fuck the story

There are these two distinctions that I wanna turn my mind onto. One is imagination vs. fantasy. The other is fiction vs. non-fiction. There are a couple delineations between imagination and fantasy, that of course, all depend on our definitions of them and our point of view. Like, in my mind - which I'm sure has been affected by others' writings way more than an arrogant moron would be willing to accept - imagination founds and expands itself on reality, whereas fantasy is the reduction of our willingness to bend reality to fit our imagination in it. I got no fucking clue what I mean by it, but you'll get it.  You imagine your ex getting hit by a bus, you imagine your supervisor found mauled by pigs, you imagine getting a small raise that you're definitely worth, just fkn ask for it. On the contrary, you fantasise about Selena Gomez watching your ex getting hit by a bus right besides you, you fantasise about your supervisor getting mauled by flying pigs spitting fireba...

The game I love the most is football. Let's not get hung up about the sport/game distinction, come on. And I think I love it for quite a few reasons. First of all, it's the sport of the people. You need a ball. That's it. Secondly, it remains unchanged. Peps have come and gone by, route 1s, long ball plays, Messis, Zidanes, Ronaldos (the proper one), but the actual game never changes. Kick a ball. Preferably, towards there/that/them. Profit. Thirdly, with quite a fair amount of mental gymnastics, for our level of playing, the ones that played until high school, were O K A Y and never had any hopes of making it pro, in its core, it remains a play-pretend. Since our childhood when play-pretend is crucial to the personal and social development of the child, football is more about "holy fuck did you see what I did, did you see?" and the natural "oooooh niiiiiice" response that followed from the choir. In reality, you've done nothing. But it feels so much...

Let's open with a couple Maro quotes from October of 2020, like not long ago. Dates play kind of a part in this piece. "The game becomes whatever you want it to be." "The ego attachment is so strong that you're not just playing a game, you're playing your game." Who's Maro? Fuck's sake. In October 2020, we can safely assume that sets up until I don't know, last year's MKM, were designed even if unbalanced. The direction was there, probably all of the cards were there, artworks had begun trickling in, most or all playtests were good and done. Hasbro, and Maro's team had a clear market analysis, a swathe of projections in their hands, and most of all, knew the narrative direction the next few blocks would go towards. Meanwhile, Spiderman Far from Home was the last MCU patch that had been rolled out, we were waiting on Thor Four More Thor (which was fucking awesome, foh), and the latest RPG fad was probably Mercer's Boiz and their ca...

I despise the word "Orc". Write it with a K, be appropriate. I don't care if it's right. It's more orkish. So, yeah, discussion's been had a bajillion times over. Are Orcs (because that's how He writes it) a metaphor for nazism? Is Mordor the disgusting progenitor of the military-industrial complex that massacres Palestinians? Is the "fair, blonde" race just inherently good? No. Fuck off.   "I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse "applicability" with "allegory"; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author." This is from the Harper-Collins edition's intro. No clue about year or whatever and I'm not home to check and I ...

The meaning of my blog's name is twofold. At least. More reasons may come up later. First, it's sincere. Fuck the story. Don't play RPGs for the fucking story, don't use plot armour, don't let the GMs rail the fuck out of your fun just to serve some perverse, narrative agenda, don't throw the rulebook in the trash just because the setting doesn't suit your homebrew. Play it as written, reveal its strengths, or if we're talking about 5e, realise why the fuck it's the worst plight in RPGs, and the most absolute shitfest in the storytelling toolbox after whatever MCU inflicted upon us. Fuck the story, play for you, play for your friends, your table, your insecurities, your whatever. Gaming is about people. Yes, obviously, you turd, if your table demands a beautiful 5-arc narrative with internal strife, do railroad that shit. But make it about yourselves. Stories are nothing if not communicated for our pleasure, enrichment of spirit, suffering, emotional...

Gamocles uses a roll and keep system inspired by AEG’s Legend of the Five Rings RPGs. Whenever the Boss calls for a check, the player rolls a total of 10-sided dice (d10) that is almost always a sum of Trait and Skill scores, and keeps his choice of a number of dice that is predicated by the check. The total of the numbers rolled by these dice is then checked against a Target Number (TN).  When a Skill check is called to be made, it always means that the dice pool contains d10s equal to the total of the skill points in that particular Skill, and the trait points in the Trait that the Boss deems most appropriate to be used based on the player’s description of the action undertaken. If the dice kept are 0 or less, the total rolled defaults to 0. For example, if the Boss calls for a Combat(Cmb) check against a undefending opponent (ie. it’s not a combat roll that would see the defender rolling a DR), and Nalac, a PCU Agent has a Cmb score of 3, she must first describe the manner in ...

  Gamocles is a role-playing game centred around your characters (referred to as Agents, or PCs), trained individuals set to carry out missions in a world like our own only with a key difference. In the Earth of Gamocles, in 2073, the people have actually realised their power and to a large degree, managed to topple the existing power structures, bringing forth new ones that have enabled them to begin discovering their potentials. In ways both tangible and intangible, your characters will belong to groups explicitly politicised, and will have been upbrought within social, political, and magical traditions that have shaped their ways of interacting with their worlds.  But, doesn’t this stand true already, for our world? Of course, it’s true. Only we are so hell-bent on individualism and person-centric, liberal explanations for history and society, that when someone needs to point out that, you know, you’re not as much of an individual as it’d serve capitalism, they need to make...