Computer, end simulation.

COMPUTER! END SIMULATION!

There’s a good movie in there, spread thinly over three. Like butter scraped over too much bread…

I imagine that’s intentional. :P “Mausritter” means “Mouse Knight.” IIRC, it was also inspired by Mouse Guard and Redwall, but is mechanically closer to old-school renaissance games.

I’ve only been using it for a few weeks now, but I’m having a great time with EndeavourOS. I’ve tried Linux every now and then for over 20 years now, but always bounced off for one reason or another. This time, I’ve never felt any desire to go back.

For me, my use case, and my hardware, EOS has been significantly less of a headache than Windows 11 was.

In addition to what others have mentioned, Mausritter might fit the bill!

I’m one of them. I’ve dabbled before, but never stuck with it. Then I had a ton of issues with Windows 11, but the straw that broke the camel’s back was seeing a Copilot button in fucking Notepad.

Now I’m on EndeavourOS, and it genuinely feels like a more user-friendly experience. So congrats, Microsoft. You’re not even the “just works” option anymore.

She’s in the same camp as Giuliani: A shitty person, who would have had a much better reputation had they just shut the fuck up.

She was always an awful candidate, and the DNC made a HUGE fucking mistake supporting her. But, after Trump, libs would probably joke about her the way they joke about Al Gore. “If only they had won, we would all be at brunch!”

Instead, she pops up every year or two to punch left, remind everyone she sucks, and then does fuck all for anyone until next time.

ICE is ruining Halloween, the shutdown is ruining Thanksgiving, but Trump has one surefire way to save Christmas.

I also bounced off of the Reloaded version (and SW in general). Unfortunately, I can’t really speak to the alternatives from personal experience.

However, I’ve been gearing up to try Call of Cthulhu, and found out it has a Western setting! Down Darker Trails. I had never heard about it, but what I could find was really positive. If and when I run a weird west game, that would probably be my first choice, and certainly a top contender.

I love the level-0 “funnels” from Goodman Games. If I have to pick one, let’s say the classic, Sailors on the Starless Sea.

They’re easy to pitch, and really help establish a tone, especially for players who bring a lot of preconceptions from 5e.

Top of the list, I think, is… just some old-school D&D. Technically, probably Old-Shool Essentials or Dolmenwood, both of which are retroclones of B/X D&D.

I just got into watching Dungeon Meshi and playing Caves of Qud, both of which are just dripping with old-school D&D influence. Plus I’ve never actually ran a full dungeon or hex crawl.

Honorable mention to Burning Wheel, 16-time annual winner of My Favorite Game I’ve Never Played. :P

I love that kind of history. On the topic of cooking, Tasting History is one of my favorites!

And I’m also adding that book to my reading list. I’m kicking myself for not reading enough books, but I’ve gone on a nonfiction kick out of nowhere.

I almost skipped over this video, because I thought it was about some other drama about the origins of D&D, which is mostly just outrage tourism.

Happy to be mistaken! It’s been a little bit since I watched Matt Colville, so I’ll give this a watch when I have the time. And it includes a book recommendation on top of that!

I’m super excited to give Barkeep on the Borderlands a go! :D

Also, this paragraph stuck out to me:

Before we take a look at Barkeep, I want to drop a few quick examples to demonstrate how tone can be affected by writing, mechanics, art, etc. I firmly believe that the tone communicated by an RPG author is inteded to be replicated by the GM. So while you could run Blades in the Dark as a sexy dating game, I don’t think that would properly reflect the game’s tone.

I absolutely agree. Burning Wheel has stuck with me for a decade and a half, even though I haven’t played it yet, because it’s the first time I opened a game with a clear authorial voice, and it was explicitly explaining to you not just how, but why the rules work the way they do.

Obviously that’s an extremely explicit example, but it’s also something that clicked for me with the -Borg games. The ratio of style to substance greatly favors style. That’s not to knock the substance, but the games are light and, to be honest, pretty standard for a new-school renaissance type game. It’s not that the rule book is also, separately, an art book. It’s that, when the rule book is an art book, then the acts of bringing it to the table and opening it up to reference the rules become acts that set and reinforce a tone. It made me realize that all games do this, even if it’s sometimes unsuccessful, or negligible.

Heck, to go back to Burning Wheel, I love the digest-sized hardcover with matte pages, because it looks and feels like a novel, and I think the game intends to create that style of play. I might join a Fabula Ultima game, and that rulebook looks and feels like a manga, which had to be intentional. It works.

So I really jive with what the author says about how RPGs should communicate their intentions, especially tone in an adventure like this. Obviously any GM will put their own spin on the performance, but hey, if they’re laughing and having fun just reading through potential encounters, that’s the vibe the GM is going to cultivate in turn. :)

I’d really like to give Monster of the Week a try! I really enjoyed when The Adventure Zone ran it.

Haha, thanks. I just meant that sentence at first blush, I know it’s a reasonable position after that. :P

I’m not sure I’d like it, because I “got” Blades in the Dark, but realized it wasn’t for me. It does what it does well, but my group and I didn’t like so much the “one session, one job” paradigm, and it seemed too abstract at times. I read a comment that said narrative games are like writing with the other players, and it seemed to click. I might just not like that kind of approach, as a matter of personal preference.

But I might like DW2 more, as it incorporates more of a traditional style. That and, to be honest, I might love Blades and other FitD games with some light tweaking. I need to explore!

Unfortunately, I can’t speak from experience at the table, so it’s just that my impression of BW’s mechanics seems more optimistic. That said, we can agree on the BITs, because the Artha cycle is the star of the show. I don’t know if they’re going to incorporate elements of that into DW2e, but it might just be a great direction to go.

Dungeon World was a big flop for us… and I’m excited about the next edition. :P

I think it flopped largely because we were playing it wrong. I know that sounds stupid, and you usually hear that from people making excuses when people don’t like their favorite game. What I mean is that we tried to play it like D&D, and while it’s clearly trying to bridge the gap between PbtA games and D&D-type games, you have to approach it a bit differently, which we didn’t. Maybe I still won’t like it, but I want to reevaluate it on its own terms.

I’m also a big fan of Burning Wheel productions. Burning Wheel is my favorite game I’ve never played, just because there are so many things I find interesting about the system, and I love the presentation. (Still trying to get a group together, though!) If DW2e takes the form of a chunky, digest-sized hardcover, I’d be thrilled.

Oh yeah. The campaign already had a lot of comedy in it (the whole cast are improvisers), and the one-off was extra silly, but there was also a log of nostalgia and genuine joy.

Somewhat off-topic:

I really enjoyed the NeoScum podcast, which is a Shadowrun actual play, but they also had a one-off side-quest in the digital world of Neopets. So I’ve kind of seen a Neopets RPG in practice, before this bespoke system. :P