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Meta Spins Casino	100% up to 1 BTC	0.0001 BTC, 0.01 ETH/LTC, 5 USDT/USDC, 0.001 BCH, 10 TRX, 1 ADA/DOGE	New customers only. Must be 21+. VPN friendly crypto casino
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7 bit casino	The welcome package at 7 Bit Casino is a four-part bonus, and you can unlock deposit bonuses and free spins to use as follows: Deposit 1: Receive a 100% deposit match up to 1.5 BTC and 100 free spins. Wagering requirements of 35x apply. Deposit 2: Receive a 75% deposit match up to 1.25 BTC and 100 free spins.	You can deposit a minimum of 10 USD, and withdraw a minimum of 20 USD.	Must be 21+, not available in the USA in most deposit methods, available in crypto. VPN friendly
Stake	250K Gold Coins and an additional $25 Stake Cash	At Stake, you don't actually need to make a real-money deposit to start playing. The platform uses virtual tokens like Gold Coins and Stake Cash. However, if you want to buy Gold Coin packages, the minimum amount required is equivalent to $5 in cryptocurrency.	21+. in USA except: Idaho, Kentucky, Michigan, Nevada, New York, Vermont, Washington

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Note: Stake isn't available in Idaho, Kentucky, Michigan, Nevada, New York, Vermont, and Washington.
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The second installment of my "Yes, No, Maybe So" slate of predictions, where I lay out my wide pool of contenders and weigh each of their pros and cons. My first entry for the Best Picture field was received well enough, so I figured I'd keep going. I hope these are fun to parse through and prove useful when you make your own predictions.
I'm sure I'm leaving out some viable contenders, but these are the 20 names that stood out to me the most while surveying the field:

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

ANORA (Neon) Mikey Madison (No previous nominations; 25-years-old) Role: Anora, a Brooklyn sex worker who seizes her shot at marrying into royalty. Yes: She's carved out a nice reputation as a fearless actor. Baker is on a steady roll of mounting acclaim, and this project could really uncork her as a force of nature. No: Mikey goes for it in every role, but she's not everybody's cup of tea. Her style might be too eccentric for the median voter. Simon Rex can attest that knocking a Sean Baker leading role out of park is more useful for indie cred than Academy gold. Maybe So: If the movie nabs a big honor at Cannes -- Best Actress, perhaps? -- she'll definitely be in the conversation.
BLITZ (Apple Original Films) Saoirse Ronan (Four previous nominations; 30-years-old) Role: Unspecified, but presumably a young woman trying to survive the London Blitz. Yes: She's broken records by racking up nominations before even turning 30; a win feels more life a matter of "when" than "if." And what could be a more prime opportunity than starring in a Steve McQueen film that looks like a frontrunner on paper? No: The parameters of her role are still unclear. She might be more of a supporting player than everyone is presuming, and it's possible she doesn't even have the standout part among the cast. Maybe So: It doesn't look like The Outrun is going far in any awards conversation, but it was a very recent reminder of how much she can elevate a movie that otherwise wouldn't drum up hullabaloo. And if Blitz is strong enough, she could ride the wave on the strength of her reputation even if the role isn't a standout.
CHALLENGERS (Amazon MGM Studios) Zendaya (No previous nominations; 27-years-old) Role: Tashi Donaldson, a prodigy tennis player who becomes embroiled in a throuple with two other hot shots. Yes: She's having a helluva 2024, dominating springtime with Dune: Part Two and Challengers. She gets to be complicated, driven and highly physical in a star vehicle that worships the ground she walks on. Glowing reviews and an adult film that makes great use of her star power. No: Early release, and credit to her is heavily balanced with Faist and O'Connor (much to the movie's artistic benefit). Can she weather months of competition and short memories? Maybe So: When you've reached the level of superstardom that Zendaya has, sometimes the Academy wants to welcome you to the club at the first opportunity. When your vehicle is this good, admiration and affection can grow instead of recede over the year.
EMMANUELLE (Neon) Noémie Merlant (No previous nominations; 35-years-old) Role: Emmanuelle, a young woman following her muse through a series of erotic adventures. Yes: Merlant is a star in France and is recognizable to Hollywood thanks to her performance in Portrait of a Lady on Fire. She's pairing up with the promising Audrey Diwan. She could have a similar trajectory as Sandra Hüller last year as a respected European actor getting their crossover moment. No: A "series of erotic adventures" isn't as dramatically potent as "did this mercurial author murder her husband?", you know what I mean? The movie might be a tough sell to Hollywood, even if it's critically respected. Maybe So: The film isn't playing at Cannes, but if it makes a splash during the fall festivals then she could be in play with an increasingly international Academy.
THE FIRE INSIDE (Amazon MGM Studios) Ryan Destiny (No previous nominations; 29-years-old) Role: Claressa 'T-Rex' Shields, a boxer from Flint, Michigan who trained to become the first woman in her country's history to win an Olympic gold medal in the sport. Yes: Best known as one of the stars of the Fox series Star, Destiny could be one of the big breakouts of the year. A physically demanding portrayal of a real-life sports star in an inspirational true story could slingshot her into stardom, capped off with an Oscar nomination. No: She's not particularly well-known. Directorial debuts by cinematographers have a cursed history. The rumored release date is in August -- it might be a pure commercial play. Maybe So: Even if the movie isn't in the awards conversation, it could go a long way in elevating her for future consideration.
HARD TRUTHS (Bleecker Street Media) Marianne Jean-Baptiste (One previous nominations; 57-years-old) Role: Unspecified, but presumably the focus of the movie's exploration of the contemporary world. Yes: Reuniting with Leigh since their fruitful collaboration on Secrets & Lies, which nabbed her an Oscar nomination. It'd be great if they make magic again and are rewarded for it. No: Bleecker Street is a minor league campaigner. It's been nearly 30 years since she was nominated and her profile has quieted considerably. Mike Leigh hasn't directed anyone to an Oscar nomination since Vera Drake two decades ago. Maybe So: The BAFTA constituency could make a huge difference if they throw their weight behind her and the film.
HEDDA (No Distributor) Tessa Thompson (No previous nominations; 40-years-old) Role: Hedda Gabler, newly married and bored with both her marriage and life, seeks to influence a human fate for the first time. Yes: One of the more exciting actors of her generation, she's spent the past decade doing a mix of commercial projects and small indies. Passing was a promising step towards the awards conversation, but she hasn't been playing in that arena up until now. How about a Henrik Ibsen adaptation, reuniting with her Little Woods director Nia DaCosta? That could do the trick. No: Will the movie even come out this year? Even if it plays in the fall festivals, it might get pocketed for 2025. Play adaptations are often stagey; could this be written off as a neat creative exercise rather than the real deal? Maybe So: The material is indisputably dramatic and weighty. DaCosta could be approaching this with fire in her belly after the reportedly frustrating experience on The Marvels. If the movie is arresting, she may have crafted a great awards vehicle for her star.
HERE (Sony Pictures) Robin Wright (No previous nominations; 58-years-old) Role: Unspecified, but presumably the matriarch in a family story "capturing the human experience in its purest form." Yes: Wright is one of the most prominent actors of her generation without an Oscar nod to her name. She became an Emmy mainstay with House of Cards. Maybe reuniting with her Forrest Gump director and co-star could finally get her into the Academy club? No: Zemeckis' output has skewed more towards "disaster" than "hit" for a while now. The pretentious log line doesn't bode well for this being a well-considered return to form. Maybe So: If this actually is a return to form for Zemeckis and a great spotlight for Wright, the narrative of her being the odd one out on Gump's success can only help her case.
HIS THREE DAUGHTERS (Netflix) Natasha Lyonne (No previous nominations; 45-years-old) Role: Rachel, a dutiful daughter who reunites with her fractious sisters when their father becomes terminally ill. Yes: Lyonne's graduated to the status of national treasure over the past decade and she's gotten career-best notices for this critical hit from last year's fall festivals. Netflix is a great backer for nabbing an acting nomination. The film's overall strong acclaim only helps her. No: She shares the limelight with Carrie Coon and Elizabeth Olsen. Will they even campaign her lead, or try their luck with the supporting category instead? Industry insiders saw this performance months ago; will the appeal endure when new and shinier contenders materialize? Maybe So: The Netflix effect cannot be underestimated. Even if the film doesn't become a package contender, her performance will be seen by many and that can make all the difference.
JANET PLANET (A24) Julianne Nicholson (No previous nominations; 52-years-old) Role: Janet, a spirited mother who we see through the adoring eyes of her codependent daughter. Yes: Rapturous reviews from last year's fall festivals with career-best notices for Nicholson. A24 is a savvy distributor and Nicholson's Emmy win for her turn in Mare of Easttown has upped her profile. No: Summer release date. It's a small film, and Nicholson is one of those hard-working actors who can be easily taken for granted amid a field of showy turns. Maybe So: If critics rally around Nicholson and keep her in the conversation through awards season, this could be the indie-performance-that-could.
JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX (Warner Bros.) Lady Gaga (One previous nominations; 38-years-old) Role: Harley Quinn, an institutionalized rebel who takes a shine to Arthur 'Joker' Fleck, embarking on a bad romance together. Yes: Her casting perked up the ears of people who didn't even like the first installment. Gaga starring in anything is an event, and this sequel is a musical -- playing exactly to her strengths. Going toe to toe with Phoenix in his Oscar-winning role will leverage her star power in spades. If she steals the movie from him, watch out. No: Gaga was accepted by the Academy with a grounded performance in A Star is Born -- less so with high camp like House of Gucci. She was pointedly ignored for the latter even though her precursor run pointed towards her being a frontrunner. Does the Academy plan on being rude to her going forward, rejecting her theatrical turns and really making her work for it? Maybe So: The movie's going to be a huge hit, and you just know she'll be recording an original song. If she's a viable nominee, she feels like a threat for the win.
KINDS OF KINDNESS (Searchlight Pictures) Emma Stone (Two previous wins and two nominations; 35-years-old) Role: Multiple roles across three different stories, but the most prominent appears to be a woman searching for the messiah of a new religious movement. Yes: Stone has graduated into a rarefied league that few stars ever get to touch. She's fresh off a second Oscar and reuniting with Lanthimos, striking while the iron is hot. No: Anthology films don't lend themselves to roles that voters can glom onto. Even if she brings the house down, this might be viewed more as an exercise than an achievement, Maybe So: Stone is arguably growing into the Meryl Streep of her generation. We may have entered a new era where the Academy makes room for her no matter how unconventional the project.
THE LAST SHOWGIRL (No distributor) Pamela Anderson (No previous nominations; 56-years-old) Role: A fifty-something showgirl who must reassess her life after her Vegas gig closes up shop. Yes: Anderson has always had higher artistic aspirations than her career has afforded her. Gia Coppola has exhibited talent before, and this metatextual indie vehicle could be an ideal showcase for the 90s sex symbol's chops. No: Anderson has never been taken seriously as an actor before, and she comes with a lot of baggage. Even in an optimistic scenario, the movie might be received as a solid showcase but nothing revelatory. Maybe So: If the film makes a splash at the festivals, Anderson's narrative could be irresistible on the campaign trail. It would certainly make for one of the more triumphant stories of the season.
MARIA (No Distributor) Angelina Jolie (One previous win and one nomination; 48-years-old) Role: Maria Callas, a legendary opera singer facing the end of her life as her chronic condition worsens. Yes: Jolie is one of those movie stars where you feel she'd have a lot more nominations under her belt if she just tackled awards-friendly projects more often. She's playing a famous icon and working with Pablo Larraín, who's been on a hot streak with getting leading ladies nominated in biopic roles. No: Larraín's frosty star biopics have been received more and more coldly with each new installment. Kristen Stewart's nod for Spencer was a squeaker. Streaks are made to be broken, and this one's been on an increasingly strained thread. Maybe So: Jolie hasn't put herself out there in this arena for a while now; the sheer novelty of her starring in something this ambitious again will draw a lot of attention.
MOTHER MARY (A24) Anne Hathaway (One previous win and one nomination; 41-years-old) Role: Not entirely clear, but either the fashion designer or pop star in the film's central relationship. Yes: Hathaway's been generating some admiring press for sizzling up the (small) screen with her return to romantic comedy in The Idea of You. She's pairing up with David Lowery, who's quietly been one of the best American filmmakers out there. Could this glitzy vehicle be her return to the awards conversation? No: Is she even the lead role, or will the film tilt more towards Michaela Coel? Lowery's got an admirable body of work, but he hasn't broken through with the Oscars yet. Maybe So: Hathaway inexplicably became a punching bag for the internet after her 2013 win for Les Miz, but she's reemerged with no fucks to give towards the haters. She may be entering a resilient new era of being taken seriously again.
NIGHTBITCH (Searchlight Pictures) Amy Adams (Six previous nominations; 49-years-old) Role: A dissatisfied stay-at-home mom who begins to worry she might be turning into a canine beast. Yes: Adams is right alongside Bradley Cooper as the most recognized actor of her generation without ever taking home an Oscar trophy. She is glaringly overdue, and who better than the massively talented Marielle Heller to give her the star vehicle to finally propel her to long-awaited victory? No: The premise is aggressively strange. Adams is beloved, but her profile's been severely degraded after a series of disastrous choices. Is a whacko body horror movie going to pull her out of her career rut? Maybe So: This project was initially slated to go directly to Hulu, but Searchlight Pictures has since had an about-face and announced it will have a theatrical run. That indicates confidence, and you couldn't ask for a better distributor in the awards race.
PARTHENOPE (A24) Celeste Dalla Porta (No previous nominations; 26-years-old) Role: Parthenope, a woman born of the sea who looks for love in 1950s Naples. Yes: You could do a lot worse than making your theatrical debut starring in a Paolo Sorrentino picture. Dalla Porta is brand new, acting in some Italian TV before being cast in the titular role of the auteur's new feature. If the film is a Cannes sensation and Oscar breakout for Sorrentino, you'd imagine that the Parthenope of Parthenope would partake in the spoils. No: She's completely unknown, and Sorrentino has yet to hit with the Academy outside of the International Feature category. Will this be an actual acting showcase, or will she be relegated to being just the sensual muse of this odyssey? Maybe So: If Parthenope hits with the increasingly international Academy, she could be swept up along with the ride. Every year has a couple unknowns who are catapulted to the Oscar spotlight.
THE ROOM NEXT DOOR (Sony Pictures Classics) Tilda Swinton (One previous win; 63-years-old) Role: Martha, a long-suffering daughter who hits an unbridgeable impasse with her mother after a misunderstanding. Yes: The great Tilda Swinton teaming up with the legendary Pedro Almodóvar for his feature-length English debut. It has the potential to be dramatically rich and a spotlight of her talents. No: Will the movie even be out this year? Swinton is a legend, but she hasn't been recognized by the Academy since her win for Michael Clayton despite a string of great performances. Was it just a passing fancy that can't be replicated? Maybe So: The pedigree alone will be catnip for a savvy campaigner like Sony Pictures Classics.
THE SUMMER BOOK (No Distributor) Glenn Close (Eight previous nominations; 77-years-old) Role: A grandmother vacationing with her granddaughter on a Finland isle, where they bond over life and death. Yes: Close probably has the strongest "overdue" narrative out of any living actor, and this is a ripe role from a well-received book. The existentialism of her role only compounds how little time the Academy has left to finally recognize her. No: Will the film be out this year? Director Charlie McDowell's track record hasn't been strong enough to give a high degree of confidence for this adaptation. Maybe So: Admit it: Close made a lot of new fans by being a great sport and twerking to "Da Butt" at the 2021 Oscars. She will always be someone to root for.
THELMA (Magnolia Pictures) June Squibb (One previous nominations; 94-years-old) Role: A nonagenarian who seeks vengeance when she's robbed by a phone scammer. Yes: Squibb is probably the most beloved actor in their 90s working today, and this Sundance hit is a great showcase for her charms. No: The movie is a broad comedy and a summer release. Magnolia Pictures is a minor league campaigner. This is plainly a commercial play. Maybe So: There's something beautiful about Squibb starring in a gonzo action movie at her age. She'd be the oldest nominee ever by a considerable margin if she were recognized -- that's a juicy narrative.

I just started playing RPGs again after about a(nother) 10-yearish hiatus. My choice has been to try DCC and Shadowdark. I've got a handful of plays of DCC under the belt, and my first Shadowdark game was this week and another next week.
I've formed some preliminary opinions, and I intend to continue on with both games to sift the experiences, but here's where I'm coming in:
DCC: Very fun! I avidly played what we call B/X in about 1980, so I'm a legacy RPG player (but have played on and off right up to 5e). DCC feels like the best moments of B/X D&D distilled into its own game, and I very much endorse this. The sometimes-extreme outcomes create emergent gameplay and can knock a player-based agenda off course. People call DCC gonzo, but there's a "truthiness" to that unpredictability! Feels perilous and at the same time funny.
Shadowdark: Only one play in, but I enjoyed playing it and will play again. This was in-person play where all my DCC games have been online, and so I really enjoyed the interaction at the table. I'm not really soaked in 5e so drawing comparisons with 5e isn't relevant for me. That said, it played **very** differently from DCC, and this really kind of forces the purpose of the post. That is, SD played very fast and real-time-ish, but felt much less storied. More like a smash-and-grab heist with monsters. That fast-and-furious play was unique and enjoyable. Not that DCC has ever felt too bogged down, but there was more consulting of outcomes with DCC that created a fair amount of apprehension, and was in fact part of the fun.
At the moment I'm well-impressed with DCC and look forward to doing some in-person play, and also looking forward to more SD. My question is, how do you imagine my impressions of these games will change as I play more? Or do they seem well-aligned to what others take away from these games? I intend to play more, but at the moment SD feels a bit more like a game that will fill the gaps in my time budget rather than my feature game. At the moment, DCC looks like my go-to game of choice. I'll post back here when I've done some more SD play to update my sentiment.

And, as promised, my update: I just played another Shadowdark session today and this session seemed to have more charactestory than the first, with caveats (below). And, my pre-gen level 1 character died! Huzzah! It is confirmed grim-dark.
Now for that caveat: this was a different game with a different GM, though technically still in the same Viking-esque setting. But it was again very "crawl"-oriented. It's hard for me to pin this down, but I used the term smash-and-grab before and I do think this is kind of baked into the real-time mechanics. Again, I had a good time at the table, liked the GM and the group, but I've taken another step in the direction that this won't be my main. Maybe that will be DCC, but I have some other systems to try as well (Cairn, Barbarians of Lemuria, OSE, Dolmenwood). I'm not saying SD is off the table for me; after all, there's a fair amount of it around available to play. But at the moment, as someone mentioned below, DCC has had more memorable moments. In fact, I think every session of DCC has felt that way so far (though again, only a handful of plays), and not really any for me so far in SD. The SD games definitely have had moments of tension, however, and that when the combat is driving forward that feels very "grim" to me. Well done SD on the grim-dark!

