A friend was thinking about running a Call of Cthulhu campaign, where demonic hair-extensions burrow into people’s brains to control them.
I’ve never run Call of Cthulhu, but I had a few ideas for things which might happen in the background, and some friends added a few ideas.
So here are the bullet-points I sent him:
2024 AD
Class action lawsuit on AI-related discrimination reaches final settlement
Skibidi Toilet Company sends DMCA to Garry’s Mod, as Skibidi movie enters pre-production
You go to turn off your phone, but the power-button now turns on AI. Cortana pops up and asks how she can help.
You can turn this feature off by going to Settings > Developer -> Advanced -> Ethics > Ethical Adjustments > Features > Click ‘Fewer features [ ]’ > Agree > Agree > Voice authentication.
Microsoft issues an apology for incorrect instructions on turning off new AI features. ‘That page was written by an AI.’
“We are working tirelessly to fix the hallucination problems, and will be back to you with a better solution as soon as we can.”
The RPG scene has suffered for too long under its assumption that every positive feature in a system (realism, choices, fancy-looking hats) must imply more work to understand the system, and more time to resolve every action.
(easy but nonsensical) (realistic but Maths)
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[Mąrk Bórg] [World of Darkness] [Fate] [D&D] [GURPS] [World of Darkness Combat]
People imply the idea more than they state it, but when stated, it becomes quite clear that this is a social truth, rather than…true.
It serves two functions:
It’s hard to read a full adventure module - you keep having to go back and check you’ve remembered all the important points.
And no matter how much you read, you always need the module open at the table, so that you can check it again.
Even when you haven’t forgotten anything, you still repeatedly check the book in case you might have forgotten something.
I want to zap an entire dungeon into the reader’s head.
I want it to be so easy to memorize that they just look at a paragraph and know they can interpret the underlying world, and explain to someone what they would see.
The players randomly encountered an Owlbear. It has ‘Treasure type P’.
The DM then rolls 1D8 x 100, and determined that it has 200 cp in its nest, because all monsters like collecting coins, because all monsters in A,D&D work like hyperactive magpies.
Rolling a D100, the result of ‘58’ shows that the owlbear has no magical scrolls.
A second D100 roll of ‘03’ shows that the owlbear has a magical potion, so the DM selects one from the Dungeon Master’s Guide.
Like so many A,D&D systems, it seems more suited to a computer than a DM, and demands far too much time to prepare, even ahead of time.
The system begins by embracing randomness, then immediately switches to DM-fiat as the DM must select which magical items the party can gain.
It has demanded 4 dice rolls, and still hasn’t determined a result.
People who want to work with others on an RPG naturally tend towards Google docs.
It seems so easy.
They send the link out, people make edit suggestions, and you click ‘approve’ or ‘deny’.
Everyone’s generating spells, and spelling corrections at 100 kph, and it all looks great.
Git, meanwhile, looks like a technocratic chore, posing a massive barrier to entry for a great many contributors who just wanted to view the file and maybe add in their two cents.
A good RPG session works a little like a dinner party, and the best of both have food.
So why don’t rule-books come with recipes?
This module pairs well with doritos and twiglets, and a side of Monster energy drink.
Of course, the RPG community, that socially malformed mass of cretins who couldn’t wipe their own snot off their face, will need some basic safety tips.
Remember to ask the players about their diets. Remember to ask if they’re vegan, or have any allergies.
The One Page Dungeon contest asks people for a single-page dungeon with a Creative Commons, share-alike, attribution licence.
“Huzzah”, I thought, “that’s GPL compatible!”, I imagined, wrongly.
The first caveat is ‘GPLv3’, which is still fine for what I do, but a shame.
The next caveat is ‘only CC BY-SA 4.0’, not version 3, just version 4.
The competition has been going since 2008, but people only recently started using CC BY-SA 4.0 commonly.
Still, some earlier years had some entries using the 4.0 licence.
Sometimes the party needs to make a decision as a group.
Most of the time, in fact.
The strange man beckons you to follow him
The goblins spot you, and instantly retreat back into a hole in the hillside
You know the drill.
And sometimes, people perfectly capable of deciding what they want to do, will not make decisions for the group.
That’s quite understandable, but sometimes the entire group just stalls, unsure of what ’they’ want to do.
Discussion does not come easily, perhaps because nobody has a strong intuition one way or another, perhaps because they want someone else to speak first.
People have asked why BIND doesn’t use more standard RPG publishing software.
In short, BIND’s all about working together on an open project, but InDesign is
geared to limit that openness.
Accessibility
Cash
In order to use InDesign, one has to:
Have Windows or OSX (both of which cost a fair amount of cash),
sign up for a monthly subscription (more cash!),
agree to never work with countries deemed unfriendly to the USA (or Adobe will flat-out ban you, even if you have a licence).
Zero Interface Choice
LaTeX has many interfaces to choose from, while Adobe products resist the very concept of people being able to select an interface.