Can confirm. I was gifted a bunch of Reddit cash for... er... I dunno, being around for a long time maybe. I spent it on giving gold and silver to posts or comments I enjoyed, but I certainly wasn't going to spend my actual money on it.
Try pickled onion - even sharper.
The little train that… awww, mum, effort, stop nagging me, can’t be bothered!
Never seen it, but I hear it's schtick is that all the characters are horrid.
A guy I used to know got annoyed with some student neighbours who were kind of arseholes, but he was mostly annoyed with them for their frequent late, loud parties - like partying until 04:00 in the morning, shouting and screaming, vomitting on the pavement in front of the houses, etc.
Phase 1 spite involved booking in lots of tradespeople to come and visit them early in the morning so, eg, carpet fitters coming to measure up a room in their house at 08:30 on a Saturday morning and so forth.
Phase 2 spite involved pissing in an empty washing up liquid bottle and then squeezing a little stream of piss in through their letter box whenever they weren't home. Not enough that it wouldn't dry in a couple of hours, but that was the aim. Their hallway carpet got smellier and smellier as more and more piss dried on it.
Eventually they moved out and the landlord has to replace the carpet. The only problem. was that no carpet fitters would come out to that property any more.
In the UK, one of the first modern (ie publicly salaried) police forces was the Metropolitan police, founded in 1829 on the principle of "policing by consent" rather than by force. In other words, our police uphold the law because we want them to not because they have shooters.
Additionally, politically, there was a lot of disquiet about the formation of a paramilitary arm of the government when the army had been used to repress and supress in living memory. So the police were created to be clearly distinct from an armed military.
In the 2021, the most recent year I could find easy data for, the UK had 4.7 deaths by firearms per 10,000,000 inhabitants. That's a pretty low rate (see here for more detail and comparisons with other countries). Most of the police here don't have guns. Most of the criminals here don't have guns. Most of the civilians here don't have guns.
I, also, don't have a gun and would find it pretty difficult to legally get one. That said, in the last decade, I've been clay pigeon shooting with shotguns a few times and target shooting with rifles a couple of times. I don't feel the need to tool up in my everyday life. If I want to go shooting, I can do, but I have no need or desire for a concealed carry permit for a handgun or any other firearm for self-defense purposes.
that’s when you send the new offer of a whopping $21.37
Pffft. Next offer goes in at $19.50
Runequest
No character classes: everyone can fight, everyone gets magic, everyone worships a god (with a few exceptions), and your character gets better at stuff they do or stuff they get training in. The closest there is to a character class is the choice of god your character worships (which dictates which Rune spells your character might have) but there is plenty of leeway to play very different worshippers of the same god.
No levels: your character gets better at stuff they do or stuff they get training in. As they progress in their god's cult they also get access to more Rune spells.
Intuitive percentile 'roll under' system: an absolute newbie who's never played any RPG before can look at their character sheet and understand how good their character is at their skills: "I only have 15% in Sneak, but a 90% Sword skill - reckon I'm going in swinging!'"
Hit locations: fights are very deadly and wounds matter, "Oh dear, my left leg's come off!"
Passions and Runes: these help guide characterisation,and can also boost relevant skill rolls in a role-playing driven way, e.g invoking your Love Family passion to try and augment your shield skill while defending your mother from a marauding broo.
Meaningful religions: your character's choice of deity and cult provides direction, flavour, and appropriate magic. Especially cool when characters get beefy enough to start engaging in heroquesting - part ceremonial ritual, part literal recreation of some story from the god time.
No alignment: your character's behaviour can be modified by their passions, eg "Love family" or "Hate trolls", and possibly by the requirements of whatever god you worship, but otherwise is yours to play as you see fit in the moment without wondering if you're being sufficiently chaotic neutral.
Characters are embedded in their family, their culture, and the cult of the god they worship: the game encourages connections to home, kith, kin, and cult making them more meaningful in game and, in the process, giving additional background elements to take the edge off murder hoboism (though if that's what the group really wants then that's a path they can go down (see MGF, next)).
YGMV & MGF: Greg Stafford, who created Glorantha, the world in which Runequest is set, was fond of two sayings. The first is "Your Glorantha May Vary". It is a fundamental expectation, upheld by Chaosium, that while they publish the 'canonical' version of Glorantha any and every GM has the right to mess with it for the games they run. Find the existence of feathered humanoids with the heads, bills, and webbed feet of ducks to be too ridiculous for your game table? Then excise them from the game with Greg's blessing! The second is the only rule that trumps YGMV, and that is that the GM should always strive for "Maximum Game Fun".
While we're on the subject of Glorantha, the world of Glorantha! It's large and complex and very well developed in some areas (notably Dragon Pass and Prax) but with plenty of space for a GM to insert their own creations. It is, without doubt, one of the contenders for best RPG setting of all time.
To continue on the subject of Glorantha, there is insanely deep and satisfying lore if you want to go full nerdgasm on it. But you can play and enjoy the game with a sliver-thin veneer of knowledge: "I'm playing a warrior who worships Humakt, the uncompromising god of honour and Death." The RQ starter set contains everything you need to get a real taste for the game (ie minimal lore) and is great value for money since it's what Chaosium hope will draw people in.
Ducks: ducks are cool and not to be under-estimated.
Dude outed himself when he told Janice his birthday was the 35th of March.
I was the tech director of a small video game start-up. Our investment dried up but I didn’t want to lay off our employees so I kept the company going, burning through my savings, and not taking a salary myself, while hoping the finance director could sort out new investment.
He couldn’t. We had to wind the company up anyway and I had nothing left. That lead to some hard times.
Sorry for the absolute potato quality!
Looking for a UK pixelfed server. One choice.
Do any furries have naked molerat as their fursona?