** BOTH SAT 4/13 AND SUN 4/14 *\*
Cactus & Succulent Society of NM Annual Show and Sale Albuquerque Garden Clubs, 10120 Lomas Blvd. NE *Free Admission* The show will display several hundred plants, including some of the finest specimens from many different private collections in our region, including our society's members. You do not need to be a member to exhibit plants. Please bring your very best cacti and succulents to be exhibited at this show. Please email cssofnm@gmail.com for more info on how to enter your own plants to the judged show. Entries are accepted at the Albuquerque Garden Center on Friday, April 12, from 1 pm to 6 pm. Remember that you may not retrieve the plants you entered until the show closes, at 3 pm on Sunday. In addition to the judged show, the society's annual sale brings in vendors, from various places, that provide a wide variety of cacti and other succulent plants available for purchase; they range from bargain starter plants to spectacular specimens. Some excellent specimen plants will be sold via a silent auction, which will be done at least one of the days. Bidders are urged to be present at the close of bidding to purchase the plants, and take them home. An additional special feature of the sale is a selection of some locally grown, hardy species for the yard---at least in Albuquerque, and, sometimes, further north. We will have 3 checkout lines for sale items, instead of the traditional 2 lines. We will accept cash, checks and credit cards

• Sat 10 AM - 4 PM
• Sun 10 AM - 3 PM

12 - 6 PM Duke City Foodie Fest 2024 Cliff's Amusement Park, 4800 Osuna Rd. NE Join us for our second annual DUKE CITY FOODIE FEST! 100+ local food trucks and vendors, live music, kids activities, food competition, and more! ONLY DESERT SUN EVENT PRODUCTIONS AND DELECTABLE BAKING CO ARE THE HOSTS PLEASE BEWARE OF SCAMMERS!
** Fri 4/12 *\*
Fri 6 PM Discovery After Dark National Museum of Nuclear Science & History, 601 Eubank Blvd. SE Join us for an evening of fun and hands-on experiments for guests ages 21 and over. Enjoy food and beverage trucks and the Nuclear Museum’s exhibits while you participate in hands-on science, technology, engineering, and math fun! (tickets)
Fri 6 – 8 PM "Lavender Haze" Swiftie Inspired MotheDaughter Date Night Pinspiration, 6271 Riverside Plaza Ln. NW, Ste D1 Swifties get ready to party! Join us for a “Lavender Haze” inspired night of craft making! Whip up your own lavender scented candle, lavender sugar scrub and Swiftie bracelets fit for a pop star. And that’s not all! Sip on a glamorous sparkling cider drink, play ERAS Tour Bingo (for prizes!) and jam to Taylor Swift tunes. The cost is $60 per couple and payment is due at registration. Note: All children must be accompanied by an adult. Let’s make some memories, Swiftie-style! Fee is non-refundable and if you register and are unable to attend, a studio credit will be honored for another workshop, crafts or our splatter experience. Seats are limited and registration is required, so reserve your seat today. All are welcome, moms, daughters, besties, and gal pals to join us for this amazingly fun event! This will sell out fast so register today!
Fri 6:30 – 8:30 PM Lighting the Way Our Abundance Journey Kick-Off Gala! Unity Spiritual Center, 9800 Candelaria Rd. NE Join us in this celebration for everyone to enjoy. We will kick off Our Abundance Journey with a gala! This event is for everyone including kids and teens. There will be tasty bites, D.J., dancing, a photo booth, reflection room, a Grand Prize, and more. Those in attendance will be given a ticket to be entered in the Grand Prize drawing so be sure to attend. You must be present to win! While we celebrate our abundance as a community we will ask you to reflect on how you might contribute your time, talent and treasure to the journey. We have a budget, but your participation will enable us to better create a realistic forecast. This will help us, not only with our current programs, but also how we might offer even more here at Unity Spiritual Center Albuquerque and reach out to the greater community. Kids, classes, groups, services, concerts, workshops, and more . . . all of these things offer exciting opportunities for happier more abundant living in keeping with Unity principles
Fri 7:30 PM April Monthly Meeting Rainbow Park Observatory, 301 Southern Blvd. SE, Rio Rancho Rio Rancho Astronomical Society members who traveled to witness the Total Solar Eclipse will share stories of their travel adventures and pictures of the event. Anyone else who saw the eclipse is encouraged to attend and share their experiences as well. The meeting is free and open to the public. Telescopes will be available for public stargazing after the meeting, weather permitting
Fri 7:30 – 9:30 PM Bluegrass Live with Juniper Roots Bow & Arrow Brewing, 608 McKnight Ave NW Enjoy local bluegrass-inspired Juniper Roots with their banjo stompin, high desert mountain vibes! *No cover, 21+
Fri 8 PM Baracutanga Juno, 1501 1st St. NW Dance to Albuquerque's #1 South American Cumbia group. Bandleader Jackie Zamora draws on her Peruvian roots and her sultry vocals to bring authentic South American Cumbia to Albuquerque with her group Baracutanga. Top notch musicians all around. In Juno's newly expanded indoor performance space. 21+. $10 at the door, or online/advance to secure your spot. VIP w/ reserved seating available
Fri 8 – 10 PM Pink Floyd Laser Spectacular KiMo Theatre, 423 Central Ave It’s the smash hit multi-media laser and light show featuring the music of Pink Floyd “as you’ve never seen before.” Laser Spectacular carries listeners away on a mind-expanding journey driven by cutting-edge effects, high-powered lasers, and large-screen video projection, all performed to the masterful soundtrack of Pink Floyd. The Laser Spectacular has become a must-see classic for Floyd fans of all ages. Doors open at 7pm. Show begins at 8pm. No flash photography or video taping permitted. There is no elevator at the KiMo Theatre. Accessible seating is available upon request in the orchestra section. Paid parking is available in garage just north of the KiMo Theatre on 5th St. and Copper Ave (tickets)
Fri 8 – 11 PM Goth Night & Dark Market: Spring Heathens Edition Tractor Brewing - Wells Park, 1800 4th St. NW We're celebrating spring as it was intended to be celebrated, with Goth music. Time to break out your Doc Martins, black nail polish, eyeliner, choker, and red lip stick because we're hosting a night of beautiful music for you dark hearts. DJ Riff Rat and DJ Suspence will be spinning one the ones and twos, Pepe El Monstrito will be providing sound, and Spectral Youth will be featuring some amazing local vendors
** Sat 4/13 *\*
Sat 8 AM – 12 PM Downtown Grower's Market: FIRST MARKET DAY! Robinson Park, 810 Copper Ave NW The Downtown Growers' Market is BACK! This vibrant community event connects local farmers, growers, artisans, wellness makers, and hot food vendors with the local community from mid-April to early-November. Bring friends / family or come solo to enjoy fresh food made on sight, a variety of seasonal produce, unique arts and crafts, live music, and special programming all in the heart of downtown Albuquerque
Sat 8 AM – 2 PM 2nd Saturday Tent Sale! Anteeks on Menaul, 8908 Menaul Blvd. NE Back lot tent sale! 2nd Saturday of each month. Come meet local vintage, antique & oddities dealers
Sat 8 AM Walk MS: Albuquerque Hoffmantown Church, 8888 Harper Rd. NE The new Walk MS brings the MS community together like never before and celebrates those who are at the center of everything we do: people living with MS. Whether you live with MS, love someone who does, or are a part of the wider community, you can proudly display your role in the movement and be celebrated for the important part you play. So, what are you waiting for? Learn more and to register or build your team and join the movement at https://ntlms.org/Walk2024 Don’t forget to use #WalkMS in your social media posts so we can share in the joy of your Walk MS journey!
Sat 8:30 – 10:30 AM MADAGASCAR JR Pancake Breakfast FUNdraiser for Cardboard Playhouse The Box Performance Space and Improv Theatre, 119 Gold Ave SW Catch a preview performance from Madagascar Jr before we hit the stage at the KiMo Theatre. All proceeds and donations will go to the general operating fund of Cardboard Playhouse Theatre Company. Tickets are $10 in advance and $12 at the door. We offer 2 hours of validated parking in the structure attached to the building. If you have questions or need to change any selections, please email [cardboardplayhouse@gmail.com](mailto:cardboardplayhouse@gmail.com)
Sat 9 AM Ellen Reavis Race for Autism Balloon Fiesta Park, 9455 Balloon Museum Dr. NE The Ellen Reavis Race for Autism our biggest fundraiser of the year! It is also a great way to raise your voice and join our force to create acceptance of Autism in your community. Create your team today and join us during Autism Acceptance month as we celebrate our community. We will be having a team t-shirt contest. Create a t-shirt design in honor of your team! You can drop off a t-shirt at the main stage or come to the stage at 12pm to be judged by the best emcee there is Sam Newton of Coyote 102.3. We will have a special prize for the winner! There also is prizes for largest team and biggest fundraising team! 5k race is a timed race. Participants will receive a finisher medal and a shirt (not guaranteed) The top 3 males and females will receive a prize for their efforts. 1 mile walk is untimed and is for those that do not want to be timed. A shirt is included (not guaranteed) The Star Walk is our time to honor those we are running and walking for! Open to any Autistic individual. Walk a short aisle as the crowd cheers you on just for being you! Each participant gets a t-shirt with their registration (not guaranteed) (register)
Sat 9 AM – 3 PM 31st Annual César Chávez & Dolores Huerta Fiesta NHCC National Hispanic Cultural Center, 1701 4th St. SW This is a free event, open to the public. Children are welcome. There will be a Kids Corner with activities and food trucks. Mariachis, entertainment, and the Si Se Puede awards ceremony. Headliner band: Mala Maña. 9am- Car Show, 10am- La Marcha, 12pm-3pm La Fiesta. Dolores Huerta is our special guest & keynote speaker. *Times are estimated, we reserve the right to make adjustments to the schedule as needed
Sat 10 AM – 1 PM Earth Day Clean-Up Pueblo Montano Trailhead, 4100-4112 Montaño Rd. NW Get ready for an awesome Earth Day Cleanup! Once we've rocked the cleanup, we'll head over to La Cumbre Brewery for a Raffle and drinks! Please be sure to register for this event - it's free & provides you with a complimentary beverage ticket. Plus it ensures we have the proper amount of supplies. We'll provide gloves, sunscreen, hand sanitizer, trash bags, bottled water & snacks. Come dressed comfortably, including footwear
Sat 10 AM – 2:30 PM West Mesa Community Health Fair West Mesa Community Center, 5500 Glenrio Rd. NW FREE Community Event offering families vaccines, health screenings, live chair yoga, lice kits, health vendors, pharmacies, health insurances, Medicaid/Medicare enrollment, food and clothing assistance. Food, music, jumpers, STEM challenges, games! Free parking will be available at the John Adams Middle School parking lot and Holy Rosary Church parking lot. For more info, call 505-836-3487
Sat 10 AM – 3 PM Community Celebration of Arts and Culture Sandoval County Administration Building,1500 Idalia Rd NE, Rio Rancho Creative New Mexico, New Mexico’s arts advocacy organization, and Rio Rancho Creative Crossroad. Free, family-friendly, events are occurring in several communities across the state during April. There will be over 30 vendors and non-profits on hand providing visitors with the opportunity to learn more about the diverse creative resources that are available in our community. “Dogs for a Cause” food truck will be on hand—so come hungry and thirsty! Funding for Art NM! comes in part, from a grant from New Mexico Arts, a division of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs
Sat 10 AM – 4 PM Indigenous Market HomegrowNM Trading Post, 2715 4th St. NW, Ste 2 Another Indigenous Market here at the Post organized by Cleo's Blue Corn Kitchen with great vendors & delicious food! Can't forget coffee & baked goods
Sat 10:30 AM – 2:15 PM Abstract April New Mexico Ferments, 2506 Washington St. NE Apply the serotonin high of being creative in the freest way while transforming still life tableaux through the lens of your mind's abstraction a fun meditation in an artful setting! As always, all ages welcome to freely create with a 'chip in' local New Mexico charity jar available. Our April charity is Offcenter Community Arts Project
Sat 11 AM Spring Market ABQ Food Park, 6951 San Antonio Dr. NE Over 25 local artisans, enticing food vendors, exhilarating games, and live music for a day packed with excitement!
Sat 11 AM Phat Stax Block Party Phat Stax Nob Hill, 114 Tulane Dr. SE Join us for our 1 year anniversary block party! Local vendors on site! Music and Dancing! Come celebrate with us!
Sat 11 AM move thing: community dance project Los Jardines Institute, 801 La Vega Dr. SW FREE. No RSVP required. Collaborators: Los Jardines Institute, Jah Truebadoors, youth from South Valley prep, Alex Viteri Arturo, Valerie Oliveiro, and Jennifer Monson. Conceptual formations: Valerie Oliveiro and Jennifer Monson. move thing is a community-based dance project proposing that the multi-sensory, improvisatory, and choreographic structures of dance contribute to reparative projects in communities that have historically been impacted by toxic contamination due to resource extraction (Uranium and coal mining) and industrial effluents (chemicals, particulates, carbon monoxide, and heavy metals). Resisting all forms of purity, the work proposes that we are all constantly, inherently, and unevenly making up each other and all other animate and inanimate beings. If we imagine ourselves as soluble, always dissolving and reconstituting choreographically, could we move through toxicity and be with and/or absorb toxicity and find new / alternative / old / transformative relationships to its states / tendencies / behaviors / effects / violences / shifts? Could we find intelligences within our bodies and abilities to connect more deeply with the mechanisms for survival and support in sites and systems that we are a part of? move thing is supported, in part, by the Challenge America grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Campus Research Board’s award from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and the Puffin Foundation
Sat 11:30 AM – 2:30 PM April Pop Up New Mexico Ferments, 2506 Washington St. NE LadyJennD (Jennifer DeSantis) will be with Random Acts o Art! Join us for collage and Kombucha! I should have some new merch too! FYI - I am gearing up for a solo show at NM Ferments from May through the end of June
Sat 12 PM April Brew tour Sidetrack Brewing, 413 2nd St. SW Sidetrack Brewing, Gravity Bound Brewing, Boese Bros Brewing, Thirsty Eye Brewing. At Sidetrack, a DD will be selected, then we’ll head to the other breweries in the order listed. T-shirts, if ordered will be delivered. For safety, a breathalyzer is available, a DD will be established and a liability waiver will be signed by all participants. Safety is of utmost importance. We want everyone to enjoy their tour and arrive home safely
Sat 1 PM International Steampunk Day Celebration The Kosmos Restaurant, 1715 5th St. NW Sunday is International Steampunk Day. Let's meet up a day early for lunch to celebrate (505 Steampunk: Society of Brass and Steam)
Sat 1 – 3 PM Wine, Cider, and Mead Making Class Southwest Grape & Grain, 3401 Candelaria Blvd. NE An entry level class to teach you the basics you'll need to get started making your own wine, cider, and mead at home! Wine, Mead, and Cider can trace their roots back many centuries to various locations and regions. There’s a reason these beverages are still around, they’re delicious (and relatively easy to make!). Now, you can add the knowledge of the history and creation process to your repertoire. Join us for this informative class in which we’ll delve into each of these categories and leave you with an instilled sense of confidence to go home and make these timeless beverages (tickets)
Sat 1 – 3 PM KAJILLIONAIRE - a Lesbian Earth special screening of the wildly original Miranda July comedy! The Guild Cinema, 3405 Central Ave NE View the trailer. Dir. Miranda July - 2020 - 104m. Know your worth! From acclaimed writedirector Miranda July comes a profoundly moving and wildly original comedy. Con-artists Theresa (Debra Winger) and Robert (Richard Jenkins) have spent 26 years training their only daughter, Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood), to swindle, scam, and steal at every opportunity. During a desperate, hastily conceived heist, they charm a stranger (Gina Rodriguez) into joining their family, only to have their entire world turned upside down (tickets)
Sat 2 – 4 PM Paint Party Chill Zone Frozen Yogurt, 4320 Ridgecrest Dr. SE, Ste B1, Rio Rancho $10 per person. Join us at the Chill Zone and paint these comical springtime friends enjoying FROYO on an 8"x8" canvas. All supplies are included
Sat 4:30 – 7:30 PM ENCOMPASS // OPEN STUDIOS Harwood Art Center, 1114 7th St. NW Harwood Art Center and Escuela del Sol Montessori are pleased to present Encompass, a unique multi-generational art event that takes place annually. Featuring five exhibitions, open studios, hands-on art-making projects, live music, food trucks, and activities for all ages, Encompass is both a reflection of and an offering to our community; this year’s theme is Embodiments of Wonder. Encompass is Harwood’s capstone celebration for the year. This event will include Open Studios, food by Root 66 Food Truck, and our very own Wonder Fair! Harwood’s Wonder Fair at Encompass will feature live music by Casey Mráz, special guests the beloved Giant Puppets from OffCenter Arts and free artmaking activities and experiences for our community
Sat 5 PM Silver Lace Gala, Benefitting Running 505 Tramway Plaza Events, 9600 Tennyson St. NE Join us for this 21+ fundraising event, to support Running 505. An evening of fun, elegance, live music, dancing, great food, silent auction, and race entry raffle prizes! Dress code: white or silver (tickets)
Sat 5:30 – 9 PM A Very Merry Unbirthday - Alice in Wonderland Spring DANCE Grace Church, 6901 San Antonio Dr. NE DON'T miss Jeremiah’s Place Spring Dance! Free event for our Adults-Special Needs community. Dinner provided! Alice in Wonderland costumes Encouraged. Cafe doors open at 5:30pm. SO … Get your guardian/caregiver and head on over a FUN dance to kick off Spring 2024! Mad Hatter - Queen of Hearts - Alice who are you coming dressed up as? (No drop offs, guardian/caregiver must stay)
Sat 6 PM ¡Loteria! Game Canteen Brewhouse, 2381 Aztec Rd. NE We are so excited for ¡Loteria! at the Brewhouse! Practice your Spanish, have a drink, hang with friends and win prizes! Please arrive a little early to get signed in and set up
Sat 6 – 9 PM Nat'l Assoc of Latino Healthcare Execs Salsa Night Juno, 1501 1st St. NW Salsa dancing for a good cause, sponsored by National Association of Latino Healthcare Executives. Music by DJ Pedro and DJ Sizzle. $5 at the door or presales online, all ticket proceeds go to the organization. 21+ (minors ok with parents). Stay after for live Salsa with Calle 66
Sat 6 – 9 PM Gone Country Saturdays with DJ Gonzo Supreme Ponderosa Brewing, 1761 Bellamah Ave NW Starting with free dance lessons at 5 pm, followed by family-friendly entertainment until 9 pm. Come join us for an evening of music and fun you won't forget!
Sat 7 PM Selena Birthday Celebration Flix Brewhouse, 3236 La Orilla Rd. NW Don’t miss this Flix tradition! SELENA is the story of a girl who had the spirit to believe in a dream and the courage to make it come true. Join us for a birthday screening of SELENA! Admission includes a free slice of birthday cake (tickets)
Sat 7 PM Music in the Beer Garden Flock of Moons Brewing, 111 Harvard Dr. SE Join The Ukuladies, Chris Kill Duo, and Iain Cummings at Flock of Moons on on their beautiful Beer Garden for a fun Spring night of live music!
Sat 7 – 9 PM Pre-Freedom Fest Fundraiser Mary James Café, 11601 Menaul Blvd. NE Get ready for an evening of community, compassion, and cannabis at the Freedom Festival Private Pre-party and Cannabis Private Party! Hosted at the renowned Mary James Cafe, this event promises an unforgettable experience in support of the Freedom Festival and the Indigenous Cannabis Council’s effort to bring event access to those in the community who need some assistance in experiencing this captivating Cinco de Mayo weekend festival on 20 acres of reclaimed Indigenous land. **CBD Focus (3-5pm):** Embrace the healing power of CBD during our early bird session. Explore a variety of CBD-infused products, connect with Freedom Fest event coordinators & the team from The People's Ecosystem, participate in our silent auction and raffles. Your contributions will help us provide over 20 tickets and gas cards to members of our community facing barriers to attending the Freedom Festival. **Cannabis Private Party (7-10pm):** As the beautiful New Mexico sun sets, join us for a private cannabis celebration like no other. Indulge in herbal goodies, courtesy of our generous partners. Don't miss out on the chance to win celebrity giveaways and savor mouth watering creations by none other than Chef Charlene, a Food Network Chopped winner & co-founder of The People’s Ecosystem! Quench your thirst with some fire custom drinks from Mary James Café with the option to add high-grade infusions. ALL while supporting a worthy cause. **Why Attend:** 1. Support the Indigenous Cannabis Council's mission to empower our community, 2. Enjoy a night filled with cannabis, love, laughter, and delectable cuisine, 3. Contribute to providing festival access to those in need (tickets)
Sat 7 – 10 PM EQNX Jazztet Lizard Tail Brewing Industrial, 3351 Columbia Dr. NE Please come and join EQNX Jazztet as we stretch our boundaries again and perform at Lizard Tail - Industrial for the first time on a Saturday night! EQNX Jazztet is a jazz group that plays music from all genres; Jazz, Funk, Latin with a little bit of originals and genre-cross exploration just for fun. We primarily play in the style of "Blue Note Jazz" using a modern take to explore the music of today. We believe in having fun making music! This is a cool venue with a stage and lots of places to sit. It even has a patio. THERE WILL BE A FOOD TRUCK! No Cover! Great selection of beers and a food truck too. Michael Metz - Trumpet, Dan Kelly - Sax, Vic Romanelli - Guitar, Ian Davis - Bass, Steve Arbuckle - Drums. FYI: - This is not a Jazz Jam session. The regular jazz jam session occurs on Sundays from 5:30 to 8 PM
Sat 8:30 PM – 1 AM SABOR Latin Night - Saturdays! Bama's 1865, 6007 Osuna Rd. NE DJ Gabriel Goza will be serving you the saucy Salsa, Bachata, Cumbia, Merengue y Mas! Ample Parking, Safe Environment, Beautiful Venue, Good Food, Good Music, Good Vibes. 21+ / $10 cover, Salsa or Bachata lesson 9:00-9:45pm
** Sun 4/14 *\*
Sun 10 AM Acequia 5K Fun Run Sanchez Farms, 1180 Arenal Rd. SW The Fun Run has been a tradition for CESOSS for over five years. It includes a ceremony, food, and a 4 mile run along the acequia. The funds from this Fun Run will be used to support our current Cultivando Nuestro Futuro Leadership Institute Interns. We invite you all to join us to honor and celebrate acequias and acequia culture in the South Valley. A $30 registration fee is strongly encouraged. We are also accepting sliding scale donations. Please use this donation form to complete your registration. Organizations are able to register for a flat-rate fee of $120. This includes registrations for up to 7 participants in your organization, 7 t-shirts, 7 tamales and beverages for your team!
Sun 10 AM AND 11 AM Pride & Prejudice Brunch Flix Brewhouse, 3200 La Orilla Rd. NW This April, experience the greatest love story of all time. Sparks fly when spirited Elizabeth Bennet meets single, rich, and proud Mr. Darcy. But Mr. Darcy reluctantly finds himself falling in love with a woman beneath his class. Can each overcome their own pride and prejudice? Enjoy a complimentary glass of mimosa with admission and all-day breakfast items (tickets)
Sun 10 AM - 12 PM Christina Kent Early Childhood Center Fundraiser Topgolf, 1600 Desert Surf Cir NE Buy your tickets today! Join us for a fun family event filled with great food, an amazing raffle, and fabulous people. Christina Kent Early Childhood Center is a non-profit that serves the working families of Albuquerque with 5 Star, nationally accredited, and affordable child care. Tickets include continental breakfast
Sun 11 AM – 2 PM Drag Brunch Craft Republic, 4301 The Lane at 25 NE Mark your calendars for a fabulous Drag Brunch, hosted by Kalorie Kardashian! Don't miss out on dazzling performances and delicious mimosas! (tickets)
Sun 11:30 AM Wonka Historic Lobo Theater, 3013 Central Ave NE THE HISTORIC LOBO THEATER is excited to bring Wonka to the big screen! Showing Starts at 11:30 am Tickets are ONLY $10 for General Admission $25 Brunch and a Movie Ticket $21 Brunch Only ticket
Sun 12 - 4 PM Squidly Fest 2024 The Squidly Store, 514 Central Ave SE Join us for a spring pop up shop! Over 20 local artists and small businesses! Come shop local!
Sun 12 – 4 PM Plant Based Junk Food Bow & Arrow Brewing, 608 McKnight Ave NW We will be bringing out our very popular Crispy Chik'n Sandwiches and Loaded Fries. Our patties are made from a combination of soy, wheat, and peas. We are entirely nut free. We will be accepting cash or CC
Sun 2 PM Café Close Encounters Lala Coffee and Tea, 6239 Montgomery Blvd. NE This isn't your ordinary meetup; it's a journey into the mysteries of the cosmos! Remote Viewing Revelations: Dive deep into the intriguing world of remote viewing. If you've taken our in-person class, come share your mind-bending experiences and insights with fellow explorers. UFO Disclosure Updates: Stay up-to-date with the latest UFO disclosure news and unravel the mysteries surrounding unidentified aerial phenomena. Personal Encounters: Share your own extraordinary encounters with the unexplained and hear captivating stories from others who've had close encounters of their own. Theories & Speculations: Let your imagination soar as we discuss theories on what visiting non-human intelligences might be up to. Engage in thought-provoking discussions that'll leave you pondering the possibilities of the galaxy. Our last event was a cosmic blast! We took over the entire coffee shop, creating an atmosphere of intrigue and wonder. New friendships were forged, old ones rekindled, and a tapestry of personal experiences was woven throughout the afternoon
Sun 5:30 – 8:30 PM Jazz Jam Hosted by EQNX Jazztet Lizard Tail Brewing Industrial, 3351 Columbia Dr. NE This is a cool venue with a stage and lots of places to sit. It even has a patio. THERE WILL BE A FOOD TRUCK! Every Sunday from 5:30 to 8 PM. Jam starts after the 1st set. Get there early and make sure you sign in! Piano players, please contact me - we don't us a Piano so you can bring one or see if someone already committed to bring one.
Sun 6 – 9 PM Sunday Funday Karaoke Tractor Brewing - Wells Park, 1800 4th St. NW What brings the fun better then karaoke? Nothing! We got an all new night of karaoke for you singing addicts! Come amp up your Sunday Funday and sing a song with us! The Pop Up will be on hand serving up eats!

