simonm223.bsky.social
Artist, critic, weirdo pomo leftist.
Opinions do not represent anybody else.
Ask me my opinions on wizards.
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Blogger at http://simonmcneil.com
6,340 posts
979 followers
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I said as much in my blog but I think they left the culture and society stuff out so they could sell it in setting books more than for political reasons.
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Thr separation of image from political ideology fascinatin gdespite art being diverse its very polically shallow because they don'twant to make chuds mad. Like how did Marvel released a politcal thriller in 2025 about what does it mean to represent America as a black man and only mustard a shrug.
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simonmcneil.com/2025/02/26/o...
I kept it brief.
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And, frankly, there is a clear political dimension to the visual art across these three books and now I'm realizing this is a blog pos.
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Basically it doesn't matter that WotC excluded any sort of Orc culture from text because they had a picture of Orcs that CHUDs could point to and say (sigh) "Mexican Orcs".
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I think Mearls (and possibly WOTC) seem not to know how the far-right aestheticization of politics applies to visual art.
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Plus (sigh) multiverse. Which seems quite tacked on considering how expansive the D&D cosmology already was. It fits into one universe but, no, we need a multiverse because that's what all the Media Properties have these days. LOL
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I suspect that's the case. But it was a mistake because, instead, a lot of 5e players went, "well I have the core books and Tasha's already so..."
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And that's just the mechanical side. On the social / thematic side there's a whole lot of attempting to appeal to a big tent in a variety of ways. And it is a bit more video-gamey (because WotC now see D&D as a digital-first product.)
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There's also a lot greater clarity on a variety of status conditions like possession that were vaguer in 5e. Status conditions are generally more important and more likely to come up in 2024.
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in general, attacks do more damage, there's greater variety of damage type which reduces the effectiveness of resistances, AC went up and, for monsters, HP went down.
So they hit harder and die faster.
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Beyond that most of the rules changes were designed to speed combat up. This partially balances against the extra time taken for weapon masteries but...
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A lot of attention was given to martial classes. So you get pretty big buffs for fighters, rogues and monks with Paladins getting debuffed and barbarians largely staying the same. Ranger, of course, was heavily redesigned but it still kind of sucks. Just for new reasons.
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Yeah. I think WotC really did themselves a disservice by pushing the backwards compatibility angle on the marketing so hard. When the PHB dropped the perspective was it was basically just 5e+Tasha's as core. And it's not. But the problem is that a lot of the rules changes were rebalancing.
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“Middle aged loser still reminiscing about his teenage football accomplishments” was a stock comedy bit for decades, when you replace actual football with Madden it becomes too sad to be funny
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I beat Elden Ring. It wasn't really hard; just took time and patience. I feel sincerely bad for people who act like it's some sort of ACCOMPLISHMENT.
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BlueSky is not an "equal-but-opposite X", it's a place where the leadership haven't decided (yet) to go out of their way to build up, boost and bump the posts of the far right and give a skewed impression of public opinion. Yr average people online are decent folk who care about social issues.
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@seannb.bsky.social have you read the 2024 rules yet? I'm about 5/6 of the way done (read PHB and DMG, halfway through monster manual) and definitely have thoughts about it as a distinct edition from both social and game-mechanics perspectives. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.
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Why aren't you voting right now? Oh, it's "not an election day"? Sounds like you've fallen for Putin's kompromatski
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It's not libel if you draw a Hitler mustache on the pop of the person you don't like. ;)
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Lol
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Simply tell him that he should have read ATP more closely.
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This is how you summon Nick Land into your mentions
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Need to add one - ecstasy and incommunicable experience - which Bataille thought was a significant piece of religious devotion.
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like maybe you don't need to metaphorically kill someone just because you two didn't spend the rest of your lives together wtf go to therapy
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Anyway HMU if you have a publication about fascism looking for a timely essay.
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I've been cooking an outline for an essay about the Benjaminian idea of fascism as the aestheticization of politics and the nationalist aesthetics of the "Gulf of America" executive order and for... various reasons... I'd rather not put it on my blog.
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Man, AofB's Deep Lore really is a wild thing, innit?
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Only 25% nazis by volume!
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since yall asked. this tweet was 4 days after a neo-Nazi murdered an antifascist activist, Heather Heyer, in Charlottesville
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Still I'd rather listen to Hannah Diamond.
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But, hey, at least Anti-Hero is a song with some teeth so she isn't a total waste.
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She's a de-libinized and over-polished act, prepackaged for kidz-bop covers.