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Dr.Device

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Everything posted by Dr.Device

  1. I've started posting the main story I worked on during December's rush. Just Super NB - This story has lots of trans and other queer folks. If that's a problem for you, I recommend not reading it.
  2. We roleplayed it. The characters knew each other and were on the scene together when the Void appeared. They each had to find their own way out, or most of the way out, though. Basically, they roleplayed manifesting their powers as a way of getting themselves out.
  3. I ran two campaigns set in a world where, in 2000, a quarter mile radius sphere of nothingness, dubbed "The Void" appeared just South of downtown Austin. Many people were caught in it when it appeared. Those who made their own way out (including the PCs) ended up with powers (which the PCs used to rescue most of the folks who couldn't make it out on their own). As the campaign progressed, I did open up origins a little bit, because the Void sort of broke the world. Eventually there was magic. The second campaign was focused on a team that was assembled to deal with otherworldly incursions, and ended up with a couple of members that were there because of those incursions.
  4. I, for one, would be sad to see social justice removed from D&D products. I happen to think social justice is a good thing.
  5. If the pose holds for more than four hours, please consult a physician.
  6. Hmm, If I'm able to maintain my current trend, I'll manage it. I'm sitting at around 80k words for December, but I had some extra time off, so I doubt I can maintain that. 50k seems doable, though, unless this is a fluke. I took a short (partial) break from my TSP (Teen Supers Project) and wrote an adult short story. I'd never done that before. It was fun.
  7. Congrats on getting going! The first trigger for me was deciding that it didn't matter what I wrote, as long as I wrote. Heck, I started this flood of words with a Baldur's Gate 3 isekai, which no eyes but mine will ever see, lest they be burned out by the horror. I'd never heard of that. I'll have to take a look.
  8. I'm going to talk about my writing in this thread, but anyone should feel free to throw in their own anecdotes. I managed to flip a switch in my head recently, and I'm writing again. I'm writing a lot. On my main project, I've written over 40k words this month, with a few thousand more that I've ditched or set aside for possible future use. This makes me very happy. Quite a while back, I posted a link to the one novel I've completed. anyone who remembers that would be unsurprised to learn that my current project is about teens with super powers. The protagonist, Frank, is a character who was the antagonist in a bunch of stories I used to tell my kids at bedtime (but aged up a little, and with the G rated filter removed). Her worst enemy is the protagonist from most of those stories, Emily. I'd tried to write stories with Emily in the past, but she's just too good. She's based on my second Champions character, altered to be what my kids wanted in a superhero (e.g. she always won). That image of her is too stuck in my head for me to tone her down, much, so she wasn't really workable as a protagonist. As an antagonist, or even supporting character, though, she's fine. So her nemesis Frank became the protagonist, and Emily is the thorn in her side. Since I'm essentially writing fanfic (even if it is for a world that's only in my head), it's probably inevitable that Frank and Emily would get thrown together, and get, if not an enemies-to-lovers arc, at least an enemies-to-girlfriends arc. It turns out that that's a lot of fun to write. Of course, that requires a redemption arc for Frank, which is fine, because I'm a fan of redemption arcs. If Emily had been the protagonist, these would have been flat out superhero stories. With Frank as protagonist, though, they're not so much that, at least not at first. She isn't looking to save anyone. They're more slice-of-life or adventure stories. The story I'm currently working on has Emily and Frank thrown into a parallel universe where the event that led to superpowers in their universe never happened (essentially our world). I wanted a fight scene while they're stuck there, partially because I just wanted a fight scene, and partially to advance Frank's redemption arc. So I started this scene. Getting them to it was no problem; Emily is drawn toward places and times where someone will need protection. Truck crashes through a window, Emily deals with that while Frank teleports around being a bad-ass and dealing with the armed men charging in. It sucked. Sure, Emily's been doing this crap since she was thirteen, but Frank hasn't been in any fight more serious that a high school tussle or a sparring match in her life. She's very competent at [martial art tbd], but that doesn't mean that she'd have any idea how to handle herself in fire fight. Plus, she could just teleport away and leave Emily to deal with things. Facing a bunch of nazis with rifles and handguns, Emily's biggest worry would be not killing them (and keeping innocents safe, of course). I scrapped those 700 words and started again. Now Emily gets taken down by a sniper rifle* as the start to the combat, and Frank needs to deal with the sniper on her own, or a bunch of people are going to die. She chooses to fight, and it's a really hard fight for her. It was so much more satisfying to write than if she'd just been kicking ass and taking names. * I'm open to suggestions as to an appropriate real world weapon to use for this. Emily is a flying brick, with an emphasis on the brick. Small arms fire is basically a minor nuisance to her, and even normal assault rifles can't usually do more than cause a bit of pain or minor bruising. Military grade is fine, as long as it's something that could be lugged by one person up fourteen flights of stairs.
