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Mimes have no poker face- they wear their heart on their sleeve.
The Duckstacks are stacked against us
If you have ever examined an innocent1 6 sided dice, you may have found the sides had a bunch of dots on them, because the first gamblers read only in braille. They were all blind, you see, which is why they lived in a world of possibilities. Ancient gamblers determined that the optimal ratio of chance was six- Too few and you lose the excitement, too many and normal, average[sic] people can’t simulate the vast probabilities in their head. This wasn’t a problem for the early gamblers of course, who, being blind, were all statistical savants. But they used their advanced applications of statistics to predict the founding of a world on science, where the great science of possibilities would fall into neglect. Preparing for this catastrophe, they enacted a plan to keep statistics alive in the form of “games”, and scattered them throughout the galaxy. All dice are thousands of years old, and steadily influence our decisions at random to this day. If you don’t destroy them, nobody will. That much is a statistical certainty.
“Duck, that’s kind of excessive effort, I don’t really think they’re that bad.” You’re right. You might roll a 6 on them, and wouldn’t that feel good? But I urge you not to be deceived, because a 1 is equally likely2. This is the witchcraft they’ve put on dice, that you can want a good result, but get a bad one, or vice versa. This type of horror has no place in respectable society. If you are unable or lack the necessary equipment to destroy your dice, you must bury them. Six side up, six feet under, in double rows of three would be appropriate. Stick it to the primordial gamblers! Seal their artifacts away. Free society from their awful chains. Let them die.
Duckstack Cooking: Dungeons and Dragons
A Dungeonmaster’s Guide to making a game fun
After giving it some careful thought, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are a lot of dungeons in the world. Far too many to keep track of, and I don’t recommend trying. I’m only familiar with Pathfinder really, a dungeons and dragons variant somewhere between 3.5 and 5e. In any case I feel supporting Wizards of the Coast is immoral and they’re going down fast anyway so whatever, Pathfinder it is for me.
For those who don’t know what that is: Pathfinder (and similar tabletop RPGs) are a genre of game designed explicitly to disprove the K.I.S.S. principle. Every player has to first design a character to be able to play, which is a process that can take, you know, five to eight hours, if you’re serious. Then there is one player who is “dungeonmaster” who designs the world and basically plays “referee” on the characters interactions and progress. DnD groups tend to have a lot of players, but players generally really only control one character, in contrast to the DM manipulating all other characters the players might encounter. What I wish to emphasize is the DM (dungeonmaster) is a single point of failure for the whole thing, not just in writing the story but setting the pacing, populating the world, modulating the difficulty, everything it takes to make the game work and fun. And there are a lot of things you can do to mess the whole thing up. Some may find this view obscene and controversial, but I believe that dungeons and dragons should be fun, and it is more or less the DM’s job to do so. One of the most glaring obstacles to this, of course, is that nobody knows what they’re doing.
Nobody knows the rules, nobody knows where your campaign is going (including you, usually), nobody knows what anything in front of them means, and everybody has 10,000 variables they have to juggle before they even can figure out whether a move is a good idea (that’s a feature, not a bug). There are many possibilities and any given play session is going to be a mixed bag, but if you to develop the game to maximize each players tastes a part of your job is massively narrowing the options.
Dungeonmastering a game is like wooing a beautiful woman3, namely that you should never ask the players what they want to eat. Metaphysically, I mean. You will introduce an indecisiveness death spiral- “I don’t know, what do you want to eat?”. When you drop players in a massive open world, no matter how much pre-building you’ve done, they won’t even know what they even want to do. The trick for dating, sales, and similar fields is to instead present two to three options within the games mechanics, with somewhat clear implications of where that path will take them, and let them pick. Here’s one trick I do. In Pathfinder, every character has some bonuses to any of 30 or so skills, 10 of which are subsets of “knowledge”. So when players come into some unknown chamber, I go “okay, everyone roll a knowledge check of your choice.” This lets them steer within a very narrow range, and gives them clear expectations for what details I should give them. It makes the players feel in control, it gives an opportunity for stardom, lets them roleplay, everything, all just from presenting good directions.
