Recent content by The Firebird

I like this post for explaining the motivations, and I generally agree. I've said before, playing RPGs is a great way to get to know someone because you will learn a lot about their desires. At the same time, I think it is reasonable for folks to question if it is worth it at their tables...

That's compatible with my idea--which is as games prioritized high emotional stakes to a greater extent, there became more need for safety tools. Once they were created they were back ported to systems where that was not as strong a priority.

I wonder if this may be one of the key divides in the conversation. It probably isn't a coincidence that the first safety tools (apparently?) were designed by Ron Edwards for more narrative-first games, nor that the X-card has grown in popularity with the advent of more narrative heavy games...

Hunger games got a lot of talk among people my age (the boundary between millennial and Gen z). I think we were mostly reading it ourselves, rather than with parents, so it had less cross generational impact? Also fewer books so influential for not as long. Ender's game has a lot to talk about...

Might I suggest finishing the series? This is not true. Likewise, "elf slavery is good" does not survive contact with Dobby. The point Hermione is learning with SPEW is rather "when you advocate for others, communicate with them and do so in a way that advances their goals". She's idealistic...

I think that reading is straightforward. But in the context of choice, Draco, Percy, Sirius and Regulus, Slughorn, Pettigrew, and Lockhart all have stories that reject the intrinsic morality idea. We can add Hagrid and Lupin to that as well.

It is the unpopular opinion thread...but I think many of these interpretations are not supported by the text. Maybe one of my unpopular opinion is that I think it is a good fantasy story?

I used to have adblock, then got rid of it. In practice the number of sites that were blocked with a "please whitelist us" was more troublesome than the ads. I had trouble getting the whitelist function to work on multiple occasions. So when I switched computers I didn't bother. The pop up...

Sounds like the law as written applies. That said, I understand Bluesky has quite a bit of 18+ content and I'm not sure Enworld or other gaming sites would be targeted in the same way. I also believe Enworld gets much more traffic from news, and could argue it is primarily a news site with the...

The majority of these would be an immediate boot, x card or no, if I was running.

Ime running AL, @Reynard has it right. People come in, and stay, because they want to "play D&D". More senior folks, myself included, push for other systems and typically there is not much interest. It just isn't d&d, you know? That may be more attributable to 50 years of branding then any...

Gonna be honest...I love what I see here. I know there were concerns about price point. But the art is fun and evocative, the components look useful, it seems like it will do a good job of teaching the game. I do wonder if Keep is the right module design for this product? Would like to hear...

Never seen it deployed. I've seen it required in games for some AL groups. At one group, they added a 'bathroom break' sign to the other side of the card, with the idea that it would help it be used more often and make people more comfortable deploying it at the table. Still never used.

It is much easier imo because it avoids the very real clash of value systems. Most people really do believe they are doing good, but there are hundreds of value systems and these are opposed in significant ways. There isn't a button that says "remove brainwashing" and once you press it everyone...

I've seen a lot more of this recently and it's great