I am so thoroughly over-educated on the subject of Cluster B personality disorders I can casually reflect on things like “oh, that person was upset because an attempt to draw a line (establish a boundary) was confusing or triggering to them because BPD”, and after a recent encounter in the wild I realized I’m really over-equipped to wrangle these interactions any more. Thanks, Dad, for educating me about my birth mother I guess.
It took a really, really long time for me to fully understand and absorb the notion that the person who birthed me wasn’t a parent. It’s a sad thing; a bit of an unnatural thing given the longing I had to have family growing up. It’s also really sad to think about how I had to do this in the first place because the person who should have been my mom was reduced to a generic NPC of someone with a personality disorder, identical to other people with the same severity of her mental illness.
A few weeks ago, I was approached by one of the agencies I work for about a client who I immediately recognized as having BPD, which the office manager confirmed when I asked. I have all of the skillset necessary to work with a client like that no problem, except for the fact I still haven’t recovered from my birth mother’s death at the hands of her thinking COVID-19 was “a cute little fuzzy ball” and apparently in some small part of me being dropped off her medical contacts because I kept telling ERs about her BPD and her actual medical problems. I’m not well emotionally equipped to be reminded of her at the moment so up close like that.
Still, other than that, I'm fine? Like it just doesn't bother me any more. I see it in politics, I see it online, I see it here or there and asides from the irritation about how poorly aware people are that the gonzo behavior they're being confronted with is just cluster bees buzzing about I just don't feel affected at all. The only exception is perhaps when I get into arguments over a BPD misdiagnosis placed on someone with a dissociative disorder, which drives me up the wall due to my own personal Thanos being Dr. Paul McHugh, but that's a whole other rant and conversation about a painfully common thing in the world of child abuse survivors.
I'm 38, for clarity. Has anyone else gotten to this stage or felt this way?

Initial thoughts after running the Daggerheart playtest scenario for a group of 3: Me as DM who's run a number of systems, everything from rules light to crunchfest supremes, from narrative focused to "what narrative? Only combat" One player that's a CR fan and has only played 5e before Two players that're neutral on CR and have played multiple systems
Things we liked:

• The scenario did a good job of keeping individual scenes contained to one page of single-sided text
• The character sheets were largely parsable and the "cut this sheet in half to show more info" was a fun idea
• The 2d12 thing was a fun gimmick for a few minutes
• We had fun with it since we collectively agreed to not take it seriously and treat it like a shitty MMO video game world

Things we disliked (Oh god this is so much longer)

• The 2d12 thing got real tiring since it was a bit of tracking to remember which die was the hope/fear die every single roll
• Me needing to roll a d20 instead of a d12 felt weird and incongruous. It worked, but it was a weird asymmetry
• The way degrees of success was implemented felt really jank. It has multiple degrees of success, but being based on both the die total and what die rolls higher took a couple hours to kinda smooth out.
• The starting scenario does a lot of the 5e thing of "DM/players do some random improv and figure it out"
• The rules kept feeling like they were in our face, reminding us of their existence rather than ever fading into the background
• It took a fair amount of time to find any given rule even with the PDF up on a laptop and running a lot of text searches
• Experiences took a second to grok since at first we thought it was tied to XP instead of just being a Hope sink
• The most fun we had was laughing at how aggressively stupid parts of the game was instead of how much fun it was to play

Combat was an absolute mess

• One player with lower combat ability just kinda sat back and didn't do much at all since it wasn't worth them taking actions over more effective combat units
• The Ranger had an ability where they could spend a hope to immediately make an attack roll... That attack roll then has a 50/50 of giving the player hope again, which they can immediately spend to attack again. So long as he kept winning 50/50s, he could keep spamming attacks
• We opted to only use the range increments. We couldn't find where in the quickstart pdf it described how to move between them, so we wung it and said you could only move one increment at a time
• Fear and Action tokens being interchangeable as a DM is rather stupid when the final encounter of the adventure has a bonus rule saying the GM can spend one fear to magically appear 2 more skeletons. Party rolls a few rolls that give me fear but kill one or two skeletons? Fuck you, now I have 2 more for every roll you fail, and if I have enough skeletons, I can just give them more action economy with excess fear.
• Enemies holding back for a few actions for the party to get 2ish rounds in then going ham on them is wicked for the party, but both my players and I agreed it was a sensible way to run an undead horde.
• Stress and damage ranges felt weird. We grokked it by the end of the second encounter, but when 2/3 players had nothing that could spend stress, stress was just another HP pool for them
• There wasn't really any combat strategy outside of trying to get the most out of a player action given every one of those gives the GM Actions and potentially Fear
• Missing is even worse in this system than in 5e or other systems. Not only do you miss, you also give the GM more action economy, and if you miss with Fear you give the GM a nasty resource enemies can spend for Bad Times™️

For out of combat, I'm not a fan of how players have a really high chance to pass any given check. Having a 1 in 12 chance to crit any roll and auto-succeed makes this even worse . As for FeaHope, I think the idea can work, but I don't like how its implemented. As-is, a GM is mechanically incentivized to hold onto as many as they can before combat breaks out, then go ham on the players. I can choose not to if I want, but that requires I actively underplay my side of the table. It's encouraging an adversarial dynamic where the GM wants the party to roll with Fear so the GM can break out moves and take a more active role in the narrative. I can of course just ignore Fear and do whatever I want, but if the solution to a mechanic being adversarial is just ignoring it, I think it's not a good mechanic. Beyond that, it generally felt like the game had an identity crisis. It has Fate Aspects, FitD stress and clocks, 5e-esque inspiration, playbook advancement, and a few random influences/ideas shoehorned in seemingly at random. It wants to be rules light, but then there's a 400 page rulebook, a solid 200 of which is PC options or mechanics. It wants to be gm-friendly with the pared down statblocks and explicit GM moves, but then the game puts even more work on a GM than 5e does to wrangle the group and keep a narrative interesting and moving. Players have near impunity to do whatever they want and the high success chance backs this, but then the GM has to manage fear tokens, avoid overextending, and use those tokens in a way that messes with the party just the right amount.
Hoh boy the combat though. This is where the game went from okay to aggressively unfun for us. I've run systems with popcorn initiative before, but this weird not-initiative-but-kinda system was jank. For starters, one of the fights, as-written, actively encouraged our rogue player to just not do anything because the odds were if he didn't roll well to hit and damage the enemy, the fight would actively become worse as the GM gets to summon more minions or give enemies more attacks. If a player with less explicit combat ability's best move is to actively do nothing because otherwise he hurts more than he helps, that's insane. That aside, the system enables folks that are already bombastic/loud/very active to absolutely outshine anyone that isn't super quick on the draw in fights, and a GM has to actively reign them in for quieter or more mellow players to be able to do anything. Why? Who thought this was a good idea in a hobby full of socially awkward nerds? Put even that aside, and because action economy is largely GM fiat (yes, the gm is required to take at least one move after the party fails or rolls with fear, but they absolutely can just have one mook do something irrelevant then pass back to the PCs to build up a horde of action tokens/fear, or just interrupt whenever with fear.)
The game feels like it threw together a buncha other systems in a blender and this's what came out. It has a few good ideas, like the page 229 "Introducing a New Character" segment, that's terrific advice, but I had to go digging for them and most of it didn't show up in play. Even my group's CR fan who had only played 5e, about as much of a target audience as you could get for this game, came away from our playtest disliking the system even if we had a good time making jokes, memes, whatever during the sesh. Combat needs a major rework, and I'd want to see the out-of-combat skill math tweaked to be less stacked in the party's favor at all times. As-is, it's a rulesy game that wants to be rules light, but it's hard to ignore the rules when every roll is generating a meta currency for someone. For us, we found the rules just weren't all that fun to play with outside of embracing gonzo nonsense. Maybe that's the idea, idk, but if the game's only fun when we're mocking it, I don't think it's a good game in its current state.

** ALL WEEKEND (FRI 3/8 - SUN 3/10) *\*
PandaFest Flix Brewhouse, 3200 La Orilla Rd. NW Prepare for awesomeness at our PandaFest event during KUNG FU PANDA 4 opening weekend! This event will feature an in-theater giveaway, plus photo ops, freebies, and activities for the whole family. All ages are welcome! (tickets and showtimes)
** BOTH SAT 3/9 AND SUN 3/10 *\*
Mommy's Market ABQ Spring Event Mommy's Market, 3740 Eubank Blvd. NE The Event FOR local families BY local families! Thousands of gently used *Maternity *Baby *Kids Items in ONE place for ONE weekend! Local families selling their maternity to kids size 14/16 clothing, furniture, books, toys and equipment. Everything organized by size for easy shopping and clothing on clothing racks! Want to shop before we open to the public? Check out our presale passes for the best bargains! (Join our text list for first access!) No Diaper Bags or Large Purses Please. We accept Cash, Mastercard and Visa! Strollers welcome Saturday and Sunday (Empty-no toys, blankets, etc.)

• Sat 9am-3pm, $1 Admission
• Sun 2:30pm-5:30pm, $1 Admission

Albuquerque Oddities & Curiosities Expo Expo New Mexico, Lujan Building, 300 San Pedro Dr. NE For Lovers of the Strange, Unusual & Bizarre... $10 advance / $15 days of. Kids 12 and under free (no ticket needed). The Oddities & Curiosities Expo showcases hand selected vendors, dealers, artists and small businesses with all things weird. You'll find items such as: taxidermy, preserved specimens, original artwork, horrohalloween inspired pieces, antiques, handcrafted oddities, quack medical devices, creepy clothing, odd jewelry, skulls/bones, funeral collectibles & much more. We truly have something weird for everyone at our shows. All items you see at our shows are legal to own and sustainably sourced. Outside of our curated vendors, we host sideshow performers on stage all throughout day and the opportunity to learn the craft of taxidermy with classes available during the expo. The O&C Expo provides a safe place for anyone to come and discover new artists, meet new friends and be surrounded by an amazing community of like-minded people. We pride ourselves in being a completely "DIY" ran show from start to finish. We find so much joy in being able to provide a place where you can feel at home surrounded by others that share the same interests. We are the first and original traveling event exclusively showcasing oddities vendors and dark artists in the country. We are a one of a kind event and the first to do what we specialize in. We take tremendous pride in this and hope to gain your support along the way (tickets)

