u/theSweetestYeetus

Heyyyoo to all my autos! Happy Pride Month!

Firstly, I just wanted to remind everyone here that we are just as valid and just as allowed to be outwardly proud of who we are and who we love as any other identity. Just as any other person can and should be allowed to talk about their partners and to discuss the ways their sexuality and attraction has manifested, we are also valid in expressing our self-love outwardly and in the open.

Representation Questions & Discussion-
I'm planning to be way more visibly involved in Pride events this year (because crying at all the events last year from feeling alone was so lame), and I would love some input from other autosexual people, as I'm very likely to get asked questions with some of the plans I have, and then actively plan to speak about us during others.

I'm very comfortable speaking openly about my own experience, but I don't want to accidentally present my experience as thee autosexual experience. Because I know that the loudest people are the ones who end up stereotyping a community, I'd really like to hear from a wider range of voices before I start representing all of us in public spaces this year. It's important to me to hear perspectives that differ from my own as I take some leads on pushing our community further into the open. Some questions to spark discussion:

1. What parts of your autosexuality do you wish people understood better?
2. What are the biggest misconceptions or stereotypes you've encountered? [We all know about the narcissist accusation lol -can you add depth to this, or are there any others to mention?]
3. If someone asked, "What does being autosexual mean?" what would you want them to hear?
4. Do you see autosexuality as a part of your sexual orientation, simply just your relationship style, maybe your entire self-concept, or something else to some degree?
5. What questions do you get tired of answering?
6. What kinds of representation make you feel seen, versus what representation makes you feel misunderstood?
7. What would good autosexual representation at Pride look like to you?

Feel free to share as much or as little as you'd like, and don't feel pressure to answer each one, they are numbered for convenience. I will share my own answers in the comments, just remember that we can have different experiences; there is nothing wrong- only other.

Thanks!!!

P.S. consider Autosexuality as interchangeable with Autoromance as far as the questions go if you want to speak on one or the other

As the title implies, I'm curious what yall do when writing XP systems for your games? I don't know of any great systems/rules out there for handling experience/advancement in tabletop games. Of course, video games handle all that fine for the most part, cause it's a lot easier for a computer to make complex calculations at any point and keep track of the totals and such, but when gaming, in my experience, anything like these systems are usually ignored.

As a gamer, I think every campaign I've played in, we've always leveled up based on "vibes" and as a GM in my recent years, I do the same thing lol. We just level everyone up when the next level feels right. This usually means 1-3 sessions sit between each level, and it seems to work a lot better than tracking XP. It also means always saving level-ups for the end or on your own time, which tends to work a lot better than pausing a session to shift gears and level up, picking back where we left off after.

So as a designer... Do I invest time and thought into an XP system like this that I think everyone's gonna ignore? Is this just a "me and my people"-thing where everyone else does track these things? If you were to implement something like a "based on vibes" level-up in a reader/player-friendly mechanics kind of way, how would you go about that? What would you track, and how would you make a system like this feel one-size-fits-all? I feel like you can't just tell people to make their own choice; you're supposed to provide at least some default or baseline. Since you can't really dictate how long different people are gonna play, or what all goes down in game relative to real time, anything related to time-passing/played feels like it would be inadequate. I think the only way to approach this is by counting events, like some number of combat encounters, but even then... anyways, I'm kind of just spewing thoughts now, but I think yall get it. What's out there for XP systems, and how do you approach these concerns, or are there others you have and try to mitigate? How so?

For context, my history is with pathfinder/savage worlds/D&D/"d20s-move on a map-take your turn" dungeon-simulationist style ttrpgs. I love people who can immerse themselves within roleplay, but I'm a narrator, not an actor. When I play these games, I prefer to steer clear of PbtA and narrative-heavy storytelling. I would still be curious how these games manage these concepts, so this isn't to say keep that stuff out of the discussion, honestly it's prolly more like def share those ideas because I am unfamiliar with them, and maybe there are ideas in those realms I can adapt for myself/my goals.