Today S, T and I Planned to play the new overwatch drives. We got hard shit on every single game. We changed roles. We changed heroes everything. We ended up like two wins eight losses. S finally called it and got off to go to bed, and then T and I went on an eight game win streak. S wasn’t doing bad at all, it is honestly pure luck and we kept playing with the same people and we had really good synergy, but it’s so fucking funny to me.

An American Conference Game.

My Friday's game of choice finds the (3-4) Tulane Green Wave football team traveling to the University of North Carolina at Charlotte to play the (1-6) Charlotte 49ers in an American Conference game scheduled to start at 6:00 PM CT. I should be able to listen to at least the first half, and maybe the whole game before sleep takes me away.

And the adventure continues.

Meer en meer zijn het Graaiend in afvalbakken Ieder blikje telt.

i didnt write yesterday because i have a big surprise to tell you, well, if im being honest. ive always come up with random surprises that shock us both. but this one is rather unexpected. i’ve fixed my sleep schedule. yes. you read that correctly. my sleep schedule. fixed. im just as surprised as you are, believe me. its quite amusing when i think about it. a few days ago, i was here complaining about insomnia, then sleeping at nine in the morning and waking up somewhere around seven in the evening, generally behaving like a creature that has no business being awake during daylight. id spend the night staring at the ceiling, then spend the day sleeping through whatever unfortunate responsibilities i had. a rather impressive arrangement, really. one id been committed to for quite some time. but now? gone. fixed. usually, fixing my sleep schedule requires more effort than im willing to put into most things. but, miracles do happen. actually, now that ive written it down, im less excited about it. thats disappointing. i had this lovely little surprise sitting in my head, and now that ive spilled it all over this page, it feels rather ordinary. maybe i should have kept my mouth.. well, in that case. my hands shut. a rare much rare opportunity wasted on an audience that doesnt even pay admission. anyway, i guess thats enough writing for today. i have nothing left to report.

Sincerely, Who might ruin his sleep after this.

For as long as automation has had a sales pitch, the pitch has been the same. The machines will take the drudgery. They will fill in the forms, file the reports, chase the invoices and reconcile the spreadsheets, and in doing so they will hand back to human beings the parts of work that are interesting, creative and their own. Strategy, design, ideas. The good stuff.

A paper presented at the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, held in Barcelona from 13 to 17 April, suggests that the pitch may have the order of events backwards. Its title asks the question bluntly: “Are We Automating the Joy Out of Work? Designing AI to Augment Work, Not Meaning”. Its authors are Jaspreet Ranjit and Swabha Swayamdipta of the University of Southern California, Ke Zhou of Nokia Bell Labs and the University of Nottingham, and Daniele Quercia of Nokia Bell Labs and the Politecnico di Torino. Their central finding, in the words of the abstract, is this: “Worryingly, we find that tasks that workers associate with a sense of agency or happiness may be disproportionately exposed to AI.”

Not the tedious tasks. The ones people like.

The authors go further. A central risk of AI, they argue, is not mass unemployment but what they call mass demoralisation: “a loss of meaning and ownership in day-to-day work”. As models generate more of the early-stage output, they write, the visible creative steps can start to feel machine-made, while the human contribution becomes rushed, under-resourced and difficult to see.

That is a different kind of warning from the one that has dominated the debate about AI and jobs. It is not about whether people will have work. It is about what work will be like for the people who keep it. And it raises two questions that most organisations deploying AI have not yet seriously asked. What happens to a person's relationship with their craft when the parts of the job they found most fulfilling are the first to be handed to a machine, and what is left is the emotional and relational upkeep? And if the danger is demoralisation rather than displacement, who should decide which parts of a job get automated?

How the researchers mapped meaning onto ten thousand tasks

The study starts with the US Department of Labor's Occupational Information Network, known as O*NET, which breaks every American occupation into short task statements. The researchers narrowed this universe to tasks performed mainly on a computer, carried out daily or weekly, and ones that workers on the research platform Prolific were highly familiar with. That produced a representative sample of 171 tasks across 22 occupations.

They then surveyed two groups. The first was 202 workers who actually performed those tasks. Each rated their tasks against dimensions drawn from a scoping review of research on meaningful work: whether a task felt pointless or valuable, whether it called for novel ideas, gave them freedom or made them happy, and whether it built relationships or required emotional awareness or in-person contact. The second group was 197 developers who build AI systems, who were asked what traits they would design into an AI tool for each task.