As the dungeonmaster, your job to give directions, because like I said everyone is lost by default. Some of this is because you went 3 months since the last name and can’t remember what flower was on the signet on the innkeeper’s lapel or whatever, but also you’re the only one with any sort of map. What you need to keep in mind as the dedicated fun-steward for your entire group is that fun = participation in a roleplaying game. So the more directed your directionless adventure can be, the more people can do whatever their favorite part of dungeons and dragons is. This means, (this is the only place on the entire internet you will find this advice:) your best bang-for-your-buck skill in dungeon-mastering is speed.
This doesn’t mean railroading over players of course- it means minimizing air pockets. If they want to do some tricky thing in combat, you need to be able to supply (or fabricate) the rule from thin air, so all they have to do is roll the dice. There are a lot of ways play can still slow down, and I’m sure you want to have fun too, but mechanically, you’re the engine the game runs on, so you want to be in tip-top shape.
Should you be prepared? Yes. Preparation aids speed. Too detailed and you lose speed though so keep it broad, flexible, drag and drop. The only real key to flying by the seat of your pants is to write things down so that you can bring them back later, creating the impression of a tight story that was somehow planned all along. Most things are better with constraints, so your goal as DM is not to say yes to everything, but to set constraints in an interesting and enjoyable way, like a skate park, for people to test themselves on, and feel the wind flowing through their ears.
Duckstack History: Cooking
The kid is doing an increasing amount of our cooking, and his little brother is doing an increasing amount of ruining our cooking mid-process
Our kid is a total sweetheart, he sees his little brother toddling after some knives or whatever and is like “here you go!” every time
We were watching a video of an old 2d sonic game and he said to me “Papa, where’s the real sonic?”, aging me 40 years instantly
I guess he was constipated because he told us he didn’t want to poop because it was going to hurt. But then he looked at us and said “mama, I’m going to be brave to poop.” And proceeded to make extremely heroic constipated noises demonstrating his valor. His potty training is going great.
We introduced him to a new treat this week and he’s asked for them every day now. “Mama did you buy some more potater-tots?”
The toddler does downward dog when he’s really upset. His older brother does downward dog while watching TV on the couch.
Duckstack Reviews: great value chips (queso)
Nobody paid me for this section, I write it of my own free will, I do not have a great value potato chip (queso) at my mouth in the attitude of a threat in case I do not write this review
Walmart has their own knockoff brands of everything, including chips, and there are two of them with orange packaging. Normally I get the cheddar and sour cream chip when I need a treat. This time I got the other one.
I would have to say: This was not taste tested. I’m a professional taste tester of sorts, so I know that they kind of missed here. The Queso chip tastes less like queso than yellow laffy taffy tastes like banana, except it punches you in the tongue also, which laffy taffy does not do. If I had to describe the taste, I would say “something like cheesy raw peppercorns” which might be fine if you’re in the market for something like that, but it doesn’t taste like delightful fat, it kind of just tastes like something that is attacking you. Imagine sprinkling a raw mac’n’cheese flavor packet on a chip and eating it, except worse. The flavor is way too strong, not salty or sweet or even spicy. It isn’t good for dipping, it fails to check a single potato chip box. Instead, I submit, these chips should be considered more in the “inedible” category, and I would say that if you are in the chip aisle, you should consider the phrase “buyer beware” in terms of not buying great value orange potato chips on the basis of color.
Now I worry a little bit that I have overhyped these potato chips, that you will think I am being to harsh on them, just because they’re horrible. I want to emphasize that there are dozens of pringles flavors out there, and I have tried them all, and most of the pringles flavors are worse. But pringles come in entirely different packaging, so I don’t think anyone is going to be tricked into accidentally buying habanero pickle flavored pringles or whatever. You know you’re getting novelty when you get those. But these were disguised among the ruffles, lays, and other respectable brands, rather than properly segregated as they should have been. Am I upset? No. I’m just disappointed. To the extent that walmart is my son, I didn’t raise them to be like this.
I ate the whole bag, 3/10
We are excluding all criminal dices for the purposes of this hypothetical
In theory. In practice, and I take no pleasure to report this but we have observed this numerous times, you will roll nothing but ones and twos.
Dungeonmastering a game is like wooing a beautiful woman, who is roleplayed by a bunch of men, who are sitting at your board game table eating pizza and stuff.