so how did DnD get the race science bs in it? was that just a norm when it was made or was one of the devs racist or something?
A little bit of column A, a little bit of column B.
In the "A" column, it's important to understand that Dungeons & Dragons isn't anything close to being a generic fantasy game: it's very specifically inspired by American literary sword and sorcery fantasy in the period roughly spanning the 1930s through the 1970s, with a particular emphasis on the late 1960s and early 1970s strand of the genre. Other inspirations have crept in over time, but that core has remained largely unchanged.
Like most Western pulp fiction, sword and sorcery fantasy frequently featured scenes of lantern-jawed heroes manfully slaughtering their way through nameless hordes of jabbering, spear-chucking, dark-skinned savages. Even at this early date, however, the explicitly racist dimension of this trope wasn't necessarily playing well with contemporary audiences, so over time, depictions of these groups tended to drift away from direct stand-ins for real-world "races" and toward fictional ethnic groups, eventually culminating in the tribes of swarthy hobgoblins and degenerate lizard-men and such populating the pages of the Monster Manual. Such literature freely invoked the assertions of race science to explain why these creatures were morally okay to kill, and that carried over into Dungeons & Dragons.
In the "B" column, Gary Gygax was the kind of person you might invent as a cartoon parody of a racist game designer if he didn't already exist. Like, this is a guy who was quoting John Chivington's infamous "nits make lice" remarks in order to explain why it was okay for paladins to kill orc babies in forum threads as recently as 2005; one might think "not citing the Sand Creek Massacre as an example of morally praiseworthy conduct" would be a very low bar to clear, but he managed to tunnel right under it. Certainly, he didn't originate the race science that's present in D&D's worldbuilding, which is also amply present in its core inspirational media, but he also had no interest in pushing back against it!
My problem with the dragons-with-bat-wings-versus-dragons-with-bird-wings debate is that it doesn't go far enough. We need to really push the envelope with respect to draconic aerial mobility. Anti-gravity dragons. Dragons with organic VTOL turbines. Dragons that inflate themselves with lifting gas and float like dirigibles, and I say this one in the full awareness that what I'm picturing and what many of you are picturing are very different.
There's a cartoon film from the 80s called The Flight of Dragons where flight-via-hydrogen is how dragons work. They have an electric pilot light in their throat to flame, which is both a weapon and how they get back down to the ground. They bully gnomes for gemstones that they use to break up limestone for creating their "lifting gas".
It's a film with a lot of period relevant issues, but the dragon biology is fun and it's an entertaining storyline that doesn't go exactly how one would think.
Flight of Dragons certainly gestures toward the idea of dirigible-dragons, but the cartoon adaptation's actual character designs pretty comprehensively fail to follow through on it. Granted, they exist in a world where the rules of science don't apply as an explicit plot point, so piffling concerns like lift ratios are not strictly pertinent, but that's a Watsonian justification for a Doylist failure of imagination.