To scale the analysis beyond 171 tasks, the team prompted language models to simulate the ratings, checked how closely the simulated ratings matched the human ones, and, finding reasonable agreement, generated annotations for 10,131 tasks across 512 occupations and 19 sectors. They report that only 0.87 per cent of tasks showed a large gap, of two points or more on a five-point scale, between model and human ratings, and that their main patterns held when they reran the analysis using only the human ratings.

To decide which tasks counted as “exposed” to AI, the researchers used a patent-based measure developed by Ali Akbar Septiandri, Marios Constantinides and Quercia, published in PNAS Nexus in 2024, which matched descriptions of tens of thousands of AI patents filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office against O*NET task statements. Tasks above a threshold on that measure were classed as likely to be exposed. Restricting the analysis to computer-based work left 3,179 tasks in the likely-to-be-exposed group and 2,349 in the comparison group.

The parts of the job that machines reach first

The comparison between those two groups is where the paper becomes uncomfortable. Tasks likely to be exposed to AI were more strongly associated by workers with novelty and creativity, with positive feelings and with autonomy. The researchers say directly that this “challenges the usual narrative that automation mainly targets routine tasks”. Tasks less likely to be exposed were associated with emotional awareness, in-person interaction, relationship building and social connection.

The sector picture sharpens the point. The heaviest exposure of creative, high-agency work fell in Arts, Architecture and Engineering, Computer and Mathematics, and the Life, Physical and Social Sciences. The examples the paper draws from O*NET are telling: an art director “formulating basic layout design”; an actuary “constructing probability tables for natural disasters”. These are first passes, the authors note, of the kind that models can now credibly generate, with humans refining the output afterwards. Meanwhile, in Education, Sales, Community and Social Services and Healthcare, the work that remained less exposed involved activities such as guiding students through tangled academic and personal problems, or “presenting offers while preserving relationships”.

The authors read this as a reversal of the expected trajectory. Generative systems, they observe, already draft text, suggest layouts, start campaigns, run simulations and infer likely emotional responses. In their data, these uses line up with tasks that workers describe as meaningful precisely because they reflect taste and authorship. AI is not confined to chores. It is becoming entangled with the moments where people feel they add something of themselves.

There is a second finding that matters for anyone building the tools. Workers and developers disagreed about what an AI system should be like. Workers wanted systems that were straightforward, tolerant and practical. Developers said they would design systems that were polite, strict and imaginative. The single biggest gap was between straightforwardness and politeness, and it was widest in Production, Architecture and Engineering, and the sciences, where vagueness can mean wasted materials or flawed data. “In high-risk contexts,” the authors write, “the ethical choice may well be the blunt one, and the useful thing to say may be short.” Developers, they suggest, tend to romanticise creativity as a frontier capability, while many workers in structured, routine jobs simply want a tool that spots anomalies and sticks to the rules.

Put the two findings together and the problem comes into focus. The AI that is arriving is being built to be imaginative, and it is landing on the imaginative parts of the job.

Why exposure is not the same as replacement

It is worth being precise about what the study measures. “Exposure” does not mean a task has been automated, or even that it will be. The authors define it as tasks that current or near-term AI could plausibly perform or substantially speed up. It is a statement about technological reach, not about deployment decisions inside any particular firm, and the paper separates automation, where AI performs a task end to end, from augmentation, where humans keep primary responsibility.

The researchers are also candid about their limitations. The study covers only US occupational tasks. Prolific participants tend to be more technologically literate than average, so low-wage and non-digital work may be underrepresented. O*NET task statements are short summaries that different workers may picture differently. The scaling to 10,131 tasks relies on language-model ratings, which the authors treat as an approximation of human responses rather than as ground truth, and which they found to be more uniform and optimistic in some sectors. Even the creativity finding has a wrinkle. When the analysis was rerun on human ratings of the original 171 tasks alone, humans and models agreed on six of the seven significant dimensions; the exception was “requires novel ideas or creativity”, where the authors suggest human annotators tended to underestimate the novelty of tasks.

None of this undoes the core pattern. But the study is best read as a map of where pressure is likely to fall, not a ledger of what has already been lost. What actually happens to people's work is decided later, by managers, vendors and product teams.