• Sat 10AM - 6PM
• Sun 10AM - 4PM

** Fri 3/8 *\*
Fri 5 – 7 PM Artwalk Dance Party OT Circus, 709 Central Ave NW How exciting to do a Headphone Dance Party as part of ABQ Artwalk in conjunction with the folks at OT Circus! We are going to set up in the back area just past where all the artists are located on the side of the building. "The OT Circus is a New Mexico based non-profit. We focus on using various therapeutic methods, and creativity, to build community, and to bring people of all abilities together. We do this through various programs including pop up art shows, community outreach, and our monthly artist markets, with local makers, crafters, and community organizations. OT Circus Gallery is honored to work with a wide range of artists, incl. Indigenous artists, creatives living/working with a disability, and makers and crafters of all kinds. We welcome everyone and anyone to join us as a guest, and as an artist/maker to show and sell their work!" Any donations we collect for this event we will donate to OT Circus! Hope to see you there and throw down with y'all!
Fri 5:30 PM Science on Tap: Bringing Healthcare to the Streets National Museum of Nuclear Science & History, 601 Eubank Blvd. SE Science on Tap is not your ordinary lecture series. Grab a beer and enjoy a relaxed presentation by scientists, researchers, and subject matter experts on a range of engaging science topics. Join us at the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History. The talks are co-sponsored by New Mexico Operations-Kansas City National Security Campus, the University of New Mexico Nuclear Engineering, and the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History. Admission is $10 per person, and you must be 21 years old to attend
Fri 6 - 7 PM Yoga at the Dispensary Verdes, 10032 Coors Blvd. NW Join us for some canna-yoga vibes! Come to flow with us and leave with some cool goodies! Discounts for attendees! This space is incredible and there is plenty of room to stretch it out! Bring your yoga mat and some friends and start your weekend off right! $10/person (collected at the door) *no consumption on site please
Fri 6 – 9 PM The Wicked Fest JUNO, 1501 1st St. NW Happy to return to Albuquerque! dress up or come as you are and enjoy a night of Horror! Doors 6pm. Music 7pm. Cover: $10. Ages: 21+. Lineup: Atlas//Below, Wicked Meadows, Narbona Official Band, Forbidden Witchery, Bigfoot, Trenchcult Mafia
Fri 7 – 10 PM Beyond The Case: Whodunnit & Wine OutPost 1706 Brewhouse, 2034 S. Plaza St. NW CALLING ALL TRUE CRIME DETECTIVES! Come have a drink with us while we dive into a night full of True Crime! Join us for a thrilling evening of mystery, drinks, and good company! Get ready to put your detective skills to the test as you immerse yourself in true crime trivia. As the night unfolds, you'll enjoy a selection of brews, cocktails and appetizers while enjoying a special episode of Beyond The Case: a true crime show hosted by seasoned reporter Crystal Gutierrez and private investigator Louis Carlos. After the episode, stick around for a Q&A and raffle for your chance to win exclusive merch! Subscribe to @ crystalgutierreztv on youtube to get free merch! Don't miss out on this exciting event!
Fri 7:30 PM PROUD TINA: The Ultimate Tribute To Tina Turner Popejoy Hall, 203 Cornell Dr. NE Get the electrifying concert experience of Tina Turner, brimming with Tina hits from the 60s, 70s, 80s & 90s. The powerful raspy vocals, high-intensity dancing and thrilling stage presence live on stage, plus band, brass section, backing vocalists and dancers, making this the definitive tribute and a fabulous night out! (tickets)
Fri 8 – 11 PM Goth Night & Dark Market: Celtic Goth Edition Tractor Brewing - Wells Park, 1800 4th St. NW We're celebrating the St Patrick's as it was intended to be celebrated, with Goth music. Time to break out your Doc Martins, black nail polish, eyeliner, choker, and red lip stick because we're hosting a night of beautiful music for you dark hearts. DJ Riff Rat and DJ BlackDeath will be spinning one the ones and twos, Pepe El Monstrito will be providing sound, and Spectral Youth will be featuring some amazing local vendors
** Sat 3/9 *\*
Sat 8 – 11 AM Annual Pancake Breakfast Fundraiser Albuquerque Christian Children's Home, 5700 Winter Haven Dr. NW Come by our campus to enjoy a delicious breakfast brought to you by Whataburger and Albertsons, and see what ACCH is all about. Tour one of our cottages and meet some of our wonderful staff. Adults: $5, Children 6-12: $3, Children under 6: Free
Sat 9 AM Car Wash Christian Brothers Automotive, 8031 Ventura St. NE Let's show our support for Manzano High School's Royal Guard
Sat 10 AM – 1 PM Field Clean-up Mile High Little League, 725 Juan Tabo Blvd. NE Bring your best weeding gloves, a garbage bag, and your family to help us pick up around Mile High!
Sat 10 AM – 2 PM Photos with the Easter Bunny North Domingo Baca Park, 7521 Carmel Ave NE Get ready for an egg-citing event! Come snap some adorable photos with the Easter bunny and grab a goodie bag for the kiddos! Don't miss out on our raffle too, where you can win a visit from the Easter bunny on Easter Day!
Sat 10:30 AM – 2 PM Pueblo Women's Heritage Celebration Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, 12th St. NW Join us for a Pueblo Women's Heritage Celebration in recognition of National Women’s History Month. We will celebrate these remarkable Pueblo women for their leadership, strength, and courage (tickets and lineup)
Sat 12 – 4 PM St. Patty Day Photos BoaF Parrot Pantry, 2325 San Pedro Dr. NE Kokopelli Photography will be at the Parrot Pantry to photograph you and your birds for $10! We are doing a photo redo! The last was canceled due to the weather! Now we are doing both Valentine’s and St. Patty’s! Bring your besties. Don’t have a feathered kiddo... no worries, we can help! Cattle Tags Food Truck will be there with tacos and waffles! Call to book your spot 505-584-1803
Sat 12 – 5 PM Lucky Charmers St. Patrick's Day Pet Photos Boofy's Best for Pets, 8201 Golf Course Rd. NW, Ste C2 Time for your pets to get their Irish on! Join us for Lucky Charmers St. Patrick's Day Pet Photos. All well-behaved critters and humans are welcome to attend. $10 per photo suggested donation benefits the 120+ cats and kittens being fostered by F.A.T. Katz. Photography provided by Winstonfoto.com
Sat 1 PM Try Hockey For Free! NM Amateur Hockey Association, 801 Loma Colorado Dr. NE, Rio Rancho NMAHA will be hosting another Try Hockey For Free this month. Register here. This is the PERFECT opportunity for new skaters to try ice hockey - no experience necessary! Please bring a bicycle helmet and winter gloves (not mittens) as the starting point - some gear will be available along with sticks too. Skates will be provided by The MAC. NMAHA Coaches & Players will be on the ice to assist. Target Ages: 4 to 9 (but up to age 15 accepted...) Please plan to arrive at least 30 minutes early (by 12:30pm at the MAC). Questions? Reach out to [nmahahockey@gmail.com](mailto:nmahahockey@gmail.com)
Sat 1 PM UFOs Over New Mexico with Author Preston Dennett Unser Library, 8081 Central Ave NW Join us for an interview with Preston Dennett, author of UFOs Over New Mexico and many other paranormal books!
Sat 1 – 3 PM Beer Brewing Class - Beginner Southwest Grape & Grain, 3401 Candelaria Blvd. NE Our Beginner Brewing class is the perfect place for anyone interested in learning how to brew their own beer at home. Always wanted to learn how to brew beer? Don’t know where to start? This is the class for you! We'll teach you the basic brewing terminology, the ingredients that make up beer, all the equipment you will need to get started, and the step by step of how to brew your first batch of beer! Brewing is fun and shouldn't be overwhelming. This class will answer all your questions and start you on the path to being a master home brewer! (tickets)
Sat 4:45 PM AND 7:45 PM AND 9 PM From Dusk Till Dawn Flix Brewhouse, 3236 La Orilla Rd. NW To celebrate Quentin Tarantino’s birthday, we're having a month-long celebration of his films! Let's kick it off with FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, penned by and starring QT (The Gecko brothers, two dangerous outlaws on a wild crime spree, kidnap a father and his two kids and head south to a seedy Mexican bar to hide out in safety. Soon they realize that they're not in a typical bar, as the entire place begins to teem with vicious, blood-sucking vampires. With the odds stacked greatly against them, the Geckos are forced to team up with their hostages in order to make it out alive) (tickets)
Sat 5 – 7 PM March Babies Birthday Celebration Rio Bravo Brewing, 1912 2nd St. NW Starting at 5pm, the first 25 people with March birthdays to show Ryan proof of their birthday month will score a $5 Rio Bravo Brewing Gift Card... oh, and Beers are on special for birthday kids for just $5! But you spend your gift card however you want! Thanks to Cake Fetish...we'll have cupcakes for the March Birthday Kids (while supplies last) We'll have prizes JUST for the March Babies...PBR Tix, Boots in the Park Tickets, Hozier Tix, Monster Jam Tix, Night Stays At Heritage Hotels, Teddy Swims Tickets, NM United Tix and more. We'll also have drawings for all you non-birthday folks too including your own pair of Boots in the Park tickets! If you want to get their before us... All drinks are $1 Off for March Birthdays the whole day!
Sat 5:10 – 6 PM Free Introductory Class ~ 2nd Saturdays ~ before Practi*Longa! Las Puertas, 1500 1st St NW Experience social Argentine Tango! Learned in Buenos Aires and hosted in an inclusive, open, non-judgmental atmosphere at the iconic Las Puertas! Free! Studio will open at 4:50pm. Class from 5:10 to 6:00pm * No partner needed. Come as you are! * Casual and comfortable attire * Class will be fun, chill, even meditative all at the same time * All are welcome! Even experienced dancers * We work both roles. It's the best way to learn
Sat 5:30 – 9 PM #MusicSavesLives Songwriting Contest Marble Heights Brewery, 9904 Montgomery Blvd. NE Songwriting contest for the benefit of Mental Health organizations. We are dedicating this contest to addiction recovery and mental health. Currently accepting auditions. 50% of donations are for the winning organizations and 50% for the winning songwriters. All donations are dedicated to mental health and addiction recovery in our community! Please consider donating to this cause
Sat 6 – 8:30 PM Yuc’ ing Fun Run Canteen Taproom, 417 Tramway Blvd. NE Registration Begins at 6:00pm. Run Begins at 6:30pm. Join Feral Adventures and Canteen Brewhouse for the first annual Yuc'ng Fun Run 5K starting and ending at the Canteen Taproom. This course will take you from Canteen up and around the glowing yucca on a lollipop course. This will be a great intro for those looking to start trail running and for seasoned runners alike. Plus there is beer after your run! This will be a donate to participate run. We will be accepting donations from the runners/walkers and proceeds will go to the Public Lands Interpretive Association. Each participant must have a light source (head lamp preferred), check in at the start of the race and check out for safety. We will only allow 50 runners and you must register beforehand
Sat 6 – 9 PM Gone Country Saturdays with DJ M.Martinez Ponderosa Brewing, 1761 Bellamah Ave NW This family-friendly event welcomes all ages to partake in an unforgettable evening. To kick off the night, we've got Free Dance Lessons starting at 5pm – a fantastic opportunity for both seasoned dancers and those eager to learn a step or two. With a mix of country beats and the lively atmosphere, it's the perfect setting for a fun-filled Saturday. Gather your loved ones, embrace the family-friendly vibes, and indulge in every moment of this special Saturday. Capture the joy, share your memories, and don't forget to tag us in your posts. Let's create lasting memories together!
Sat 7 PM A Tribute to Shane MacGowan Historic Lobo Theater, 3013 Central Ave NE Enjoy a lively evening of your favorite Pogues songs hosted by the Reelers, ABQ's premier Celtic rock band, with some very special guests! (tickets)
Sat 7 – 9 PM EQNX Jazztet Thirsty Eye Brewing, 206 Broadway Blvd. SE Come and join EQNX Jazztet as we return to Thirty Eye Brewing. Heck, if the there are enough people we may even play till 10 PM! We had a blast when we performed in January and they asked us back, YAY! The staff is super friendly, the beer is amazing and they always have a food truck parked outside. Michael Metz - Trumpet, Vic Romanelli - Guitar, Micky Patten - Bass (Special Guest!), Steve Arbuckle - Drums
Sat 8 PM El Paso ska legends Fixed Idea Historic Lobo Theater, 3013 Central Ave NE Ska vets Fixed Idea return to the Duke City to bring their chuco sound to the El Rey Mezzanine. Joining them will be locals Gilead Rises and Los Domingueros as well as El Paso new comers Saving Bandit! Opening the show will be Tony Roddy. Doors 7pm. $10
Sat 8 PM - 1 AM Anime Night (Cosplay Party) Juno, 1501 1st St. NW Dance and Cosplay Party with DJs by Santa Fe's Famous on the Weekend! Dress up and join us for our first ANIME NIGHT! Come in your best anime cosplay costumes and let's party with some of the best DJs in New Mexico! DJs: ALL SICK, AARON BLISS, MIICASA, KALEIDO, JIRAIYA. 21+ ONLY. Presale: 5$ // Door: 10$
Sat 8 PM – 1:30 AM Sounds Like Fun Backstage at Revel, 4720 Alexander Blvd. NE Prepare for an exhilarating night filled with pulsating beats and endless enjoyment at "Sounds Like Fun," an unmissable event. Immerse yourself in an extraordinary musical experience featuring the talents of esteemed DJs: DJ Gonzo Supreme, DJ Soiree, SuprimoFunk (DJs BuddhaFunk & PrimoSwift). These exceptional DJs will curate an open-format playlist, catering to the diverse tastes of music lovers and ensuring an unforgettable atmosphere (tickets)
Sat 8:30 PM - 1 AM SABOR Latin Night - All-White Affair Bama's 1865, 6007 Osuna Rd. NE We are excited to announce the return of Sabor Latin Nights at an all-new location! 1st Saturdays are healthcare workers' appreciation. NO COVER before 10pm. Bring a picture of your work ID / BADGE. DJ Gabriel Goza will be serving you the saucy Salsa, Bachata, Cumbia, Reggaeton, Merengue y Mas! Ample Parking, Safe Environment, Beautiful Venue, Good Food, Good Music, Good Vibes. 21+ / $10 cover. Salsa or Bachata lesson 9:00-9:45pm
** Sun 3/10 *\*
Sun 9 AM AND 12 PM You've Got Mail Brunch Flix Brewhouse, 3236 La Orilla Rd. NW Dial-up into the way back machine and join us in a simpler time where the only thing faster than your internet connection is the chemistry between Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks. Enjoy a complimentary glass of mimosa with admission and all-day breakfast items (tickets)
Sun 10 AM Rio Grande Mustang Club Car Show Rich Ford, 8601 Lomas Blvd. NE Rich Ford is thrilled to host the Rio Grande Mustang Club at our 63rd anniversary celebration. Stop by, grab a hot dog and enjoy the vintage, custom and new Mustangs on display. There may even be an all-electric Mustang Mach-E or two!
Sun 10 AM Sunday Morning Canna-Yoga at the Dispensary (F&H Market edition) Leaf and Lotus Yoga, 119 San Pasquale Ave SW Flow with me at the Flowers and Herb Markets in Old Town! Sunday Morning Re-Set! Join me for canna-yoga vibes to restore before the new week sets in! This place has got so many treasures! From house plants to magical jewelry and I won't forget to mention their ah-mazing flower products! Each attendee gets a freebie with their ticket! *no consumption on site* *please consume responsibly* Space is limited, please reserve your spot or reach out to confirm you'll be attending!
Sun 10 AM – 1 PM Spring Dog Social USS Bullhead Park, 1606 San Pedro Dr. SE Join us for a morning full of fun, fur, and community spirit! Our doggy social is a chance to connect with fellow dog owners, create friendships, and sharing experiences. Together, we're building a stronger, more connected community, one paw at a time. Free Doggy Snacks & Human Treats: Tasty treats for pets and a small thank you for owners. Complimentary Doggy Bag Rolls: Encouraging cleanliness with rolls of doggy bags for attendees. Tennis Ball Donation Drive: Bring any spare tennis balls to donate to our community's furry friends for more playful days in the park. Community Impact: By joining hands (and paws), we make our shared spaces cleaner and more fun for everyone. Let’s make a difference, one paw at a time. Bring your furry friend, enjoy the social, and be a part of our collective effort to enhance our community's pet-friendliness! ATTENTION: For the safety and enjoyment of all, we kindly ask that only pets who interact well with other dogs and people attend our events. Our priority is to ensure a safe and positive experience for everyone in our community. We appreciate your understanding and cooperation in helping us maintain a secure and friendly environment for both our two-legged and four-legged participants
Sun 10 AM – 4 PM Sunday Rally Sunday Service Motor Co, 2701 4th St. NW Join us every second Sunday of the month. Drop in and enjoy a cup on the house in the morning, join us for a ride around town, and finish back at the shop with beers and a food truck!
Sun 11 AM Sunday Yoga w/ Sade Munirah Collective Frequency, 204 Dartmouth Dr. NE $11. Breath, sound, and yoga
Sun 11 AM – 3 PM Drive-thru Vaccine & Microchip Clinic Isleta Amphitheater, 5605 University Blvd. SE Bernalillo County Animal Care Services will be hosting a free drive-thru vaccine and microchip clinic for ALL Bernalillo County and the City of Albuquerque residents. Please note, all animals must be contained safely upon arrival. Cats and dogs will receive vaccines on a first come first serve basis. The clinic will end promptly at 3 PM
Sun 11 AM – 3 PM Pizza and Play Hot Flash Glass, 2111 San Mateo Blvd. NE Create your own glass! Then make a second piece using the technique to make a small floral bowl
Sun 2 PM Spring Recital West Mesa High School, 6701 Fortuna Rd. NW All our classes will be performing their newest dances which they have worked so hard to learn, hosted by our Special Guests Ballet Folklorico de West Mesa. Show A: 2 - 3 PM, Show B: 4 - 5 PM. $15, seats are limited
Sun 2 – 4 PM Sip N Strum Brew Lab 101, 3301 Southern Blvd. SE, Rio Rancho Play guitar and sing along to classic songs like Brown Eyed Girl and Sweet Caroline while enjoying a cold brewsky from Brew Lab Brewery. Absolutely no experience necessary, we'll even provide a guitar for you! Or bring your own awesome guitar! AND no need to call in a sitter, if you have kids age 8 - 15 we've got you covered! Sign up for the pain event that will happen at the same time on the other end of the brewery! (Paint event for kids is only open to participants of the Sip N Strum event) (tickets)
Sun 5 – 10 PM Night At The Oscars With AFMX Historic Lobo Theater, 3013 Central Ave NE Roll Out the Red Carpet - Your Invitation to a Night of Glitz and Glamour! Imagine an evening filled with the sparkle of champagne, the lure of enticing canapés, and the electric buzz of networking with like-minded individuals. Now, sprinkle in the excitement of a high-stakes prize draw and the sparkle of the Academy Awards streamed live on a jaw-dropping BIG screen. Sounds like a dream, right? Well, pinch yourself because this is not a dream! We are thrilled to invite you to this unforgettable evening of celebration. Join us to toast the success of our industry's finest and share in the anticipation of the Oscar winners. Film enthusiasts and Hollywood hopefuls can strut their stuff on the red carpet, mingle with fellow cinephiles, and enjoy our appetizer buffet (included in your ticket price) and beverages before and during the awards ceremony. Single tickets are $25 or reserve a premium table seating for up to 4 people for $125 which includes sparkling wine! (There is a limited number of premium tables) * Dress to impress in your favorite Oscars fashion! * Paid valet parking will be available! * We are bringing back our ballot contest this year! Ticket prices go toward the AFME Foundation. Your tax-deductible contribution goes towards: * Scholarships, internships, and career development opportunities for students *The production of AFMX’s annual festival and year-round programs and events *Free festival passes given to students, other non-profits, and families in need
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Hi folks.. I apologize in advance for what's probably going to be a long rambling stream of thought but if anyone has the patience to read the whole thing I'd really appreciate any critiques and comments as to what you thought.
I originally started thinking about this when I read the excellent and highly recommended Torg Cyberpapacy cosm sourcebook, particularly the chapters on the godnet, reality and malreux and the church. The reality chapter helps a lot as far as explaining the apparent contradiction between a tech 26 axiom and the low by comparison, while technically 18, social axiom that for all intents and purposes tends to function more at a 14 social axiom. As pages 100-101 indicate the "true" scientific method is actually heresy punishable by death and scientific discoveries take the place of something as crazy (by our "real world" standards anyways) as someone praying for the ability to "discover" nuclear technology, being gifted with it through the cyberpapacy's version of divine revelation, and then frantically writing down the revelation as it quickly fades from their mind leaving scribblings that can be pieced together by persons who have the scientific knowledge to put it to practical use (assuming the person praying for said revelation wasn't in fact a science minded person who was praying for enlightenment they could directly put to use themselves) .. but bearing in mind that the scientific method and in general any pursuit of science itself is forbidden short of this divine revelation, if it's some scientist quietly pursuing these scribblings they do so in secret and then present their findings as their own "divine revelation" lest they be burned at the stake. It's clear that the church considers itself to have a monopoly on science within the cosm.
(I use the phrase "scientific method" a lot in this post - here's a link explaining what I mean by it but any google search for the term will no doubt turn up something similar to what I've posted here )
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/science-faisteps-of-the-scientific-method
The original cyberpapacy sourcebook from the 1990's had a way of explaining the tech axiom in a way that absolutely fit the gonzo, over the top, clash of realities original version of Torg that I still have fond memories of .. a shaman from Australia if I recall correctly told Hari Machi Two, who herself comes from a cosm with a high tech axiom, to slap a piece of cyberware on Jean Malreux himself who at the time along with his cosm was operating under a much lower tech axiom, that similar to medieval Core Earth's era if I recall correctly .. Malreux's darkness device liked what it saw and instantly put the higher tech into effect resulting in a "second transformation" to speak, another reality surge where areas like France already conquered and converted to the cyberpapacy transformed a second time to reflect this new higher tech axiom.
Torg Eternity has done away with this but I found myself craving more detail as to how exactly how technology evolved in Malreux's home cosm... said cosm being named Magna Veritas in Torg Eternity (maybe that was the name for the cosm in 1990's Torg , I can't remember). The easiest solution would be to simply assume the cosm was always at tech level 26 even before, with the help of his darkness device, Malreux seized control over the church and by extension the cosm. Extrapolating from the information above one would assume that the high tech axiom was the result of divine inspiration from Manga Veritas's version of the Catholic deity even prior to Malreux taking power.
A very minor spoiler here , so minor I don't think it's even worth a spoiler tag, but if you read the cyberpapacy mega length adventure Unhallowed Data on page 9 mentions that the current "year of our lord" in Magna Veritas is the year 1985... Unhallowed Data takes place during year one of the possibility wars albeit near the end of said year. The Cyberpapacy sourcebook mentions Malreux has been ruling Manga Veritas for over 150 years but let's say simply 150 years just to give ourselves a concrete number.. this would mean Malreux seized control of Magna Veritas in the year 1835 in that cosm.
So far I've been quoting from the official Torg Eternity books minus that last sentence above which is an educated guess based on what I've read in the Cyberpapacy sourcebook. The rest of what I'm about to say is my own invention and something I'd like feedback on if you're so inclined.
I find myself wondering.. what if the tech axiom wasn't necessarily tech level 26 when Malreux took power? This would mean he wasn't yet referring to himself as "the cyperpope" (see below) and probably just "the pope" of the cosm. What if, thanks to Magna Veritas's version of the Catholic deity granting technological discoveries to it's populace which in turn was seized upon and controlled by the church, the cosm was operating at tech level 23 at the time, the current tech level our "real world" core earth is operating at as well as the torg eternity version of core earth.. still far in advance of our real world's lower tech axiom in the year 1835. However as the discussion of the godnet chapter in the cyberpapcy cosm sourcebook indicates technological progress was uneven thanks to the lack of the true scientific method being allowed .. the current version of the cyberpapacy's "super internet" the godnet - a creation that has a spiritual component on top of the enormous technological advancement it represents ...
....even at tech level 23 the internet described on pages 58-59 of the cyberpapcy cosm sourcebook would be an embarrassment to tech level 23 standards, no high speed internet and very basic computer networks with most devices simply not being connected to the internet.. which makes sense when you think about the uneven nature of scientific advancement. Despite the church's self imposed limitation on technological advancement one could argue that in Manga Vertias ... and I'm drawing from inspiration from the original 1990's Cyberpapacy sourcebook here... there never was any seperation of church and state, the church not only maintaining the power it had in our real world medieval times era but also expanding on said power, doing away with kings, presidents and ministers of state entirely and going on to rule the populace as a government in its own right, pages 42-43 of the cyberpapacy sourcebook talk briefly about history and the Great Crusades.. combine that with it's monopoly over any technology and making the most advanced/powerful of said technology available only to the "truly faithful" under the church's control with "lesser technology" available only as a trickle down sort of thing to the faithful among the masses prior to Malreux's rise to power.
Malreux takes power and with the help of his Darkness Device starts plundering other cosms and raiding them of their possibility energy... this gives Malreux's Darkness Device all the power it needs to bump the tech axiom by an astonishing 3 points, from 23 up to 26, over Malreux's 150 year reign. The cyberpapacy cosm sourcebook mentions, if I'm understanding correctly, the godnet coming into force during the last 70 years of Malreux's reign so let's say from the year 1915 up until the "now" of the year 1985 in Manga Veritas. Given the description of the Godnet in the book it would allow for even technological advancement that would occur at an even more breakneck pace at that point.
But going back to the year 1835 when Malreux seized power up to the year 1915... let's say Malreux and his darkness device allowed the tech axiom to rise from 23 to tech level 24 for the longest while then up to tech level 25 just as the year 1915 begins. Page 234 of the torg eternity core rules mentions that at tech level 25 cybernetics are superior to natural components but also mentions at tech level 24 bionic or cloned organ replacement becomes practical and that advanced batteries allow for high energy lasers and energized melee weapons and computers gain limited awareness (also at tech level 25 the weapons mentioned become a lot more commonplace thanks to much more efficient energy sources).. let's say Malreux used the tech benefits mentioned at tech level 24 and 25 for his own personal advancement and that of his most loyal followers... cybernetics were in play in the year 1915 but not commonplace the way there are in the areas of say formerly core earth transformed to the cyberpapacy's reality as described in the cyberpapacy sourcebook.. such cybernetics... not to mention the weapons and artificial intelligence mentioned below... were tools and implants available only to Malreux and his followers within the church who had proven themselves loyal to Malreux.
The Cyberpapacy sourcebook makes it clear that the Godnet is, literally, addictive, stimulating the pleasure centers of the brain and effectively letting Malreux and his darkness device eventually brainwash anyone who plugs into it. With the Godnet now in play Malreux could safely begin distributing cyberware to the masses - the faithful among the masses of course who obeyed Malreux without question.. with the cyberware remotely/wirelessly plugged into the godnet Malreux now had even further control over the brainwashed masses (though one could argue he had iron control over them before if nothing else out of their fear of going against his church-government). The cyberware implants themselves could now spy on the person they were implanted into and could be turned against the person they were grafted onto should they act in a way that displeased Malreux. Given the life changing nature of cybernetics... failing body parts can now be easily replaced and are freely available to the masses at this point, not just the clergy and elite church-soldier of Malreux... Maleux's popularity would be immense, beloved by the masses (let's not forget the brain washing capabilities of the Godnet here too) from the year 2015 up until the "now" of 1985 in Manga Veritas. Maleux feels free to let the tech axiom increase from 25 up to 26 from the year 2015 to 1985 as more and more of the masses pledge their undying loyalty to Malreux and his church and have cyberware implanted. No doubt the piety score described in the cyberpapacy sourcebook would come into play here too starting from the year 1915, the "information highway" that is the Godnet making it very easy for Malreux to institute piety scores. At this point Malreux starts referring to himself as the "Cyberpope" not just "The Pope" and the masses adore him for it.
While the Cyberpapacy cosm sourcebook doesn't come right out and say it, with the other cosms Malreux has plundered for possibility energy resulting in the eventual destruction of said cosm, given Malreux's tactics of attempting to convert enemies to his twisted version of Catholicism, one would guess there are some persons within the cosms he's conquered.. reality rated Stormers or just very useful highly skilled Ords ... who allied with Malreux at first out of self interest seeing that Malreux was going to prove triumphant and then finding themselves brainwashed after repeated exposure to the Godnet (or as the Cyberpapacy sourcebook states taken for "re-education" within the virtual reality of the Godnet and definitely brainwashed into a loyal Malreux follower at that point)... Malreux would now have an acquired small army of highly effective recruits from the cosms he's plundered not to mention the fanatically loyal populace of his own cosm Manga Veritas. This is the invading force Core Earth has to deal with. And in addition to this potent force of brainwashed soldiers and experts, as the Cyberpapacy sourcebook mentions Malreux can now take advantage of the threat the other High Lords pose on Earth.. those invaders from other dimensions will kill you.. but I, Malreux, have nothing but love to show you.. join my church, see the one true light and I will not only save you, I will gift you with cybernetics that heal any bodily afflictions you were suffering from before AND perhaps even make you better than you were before (the martially inclined who join Malreux's military and get cyberware that boosts their physical abilities, potential cyberpriests who join and get not only that but other kinds of cyberware too). And then of course you have the Godnet brought to Earth and brainwashing any denizens of Earth who plug into it at well. It's no wonder that the delphi council is described as fighting a losing battle in the delphi council chapter in the cyberpapacy cosm sourcebook since, as mentioned in that chapter, the populace within France and other areas Malreux has converted to his reality really don't want to be saved.
One last but very important point I should mention.. I myself am religious in "real life" though the Catholic (or Christian) faith is not the religion I follow.. but I have dear friends in real life who are Christian, other dear friends who are atheist, and dear friends who are more spiritual in religious belief than anything else. I find myself hoping anyone who plays Torg Eternity would know this without me coming right out and saying it given the nature of the Cyberpapacy cosm and the presence of the faith skill and miracle perks in the game (otherwise I'm guessing you would not be playing Torg Eternity to begin with) but my comment on Malreux's twisted version of the Catholic faith are just that.. a horrifically twisted perversion of the Catholic faith and Christianity for that matter that in no way shape or form should be taken as my real life belief or view of the Christian and/or Catholic faith in general nor should it be taken as a condemnation of religion in general either as far as the horrific liberties Malreux has taken with his twisted version of Christianity.
For anyone who's made it this far and finished reading my gigantic walls of text I thank you for your patience and if you were so inclined I would love to hear your thoughts as well on my suggestions.
​

I'm a social-creative GM and I design for it. I playtest to smooth social friction and hear as many good ideas from players as I can. My initial design constraint was 15 minutes to start play, but that's how I got there.
The GM is a player in a special role—bigger and potentially more engaging than the role of a normal player. But some rules and expectations burn GMs out.
What spoils GM fun:

1. Prep is laborious, frustrating, or uninspiring. (Just-in-time decisions fix this)
2. Running the game is cumbersome or frustrating. (Delegating and just-in-time decisions fix this.)
3. Disconnect between player and GM expectations (setting, activities, roleplay). (Collaboration, culture, and just-in-time decisions fix this.)
4. The game rewards/enables player behaviors that suck to GM for. (Rewards and culture fix this)

