200 Word RPGs 2024

Each November, some people try to write a novel. Others would prefer to do as little writing as possible. For those who wish to challenge their ability to not write, we offer this alternative: producing a complete, playable roleplaying game in two hundred words or fewer.

This is the submission thread for the 2024 event, running from November 1st, 2024 through November 30th, 2024. Submission guidelines can be found in this blog's pinned post, here.

Collected entries for 2024-11-19:

Previous summaries: 2024-11-01, 2024-11-02, 2024-11-03, 2024-11-04, 2024-11-05, 2024-11-06, 2024-11-07, 2024-11-08, 2024-11-09/10, 2024-11-11/12, 2024-11-13, 2024-11-14, 2024-11-15, 2024-11-16/17, 2024-11-18

Another busy day, bringing us to 150 entries in total.

Honestly, at this point the event has already exceeded my expectations. When I promised not to piss everybody off this year by aggressively plugging the game jam multiple times per day like I did last time, I figured things would slow down a lot, and initial participation seemed to bear that out; there were fifteen entries in the first 24 hours this year, compared to fifty-one for the same span in 2023, and things dropped off quickly from there. Based on the first few days, I figured we'd probably get maybe 150 entries for 2024.

Well, we're at "maybe 150", and there are still over ten days ago. In fact, in spite of the much slower start, we seem to be gradually catching up to last year's total; the gap in the total number of entries by this time in November has narrowed from that initial gulf by more than 50%. I'm genuinely curious to see where this momentum will take us!

I am becoming aware of the effect a lack of trust in the media has had on people, paired with a dearth of research skills.

I'm thinking about the argument I got caught in yesterday- the subject of it doesn't matter.

Often, pseudoscience and misinformation comes packaged with a lot of very important sounding words, and the jargon gets to the point where it seems like a lot of work to fact check it. Which makes the 'I encourage you to do your own research' statements real obnoxious. If it's phrased in a way that's impossible to navigate, good luck.

It sucks, but you gotta.

If you don't want to fact check individual words, that's fine. That's a lot to ask of someone that's just trying to figure out whether something is true.

This is where we get into something called 'lateral research.' Instead of trying to draw a map to a sentence, you check the credibility of their source material.

This is your Snopes, your Fact Check/Media Bias, your Follow The Money.

Knowing more context about what someone is saying will save you a lot of time and energy.

If you're not sure about something, question it.

I feel like I've been throwing this around a LOT lately, but:

Practice SIFT! SIFT is based on lateral research and can be very helpful for these situations.

DON'T just share information without doing your due diligence.

whyyy the fuck does this not have more notes please rb this more often qwq

Well, I mean... probably because I posted it like an hour ago.

STOP

i have found this post and infographic and i want to share it

INVESTIGATE THE SOURCE

zetabrarian's blog says they are a socially progressive librarian monsterfucker, which a quick scroll through their blog seems to support. This makes them pretty cool but not necessarily the perfect source -- anyone can say they are a librarian, and surely not every librarian is correct about processing information

FIND BETTER COVERAGE

if i go to a search engine (in this case google via firefox) i see that several universities, libraries from large municipalities (like Los Angeles) as well as the BBC all agree that this is a real method experts in information fields recommend. I wouldn't necessarily take any single one of these sources as 100% credible, but they are individually reasonably reliable, and taken together indicate a high probability of factual information

TRACE TO ORIGINAL CONTEXT

A brief search reveals that the SIFT method was created by Mike Caulfield, who is a research scientist at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, where he studies the spread of online rumors and misinformation. This is an extremely good source of information for how to process information on the internet. As the creator of the SIFT method, he has taught thousands of teachers and students how to verify claims and sources through his workshops.

I could not find a post or page about SIFT written by Mike Caulfield himself, so i went to the University of Washington's website for this page about it, since that is the university that employs him.

It corroborates the above information, though there are a few notable differences. For example, under the "trace to original context" section in the Washington U. source (again, as close to the original as i could find) this step contains advice to check the date. This seems very good to include, as in the fast moving world of internet information, things become outdated or get updated very quickly, and yet first takes and outdated articles hang around and get shared for a long time.

EXTRA CREDIT

I personally find that it is important to outright search for the opposite information. For example, I put in a few searches like "Mike Caulfield discredited" "Mike Caulfield wrong" "SIFT method bad" etc. I found nothing showing me any indications this method has any problems. Interestingly, somehow this did turn up an article about news literacy on Medium, which was actually written by Mike Caulfield in April of 2017

"Consider the Source," was pretty much a catch phrase for my mother (who was an environmental / political activist in her earlier years, and a local newspaper journalist in her final years).

So, for what it's worth, here's some anecdotal (partial) corroboration to Mike Caulfield's findings.