From mass unemployment to mass demoralisation

Why should the location of the pressure matter so much? Because meaning in work is not spread evenly across a job. It clusters.

The sociologist Richard Sennett, in his 2008 book The Craftsman, described craftsmanship as the basic human impulse to do a job well for its own sake, and argued that this impulse extends far beyond the workshop, to programmers, doctors and artists. Craft, in that sense, lives in the moments of making: the first sketch, the opening paragraph, the elegant solution to a modelling problem.

If those moments are exactly where AI exposure is concentrated, then a job can be automated in a peculiar way. The worker keeps the job title, the salary and most of the hours. What disappears is the part that made them want the job in the first place. In the paper's own examples, the basic layout and the first probability table are precisely the drafts a model can now produce; what is left to the human is refinement. This is the scenario Ranjit and her colleagues have in mind when they describe a loss of ownership. The creative steps that others can see now appear to come from the machine, while the human's contribution moves into the background, squeezed for time and harder for anyone to credit.

There is already experimental evidence that this dynamic has psychological costs. In a 2025 paper in Scientific Reports, Suqing Wu, Yukun Liu, Mengqi Ruan, Siyu Chen and Xiao-Yun Xie of the School of Management at Zhejiang University reported four online experiments with a total of 3,562 participants. Working with generative AI improved immediate performance on professional tasks. But that performance boost did not carry over when people subsequently worked alone, and the switch from AI collaboration to solo work was accompanied by significant decreases in intrinsic motivation and increases in boredom, even as participants' sense of control rose. The authors' summary is succinct: collaboration with generative AI “enhances immediate task performance but can undermine long-term psychological experiences of human workers.”

Creative workers are already reporting effects outside the laboratory. A survey by the Society of Authors, the UK trade union for writers, illustrators and translators, received 787 responses in early 2024. A quarter of illustrators, 26 per cent, and more than a third of translators, 36 per cent, said they had already lost work to generative AI. The survey was self-reported and drawn from a membership sample, so it cannot measure the market as a whole. But it captures the sense, among people whose identities are bound up with a craft, that the craft itself is being lifted out of their hands.

What the remaining work asks of people

If the creative core of a job is thinned out, what is left? According to the CHI study, the tasks least exposed to AI are those built on emotional awareness, in-person presence and relationship building. That might sound like a reassuring residue. Machines draft, humans connect. But it is worth looking at what those remaining tasks involve.

In 1983, the sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild of the University of California, Berkeley, published The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, which introduced the idea of emotional labour. Studying flight attendants and bill collectors, she described public-facing jobs in which managing feelings was part of what the employer was paying for. Flight attendants had to be, in the phrase used by her publisher, “nicer than natural”; bill collectors had to be “nastier than natural”. Hochschild's concern was that this kind of work, done for commercial purposes, could estrange people from their own feelings.

Relational work is not inherently draining. For many teachers, nurses, social workers and salespeople, the relationships are the point of the job, and the CHI data suggest that workers do regard these tasks as meaningful. The danger lies in the mix. A job that once combined making things with tending to people can become one that is mostly tending to people, with the making delegated. The remaining human work then has a distinctive profile: smoothing over the AI's output with clients, absorbing complaints, reassuring colleagues, maintaining relationships that the automated parts of the workflow no longer support. That is emotional labour, and much of it is invisible in the way that a finished design or a well-built model is not.

The Stanford University researchers behind the WORKBank database, Yijia Shao, Humishka Zope, Yucheng Jiang, Jiaxin Pei, David Nguyen, Erik Brynjolfsson and Diyi Yang, found a related signal in a 2025 study of 1,500 workers across 844 tasks in 104 occupations. Their results, they wrote, offer early signals that AI agents may reshape core human competencies, “shifting from information-focused skills to interpersonal ones.” The CHI paper adds a warning that this shift may not be benign. Among its design examples is the risk that teachers, managers and clinicians who use AI for canned replies and templated feedback end up making their communication with students, staff or patients feel more generic. If AI pushes people towards relational work while also hollowing out that relational work with templates, the worker is squeezed from both sides.

When the most fulfilling parts of a job are automated first, then, a person's relationship with their craft is put at risk in two ways. They lose authorship of the work that once expressed their skill and taste. And they are left with a larger share of work whose value is real but less visible and more emotionally costly. Whether that produces demoralisation depends on what else changes, and here a very different body of evidence becomes useful.

