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mozi.
Snake is behind us and Horse has arrived! May all your worries slither away and wishing you'll be healthy as a horse in this fortuitous new year!
Currently recovering from working for dad. ^_^;;
Context: I was reading an article on tabletop RPG design philosophy regarding crunch (aka number crunching, a short hand for "complex rules" in the TTRPG space) when I ran across some examples being given and suddenly have to headdesk as I realized the person is missing the point in terms of the literary difference between all the "Chinese kung-fu movies." Ok, let me explain a little more.
In the section titled "Different Rules for the Same Fictional Activity can be Completely Different" (scroll down or use Ctrl+F to find the section), the article uses three different games to illustrate how martial arts is mechanically different in three different games. The three examples are:
Rivers & Lakes, a game that focuses on using mechanics to generate tactical decisions during a fight that encourages learning the opponent's moves and devise a tactical move that leverages your strengths against an opponent's weakness.
Wushu, a game that rewards players mechanical benefits to encourage narrating complex choreography of fight scenes by handing out more dice for each detail the player includes in their "attack".
Hearts of Wulin, a narrative game that resolves fights in a single roll because it's more concerned with the narrative drama/consequence of the fight than the technical aspects of the fight itself.
Now, the article sums up this discussion with this:
Personally, I take a bit of issue with this (to me this combat system would be ideal for something like samurai fiction, westerns, gangster and crime fiction, etc. but is terrible for most forms of wuxia)... A Knight at the Opera
So my problems with this pointless aside is many. At the forefront, it speaks to a lack of understanding about Chinese martial arts movies. specifically a lack of nuanced understanding of the Wuxia genre. In fact, the three games listed as examples actually captures the three core engagements of the sub-genres of Chinese martial arts movies.
Allow me to get into the weeds a bit:
Chinese martial arts movies can be largely categorized into three sub-genre's:
Wushu (武术): in this genre, the movie's main theme is to communicate, ostensibly, anti-war messages. For you see, one of the unifying philosophy in Chinese martial arts schools is to stop war by improving one's self-defense strength. The belief is that military/martial strength is in service of defense and only defense. Expect some lesson about "self improvement to ward off bullies" to show up at some point. And if they fail on the philosophical aspect, the movie at least hopes to educate the audience a little bit on the actual design philosophy of a school of martial art, such as how Taiji was invented.
Kung-fu (功夫): this genre of movies is less concerned with the philosophy and more interested in showcasing awesome technical ability. Kung-fu (功夫) literally translates into "effort". In other words, the goal is to showcase the actor's ability to pull off stunts that took decades of training to perfect. This is the main type of "martial arts movies" that makes it into the West.
Wuxia (武侠): movies in this genre are less interested in the martial arts itself and more interested in the heroism and the interpersonal/political drama. The martial arts is more of a framing device to focus on the character rather than any interest in the actual fighting. And the books that inspired these movies often handwave away the nitty gritty details of the actual martial arts stuff.
So this is my very long winded way of explaining no, actually choosing the narrative focused resolution system when mimicking Wuxia is actually very appropriate. The game Wushu is inaccurately named and should have been called Kung-fu (or Gong Fu if you want to be culturally sensitive). Finally, Rivers & Lakes is more of a "Wushu"-esque game because it intends to use actual martial arts philosophy in the game design.
Aaand... yeah. That's my rant over.
I've had a long week, because I've been basically moving on high gear for the past 5 days and I'm like exhausted as woah. So some brainless chatter.
Have you ever solo'd an MMO? Played solitaire board games? Played chess against yourself? Played any form of "multi-player" yourself?
There you go. If you enjoy a game, you wanna play it and you don't want to have to wait until you can wrangle 3-5 adults into setting up a schedule to play with you. Hence. Solo D&D.
Because it is the biggest TTRPG on the market. There's a lot of published adventures for D&D and once you figured out how to play D&D by yourself, you'll probably have a good idea of what kind of rules are fun for you versus what kind of rules you don't like. And you'll be comfortable running through any kind of system and hacking it into doing what you enjoy.
So, let's get to playing some solo D&D.
( Step-by-step walkthrough of how to play a published adventure by yourself. )
Apparently "becoming Chinese" is a meme/phase now?
My feelings are... "Huh?"
I mean, sure, whatever I guess. I'll just be over here enjoying my high speed rail and door-to-door grocery deliveries (with free delivery because my bank gave me a VIP membership) while y'all drink goji steeped hot water.
