Is it the one with a chicken, an octopus, and two crab claws? :-)

It’s a common trade off though. Pathfinder is a crunchy game because you have so many different abilities, feats etc. But that crunchiness gives you meaningful tactical choices in combat.
With simpler games it’s hard to maintain a wide range of choices that aren’t suboptimal.

It’s such a good twist, isn’t it? Love that scenario.

Ran my first ever Traveller session tonight for @thegrognardfiles.bsky.social ‘s Virtual Grogmeet! Loads of fun reinvigorating an adventure written in 1984 for more modern rules. And amazingly the author of the adventure plays in the RPG group that the father of a friend of mine still runs!

BMW introduces new heated seat subscription in UK The company says the £15 per month payment allows UK drivers to

www.bbc.co.uk/news/technol... for a while the heated seats and heated steering wheels in some BMWs was a subscription service. The hardware was already in the car. But you had to pay £15 a month to turn it on.

I think you can approximate a statement though based on the potential bonuses vs dice range. So Brindlewood Bay offers very few dice mods. +1 or +2 occasionally at the start of a game. But the dice are 2d6 and success is 7+. That’s not a swingy system. But make it 1d12 instead and it suddenly is.

I had a look at their timeline. Nearly 20k posts of snippy little aphorisms. Nothing to do with RPGs so they don’t understand the context. They’re just a seagull - flying in, squawking loudly, crapping here and trying to steal your chips.

Not sure what you mean by “I’ve shipped 50+ AI docs” here but my uncharitable interpretation is that you didn’t write them. In which case, you’re not qualified to have an opinion in this discussion about writing.

I’m autistic and write the same way. We can be witty without being cutting but we might have to do a sense check on where the line is because our guess of it may not align with other people’s. I often try to be funny. I deliberately try not to be cruel.

… could easily assess how close he’d got to the style he’d been trying to write in.)
I think there are some clear positions one can use for consistency - always use 2nd person to address the reader, use active rather than passive statements etc - that can be applied by anyone. 2/2

I’m a bit torn here. I think your advice is solid, but I also know that I’ve spent a long time developing a professional writing style that is appropriate (for my field), but still identifiably me. So I do think that @squadronuk.bsky.social could do that without an editor. (Though the editor … 1/2

Imagine the pressure of knowing that if you slip up, you will go down in history as the first Pangolin Wrongdoer!

Cool is overrated. The people you value and who value you respond well to enthusiasm. :-)

I love that restaurant! The shape and style of it is so lovely!

No, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein doesn't really test positive for AI We need to talk about how AI detection really works

This may help put your friends mind at rest a little? open.substack.com/pub/lindac/p...

“Learning to crimes -for-good-“, John. :-)

An Evening of Kate Bush - UK Cathedral Tour 2026 Let Me In are back with a brand new show, exploring the evocative music of Kate Bush, on a UK Cathedral tour in late 2026.

www.eventbrite.co.uk/cc/an-evenin... this looks like a fantastic set of events - @jonathanlhoward.bsky.social there’s one that’s handy for you!

I introduced my wife to RPGs over lockdown with the Dee Sanction - she loves Tudor history and it’s an ultra light system compared to D&D et al. Her difficulties weren’t with the rules per se - they were with the underlying socialisation rules that we all accept without question. 2/2

Absolutely agreed. But I think we are taking different things from that. You (forgive me if I’m simplifying what you said for the sake of post limit) think that means “rules light games don’t work as an entry point” and Simon is saying “what if they weren’t light enough?” 1/

So many good Robin McKinley books!

with each cardboard chit but the runaway successes in the last 20 years - Settlers is a great example - have maybe 4 - 10 pages of colourful rules.

The RPGs most grognard role players consider to be simple “aren’t”.
So I’m with @squadronuk.bsky.social on this. More simple games please. 4/fin

Complexity but the vast majority of computer game players play phone games, not AAA console games. “But those aren’t *real* games!” say the grognards, but they are.
Same with board games. You can still get the interminable Avalon Hill War games that took 3 days to play and sapped your soul 3/4

Compare Steal a Brain Rot on Roblox. Wikipedia they’re quoting a record of 25 million concurrent players at its height and has had upward of 7 billion unique visits. It’s a fucking stupid game and I hate that my son likes it but he does. It’s been this way for a very long time. Grognards praise 2/

a man in a suit and tie says " those are rookie numbers " in front of a window Alt: Matthew McConaughey's quote " those are rookie numbers " from Wolf Of Wall Street

I don’t agree. Obviously stats vary but a quick google shows Dark Souls 3 with 130k concurrent players at its max on Steam and that was April 2016. Since then it’s barely topped 50k and most months its high number is below 15k. 10 million copies sold via Bandai (steamplayercount.com/app/374320) 1/4

First time I read the Leverage RPG it struck me that the primary / secondary system made playing The A Team very possible. “For this game of playing an elite mercenary group who all met in the army, either your primary or secondary must be Hitter. Any other role combination is possible.”

You know, there’s something about that photo that reminds me of Elias from “Person Of Interest” :-)

It doesn’t help that the BBC regurgitates their claim in the headline then buries the lede in the weeds:
“The reasons given by the US tech giant are energy costs and regulation issues: but the reality is neither are particularly new.”

I did one hour of guest lecturing for a uni in the midlands and they asked me if I wanted to opt out of their pension fund. The form to do so was 14 pages long so I said that I was happy for them to set up my account and put a whole £10 or so in there.

Oh jeez. The stories I have of trying to get paid by university finance departments. Good luck.

Again, totally agreed. :-)