ZDL

ZDL, 4 months ago

I’d probably go with [ʂ]. Before that it would likely have been [x].

ZDL, 5 months ago

Let’s see:

• signed up a day ago ✅
• makes a group that’s guaranteed to be contentious ✅
• responds to people’s contention in ways intended to egg them on ✅
• has literally no other content in profile ✅

Conclusion: Troll. Just block and move on.

ZDL, 5 months ago

Replace “Lemmyverse” with “the American left” and you’re closer to the truth.

• The American left is against racism … yet harbours an alarming amount of antisemitism and an increasing amount of sinophobia.
• The American left is against ageism … directed at young people. Old people are open season.
• The American left is against religious bigotry … except Christians. . . .

It’s just tribalism cosplaying as idealism. (And it’s why, for example, Chinese LGBT groups have been quietly removing themselves from interaction with American LGBTQA+ groups over the past few years.)

ZDL, 5 months ago

Or, you know, someone knows German, since “Stollen” is a German fruit bread that anybody who’s ever been to Germany in the winter will likely have seen and probably tasted as well.

ZDL, 5 months ago

American plain old bread is way too damned sweet!

ZDL, 5 months ago

Those so simple-minded they think there’s only two kinds of people, and…

ZDL, 6 months ago

Chivalry & Sorcery

I played loads of this back in the 2nd edition days, but by the time 3rd edition had come out, all the people I’d played 2nd with dribbled out of my life (or I out of theirs) and that, combined with the seriously flawed nature of 3rd’s publication, left me nobody to play with. Now C&S is in its 5th edition, and it’s a powerhouse of a game, but I know of nobody anywhere who plays it. I play it solo only, now. I wish I could find a group.

Grey Ranks

You need to have a very special kind of player willing to play a game that’s as depressing and rigidly structured as Gray Ranks. I’ve never found people matching those traits. I can only read the game and imagine.

Space Opera

Yes, it has some of the most ludicrously complicated rules ever put into a game. (1.5 pages of dense-type rules for handing items from one character to another!) Yes it feels like they just took every space-based SF conceit and crammed it into the rules. But there’s a whole lot of remembered good times in those black books that very few games since have ever come close to matching.

Psi World

At a time when games from almost all companies were going crazier and crazier in complexity, with FGU, the publisher of this game, leading the pack with the insanely complicated rules of (in)famous games like Space Opera, Chivalry & Sorcery, Aftermath, and even games like Flashing Blades or Daredevils, out came the small, unassuming boxed set of Psi World with slim rules that were very simple (by the standards of the time: medium complexity by modern standards) and yet contained within them one of the best systems for psionic powers ever put to paper, and had an implied setting with more depth than you’d expect from the low page count in the main rules box.

I had loads of fun in this game playing weak psis, strong psis (verging on abusive), and psi cops. And now nobody’s even heard of it.

ZDL, 6 months ago

Nobody cares “how it works” and “what really goes on”. They care about the outcomes.

And the outcomes are a festering pile of half-truths sculpted to meet a pre-defined narrative.

If I open up any news site anywhere in the world and read what it has to say on subjects I know something about, it takes little to no time to start racking up a large count of egregious errors of fact. And note here: errors of fact, not simplifications, etc. Outright incorrect information.

So when I extrapolate my findings in my own areas of expertise into the areas I lack expertise in, I have zero confidence that what I’m being told is correct or truthful.

So it doesn’t matter how things work. It doesn’t matter what really goes on. Whatever goes on and however it works, the output is factually incorrect and narrative-furthering. Apparently being “one of the most self-critical professions there is” isn’t helping.

Time to change how things work and what goes on, no?

ZDL, 6 months ago

Would “hit” not be defined by sales? Do we have sales figures?

ZDL, 6 months ago

I’ve never seen it. I’m sure it can happen in theory, but it doesn’t seem to be an issue in practice.

ZDL, 6 months ago

I got them from Taobao. I can’t imagine that they’re only available in China, though.

ZDL, 6 months ago

Apologies in advance for the quality. I suck at videography even more than I suck at photography.

Strange D10 Panning Video

ZDL, 6 months ago

… by my testing seem to be more than sufficiently random …

ZDL, 6 months ago

In style they’re very similar to ancient Chinese d18s, so … it could be that these are actually Chinese in origin.

ZDL, 6 months ago

I have no need for the sheer number of dice I have, but I have desire.

I got my literal gem dice (as in machined form semiprecious stones) because they were gorgeous. The same applies to my dichroic prism dice. I have my metal sets because I just like the feel of them; the heft in the hand and the satisfying thunk as they hit the dice tray from out the dice tower. I have several sets of dice because the colours appealed to me. (I tend to give these out to new players as I introduce them.) I have speciality dice (FUDGE/Fate dice, various Chinese dice, etc.) for the times I need them. And in the end it winds up with me having way more dice than I strictly speaking need.

But I regret none of them.

ZDL, 6 months ago

In my case because I want to avoid computers when playing, not increase my usage of them.

But of course that’s because I hate computers.

ZDL, 6 months ago

Indeed.

Storage mode

storage mode

Disassembled to show all pieces.

all parts displayed

Dice tower mode.

tower mode

Dice tower mode in action. (video link)

ZDL, 6 months ago

Yes. That’s exactly how it works here.

🙄

ZDL, 6 months ago

Yes. That’s exactly how it works. 🙄

https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=748387928721

https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=747181564375

https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=669507077727

https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=531090778965

https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=735841117624

https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=673183095318

https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=738609594310

ZDL, 6 months ago

I played Star Realms with a student I’m tutoring. And I usually play one or more games of Xiangqi every week.