(Confession: I'm drinking goji steeped rose tea with dragon's eye daily because something something "good for skin and menstruation". So, y'know. I'm living the stereotype.)
Is this the promised Chinese century? Because it's a lot more banal than it was propagandized to be.
BTW, if anyone wants to visit China, I've just learned that there are 38 countries with Visa Free tourism for up to 30 days, and an additional 50-something countries that get Visa Free transit for up to 10 days. (I only know this because I'm preparing to host some friends who are planning to take advantage of the visa free travel.)
In other news, I had to replace my cabinet, because the bamboo material deformed under constant pressure from my PS3 sitting on it and now my muscles hate me. I don't even know how I pulled something, but I definitely pulled something.
Ok, so I have my problems with AI, not because of major ethical concerns but because the damn thing doesn't deliver what I want. (I've once again dropped AI Dungeon because LLM cannot write a decently creative story even after I feed it explicit instructions on how the scene should go and what the characters should say, because all the AI does is reuse my own words back at me.) However, despite AI sucking and absolutely not delivering creativity (which is a personal problem I have with AI), the actual problem with AI is not with the AI technology itself.
The problem with AI is, pay attention now, CAPITALISM. So you know all that plagiarism and copyright stuff? Nobody gave a shit before CAPITALISM became the defacto economic system. I mean, remember how in pre-captialistic societies people snuck their own writings under the names of other people and were perfectly willing to not claim credit for their own labor? Stories were told, retold, remixed, rehashed, derived, and, yes, stolen, over and over and people didn't really care. Art was copied and reproduced and counterfeited as people tried to pass their own art off as someone else's.
Because, in this distant past, the economic system was not one in which an artist/writer had to consider their labor as something to be sold for money. No. They saw their labor as a creative outlet that needed to be expressed, not monetized. (And also because they had aristocratic patrons who fed and clothed them so they can focus on making art instead of learning a trade skill to make ends meet.)
It is the monetization of creative labor that causes AI to be a problem. It is the world, the economic system in which one has to sell labor to ensure survival, that turns creativity into a commodity, which causes AI automation to turn into "a problem". Just like the steam/combustion/electric engine obviated the need for carriage drivers, AI automation will take over and slowly replace a company's need to hire skilled drawers and writers of stuff to generate consumer products (be that illustration for animated movies or flavor text in a videogame).
And of course the discourse is constantly around the topic of "AI is stealing from these artists without compensation", as if the commodifying of art and artistic creativity is some kind universal constant, without anyone asking, "Hey, wait a minute. WHY IS ART COMMODITY?" Isn't art supposed to be expression of the self? (Plus, art pieces used to be collected by the aristocracy and bourgeois and had nothing to do with 99% of the population that were peasants who wouldn't have been able to enjoy the art because they were too busy tilling the fields. Just to be clear, I don't think feudalism is better.)
And the answer to why we've normalized the commodifying of art is because CAPITALISM. Because under a capitalistic society, labor must be sold to secure resources to stay alive. Because under capitalism, we live in a scarcity driven economy that incentivizes monopolizing labor to secure enough material goods to generate more stuff.
But guys. We currently live in a post-scarcity world. We make so much food that literally 60 million tons of food is thrown away every year in the US alone. Electronics are in such oversupply that planned obsolescence is a standard practice (Google it if you haven't heard of it by now). We can literally feed the entire world's population with the food we already grow without anyone having to work.
So. Why are we still selling our labor for money to exchange for food? Why do we still accept an economic system designed to stimulate production? When will we realize increased production does not guarantee distribution?
The problem with AI isn't its automation. The problem is the irrational system dictating the distribution of resources and the reliance on the selling of labor to gain a portion of the already overproduced resources to secure survival. We shouldn't be distributing material resources based on money. We can definitely just hand out food and housing for free at this point without production being impacted (because, again, automation is a thing now).
In a post-scarcity world, problem is a matter of getting stuff into the hands of people who need the stuff, not stimulating more production of stuff we already can't consume. Using money as the accounting method is outdated and unsuitable for the post-scarcity world we live in.
TL;DR - The problem isn't AI is stealing jobs. The problem is that for some reason selling labor is the economic system we're still using in a post-scarcity world when distribution is the problem we should be solving.
I've been trying to get a satisfying result from AI and so far, it's been bleh. I mean, it's possible that I'm just expecting something that isn't possible with AI, or it's just that AI requires more programming to network together modules/agents/whatever the term is so that it can actually do what AI Dungeon is proposing it does.
