Starfield juergen_hubert • 1y ago • 39%

The Most Important Starfield Video Ever (The Jimquisition)

www.youtube.com

Welp, that dampened my enthusiasm for the game. I won't preorder it, and maybe wait until it is on a Sale for a reduced price.

Deutschland juergen_hubert • 1y ago • 33%

Räume für Rassismusbetroffene : Ein Ort ohne weiße Menschen?

Die Kommentare unter dem Artikel sind mal wieder unterirdisch. Ist es echt so schwer zu begreifen, daß Schwarze Menschen in Deutschland zumindest für ein paar Stunden mal Ruhe vom Bullshit der weißen Mehrheitsgesellschaft haben wollen?

Today I Learned juergen_hubert • 1y ago • 100%

TIL of a folk tale named "Death of the Seven Dwarves"

Basically, in this tale a farmer's girl lost her way in the forest and stumbled across a hut inhabited by seven dwarves. She asked them for a place to stay for the night, and received it (after the dwarves argued about who would get the honor of giving up his bed for the girl). A short term later, a farmer woman arrived. When the girl opened the door and explained that there was no more space, the farmer woman suspected her of being the lover of all seven dwarves, called her a slut ("Lumpenmaitschi" in the local dialect), and then fetched two men who killed the dwarves in the same night, buried the corpses in the dwarves' garden, and burned down the hut (the girl, however, had managed to escape). This tale is from an obscure 19th century folk tale collection from the Aargau Canton in Switzerland, and I don't *think* it has ever been translated into English. But I think I shall do so at the earliest opportunity.

Deutschland juergen_hubert • 1y ago • 95%

Linkliste für Sagensammlungen auf Wikisource

Für Leute, die sich an deutschen Sagen und Legenden interessieren: Viele der alten Sagensammlungen aus dem 19. Jahrhundert sind inzwischen digitalisiert und online erhältlich. Wikisource hat eine Link-Liste für diese Sammlungen (falls Ihr noch andere kennt, bitte hinzufügen!). Diese Liste war extrem hilfreich für meine eigenen Recherchen und Projekte, und man kann da sehr viel Zeit damit verbringen, die Sagenwelt bestimmter Gegenden zu erforschen. Einziger Schönheitsfehler: Die meisten dieser Bücher verwenden Frakturschrift. Aber auch daran kann man sich gewöhnen!

Confession time: I am not overly enamored of "rules-lite" RPG systems. As long as the system is coherent and well-thought out, I prefer it when the system has rules for all sorts of things - from tactical combat to running chases to social encounters to falling damage and so forth. I like GURPS, I like D&D5E, I like Pathfinder 2E (although I haven't gotten a chance to try it as much as I'd like). However, one thing that I want to be as simple as possible: NPC/monster creation. When I am the game master, I want to churn out the stats for enemies that the PCs can overcome as quickly as possible. Any time I spend on building NPC stat blocks is time I can't spend on working out fiendish adventure plots. Here are a few examples of NPC creation in different systems: **Horribad:** D&D 3.X, Pathfinder 1E. Too damn many derived values, templates, and so forth. Far too much math for far too little to show for it. **Bad:** Exalted 1E/2E. NPCs have all the same stats as PCs, of which there are lots. Plus lots of charms with overly long texts, in the case of Exalted NPCs. **Decent:** GURPS, D&D5E. The math isn't too complicated, and you can easily recycle and modify existing stat blocks - though you have to be careful so that these NPCs are balanced in a fight. Exalted 3E edges into this territory with their "Quick Character" concept - but they spoil it with insisting that "significant NPCs" should be built with all the same rules as player characters. **Good:** Storypath System, Exalted Essence. I love how they boil down all skills to: "This dice pool is for what the character is good at, this is what the character is okay at, and this dice pool is when they have to do something they have no real competence at" - and the GM can define these however they like, and even improvise this. Then you have a very few other stats like Health and Defense, and you are set apart from a few special qualities! I've started running Scion very recently, and I am very impressed with this. So, what other examples do you have of RPG systems that do NPC creation well - and which do it badly?

Technology juergen_hubert • 1y ago • 100%

Onyx Boox Tab Ultra C Review: Delightful Heavyweight

I am curious - has anyone tried out these color e-ink Android tablets with some popular drawing/painting apps? I have a reMarkable 2, which is decent for quick black & white sketching - but I *really* want a color e-ink tablet one day, and I want to make sure that color drawing and sketching works well with them.

Today I Learned juergen_hubert • 1y ago • 100%

TIL of "Deutsche Bauzeitung", a long-running German architecture and civil engineering magazine that was first published in 1867

People today underestimate just how much stuff was published in the 19th century - there were numerous journals and magazines dedicated to all sorts of topics. This magazine is definitely among the more interesting - it has lots of drawings, floorplans, and sketches of fantastic old buildings. I'll be sure to spend a lot of time browsing these!

Today I Learned juergen_hubert • 1y ago • 100%

TIL I learned of the "Tartarian Empire" conspiracy theory, which holds that all those large 19th century buildings were actually built by a prior global civilization that was destroyed by "mud floods"

I mean, how do you *deal* with something like that? There were so many buildings of that type because cities in the 19th century were growing rapidly thanks to growing populations and industrialization, and European Colonialism exported this kind of building style to the rest of the world. This is no great mystery, and there is ample documentary evidence for this. I wish I could believe that the adherents of this notion did so as a joke. But alas, here we are...

Two years ago, I decided to make a list of all the public domain, English-language folk tale collections I could find, and deposited them at Wikisource. If you need to research the folklore of any given region, then I hope that this list has you covered! Just take some of these works with a grain of salt - especially if the authors discuss a culture that is not their own. Most of these *are* from the 19th century, after all.