Just finished running what was probably my best session of Star Trek Adventures yet. Definitely learning some interesting lessons about the game, its systems, and perhaps more importantly, the challenges of running a game in the Star Trek setting. Short thread.

Tonight's episode revolved around the ship's Klingon doctor & Trill ensign being recruited to fly a cloaked Bird of Prey deep into Cardassian territory to retrieve a defector. There was deception, cultural conflict, and a moral dilemma that saw the doctor go against his beliefs.

I did two things differently in crafting tonight's episode than I've done previously. First, I made it clear to my players that there was an A-plot (the Klingon story) and a B-plot (involving an away team that got left behind on a planet), & that the A-plot would get more scenes.

I also made it clear that I was going to expect the B-plot players drive a lot of the scene creation and setup, and that they should see the goal of those scenes as fleshing out their Focuses, Values, and character histories.

Second, I crafted the plot using something similar to the new edition of Legend of the 5 Rings' brilliant-but-woefully-under-discussed Discord mechanic, where you create complications that put two players' beliefs in conflict with one another.

This reminds me of an old story...

Once upon a time there was a city.

In the middle of the city there was a huge and very popular meeting place where everyone gathered and talked and shared ideas.

The meeting place had only one rule: "No shitting on other people".

1/10

The people agreed that it was a good rule and they met and talked and didn't shit on each other and were happy.

2/10

By and by a politician wanted to take advantage of the meeting place to talk to all of the people at once.

The owner thought it was a good idea and said "everyone is welcome but you must obey our one rule".

The politician agreed.

3/10

Day after day, the politician talked and talked and people listened, but there was a bad smell in the air.

People thought that the politician was not obeying the rule and complained to the owner that they were being shat on.

4/10

The owner assured the people that the politician wouldn't do something like that deliberately but agreed that it was only fair to warn people.

So, whenever the smell was bad the owner made the politician wear a blue badge to advise that there may be shit in the air.

5/10

Ok. Here goes.

I track all my books at https://t.co/WLPKFEPoYK. I am going to go through the list and talk about the books I read in 2020 that struck me. Hopefully this won’t be 55 tweets long.

The first book I read in 2020 was this book about punk rock I think recommended by @dansinker

I love books about music and especially music that I enjoy. I learned a lot reading this book and it introduced me to a number of bands. Was fun.

I will read anything by Ken Liu. This collections is wonderful. The story “The Paper Menagerie” broke my heart. I loved it so so much.

A friend recommended Infinite Detail and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I often think about the techno utopian world that we have build and what will happen in the future. This book details a very bizarre and weird future building on a lot of those ideals.

I loved reading this book. I didn’t really know anything about Jessica Simpson before - but really enjoyed her autobiography. Who knew!

There's more today on the weirdness of a housing boom in the midst of the worst economic crisis in 300 years, helped by temporary tax breaks that will expire - probably before Lockdown3 comes to an end.

It's always puzzling why people aren't more repulsed when lenders report "soaring" house prices; we wouldn't, for example, welcome "soaring" gas or electricity prices - or soaring bread prices. But in any case that's what Halifax says they have been doing:

"Soaring" sounds very different if you're hoping to be a first-time buyer than if you're a potential seller who thinks 'ah - freebie time'. That something for nothing mentality has led politicians for decades to think it's bad politics to have prices fall.

...and to spend taxpayers' money propping them up (from mortgage interest relief in the late 1980s to Help to Buy to the current stamp duty holiday). But the reality is that unless your next move in the housing market is to downsize - rising house prices work against you.

Today the estate agency chain Chestertons highlights a huge imbalance in supply and demand: “There were 4% more homes for sale in 2020 than the previous year compared to a more than 40% rise in buyers." And apparently the outlook for the market is therefore 'positive'.

I turn 44 later this year; God willing of course; earlier today I was thinking about how a lot of this went down; I remember the OJ case, and Rodney King - is right around where things started to go 'backwards' again; Let me explain if you don't mind ...

Look at TV in the 80s

if some of you follow me you 'might' remember me talking about a TV Show, I used to watch as a kid, but must not have watched it too faithfully; I forgot all about it, till I saw a clip on YouTube; and a lot of memories came back; The theme song; dude being clumsy, etc -

still I probably never saw entire seasons; most likely I just caught it when it was on; the show was called #TheGreatestamericanHero :: just 'an example' here :: not even sure what's in this episode... but, I bet it was 'diverse' -- I'll explain

one of these episodes I saw, featured a black man as one of the 'main friends' of one of the characters; another was In charge of an entire army division; Neither, were shuckin or jivin; playing 'lesser than' roles; and again this is the 80's - who watched Magnum P.I. ?

On #MagnumPI our brother, was also an Equal; One of the baddest cats ON the show in fact; Did it all - highly skilled, but at no points, "Lesser than" anybody. 80's tv was actually presenting a 'narrative' of equality in America; or at least,