Long story short, I'm trying to reproduce a TTRPG experience with AI, with AI running the story, world lore, NPC characters, party members, and me roleplaying an adventurer in a typical D&D setting. I'd thought leaning on D&D IP could maybe help the AI to be more creative about its responses, but I'm finding it difficult to generate meaningful progression.
For example, the context fed to the AI contains information that my character's spellbook (which is necessary for casting of spells) is inside a magical hand purse that is bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside. Yet, the AI insists on writing that the spellbook is retrieved from or put away into a satchel. Or in another example, a major bullet point in the context states that my character is an elf fostered and raised by humans, yet the AI insists on having characters in the story speak to my character as if she grew up in elven society. It's as if the concept of adoption by a different culture is completely foreign to the AI.
I often see people try to brush this off as "minor details" which is infuriating. I don't know if gamers are just terrible at understanding narrative or if AI has degraded people's understanding of how world building works. No, if a character is raised in a foreign culture that's a pretty fricking huge part of the characterization. I also can't figure out if "elf" is just has too much valence for the AI and anything else that come after is swamped out by all the training data on the "ethereal elf" trope that's all over fantasy or something. (Good luck trying to get the AI to associate elf with a Keebler elf, despite feeding it description after description. No, an elf must be graceful, WTF. Despite D&D wood elves being far more inspired by a brownie than a Tolkien-esque elf.)
And then there's the issue of AI not being able to create anything new. Tell AI to avoid A, B, C elements in the next section of the narrative and it will inevitably come up with nothing other than rephrasing and repeating A, B, and C elements. Tell it to pick an option between A or B and it will inevitably pick both.
At this point, I'm a bit annoyed at the company for releasing a product that over-promises and under-delivers. If I wanted to be in the driver's seat dictating the success and failure of every turn attempt and describing to the AI what is an in-character response and also managing the pacing of a scene while keeping track of world lore and overall plot progression, then I'll go write a story or play solo TTRPG.
So, was out of town visiting a friend for two weeks. Haven't been able to check in with DW due to only having a phone and trying to type on phone browser is...less than ideal. Over the course of the two weeks, ended up binging on the third season of 《唐诡》(aka Strange Tales of Tang Dynasty), a semi-fantastical mystery drama set in, you guessed it, the Tang Dynasty.
Firstly, I genuinely enjoyed Season 1. Is it something I'd recommend? Eh... only in the context of current period dramas are shit and this one is semi-passable and uses decent grammar that doesn't feel "too modern" all the time. The mysteries are somewhat entertaining and despite the semi-fantastical setting (there is a heavy reliance on "weirdness" that isn't always explainable), the show definitively states ghosts are not real, which is kind of important in a good mystery. But also animals don't work like that, but whatever, I've given up hope when it comes to accurate portrayal of animal behavior in fiction. 😓
Secondly, despite my enjoyment, the show is not without problems and there are very, very many cringe moments. Yet, because it's directed at a domestic audience and unapologetically Chinese, I just keep giving the show a pass for the cringe. Like, is it xenophobic against foreigners? Yes. On the other hand, given the last 150 years of Chinese history...it's also kind of understandable why the xenophobia exists.
Thirdly, the latter seasons get worse and worse. Second season was mildly enjoyable if featuring way too many cryptids. Third season, which I just finished binging these past weeks while out of town, was... well, it's kind of straight up bad. None of the set up were paid off in a satisfactory manner, the main characters got sidelined for one-shot characters, plus the mysteries leaned way too hard on the horror aesthetic and just didn't have any real mystery pacing. The final arc was so deeply disappointing I'm still trying to find the words to properly describe how much it fails at being a mystery.
And yet.
Despite everything, despite all the crap, I suspect I'm going to end up watching season 4 and 5 (which have already been announced). I mildly hate myself for it. This is clearly my new fandom, but I'm so resentful, because it started off strong enough that I had hopes it will improve. Instead, what I got was an increasingly terrible series that simply cannot sustain the expectation of success.
This is possibly why I've been diving into D&D. Because despite my general dislike for D&D settings and annoyance with a lot of the game mechanics, at least I can take as little or as much as I want from the source material and simply do my own thing with it. And honestly, I just never expected solo D&D to take so very long. But also, because I needed a change of pace because working on my own game has been feeling a bit like running in a hamster wheel.
Sometimes I question my decision making.
So, I've been doing some solo D&D (maybe I'll have the energy to write up on the hobby at some point), but anyway, point is, I have issues with the Wizard.
The biggest problem balancing D&D wizard is the fact that, in this game, every other spell casting class faces significant spell casting limitations.