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prokopetzMy problem with the dragons-with-bat-wings-versus-dragons-with-bird-wings debate is that it doesn't go far enough. We need to really push the envelope with respect to draconic aerial mobility. Anti-gravity dragons. Dragons with organic VTOL turbines. Dragons that inflate themselves with lifting gas and float like dirigibles, and I say this one in the full awareness that what I'm picturing and what many of you are picturing are very different.#media#fantasy#tropes#dragons#character design#speculative biology
prokopetzSo many fantasy artists drawing dragons with catlike physiology to communicate their predatory nature, and not one with the courage to carry it to its logical conclusion and give their dragons toe beans.#media#fantasy#tropes#dragons#art#character design#speculative biology#cats
prokopetzLeaving shit you really ought to have looked at unaddressed because you didn't notice the symptoms is only half the chronic pain puzzle. The other half is when you do notice something and have to play the "okay, is this a new thing, or a long-standing issue I've gotten so good at tuning out that I literally forgot it existed?" game.#life#chronic pain#swearing
prokopetzRebloggedprokopetzFollowspace-wizards asked:Do you happen to know of a good print-and-play/arts&crafts spinner? I'd like to use one for my WTF project, but the level of quality I'm shooting for doesn't justify buying anything bespoke. I guess I could say "grab a copy of Twister from somewhere"?prokopetz answered:(With reference to this post here.)Most tabletop RPGs that call for a DIY party spinner use the basic "stick a brad or push-pin through the end of a paperclip" approach:ALTIt's best to use one of those jumbo plastic-coated paperclips if you can get it, since they have more mass, less friction and are less likely to nick the paper, but apart from that it's pretty straightforward. If your spinner only has one ring you don't even need to unwind the paperclip.As for good print-and-play spinner designs, it really depends on what you want to use the party spinner for. If you're using it as a thematic substitute for dice, for example, Bull Press has some fantastic designs; their games are designed to played in prisons where dice are banned, and the long-form ones use multi-ring party spinners like the one shown below in lieu of the standard polyhedra.ALTspace-wizardsThanks for the answer; I'd seen the brad-and-paperclip spinner, but I was hoping for a spinner I could stick an origami frog to. For reasons.I'm sure I'll figure something out, and that dice-spinner design is giving me ideas.prokopetzIf you need a spinner whose pointer can have stuff attached to it, you can stick the brad through the narrower loop of the paperclip and tape a strip of cardstock – or a piece of cut-out cereal box – to the paperclip's upper face. This approach is often used to turn the paperclip into a proper arrow, but I can't see why you couldn't use it to furnish a platform for an origami frog.(My big concern is that it may not spin well if the pointer ends up being end-heavy, so you might need to figure out something to reduce friction further if that proves to be the case.)#gaming#tabletop roleplaying#tabletop rpgs#game design#wtfjam#wtfjam 2025
prokopetzspace-wizards asked:Do you happen to know of a good print-and-play/arts&crafts spinner? I'd like to use one for my WTF project, but the level of quality I'm shooting for doesn't justify buying anything bespoke. I guess I could say "grab a copy of Twister from somewhere"?(With reference to this post here.)Most tabletop RPGs that call for a DIY party spinner use the basic "stick a brad or push-pin through the end of a paperclip" approach:ALTIt's best to use one of those jumbo plastic-coated paperclips if you can get it, since they have more mass, less friction and are less likely to nick the paper, but apart from that it's pretty straightforward. If your spinner only has one ring you don't even need to unwind the paperclip.As for good print-and-play spinner designs, it really depends on what you want to use the party spinner for. If you're using it as a thematic substitute for dice, for example, Bull Press has some fantastic designs; their games are designed to played in prisons where dice are banned, and the long-form ones use multi-ring party spinners like the one shown below in lieu of the standard polyhedra.ALT#gaming#tabletop roleplaying#tabletop rpgs#game design#wtfjam#wtfjam 2025
prokopetzToday's aesthetic: when something one wouldn't reasonably expect to be full of blood gets cut or shot or blown up and it's full of blood.#media#tropes#aesthetic#blood
prokopetzOne for the "robot girls in maid uniforms wielding swords" fandom, presumably.#gaming#video games#shade protocol#video#youtube#violence#flashing lights#you know who you are#'mega man x fans who really like it when fanartists draw zero as a girl but can't quite put their finger on why' ass aesthetic#swearing in tags#Youtube… See all
prokopetzThe essential Tumblr experience is talking about what's happening on Tumblr as though you are not also on Tumblr.#tumblr#blogging#social media
prokopetzReblogged ostrichmonkey-gamesettinjiggywithitFollowTTRPG recsALTALTALT#gaming#tabletop roleplaying#tabletop rpgs#graphic design is my passion
