Allen Varney @AllenVarney@mastodon.xyz
Writer/game designer in Ithaca, New York, USA. Operator of the Bundle of Holding (bundleofholding.com).
Any tabletop roleplaying game designers here? I designed the 2004 edition of PARANOIA, and now I operate the Bundle of Holding ( bundleofholding.com ), which offers time-limited collections of RPG ebooks.
Tricky tests to determine yoru ability to distinguish colors (Gizmodo):
https://gizmodo.com/these-tests-will-tell-you-just-how-good-your-eyes-are-a-1826868420
Your next Endless Internet Feud: "Who could launch themselves higher on a trampoline -- LeBron James or [world-class female gymnast] Simone Biles?" (Marginal Revolution):
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/06/trampoline-question.html
Find your street address in the corresponding location on the Pangaean supercontinent 240M years ago:
@cypnk "Junk Food Mens R2D2 Cyber Punk T-Shirt"
Never good to hear one's burrito making odd moaning noises in the microwave.
"What Happens When a Bad-Tempered, Distractible Doofus Runs an Empire?" (Miranda Carter, The New Yorker):
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/what-happens-when-a-bad-tempered-distractible-doofus-runs-an-empire
!"Only a thousand people ever heard the first Velvet Underground album when it came out, but they all went out and formed bands." What would the tabletop roleplaying equivalent be, besides white-box OD&D? Maybe Vampire 1E?
when they told you that computers are really dumb, because they only do exactly what you tell them to do, that was a lie
a lie of omission.
they do what you tell them to do, while also doing what a million other people over the past 40 years told them to do to
sometimes, those commands interfere with, or contradict each other
Annual reminder: I hate April Fool's Day. Anything I post tomorrow is, to my knowledge, real and true.
I just backed "Imp of the Perverse: A Jacksonian Gothic American Horror RPG" by Nathan Paoletta on Kickstarter. "In this darker version of the 1830s and 1840s, you play a member of society with an Imp of the Perverse on your shoulder, constantly impelling you to do terrible deeds. Only by hunting down those who have given in to their Imps, and turned into monsters themselves, can you rid yourself of yours."
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ndpaoletta/imp-of-the-perverse-a-jacksonian-gothic-american-h
The first human colonists land on Mars. They find an obelisk, with perfectly intelligible writing: "Congratulations on completing the tutorial. All spawn protections will now be disabled. May the odds be ever in your favour."
#writingprompts #writing
Attention, citizens! "Cyanide (they of board game adaptations such as Blood Bowl and gobliny stealth series Styx) are working with Dublin-based studio Black Shamrock (Of Orcs And Men) to adapt the darkly comedic world of PARANOIA to PC." (Rock Paper Shotgun):
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/03/08/cyanide-to-adapt-pen-and-paper-rpg-paranoia-to-pc/
Master RPG designer Greg Stafford (Pendragon, Glorantha) turns 70 (Chaosium ): https://www.chaosium.com/blog/the-grand-shaman-of-gaming-turns-70-happy-birthday-greg-stafford/
Of course Wikipedia has a "List of Italian soups:"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Italian_soups
"If you consume culture in the hopes of building a mental library that can be referred to at any time, you're likely to be disappointed. Books, shows, movies, and songs aren't files we upload to our brains -- they're part of the tapestry of life, woven in with everything else." (Atlantic):
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/01/what-was-this-article-about-again/551603/
If you've seen the famous #JavaScript "Wat" talk about JS oddities (Gary Bernhardt, CodeMash 2012), this Medium article explains how the JS type system produces these quirks:
https://medium.com/dailyjs/the-why-behind-the-wat-an-explanation-of-javascripts-weird-type-system-83b92879a8db
Lessons learned from analyzing 225 million hours of work (RescueTime):
http://blog.rescuetime.com/225-million-hours-productivity/
2017 - the roleplaying field year in review (Shannon Appelcline on RPGnet): https://www.rpg.net/columns/advanced-designers-and-dragons/advanced-designers-and-dragons15.phtml