I've designed and playtested 7 games and run over 50 (short) playtest campaigns in the last 4 years, and these are procedures I iterative-designed to make GMing more fun. They're very conversational, meaning more social, creative, back-and-forth, flowing, and intuitive. Nothing technical.
In order, I'll talk about starting a story, aligning play norms, rapid collaborative worldbuilding, group character creation, player-driven, just-in-time lore creation, fun crits, and advancement. I didn't touch content and presentation, just mechanics and procedures design.
My folktale-themed system starts with a procedure to collaboratively create the premise of the story. Using the following questions, I listen to the players and take notes while chiming in with my own ideas (and items from random tables to add flavor). This zero-prep spontaneous start usually takes 5 minutes of fun brainstorming.
The questions are:

1. Are we children, youths, or grown folk? (In my paradigm, this is power and role)
   
2. Is the tone dark or light? How so? (The "how so" was a huge improvement!)
   
3. How much magic? Spells? Items? (Those sections are in the book)
   
4. What are some fun locations in our setting? (The GM has themed sparked tables to pull from while the players imagine their own locations. This is extremely efficient intuitive worldbuilding and will serve 3 purposes)
   

What doesn't work is head-scratcher questions. Conversation must flow, and players' intuitive answers are more useful and less regretted than contemplated answers. By the way, I started with 7 questions (which was fun) but put priority into character creation instead.
It's a great feeling to start with everyone onboard because they pitched in. Yes, this replaces prep work, but I cannot overstate how much MORE FUN it is to GM when players start with informed intuitions due to buying in this way. This conversation creates a vortex of vibes that draw out enthusiasm and draw in engagement. Good players do things that feel right for the story. In testing this procedure (repeatedly, by itself), players often said, "Okay, but that was a really good premise. We have to play that sometime."
There's a creative risk in inviting everyone to put their imaginations together. Some players like to be subversive, controverting the premise or going gonzo because contrast feels special. For the odd player muddying the social vortex, there's the following soft rule:
Vibe Check: Any player may call "Vibe Check" on an action that interrupts the story or the fun, including a choice during premise or PC creation. If the players vote the vibe is not right (the GM breaks ties), the action is blocked, and she who checked vibes is granted a small in-game reward by the GM.
Players thank me for this ability, and I love not having to argue, "No, that's wack and we hates it like a cat hates a bath." Vibe check is used less than once a month, and it turns a sour note into a funny one! Problem players get grumpy for 2 minutes when vibe checked, but this correction is quick and gets them harmonizing for the rest of the play session. Consistently. It's really a cultural rule that helps disruptive players feel how it's fun to play along rather than go against the grain.
Next comes PC creation. Do this together like session 0 and skip 1000 headaches and haphazard expectations. When the PCs, the players, the setting, and the GM vibe, orchestrating it all is rewarding and smooth. Keep in mind, this is still a super-fun conversation, everyone is listening and responding to one another. The next part marries the world and PCs.
Each player answers for their PC:

1. Where do you belong? Why?
2. Where do you avoid? Why?

Context is key. These questions immediately follow players brainstorming locations for the premise. Flow. Vortex. In minutes, you'll start the story in one of these locations like a great callback. What doesn't work is asking 'Where do you belong?' without providing a list of locations that players already favor. It's too cumbersome for players to invent a location and identify with it simultaneously. I tried without cooking up locations in the premise procedure, but it's too committal. It's fun to answer questions with intuitive answers and fun for the GM to then use intuitive answers in an unexpected way (see above). It's creates that golden, "Surprising yet inevitable," twist.
Next solution is a biggie. A HUGE issue for many GMs: how do I handle PC deaths? Some players (like me) crave a meaningful death, and others would rather wolf down a turd. So I ask.
Deadliness: "How deadly do you want this story to be for you?" (Players can differ) Choose on this ascending scale from 1 to 5

1. You'll live
2. Reveal what happens if your health hits 0 (reveals explained soon)
3. Risking life and limb is part of play
4. Any failed roll might hurt you
5. Seek a meaningful death

If you want the story more lethal for your Protag than others, enemies and story hazards target you more viciously. The GM writes this number next to your name, circled.
Aligning expectations of consequence makes GMing way more fun. Keep in mind, most players feel different while dying than they did while signing up to die. Personally, I foreshadow death a lot. "This could be your last moment." "The rocks you saw along the path could be piled on your corpse like a cairn if this goes sideways." "I would say a quick prayer if I were you."
Speaking of that, one of the most devious improv tools in my game's design, is this character feature. Vulnerability: "How can I hurt you without killing you?" Examples: Madness, fame/bond loss, equipment and wealth loss, disfigurement, vices, spiritual corruption, and loss of loved ones.
No guesswork—the players tell me their (fictional) pain points so that we're on exactly the same page when I use them to motivate or provide consequences. It's a danger tool. Aligning expectations on consequence makes GMing way more fun. No social friction. This is a playful, humorous, extremely useful narrative tool. So is it's opposite.
Wish: Dream big because your wish comes true when your 3rd roll in a row is a crit success.
I prefer carrots to sticks, and this huge carrot is a fun driver to dangle in front of players. A wish is also an unforgettable twist in a story when it comes true. It's happened twice, for a single risk-taking player, which is insane.
During play these next player abilities keep players coming up with stuff that makes GMing more fun.
Players can REVEAL details for their PCs and the setting during play. The GM decides if the player is an "(un)reliable narrator" and how (un)truthful a reveal is. Perhaps a wayward Reveal is actually a rumor or wish. Niche equipment, knowledge, and preparations can be revealed with dice rolls when needed, instead of in dry exposition beforehand.
Caveat: If a player is revealing something really convenient and tension-destroying, call for a roll to see if he was being a reliable narrator or not. Player: "If ghosts can only be killed with silver, I reveal my knife is silver." (low roll) GM: "Not silver. Someone sold it to you as silver, but there's no reason to believe it for the price you paid." Vibe check helps keep reveals on point. This just-in-time decision making is flexible and serves pacing, and its super fun to fully engage the creative abilities of your players. Never get "stuck" when improvising as a GM again.
I love to ask leading questions for reveals, or when I feel a player has the right flavor of imagination for the moment. "Which of your friends recently went missing? Or was it a family member?" "Witches are rumored to cast curses of bad luck and unnatural trouble. What cursed stuff has been happening?" "Anyone want to name something in this room?"
CRITICAL ROLLS are special story moments triggered when someone rolls a 1 or the maximum result on the die used for an action. Reveal the outcome of your own critical "failure" or "success."
These always surprise me as a GM. No session is predictable, no matter how simple the content, when players can swing big moments like this. Vibe check keeps crits from being disruptive.
This last part might be divisive, but it's central. Rewards are the core of a game. The player behavior you reinforce makes or breaks GM fun. No matter how diegetic, fair, or ludo-narrative harmonizing, rewards cannot make GMing less fun, or you're going to have campaigns that fizzle out and GMs that burn out. This includes PC advancement overcomplicating GMing. GMs provide interesting challenges, which necessarily interact with PC abilities. Overcomplicated PCs need overcomplicated challenges.
I designed two reward systems to make GMing more fun: 1. Fame is for being good to NPCs in the form of quests, building trust, culture, etc. and is lost by in-game anti-social behavior like murder, betrayal, and cruelty. Fame empowers you to have Friends with Bonds, which are like hirelings you can't sacrifice as cannon fodder. 2. Blessings are a metacurrency awarded for being good to the players at your table, including the GM, decided by GM fiat or players saying, "that feels like it deserves a blessing." You can also just say, "Doing xyz in game gets a blessing." I use that to tempt players into using new mechanics. It works.
Players love both Fame and blessings. They don't love the threat of losing Fame, but it keeps me wanting to roleplay because PCs are never psychopaths. In fact, this eliminated murder-hobo behavior completely. No GM skill or social contract did what this truth does: "You can murder him, and your Fame would suffer x much, though that might be worth it. It's not about witnesses, it's your choice."
What does metacurrencty buy? Not some ability from a book that will blindside the GM. When players advance their PCs, it's like they're designing the GM's game experience. That's what the GM roleplays with. The GM can grant appropriate items, spells, friendships, or custom abilities that will be useful in the upcoming session, in trade for metacurrency.
Posting these thoughts because they really feel good to GM for, and my players actually like to GM this way. We take turns, which makes us all better players and GMs. Feedback appreciated.