prokopetzThere exists a fandom equivalent of Bidoof's Law where a person is giving another person shit for being a fan of mildly problematic media and the shit-giver's avatar and username are a reference to a specific storyline from an obscure early 2000s webcomic that's genuinely the most racist thing you've ever seen.#media#fandom#bidoof's law#racism mention#swearing
prokopetzIt's kind of hilarious seeing certain people get super worked up about violence or regulations targeting "wealthy landowners" because they own a house. Like, buddy, you're a quarter million dollars in debt for a shitty 900-square-foot bungalow that hasn't been renovated since 1978. This conversation ain't about you.#politics#economics#capitalism#violence mention#swearing
prokopetzPeople pleasing? No – people displeasing. Exercising my faculties of empathy to determine precisely what you hope to get out of this interaction and providing a personalised experience of not getting it.#life
prokopetzRebloggedprokopetzFollowBeach episodes and episodes where everybody gets really small and goes inside someone's body in a tiny submarine are rightfully classics, but for my money there's nothing quite like the episode where we randomly follow the daily life of the protagonist's distant ancestor who's weirdly similar to them in a mildly anachronistic way.prokopetz(Honestly, I like any episode that clearly exists purely to save money on sets and costumes by raiding another, recently concluded show's leftovers. You don't get as much of that these days, now that most TV shows that last longer than a single season have actual budgets!)#media#television#tropes
prokopetzSometimes both of my cats will be pestering me at once, but when I tell them to show me what they want, they go running off in opposite directions, then pull up short and stare at each other – and while I'm probably anthropomorphising here, the "I thought we were on the same page" energy is off the charts.#life#cats
prokopetzBeach episodes and episodes where everybody gets really small and goes inside someone's body in a tiny submarine are rightfully classics, but for my money there's nothing quite like the episode where we randomly follow the daily life of the protagonist's distant ancestor who's weirdly similar to them in a mildly anachronistic way.#media#television#tropes
prokopetzRebloggedprokopetzFollowThe problem with a lot of attempts to create federated social media platforms is that they talk about building decentralised communities, then turn around and adopt models of social media which are, at a structural and intentional level, hostile to both decentralisation and community-building.They're caught in this horrible trap where they have to make it work like X/Twitter to leverage people's existing familiarity, but the X/Twitter model by design fosters "communities" consisting of large audiences of passive content consumers whose participation is oriented around following a tiny core of mega-popular content producers, which is fundamentally opposed literally all of their stated goals. It's great for monetisation, of course, but if advertiser-driven monetisation isn't part of our game plan, what the fuck are we even doing here?You know why it's so hard to find a satisfactory alternative to something like Tumblr? A big part of it is because Tumblr is one of the only major social media platforms that isn't structurally hostile to people just talking to one another.prokopetz#I'd sell my soul for a fediverse tumblr alternative (via @roboco-san)See, that's what I mean about the problem being structural. A big part of the reason there aren't any true Fediverse-based Tumblr-likes is that much of the existing Fediverse infrastructure is oriented toward Twitter clones. I admit it's been a couple of years since I last looked into it in depth, so my knowledge of the topic is somewhat out of date, but one of the big stumbling blocks is that trying to implement forum-esque reblog chains like Tumblr has causes most Fediverse front ends to bug out hilariously trying to display them, and breaks back-end compatibility with most existing Fediverse servers. As I understand it, the ActivityPub protocol supports this type of interaction in theory, but in practice nearly all existing implementations of it are built around the assumption of a Twitter style one-per-customer interaction model.scribe-awokenI think so far, the two most successful attempts at a fediverse tumblr clone at the moment (Goblin and Wafrn) have kinda thrown their hands up and just render what would be reply chains on more twitter-like fedi platforms as reblog threads. But that runs into the problem that the forum-esque reblog chains are only reblog chains for people on Goblin and Wafrn, and just look like Twitter-like reply threads to everyone else.Also the problem is compounded by the fact that not only is most existing Fediverse infrastructure oriented towards Twitter clones, but it's oriented towards one specific Twitter clone. Basically everyone making a Fediverse-based platform, even a Twitter clone, has to contend with the fact that Mastodon is the most popular Fediverse-based platform by an order of magnitude just going by the number of