Amazing work! This is so helpful.

Intro to Songbirds, Canary in the Mine YouTube video by 11dragonkid

Songbirds, by Snow, is an OSR and storygame traditions inspired ttrpg about you being the canary (adventurer) in the coal mine (dungeon), you go where others won't trying to help spirits find rest, since the god of death is slacking.

The “Calvin’s dad explains two types” meme, inspired by a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon. Clockwise from top left: 1) Calvin’s dad walks into frame to find Calvin trying to operate a record player. The dad says: “There are only two industries left in America: gambling, and fraud.” 2) The dad shows where the record goes, and how to turn on the player, while Calvin watches. Dad says “Derivatives? Gambling. AI? Fraud. Video games? Gambling. Social media? Fraud.” Calvin says “yeah”. 3) With one hand open palm up, Calvin’s dad cheerfully explains to Calvin out of frame below him, “The stock market looks like gambling, but it’s actually fraud.” 4) In bed in a dark room, Calvin clutches at his pillow, eyes wide in existential terror. There is no text in the panel.

You're welcome! Thank you for your hard work, as always.

More TTRPG about me:

Running: Pathfinder 2e (Hellbreakers AP, Season of Ghosts AP)

Reading: War Story: Occupied France, Spectres of Brocken (@ehronlime.bsky.social)

Working on: Da Xia / 大侠 (pulp, noir mix with gong'an, and wuxia, set in 1940s occupied Singapore; blending PF2e and FitD mechanics)

I didn’t create over 200 paintings in the last 15 years just to see 1/3 of them scraped for training data & my name abused as a prompt thousands of times. These companies are blatantly laundering copyrighted artwork, displacing the artists they stole from, & devaluing the arts as a whole.

FUCK AI.

TTRPG about me

First game: AD&D
Latest game: Salvage Union
Longest game: D&D 3.x
Favorite game: Band of Blades
Favorite mechanics: Nightmares (The Nightmares Underneath, @chthonstone.bsky.social)
Favorite setting: Chronicles of Darkness
Favorite art: @munkao.bsky.social, @brianyaksha.bsky.social

That's very kind of you, Eric, to place Lilac as your favourite setting! Wow! I will try to do a really good job of running it!

Thank you again @silentinfinity.bsky.social for covering Hellfire Dispatches! I really like how the whole book worked out, and enjoyed reading it. I wrote the Fangwood section, and that chapter's POV character, Sir Kieran of House Graytree, is probably the fave NPC I've made! Check our work out!

Thank you @silentinfinity.bsky.social for your praise for Hellbreakers! I'm glad you like the Hellhusk Shroud and Lazybones Pendant; I enjoyed writing those items, and am also glad you felt so strongly about the devils we made. I definitely mined my nightmares for my contributions to rhose designs!

:( it gets hard when it's a group project. Cos it's not just AI race to bottom; class sizes swell from 20 to 40, soon 60 lol. Doubt pervades many of my decisions; some advise me, "let them learn, it's the real world, if they can't work together it's their fault" but that doesn't sit well either..

I'm probably, nerves flaring, too raw, too "in it"; and emotional intensity, like my impassioned outbursts, is considered disturbing or childish to many within my home society. I feel tired out, but I can't get tired out till I stop caring. But if I care too much and can't do anything, I burn out.

That is an interesting experiment. I would love to find out more about it.

I'm exhausted looking at the disappointment in the eyes of the ones who actually do stuff.

Now it's not genAI's fault we have group projects, but group projects are contexts where genAI can really damage learning and teamwork. Mediocre students have last minute content generator, so why work hard?

And the genAI users are so self righteous and think they are normal and the kids who wanna learn and question are making things needlessly difficult and complex...

And complain to me their work isn't used in the project (cos it sucks) and that is *unfair to them* when they didn't do any real work!?