Before I go through each class, a quick primer on how spell casting works in D&D:
( Vancian Magic )
So, let's run through the list of full spell casters (aka the classes that can cast level 9 spells) and see how they stack up:
( Read more... )
So, we've identified the wizard's problem. It's got the power of a sorcerer, the selection variety of a bard, the flexibility of a druid, and the ... OK, see, I'd say that a wizard and a cleric fulfills two very different niches until you realize WISH exists. See, the thing about WISH is that it is effectively a spell that replicates any spell (even 9th level spells if you are willing to take the stress).
And that's only getting into the core wizard without touching on all the subclass bonuses that comes along.
It really becomes a case of why play anything else other than wizard when everyone else is effectively a down grade of wizard? (Again, with maaaaaaaybe an argument made for cleric due to wizards having to resort to necromancy when it comes to restoring the team in early levels, but that poofs away in late game when there are many, many other ways negate damage.)
And all you really need to do is see this optimization video to realize oh, akshually, fuck playing anything not a wizard.
Yes, yes, there is the basic fantasy of "but I just wanna swing a big sword", but beyond the narrative reason, game mechanics doesn't really offer a compelling reason to try something else out.
So. Here's my very simple proposed fix:
Recently have been sucked back into fighting AI logic on AIDungeon.
Honestly, I'm not even sure why I'm doing it, because most of the time it's me trying to figure out how I can get the AI to spit out text that makes narrative sense. AI seems to be favoring really stupid descriptions, like "You pick up the notebook with practiced ease." Yes, yes AI, picking up a notebook is fucking easy. Stop.
Anyway.
At least I figured out how to stop the AI from trying to sexually assault the player character. Don't let conversation continue for longer than two turns. Apparently, AI thinks talking about anything beyond "Good day, sir" is sexual interest.
Which isn't as far away from how real men act as one would like, sadly enough.
Also, never, ever, ever write a character cares about another character anywhere in the prompt, because apparently AI only understand care in the framework of sex.
(I know, I know, AI doesn't actually understand shit. It's because of the proximity of those words in the written data that AI gets trained on causing the word "care" and smut get linked together constantly in the algorithm.)
Also, anyone who argues that AI makes them a better writer is lying. I can feel my writing skills deteriorating as I battle the AI to use sentence structures beyond "verb with practiced ease" or "verb with practiced precision". All it tells me is the descriptor "practiced" is used way, way too often in genre fiction. Ugh.
Anyhoo.
Oh, yeah, and I also continue moonlighting as Dad's zero-draft editor. 😑
(Am sick, so brain rambling.)
( Read more... )
And speaking of lore... Well, what can I say? It's been a while since I've dipped into HSR but what I've read has not filled me with much enthusiasm. Such is the unfortunate fate for those of us who have a tendency to prefer side characters. It's really a bit dispiriting to see HSR drop the opportunity to push more Chinese-cultural framing into their storytelling. If you can't rely on a Chinese company to incorporate Chinese themes, then...well.
And I'm also a bit annoyed at the Wuxia/Xianxia genre becoming the international "representation" of Chinese culture. Mostly because for me, I always found the political imperial dramas (such as the Three Kingdoms/Water Margins in the classics and 《汉武帝》/《唐太宗李世民》 for the more modern representatives) to be more defining of Chinese media. And I don't mean that it has to be a period piece, but political maneuvering and machinations always makes its way into most Chinese stories, regardless of whether the story is modern or a period piece or futuristic science fiction.
So I was really hoping to see more political machinations, deal making, treaty negotiation (but y'know, on a stellar level given HSR's sci-fi setting), yet we keep getting the same old same old "adventurers on a journey and beat up baddies" type of story. And the abandonment of the traditional aesthetic for the bog-standard "Western" aesthetic when it comes to basically well...everything.
Anyway, am disappointed in HSR. Not sure what else to really say at this point.
Ok, I know this like matters to exactly zero people, but I just have to say that after reading a lot of how people interpret words on forums, my conclusion is that while Druidcraft is still slightly weaker utility-wise compared to the other two RP cantrips (Prestidigitation and Thaumaturgy) , it is also being even more shafted by people who can't read.
One of Druidcraft's biggest advantages over Prestidigitation is that it is written with subtle spell casting. Unlike Prestidigitation, which is labeled with a default verbal component (which in D&D rules lawyering means audible chanting), the first sentence of Druidcraft's description is "Whispering to the spirits of nature". Combine that with 30ft range (instead of the 10ft range of Prestidigitation), that means Druidcraft's Sensory Effect can be cast from distance in secret without the target realizing the effect came from a spell.
