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LeviKornelsen

@LeviKornelsen@dice.camp

Canadian maker of tabletop RPG bits and assorted weirdness.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. For a complete list of posts, browse on the original instance.

LeviKornelsen , to random
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Awen (with cards) live playtest went extremely well. Nailed every design objective I had.

Some parts sing perfectly, while others are merely functional,and a couple things got skipped intuitively with no damage done (and will therefore be dropped for the next iteration).

And, with feedback, I now have a whole list of ways to make the dry parts engaging and the fun parts notably better.

Big win.

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LeviKornelsen , to random
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Paycheck was surprisingly good this round, so instead of the microwave kiln, I opted to splurge and ordered the fancy desktop kiln to attempt firing of my little dudes.

Gonna break out my fireproof slabs and set up a workstation for when it arrives.

Novel ceramic game pieces look to be in my very near future! Whee!

LeviKornelsen , (edited ) to random
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I now have a design version of the Chessables in which they are heavily armed.

  • Bottom row is standard chess: Pawn, Reeve/Rook, Knight, Bishop, Queen, King.

-Middle row is: Damosel, Mann/Merchant, Prince, Princess, Friar

-Top is: Vampire, Skeleton, Witch, Elf, Wizard.

(A few are not pictured here, including the Hood and Ranger.)

LeviKornelsen , to random
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"A mount other chess pieces can ride on" is not the silliest thing I've designed, but it's close.

LeviKornelsen , to random
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I swear, every time I boot into Windows, it does an update that reactivates some bullshit that gives me grief in Linux.

This time: It auto-re-enabled "Fastboot", locking my backup drive to Linux until I went back in, hunted it down, changed it back.

Such utter nonsense.

LeviKornelsen , to random
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Dead Boy Detectives:

This show is fun and odd!

...Ah, some gay subtext, too!

...Oh, now it's text!

...Huh, this show is pretty gay!

...I should tell people on social media; I know loads of people that would be at least a little interested.

LeviKornelsen , to random
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First attempt at slipcasting a chessable: Naturally, the witch.

Slip cast on right, painted plaster on left. Still drying, but definitely a rousing success for a first attempt.

LeviKornelsen , to random
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Realized it's actually been a year and change since I recapped what my chessables ARE, so:

I wanted a chess set plus a ton of extra pieces, for variant chess games, tokens for other stuff, etc, so I made some 3d printable ones.

They came out pretty cool.

Then I 3d printed them as molds and cast them with plaster and painted them.

I'm still working on making them as aluminum molds for plastic injection.

I'm now ALSO working on making them as plaster molds to slipcast them as ceramics.

(1/2)

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LeviKornelsen , to random
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While I'm mucking about with ways to make my little chess dudes out of recycled plastic (I've been using a plaster-concrete concoction), I realised I could probably switch the process and make plaster molds, and slipcast the pieces.

Which classes them up enough I'd likely feel good about selling them!

Test mold #1 formed perfectly, though I forgot to add a well for extra slip....

LeviKornelsen , to random
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Heroes solve problems for local areas, and then become leaders of those they've saved. That's how the stories go!

So when the heroes show up having solved a horrifying problem... The local people might say to each other "They probably want to be in charge now, right? That's how it works?".

And some of them will want to make that happen! And some of them won't! And the ones in charge currently will have especially strong feelings on the matter.

Clearing the dungeon as political debut.

LeviKornelsen , to random
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Any shapechanging spell in an RPG that doesn't include "Oh, and you can change whatever you like in the pants and chest departments, etc" has failed to understand why a great many people would pursue that magic.

LeviKornelsen , to random
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Best fan gripe about Fallout series I've seen:

"Deeply inauthentic. Loading times too fast, browser didn't crash even once."

LeviKornelsen , (edited ) to random
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Elves, being nearly ageless, have a lot of very very old ideas. Like bronze age blood feuds. And they have very good manners, because, well, same reasons. And these things have aged... Sharply.

You will never meet Elven royalty unless you are exactingly courtly, and this is for your protection. If you insult them (and you probably will), they have to kill you or they'll breach protective, critical reputations they spend centuries accumulating.

LeviKornelsen , to random
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I've watched the second half of Dune a few of times now, and, look, it's just plain better at portraying the political messaging that Herbert repeatedly said he wanted out of the book - and the changes to Stilgar and Chani are essential to it it doing that.