Then you get 2-3 students in same group who don't put in the effort, the sincerity, to question or learn. And they throw in genAI shit at the deadline and that's their goddamn contribution and when I ask what's your work and they say this is it and you have to give ppl who worked for an A a B-...

Drowning amidst duty (I don't get a choice to decide policy, I am so tired, but I still have to work), false dilemmas (as a small country we have to use this OR ELSE), and maybe the most heartbreaking shit of all:

Group projects. You get 2,3 students who really love the work and wanna learn...

Is this the machine as a reflective aid? Or the machine as a disciplining, mediating tool? It's horrendous. I asked someone, turns out they edited their own memories to make for what the algo considers better poesy.

Why would you mutilate your memories, for something as paltry as a grade? Or work?

Qualia moment there: what is real?

E.g. a journaling assignment. They prompted the algo to fit "a high grade assignment", looked into their own memories, then forcefit their lives as vibes (never mind the details) into the algo to make the words come out, and pass that off as their own truths?

Some students treat creative storyboarding work as a lazy bit of prompting, followed by AI-powered but human-curated wordsmithing to reduce chances of detection, and when I ask is it their work, they pass me this crap and say yes this is work. And can tell me it's their own experiences so it's real.

Esquire Singapore Responds To Criticism Over AI Use For Mackenyu Story, Calls It A ‘Deliberate Creative Decision’ The publication faced backlash for its March cover story, which featured an interview with the One Piece actor that was “produced with Claude, Copilot, and edited by humans”.

And yeah my countrymen did a shitty AI article pretending to interview an actor who couldn't make it for the interview so they just threw out a word salad with algorithmic vinegar dressing.

www.8days.sg/seeanddo/str...

If this is the industry, I can imagine my students saying it's ok for them too.

Class sizes going up. AI tools to manage large classes. Chatbots and pdfs, no textbooks. Sell it as egalitarianism, but basically more bodies to squeeze for cash, accredit or train, then pack off into the workforce.

I do the work I am paid to do, but I shall also ferment in my defiance, my rage.

A cry for help, perhaps, as I'm probably going a little batty here. So many, even ppl I used to respect in academia, says it's ok. It's the way of the world. It's supposed to be like this. And I'm like, don't be such a defeatist tech optimist that you give up on the fundamental parts of our work...

Looking at student assignments for my critical thinking classes as well as my storytelling classes, comparing over the years... And the general coherence, effort, quality dropped a great deal over the last 2+ years, coinciding with when my fellows started pushing genAI into every part of the system.

With the way it looks, I don't really know if I will even enjoy teaching anymore. Responding to emails and all the other busywork takes up so much more time these days, that my imagination, inspiration, general feelings of curiosity, joy, happiness have all been severely and negatively impacted.

And all that, with increased class size, means lotta more work... And I guess as a "full-time part-timer", I feel the strain from having to do a lot more unpaid labour (cos I'm usually teaching 8 classes a term to pay for my rent, etc, expenses), and when more work adds up across those 8 classes...

Relentless cost-cutting is one thing (increased class sizes, AI this or AI that), but attempts to make assignments less "failable" are also taking their toll. Term papers are broken into graded drafts, participation for consultations etc, 5 percent here, 1 percent there, to distribute failure risk..

Teaching in universities has become increasingly tiring. Class sizes have gone up (used to teach 20-30 students, sometimes I now teach 40, maybe even 100+ students in a class, because some unis pay me for 1 class but give 2-3 classes worth of work, etc). Ah idk how long I can go on like this haha.

I'll bring more cookies next time, for sure! Looking forward to more hangout time and uhhh more careful crossing of roads at Soho for me lololol

Just got back from the United Kingdom, happy I could see the cherry blossoms in London and pass some Chinese New Year/Ramadan festive cookies to Kellynn, as well as @babblegumsam.bsky.social and @pixelgrotto.bsky.social! Truly happy to meet and reconnect with my TTRPG family everywhere in the world.