I used to think I could be happy anywhere. I wanted to see the world, and imagined I could make a life for myself wherever you plunked me down. Now I chalk that up to a youthful lack of taste. The same one which makes small children prefer pieces of breaded, processed chicken in the shape of dinosaurs over filet mignon.
There’s a connection between my body and the land where I was born. Yes, that’s a real thing. I didn’t believe it either until I moved out here. As I grow older, I crave familiarity more than novelty. Familiar sights and sounds. Familiar flora and fauna. The very scent of the air.
I have nobody to blame but myself. I made a classic young man’s error, getting on a plane for somebody I wasn’t married to. “Yet”, I told myself. Had my future with her all planned out, down to the color of the curtains...only to be dumped over the phone while unpacking.
I just wanted to go home after that. I wanted the comfort of those familiar sights, sounds and smells. Instead, because I spent my last dime transplanting my life from Oregon to Florida, I found myself stranded in an utterly alien environment.
I don’t belong here. Certainly not my body, but my heart least of all. Come to think of it, my true “happy place” was never a place, but a person. Was. Now I’m a stranger in a strange land, surrounded by incomprehensible beasts I have no ability nor desire to understand.
The first thing that struck me when I left the airport was the faint smell of burning tires, mixed with what I would soon learn is a scent typical of swampland. An obese woman dressed up as Uncle Sam occupied a booth set up outside, handing out free baby turtles to “police, firefighters or military in uniform.” I still don’t know what that was about.
The smell inside the cab was the same as outside but intensified by heat. A dense musk I was reluctant to immerse myself in, except that I knew nothing of local public transit options and couldn’t afford to bring my car.
On the drive from the airport to the apartment complex, I spied gators sunbathing right on the front lawns of houses adjacent to a large pond. Just right out in the open. And here I always thought the point of creating civilization was to get away from large predators.
A news report on the cab’s radio described a recent altercation between a shirtless man and police. Evidently he lit his beard on fire, declared that he could turn his entire body to steel and fire lightning from his eyes at will, then challenged bystanders to face him on the field of honor.
There’s a running joke that every time a news report begins with “A Florida man…” followed by a list of depraved crimes against nature and decency, they’re really all about the same guy. Some sort of demented superhero named “Florida Man”.
It was followed by a report on a string of missing persons cases. I didn’t know it then, but pretty soon I’d regard that as an improvement. If the rate of disappearances picks up, pretty soon this could be a dramatically nicer place to live.
This state is, at the very least, never boring. Maybe it’s something in the air, or the water. Maybe it’s the frequent hurricanes. Frequent by my standards anyway. But more likely it’s just the abundance of meth.
I was mugged on my third night, though mugged might not be the right word. The poor slob was too out of his mind to actually take my wallet. He wore a vomit stained undershirt and something resembling a kilt fashioned from a garbage bag around his lower body.
I couldn’t understand a word that came out of his nearly toothless mouth. I don’t know for certain if he was tweaking, he may simply have been homeless. Every native I’ve run into since I got here speaks English, but degenerated by varying degrees.
It’s not just a Southern drawl. Not much of that here. Nor is it a self consistent local dialect. It’s a mushy, corrupted patchwork, ever-changing to suit the mood of the speaker. I’m not just trying to be difficult, there have been times when I sincerely had to nod and smile because I couldn’t understand the fellow speaking to me.
I have known plenty of brilliant Southerners. This isn’t about North and South. I recall struggling to describe the nature of that cultural divide to an exchange student once, realizing in the process how petty and artificial it is.
The only actual, literal rocket scientist I personally know speaks with a Southern accent so thick, he ought to wear a tablet around his neck to display subtitles. So whatever’s wrong with Florida has nothing to do with the larger Southern US, which has produced a respectable number of accomplished thinkers. It’s specifically a Florida thing.
When you’re little, everyone you trust tells you to follow your heart. What awful advice that turned out to be! I followed my heart all the way from a lush, temperate wonderland of natural beauty to a putrid swampy hellscape prowled by roving bands of mutants. Fuck you, heart.
That’s not to say I haven’t met some interesting people here, albeit nearly all of them from out of state. I don’t have a large enough sample size to say this with any confidence, but it does seem like Florida is a popular place to pass through when you’re young, figuring yourself out and deciding what to do with your life.
Passing through Florida, and through my life. Each of them like a momentary sip of water, just barely sustaining me as I languish in this human desert. The cab ran over another of the increasingly common potholes.
I would later learn that the city concentrates maintenance funding on the areas immediately surrounding the theme parks which bring in all those lucrative tourist dollars. They visit the parks, maybe they visit the beaches, then they’re gone. No sense in fixing up what they’ll never see.
Consequently everything outside of the oasis of city spending surrounding those theme parks looks like a borderline post apocalyptic banana republic. I’m exaggerating, but not by much. As with any state there are nice and not so nice parts of Florida, I’ll be generous and assume I happened to move to one of the latter.
The landscape consists of dodgy, cobbled together strip malls and various small businesses of questionable legality. All of them operating out of dirty single story hovels which change hands frequently. Payday loans, pawn shops, cash for gold, and churches.
Oh, the endless variety of churches! One on every street corner, as plentiful as coffee shops back home. Pentecostal, Seventh Day Adventist, Scientologists, Eckankar, even a few snake handlers. The more gonzo, sensationalist and fringe, the better.
Like Vegas without the casinos. Everything’s instant, value priced, while-u-wait. Culture without nuance, depth or patience, with a population to match. If you’re familiar with the website “People of Wal Mart”, imagine that, but everywhere you look any time you step outside.
Partly due to the cultural disconnect and partly due to the lingering shock of being dumped, I began floating through life high above everything, nowhere touching the Earth. It no longer had anything I wanted. Nothing with which to entice me to re-engage.
The sting of the breakup, though it felt as if it would last forever at the time, eventually petered out. The habit of disconnection I picked up in the process did not die with it, but persisted as a permanent new feature of my personality...one which quickly proved its worth as a pain avoidance mechanism.
Nobody could hurt me if I never sincerely invested myself in them. What an ingenious trick! Nothing prevented me from going through the motions. From saying all the same kinds of things I would’ve, if I allowed myself to return the love so generously invested in me by a string of women more emotionally adventurous than I.
This way I could have companionship, gratification and the various other benefits of a relationship, but with none of the danger. It never lasted longer than a few months though. They always picked up on what I was doing when, sometimes just experimentally, they tried to hurt me a little bit.
A test of some sort. Going to dinner with an old boyfriend, sloppy makeouts with some rando at a party or something of that nature. I was supposed to get angry. To yell, to cry, even to slap them depending on their tastes. Anything but an indifferent shrug.
If only they weren’t so curious, things might’ve lasted longer. But they had to know. They couldn’t just accept outward appearances as reality. They had to scrape at the skin, recoiling in horror when the wound refused to bleed. When only cold, dull metal shone back at them through the opening.
I know I’m the one who was in the wrong. To lead them on like that, letting them entrust their hearts to an emotional cripple. I should be guilty. But then, guilt is a feeling. I’m just about out of those by now.
It’s the same way anywhere there’s loads of people. Malls, airports, theme parks, bars. I imagine a sort of invisible force field just slightly larger than I am. A full body condom. To separate me from these people, however frequently I must immerse myself in them.
A Christian roommate back in college had his own term for it: Being in the world, but not of the world. A stopped clock is still correct twice a day. This particular world is one I have to be “in” for the time being, I decided...but I will never be “of” it.
There’s no avoiding interaction, not forever. Don’t think I haven’t tried. I don’t even leave my apartment lately, performing online jobs for a service called Mechanical Turk. Basically human assisted search results.
I did it on the side at first, but once you’ve stuck with it for long enough and are highly rated, you can make serious money at it. Enough for rent and utilities anyway, plus a little extra for the occasional pizza or energy drinks that food stamps won’t cover.
So I stagnated. Then I stagnated more. Days, weeks, months went by with no human contact save for text on my monitor. The only times I’d go out would be for booze or coffee. Or to hike. With practice, over time I whittled down the number of words I needed to say to the bartender (in order to communicate what I wanted) to the absolute minimum.
She didn’t notice what I was doing at first. When she did, she started giving me the stink eye every time I ordered. Not that I care. I don’t know her. I don’t fucking know any of these people. This may as well be a foreign country.
Back home, I loved to hike. You really can’t get away with being an indoor person in the Pacific Northwest. There’s an embarrassment of gorgeous wilderness just minutes from any city. Not so much here. Just endless flat expanses of asphalt or swampland, punctuated by big budget tourist attractions and gimmicky, low budget Americana.
I chose this apartment complex in large part because it’s directly adjacent to a much nicer, more upscale complex. They’ve got their own beautifully landscaped bicycle path, the closest thing to a wooded trail for miles.
Naturally, they’ve put up a rustic wooden fence as a “suggestion” that those of us who don’t pay for the path’s upkeep should stay out. Of course I just step right over that shit. I don’t know these people. I don’t care what they think of me, or owe them anything.
It’s one of the rare bright spots in my life since moving here. Nothing like a proper hiking trail but it makes for pleasant Sunday walks. The landscaping is a little overdone and artificial, like everything else in this state...natives included.
Even so, simply being out in the sun, more or less surrounded by trees, flowers and grass is a sorely needed respite. The only interruption is the occasional overly disciplined cyclist, wearing full body neon spandex and a teardrop helmet, rocketing past to one side.
One of ’em stopped once to lecture me for making use of the path. He could tell from my clothing where I must live. I just stood there, expressionless, until he tired himself out and left. Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Except for incidents like that, I could be both outside and alone for the entire day once a week. I needed the exercise too. My hermitic lifestyle had begun to take a toll on my body. The regular diet of rice, beans and pasta plus the occasional pizza delivery also wasn’t doing me any favors.
Despite the weekly exposure I’d grown distressingly pale. All muscle definition vanished and with each passing day I felt myself growing weaker. Every Sunday, when I emerged from the apartment for a walk, the sun hurt my eyes a little more.
Deterioration. Progressively worse, resembling the transformation already underway within me. A gradual withering which I could imagine no plausible way to reverse. To hell with it, I decided. It’s not as if I’m terribly attached to life at this point.
It was during one of these Sunday walks, specifically a stopover in an undeveloped field of grass, that I found it. The field is one of the few places I can reach from the path that’s purely natural, neither landscaped nor built upon.
I didn’t think much of the object jabbing me in the back initially. I simply meant to lay down and look up at the sky, maybe listen to some music. But something sharp pressed into me as I reclined. Rolling over and retrieving the offending object, I stared.
Can’t say why I didn’t notice the smell sooner. Once close enough to my face, it made me gag. Something like the cracked, partly decomposed claw of a crab. Not any species I’ve ever seen. Too large for one thing, and black as night.
Here and there, coarse, pointy bristles protruded from it. Like the ones which cover tarantulas, seen up close. Coconut crabs? Out here? Not that I knew of. Lobsters? Not this far inland. As repulsive as it was, it made for a welcome curiosity. A disruption of my usual, increasingly mind numbing routine.
I contemplated bringing it back to the apartment, but decided against it because of the smell. Instead I took a picture with my phone, then laid elsewhere in the field until the sun began to set. I’ve become accustomed to the heat since moving here, but it’s downright pleasant in the evening.
Except in the Summer, and even then only for a scant few days, back home it was never warm enough that I could take walks after dark without a jacket. Strolling along beneath the stars, the now comfortably tepid air tickling my bare arms made me resolve to schedule some more evening walks in the following weeks.
Now and again I passed through great teeming clouds of gnats or some other tiny winged insect. I knew these small, localized swarms assembled in the evening for breeding purposes and felt mildly disgusted by that as I picked them out of my hair.
Then again, they inconvenienced me relatively little compared to what it must be like from their perspective. Imagine some gigantic, incomprehensible beast plowing into you while you’re just trying to get laid. A brief moment of disgust for me. But for many of those flies, a brutal and unexpected end to their already short lives.
They’re the lucky ones. I’ve got to go on living here. I took a shower when I got home to wash the remaining gnats out of my hair, as otherwise I could feel a few stragglers writhing against my scalp, fighting to free themselves. Down the drain with ’em.
I ordered a pizza online afterwards, still dripping, towel wrapped around my waist. I didn’t even bother getting dressed in time for the delivery. Just opened the door, took the pizza and handed him the cash. “Oh. I uh, I didn’t mean to…sorry!”
I didn’t so much as make eye contact. “Well, have a great evening and enjoy your pizza!” Token friendliness, and thinly veiled pleading for a generous tip. I shut the door in his face. I order pizza once a month at most. The rate of turnover is such that it’ll be someone else next time anyway, guaranteed.
Strangers in the night, just how I like it. The pizza was decent for what I paid, though some strange process happens as it cools down. It’s never anywhere close to as good reheated as it is freshly baked.
The same thing happens to any fast food I’ve tried. Addictively tasty when fresh and hot, but it slowly congeals as it cools, saturated fats solidifying until achieving a rubbery texture. It doesn’t stop me from eating it though. My insides are no less cold, no less limp.
I played computer games on one monitor while ‘turking’ on the other until the sun came up. All told I made nearly fifty dollars. Something about sleep deprivation really puts me in “the zone”. The energy drinks probably have something to do with it.
I enter this hazy, almost dreamlike mindset where the work flies by. I’m no less proficient in MOBAs when I get like this either. My skills improve, if anything. Time loses all meaning. My bloodshot eyes track the action with no conscious effort on my part, my every movement automated.
During one of these semi-lucid marathon gaming sessions, in the wee hours of the morning, I first glimpsed one. A whole, living specimen that must’ve followed the scent I picked up from touching that claw. I only saw it out of the corner of my eye mind you, and because I knew I was inebriated, I didn’t take it seriously.
Hallucination comes with the territory. It was hardly the first time I spotted blotchy, moving silhouettes in my peripheral vision. Mildly concerning the first time, but I don’t scare easily. I have a solid grasp on what’s real. On what’s even possible, versus the mind playing tricks on itself.
That infuriates some people. Usually ones with some frivolous worldview built on a mixture of sloppy thinking and outright fraud. I could be less abrasive if I were to qualify my statements as if they were just my opinions, but they’re not. Anyway, do they deserve that level of consideration? It’s their own fault for being suckered into such obvious hokum.
This fortified materialistic mindset insulates me against fear of the dark. In most cases I’m likely to be the scariest thing hiding in the dark anyway. I can’t pinpoint when I turned into what I am now, but any crazed vagrant, thief or meth head concealed by cover of night has more to fear from me than the inverse.
That’s just realistic threats, too. Ghosts, demons and the like never enter into my consideration. To reach the center in my brain responsible for fear, such ideas would first have to pass through the center responsible for separating the plausible from the implausible. They never do.
I simply know better. It’s a bleak, boring world out there. No sasquatches, no devils, no ghosts or chupacabras. Humans are the only monsters on this planet, myself included. The longer you live around them, the more of their attributes you absorb until one day you look in the mirror and see one of ’em staring back at you.
That reminds me, I should start smoking. Whatever it takes so that I die before the transformation completes. Death is my destination, as certainly as someone with a gun to his temple. I’ve just chosen to take a more circuitous, scenic route.
To that end, when I woke up the next morning with a pounding headache, I headed straight for the bar. Sheila was surprised to see me, I think. I don’t look at her face much. I’m also not actually sure that’s her name. Sharla? Shauna?
“Shit, you’re a mess.” No argument from me, I left the apartment without showering. My hair must’ve been a riot to look at, stiff oily tufts sticking out all over. When I said nothing, she sighed and asked me what I wanted.
“Whisky, neat.” She frowned. “This ain’t fuckin Star Trek. I’m not that machine. Whatever it was, you know. Tea, earl grey, hot. Can’t you say hello first? Maybe ask how I’m doing?” I smiled. Shirley’s not usually funny. Shanna?
“I just want my drink.” I paid upfront. A tab would’ve been too much of a commitment for my liking. The beginnings of roots I had no intention of putting down in a place like this. I already felt hungover and would undoubtedly regret this later in the day.
Morning drinking is one of those cliche signs that you’ve lost control of your life. I’ve got no life to lose control of, so I ought to be alright. My eyes wandered, then came to rest on the dingy little strip club across the street.
I think it used to be a Blockbusters. They repainted but didn’t bother to change the architecture, just blacked out the windows. The sign was missing some letters, and had been for the past year. The giant pair of neon outlined cartoon tits above that communicates their value proposition clearly enough. Most of their regulars probably can’t read anyway.
A pair of surly, shirtless men with huge beer bellies were duking it out in the strip club’s parking lot. Really going at it, smashing each other’s ugly, drunken faces with their fists, a trash can lid, and at one point the hood of a parked car. I looked away, having seen that sort of thing so many times around here that it wasn’t even worth paying attention to.
I’m not an eavesdropper by nature. I could care less what anybody around me is talking about, but it’s occasionally ridiculous or outrageous enough that my ears perk up. This is how I’ve learned everything I know about how their minds work, which is more than I ever wanted to.
For one thing, there exists no semblance of critical thought in their understanding of the world. Their method for determining what’s true basically boils down to what they’ve heard other people say. The more people say the same thing, the more credible it is in their estimation.
I cannot count the number of times I’ve heard them breathlessly discussing obvious internet hoaxes as though they were real. Confusing satire for news, or the contents of tabloids and chain letters as if they were the products of reputable journalism.
This is how they accumulate a sort of “folk wisdom”. What “everybody knows is true”. A mishmash of politically motivated rumors, investment scams or other get rich quick nonsense, and the sort of hollow Earth, Jewish conspiracy, ancient aliens bullshit of the sort commonly discussed on Coast to Coast AM and Infowars.
Whether they believe it boils down to how cool they think it would be if true, and the degree to which it reinforces their entrenched political views...which are themselves dictated in large part by fear, selfishness and stupidity.
According to the average conversation I overhear while drinking, Obama was born in Kenya, the government puts fluoride in our water and chemtrails in the sky to dumb us down (as if these people need any help with that) anybody who’s not some sort of evangelical Christian is out to get everybody that is, and these various menaces are all somehow in cahoots with each other.
Rolling up everybody you dislike into a single vague, sinister entity as if Jews have any truck with Muslims, or atheists with either is surely simpler than forming separate opinions of each group. Which is easier still than getting to know individuals, though I suppose I’m not one to talk as I avoid that like the plague.
Topping off their list of bogeymen, there’s the feminists, the gays, the blacks, the ACLU, the government and basically any other barrier to achieving their idea of utopia; a country under the exclusive control of people who look, sound, think, dress, fuck, and smell like they do.
That’s a wonderful joke to me, because if you ask one of these creatures to list the qualities they imagine all blacks possess that they find so disagreeable, what you’ll get from them is a spot on description of themselves.
They’re disgusting, aren’t they? It can’t just be me. There are days when I wonder if I’ve judged them too harshly. This usually happens when I haven’t run into one for a while. That little shred of guilt vanishes the moment I next hear one of them speak.
“Oh ya, dem fings is real. I seen ’em” says the plump woman with the ratty blonde hair seated near me. Whoever she’s speaking to is just outside my field of vision, but I don’t care enough to turn my head. I continue listening anyway, and discover she’s talking about ghosts.
“Dey had experts on dat show, I done watched it t’other night on da Histry channel.” Oh yes, of course. The History channel. Also known as the Hitler, ghosts and aliens channel. Gotta give the people what they want, integrity be damned.
“Expert” has a very particular meaning for these people. “Scientist” is a dirty word. It has political connotations for them. It’s those damnable “government scientists” who tell them that climate change exists, that the Biblical account of human origins probably isn’t accurate, that vaccines are a necessary precaution against pathogens, that fluoride is harmless in sufficiently small amounts, etcetera.
Just a bunch of dour, humorless spoilsports in their view, whose input on any matter of emotional importance is never welcome. “Experts” are another story. That’s any white or Asian man in nice clothes who argues in favor of their own ill formed opinions, with a command of the English language far enough in advance of their own that he sounds intelligent and credible, but not so much that he comes off as snooty.
These buffoons regularly appear in so-called documentaries about the existence of mermaids, the alien origins of Bigfoot and so on with “Expert” under their names at the bottom of the screen. It’s these “experts” the locals are referring to when they use the ambiguous “they”.
As in “Did you hear that they proved the existence of Atlantis?” or “They found evidence dragons really existed back in the middle ages”. Which it turns out was the poor fellow’s interpretation of The Last Dragon, an openly fictitious mockumentary which speculates about how the anatomy of dragons might work if they existed. If.
Doesn’t matter. He saw it, it sounded serious and authoritative, so in his mind he’s got a rock solid basis for making such a claim. There’s no use arguing. He’s got that vague but convincing memory to latch onto.
Even if you take out your phone and show him the exact program he’s talking about to demonstrate for him that it was never meant to be taken as fact, he’d shrug and say something like “close enough”. As if it was a reasonable mistake anybody could’ve made, and you’re the asshole for taking it seriously enough to settle the matter.
It’s maddening and never, ever worth the hassle. When you wrestle with a pig, you both get filthy, but the pig enjoys it. I learned that the hard way when I took a night class on programming.
A well built fellow in a pink polo shirt with a popped collar was impressing the anorexic blonde with the disproportionately huge bust seated next to him by explaining that time is the fourth dimension.
Not realizing the tar baby I was about to become entangled with, I muttered that time isn’t objectively the fourth dimension (since it isn’t as though they have numbers carved into them) and that there exist spatial dimensions in excess of the three familiar to us as well, one of which could be accurately called the fourth.
He “corrected” me, citing a Michio Kaku television special he watched the night before. Didn’t matter that we could both be right. That duration can indeed be added to length, width and height as one of the metrics used to describe a solid at the same time that spatial dimensions exist in excess of the three familiar to human experience.
What mattered is that he saw something on TV which sounded credible, so he felt certain that the irritating nerd contradicting his recollection of it couldn’t possibly know better. I drew a tesseract for him. To his credit he recognized it. Most people recognize a tesseract even if they don’t know the term for it.
“This is a four dimensional cube, or at least a flat drawing of one. Yet the fourth dimension expressed here isn’t temporal, but spatial. What’s being visualized isn’t the duration of the cube, but an additional degree of extrusion.
A line is an extrusion of a point, a square is an extrusion of a line, and a cube is an extrusion of a square. When you extrude a cube, you get a tesseract. That has nothing to do with time and everything to do with space.”
He scoffed but didn’t explain why. “Whatever nerd. Just go look up what I was watching, then come back and tell me that. You think you know everything.” Of course I don’t, but this particular topic was one I happened to know something about.
His posturing further impressed the tits on a stick whose narrow white ass he’d been blowing smoke up before I made the mistake of involving myself. “Ooohhh, you’re so smaaart. You should come to my place and help me study tonight.”
Maybe I really am the fool. He was presumably balls deep in her a few hours later, while I pulled another all-nighter playing MOBAs and narrowing search results for random internet retards. If you judge a method by the results it produces, impressive sounding horseshit outperforms factual accuracy every time.
The women I did occasionally capture the interest of seemed mainly attracted to the novelty of dating somebody who could string together a coherent sentence without straining himself. I’ve got opposable thumbs, an even number of toes and all my original teeth, apparently rare and enticing qualities around these parts.
A few tugged at my heart. Tempted me to engage, to become entangled. Really sweet, bright, worthwhile girls who had the misfortune of meeting me. Of being fooled by the human shaped outer shell, mistakenly imagining there was still anything of substance left inside.
Even then, they could tell what I was turning into. I don’t blame them for leaving. If I had any scruples I would’ve warned them off myself when we met, but I didn’t. Nothing that I once liked about myself remains. It all burnt to the ground the day I received that phone call while unpacking.
When my blood alcohol level rose to the point where I could no longer silently endure the braying and bleating of barnyard animals carrying on behind me, I stumbled out through the double doors in a blinkered stupor. Is the sun always this painfully bright?
The debilitating level of intoxication made the heat and humidity surprisingly bearable. I was soon drenched with sweat but only noticed when my hand became too slippery to hold onto the bottle. Wait, I paid for the whole bottle? Shit, I’d better finish it then.
Drank too much? Drink more, that’ll fix it. Booze logic at work. I can’t say exactly how I got there, but after a long unintelligible smear of blurry scenery, I realized I was back in the field. I really ought to wear a GPS collar when I drink, so that after I sober up I can have Google Maps show me the route I took. Something like those Billy focused Family Circus comics with the dotted line all the fuck over the yard.
I concluded it was an ideal place to pass out, and was in the process of laying down when I spotted the unmarked van pulling into the parking lot at the far side of the field. I pressed down as flat as I could, but continued watching with rapt interest.
Someone must own this field after all. I worried about how they might react to finding me here, drunk and disheveled. Not for long though. Curiosity quickly supplanted fear as I watched a quartet of men in black suits, white rubber gloves and sunglasses emerge from the vehicle.
Even if I were sober, they were far enough away that I couldn’t make out what they were doing in any real detail. Whiskey goggles only added to the difficulty. What is that, I thought. What the fuck is it?
Some kind of carrion. A dead animal, about the size of a man. Too many legs though! Too many for a bear, or a deer, or anything I know about. Jet black all over. Long spindly legs dragging behind as they heaved it into a body bag, zipped it up, then loaded it into the back of the van.
Fuck me. I studied the label on the bottle but could find nothing to blame for what I’d just seen. When I looked up, one of the agents seemed to stare directly at me. I froze. He turned a few degrees. Then a few more, surveying the field for any witnesses.
Despite my drunken incompetence, just by laying flat in the tall grass, I managed to evade notice. Once fully satisfied that there were no witnesses, all four men piled into the van and drove off. Why during broad daylight? Even in such a state, that seemed odd to me.
Unless they didn’t want to risk anybody finding whatever the fuck it was that they bagged up and made off with. Didn’t want to leave it rotting out here even a second longer than necessary, heading out to retrieve it the moment somebody called it in.
Cops? No, no. FBI? Maybe. Spooks of some kind. I don’t know enough about the agencies which handle hush hush, cloak and dagger type shit to venture a guess at who employs those men. Just that they weren’t the sort of fellows I should introduce myself to.
I remained there for a time, watching for any further activity. Then I abruptly vomited, getting some on my shirt. I stood up swearing at myself, every other word slurred to the point of unintelligibility. Then it struck me.
They did it. They finally fucking did it. I’m one of the local creatures now. God damnit. Maybe this is how it happens? Maybe nobody’s actually native to this fetid swamp, the prehistoric peninsula that time forgot. Maybe they come here and begin changing. By the time they realize what’s happening, it’s too far along.
Fuck me. Fuck this place. Garbage, all of it. But I could no longer exclude myself from the mess around me. Now I’m just another figure in the background, fitting in at last when I hoped I never would. Death, take me now.
I tripped in a gopher hole and stumbled, falling to my hands and knees. When my senses returned, it took a while to fully process what was in front of me. I never really bothered to explore the whole field before this, just wandered a short ways in and laid down to watch the clouds roll by.
But now, close to dead center of the field, I found myself peering down what appeared to be a borehole of some kind. A sinkhole, maybe? Is this what they look like? Didn’t sound right. This looked excavated, not naturally formed.
It was about five feet in diameter and so deep that I couldn’t see the bottom. It just faded into inscrutable blackness after about fifty feet. If I didn’t stumble on that gopher hole, I’d probably have fallen into the much larger opening instead.
What is this? Something related to construction? That must be it. A freshly dug well, possibly. Or the early stages of a geothermal heating and cooling setup for whatever building would soon be erected here. With atypically good timing, my stomach chose this point to once again empty itself.
The remains of my liquid breakfast spiraled down into the darkness, scattering along the way into so many soupy droplets. I dry heaved a couple times, confirming that was the last of it. I then repeatedly called out into the abyss. I don’t remember exactly why. Just to listen for the echo I think.
^{Story continues here. Hardcover books + audio content here.}

https://brokeassstuart.com/2023/12/07/interviews-with-infamous-san-francisco-pippers-theives/
INTERVIEWS WITH INFAMOUS SAN FRANCISCO BIPPERS & THIEVES
07DEC2023 ALEX MAK - MANAGING EDITOR
It’s a familiar view of San Francisco. When outside journalists, bloggers, and film crews come to SF these days, the news is rarely about the next unicorn startup or landmark progressive legislation, the coverage is almost always about crime, open drug use, homelessness, and the commercial vacancies taking place in the Tenderloin and SoMa.
The cameras rarely leave a 4-block radius, unless it’s to get a B-roll of the Golden Gate Bridge or to show footage of Union Square stores being robbed.
This particular documentary is by Andrew Callaghan of YouTube’ Channel 5 News’. Callaghan first became a bit of a gonzo journalist legend on YouTube with his channel “All Gas, No Breaks”, where he and his cameraman would go to popular and unpopular neighborhoods across America, to festivals, conventions, and even riots, to simply interview people on the streets.
THE HOFF TWINS OF MARIN CITY
Sometimes this meant incredibly graphic admissions of strange behaviors, lifestyles, and even crimes, or rampant displays of alcohol abuse, to fist fights and mayhem. Although Channel 5 videos are clearly sensationalist, and the most graphic and extreme interviews no doubt make the final cut, there is an undebatable authenticity to the coverage.
Andrew’s videos are made on location and at events, usually with Andrew standing in the street and talking to the people that no normal journalists would ever approach or get to speak candidly. He has a knack for finding characters who want to flex on camera. He gets people talking, yelling, and rapping.
In his latest video on San Francisco, Andrew interviews unhoused people, pimps, thieves, drug addicts, and police officers on the streets of San Francisco who talk openly about the life, the crime, and the culture. Andrew admittedly never really leaves the Tenderloin, but he clearly does do some research for the video’s narration, and the interviews speak volumes about the current state of Downtown.
In any case, this is a pretty accurate depiction of a tiny part of San Francisco, one that most locals ignore, and the rest of the world judges us for.

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https://sfist.com/2023/12/07/gonzo-journalist-interviews-serial-car-burglar-draws-direct-line-between-fentanyl-and-24th-street-vendors/
7 DECEMBER 2023/SF NEWS/JAY BARMANN
Gonzo Journalist Interviews Serial Car Burglar In SF, Draws Direct Line Between Fentanyl and 24th Street Vendors
You may be familiar with gonzo YouTube journalist Andrew Callaghan and his "Channel 5" interviews with everyone from the Q Shaman, to anti-vaxxers, and Phish fans. Well, he just spent some time in San Francisco, and his footage is both sensational and enlightening.
Let's start by saying that Callaghan doesn't seem to have any particular journalistic mission other than garnering YouTube views and getting "real" with people on the street. And there is plenty of questionable and/or downright unethical stuff in his new videos about San Francisco.
For instance, he segues from talking about how crazy dangerous San Francisco is right now in this video below (around the 5:20 mark) to shilling for a personal-injury law firm, which is apparently one of his sponsors.
But the video, which was picked up earlier by Brokeass Stuart, is remarkable for a few reasons, not the least of which is that Callaghan got one of San Francisco's most prolific "bippers" — thieves who break into cars using a "bip" or other device — to show him how he does it. This bipper, who starts by partly covering his face with a jacket hood but ends up fully revealing his face, is named Jack. Jack the Bipper.
We learn about how vehicle spark plugs are well known, reliable, and cheap devices for shattering car windows, and now these are among the items that count as burglary tools when SF prosecutors are filing enhancements against burglary suspects.
Jack, who just got out of jail a few days before the video was shot, talks about how SF cops and the sheriff's deputies who run the jail are not treating incarcerated burglary suspects and fentanyl addicts like him very kindly these days.
And because he's been caught too many times with spark plugs, Jack is now court-ordered to stay away from all Auto Zone stores or from possessing spark plugs. So these days he goes to Chinatown and buys what they're calling a "bipping kit" — essentially a baggy of cheap porcelain dishes and tchotchkes, because these are also effective at shattering auto glass.
Jack then takes Callaghan to an underground parking garage somewhere downtown where he proceeds to break into some cars, on camera! Then the pair get on BART to 24th Street, so that Jack can sell what he's stolen to a fence, and while on the five-stop BART ride, Jack smokes some fentanyl! And he goes on praise what he's just smoked as the "best fenty in the city."
Jack also discusses how everyone who's out there bipping isn't doing it to harm people or make the city look bad. They're just trying to get by, like him, and/or support a drug habit.
Callaghan has plenty more footage about fentanyl use, drug sales, and crime in general in the 46-minute video below, titled "San Francisco Streets." It seems to have been shot over the summer, because Callaghan was on the scene and captured footage of a July incident in SoMa in which a food-delivery driver had his Prius stolen, and the thief sped backwards in the car with the driver's side door open — Callaghan's footage of that made it on several evening news broadcasts.
Callaghan also speaks to a couple of prolific thieves who brag about smash-and-grab robberies at local retail stores, and stealing iPhone display models at the Apple Store. And they take credit for a high-profile armed robbery on Twin Peaks in March 2022 that landed on the news, which they apparently were never convicted for. (Four suspects were arrested for that robbery, though, in April 2022.)
A guy named Antwuan whom Callaghan enlists as a guide also takes him up Jones Street, off of Market Street, which he calls the Woo Block, and says this is basically where you can get "anything and everything."
Callaghan also has kind of a gross, sensational angle on homelessness which he conflates with San Francisco's crime issues — and he makes the baldly misleading connection between the April murder of CashApp founder Bob Lee and homelessness and crime, even though we now know the only suspect in Lee's murder is a fellow tech entrepreneur, not a homeless person. News outlets quickly used Lee's murder as an example of SF's "out of control" state, but then had to back-track when the arrest was made, and Callaghan just ignores all of that.
On the plus side, Callaghan acknowledges that many of SF's neighborhoods are perfectly safe, and that all of the filming he did for his documentary was done in a six-block radius around the Tenderloin and mid-Market.