In other words, while a Druid can make the woods whisper terrible things into your ear without you being able to figure it out, a Wizard has to be basically within reach to try those things. Therefore, in terms of pulling off tricks like "create a stinky smell to distract the guards" can be pulled off with Druidcraft, but will require a lot more set up using Prestidigitation.
Still doesn't make up for the fact that Bloom and Weather Sensor sub-effects have low RP and utility value compared to Clean or Soil and Minor Creation and Minor Sensation. Again, Prestidigitation getting six effects compared to Druidcraft's four makes Prestidigitation the better RP cantrip. But Druidcraft really could be significantly better if the D&D crowd remembered Druidcraft's built-in subtle spell casting.
I maintain that Druidcraft's Weather Sensor should be changed into generating a localized (aka one square or 5x5x5ft sized) harmless weather effect, like tiny rain cloud that waters the plant or a tiny sun to function as a hand warmer, etc. And Bloom needs to do more to plants than just make a bud open. If making shelter with a cantrip is considered too useful, then at the very least it needs to be able to boost plant vitality, like revive a (non-magical) dead tree temporarily (an hour seems reasonable) or make ivy crawl up a wall and cover a window (then withering away after an hour). Personally I think using Druidcraft to make plants grow in a 5x5x5ft plot to create difficult terrain really isn't overpowered given Mold Earth (a cantrip) can do the same just about everywhere (without needing plants available).
And for all the people worried about Plant Growth being outshine, given that Plant Growth has no time limit and is permanent, I'd say uh...no.
Because it came up, I figure I'd just throw out a clarification of my stance on AI art and thoughts on the ethics, not that it matters because there's a lot of people already spilling digital ink and whatnot over the subject, but whatever.
My position:
The entire controversy with AI art, from what I understand, at its heart has to do with AI scraping art from real human artists without compensation, then regurgitates/remixes the material and spits it back out to make money off of users who pay to use the AI generator to make the stuff.
So.
To put it simply, the real problem is paying AI company money.
If the art has already been generated by someone else, is hosted on another company's server on the AI company's dime and I hotlink it to my blog? I have not in anyway contributed to the AI economy nor fed the AI machine.
In fact, by hotlinking from the AI company server (or a company that uses AI to generate art), I'm draining the AI company's funding (a drop in the sea, but it's a drop). By not giving the company any credit, it means I'm not giving the company any free advertising, further eating into their profits (if they're even making a profit at the moment).
I can't stop other people from using AI. I can't stop AI companies from stealing artists' work to train their machines. But I can definitely leech a minute amount of funds from their coffer every time I hotlink an image hosted on their servers.
So, I don't use AI generators personally. But if someone else already generated an image? You can bet I'm going to hotlink the fuck out of that thing.
Mochia, a new modern mobile browser friendly version of Neopets.
I have a butterfly cat and I already love it.
I basically played it for one day and already I'm like "Yeeeeees." Great for when you just want to go brainless for a little while. Haven't really explored how much feeding is necessary in terms of the pet stuff yet, but the connect 5 game was decently fun.
Basically, if you remember Neopets from the 90s/00s, this is exactly that. But like more limited in terms of pets available. I had a hard time picking between faerie red panda and butterfly cat, but I went with butterfly cat in the end.
Anyway.
*slinks away*
Edit to add:
Since there really isn't a decent wiki for the game, here are my general thoughts so far after trying my hand at all the game types. Organized by region.
( This game is way more generous than Neopets when it comes to currency. )
Some stuff to keep in mind:
There is a cap on the amount of money (or MP as it's called) awarded on each game. Seems to be roughly somewhere between 4k and 5k.
Single payout caps out at 1500, so unless trying to unlock an associated avatar, no reason to keep pushing the high score beyond max payout per game.
While all games are playable on touch screen (aka phone or tablet), not all games play nice with mouse+keyboard; in fact, some games are out right terrible using m+kb, such as Loose Lambs & Beach Bounce, due to multi-tapping being a significantly better strategy than single clicking.
Total game-based payout (across all maps) is around 35k per day. Fastest for me is running Loose Lambs, Stellera, and Spikey Spirits, because I can get get max pay out on each of those games pretty quickly. Then I fill the remainder with Spelunker, Enspell, Brick Break, Shrumble, Snarf as I try to go for high score on those games.
