"We — users of products — are at war with the products we’re using and the people that make them. And right now, we’re losing."

-Have you visited a website on a phone recently, Ed Zitron

#enshittification

mostlysignssomeportents

"The truth is that the media is more afraid of bias than they are of misleading their readers. And while that seems like a slippery slope, and may very well be one, there must be room to inject the writer’s voice back into their work, and a willingness to call out bad actors as such, no matter how rich they are, no matter how big their products are, and no matter how willing they are to bark and scream that things are unfair as they accumulate more power."

-Meta making billions of dollars of profit is a sign of something wrong with society, not proof that it’s a "good company", Ed Zitron

#enshittification

mostlysignssomeportents

"Accepting the truth requires you to accept that most of the tech ecosystem is rotten, and that billions of dollars are made harassing and punishing billions of people every single day of their lives through the devices that we’re required to use to exist in the modern world. Most users suffer the consequences, and most media fails to account for them, and in turn people walk around knowing something is wrong but not knowing who to blame until somebody provides a convenient excuse"

-An undignified existence, Ed Zitron

#enshittification

mostlysignssomeportents

"Technology is our lives now. We wake up, we use our phone, we check our texts (three spam calls, two spam texts), we look at our bank balance (two-factor authentication check), we read the news (a quarter of the page is blocked by an advertisement asking for our email that's deliberately built to hide the button to get rid of it, or a login screen because we got logged in again), we check social media (after being shown an ad every two clicks), and then we log onto Slack (and feel a pang of anxiety as 15 different notifications appear). "

-Modern existence has become engulfed in sludge, Ed Zitron

#enshittification

mostlysignssomeportents reblogged

vintagerpg

That’s all there is for Role Aids, but plenty of other people made cool stuff for D&D. Like Bard Games. Better know for Atlantis and Talislanta, the company’s first products were a trio of booklets that expanded the roster of existing D&D classes. The first was The Compleat Alchemist (1982, this edition 1983).

This wasn’t the first attempt at an alchemist class. At least two appeared in Dragon Magazine, the first in 1981. I’m sure other attempts exist. This is probably the most exhaustive. It is hampered somewhat by the system neutrality — there weren’t best practices for that sort of thing yet, so the language often feels vague. I also wonder, broadly, why there was such interest in Alchemists as a class when they always seemed a stay at home sort. Still, there is a lot of interesting (if likely overpowered) stuff here.

The book starts off with lists of ingredients and other components, which is a valuable resource on its own. Then you get the level specific abilities, which are…too powerful, though mitigated by time and cost. 1st level, alchemists can brew elixirs, 2nd level they get powders, 3rd is venoms. Things start to get interesting with 4th, when they can make a number of devices, including a rod of detection. Level 5 is talismans, level 6 is potions, 7 is dusts, 8 is solvents, 9 is gases. 10 is essences, which include elixirs of elemental power. Level 11 comes with the ability to create a number of constructs and level 12 allows access to the aqua vitae and the creation of artificial life. I would counsel limiting the number of magical substances an alchemist can create before allowing a player to roll one up, dang.

Still, this is a clever book. The abilities all build on each other, and there is an assumption that the creation of the many magic items is contingent on rare materials which provide the impetus for adventuring. I’ve seen far less reasonable first efforts!