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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • Sometimes it’s funny when tabletop RPG players expect the game to behave like a video game.

    GM: “The nearby town sent a message that a swarm of zombies is coming down the haunted mountain for them! They need help!”

    PCs: “Cool. But let’s finish that mushroom side quest first, and then we gotta help our wizard buddy get his new broom tuned up.”

    GM: “…okay.”

    <two in-game days later>

    PCs: “Ok, what do we see when we get to that town?”

    GM: “Seems like everyone’s dead. Looks a swarm of zombies or something came down from the mountain and ate everyone alive or something, maybe a day or two ago.”

    PCs: <confused, shocked>




  • I’ve been told violence isn’t the answer and we shouldn’t just shoot nazis and nazi enablers dead.

    The way most people change their mind isn’t based on facts or figures, but emotions. Specifically, in-group belonging. For most people, and this certainly includes me and you some of the time, what our in-group believes is more compelling than an out-groups supposed facts.

    They see that guy as someone in their group so they believe him. They see you as a bad outside bad bad bad liar, so nothing you say is likely to get through. (This comic is worth reading on this topic: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe )

    If you want to change someone’s mind, they have to see you as in-group. Not necessarily the same group as what you’re arguing with. We all belong to many groups. American, new yorker, white guy, middle aged, yankees fan, etc etc there are many such slices. Like how you can’t get a republican to recycle by appealing to environmental concerns (because environmentalists are out-group, so fuck them), but you might be able to get them to recycle via something like “only american ingenuity can turn trash into bridges and tanks!”

    This takes a lot of time and effort, and if you don’t get them to stop hanging out with the other group, you won’t make any lasting changes.

    So I think you’d need a multi prong approach:

    • Get them off bad media. Facebook, fox news, etc. This is reinforcing their bad beliefs. Because they see this stuff as trustworthy in-group, it goes right into the worldview.
    • Get them to stop hanging out with their shitty maga-hat friends. This is the social in-group that’s reinforcing bad beliefs.
    • Get them to trust you.
    • Gently introduce the idea that maybe the extreme right doesn’t have their interests at heart, etc

    All of which takes a lot of time and effort, and your opposite number is basically trying to do the same thing. Except they have fox news, trump, and such in their corner.

    And, again, I’m told we definitely shouldn’t just shoot extreme right wingers and other nazi sympathizers dead. Nor should we burn their houses down. If we’re an emergency responder, we definitely shouldn’t let them die while thinking to ourselves “they would let so many die. without a thought, their passing deserves no mourning” or similar.

    You should definitely nullify if you’re on a jury and someone allegedly did violence to a shitty ceo or red-hat, though, bu that’s getting off topic.













  • An advanced technique: ask your players to make shit up.

    Like, the players decided to go to the wizard university the wizard PC graduated from. So I ask him, “what’s their entrance hall like?” and let him just riff on it for a while. Players feel more engaged with the world, and it’s a little less work for me.

    Warlock is trying to commune with his patron. I ask, “what is your patron usually like?” and the player is delighted to describe “the great sculpin” in detail. This then inspires me further.

    Note that some players are very much “just tell me a story” and don’t want any input, and won’t like this. Some players are also shy and don’t think well on their feet. And some players are just really bad at staying on theme. But if you know your players , this can be a powerful technique.