800 years ago at All Saints Church in Hereford, England, a skillful carpenter carved this gentleman high up in the dark roof where nobody could see him. Five years ago they built an extra floor with bright lights for a restaurant.
Thought I’d share this for the benefit of those who might be under the false impression that fandom is only for the young. This is me. We’d just moved to a new apartment, and I was excited to decorate my room with my latest con purchases. This photo was taken 42 years ago. I’m still here. And with any luck, you’ll be wherever the fans are in another 42 years. With a lot more luck, so will I.
Updated for Star Trek Day 2021. Still kicking.
Since this post is making the rounds again in 2023, I thought I’d update again, this time with some of the ‘70s con programs I saved. It’s now 47 years since that first photo was taken. Still here! (And excited about all the new Star Trek!)
HEY! Do you like mushrooms? Do you like mushroom people? Do you like hundreds of mushroom people? Do you like hundreds of mushroom people and supporting indies?! DO YOU LIKE HUNDREDS OF MUSHROOM PEOPLE AND SUPPORTING INDIES AND SUPPORTING GENDER CONFIRMING SURGERIES?!
Ok but like. What the fuck is there to do on the internet anymore?
Idk when I was younger, you could just go and go and find exciting new websites full of whatever cool things you wanted to explore. An overabundance of ways to occupy your time online.
Now, it’s just… Social media. That’s it. Social media and news sites. And I’m tired of social media and I’m tired of the news.
Am I just like completely inept at finding new things or has the internet just fallen apart that much with the problems of SEO and web 3.0 turning everything into a same-site prison?
ALSO you should consider browsing Virtual Pet List and seeing if there are any pet sites you might be interested in playing. There is a whole genre of browser games right under your nose
Make sure you’ve got shelf-stable food and water for everyone in the house, including pets. The rule of thumb is a gallon per person per day. Freeze water bottles if you want cold water.
Make sure you have enough meds!
Make sure you have batteries, candles, flashlights, and a manual can opener.
Make sure your electronics, including backup batteries, are charged. Unplug things you don’t want fried in case of a power surge.
Don’t tape your windows, it doesn’t help and you’ll just be stuck scrubbing goo off of them later.
Put a mug of frozen water in it in your freezer with a quarter on top of it. If your freezer defrosts, the ice will melt and the quarter will sink and tell you you need to throw things out.
Get everything that’s not nailed to a foundation out of your yard. That dead branch hanging on by a thread? Time to get it down (it was probably time to do that three days ago, but now’s better than never).
Park away from powerlines and trees if you can. Rain makes the ground soft and then trees fall over.
Have an evacuation plan to a shelter. Evacuate if they’re telling you to.
If you start to flood, don’t go in your attic. You’ll get trapped if the water rises too high and you can’t hack through your roof. This happened to a lot of people in Texas and Louisiana. Get ON the roof.
Rules are toys, and the process of rules-mediated play consists of smashing their faces together like little girls making their Barbies make out. Unless a rules module is explicitly intended to be enacted solo, it should present a generous surface area for other rules to bite into. The most elegantly self-contained piece of rules design is, collaboratively speaking, also the most useless.
The principal function of “player characters” as discrete collections of mechanical traits is to furnish each player with an assemblage of shiny things to show off to other players. Mechanical abstraction is well and good, but if you abstract away the act of curating one’s collection of shinies, player engagement will suffer.
The GM, if present, is a fellow player. Ensure that they have their own toys and shinies to play with. The failure of a game to provide these is often a major contributor to why nobody wants to run it!
The most effective way of encouraging players to do what you want is to make a number go up. This applies to both to rewards and to misfortunes; a number counting up to disaster a much more visceral motivator than a number counting down to zero.
Crunch is good. The defining feature of tabletop roleplaying is that rules produce stories. The act of interpreting the outputs of the rules and the act of telling the game’s story are the same activity. Be mindful of what kinds of stories your rules want to tell; you may find that their opinion on the matter differs from your own!
Randomised outcomes should be made mandatory with care and restraint; randomised outcomes should be made available with delirious abandon. As far as is practicable, players should always have the option of asking the dice what unhinged bullshit should happen next. Corollary: lookup tables are your friend.
Players don’t need your permission to depart from the rules as written; granting it is arrogant. By the same token, however, it should never be unclear to players whether they’re departing from the rules as written. Let the thought process behind what you’re writing hang out for all the world to see; folks will be rummaging in the game’s guts anyway, so give them easy access.
If your game has a default setting, explain it as little as possible, but always let the rules and presentation reflect it. Seeing an entry for “poorly made dwarf” in a table of player character backgrounds will fire a group’s imagination more strongly in three words than a chapter stuffed with worldbuilding lore could in ten thousand.
You don’t need to be good at naming things as long as you’re good at puns. Wordplay, alliteration and rhyme may also serve in this capacity, as, in a pinch, may a well placed dick joke.
hi i’m really sorry to make a post like this but someone stole the charger to my mobility scooter and it costs 1450kr for a new one. could i maybe get some commissions ( @saguarosketchbook for examples) or donations? i’m disabled and i can’t get anywhere without it
273/1450 (about 215 USD)
i only have paypal (and mobilepay if you live in denmark, dm for phone number) sorry
