TRPG General Chat

A. B.

00:25

Vampire: the Masquerade annoys me because all the fancy words are wrong! :-D

Well tried, somebody, but not entirely succeeded!

BESW

[sigh] Every time MacKinnon re-emerges I get to be annoyed all over again about how frequently TRPG people think my handle is endorsing his game.

@A.B. D&D's even worse, naturally.

A. B.

You know, I haven't really noticed it with D&D, with the memorable exception of the Gorgon, maybe because it doesn't try so hard to look terribly seriously real-world-archaic.

BESW

Most of D&D's vocabulary issues are that they're redefining culturally broad terms into specific terms of art. cf the name of almost every single class.

Yes, please go on about the difference between "druid," "cleric," and "monk," and tell me more about "arcane" vs "eldritch."

A. B.

Oh, well, yes, that. I kind of expect that, but the effects are silly now you mention it, if you think about them as real words with their usual meaning rather than technical terms.

"Monk" must particularly surprise new players, being as an actual monk would be a Cleric and definitely not a Monk. I suppose they're thinking of the Jet Li kind.

BESW

The big obvious problem is that they're erasing important and interesting cultural meanings in favor of generic pretend-historical pablum.

"Bard" my left buttcheek.

A. B.

00:34

They should have just called it "martial artist", since that's what it is, but I suppose they wanted it to sound like actual mediaeval talk rather than technical jargon, so as not to break up the story. From which perspective it's unfortunate, as you say, because it's not.

BESW

These are important words with real meanings. "Arcane" has basically lost all meaning now. And don't get me started on the actually profane misuses like "mana."

A. B.

"Bard" is at least slightly justifiable since it has got some bard in its DNA, but more minstrel.

Minstrel in appearance and habits, bard in that its performances are supposed to be actually magical.

Of course that's the standard version, according to the 5e rules it can be any performer regardless of fluff and then I don't know where we are.

Yeah, I don't care for "mana", seeing as how that is an actual religious term. (And doesn't even mean quite that, I think in Maori usage it's people who have mana, not objects or places, and it's not something you can use up. Is that right?) I don't know how that became so universal. Maybe because few enough people knew about the specific meaning that it seemed like a "generic term with no baggage".

BESW

Land can have mana, because land and humans are part of the same systems. But it's almost impossible to describe in English because our words keep trying to distinguish between social power and spiritual power in ways that "mana" doesn't.

Thing is, "druid" and "monk" are also derived from real-life sacred practices that the creators have no personal stake in except as an aesthetic.

A. B.

Yes, I remember that - "mana" seems to mean spiritual status but also implies social status. I learnt the (roughly) correct usage from a fluff story in Star Trek Online, of all places. There was a Maori engineer and she was talking about being a woman of mana.

You start to not know where to begin, with those class terms.

Yuuki

i'm not particularly okay with describing an "actual monk" as a D&D cleric

A. B.

00:45

I don't know what you'd call "druid" literally.

BESW

@Yuuki Yeah, they're mixing together religious and martial traditions from multiple cultures in deeply inappropriate ways, neither of which has any relationship to the Western priestly traditions that inform the "cleric" class (via Hammer horror films, so it's not like they're being exactly careful or respectful there either).

A. B.

@Yuuki Well, I mean, as you might get it in the context of a fantasy story. If there was one, and he drove off the zombies or something, he would be doing the job of a D&D "cleric" more than a D&D "monk" which has nothing to do with a Western "monk". Naturally most things in D&D are silly in the context of real life.

BESW

Druid

A druid was a member of the high-ranking class in ancient Celtic cultures. Druids were religious leaders as well as legal authorities, adjudicators, lorekeepers, medical professionals and political advisors. Druids left no written accounts. While they were reported to have been literate, they are believed to have been prevented by doctrine from recording their knowledge in written form. Their beliefs and practices are attested in some detail by their contemporaries from other cultures, such as the Romans and the Greeks. The earliest known references to the druids date to the fourth century BCE...

Yuuki

d&d's use of east asian culture has always felt... <words>. especially any settings that actually decide to have an asian-ish presence always have asians represented by one culture and that one culture is mock chinese

BESW

@Yuuki You're familiar with the Asians Represent podcast, I assume?

Yuuki

00:48

i actually don't llsten to many podcasts, though i probably should

BESW

It's a great resource for <words>.

