of the process, a wrong choice can have a heavy impact on character capabilities. Let’s look over some examples.
(For the purposes of this essay, I’m NOT looking at comparative resource costs to get the same result, which is the bane of certain more-complex character creation systems, but instead circumstances where players may have a handful of choices to make. The topics are similar, however.)
Broadness of Application
One area that this will often matter is broadness of application; if a character has a trait that can only be used in limited circumstances, they may feel very limited in play compared to a character with traits that can be used in a variety of ways. Extremely freeform traits, such as Aspects in FATE, are susceptible to this problem. (The FATE rulebook does provide guidelines, but it can still take experience to see the difference in application between Can Make Machines Purr and “Okay, I’m going for it!” One is good for technological challenges, but the other could be used for almost anything.)
But sometimes, these issues with broad application are actually built into the system. One example of this is the Sentinel Comics RPG. PCs built in this game have two Principles in their Abilities list; without getting into game mechanics and probability too heavily, these are actually a very important resource for characters, because they allow characters to use the Overcome action with a dramatically improved success rate. (The odds of complete success jump from extremely roughly 2% to 43%; PCs should rely on them a lot!) Principles are selected off a list (and the full range of choices is sharply curtailed depending on character type), and everybody will always have precisely and only two of them, so they should, in theory, always be comparable.
But they aren’t. An Overcome in SCRPG is, roughly speaking, beating a challenge that is not an opponent, whether it’s persuading an official, solving a puzzle, rescuing a drowning victim, or infiltrating a warehouse. The Principles, among other things, have a triggering circumstance in which they can be used. For example, the Principle of Lab says “Overcome while in a familiar workspace or when you have ample research time.” That’s good when those very specific things are involved, but it becomes a very hard stretch to rescue a drowning victim or shift a boulder out of your way. For contrast, the Principle of the Tactician says “Overcome when you can flashback to how you prepared for this exact situation.” For that one, it becomes almost impossible for the GM to deny its use, and fairly simple for a player to justify it. Shift a boulder? Studied leverage just in case. Drowning victim? Took lifeguarding classes to know what to do, anticipating trouble. Persuade an official? Did research on the profiles of all of them. One is much more broadly useful than the other, period. A player who plans ahead and picks at least one Principle that they can use in a wide range of situations will have a distinct advantage, but a random choice might find a character who is great at knowing locals and their own business and at situations where being small and young is an advantage and nothing more.
(And yes, very creative and/or persuasive players may be able to somehow stretch and distort their Principle to fit anything, but there’s a point where it just goes outside rational use.)
Scenario Specific
During a scenario at a gaming convention I attended last year, one of the pregen PCs had their one-and-only special trait be a bonus at piloting extraterrestrial spacecraft. In the course of the scenario, our characters wound up on a spacecraft that we couldn’t control or pilot in any way, arriving at another spacecraft that we then took over-- and that wrapped the game. That player never had a chance to use their specialty; it was irrelevant to the game. Now, that’s not good design, since it was a convention game with pregen PCs, but it showcases another kind of problem with unequal choices-- scenarios where some of the options for characters don’t matter. A classic one is a character built for social encounters who finds the group frequently in deadly combat, but there are countless other examples that are possible. (At the same convention, I wound up with a character whose major resources were related to hacking and communications, which was fine, but the only conflict involved very dangerous enemies attacking us while we were on a highway in the middle of nowhere, and it was set in the 80s, so there wasn’t much I could do with that.) This is at least easier to solve if the GM is involved with the characters during the creation process, and can guide them into roles relevant to the scenario, but if that doesn’t happen, it’s all too easy for a character whose focus is not relevant for the game to simply be unable to participate in the way they wanted to, and that feels like a serious loss.
Combat and Noncombat
One key area where this matters in games is, of course, combat; woe betide the player whose character lags behind others in this arena, it is known, lest they simply die! And that’s certainly a concern-- many RPGs involve a lot of combat, combat almost always involves the entire group, often takes up a lot of table time, and inability to participate meaningfully can get somebody killed.
But that’s actually not the only consideration here. Being combat-capable is so ingrained into game design and character design that it’s almost not the largest concern compared to noncombat application in a number of game systems.
One of the classic examples of this is the most popular game in the US and probably worldwide-- Dungeons and Dragons, notably the current edition. In D&D, one class is “Fighter”; Fighters… fight. They are good in specific aspects of combat; otherwise, they have skills. But everyone gets skills; likewise, everyone can participate in combat, often challenging Fighters in their specific area of greatest strength (Single-target combat), and utterly triumphing over them in other aspects of combat (Crowd control, for example.) It’s doubtlessly necessary for gameplay-- it wouldn’t do to have other classes be helpless in combat, which is a large part of D&D-- but outside of combat, things change. Fighters can have Skills, as can all classes. But spellcasting classes gain abilities that let them bypass Skill challenges, or let them do things that no Skill could ever accomplish, and this gap grows larger and larger even as the combat abilities of spellcasters grows with it.