  9. I tend to min-max the combat/actual-game-play part of my characters so that they can have whatever off-the-wall or irrelevant abilities/traits [1] I want, but still be viable. For example, I like playing smart characters. In most of the Hero games I've played in, a high Int is not worth as much as the sam points spent in strength or dex. I also like to play attractive characters, is I'll tend to pay those points, but I've never used any mechanical benefits from that in the game. Then there are the skills that will never be game-relevant that I need to buy to match my concept. So, then, when I get to the game relevant stuff, I do my best to squeeze the remaining points to get a character who can actually be an asset to the team. [1] Take Emily. She has autokinesis, which means, logically as I envision her, she effectively has prehensile hair. So I pay for the extra limb, despite the fact that she keeps her hair shoulder length and it never, in the years of playing, came up except for her lowering her sunglasses to glare at someone while her hands were full.
  10. I didn't do nano this year, but I started writing some non-novel stuff in late November. Over the weekend, I wrote over 10000 words on it. This is the most fun I've ever had writing.
  11. https://www.tor.com/2023/09/19/a-tale-of-two-genres-doc-sidhe-by-aaron-allston/
  12. https://www.polygon.com/23759783/dnd-dungeons-dragons-lawsuit-tsr-bankrupt-chapter-7
  13. @Pattern Ghost {I'm not going to quote because the nested quotes are getting out of hand, and it's not really necessary] First, I want to say that I do appreciate that you acknowledge the threats that folks like me are facing. I do have a lot of anger, but what you're seeing here is more frustration (not that there's a bright line between the two). My problem with "The fact is that elements on BOTH sides have become quite a bit too heated lately" is twofold. First, tone policing always favors those in power. I and other have been repeatedly accused of raising the heat (in general, I'm not talking about here) by pointing out that there is a thriving campaign on the right to eliminate us, which is a simple statement of fact, backed up with evidence. It's not, what's raising the heat is the fact that they're trying to eliminate us. Second, most of the time I see any "both side" argument these days, it's being used by someone as an excuse to keep voting for republicans, or dismiss the concerns being expressed by LGBTQIA+ folks. I appreciate that that is not what you're doing, but I'd ask you to keep in mind that for many people, the moment they hear "both sides" they stop listening. And then there's the more emotional aspect. Analogies suck, but I'm going to make one anyway. Let's say that we have two people, Alice and Jane. Alice's sister has a bad cold. Jane has lung cancer. Every time Jane brings up something about her cancer, like how she's having trouble getting her insurance to cover a new treatment, or that chemo has been killing her appetite, Alice brings up how miserable her sister's cold is making her. She never says that the cold is as bad as Jane's cancer, but she always takes that opportunity to talk about it. I'd think Jane could be forgiven for thinking that perhaps Alice is minimizing the cancer by regularly bringing up the cold. That's what I'm dealing with. Almost anywhere outside explicitly queer spaces that I bring up the attacks on trans people, someone will chime in talking about how some people on the left are mean, too. It's immensely frustrating, and does come across as minimizing what is being done to us.
  14. That's a swing and a miss. First, that isn't an example of anyone being attacked for their identity. No one is being attacked by that law. No one's life is being put in danger. No one is being vilified by that law. To the extent that anyone is being judged, it is for their actions. [edited to add: Also, what Old Man said above] Second, even if one were to accept the counterfactua] that affirming the gender identity of a child is anything but a good thing, requiring it to be one factor in determining custody of a child, when that custody is in dispute, is vastly less than what is being done in the other direction. In Florida, if I visited with my child, they could just take my child away if they believe, that I might provide my child with gender affirming care (and me being trans could be considered enough evidence that I would).