Mother's advice for when you're in conversation with someone, and they say something incorrect (especially if it makes you mad): Instead of saying "You're Wrong!" say: "That's very interesting. Where did you learn/hear/get that?"

sorry but every time i see this image in game launcher i can only think of this

if you're transgender and need name ideas, may I direct you toward the nato alphabet because like. delta? november?? echo?? romeo is like the butchest name. please consider foxtrot. being named whiskey would be cool as hell. I know multiple transmascs who were a bit too into english lit and are named victor now. I've met people named sierra who were trans in every direction. maybe don't name yourself golf

Renegade renegade renegade renegade

Waking up feeling like shit and giving myself grace like

not to worry mutuals, I’ve recruited a halfling to detect any and all spike traps on your dashboard, just make sure not to scroll too fast so he has time to find them

yeah okay ill reblog that

child handling for the childless nurse

My current job has me working with children, which is kind of a weird shock after years in environments where a “young” patient is 40 years old.  Here’s my impressions so far:

Birth - 1 year: Essentially a small cute animal.  Handle accordingly; gently and affectionately, but relying heavily on the caregivers and with no real expectation of cooperation.

Age 1 - 2: Hates you.  Hates you so much.  You can smile, you can coo, you can attempt to soothe; they hate you anyway, because you’re a stranger and you’re scary and you’re touching them.  There’s no winning this so just get it over with as quickly and non-traumatically as possible.

Age 3 - 5: Nervous around medical things, but possible to soothe.  Easily upset, but also easily distracted from the thing that upset them.  Smartphone cartoons and “who wants a sticker?!!?!?” are key management techniques.

Age 6 - 10: Really cool, actually.  I did not realize kids were this cool.  Around this age they tend to be fairly outgoing, and super curious and eager to learn.  Absolutely do not babytalk; instead, flatter them with how grown-up they are, teach them some Fun Gross Medical Facts, and introduce potentially frightening experiences with “hey, you want to see something really cool?”

Age 11 - 14: Extremely variable.  Can be very childish or very mature, or rapidly switch from one mode to the other.  At this point you can almost treat them as an adult, just… a really sensitive and unpredictable adult.  Do not, under any circumstances, offer stickers.  (But they might grab one out of the bin anyway.)

Age 15 - 18: Basically an adult with severely limited life experience.  Treat as an adult who needs a little extra education with their care.  Keep parents out of the room as much as possible, unless the kid wants them there.  At this point you can go ahead and offer stickers again, because they’ll probably think it’s funny.  And they’ll want one.  Deep down, everyone wants a sticker.

This is also a pretty excellent guide to writing  kids of various ages

Some 2023 illustrations. I was trying to make a collection 👀

[Image Description: four pieces of artwork, each showing a different mother pokémon with her offspring.

End image description.]

I've been trying to spread this around to everyone, especially writers and artists, without spamming anyone.

First: Sky Follower Bridge. This is a plugin that enables you to follow any Twitter users you follow who also have Bluesky accounts. I've been running it every few days as Bluesky gets more users.

Second: importing your tweets to Bluesky. Here's a free method:

Then you can mass-delete your posts using this:

Deleting your account could allow someone else (like trolls or spammers) to take the name. Also, keeping your account allows you to run Sky Follower Bridge regularly.

The new terms of service go into effect Friday November 15th 2024.

Women are getting rid of their Trump supporting partners while they still legally can since they clearly don't give a shit about them or any other woman.

If you're thinking about getting a divorce, you should do it while you still can.

sasuke driving gaara to class at their shitty liberal arts school

you guys are so annoying. why do i have to see discourse every year that's like "was tolkien really a woke king or was he your conservative uncle?" the guy was a devout catholic and a genteel misogynist who maintained lifelong friendships with queer people and women, and this isn't even paradoxical because that was part of the upper-class oxford culture he was immersed in. tolkien told the nazis to fuck off (and in doing so demonstrated a real understanding of what racism is and why it's harmful, beyond simply "these guys are bad news because they're who my country is at war with right now") but his inner life was marked by internalized racism that is deeply and inextricably woven into the art that he made. he foolishly described himself as an anarcho-monarchist, and it's kind of crazy to see people on this website passionately arguing that he likely never meaningfully engaged with anarchist theory, because...yeah, no shit, of course he didn't. tolkien didn't have to engage with most sociopolitical theory because as an upper-class englishman of his position, he was never affected by any of the issues that this theory is concerned with. what is plainly obvious from reading both his fiction and letters is that tolkien's ideal political system was that the divinely ordained god-king would rise up and rule in perfect justice and humility; he didn't want a government, he wanted a king arthur, even though (obviously) he was aware that outcome was impossible. why is it so hard for people to accept that he was just some guy! his letters aren't a code you have to crack. no amount of arguing or tumblr-level analysis is going to one day reveal a rhetorically airtight internally consistent worldview spanning jrrt's fiction, academic work, and personal writings, thereby "solving" the question of whether he was a woke king or your conservative uncle. his ideology was extremely inconsistent because, at the end of the day, he was just some guy.

You could say I'm pretty knowledgeable about RPGs. That's right: I play D&D and Pathfinder. 😏

Is Rolemaster d&d or Pathfinder?

Definitely a D&D. Although Standard System and Unified could be considered Pathfinders.

i hate this in that horrible trolling way where i adore it. want to categorize all games onto being either a D&D or a Pathfinder, and it will even pain me as i'm doing it xD

Pointing at Apocalypse World: that's a D&D. Now, Blades in the Dark? Pathfinder.

decided to rank my games

middle aged lady on my bus just called someone's partner "your whimsical idiot boyfriend" over the phone . with sincere frustration might I add