Of the stationary puzzles, I've figured out how to complete them relatively fast on hard except Blocksmith. I've taken to doing Blocksmith on medium due to being terrible at block puzzles.
Earning 50k per day is definitely doable. Also definitely play the stock market game. Trade is limited to only 100 shares, so you're unlikely to loose that much. There's a graph tracking the rise and fall. The spike and crash is pretty regular and predictable (unlike real stock market).
(OK, technically a slight exaggeration, it's more like 1800 years.)
So, recently, the Buddhist temple Shaolin (少林寺) got into some trouble with society in general. The head abbot (主持) was arrested for corruption. A monk at the temple reported the head honcho back in 2016 and finally he's been arrested on corruption charges.
Aaanyhoo, point is, the new head started cleaning house and the temples of other Buddhist sects (Shaolin is only one of many sects of Buddhists in China) are starting to freak out that they might get dragged into the mess and have been holding emergency meetings.
Meanwhile, the Daoist temples continue as usual, because they've been paying taxes. Yes, 2000 years later and the Daoists still pay taxes while the Buddhists are tax exempt.
In other words, the trend of government crack down on Buddhist Temples continues while Daoists stay in the ruling classes' good graces by paying into the system, as they have been doing for 2000 years. Some things never changed. 🤣
Fresh walnuts are here! Yay! Summer!
I just realized America is a fricking food desert, which is shocking given how much flat arable land is in its borders. Anyway, point is, fresh walnuts are delicious! Yes, peeling it is a PITA, but the yummy crunchy sweet flesh is so worth the effort. Aaaah, yummy food.
Uh...yeah, that's all. Just have to squee about delicious food that I can't get in the US.
Ok, you know what? I'm usually of the "let's be nuanced about this subject" type if person, but at this point, western media's hypocrisy and bullshit on the issue of Israel committing genocide is wearing down my nuance.
If you're going to condone genocide, don't act fucking surprised when others retaliate by promoting genocide against you. And don't give me this "but it's morally wrong" argument because we are so far past that now.
IDGAF about your feelings and safety when you're supporting a fucking genocide that's wiping out babies. Yes, there is in fact a hierarchical ladder for who gets my sympathy and it's not Israeli Zionists. STFU.
Cortex is a TTRPG system that's meant to be a universal system.
Ok, quick explanation: in TTRPG space there are two design paths. First path, design a system to represent relevant player actions in the setting which the game is meant to take place. This is exemplified by D&D, where the system accounts for magic and spells because the setting is meant to have magic and spells.
Second path, design a universal system meant to be used to resolve story conflicts that is setting agnostic. Systems such as FATE, GURPS, RISUS and Cortex are all such games.
And sure, Cortex Prime might have won tons of awards for game design and presentation, but also...no. So I'm going to vent about my problems with Cortex.
( Cortex is an over designed piece of crap with crunch in all the wrong ways. )
So. In conclusion, Cortex is an overdesigned piece of crap.
As much as I love Studio Ghibli material and worlds, I'm not very happy at seeing Obojima being officially collected on D&D Beyond. Mostly because the book is written by a bunch of white guys who seem to think watching some Ghibli movies means they can capture the nostalgic nature of Studio Ghibli's creation and fail to realize the magic of Studio Ghibli isn't something that can be reproduced through emulation. It's not the "vibe" that makes a Studio Ghibli film what it is, it's the themes, thoughts, personal experiences that Takahata and Miyazaki brings to the story that makes the works stand out.
Fundamentally, Studio Ghibli works center around personal growth and contrasting the mystical with the mundane. Magic is both whimsical and terrible in the Ghibli worlds, yes, even in a work like Kiki's Delivery, because magic is the domain of childhood. Because the purpose of magic in Ghibli works is to be a metaphor for childhood wonder. This is in direct opposition of what magic stands for in D&D, which is a tool to be used rather than a majesty of nature to be wondered at. The way magic is handled narratively is fundamentally in opposition of each other. So unless the system reduces access to magic as you level up (which it doesn't), this project is just a ... really shitty imitation.
In other news: It's been really hot and I'm melting. Plus, I've been going through some really shitty cramps for about a week now.
Previously, I yapped about fixing Druid, but was basing it on the 2014 rules. Now that I've read up on the new 2024 rules (which severely nerfed Wild Shape for Druids), I'm back again to fixing Druids 2024-edition. Grrr...
( FFS, just let Druids be awesome. )
Circle of Land is in a much better place in 2024 edition, so I think fixing core Druid traits will fix a lot of things.