A. B.

No, I mean, I know what an actual Druid was (vaguely) but I don't know what would be a literal description of what's included in the D&D "druid" class in the same way that "martial artist" would describe what the "monk" class is for.

BESW

@A.B. Romanticized nonsense, like the monk is Orientalist nonsense.

Yuuki

a celestial bureaucracy isn't present in all asian cultures. i don't know enough to say whether it's a specifically chinese thing, but it definitely feels reductive in any setting when the only asian-esque culture worships a celestial bureaucracy

even then, "worship" itself feels wrong too since that's not really how i would describe the relationship with religion that i am familiar with among members of my family

A. B.

Do they really? I haven't paid much attention to the Asian-like things in D&D, I take the view that what D&D does best is, well, dungeons and dragons. I did see that "Chinesey" alphabet that was apparently in a recent thing, and thought it was a bit cringey. :-D

BESW

00:51

@Yuuki Yeah. The whole D&D pantheon is a cultural monotheist's lens that doesn't even try to understand how other religious traditions approach the supernatural.

Mar 12 '20 at 10:00, by BESW

"Best Practices for Religious Representation, Part I: Check for Traps" and "Asian Representation and the Martial Arts" by James Hodes.

A. B.

(If you didn't see it, it was just ordinary English letters written in a slightly disguised way to look like Chinese character shapes. It was like a Sekrit Kode from a kids' puzzle book.)

Thinking about the "Druid" class, "shaman" is annoying, because that gets used as a generic term for that kind of thing, but it's actually another specific term, Mongolia and thereabouts, I think, but don't quote me on that.

Ironically, the one more specific meaning it's often given in its "generic politically correct term" usage, somebody who reckons to journey to the spirit world, isn't true of those ones!

BESW

Roughly, yeah. And then Western anthropologists co-opted it as a category term for any other culture's practices that seemed similar.

A lot of D&D's problems with cultural depictions are related to the compulsion of Western science to categorize in ways that reduce complex cultures to supposed commonalities. Like Yuuki says above, D&D has a concept of gods as beings demanding worship, so any religion D&D creates must be crammed into that mold.

A. B.

I read an article about it in a mythical-archaeology magazine one time. Did you know that "medicine man", which is one of the terms it's used as a supposedly politically correct substitute for, is not only a perfectly correct translation of the commonest Native American term but they're still using it themselves? I'm sure you do, though, you usually know more about this kind of thing than me.

BESW

Aye. Of course, "medicine man" is insulting when it's used incorrectly or condescendingly. But outsiders deciding that for a marginalized group and then also deciding what alternative to use instead, is A Thing That Happens.

A. B.

Yeah, the only cure for that is probably just to do your best to get it right, not to randomly decide to call it something else that is also wrong.

BESW

01:06

It's very much about sovereignty vs paternalism, and deciding what's best for other people without consulting them.

Yuuki

@A.B. ugh, i ~~hate~~ have a distaste for whenever a "foreign language" is basically just making up 26 glyphs that correspond with the modern English alphabet

it's particularly insulting when it's used for Chinese because Chinese is not an alphabetic language

A. B.

Yes, exactly, if you can't do better than make up a letter alphabet that just looks vaguely like an alphabet that the world and his dog knows is a word alphabet, don't bother. Maybe they think that a lot of their audience aren't interested in or haven't the brains for anything more complex than just a 26-letter alphabet that corresponds to the English one. But in that case those people probably aren't the ones that will bother using the fancy alphabets in their games anyway.

BESW

A whole bunch of alphabets popped up in 3.5 expansion materials all at once, all of them are the same 26-character cipher form, all of them have a similar style, and all of them are clearly made by someone with no formal experience in typography. Which leads me to assume somebody on the team got a free font-making program and made the ciphers as a lark.

A. B.

I bet the people that like codes and made-up languages would enjoy a bit of variety in how the scripts work, without it having to be exactly Chinese because it's not supposed to be China not that you'd know it.

Haha, that would explain a lot.

BESW

Especially since I haven't seen any new written language materials since, just those mid-2000s ones re-used with minor adjustments.

A. B.

01:14

As regards the "Asian" "gods", I suppose to make a game like D&D you've got to classify things in ways that make them comparable to each other. But if you're going to do that, some of those beings would still probably be better compared to something else in the "Western-ish" ones, rather than what those ones call "gods".