It has significantly less weird nerd shit, and hardly any of the Herbert obsession with consciousness, and I miss those elements.

I would have loved if it were three parts, and had all that. But it was probably already a lot for most.

LeviKornelsen , to random
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Have watched Rebel Moon part 2.

It's gorgeous.

It's badly, badly, badly written.

I recommend turning off the sound and having snacks.

LeviKornelsen , to random
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You know what I love?

Branches of ancient technology that dead-ended somewhere, but could have carried on in the right conditions.

In my head, that's deeply engaging fantasy material for doing "Things are weird and different here".

So if you know of sources for that stuff: Grabby hands

LeviKornelsen , to random
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For those who cannot go big enough on the Deluxe DM screen.

LeviKornelsen , to random
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Okay, this diagram came out surprisingly professional.

LeviKornelsen , to random
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Got given a present today by my other half, and, uh, see you all tomorrow maybe?

LeviKornelsen , to random
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Doodling up some more culture emblems...

LeviKornelsen , to random
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The desire to find a cultural type that revolves around towns, purely so I can put it in Awen and call it "Oppidian".

LeviKornelsen , to random
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It's been a minute; let's do this again:

If you are a Tabletop RPG nerd and have less than, say, 500 followers (or think you have less than 500 that are actually active):

  1. Write a post to introduce yourself and your particular nerdery, if you haven't already got one pinned.

  2. Reply in the comments with a link to or copy of that post.

  3. Share, check back to find people you want to follow, all that.

pluralistic , to random
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Corporate crime is notoriously underpoliced and underprosecuted. Mostly, that's because we just choose not to do anything about it. American corporations commit crimes at 20X the rate of real humans, and their crimes are far worse than any crime committed by a human, but they are almost never prosecuted:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/12/no-criminals-no-crimes/#get-out-of-jail-free-card

1/

LeviKornelsen ,
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@pluralistic - "Corporations are people" can be read in the tone of "They're made of meat", and is improved immensely by it.

LeviKornelsen , to random
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The main difficulty with Free Speech Absolutism as a position is that I don't believe anyone who says that's their position. Like, even a little.

LeviKornelsen , to random
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Junior has declared that these glasses are the best style.

Just to catch you all up on fashion news.

LeviKornelsen , to random
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Some of you have likely never experienced the purest, truest forms of "RPG as physics engine", like people actually shooting various things to see if the weapon penetration tables are good.

If you want to bake your noodle, go get the BIG version of GURPS Gulliver for 3rd edition, and enter the world of "Throwing distance modifiers by arm length? Fucking WHAT?"

...

https://www.gamesdiner.com/gurps/GULLIVER/indexframe.html

LeviKornelsen , to random
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If you take a big-ass list of conspiracy theories and replace whatever force is supposedly behind it with "this is a result / side effect of the same rich assholes you've already heard of trying to get richer", you will make a small number of them correct, and many, many more will take a big step towards being believable.

LeviKornelsen , to random
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Yup.

https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/writing-an-rpg-is-different-to-designing-one.918758/

LeviKornelsen , to random
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Being able to distinguish Dogpiles, Harassment Campaigns, Exclusion Campaigns (mass shunnings), Doxxing, Cyberstalking, and so on....

...is not a specialized branch of vocabulary I would have requested.

But here we are.

LeviKornelsen , to random
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I live in ongoing hope that the transphobic assholes will come up with an accidentally cool term for cis dudes that show any level, however slight, of trans allyship, like "Gender Traitor" or some shit like that.

Just, like "Build me my box, shitheads."

LeviKornelsen , to random
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Letting your players know the next session will be about events on a train trip they're taking is telegraphing a railroad.

Pressuring the group to wire messages to their allies, on the other hand, is railroading a telegram.

Important distinction.

LeviKornelsen , to random
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"Awen with a deck" concept:

This might be the output of the startup process for a specific region on a map, along with glass beads put as markers on the cards.

You'd get a bunch of regions like this, and then history would go on top of them, possibly as more cards.

Any strong impressions of that?

LeviKornelsen , to random
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I mostly run action adventure games, but ones where characters are tied strongly to some community.