servers (more if you're going by monthly active users). Not only does it not implement some ActivityPub features (some of which it has fallbacks for, others where it kinda just freaks out), but there are some features that are implemented in a way that's incompatible with the official spec, forcing other platforms to also ignore the spec for the sake of compatibility. On top of that, apparently actually getting Mastodon devs to hear people out on concerns about compatibility with other Fediverse platforms is like pulling teeth.I think at least in theory, the best avenue for a federated Tumblr-like that actually replicates the structure of Tumblr as opposed to being functionally a Twitter clone with a Tumblr-esque coat of paint might be actually developing a new protocol instead of using an existing protocol like ActivityPub or ATProto, but obviously that's a lot more work *and* loses the advantage of being able to piggyback off of other federated platforms' existing userbases.#tumblr#blogging#social media#grumping#swearing
prokopetzReblogged roboco-sanprokopetzFollowThe problem with a lot of attempts to create federated social media platforms is that they talk about building decentralised communities, then turn around and adopt models of social media which are, at a structural and intentional level, hostile to both decentralisation and community-building.They're caught in this horrible trap where they have to make it work like X/Twitter to leverage people's existing familiarity, but the X/Twitter model by design fosters "communities" consisting of large audiences of passive content consumers whose participation is oriented around following a tiny core of mega-popular content producers, which is fundamentally opposed literally all of their stated goals. It's great for monetisation, of course, but if advertiser-driven monetisation isn't part of our game plan, what the fuck are we even doing here?You know why it's so hard to find a satisfactory alternative to something like Tumblr? A big part of it is because Tumblr is one of the only major social media platforms that isn't structurally hostile to people just talking to one another.prokopetz#I'd sell my soul for a fediverse tumblr alternative (via @roboco-san)See, that's what I mean about the problem being structural. A big part of the reason there aren't any true Fediverse-based Tumblr-likes is that much of the existing Fediverse infrastructure is oriented toward Twitter clones. I admit it's been a couple of years since I last looked into it in depth, so my knowledge of the topic is somewhat out of date, but one of the big stumbling blocks is that trying to implement forum-esque reblog chains like Tumblr has causes most Fediverse front ends to bug out hilariously trying to display them, and breaks back-end compatibility with most existing Fediverse servers. As I understand it, the ActivityPub protocol supports this type of interaction in theory, but in practice nearly all existing implementations of it are built around the assumption of a Twitter style one-per-customer interaction model.#tumblr#blogging#social media#grumping#swearing
prokopetzYou're a royal attendant slowly realising that you've lost track of which of the young princess' numerous anti-assassination body doubles is the real one. The royal portraits are so idealised that they look nothing like her, so you can't figure it out that way, and the Queen is a shitty absentee mom who doesn't remember what her own daughter looks like and routinely gets them mixed up, so she'd be no help even if you dared to ask. None of them will break character. You're beginning to suspect they're doing this on purpose.#media#tropes#princesses#prompts#violence mention#death mention#swearing
prokopetzThe problem with a lot of attempts to create federated social media platforms is that they talk about building decentralised communities, then turn around and adopt models of social media which are, at a structural and intentional level, hostile to both decentralisation and community-building.They're caught in this horrible trap where they have to make it work like X/Twitter to leverage people's existing familiarity, but the X/Twitter model by design fosters "communities" consisting of large audiences of passive content consumers whose participation is oriented around following a tiny core of mega-popular content producers, which is fundamentally opposed literally all of their stated goals. It's great for monetisation, of course, but if advertiser-driven monetisation isn't part of our game plan, what the fuck are we even doing here?You know why it's so hard to find a satisfactory alternative to something like Tumblr? A big part of it is because Tumblr is one of the only major social media platforms that isn't structurally hostile to people just talking to one another.#tumblr#blogging#social media#grumping#swearing
prokopetzLet me put this bluntly:ALT#wordplay#puns
prokopetzRebloggedprokopetzFollowI think the funniest consequence of Tumblr's shit-ass content moderation is that a lot of people are still posting explicit art, but they've also gotten better over time at including including screen reader descriptions, and since anecdotal evidence supports the idea that whatever Tumblr is using to auto-mod explicit content seems to pick up on text better than it does on images, those descriptions will just fail to mention that the character so depicted has their dick out – and often this is not a small omission!prokopetzThe screen reader description:ALTThe actual image:ALT#tumblr#blogging#social media#accessibility#penis mention#swearing