12
Another lighter dish to fight off the post-Christmas cheese coma!
Salmon en papillote with couscous, sun-dried tomatoes, and feta
Ingredients
- 4 skinless salmon fillets
- 125 ml vegetable stock
- 120g couscous
- 60g sun-dried tomatoes, in oil, sliced
- 100g feta
- ½ tsp dried oregano
Salsa
- 1 garlic clove, minced
- 1 handful of basil, finely chopped
- 1 tbsp capers
- 2 tbsp lemon juice
- 2 tbsp olive oil
Mix together all the salsa ingredients and season with salt and pepper.
Method
- Bring the vegetable stock to the boil in a pan. Stir in the couscous, cover, remove from the heat and stand for about 5 minutes. Remove the lid, fluff with a fork and let it cool slightly.
- Mix the tomatoes, feta, courgettes, remaining oil, oregano, salt and pepper into the couscous.
- Preheat the oven, or air fryer, to 180°C/360°F.
- Spread out four large pieces of baking paper. Put a salmon fillet in the centre of each piece of baking paper and top with some of the couscous. Press it down a little so the couscous forms a crust. Don't worry if some spills down the sides, it'll still be grand. Wrap the baking paper and try to make sure it's sealed. Place on a baking tray in the center of the oven, or in the basket of an air fryer. Cook for 20 minutes in the oven, or 15 minutes in the air fryer.
- To serve, cut open the parcels and drizzle with salsa.
After the excesses of the last few days I fancied something lighter (and which would use up some leftover chicken).
Tuscan chicken, bean, and spinach soup
Serves 4
Soup
• 1 medium diced onion
• 1 x diced red pepper
• 1 large diced carrot
• 2 fat cloves minced garlic
• 1.5 litres chicken stock
• 2 tsp dried marjoram
• 1 can cannellini beans, rinsed
• 100g baby spinach
• 400g shredded, cooked chicken
Pesto
• Fat handful of basil leaves
• 2 tbsp good olive oil
• ½ cup of finely grated Parmegiano Regiano
Make the pesto:
- Shove all the ingredients in a little blender.
- Blend.
Make the soup:
- If using raw chicken: season, cook, reserve, cool, shred.
- Gently fry onions, pepper, carrot, and garlic until soft, 10 minutes.
- Add stock and dried marjoram, bring to a simmer
- Add spinach, beans, shredded chicken, return to simmer for 5 minutes.
- Stir in the pesto.
- Season with salt and pepper.
- Serve with toast or crusty bread.
38
World War 1 Hand Grenade Mistaken For Potato Found In Chinese Chips Factory
(allthatsinteresting.com)
This post is not about the mythical origins of Glorantha but about how Greg Stafford began writing about it back in 1966.
This is from a Wayback Machine snapshot taken on )ctober 14th, 2018.
How I Discovered Glorantha
I HAVE BEEN FASCINATED with mythology for most of my life.
My first mythology book that I recall reading is Manual of Mythology, by Alexander S. Murray (published 1935). I still have that old book. It is a thick tome full of the euhemerized versions of Greek myth, with many pictures of marble statues and renaissance paintings.
Like most people, I was interested in the strange and interesting stories. I began reading other versions, like Bullfinch, which was not much different, really. And then other mythologies too — well, other mythologies readily available to a pre-teen with a library card. I was lucky in that by the time I was in sixth grade I had access to the adult library, too.
Then I started reading books about mythology. I was convinced by every book that I read. If it was about how all myths are variants of Sun Myths, then I was convinced of that. Then I read one about how they were all Seasonal Myths, and they were that; or whatever subject the book was about. It didn't take too long to realize they couldn't all be right, that none were entirely right, and that mythology was something else. So I kept reading. Hero-With-a-Thousand-Faces-cover
When I got into college I was delighted to find a huge section of even deeper books that I’d never had access to before and dove into those. We even had Joseph Campbell’s Hero of a Thousand Faces in one of my courses.
But I always had loved reading the stories, and those were in short supply. That is, there weren’t any new.
Now, at that time I’d never seen a book of fantasy fiction. I didn’t have that outlet, which was limited at the time anyway — we're talking 1966 here.
So one day I decided, “I’ll write my own mythology.”
I wrote one document, (reproduced below).
Then I wrote a little story about a guy named Snodal fighting a demon guardian, and put some notes about what he’d be doing. And thought, well, I need to know where his people came from, and so I wrote some stuff about Loskalm. But then I had to know where those people came from, so made some notes about the destruction of Seshneg. And had to know where they came from, and so on and so on.
The earliest materials weren’t as dense or sophisticated as the later ones. I didn’t have the breadth of knowledge to pack it in. It wasn’t until college that I started cramming on archeology, history sociology and religion.
But I did start writing the stories of the earliest kings of Seshnela. The first was the reign of King Froalar, which begins at the dawn of the first New Year in the world. It is about how Hrestol broke the Seshnegi caste system and instituted the new order of knights in order to combat the Pendali barbarians at the gates of his land. the-hobbit-cover
And so it began. I felt fantastic, documenting fantasy dynasties, enchanted realms, invented history, a made-up world.
Then one day I came across a copy of this weird book called The Hobbit in a book store, and then found Lord Of The Rings. I read the cover blurb and thought, “Damn, I’m not the first guy to do this.”
Ah, sweet innocence of youth, so long fled!
As, wonderful ignorance, so long driven out…
The First Glorantha Writing
I wrote this one night in 1966, in a moment of creativity, and it bore me into Glorantha. I laer discovered hat this is the only remains of a log of travellers who were fleeing the destruction of Seshnela at the end of the Second Age by the Luathela, and they later were instrumental in the foundation of the kingdom of Fronela.
Obviously, it was written in flet tip pen which has suffered slightly from some water, but it's still here!
Back and to the left.