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at beginning of answer (34): Are a monk's fists considered weapons for the purpose of being targeted with weapon-empowering spells? by Marcos on rpg.SE (@Rubiksmoose)

A. B.

Don't know much about real-world Asian religions, but enough to know that a lot of what are translated as "gods" are on a completely different scale and rather different cultural role than, say, the Roman gods.

BESW

Except... things don't have to be comparable. Warlock patrons, elemental beings, natural forces, alignment powers, all have the same mechanical impact as the gods but use totally different lore to do it.

There's no reason to treat Chinese deities as equivalent to monotheist pantheons except for an arbitrary spasm of vocabulary.

A. B.

Well, that's what I mean, mechanically comparable and on the same general scale in game terms. Do you mean they use different terms for them and don't for the "Asian" "gods"?

BESW

I mean Yuuki's points about things like "worship."

There's no attempt to do anything more nuanced than re-name the existing D&D concepts.

Just like the "alphabet," it's the same thing except aEsThEtIc.

A. B.

01:20

Hmm, as I say I don't know much about how most Asian religions work, but I think I vaguely see what you're talking about. I take it they've given them the same kind of structure of temples, priests, etc. and that this is all wrong if they're supposed to be like Asian ones.

Lazy. Lazy even in game terms, because there's a lot of potentially interesting and different ideas there beyond just different clothes.

BESW

And again, a matter of power and sovereignty: if people from the cultures represented were in positions of authority on the teams making the materials, this wouldn't even be a question.

A. B.

You're not just annoying your Asian fans by imitating their legends and then telling them completely wrong, you're missing some good colour and variety, which surely is the point of putting different fictional countries in your games.

That's true. Since the problem is a function of them being written by foreigners who don't know much about the culture they're thinking of, one way to avoid it would be to get someone who does!

BESW

It's a sad time when the most convincing argument for treating entire groups of people with respect and agency is "you might make more money."

A. B.

Hah, yes. But if it works, at least it works. Unfortunately, even that doesn't seem to be working.

On the original subject, Vampire: the Masquerade does have a bad habit of using Fancy Words without much reference to what they mean or whether they make sense, and mashing different languages together in a way that looks daft.

MikeQ

I wonder if Paizo put forth some sort of effort into revamping the non-western-Europe parts of its setting as part of developing PF2, maybe by consulting actual people who can better represent those cultures. I'm guessing no.

A. B.

01:29

One thing that I've been noticing is silly is "fledgling", meaning a brand-new vampire that's still living with their "sire" (or ought to be), and "neonate", meaning the next lowest level, vampires that can fend for themselves but aren't anything higher ranking than that. Good words, but it ought to be the other way around.

I don't know anything about Pathfinder so can't comment. I take it they're making howlers in the same way as D&D.

MikeQ

Howlers? As in shouting magical red envelopes that are sent to teenage wizards?

A. B.

:-D

(are you just joking or do you actually not know that expression, if you do I won't bother explaining it.)

MikeQ

Well I know it now. In any case, the Pathfinder setting is a pseudo-earth and kinda includes parallels of earth's continents and cultures, but in a very oversimplified way. Lots of detail for the western-euro-fantasy analogue lands, everywhere else is sort of a compressed caricature of its real-world counterpart.

Anyhoo, Pathfinder has the same roots as D&D, and has the same cultural value assumptions built-in to its stories, so I think that means it has the same "howlers".

It's a pity because some of the more interesting Pathfinder adventures take place in these non-pseudomedieval settings, and I'd consider using the material, but I'm hesitant about how the real-world-analogue-people are portrayed. Dunno if anyone else here has found this same issue, or a possible solution.

Hot RPG Questions

01:58

4

Q: Does the spell Destructive Wave allow choosing hidden creatures as targets?

Many spells where you can select targets specify you must select targets that you can see, for example Seeming: This spell allows you to change the Appearance of any number of creatures that you can see within range. However there are some spells which don't require seeing. I am considering the...

BESW

Like with D&D and Wizards of the Coast, I'd be more concerned about Paizo's treatment of its employees than its fictional representations; both are problems with the former is more immediate and fixing it would go a long way to fixing the latter.

May 10 '19 at 9:59, by BESW

So, um, that Kingmaker 10th anniversary crowdfunder? I'm not saying don't do it, but check their receipts before you give them your credit card (a Twitter thread about Paizo's history of crowdfunding).

That said, there are a lot of self- and indie-published materials for both systems by RPGSEA and LATAM creators.

I would endorse those, because the money is going to the people whose cultures are being written about.