prokopetzI think the funniest consequence of Tumblr's shit-ass content moderation is that a lot of people are still posting explicit art, but they've also gotten better over time at including including screen reader descriptions, and since anecdotal evidence supports the idea that whatever Tumblr is using to auto-mod explicit content seems to pick up on text better than it does on images, those descriptions will just fail to mention that the character so depicted has their dick out – and often this is not a small omission!#tumblr#blogging#social media#accessibility#penis mention#swearing
prokopetzFor no particular reason, have a video of someone speedrunning a precision platformer using a Beatmania controller.(This is a challenge run to reach a specific point in the game, not a full game run. In casual play, getting there takes a couple of hours; there's an achievement for doing it in five minutes. This maniac does it in 1:39, using what is essentially a record turntable for a controller.)#gaming#video games#bat to the heavens#speedrunning#video#youtube
prokopetzFor clarity, when I say I have no strong opinions on a particular matter, what I actually mean is that I have lots of strong opinions on that matter, but I'm aware that all of them are indefensible bullshit.#life#swearing
prokopetzRebloggedprokopetzFollowNormalise being perpendicular to the tangent of a curve.#insert 'unit length' joke here
prokopetzThere's a long history of Dracula adaptations deciding Jonathan is boring and combining his character with Renfield, but I can't decide which fascinate me more: the ones that fully conflate the roles, or the ones that give the initial Castle Dracula sequence to Renfield, but they're still separate characters, so Jonathan is just kind of there.#media#literature#dracula#jonathan harker#renfield#adaptations
prokopetzTumblr needs to survive for another 58 years specifically so that one blog that's spent the better part of a decade very, very slowly pirating the entirety of the Super Mario Bros. Super Show by posting screenshots of individual frames at a rate of one frame per hour can complete the show's full run.#tumblr#blogging#social media#media#cartoons#animation#super mario bros. super show#mario#nintendo
prokopetzRebloggedprokopetzFollowI wonder if anyone's ever done the math on which single word in the English language has the most pieces of published media whose title is that word. I can think of like twenty different things titled "Dinosaurs", but I bet that's not even close to the top.prokopetzI guess a lot of it would depend on whether you count each instalment of a piece of serialised media as a separate instance of that word as a title or not. If you do, I bet it's probably "batman".thisrobotbeatcaptchaI assume "the," "on," etc. aren't being counted. Batman is a good contender, as is Superman (in all its connotations). "Science" might be a good contender, and "nature" for that matter. prokopetzA lot of pieces of media out there whose full title is just "The", are there?#media#language#linguistics#nameology
prokopetzRebloggedprokopetzFollowI wonder if anyone's ever done the math on which single word in the English language has the most pieces of published media whose title is that word. I can think of like twenty different things titled "Dinosaurs", but I bet that's not even close to the top.prokopetzI guess a lot of it would depend on whether you count each instalment of a piece of serialised media as a separate instance of that word as a title or not. If you do, I bet it's probably "batman".#media#language#linguistics#nameology
prokopetzI wonder if anyone's ever done the math on which single word in the English language has the most pieces of published media whose title is that word. I can think of like twenty different things titled "Dinosaurs", but I bet that's not even close to the top.#media#language#linguistics#nameology
prokopetzRebloggedprokopetzFollowSurvival horror game with a "no jumpscares" accessibility feature whereby every time there's a cutscene that involves a monster jumping out, you get an alternative cutscene where the monster just casually slides into view somewhere the player character can't see it but the player can before going "BLARGH".panikpanikpanik*slides with this specific sound effectdumbassstupidblogAlternatively?hands-off-my-macaroniGIF by h01vd4l#concepts#gaming#video games#game design#accessibility#video#youtube#animated gif
prokopetzRebloggedprokopetzFollowSurvival horror game with a "no jumpscares" accessibility feature whereby every time there's a cutscene that involves a monster jumping out, you get an alternative cutscene where the monster just casually slides into view somewhere the player character can't see it but the player can before going "BLARGH".panikpanikpanik*slides with this specific sound effectdumbassstupidblogAlternatively?#concepts#gaming#video games#game design#accessibility#video#youtube