Apolinario Mabussy

This just reminded me of how great of a book that was. Time to reread it a decade after I first read it.

Same here!

Replying as a reminder

Having come from an Abrahamic school background, I’m curious about the sources for #3. It is true that the meaning of the story has been twisted to justify misogyny, and that was how it was taught to us back in school.

This is a nice way to look at anger. Kind of similar to something my therapist said a long time ago. #3 specifically is a huge one.

I have several!

Disco Elysium: I played Disco Elysium at a dark time in my life and seeing the protagonist hit absolute rock bottom and begin to cope with his myriad problems throughout the story amidst how fucked his situation (and the world’s) was resonated with me a lot. I could go on a lot longer about this game, but it definitely changed my perspective on life and the world.

Mr. Robot: What starts out as a story about a hacker and the ethics of technology ends up as a look at personal trauma and coping mechanisms. As someone in tech who’s dealt with a lot of mental health issues throughout my life, I (and my sister) saw a lot of me reflected in Elliot as well.

A lot of similarities between those two pieces of media, lol

nice catch, haha!

For most things in life I generally follow Adam Savage’s advice: “Buy cheap tools until you know what you really need from that tool, then buy the best version you can afford.”

However, when it comes to things that are related to safety or protect you from harm the more expensive/high quality they get, that advice goes out the window. Case in point, PC PSUs. You probably don’t want your newly built PC to burst in flames because you skimped on it to buy a poorly rated PSU.

This is the first time I have heard of FATE and that is interesting! From what I’m reading, it’s highly free-form, with stuff normally associated with characters or the setting being referred to as aspects (like some kind of adjective or attributes of a programming class), which can be called upon to give bonuses provided you have enough fate points). The free-form part comes from the aspects being basically anything related to the characters/setting at hand. I guess it does put a lot of onus on both the DM and the player to collaboratively figure out how to find creative solutions to problems, but in a way that isn’t mechanically restricted.

From what I’ve seen from the suggestions so far, rules-lite/abstract helps to mitigate some of the rube-goldbergy-mad-contraption-tzeentchian-ness that seems to be inherent in rpgs (and probably human nature lol), but not by “restricting” players in a strictly defined box of rules. Rather, rules-lite systems allow for the rube-goldbergy-mad-contraption-tzeentchian-ness to feel less like breaking the system and more like building the system (within reason and the DM’s judgment), which is huge. So either that or a heavy narrative focus seems to work well in theory.

Oh don’t get me wrong, I play D&D and love it as well haha

I was just curious about other systems and how their approaches to rules, balance, and storytelling affect how players play as well (and DMs DM), seeing as there’s a myriad of different systems each with different goals and mechanics. I haven’t played any other system on the tabletop, as my group hasn’t really tried playing other systems yet (only crpgs based on other systems, plus me reading manuals and rulesets because why not)

I can see how a rules lite system would prevent random pushing of the system until it breaks type of gameplay, ala PbtA games. Plus with more emphasis on crafting a narrative vs focusing on the best combination of stats/skills/interactions, there’s less incentive to turn the mechanical knobs until something ends up broken.

What would examples of alternative TTRPGs be? And what characteristics would they have that would prevent the “LULZRANDOM We’re breaking the system” type of gameplay?

I’m thinking maybe crunchier and more in-depth rules ala Pathfinder or GURPS, since the barrier-to-break is much higher due to having to read more, but I’m just guessing as a relative ttrpg novice here haha

It probably would, butterfly effect and all. That’s part of the reason why I’m trying to evaluate why I do the things I do, trying to see how they impact other people more versus in my youth. It might be small, but enough small things do add up, compound even.

Same here! Most people were very supportive and we commiserated a lot about our majors. And the same was the case for the entire engineering department.

The only anecdote I know about which is similar to the hyper-competitiveness in the top comment is from a friend who was a CS major in a different university but with a heavy entrepreneurship/business slant.