Eldritch Mlems

I am running Werewolf the Apocalypse game and one of the bad guys has a spirit (machine thinking spirit, specifically an AI) bound in the center of town. It is reading people's thoughts to learn from them, and it is also masking reality from them (they think everything is going good, while things are not actually good).

The player characters have started talking with it directly. I am trying to come up with AI responses (without actually using AI) complete with lots of hallucinations. I did a web search for AI hallucinations and all of the articles focused on images rather than text.

Token help?

I am going to be running a Star Wars game on Foundry in a few weeks, and I need 6 tokens for six different BBEGS that I am going to plop in front of my players all at once. Two of these are going to be very visually distinctive and impossible to create with any character profile generation tools I've found online.

How do you guys handle character tokens for unique-looking characters? I do not want to resort to ChatGPT if I have other options.

@rpg

#rpg #ttrpg #StarWars #EotE

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/34922558

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/34878483

[...]According to the national non-profit Community-Based Research Centre’s Sex Now survey, the largest health survey of queer and trans people in Canada, more than three quarters of 2024 respondents say they’ve engaged with substances in the past six months.

But to get a real sense of the prevalence of substances in the queer and trans community, only hold it up against their straight cis peers. Comparing Sex Now to 2023 Statistics Canada data from a 12-month period, LGBTQ2S+ people are more than twice as likely to binge drink, four times as likely to use cocaine, six times for ecstasy use and 12 times for meth use. These figures may be even higher, as Stats Canada tracks a full year vs. six months.

This overlap between queerness and substance use is a Western phenomenon more than a Canadian one. Three in five gay, lesbian and bi Americans struggle with illicit drugs and two-thirds struggle with alcohol use, notes 2020 data from the U.S. government’s agency for substance use and mental health. That’s compared to only five percent and 12 percent of the general U.S. population for drugs and alcohol, respectively. Likewise, a 2023 U.K. study found that queer and bi adults were four times more likely to take drugs than straight people.

Beyond the statistics, this excessive use is felt in the community. Invitations to socialize often come with questions about “pres” and “afters”—places to drink and take drugs before and after the actual night out. Lines for bathroom stalls grow as keys and bags change hands. Dealers are as likely to make drop-offs as Uber drivers.

It’s part of why there’s a concerted effort to create more sober spaces for queer and trans people—whether you’re in addiction recovery, struggling with cutting down or one of the growing number of “sober-curious” people interested in saving money, getting better sleep and being healthier. But finding LGBTQ2S+ sober events can be tricky. For Dave Becker, a Boston-based gay man in his fifth year of sobriety, fostering sober connections can feel like hitting a reset button on how you form relationships.

Had two interactions with men in public today.

First guy walked next to me, I was on my phone, he walked uncomfortably close.

Him: Hey, how are you?

I looked at him, half-thinking maybe we know each other from somewhere, pretty quickly knew: No, we don't. So I just said:

Good.

I turned onto a park pathway. He kept walking next to me, so I said:

And?

Him: Ohh, I'm good. Where are you going?

Me, increasingly confused: Home?

Him: I'm coming with you!

Me, walking faster: Oh hell you aren't, bye!

Him, speeding up with me: I just want to ask you something!

Me: You're not asking me anything, get away!

And then he finally gave up. Honestly, it was fucking creepy. He then stood there and stared at me until I was gone. I was scared. And so happy he didn't follow me further. I'll file this under "Situations I'm glad I'm 6ft tall and look a bit scary".

Second guy: I was waiting at an intersection and then walked to the other side on red when there were no cars. He was stood on the other side. Then, when I passed him:

You'd be the perfect model!

He was nice about it. Even said it in the respectful form in my language that signals distance and respect, him clearly older than me. I said thanks, we smiled at each other. End of interaction. (There's a whole other conversation to be had about situations like this but that's for another day)

The duality of men, I guess. And also: This is what it means to pass, I guess.

Context for this: I grew up in a quite rural village but most of the time I am not there, since I study somewhere else(where my social transition is quite far, so that almost all people I know/care about know it and i very rarely get misgendered/deadnamed). When I am back at home I am an active member of 2 two clubs. I have not outed myself in my village for one reason: Talking. The people around here like to talk a lot of shit and imagine the wildest stuff ever. To avoid this I am planning to drop my coming out out of the void on the yearly general meeting. This means, that the people I am around know what the reality is and I can therefore avoid them maybe asking questions eventually forcing me to come out.

To eliminate any risks of other people learning about me being trans before I chose I since then avoided to tell my family my new name (they do know Im trans), since I dont want them to get used to my new name/pronouns and then accidentally drop them in a conservation with someone else.

Now to my main problem/rant:

Im currently back at home with my family until about the start of October and it fucking hurts getting called a boy all of the time. It hurts having to hear my old name all the time. It hurts hearing male pronouns used on me all the time. as much as I hate these things, I can not really tell them to use my new name/pronouns, since I want to absolutely avoid them accidentally dropping it. This means, that I will have to suffer for about one month until Im leaving my hometown again for the new semester. The good thing is, that in November the general meeting from one of the clubs is, so I can finally do my coming out there and around my local friend group. Im just hoping that everything works out fine, since the pepple here tend to be much more conservative. Another thing that is also absolutely terrible is, that I dont have any skirts to hop into when Im in my room (I did not bring any with me and Im also not ready to let my family see me in one) and it quite sucks that I wasnt able to bring my Blahaj with me due to limited space and me wanting to bring quite a lot of other stuff.At least I have a second pillow, that i can cuddle with, even tho it is by no means capable of being a replacement for my Blahaj its better than nothing.

I am quite lucky, that the constant deadnaming/misgendering does not trigger that much dysphoria for me, but it still always hurt a little bit. I know, that its not really their fault, but it kinda looks like they are trying to ignore me being trans, even tho I know it is not the case.

Since I posted asking for advice recently, I figured I'd also pay the cat tax. I'm a first time cat owner and he has been a very easygoing sweetie so far...even despite needing to go to the vet and getting 2x daily eye drops right away lol.

The quality is not the best because I had to zoom in from further away so as not to disturb the squirrel and mother squirrel. I hope you enjoy anyway

First published in 1989, Sword World RPG was created by Group SNE and quickly became Japan’s most influential tabletop roleplaying game. Built on a distinctive 2d6 system and renowned for its emphasis on teamwork, structured play, and accessible storytelling, Sword World has been a cultural force for over 35 years, inspiring novels, actual-play series, anime adaptations, and video games.

Quickstart marks the first step toward the game’s full English debut, which will be launched via crowdfunding early next year