The Oracle

02:25

0

Q: What is a Community-awarded bounty supposed to motivate?

Bounties exist to motivate answerers, and help questions get the answers they deserve. A few weeks ago I received my first bounty, +50 for my answer to this question. It was a two year old question, but soon after I posted my answer, NautArch put a bounty on the question. In the related banner,...

discussion support

nitsua60

02:47

@TheOracle collegiality.

Yuuki

03:16

> Be careful when you back, because unlike Kickstarter, this platform charges you immediately. Oh, and for some parts of the world, the shipping was $999 because they hadn't figured out how to fix that yet and just went live anyway.

Charged. Immediately.

:|

BESW

It's almost like having an entire industry based on telling creators to be grateful to be exploited because it's a chance to Do What They Love, means all the nastiest and most exploitative industry practices rise to the top.

Yuuki

like, the crowdfunding model is so easy to abuse because you're essentially outsourcing capital to faceless masses that have very few options with regards to bargaining but charging. $999. immediately. just because an entry on a table is null

like, that's a check there that they have to implement. and instead of deciding to eat the shipping charge for a user for whom they don't have a location or charge calculated, they decided to charge a comically high amount immediately. that tells you all you need to know about that platform

there's no "whoops, we accidentally the code" there. you have to purposefully implement that.

BESW

There's similar "we lied to our employees and then made them eat it" stories behind that space game, whatever-it-was-called, Starfinder?

I can't find the details right now but it basically boiled down to saying that they were going to hire people to write the text on a per-word contract but then forcing salaried employees into crunch time to write the text on their existing salary.

(In particular with regard to expansion material, I think?)

So yeah, Paizo is better than WotC in the sense that getting shot in the foot is preferable to being mauled by an alligator.

Buy self-pub and small pub third-party materials from marginalized creators on itch.io, or DMs Guild for creators whose countries don't let them use itch.io.

Yuuki

03:37

arguably, that's worse. like i have a multitude of problems with the way that d&d interprets and appropriates my culture (and others), but in my opinion, this kind of financial harm is far more devastating. i live pretty comfortably because of my job, but i know the statistics: most americans would not be able to take a $400 charge (let alone $999) on anything without very real and irreparable harm to their quality of life

A. B.

OOPS.

BESW

I'm thinking about WotC's relationship with its employees, mostly. The gaslighting and abuse described by people like Orion Black, the coddling of Nazi sympathizers alongside the bullying of harrassment victims, and so forth.

Shalvenay

@Yuuki wow. that's pretty damning of their coding practices

A. B.

Or, apparently, not even oops. They deliberately coded that? What an incredibly stupid thing to do. The only point in coding what happens in the event of an error, however unlikely you think it is, is you're expecting that it's possible that it will one day get used. And that should clearly not be used. Who was that? WotC's website?

Yuuki

@A.B. the crowdfunding platform that paizo used

BESW

03:43

The whole Zak S/Mike Mearls debacle comes to mind, too, of course.

A. B.

@Yuuki :-P

Well, I don't know who those are or what happened, but apparently you do. All this seems like a good argument for buying third-party adventures off DriveThru - I tend to like those better, anyway.

BESW

If you've got a choice between itch.io and DTRPG, itch.io takes a smaller percentage so more money goes to the creator.

A. B.

Do itch.io stock D&D-compatible materials? I didn't know that, if so. I thought they only dealt in indie systems. Which are nice in some ways, but sometimes you're after the others. Good point about the percentages, if so. It's a tough business for authors.

BESW

04:03

@A.B. Physical games tagged "5e"

Physical games tagged "dnd"

Hot RPG Questions

04:45

7

Q: Inquisitors Kit, why does it have a spell component pouch?

As divine casters (with domains), inquisitors should require a divine focus suitable to their god or worship in order to cast their spells. So why does the inquisitors kit come with both a spell component pouch and a wooden divine focus? An inquisitor should never require a spell component pouch ...

pathfinder-1e equipment inquisitor

BESW

05:11

Crowdfunding for art on itch.io: 五德 (Wu De) - The Five Powers is a setting-agnostic Cooperative Storytelling Game powered by the Element Dice System, a system based on the east-asian philosophy of Yin & Yang and the 5 Powers, or Elements.

BESW

10:03

[throws hands up in the air] I had my sound through a third-party audio manager to make it possible to use computer output as audio input on Discord streams, because OSX can't just do that like Windows can. And it was working! And then I clicked a tickbox adjacent to the one I needed to click. And now I can't get it to work again.

