I’m a user, not an admin.

Hmmm… I have hilariouschaos.com blocked in my settings, but I keep seeing posts from the site owner’s sock puppets.

Is there a way to block ALL USERS from a site, not just the communities?

Enough to block the instance now. (I’m so glad Lemmy provides that to users now!)

Personally I’ll embrace the technology by putting tire puncturing strips all over the place.

I’m confused. You say it’s non-political for left and right, then you name two right-wing parties.

Yes. “Creations.” That’s what I would call AI (=Always Incorrect) music. A “creation”. Not “a bunch of talentless twits feigning being artists”.

You know it used to be Taiwan (Republic of China, properly) who was a permanent member of the Security Council, right?

OK, mods protecting bigots. I’m out.

Removed by mod

Fate was crowd-funded for translation on Modian. They wanted 50,000 RMB for the main rule book’s translation. They got so much money (215,930.76 RMB) that they wound up translating everything Evil Hat had published for Fate up to that point.

Since then Fate has been a juggernaut here.

edited to add

If you run that page through Google Translate and scroll to the bottom, you can see an explanation for why D&D isn’t as much a juggernaut as it is in North America. I’ll quote the relevant bit:

Every time [our American friend Scott] came to JOYPIE, he would bring us a game as a gift and actively encourage us to participate in the DND games hosted by him. I tried to participate out of curiosity and for the purpose of practicing English speaking. In order to facilitate learning and operation, I decided to choose a big “double player” [probably dual-class? — ed.] - Priest profession, and selected dwarves based on racial characteristics. However, after several group experiences, I decided to give up. The reason was not the communication problem in English, but that I felt that our minds were not in the same picture at all.。

Scott and I had a candid exchange about this embarrassing experience. We both believed that it was because the fantasy background of DND was too strong. For people like me who have little in-depth understanding of the background of Western fantasy worlds, there is no way. You can do role-playing with just your imagination. From a cultural perspective, it is the cultural differences between East and West.

One of the things that always seems to come as a surprise to people trying to sell into other cultures is that, well, they’re other cultures. What might be thought of as “common tropes” in North American and European cultures may just be bewildering nonsense to others. (Like as he goes on to talk about after that snippet above, dragons here are WILDLY different than dragons in the west.) D&D is steeped heavily in western mythology and is going to feel too alien. A generic game like Fate will do better until homegrown games start popping up.

(He also takes a bit of a snipe against how D&D players tend to play the game like it’s a wargame, but I’m not certain I agree with him there; I mean yes the tendency is there, but … his rant looked a bit like BadWrongFun™ which I’m opposed to as a concept.)

Ah, yes, 8 years ago things would have been harder. (And I know the shop you mean in Wuhan for that time frame, I think. Mostly Warhammer 40K and a smattering of imported card and board games?)

Call of Cthulhu is the giant here, though D&D/Pathfinder is a pretty close second. Fate, of all things, is a decently close third as well, and going up. (There’s Chinese-native Fate modules and campaign/setting packs popping up all over the place now, along with some native CofC stuff. Native D&D stuff is rarer.) Make no mistake it’s still a fringe hobby with loads of room for growth, but it is no longer unheard of. Most people now have at least heard of it, even if they don’t know exactly what it is.

You didn’t look hard enough. It’s ALL OVER TAOBAO.

Perhaps you didn’t look in the right places?

Here’s a search for “DND”. (I ran the search through Google Translate for you.)

Here’s a search for “克苏鲁” (Cthulhu). (Again with the Google Translate.)

Here’s a search for “TRPG”. (Google Translate again!)

So if you really looked, you might have tried instead really looking where people actually go to buy these things. Different country, different customs, different ways of doing things.

edited to fix up images that my screen capture tool screwed up

“DND”, interestingly, is also how Dungeons & Dragons is referred to in Chinese translations and references. (Because the actual translation of the name itself sounds stupid.)

Because China is involved and talking heads lose their minds as soon as that happens.

Hating on D&D is a past time that’s as old as D&D.

This is absolutely correct. Source: I lived it. 🤣

Chivalry & Sorcery has had, for its entire history, great tools for planning and laying out a medieval nation. The latest edition’s version of this (a sample of which is attached) covers it with a very simple set of tables and definitions.

In addition it has very good information on feudal European history, society, laws, customs, etc. that can be used to inform a GM’s campaign setting to give it a sense of verisimilitude. And finally on top of all of this is the influence system (which has been an important piece of C&S since its first edition in 1977) makes it easier to determine NPC relationships and reactions with less of the silly degrees of randomness other games have in their “reaction roll” systems (when they have any guidance of any kind at all, I mean).

Jovian Chronicles has a good base system that you can divorce from the setting pretty easily. (The same system is used in a planet-bound SF game—Heavy Gear—and an apocalyptic fantasy game—Tribe 8.) It has a pretty simple system for making vehicles which scratches your “statted ships with ship to ship combat” itch.

I’ve only seen diviners as a type handled properly in one game which, if my faulty memory is correct, was C&S (2nd edition, probably also 1st, but not 3rd onward), but I may be huffing paint thinner.

First, diviners had a group of useful spells like detecting traps, hidden things, etc. This meant you didn’t get that whole weirdo vision quest thing with “information” that was only recognizable as such long after the fact, rendering the divination kind of useless, as the only thing a diviner could do.

But even for the visions there was a decent system in place. The diviner would cast the spell and based on the results of that roll, paired with a roll (or decision) made in secret by the GM, get a degree of success that translated into percentile points. The GM’s roll/decision decided between good or bad omens.

If the GM rolled/decided on good omens, they’d come up with one of those vague, flavourful visions so beloved byirritating to players. But… at any point for the duration of the cast augury, if something that could kinda/sorta be interpreted to belong to that vision showed up in play (GMs being encouraged to err on the side of the player), the player could use some of that percentile pool to modify die rolls in their favour (or, equivalently against the opposition’s favour) to do things like turn failures into successes, or successes into critical successes or the like, thus retroactively making the vision “come true” mechanically.

If the rolled/decided omens were bad omens, the percentile pool (smaller if the player rolled well, larger if the player rolled poorly) was instead given to the GM to use to stymie and confound the players in ways related to the vision.

The end result was that the flavourful vision was there, but its application to the situation was determined in play and had mechanical relevance, which was satisfying to the players.

Replace “Lemmyverse” with “the American left” and you’re closer to the truth.

• The American left is against racism … yet harbours an alarming amount of antisemitism and an increasing amount of sinophobia.
• The American left is against ageism … directed at young people. Old people are open season.
• The American left is against religious bigotry … except Christians. . . .

It’s just tribalism cosplaying as idealism. (And it’s why, for example, Chinese LGBT groups have been quietly removing themselves from interaction with American LGBTQA+ groups over the past few years.)

Let’s see:

• signed up a day ago ✅
• makes a group that’s guaranteed to be contentious ✅
• responds to people’s contention in ways intended to egg them on ✅
• has literally no other content in profile ✅

Conclusion: Troll. Just block and move on.