  15. Do you have any actual examples of anyone influential on the left calling for the eradication of any of the groups I mentioned (white people, conservatives, christians)? Examples of anyone influential on the left demonizing those groups in the way prominent conservative politicians and pundits demonize LGBTQIA+ people and other marginalized populations? Specifically, any examples that are spreading hate based on those qualities (whiteness, conservatism, christianity) and not on actual behaviors? Because if you're going to count hatred based on actual behaviors, then sure. I hate Trump. I hated Pat Robertson and will let you imagine my feelings about his death. I hate Greg Abbot and Ken Paxton. None of them for who they are, but for what they have done. What they are doing. That is in no way equivalent to them hating me for who I am. Please give me some examples that are within two orders of magnitude of DeSantis and his stooges making it effectively illegal for me to exist in the state of Florida. Give me some examples within even two orders of magnitude of an influential conservative voice speaking at CPAC and calling for the eradication of trans people. How about something anywhere remotely in the ballpark of a pastor with a congregation numbering the thousands calling for the parents of trans kids to be shot in the head? The two sides are not in anyway close, and to keep saying they are is minimizing the threat to me and mine, and is deeply insulting.
  16. To the extent that the conservative side actually believes that they are under any sort of threat comparable to what LGBTQIA+ and other marginalized individuals are under, they are deeply delusional. No one significant on the left wants to wipe out conservatives, or christians, or white people. Republican leaders are taking active steps to wipe me and mine out. There is no equivalence.
  17. I really wanted William Jackson Harper for Reed and Kristen Bell for Sue. Their chemistry was great in The Good Place. Sadly, they wasted WJH in Quantumania. I worry that if this rumor pans out it means that, given the choice of Driver, they'll be leaning into being a jerk being a big part of Reed's character. Which, to be fair, he has been in big chunks of the comics, but at other times he hasn't been, and I'd rather see that Reed. I could see Harper playing a Reed that occasionally comes off as a jerk, but mainly through frustration at other people just not understanding things that to him seem obvious. That, and occasionally just from lack of social skills. I agree that Ben being Jewish is an important, if background, part of his character. Since being black doesn't preclude being Jewish, I'll reserve judgement there. Margot Robbie is an excellent actress, so I have no worries there, and I know nothing about the guy they've picked for Johnny (I've already forgotten the name).
  18. Apparently, I am very, very multi-classed.
  19. I read the story before commenting. The phrase "blood on your hands," when it is true (and it is), is not "inflammatory". The flames were lit by those who are passing those laws that are going to kill children. If speaking the truth violates their rules of decorum, then their rules of decorum are garbage and should be ignored. No, I'm not going to start form the premise that the phrase "blood on your hands" was over the top. It was part of a passionately made, true statement about the effects of this bill once it becomes law. Children will die. Many others will suffer needless trauma. The people passing these laws are reprehensible, and would rather silence the truth than face it. As for it violating the rules of decorum, I'd have to see their version of those rules to know if that's the case. If that phrase is specifically called out, then, sure, those rules were violated. And what should the speaker do about it? Do you honestly think the rules of decorum aren't violated regularly by his own caucus? Do you think he would have applied the rules symmetrically? Members of his caucus intentionally misgendered her. They were not censured. Tone policing always serves those in power. It is a much used method to quash dissent and silence minorities.
  20. I'm curious, which things that she did might have "stretched decorum" to an extent that justifies barring her from doing the job she was elected to do?
  21. Ages ago[1] I played in a game where the GM [2] had home-brewed a system heavily inspired by hero. You bought spells or abilities with points like hero, but instead of buying multiple dice for damage powers (or some other effects), the base power started at a d4 damage, and each level increased the damage die up to d12, and (I think) adding another d4 (or higher) if you went past a d12. The system overall was a lot lighter than Hero, but it felt like a complete system. I liked it and would like to have seen it published. [1] As in 25+ years, so my memories of the system may not be (read almost certainly aren't) totally accurate. [2] Nonie Rider (Quinlan at the time). She co-authored Champions in 3d, and had some other RPG writing credits.
  22. He isn't lying. The health insurance provisions are not limited to minors. They refer to the definitions in the prohibitions for care of minor sections as to what constitute "gender clinical interventions," but say nothing about being limited to health insurance coverage for minors.
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