AncientSwordRage

10:14

@BESW oh no

that sounds rough

BESW

It hasn't ruined anything that was working before I started, at least.

...okay, I've got it so Discord can stream my microphone OR my computer audio, and switching between them is a pain in the tuchus.

There's a workaround that involves having another program like Garage Band open in the background and adding its input to the multi-output device.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW oh lord that sounds painful

I've toyed with the idea of streaming/doing youtube/adding another podcast to the pile and having to meddle with audio/visual. But I think it would give my already anxious wife a heart attack

BESW

Garage Band: Hello, you've never used me! I must now download two gigs of updates.

AncientSwordRage

10:29

@BESW s/Garage Band/Magic Arena/ + s/never/recently/

AncientSwordRage

12:10

Do ether, grit and elan sound like ok resources for an RPG?

Akixkisu

What is the question here rpg.stackexchange.com/q/183572/44723 ?

BESW

@AncientSwordRage Anesthetic, sand, and a GitP character? Sounds unexpected!

AncientSwordRage

@BESW Quintessence, Moxy, Poise?

BESW

Are you trying to find words that players are likely to consider unusual or unfamiliar?

AncientSwordRage

@BESW the opposite 😞

BESW

12:19

Spirit, Guts, and Grace.

Medix2

@Akixkisu Yeah I have no idea, VTC

AncientSwordRage

But specialised enough they sounds specific to those traits

Akixkisu

@Medix2 Yeah since 5 people voted to reopen I thought I missed something obvious, but I tried parsing it multiple times and there are too many different questions there.

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@AncientSwordRage In terms of familiarity, quintessence and élan seem about equally familiar and evoke an idea of semi-mystical energy, grit looks a bit over-the-top, moxy seems like a fancy way of writing moxie and I know exactly one usage of that, and poise like it reflects either tactical considerations in a mêlée or ability to come off as graceful in a social situation (which seems both very different from élan). Ether is very familiar but unclear what it's meant in that list.

Medix2

@Akixkisu it's similar to this one

Akixkisu

12:28

@Medix2 albeit that one has a better definition with the condition "single event."

Of course it is still unclear what that would mean.

Medix2

For me the biggest problem is that I have absolutely no idea how they got their d6 number

Because 40*4 would be 160 which is even higher than their 144. And delayed blast fireball caps out at 32 regularly or 42 with Extended Spell Metamagic

BESW

Help Tiago Rolim fight COVID-19! Tiago Rolim is the author of NUMA, an OSR game about samurai frogs, is fighting against COVID-19 in a hospital right now. He is the father of two small kids and husband of an amazing woman. He needs your help right now. His healthcare refused to cover the ICU expenses and his bill is already absurdly high. 100% of the profit of this bundle is going directly to them.

3

If you want to dig into the Latin American RPG scene and help somebody out at the same time, this bundle's the one.

AncientSwordRage

12:50

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica They're meant to relate to the traits Mind (Aether), Soul (Elan) and Body (Grit) but I'm open to other names, and will probably put a sidebox up saying "Hey pick your own names for these resources"

The idea being that if a power asks for a resource, it comes from one pool

BESW

Mind/Soul/Body don't work?

What about taking a page from InSpectres and calling them by the way you acquire or hone them? Like... Study, Prayer, and Work

Medix2

Now I wonder why the Community Bot takes over bounties from deleted users... Hmmmm

AncientSwordRage

@BESW the first suggestion might work, as I further split the traits into Wit/Will, Charm/Heart and Brute/Agile

But the way you acquire those doesn't work with all of the subtraits. Especially prayer

Carcer

13:37

@Medix2 the data model requires it

Medix2

13:58

@Carcer Weird, but okay

bobble

@Medix2 same reason anonymous edits are attributed to Community

AncientSwordRage

I think that makes sense

Medix2

@bobble Yes but things like questions, answers, and post notices and comments are not

And anonymous users needing a signpost is very different from a deleted user needing one

But yeah, it is probably some "this field needs a functioning user attached to it" like Carcer said

bobble

9

Q: Are bounties given by deleted users maintained or deleted?

