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The Serious GM @seriousgm.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

I think Nolan was pretty intentional in showing that Odysseus is in many ways the same character as Oppenheimer in the previous Nolan movie. Too ambitious and too clever by half, his brainchild ends a war but destroys a city, and his last words in the movie are "we may have erased civilization"

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The Serious GM @seriousgm.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

Nearly everything vaguely "western" is the Roman empire. Either Turkey or the EU (or DE/FR/AT/IT/GR...) is the Roman Empire by some chain of succession. The US cosplays at being the Roman Empire. So does Russia. So does virtually anyone putting an eagle on their flag...

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The Serious GM @seriousgm.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

I found myself nodding along with the article and laughing at the absurdity, but suggest being cautious on taking it as truth in its final instance. It appears that the author has some fairly weird stances on various issues. I suggest scrolling through the profile and looking for yourself.

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

This week on the blog: Against the State! Another military theory primer, this time focused on groups that take on the state itself, both with violent and non-violent means. Given the enormous disparity in force, how can they win? How have they won? acoup.blog/2026/02/13/c...

acoup.blog

Collections: Against the State – A Primer on Terrorism, Insurgency and Protest

This week, continuing in the vein of some of our previous strategy and military theory primers, I wanted to off a basic 101-level survey of the strategic theory behind efforts, in a sense, directed…

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The Serious GM @seriousgm.bsky.social · 01/06/2025

To all #RPG GMs: is necromancy in your games evil by definition or morally neutral? I am of two minds about it.

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The Serious GM @seriousgm.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

Despite being a great fan of the Pathfinder 2 system and setting, I recently feel that the magic in it is probably not really feeling like magic to me. It is...not terrifying enough. I don't mean the eternal "casters are underpowered" discourse. I think that the magic is too tame.

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The Serious GM @seriousgm.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

I think that the genre makes this inevitable, to a degree - and it creates a sort of treadmill. The basic process goes roughly as follows:

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Godspeed You! Woke Moralists @dashwallkick.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

A lot of de-colonializing of fantasy keeps running into this exact issue and it's always really funny. Orcs are your enemy, but also this is all a regretful tragedy we the writer disagree with, but also the story needs to go forward so we will not mention this again.

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The Serious GM @seriousgm.bsky.social · 12/02/2024

I find the notion that Game Masters should follow every single idea of the players a bit strange. There is a difference between following an unconventional approach to a given problem (say, trying to paradrop into the BBEGs tower from the back of an allied dragon) and... 1/

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The Serious GM @seriousgm.bsky.social · 02/01/2024

Just read a RPG horror story where the players casually murdered a NPC joke character. My diagnosis of the underlying issue: players and GM weren't on the same page on tone. The players didn't like having joke NPCs and rebelled against a perceived railroad. The GM now thinks of them as murderhobos.

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The Serious GM @seriousgm.bsky.social · 20/12/2023

One of key questions of today's session will be... will the dwarf fighter('s player) be able to resist the temptation to pick up the grave knight's armor, weapon and shield?

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The Serious GM @seriousgm.bsky.social · 17/12/2023

Players got enough XP to level up (waltzing through level five in two sessions). Withdrew to safe area to level up. Dungeon is now somewhat repopulated with fine and exciting monsters, complications are prepared. It awaits foolish crawlers... Wednesday can't come soon enough. #pf2 #ttrpg #rpg

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The Serious GM @seriousgm.bsky.social · 15/12/2023

When you play a TTRPG, strive for a consistent tone. A joke character can ruin even a light-hearted game, and most definitely will ruin a serious one. Similarly, a completely serious character will clash with an unserious joke game. Talk about the tone you strive for.

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The Serious GM @seriousgm.bsky.social · 10/12/2023

In one of the RPG subreddits, the OP tells that another player declined to use an available option to win against a BBEG. The subreddit gathers against the OP - and I am baffled. Isn't letting the BBEG go for "story reasons" not really bad metagaming? Role-playing should include playing for a goal.

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