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https://www.prweb.com/releases/dregs-of-the-city-documentary-illuminates-homelessness-and-sanitation-challenges-in-san-francisco-and-los-angeles-302009842.html
"Dregs of the City" Documentary Illuminates Homelessness and Sanitation Challenges in San Francisco and Los Angeles
NEWS PROVIDED BY
"Dregs of the City"
08 Dec, 2023, 11:48 ET
In the midst of America's growing concern over homelessness and sanitation issues, two powerful documentaries have emerged, providing an unfiltered and stark portrayal of life on the streets in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
SAN FRANSICO, Dec. 8, 2023 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- San Francisco, often referred to as the nation's capital of homelessness and sanitation problems, is under intense scrutiny through documentaries like "Dregs of the City: San Fransisco". This raw exploration, centered on the Tenderloin area, lays bare the daily struggles of the homeless population. The documentary doesn't shy away from presenting the gritty reality, prompting citizens to confront the severity of the sanitation problem. In a recent debate, Ron DeSantis emphasized California's sanitation issues by showcasing the infamous San Francisco poop map, a stark visual representation that brought the city's challenges to the forefront.
Complementing this narrative is Andrew Callaghan's "San Francisco Streets," which further delves into the difficulties faced by residents, highlighting the profound impact on community well-being. These documentaries seek not only to inform but also to cultivate empathy and understanding, encouraging collective efforts to address the multifaceted issues surrounding homelessness and sanitation challenges in San Francisco.
Meanwhile, Los Angeles grapples with its own crisis, earning the unfortunate title of the "capital of homelessness." "Dregs of the City: Los Angeles" offers a compelling and unfiltered look into the harsh realities of being homeless in LA. This documentary provides unprecedented access to the lives of individuals living on the streets, exploring root causes, systemic challenges, and the day-to-day struggle for survival. It sheds light on the urgent need for comprehensive solutions as Los Angeles faces unprecedented levels of homelessness.
As both documentaries gain traction, they serve as catalysts for crucial conversations around homelessness, fostering a broader understanding of the challenges faced by those living on the streets. The "Dregs of the City" series, produced by SIX SEVEN, goes beyond mere documentation; it plans to unveil the homeless crisis in major cities across America. This ambitious project transcends stereotypes, urging community leaders, policymakers, and citizens to collaborate in finding sustainable and lasting solutions.
The series provides a diverse and comprehensive perspective, showcasing the human faces behind the statistics. By intimately exploring the lives of individuals facing homelessness, the documentaries underscore the urgency of addressing systemic issues such as affordable housing shortages, mental health support, and social services contributing to the perpetuation of homelessness.
About SIX SEVEN
SIX SEVEN is dedicated to telling stories about unique lives and lifestyles. Through the "Dregs of the City" series, they aim to raise awareness and spark meaningful dialogues that go beyond acknowledging the issues to inspire concrete action. Subscribe on Youtube to witness the entire documentary series, as it unfolds a revealing exploration of the homeless crisis across the nation, starting with the raw and unfiltered examination of San Francisco's struggles

Posted on the energy_work Discord in #Telekinesis - it started there, and I tried not to get carried away, but this is exciting, and I'm trying to help.
For reference, I'm 47 and have just had a nice letter from my doctor confirming I'm not schizophrenic, and a refusal to accept re-referral for psychiatry because I'm not schizophrenic - a request I put in because I've been having a hard time at home.
I've heard voices for years and knew they were spirits, and after years of denying they were real to other people, I accepted they were, and that was part of when my head really started to quieten down. It's almost quiet a lot of the time now... or at least there's no swearing or violence in my head, where I can feel their blows...
​
More upbeat: The post from the Discord:
Suggestions for developing telekineses (That I've used over the years) - spelling corrected:
Make a joint (or just use a pencil), hold it between your thumb and index finger, lightly and horizontal, and in the corner of your eye. use your own energy flow to 'fill it', with me it almost seems lighter, or less like it's there - I'm not looking at it directly, and I keep my eyes soft-focused. Now play around with your attention, but don't move your eyes... make the joint or pencil wobble, or try to push it from your fingers
[22:39]
Also, if you can direct you energy flow, or 'doop' it out of your fingers, flow it into a lighter that has no fuel, and then try to light it... It might help to accidentally draw from a lighter in the first place (a second or so was too much, I could taste the lighter fluid in my nerves and aura)... I'm so proud that I've done this, a last-two-days achievement
[22:43]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSO21RCLu0c
​
gonzosHurricane — Today at 22:44
I posted on energy_work a few days ago, and said that I'd seen 'puffs' of something coming from my fingers, when I hold my index fingers about 0.5 to 1cmapart... I thought they were smoke, but I'm sure its the same puffs that you can see in the slow-mo recap at the end of the video
[22:46]
I've used this to wiggle a lighter on my desk,but I need to pay a bit more attention to 'catch' exactly what's going on
[22:46]
sorry for the lack of spaces... my lovely keyboard got covered in cola lol
​
gonzosHurricane — Today at 22:53
I found that I had a hard time with psi wheels years ago, and mostly put my energy stuff down (for about 15 years), and had more luck with things I can touch. Swing a pendulum in circles and tapping it from side to side from my 3rd eye (always been strong), rolling a coin across my fingers and palm... I once 'freaked someone out with a cool experiment - put a £1 coin in the palm of your hand, feel it on your skin, feel its weight... I asked if he could kinda feel the sides of the coin, and he said yes, so I said the actual sides of the coin, not just he parts in contact with his skin... yes... and then, so you can feel the top of the coin (not touching it at all)... A very cool and astounded yes... and a snap of his hand away (I got my £1 coin back)
[22:54]
Using the pendulum helped - I was touching the cord, not the pendulum, so it helped build confidence that I can move things I'm not touching, so moving things away from my body. When I was younger, I recall wondering how to locate anything I wasn't physically connected to, and this was great
[22:57]
I'm pretty good with cloud stopping too, I can make them 'stall' and then stop in the sky for a few seconds at a time. It's like my third eye looks around a corner and locks onto the cloud, and I feel a slight tension in my third eye chakra. I've been guided to try 'tunnelling' instead, and I get a vision of a tunnel forming and woosh through the air (about 1-2s in length) and I can do the same thing. I don't think the 'corner' method or the 'tunnel' method are the same thing at all
[22:59]
The corner method feels like the opening credits of His Dark Materials from the BBC, and I'm looking around what's between me and the clouds, rather than tunneling 'through'
​
gonzosHurricane — Today at 23:05
Another good one is balancing a remote control across one finger in the edge of your vision, sit back and watch TV and shift the weight from side to side,or try and build pressure on one end of the remote... 'Corner of eye' is really good, because it's in your attention and yet it's not... Don't be dragged into the misconception that other people watching if they don't believe will stop it from happening (like an unsympathic energy battle played out loudly, or just through people's auras), but trying on your own and learning to doop your energy flow through your arms absolutely help... as does an awareness that 'forcing' with telekinesis might give far from the best results. Listening to subtlety and learning control and safely ground your own energy is key
[23:06]
Anyone that uses this in a TV programme better pay me /wink lol
​
ADDED:
I've had success with a more forceful method before: ring on its side on my desk, flat surface. Thumb and index finger on either side, with 1cm or so space on either side, , and I pushed - it worked, sliding the ring to touch one finger. It took about 15m and was a lot of effort, and at the time I believed the effort came from either my solar plexus or sacral charka, but I've got IBS and investigation shows me the line between the two is really bright and energetic - so creativity and ego, but I'm now curious about my aura in such an experiment too,and whether that's what gave the push.
​

Hi Psikerlord,
I know most LFG-ers discuss on Discord, but it's almost incomprehensibly quick and ‘loud’ for me, so with apologies, I’m sticking to Reddit. LFG (and by the look of things ToA) is by a way my favourite RPG, and I have some thoughts and questions and Feature Requests.
And here’s my philosophy (which I raise because I think it’s a bit different from yours, so my ideas may simply be of no interest, which of course is fine!). I really hate the powerbloat and build culture of 5e, and am really excited by the creativity and ‘emergent play’ within the OSR. At the same time, some OSR stuff feels like it’s becoming a bit of a shibboleth to me. I love LFG/ToA because though it deploys them excellently, it doesn’t push the Rules Lite / Anti-Skills / Rulings-not-Rules positions to the extremes that some games do. (Again, no shade, just not my preference). There’s also cultural issues of OSR: in particular, deadly and more gonzo/sword-and-sorcery games and relatively low-powered characters I’m all for. But the ‘funnel’ mentality that implies or states that ‘true RPGers’ should be really easy-come-easy-go about their characters just doesn’t follow. Me and my table always loved backstory and customising our characters as much as possible. We always knew they might well die! But that didn’t mean we didn’t want to ‘curate’ them along the way, and keep them around as long as we could.
I love that LFG/ToA allows that customisation, and making really unique characters, particularly with Unique Features, which is also an excellent alternative to multiclassing. And the engine of the game, as that great review on DTRPG put it, avoids the feeling of being ‘too simplified and featureless’ or ‘missing complexity beyond the dungeon delve or character progression’ of much OsR stuff. This is why for me LFG/ToA negotiates between the best aspects of OSR and 5e (which really does have good aspects).
It feels like ToA is moving more clearly in the OSR direction from LFG. I’m fine with a ton of that. I think the flatter HP progression works excellently, for example. But when the document says, for eg, that ToA is ‘for short, sharp adventures in a sandbox world’, I want to say that while it obviously works excellently for that, I wouldn’t underestimate i) how well it could work for those like me who want campaigns that are at least potentially a bit more structured and long-form and narrative, and ii) how many other people might agree with me, and find in ToA what they’ve been looking for. Obviously, that isn’t ‘pure’ OSR, and maybe that doesn’t interest you. But I think there’s an opportunity to make ToA a system that can handle both styles of play (and the irresistible combination of the two).
I remember you wrote a tweet saying something to the effect that story and immersion weren’t really your draw when it comes to TTRPGs. Obviously that’s totally cool, but even if it’s not deliberate, I think you’ve created a system that really allows for them – and they are a huge draw for me and my table – while avoiding the railroading and ridiculous Superheroics of 5e.
If you’re really only interested in writing for more pure sandbox/OSR-style play, then a lot of my Feature Requests may simply not be of interest to you. I totally get it. And also, of course, I can home-brew a bunch of stuff to make ToA suit my purposes, which I’ll certainly do if it’s the best option. But I thought you might want to consider including some options, even as variant rules, that might give extra resources for those who are interested in immersion and/or campaign play. Not least because I, and a lot of DMs I know, either don’t enjoy or aren’t confident with creating our own rules, and it’s always good to have ‘official’ options.
Maybe these could be things you’d consider as optional variants for a ‘Companion’ volume, if you didn’t want to put them in the core book.
So here are a few Requests:
– More playable races, including maybe some gonzo ones. To be clear, I still really like the emphasis on humans, I just have no interest in Elves or Dwarves.
– More playable classes. I’ve loved all the third party expansions for LFG and would love to see all sorts of wild and wonderful other options.
– More Unique Features. More, more, more! As many as possible.
– More monsters. Because they rule.
– You’ve got tons of invaluable DM-advice for random/hex-crawl OSR play – I think it would strengthen the game if you could also include some advice (or even linked adventures!) designed for longer-form campaign play. Even if it’s not your bag, it is a lot of players’, and ToA could support it well.
– Higher level options. To be clear, I am totally down with more or less capping power. But I have absolutely no interest in creating ‘strongholds’, and if by a miracle I can keep a character alive to 9th level, and I’ve fallen in love with them, I don’t like the implicit impetus to have to retire them. I’d love the option to just keep them going. Not turning into a superhero, but not static either, so there’s a crunch as well as a fluff spur to keep them going. You could flatten the power increments considerably, but still make it interesting. For example, you could say after 9th level, a character gains 1hp per level, and maybe something tiny every other level (a skill?) and maybe a new Unique Feature at 15th level, or something. And for spell casters, the spells they gain flattens enormously too, after 9th L, and the scale of magical blowback greater. The point is, especially with flattened HP, you needn’t make 13th level characters exponentially more powerful than 9th, and one good extra sword swipe could still kill them even at L20, but there’d be in-game as well as in-world incentive to keep a beloved character soldiering on, if you wanted. [Edit: if nothing else, I'd love a return to the LFG 12th Level cap, but I think you could even go levels beyond that with a simple and flattened and very low-buff-per-level progression, for those – very few, I know! – players who want and are lucky enough to keep their grizzled artificer around for years. The great advantage with keeping the progression low at these high levels is that they could hang around with a group of 9th levellers, say, and be more powerful than them but not game-breakingly so.]
– Insight Skill. This is a tricky one, and gets at the insoluble problem of playing characters with different Int from your own. I take your note in ToA about the benefits of relying on players’ intuition over characters. But if you are interested in emergent stories in longer-form campaigns, especially if you have a high-Int character who is smarter than you, having the option of relying on Insight would enable that aspect of immersion. Maybe it could be an optional rule?
Thanks for considering any of these, and I totally get it if it’s not for you. I’ll keep these coming as more occur if you’re up for them!
EDIT: It would also be really useful for those like me who aren’t so confident in homebrew if you could publish some guidelines in designing Classes, Playable heritages, Unique Features and such. Obviously ToA is less concerned with notional ‘balance’ than 5e which is great but there are still broad bands of playability and advancement etc. Guidance on that would be really useful.

I’m not going to flex my credentials I’m just going to explain how I got good and learned how to actually develop my own style, over 10 years in.
You can start on anything, especially for starting handtags I say start on trash. Not trash cans, not walls, not people’s stuff: pizza boxes and cardboard and shit with just a sharpie or graffiti marker. Don’t ruin a sketchbook or your school-desk or your mom’s garage quite yet…
Step 1: develop a tag. Usually 4, 5, or 6 letters. My advice is people always start with words they think are cool like “Gonzo” or “Danger” but those are names that people have done 100’s of times and you’ll never be able to separate it from some other toy’s bullshit. This is what will be the most important part later: PICK LETTERS YOU LIKE TO DRAW! Pick letters you feel. It doesn’t have to mean anything to anyone but you. You want to write “Danger” but can’t figure out a cool G, fuck it dude write “Daner” it’s not about the word or an edgy origin story, it’s about style. ITS ALL ABOUT STYLE (but you gotta learn the rules to break them). If you ever plan on really getting up consider the more letters your tag and more complex you make it: the harder it is to do it on the fly on the streets and not get caught. Now practice! Practice doing it fast, practice doing it slow, practice doing it without picking up your marker, practice each letter individually and practice ways you could subtly tie letters together.
*and remember adding a 1 to the end of your tag means something to crews, it’s something you earn from being respected as a solo vandal. Adding 3 consecutive numbers is usually neighborhood or gang affiliation and should also be avoided until you know what you’re doing. And it is hella not-cool to use a crown.
Step 2: bubble letters. For the love of fuck this is the part that everyone tries to skip and go right to drawing full pieces. Draw some freakin bubble letters and start in pencil. What you are going for is even weight, even size, even spacing, consistency is key here. This is where you learn your fundamentals for doing pieces later. Don’t want to do bubble letters? Fine: look up fonts and draw those larger. Start with regular-ish fonts before you try to copy someone’s graffiti fonts. This is where you get to know the intricacies of your chosen letters and start understanding flow so you can play with them later. Try doing whole alphabets.
Step 3: learning 3D//shadow. Another mistake a lot of people make is just adding 3D all willy-nilly because they’ve never done it before and think it looks cool. Pieces will never look right starting out if your 3D doesn’t all go the same direction. Start easy with stuff like just adding another lines worth of weight to just the bottom parts of your bubble letters. See how when it all goes the same direction it looks clean and helps the piece pop or have depth. A trick for understanding this is to tape 2 pencils together at equal heights: now hold them so both leads are touching the paper at the same time, keeping it at the same angle trace your letters with the top pencil, then erase whatever marks are inside your letters. Bam, see how everything has the same weight, spacing and distance from the letter consistently? You need to learn how to get that down every time you draw a piece. Finding an art tutorial on perspective can really help you learn 3D.
Step 4: go learn some shit about colors. Learn why color schemes work. Pick up a color wheel. Figure out different variations. How to shade or make gradients. What are your favorite colors? Etc. etc. etc. When you start getting good at pieces this is the part that can take the longest to really get down and that’s why a toy can use the exact same color scheme as a pro but it doesn’t look good in how they are used for different parts (fill, outline, 3D, highlights, force fields, shadows, etc.). Remember that how you use colors is a big part of your style.
My final advice from here: now buy 2 sketchbooks and that pack of markers you’ve been thinking about (still not the expensive ones). Use one sketchbook for all your practice, use a better one for all your full color pieces, that is your black-book now and don’t let anyone touch that shit if they don’t care about graffiti. Keep practicing each of these steps, practice doing the whole alphabet, and the rest you will figure out on your own journey and experiences. Put on the documentaries about graffiti, artists, and hip-hop culture while you work so you know our history, our lingo, the struggles of old kings etc. Don’t be afraid to buy books on graffiti or fonts, it’s only cheating if you are copying others names/work/fonts. And consider taking an actual art class: it will never hurt you and might even open some doors.
Most people try graffiti for a year or two and give up, or get bored, or get caught. Don’t be like them, keep it original and keep it real folks!

If you asked me to imagine the most stereotypical guy ever, I would imagine this:
YEAAAAAAAAAH, Motherfuckaaas! I'm Bricksmasher McBeardsmith! I am TALL, I am HAIRY, I am MUSCULAR, and I am LOOOOOUD! My hobbies are sports, monster trucks, rock music, bodybuilding, and BEATING THE SHIT OUT OF PEOPLE! I work as a PRO WRESTLER and my only emotion is ANGER! My favorite food is RAW BLOODY BEEF STEAKS and my favorite drink is BEER! My favorite color is blue and I wear MANLY clothes like suits, ties...um...being topless? And shirts with manly motives on them! Like manly-sounding slogans or merchandise of things whose target audience is MAAAAALE! YEEEEEAH!
Likewise, if you asked me to imagine the most stereotypical gal ever, I would imagine this:
Heyyy! :) My name is Princess Girlygirl and I am pretty, cute, little, and petite! 😘 My hobbies are singing, flowers, dancing, drawing, cooking, embroidery, painting my nails, and playing with dolls! Teehee! 💕 I work as a ballerina and I can get very emotional sometimes. My favorite things to consume are girly things like...um...foods that happen to be pink and...glittery cocktails I guess! With straws and cute little umbrellas and everything! 💋 My favorite color is pink and I wear girly clothes like skirts, dresses, high heels, tiaras, and earrings! 🌸
Of course, those are just stereotypes. And very exaggerated ones at that. However, there is some truth to them. Thanks to sexual dimorphism in humans, a lot of differences between general tendencies have been scientifically proven. Furthermore, testosterone has proven to make people more masculine and estrogen makes people more feminine, if they want to or not. I mean, if testosterone literally makes you hornier and estrogen literally makes you more emotional, you know those stereotypes have some truth to them. Also, those things are the sources of euphoria and dysphoria in transgender people and interests in those things can even change along with the genders of genderfluid people! It is therefore neither sexist nor transphobic to acknowledge that some things are masculine and some things are feminine and will most likely always be, as long as you remain tolerant of those who form exceptions to those tendencies.
Nevertheless, if you asked me to imagine a non-binary person, I would imagine this:
Salutations. I am anthropoid unit #5037. My physical stature is unspecified. My hobbies are unspecified. My profession is unspecified. My emotional capacities are unspecified. My favorite food is unspecified. My favorite drink is unspecified. My favorite color is unspecified. My style of attire is unspecified.
What does this description say about them? NOTHING. Now, why do I feel this way towards non-binary people? Because I know nothing about non-binary people! Male and female is something that has been beaten into my head repeatedly since birth, whereas non-binary is something that I only started hearing about recently and the only people who recognize the existence of non-binary people are also the same people who advocate against gender stereotypes, meaning that non-binary people are being deconstructed before they are being constructed. And the worst part is: This is actually the correct way to imagine non-binary people! Because non-binary isn't a gender identity but rather an umbrella term of an infinite amount of gender identities ranging from agender to pangender, from xenogender to apogender!
But that's boring! A nondescript description of someone doesn't say anything and therefore isn't helpful at all! We need something more concrete. Something that really communicates what it means to be non-binary. Something that will help eggs figure out if they are male, female, or non-binary. We need stereotypes. Not negative stereotypes, of course. But we have to come up with our own stereotypes so that other people's stereotypes don't get too prevalent. You know? Of non-binary people being skinny, white, and visibly AFAB? Let's find our own stereotypes and blast them out while we're still the ones who talk about non-binary people the most!
Non-binary people have a vast history with many things we could draw from. Many cultures had different names for them, such as "Two-Spirit", "Māhū", "Hijra", "X-Gender", "Mukhannath", and, oh wait, nevermind, non-binary Westerners are not allowed to identify as any of those! Alright, let's focus on Western culture then. A very blatant aspect of Western culture is the omnipresence of Christianity. And non-binary Christians put a really high value on bible verses about eunuchs. The reason for this is that the Old Testament was written in Hebrew and the Hebrew original term that is often translated to "eunuch" is "Saris", which is one of the six genders of the Talmud, because Christianity originally came from Judaism, which is why both Jews and Christians believe in the Pentateuch. Also, only Jews are allowed to identify as Saris and damnit! We can't work with that either! Non-binary people have no culture! None! Stupid binarynormative colonialists spreading their boring binary gender model everywhere! Thanks to this, the only way to pass as non-binary nowadays is to look so androgynous that everyone wonders if you are male or female.
The term "non-binary" was invented around 2000 (after "genderqueer" in the 1980s). That's as far as non-binary history can go into the past. Fine. Let's work with that. Let's see what we can find there: First of all, there would be the non-binary flag. It can be regarded as very stereotypical, considering the male flag is blue and the female flag is pink! Furthermore, the community loves pointing out flags and the non-binary ball is a well-known genderall in lgballt so it must be possible to do something with this. Another thing is genealogy symbols: ♂ means male, ♀ means female, and the non-binary equivalent of this is 🜬. There is also ⚥ for bigender, ⚲ for agender, ☿ for non-binary and transgender, ⚨ and ⚩ for other, and various symbols for even more genders that I cannot display here because they do not exist in Unicode. Then there's non-binary terminology: Non-binary people are known for using genderneutral alternatives for gendered terms. But that's boring. Genderneutral terms say nothing about a person's gender and are therefore boring because they reduce the information, hence the boring description I said earlier. Whenever I hear a genderneutral term I'm like: "Oh wow, it's a person and I don't even know the gender, thereby reducing my first impression from one-dimensional to zero-dimensional." On the other hand, if I hear a term that can only be used for non-binary people I'm like: "Holy shit, it's a non-binary person! This is so cool! So non-binary people exist in this universe (yes, I always feel this, even if it happens in real life) and their very existence deconstructs exorsexist language and other systems!" So, with that said, here is now a list of terms invented exclusively for non-binary people I managed to find:

• ren=dad/mom
  
• Mx=MMs
  
• zizi=uncle/aunt
  
• nibling=nephew/niece
  
• sprong=son/daughter
  
• epox=fiancé/fiancée
  
• tiz=sima'am
  
• caln=king/queen
  
• prinxe=prince/princess
  
• lairde=lord/lady
  
• goddex=god/goddess
  
• enby=boy/girl
  
• ceteran=man/woman
  
• ceterophobia=misandry/misogyny
  
• gec=guy/gal
  
• thude=dude/dudette
  
• en-bae=daddy/babe
  
• mattress=mastemistress
  
• polysaccharide parent=sugar daddy/maltose mother
  
• my sib from another crib=my brother from another mothemy sister from another mister
  
• thespian=actoactress
  
• baccalaureate=bachelobachelorette
  
• person the people getting married like and choosed to be with them in the altar=bestman/maid of honor
  
• broom=bridegroom/bride
  
• ladylord=landlord/landlady
  
• duchy=duke/duchess
  
• priestx=priest/priestess
  
• themperor=emperoempress
  
• heroix=hero/heroine
  
• thembo=himbo/bimbo
  
• bitchard=bastard/bitch
  
• nyanbinary=catboy/catgirl
  
• siblicorn=brony/pegasister
  
• wix=wizard/witch but only in the Harry Potter fandom
  

There's also this list of genderneutral greeting extensions I collected together:

• My lords, ladies, and those that lieth betwixt.
  