Indeed, there is a difference in the answers of the two moderators Grace Note and Nick Craver. I quote Grace Note in her comment on an answer to Bounties from deleted accounts should still be awarded; at least, the indicator should be removed: I'm here to explain to you why the current syste...

support reputation bounties deleted-accounts

Someone_Evil

Posts not being reassigned to community user is a licence thing, no?

bobble

14:11

You can get posts dissociated, though I'm not sure what happens if you do

Someone_Evil

@bobble It is credited to a (new?) userXX name. Looks the same as with deleted users

Or assigned to anon apparently. Hmm..

Akixkisu

14:45

The more I read about various people's stances on comments, the more I think that maybe I should propose a meta to amend the comment privilege page. We could treat comments as a permanent forum-like discussion place and move on from deleting them at all (unless they are abusive)

bobble

14:59

Can lowly mods edit that? I thought the help center was basically standardized across the network.

nitsua60

15:31

The mods cannot edit that. The bit at the beginning of the overall Help Center ("Welcome to RPG.SE!" and following paragraphs) is the customizable bit.

bobble

Are y'all planning to edit/make audience-specific texts for custom close reasons?

e.g. literature.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1549/…

Akixkisu

@nitsua60 Sure, but we could make a meta about ignoring it.

nitsua60

There are ones. [rummages]

@Akixkisu You absolutely could. I'd strongly recommend that any meta you post along those lines make patently clear how familiar you are with the previous meta discussions on comments and lays out the evidence that plainly exists that current comment-moderation practice is actively harming the site's goals and community.

Akixkisu

@nitsua60 I don't think that I would make that case, I'd simple invite to discuss the idea.

nitsua60

@bobble those ^^ are the community-specific close reasons we've created.

bobble

15:37

Well, yes. But that's not the only place close reasons are visible

Other people who pass by the question, depending on if they can close-vote or not, and the post owner, will see different descriptions on a closed question

Or can. I'm not entirely sure how it looks from the end of a post owner, for example

nitsua60

@bobble oh, you're talking about the 'responsive' close-notices. Sorry.

bobble

Yes, oops. Thought that would be clear from my link.

nitsua60

Yeah, you were fine. I'm just wooly-headed this particular morning....

Akixkisu

15:54

@nitsua60 maybe I should completely disengage with comments - thinking longer about a meta like that doesn't make me imagine it fruitful.

nitsua60

17:53

It's certainly the sort of meta that will likely bring lots of long-time members to the fore saying (with varying degrees of kindness and evidence) "we've got one of the best SNR stacks, I've been other places and this is so much better, if anything we need people to cull comments even more."
And some of those people will have the attitude of "why do we have to keep going over this, look at this meta from 2017."
I, personally, am of the opinion that while the mechanics of the Stack may not change (much) with time, the population that makes up the community and the context in which it sits a…

Hot RPG Questions

18:19

3

Q: Do Player characters know they are under the effect of a Death Tyrant's Negative Energy Cone?

My players will be going up against a Death Tyrant very soon. The Negative Energy Cone states it is an invisible cone. Does this mean player characters won't know they are affected by it?

dnd-5e monsters

Thomas Markov

20:37

@nitsua60 This. Compared to some (most? every?) other stacks, ours is incredibly lean on noise and heavy on signal for as much activity as we have.

Mithical

@nitsua60 As a sheep, aren't you wooly-headed every morning?

Thomas Markov

It may be that I’m biased toward the position of these long time members Nitsua is referring to because I’ve spent a good deal of time the last few weeks looking at old posts.

BESW

21:56

THE END IS NEAR: IT'S THE MÖRK BORG 24 HOUR MISERY JAM Hosted by Karl Druid. "4:3 Look to the West. Forth comes fire, and a horde, and the Kingdoms burn." Begin, finish, and submit your entry within the 24 hour submission period. Another twenty-four (24) hours later, voting closes and the most miserable entry is declared champion! There's no prize, but if the misery ends up happening in our dimension, we'll know who to blame.

nitsua60

@Mithical It's nice to structure one's life around a pre-loaded daily excuse =)

@ThomasMarkov Anything in particular have you spelunking?

Thomas Markov

22:19

Just trying to get some context to some of our older meta discussions. We’ve done a good job, I think, of having a lot of our meta guidance be able to stand on its own without needing to understand the broad main site issues they were addressing at the time. But it’s still interesting to go back and flip through posts from 2012 and see what the site was like then.

@nitsua60 It’s weird to see questions with 5+ answers scoring over 10 that would have been downvoted and deleted if they were posted today.

But I suppose most of them were fine for the time.

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