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Cake day: June 27th, 2023

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  • Given HP Lovecraft’s known status as a paranoid raging bigot, I wonder if there’s some game where the elder gods are cool actually, the “cultists” are just people broadening their horizons into cosmic queer transhumanism, and the investigators are just close-minded people wishing to restore their own sense of normalcy. Which, true to form, about half the time awaken into these horizons anyway.






  • How isn’t there a massive overpopulation issue when these races have hundreds of years to procreate? Instead they always seem to be rarer than humans.

    This is one reason why I’d think actually making characters mature at the age of adulthood would make more sense. Of course there won’t be that many elves if raising each one is a century-long effort

    I mean, really, at some point we gotta draw a line in the sand and decide that some things just need to be handwaved for the sake of fantasy.

    Yeah, at the end of the day the main purpose of D&D is being a game so it’s understandable why they even it all out. That said I keep wondering if there could be a game that actually expressed these things, what would it be like? Maybe adventuring across ages with different heirs of humans who go from weak to strong extremely fast while elves start strong and grow slowly?

    Like @Eeyore_Syndrome was mentioning, the anime Frieren is really good at showing what that would really look like, how a character who can live so long can become much stronger while also losing track of time, and yet a human can match them in talent, even if not in training and experience.


  • If they need to reach adulthood at the same rate biologically so that they can defend themselves in the wild, why would a 100 yo elf ever be level 1?

    It sounds much weirder to consider that elves and dwarves keep acting like teenagers 30 to 80 years past their human-like rate of physical maturity. Or don’t they? What does adulthood even mean for them? Sometimes it sounds like they have a higher standard for maturity than humans, wouldn’t also be some form of neurological development? But I never seen that manifesting in any practical way.

    D&D worldbuilding is made a little awkward by how fantasy races age and develop drastically differently, but they also must become strong at the same pace, such that a 100yo elf can be completely inexperienced and grow at the same pace as a human during a week of adventuring. They try to have it both ways, but the more it’s explained, the more confusing it gets.




  • Boring AND conceited. I always roll my eyes at this trope of “unlike all these different fantasy beings that are good are specific things, we can be good at everything”. Seems like imagination falling short, that other beings would not have their own breadth of possibilities, and humans wouldn’t have their own unique advantages that are particular just to them.

    If I had to pick one thing, it would probably be something teamwork related. Humans are very social beings compared to other animals.