• Ladies, gentlemen, and non-binary individuals!
  
• Ladies and gentlemen and others
  
• Theybies and gentlethems!
  
• Hello boys, girls, and enbies!
  
• Hey guys, gals and nonbinary pals!
  
• hey ladies, hey fellas, and the people who don't give a fuck
  
• Bitches and bros and nonbinary hoes!
  
• WASSUP MY CHICKS, DICKS AND PRICKS!
  

And if you look at the sidebar of the now-defunct https://old.reddit.com/traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns/ one of the "Meme of the Day Ideas" is called "Wenbiesday". Oh, that reminds me, there's the "Non-Binary People's Day" on July 14, the date being chosen for being exactly in the middle between "International Women's Day" (March 8) and "International Men's Day" (November 19). The week where Non-Binary People's Day is in is called "Non-Binary Awareness Week".
Alright, I think we now have something to work with. But first, let us look back at when the Sausage Zone test was passed for the first time (The Sausage Zone test is a Bechdel test variation where passing requires evidence that women exist.):
"Gentlemen, how would you like becoming actors?"
"Excuse me, but I'm not a man, I am a woman."
"Huh. Okay. I thought there were only men here."
"Yeah. I don't really like how androcentrism makes everyone always assume everyone to be male as the default, even though women have existed since the beginning of human culture."
"Hmm, I agree that the generic he can be erasury of women. Unfortunately, language isn't really made to be inclusive of women. I mean, what should I say? 'gentlemen and gentlewomen'?"
"Actually, the female equivalent of 'gentleman' is 'lady'. Please refer to me as such."
"'Lady', huh? So I should say 'gentlemen and ladies' then? That is a mouthful..."
"Actually, please say 'ladies and gentlemen'. I want to be named first."
"'ladies and gentlemen'? That sounds stupid. That will never catch on."
"Also, the female equivalent of 'actor' is 'actress'. Please use both terms if you want to be inclusive of women..."
Now, let's rewrite this scene for a non-binary introduction:
"Ladies and gentlemen, how would you like becoming actors and actresses?"
"Excuse me, but I'm not a man or a woman. I am non-binary."
"Huh. Interesting. I've heard about non-binary people before but I never thought I'd meet one in person."
"Yeah. I don't really like how binarynormativity makes everyone always assume there to only be two genders, even though non-binary people have existed since the beginning of human culture."
"Hmm, I agree that gendered language can be erasury of non-binary people. Unfortunately, language isn't really made to be inclusive of non-binary people. I mean, what should I say? 'ladies and gentlemen and others'?"
"Actually, the non-binary-exclusive equivalent of 'ladies and gentlemen' is 'ladies, gentlemen, and other distinguished guests'. Please use this phrase in the future."
"That sounds stupid. That will never catch on."
"Also, the non-binary equivalent of 'actor' and 'actress' is 'thespian'..."
When the first female characters were introduced, they were often so rare to be the only female character in many cases, with their status as female being treated as their defining characteristic. We need the same for non-binary characters. We need to introduce stereotypically non-binary characters before we can deconstruct it all again. And considering what people are saying about trans people, we can safely say that people are stupid, meaning that we must therefore be extremely obvious, extreme, and to the point, to make sure that absolutely everybody gets it.

TL;DR: Alright, let's finally start now:

Name: Either something genderneutral like Alex or Robin or something stereotypical like Sock, I haven't decided yet.
Pronouns: they/them. Make sure lots of characters will refer to them as such. And make it clear that they're talking about this character in particular and not an arbitrary person or even a group of people.
Birthday: Wednesday, July 14. Someone's bound to get that reference.
Looks and Sounds: Completely androgynous. Make sure the test audience will not see your character as male or female. Also, include a running gag where people will wonder if that character is male or female. Whenever the character is present during this, make them proclaim loudly that they are neither and that they are non-binary instead. If you decide to make some people try to look at their genitals, make them fail. And if the character notices this, make them explain how this is a rude thing to do. Make sure to never specify their biological sex and to make their past a mystery so that it's never clear if they transitioned or if they have been Assigned X at Birth and been raised genderneutrally due to having been born intersex. This is about being non-binary, not about being transgender or intersex. Focus on that. And most importantly: Make them a human, not an alien or an anthropomorphic animal. Make sure everyone knows that they're not the result of any sci-fi technology or anything supernatural, even if that is a prevalent theme in the show. Also, please try to make it clear that non-binary people actually exist and that this isn't just fictional.
Behavior: Make being non-binary their defining characteristic. Looking at ennnnnnnnnnnnbbbbbby, we can safely say that this is mainly the deconstruction of binarynormativity. Make them refuse to use any bathroom unless it's genderneutral. Add another running gag where they are shown rolling their eyes any time anyone says "Ladies and Gentlemen" or "boys and girls" or "both genders" or anything else that indicates the existence of only two genders. Make them extremely knowledgable about the history of gender and include many scenes in which they explain their stuff, especially those non-binary terms I just listed, happily or not. And, of course, make them behave as genderneutral as you possibly can.
Favorite Color: Something stereotypically genderneutral. I think green is seen as the genderneutral color for blue and pink. But I have also heard about white. Or maybe just dress them in the non-binary flag's color scheme!
Clothing Style: Genderneutral, of course. If they're a pupil in a school with gendered school uniforms or marrying someone, make them wear something that's the male equivalent on one half and the female equivalent on the other.
Adventures: In accordance with the third law of gender-bending, you'll have confront them with gendered culture in our society all the time, as their one defining characteristic would not be prevalent enough otherwise. Include lots of scenes where guys and gals are treated differently and them wondering how it should affect them, which may or may not force the others to deconstruct their previously established social norms. If there's ever a girls vs. boys plot, make the character one of those who refuse to participate and exclaim how stupid that is. Make sure to include as many gendered aspects of our society as you can, including controversial topics like religion and countries where only two genders are legally recognized. If the character goes through any struggles, make sure their struggles are directly or indirectly caused by binarynormativity every time.
Sexuality: Remember when I introduced the stereotypical man and the stereotypical woman? I did not talk about their sexuality or their libido in any way. This is because I believe it to be important to separate sexuality from anything else, as sexuality is often a reason for people to misjudge if they are transgender or not. In order to move the focus away from their sexuality, I would therefore suggest to make their sexuality as ambiguous as possible: Not explicitly androsexual, not explicitly gynesexual, but not explicitly asexual either. If confronted with situations regarding sexuality, make them only react in ways that would be expected of anyone in this situation, regardless of sexuality, such as being afraid of sexual predators or not noticing signs of affection if they're not obvious enough. The other characters, however, can be as sexual as you want! In fact, it could make for a very interesting plotline to have the others be super confused about their sexualities because their inability to gender that character as male or female might make them unable to categorize if that makes them gay or not, perhaps even going so far as to unearth previously suppressed gay feelings! And if they ever confront the character with it, the character will tell them that the character never did anything and that it makes no sense to put so much value on labelling one's sexuality, as long as you find someone attractive. Same goes for other forms of attraction, such as romantic attraction or platonic attraction.
Special: Now, you might think this goes a bit too far with the stereotypes. But I have a solution for this: You could introduce other non-binary people, as well: If you make a special where the character visits a non-binary support group, you can introduce many other non-binary characters at once without anyone having the right to call your show absurd for having too many non-binary characters. This would be the best opportunity to show the diversity of the non-binary community by making them vary in their look, biology, presentation, sexuality, skin color, closetedness, willingness to talk about it, and flavor of non-binaryness: bigender, agender, genderfluid, xenogender, you name it. Perhaps one of those other non-binary characters could even become a recurring character if they become popular enough!
Hopefully, that will be a good way to start passing the...um...what's the non-binary equivalent for the Sausage Zone test? I think there isn't one! I'll make one: I'll call it the Binary Matrix test! It's designed to be as effortless to pass as the Sausage Zone test while also bringing to attention how much non-binary people are still being erased. The test will mostly fail, of course, but I'd like to see how long we'll have to wait until it can become a serious consideration and how long it will take until the numbers for the Reverse Binary Matrix test become roughly equal, adjusted to the small percentage of non-binary people, of course. Despite all of this, it is interesting that the Christian bible already passes the Binary Matrix test, isn't it? Passing the Binary Matrix test requires a single piece of evidence, any evidence, that non-binary people exist in the universe, at all, even if it is negative. And since many people have always equated sex with gender, let's be generous here and throw intersex people into the mix, as well. So, with that said, here's what you can do to pass the test:

• evidence for the existence of a being that canonically identifies as or claims to be neither exclusively male nor female
  
• evidence for the existence of a being that is canonically not exclusively biologically male or biologically female
  
• evidence for the existence of a canonically genderfluid and/or genderflux being
  
• any use of the singular they to refer to a specific person
  
• any use of any neopronoun ever
  
• any occurrence of any pride flag or symbol representing any gender outside the gender binary or intersex people that was used to represent those people on purpose (the 🏳️‍⚧ trans flag is also allowed because its white stripe also represents non-binary people, same goes for the progress flag)
  
• the use of any word used to represent people outside the binary, be it modern, such as "Agender", "Bigender", "Pangender", "Xenogender", or "Genderfluid", or historical, such as "Two-Spirit", "Māhū", "Hijra", "X-Gender", or "Mukhannath", or the inclusion of people who explicitly identify as such
  
• the attack helicopter joke
  
• the mention or appearance of any person refusing to answer the question of what gender they are with "male" or "female" or claiming that there is at least a third category
  
• the mention or appearance of any goddex that is canonically outside the binary, such as the Christian goddex, Allah from Islam, Waheguru from Sikhism, Shiva from Hinduism, Cthullu from Scientology, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster from Pastafarianism
  
• the mention or appearance of any Christian angel or Satan
  
• the mention or appearance of any character canonically outside the binary from the Christian bible, such as Adam before his rib was taken out, and Abraham and his wife Sarah before they became fertile (yes, the term "Abrahamic religion" technically counts)
  
• the mention or appearance of any character canonically outside the binary from any other religion or mythology, such as Hermaphroditus and Loki
  
• the mention or appearance of any fictional character outside the binary, such as all genderless pokémons, everyone from Minecraft except for the Enderdragon, all toads from the Super Mario series, Kirby, Popeye, and Gonzo from Sesame Street
  
• any mention of the existence of a eunuch and/or the concept of castration and/or sterilization (doesn't count if it's animals unless they're anthropomorphic)
  
• the mention or appearance of any hermaphrodite species, such as snails (unless they are gendered as male or female)
  

Okay, now I've made the test as easy to pass as I possibly could. Now, what do you think its statistics would be? Remember the Binary Matrix test is not the Vito Russo Test for non-binary people but a variation of the Sausage Zone test, meaning that this is about the bare minimum and not even about representation. That comes later.
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/uj I think I need to consume more media with good representations of non-binary characters. The only ones I've consumed are in Rain and El Goonish Shive and they are both genderfluid. Does any of you have any recommendations?
/uj By the way, here's that scene of Freddi Fish saying she is a girl as a standalone video. You could use this clip if you are binary female and wanna correct people who misgender you online.

So, to preface this; this is not strictly my story. This is the story of a game that two of my best friends took part in. I was very kindly invited to join, and I said no. And I am so, so glad I said no.
Let's get to the tale.
In late 2015, I was in the grip of an extreme D&D 3.5e phase. I had a longrunning campaign with a group of friends, I was enthusiastically writing and drawing and telling everyone about my necromancer. And, as it tends to do, one person in a friendship getting into D&D spread the contagion. Quite a few other friends got into the game, and one of them "Dave," invited me to his birthday party. At the party, I met his friend "Gary," who mentioned that he was also a D&D player. Over the course of a few hours' discussion I decided that Gary and I had fundamentally opposing playstyles; he was heavy on rules and mechanics and powergaming, and light on roleplay and character building. I quietly decided that I didn't want to be part of any group with Gary, and left it at that. There was, after all, no game on offer for us, so I thought it would never be an issue.
A few months later, Dave messaged me to ask if I wanted to participate in a 3.5 campaign that Gary was planning to run. I politely declined, cited scheduling conflicts, and wished them the best. One of my best friends, though, "Jennifer" elected to ask if she could join the campaign. I did mention to Jennifer that I thought her playstyle and Gary's might clash, but she said she didn't really care, she just wanted to play some more D&D. All good!
The early stages of the game were fraught with the usual scheduling conflicts that plague every D&D group. At the time, the players were mostly aged 18-24, aside from one outlier; Dave's younger brother Liam, who was 13. But aside from the usual issues of trying to get everyone in one room, everyone was excited and enthusiastic about the upcoming game. Until session 0, when cracks immediately began to show. Gary, upon sitting down with the group, immediately declared that too many of the players wanted to be "cool" races. Liam (a child), Dave (his friend) and Jennifer all wanted to be tieflings, while a couple of other party members were hoping to be other nonhuman races. Gary declared that everyone would be rolling d20s against a rarity table, and only those who scored high enough on the rarity table could be tieflings.
Dave, Jennifer and Liam all rolled high enough to be tieflings.
Gary, seemingly upset by this usurping of his authority, decided that since everyone wanted to be tieflings so bad, they should have to suffer some indignities for it! He ruled that everyone who was a tiefling had to roll for their tiefling mutations, and produced a chart. To this day, I have no idea where he found the chart. I used to have a copy of it saved, but that is long gone. What I can tell you is that it was an extremely gonzo and weird collection of traits for any character, let alone a standard tiefling. It included "having their legs replaced with snakes" which Dave's character suffered, "being made up of bees," and "having a bunch of extra eyes" along with some other miscellaneous weirdness. Arguments broke out as the tiefling players asked why they couldn't just have the normal tiefling traits and Gary told them that he was the DM and they could shut their faces.
Eventually, after quite a bit of back and forth, the party managed to roll up their characters. Some of the details of the characters are lost to time, and to keep things minimally confusing I'm just going to refer to everyone by the pseudonym and gender of their real self, rather than their character names. It'll just get silly otherwise.
The party comprised of Jennifer, Dave and Liam, who were all tieflings. Rachel, an elf, Bee, a human(?) cleric, and Erin, whose character details have been lost to the void. I'm pretty sure Erin was an Aasimar, but I truly and honestly do not remember.
The initial game didn't go great. There were a lot of issues with practical stuff; The players all lived very far apart and had busy schedules, so their game times were pretty sparse, and Gary had a tendency to no-show to sessions. He also tended to, at least during the first few sessions, impose extremely harsh "realism" penalties on the players, giving them horrific injuries from the slightest damage or fall. But despite this, the first three sessions took place in relative peace, with only minor arguments about rules and dramas.
Then. June 26th 2016. A fateful day.
There were three events scheduled that day. A game for this D&D group. A birthday party for our mutual friend Allen. And Jennifer's family were having a family function. Jennifer had, since she couldn’t play, given Dave carte blanche to control her character as long as he let her know what was going on during the game.
So, Jennifer, unable to attend either the birthday or the D&D game, was sulkily sitting with her family and texting me. I, hanging out with Allen and the rest of our friends, had entirely forgotten about this D&D game. I was just having a nice day!
And then I get the fateful text message from Jennifer.
"holy shit text Dave about d&d. something crazy is happening. MINECRAFT????"
I'm a little gossip queen. So of course, I text Dave.
"I need details abt what happened at d&d bc this sounds amazingly bad."
What I will now reproduce here is exactly what he sent me in response. I have edited it slightly to change everyone's names to pseudonyms and to correct some minor spelling and grammar issues. But otherwise, this is the god's honest truth of the final session of that awful, awful game.
OK SO ouR party was in a gay bar filled w/ many buff men and somehow we initiated a fight with them (theres like 3?? different reasons apparently??)
it was jennifer, me, liam and bee against 36 men (i found out the total no. just now)
rachel refused to fight them and erins character was stuck outside
the fight started w/ some of the men attacking jennifer first, one man punched them in the face and dealt like 7 damage, the next man missed them and fell onto me, and somehow tangled himself in my snake legs we both got fall damage the next man also missed and fell, and somehow got tangled, and caused more fall damage to all three of us (jennifer not included) i tried to push them off while pleading innocence to whatever started the fight, but my weak lil arms couldnt do anything so i ended up just flailing
jennifer then tried to help me etc but fell and got more fall damage and then i think?? someone else fell on us and that killed jennifer and the other men
in the meantime, rachel just kinda watched the spectacle, liam ran off shit scared (while leaving a literal trail of shit behind him) he ran like 88 miles in an hour???? idk
Bee was just sobbing into her expensive alcohol that she couldnt afford
i think one of the men took pity on us and decided to not fight, while another named Sven grabbed the corpses off me and threw them out the door, Jennifer included
Then, Sven carried me back to the table he was sitting at (bc he was the 1milllionth customer or someth) and instructed me continue enjoying his free drinks
I threw a tantrum and flailed a lot and the men kept giving me more drinks but I kept knocking them off the table
Rachel somehow stopped them all from fighting us, bc shes the diplomatic one i guess and asked Sven if he could bring Jennifers body back inside to calm the child (me)
Sven refused and refused to let us bring necromancy inti their establishment so Rachel thanked him and told me to meet her outside when hes done, which eventually i think I was dragged out and Bee also left (after making a throne out of the three dead buff men)
While running away, Liam got captured and put in a cell, where eventually he was killed bc hes a fuckin idiot and tried to cast a spell that had 100% chance of backfire
He was still shitting, like he has a constant stream of shit leaking from him
Rachel, her retainer, me, Bee and Erin head off to find Liam, while dragging Jennifers body w/ them
While WALKING, suddenly Rachels leg EXPLODED. no reason, it just did. her exploded leg swung back and hit Jennifers corpse, which caused me to scream and turn into a tree (im a druid) Rachel then tried to bandage her stump leg and Erin tried to heal her but somehow failed and mutated her leg and she grew 4 mini legs out of the stump of her leg??
Bee saw a cave not far off that held Liam, and there were soldiers gaurding it
The plan was, they carry the Tree Me and say theyre delivering lumber
they tried it, failed, and Rachel was stabbed
I turned back into myself and called upon some birds to attack and kill the soldiers anD IT WAS THE ONLY GOOD ROLLS I MADE
i should point out, the whole time, Rachel was constantly saying "this makes no sense!! how does this stick to 'realistic'?"
more soldiers came, Erin tried to attack and missed, Rachel stayed out of it i think??? Bee tried to convince the soldiers that she was a god of a gods messenger but she hecked up and more soldiers were called
I tried to call more animals but only got ants, and used my bird friends to attack, and they killed another man
Erin killed a man, and then Bee cast a spell that caused everyone to laugh uncontrollably
Rachels retainer died of laughter, and then when Bee stopped the spell, It was announced that both Jennifer and Rachel's retainer were def dead and could not be brought back
I didn't want to deal w/ my grief and tried to get the birds to kill me, but they refused Bee then tried to console me but I took Erin's great sword and attacked Bee
The soldiers then stopped attacking bc they took pity on the depressing scene they were witnessing
While all this was happening, Liam, who's dead body was still somehow?? shitting continuously, and his body was also hung from the roof and his cell was a 4 wall steel cell that had no windows or gaps and there was magic on the cell for oxygen to get in
apparently his body made enough shit that the cell was gonna explode or someth, but instead somehow became a black hole and he was transported to a different universe or someth???? and then???? this imploded on itself and then was going to explode and drag everything into a giant black hole, and we were meant to escape
but before we could, someone opened the door to the cell, which apparently caused the world to be transported or changed and the world became Minecraft World
in minecraft world, I tried to kill myself, I did not sign up for this shit but apparently I respawned as a mindlesa minecraft character, along w/ Jennifer and Liam and Rachel is using them to farm for minerals or someth
So. Yeah. The DM's finale to this game was that one of the characters shit himself so hard that the entire world collapsed in on itself and turned into... Minecraft. I don't know how you get to that point as a DM but Gary clearly got there.
To this day, I am glad that I never joined this game and deeply regretful that I did not get to witness someone say "the Minecraft dimension" in real life at an actual table.
And that's my absolute worst D&D story ever!

Hello, everyone! My name's Zachariah, and I'm the game crafter over at Secret Hearth. We're a big creative collective that focuses on making analog games. Everyone's been hard at work developing Weald, our new 'flagship fantasy game'. It's free forever, so I wanted to draw y'all's attention to it as a possible source for mining mechanics/tweaks to your own game. We're also developing a bunch of modules (also free forever) with little, modular sets of rules to change how Weald works depending on your preferred setting, like spaceship combat for science fiction games.
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Weald is an ongoing project. We're missing some art here or there. Just giving you the heads up if you're looking to actually PLAY/TRY it instead of scouring it for ideas - you'll probably want to wait another month or so.
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Weald is:

• OSR, essentially. Low health, dynamic powers that center around using magick or the environment to navigate problems in cunning or imaginative ways.
• Modular. Every chunk of rules can be plucked and used in almost any other fantasy/science-fantasy system. This is what made me realize it might be good to share with other designers.
• Weird, but grounded. A really nice mix of your typical fantasy thematics with a low-magic gonzo flair where it counts.

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You can download Weald here. Thanks for checking it out, and I hope it proves useful in your own designs.