But this can also impact other systems! In a relatively freeform system like Cortex, creativity can let a trait like Senses outperform Super Strength. It’s easy enough to justify using Senses in combat-- analyzing a foe’s movement, spotting their weaknesses and strengths, and so on. But Senses can also be used to solve puzzles, track enemies, potentially even have application in social settings. Likewise, in some games, it’s very possible to even use social or psychological skills in combat, perhaps by creating “Good morale” assets for other to use. However, conversely, it’s often much, much harder to apply combat skills to noncombat situations as broadly. Being a master archer is much harder to apply to debate than it is to find a justification for a master of persuasion being able to distract a foe or boost an ally. In this regard, it’s a serious issue if combat-themed characters can’t do anything out of combat, but the reverse isn’t true, and it’s something that needs to be considered, either in game design or in campaign design.
Does it even matter?
Does it actually matter if characters are unequal? This is a delicate question, and depends in part on the group and the specific players. If the differences aren’t great, of course, it surely matters less no matter what. But sometimes it’s easy to see where one character has noteworthy advantages over the other… and I think that it does matter, broadly, and it’s worth addressing. Some players, for example, can become frustrated with their inability to contribute, or to act effectively, and that frustration isn’t fun, the more so when it’s not obvious that some choices aren’t as good. Likewise, even if one player doesn’t mind being less capable, other players may become frustrated with that player’s weakness and having to cover for them; the GM, in turn, may find it more challenging to balance encounters and challenges while still allowing that player spotlight time. Overall, the less inequality between equivalent choices, the more desirable the results will be, even if it’s fine with certain players.
Solutions
When making characters, of course, one should look at options and choose carefully, but that’s not always very satisfactory. What if one’s character concept depends on certain choices, or if it’s not obvious that there’s a problem? Another good place to work on this problem is at the design phase of a game, of course, but that’s not an option the majority of the time; most of us play games other people have already made. (I’m a game designer, but for a variety of reasons, mostly play other people’s systems.)
Sadly, this means that a certain amount of work on the part of the GM becomes necessary; it is, however, worthwhile. It’s good to see what choices players make, and then play to them. Is the player immune to something? Make sure it shows up so that they can have their moment! Do they have a Principle that’s great at stealth? Give them lots of chances to sneak in places! Make sure to give players a chance to shine by adjusting scenarios to their characters, rather than making the players adjust to the scenario. Sometimes, it’s the only solution, but I think that it’s the best one.
Yeah, absolutely gotta reblog it.
site that you can type in the definition of a word and get the word
site for when you can only remember part of a word/its definition
site that gives you words that rhyme with a word
site that gives you synonyms and antonyms
Not an odd parallel at all
So here's the thing. Well, two things.
I'm one of those filthy tabletop game people. (So is my spouse; she has been since before we met, too.) After college, well, we needed to create a new group of people to get entirely too interested in the fall of oddly-shaped pieces of plastic and the lives of fictional elves. We are also, it must be said, on the old side. We remember the Before Times. And in the Before Times, and even a bit after that, game groups were invariably largely male. Indeed, it wasn't at all uncommon for a group of gamers to have *at absolute most* exactly one female member. (Take a look at some of the classic game-related comics-- take a look at the gender groupings in Knights of the Dinner Table or Order of the Stick. These are pretty typical; many groups had zero female members.)
But our post-college group kind of wavered, shifted, stabilized-- and suddenly, we had, and to this day, still have, a majority-female gaming table. There wasn't anything to it, honestly. It just... happened.
So here's the other thing.
The industry I work in isn't really known for progressive politics in many ways. It's one of those things, not restricted to any one company-- it's the entire industry. (It's not just politics, for that matter-- my industry can be incredibly reluctant to, say, upgrade technology. We don't like change much.)
But the specific company I work for? At one location, one particular division-- and not one you'd expect this of *at all*-- is currently majority trans.
That's even more surprising than the first one; I don't know what the current math is on the percentage of trans people in the population as a whole, but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that it's less than, oh, ten percent. So if random chance was involved, what are the odds that we'd have one job category at one location be 57% trans?
So how did that happen, anyway?
I'm pretty sure that it's the same reason in both cases.
In our gaming group, as we formed, other women in our community who were tabletop gamers saw that we had multiple women in our group, that we didn't treat them like romance objects or second-class players, that they were comfortable and happy hanging out with us. And the female members of our group, of course, were happy to tell other women about how fun it was. So more asked to join our group. And now our table is so big we can't even fit more people in, and still majority-female.
And, well, I'm not trans, and I'm not in that community, but I'm going to guess that since we started hiring other trans folks, and treating them with respect, word got out that that's what we did-- treat them with respect-- and so other people came to us over some other employer where, say, they might be taking a chance on how they'd be treated.
And I'm glad that it's worked out that way, for them, and for us.
And... I don't know. I think that it illustrates a truth that gets overlooked by some people. If someone says "[Group] isn't interested in [Hobby/Vocation/Activity]," maybe what they aren't seeing is that people don't necessarily feel safe or comfortable or welcome in some spaces, and that if it's clear that that the space is welcoming, then the demographics suddenly start to reflect the people who are really out there instead of the stereotypes.
Or something like that. I don't know. I'm not a sociologist.
But what I do know is that I have a really cool tabletop gaming group.
And I do know that we were able to hire enough people in a location and position that had been pretty painfully understaffed.
And both of these things are good.
And, just between me and all of you, I think that basically treating people with respect got us there.