cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/117605

Got bored and made a custom /etc/issue file for my Void Linux machines. It displays a colour Void Linux logo along with kernel version, tty number and date on login. The file is here just copy it to /etc/issue or you can preview it using agetty. Feel free to change it to suit.

It's an old piece, but still relevant.

Ahoy new mateys!

Just thought I'd repost a couple of little bash scripts I use to download and watch series.

notflix

This one searches for torrents, then live mounts the first result, e.g. :

./notflix.sh nina paley sita

That command should play Sita Sings the Blues, by Nina Paley.

Requirements: vlc or mpv, and either btfs or peerflix.

torrench

This one searches for a torrent, gives you the top few results, and starts torrenting what you select using transmission-cli.

Requirements: transmission-cli

Also, if you're on Debian et al. you'll have to change where the script says systemctl start transmission to systemctl start transmission-daemon.

This looks like rather good advice, and I like the comparison to brutalist architecture. It feels like it fits, because so many seem to think brutalist architecture is ugly.

Personally, I like how functional it is; and similarly, functional (if plain) adventures make for good sessions.

It's been some months, and kdenlive is still listed as orphaned. Anyone know how packages become un-orphaned?

Also, if anyone else is having the same problems, this fork worked for me (the missing dependency is glaxnimate.

https://github.com/classabbyamp/void-packages.git new/glaxnimate

Story Points

Story Points let a PC start without any backstory - instead you get 5 Story Points, and spend them to:

• know an obscure fact
• know a language/ culture
• introduce an ally to help with the current mission
• et c.

By the time players spend them all, they should have a chonky backstory which was always relevant to the current mission, so no info-dumping required.

• If all your points were spent introducing cousins and siblings, we have established the character has a big family.
• If all your points were spent knowing languages, and knowing highly obscure knowledge, we have established the character as a very clever, and well-travelled person.

Good features

• Speeds up game (no lore dump!).
• Players are less pissed about their characters dying early on session 2 they haven't invested the work of writing an essay on their origin story.
• It's probably the most popular part of the game whenever I receive feedback from someone reading (not playing) the game.

Bad features

Nobody spends Story Points

It doesn't replenish, so players hoard the points, refusing to spend them.

So far, I've tried:

• granting 1 new Story Point over a long Downtime period.
• granting XP in return for spending Story Points
• adding a one-page rules summary to the table, including notes on what you can spend Story Points on.
• demanding all new characters come from the pool of allies created through Story Points, meaning that:
  • it's better to have more allies, so new people have a wider pool of characters to select from, and
  • new PCs are never entirely new - they're known to the party.

...nothing works. Everyone likes it in theory, nobody uses it in practice.

The only idea so far is massively raising XP rewards for spending Story Points.

Is there another rule, or a better way to present this system, which would encourage actual use?

Well, it's not new - I've just ported it from Gemini, so it's new to the web.

Hugo compiles the website from Markdown documents. It runs on a raspberry pi, which spends most of its day telling robots that admin.php is not available.

Download the spreadsheet, type in your name, and you'll find a randomly generated spreadsheet.

• Your name becomes a seed for a hash.
• The hash creates a random numbers through modulos.
• The modulos become D6 rolls.

It's taken a few days to make, and the results are interesting - having to put every rule in the game gives a new perspective on the rules.

I'm not a big fan of spreadsheets - TTRPGs feel like a little haven away from the screen. But sometimes in-person play isn't on the cards.

I think a heavily-automated spreadsheet makes a good introduction to a game's rules. You just click on all the yellow-coloured squares, and fill in what you can until you don't have any XP left.

Looks snazzy AF, but no Linux version yet.

I'm not a big fan off some of the Void Distro-reviews which just show the installer, so I've made a review of how it looks after a few years of daily use.

I've missed out a load of nice features, because it's already a fairly waffly review.

Given the price of art, I've been playing a whole heck of a lot with Machine Learning (ML) images (along with ever other indie RPG designer out there), and the results are bad. This one is Midjourney, which seems to be one of the better generators.

If the problem is just my lack of skill, that still sounds like a problem. If I have to hire a professional, I'd rather just hire an artist.

I'm writing a campaign about Vampires in Belgrade (Hungary) in the year 1230.

Starting with something without too many parts, a young Tzimisce vampire in the story (well, he was embraced young), has a ghouled raven he speaks with.

dark ages boy speaks to raven in the moonlit rain

Oh dear... it doesn't know that human boys are bigger than ravens. So it's beatuful, and enchanting, but doesn't convey information, and the kid looks like 'the little prince', not like a sinister flesh-crafting vampire.

Making some variations, I finally got here:

It's better, but the raven also looks like a humming-bird, and the moon looks like someone spilled it. It really conveys nothing more than 'boy and raven', so it's not about to enhance the passages - and RPGs really do need good images, because every one conveys a boat-load of strange ideas.

Next up, what about a that scene where a vampire-hunter finally tracks down the coterie's lair? He finds them by sunset and has to flee before they wake up, but he'll be back tomorrow to kill the lot. He rides a horse, and has an ovcharka (bear-hunting Russian dog) by his side. The coterie will find signs of his passing, such as footprints.

After some bad images, I finally left the dog out - most of them blended the dog and horse into a single image, if the dog appeared as anything more than a shadow.

Slavic, of-the-night, noble hunter reading tracks, horse, footprints, village, 1300s

So we have a ruddy-great horse dwarfing the world in one, and lots of horse-butts which look out of place.

Time to make lots of variations again.

Slavic, of-the-night, noble hunter reading tracks, horse, footprints, village, 1300s

... so now we have more of a centaur-creature as the horse blends with the man.

Overall

RPG images should explain things, and the explanations should involve the interactions of multiple elements, such as one person shooting an arrow at another, or threats, or setting a building on fire. AI seems to mix styles well - want a vampire drawn by Picasso? I'm sure the results would be stunning. But if interactions are missing, I don't see how anyone can use these results.

Machine Learning In General

I suspect machine learning will simply not work in our lifetimes. Consider the story of machine learning when translating:

1. You make a basic dictionary, so you can type 'cat', and it gives you 'le chat'.
2. You give it rules about nouns and adjectives - now you type 'the black cat', and it returns 'le chat noire'.

It gets 5% of language, then 10%, then 20%, and it's tempting to imagine that 99%-accurate translations are coming soon, but they're not, because if we go to translate 'James is right, Alice is left', the machine will return 'James is correct', because translating this statement does not rely on rules, but on understanding intention and meaning. Those hold-out sentences may require that we start by programming real AI, with real consciousness, and only then teaching it multiple languages.