This positions me well to drop an Oh Shit, Your Aunties Are Here scene, and I really need to do that.

LeviKornelsen , to random
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Trope inversion:

The emperors of Kuruk magically engineered their great tombs so that the spirits of anyone who died in them would be drawn to their service in the afterlife. And had the architects and labourers sealed in, treasures hidden, traps built.

There are supposed to be tomb raiders going in, and mostly dying, but rarely, rarely scoring awesome loot to attract more attempts.

That's the intent.

LeviKornelsen , to random
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When you fully accept that gamers are largely fundamentally competent at having a good time roleplaying, you realize that most design objectives OTHER THAN "save people work" and "get them excited" can be managed with a box of parts and a discussion of how to assemble them.

But those two, hoo boy.

LeviKornelsen , to random
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The single most important thing RPG theory has ever done is to make it obvious that the GM and group often deserve much more of the credit for a good session than the game does.

This is then seen as cause to rush off and write better games, which deserve more of the credit.

Which, I mean, cool, but also, hang on a second.

LeviKornelsen , to random
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Bridge of Birds, Story of the Stone, and Eight Skilled Gentlemen have always been favourites of mine (they're not, like, free of problems, obviously, but still good).

Turns out they were once collected into an omnibus edition, which I now own.

GeePawHill , to random
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One of the key facts here keeps getting sidestepped by a mixture of scam marketing and common language usage out there.

LLMs don't sometimes make shit up, they always make shit up.

That's what an LLM is: a piece of software that makes up plausible sounding shit.

What's impressive about this is the extent of improvement in the plausibility.

What's horrifying about it is the extent to which so many people don't care to distinguish between plausibility and correctness.

LeviKornelsen ,
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@GeePawHill - The current divergent media environments by political views strongly suggest that "peak plausibility" is not "actual truth" but "tells me what I want to hear", which in the context of your post, bodes, and not well.

LeviKornelsen , to random
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If you want ethical AI (and I sure do), consider that it's extremely likely we won't get it until after the current craze implodes and the market bubble washes away; the people running the show have made it clear that's not what they're after.

Supporting the current awful platforms just delays the day we'll see it get decent.

LeviKornelsen , to random
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And, done! A little booklet of basic euro-fantasy "starter cultures" for use in worldbuilding:

https://levikornelsen.itch.io/starter-cultures

LeviKornelsen , to random
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Today is the coolest of all Christian holidays:

By setting himself up to be used as a blood sacrifice, the son of God is dumped into hell and empowered to pull a sickass jailbreak, as well as, by that same sacrifice, smashing down the rules his dad (who is also him in a weirdass way) set up. And this is called "the Harrowing of Hell".

Like, I don't have to believe ANY of that shit to be like "Damn, that's fucking cool, man".

LeviKornelsen , to random
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This is your every-few-years reminder that if you need a made-up language for your game or fiction, you should definitely start by going to Vulgarlang and hitting "generate new language":

https://www.vulgarlang.com/

LeviKornelsen , to random
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So, this guy is out there pitching AI services to cities, now, I hear?

LeviKornelsen , to random
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I have accepted that programs are called apps, now, and I am at peace.

LeviKornelsen , to random
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An actually smart appliance would be a dishwasher that had exactly one button marked "start", and could figure out the minimum time, water and soap to do the job, and do it.

This is exactly the opposite of the "smart" we're seemingly getting.

LeviKornelsen OP ,
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@Teyrnon - Even better - my main point, though, is that the intelligence wouldn't be "you can interact with it more!", but instead "You need to fuddle with it much less!"

LeviKornelsen , to random
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A project I keep coming back and doing, like, an hour of mucking with at a time, is a little booklet of "Standard Eurofantasy Cultures", written out.

It's an oddity, because the intent is "I recommend you absolutely DO mess with these significantly before use", and it's weird to write something you not only assume people will modify, but don't really WANT used as-is.

LeviKornelsen , to random
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I think calling the multitude of playable human-likes in an RPG "species" is POTENTIALLY much better than calling them "races".

But as soon as you do that, you're saying overtly that this is a biological grouping, and therefore that traits assigned to them are biological in nature, and you should know that.

If you then assign cultural traits to a species without calling them out as such, you have made... Let's call it... an error.

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