Lessons from people who stopped working

In September 2026, four researchers at Google DeepMind, Stephanie C.Y. Chan, Adam Bales, Katherine L. Hermann and Iason Gabriel, posted a review titled “Work, Wellbeing, and Choice: Empirical Lessons for AI Futures”. Their question was not what AI does to work, but what decades of research reveal about people who live without it. They drew on psychological, sociological and economic studies of the unemployed, retirees, lottery winners, financially dependent spouses and citizens of Gulf states with guaranteed public-sector employment, covering OECD countries, China, India and the Gulf.

Their findings are stark in places. Involuntary job loss harms life satisfaction, mental health, physical health and even mortality, and the damage can last: some studies find psychological “scarring” that persists for years after people find work again. Yet the vast majority of lottery winners, between 85 and 89 per cent across studies of American and Swedish winners, keep working, typically using their windfall to buy flexibility rather than to quit. And retirees, who are also not working, often report high and sustained wellbeing.

The authors draw on the work of the social psychologist Marie Jahoda, whose 1982 book Employment and Unemployment, published by Cambridge University Press, argued that a job provides “latent” benefits alongside its “manifest” purpose of earning a living. Jahoda identified time structure, social contact, status and identity, regular activity and collective purpose. The DeepMind review finds that both income and some of these latent benefits matter, and adds cognitive health: retirement has been causally linked to declines in cognitive ability.

To explain why the unemployed and the retired fare so differently, the review identifies three factors that mediate the relationship between work status and wellbeing. The first is agency and choice: whether the exit from work was voluntary, and whether people retain agency over the long term. The second is the availability of alternative sources of work's latent benefits, such as volunteering, hobbies or state-provided employment. The third is social and systemic context, including cultural norms around work and the strength of safety nets.

The evidence on each is striking. Between 20 and 30 per cent of retirees perceive their retirement as forced, and across countries those who retired voluntarily report significantly better physical and mental wellbeing than those who did not, even after controlling for health, income and other factors. Volunteering confers benefits at remarkably low doses, with gains for older adults observable from about one hour a week. One study cited in the review found that plant closures produced an almost four-fold greater increase in depression among American workers than among European workers, who have stronger safety nets. And the psychological cost of losing work tends to fall harder on men, which the authors attribute to stronger social pressure to conform to norms about working.

“Many policy discussions about AI futures focus on the availability of work or the availability of resources,” the authors write. “However, these discussions overlook the fact that it matters deeply whether people get to choose their path.” Their summary of the policy lesson is equally direct: purely material interventions such as universal basic income “are valuable but highly insufficient”.

Applying the exit evidence inside the job

The DeepMind review is about people who leave work altogether. But its three factors translate remarkably well to what happens when people stay in work and lose part of it. Demoralisation, in the CHI paper's sense, is a kind of partial exit: a withdrawal not from employment but from the meaningful core of a role. Read that way, the review's factors become a diagnostic for when task automation is likely to hurt.

Start with agency. A critical determinant of wellbeing in the review is not whether people work, but whether they chose their situation. Inside a job, the equivalent question is whether workers chose which of their tasks were handed to AI. The Society of Authors survey hints at the distinction: alongside those who chose to use generative AI, 5 per cent of illustrators and 8 per cent of translators said they had used it because their publisher or commissioning organisation asked them to. The CHI paper notes that, in practice, managers, vendors and technical teams, not workers, usually decide which tasks are exposed to AI and how far automation goes. “Managers, vendors, and technical teams make these decisions before workers can consent or take part, especially in roles with low bargaining power,” the authors write. That is the workplace version of involuntary exit.

Next, alternatives. Retirees do well when they find other sources of structure, status and purpose. Workers who lose the creative core of their job need somewhere else for those things to come from: new responsibilities with real authorship, protected time for the work they value, recognition for the judgement involved in steering and correcting AI output. If the time freed by automation is simply filled with more volume, the latent benefits drain away without replacement.

Finally, context and safety nets. The review shows that the same loss lands very differently depending on norms and institutional support. Inside an organisation, the analogue is culture and protection: whether people who push back on a deployment are heard or penalised, whether those whose roles shrink are offered retraining or redeployment, and whether the organisation measures anything other than throughput.

This is an analogy, not a finding. Neither paper tested it, and evidence about the unemployed cannot be transplanted wholesale onto people still in work. But the convergence is hard to ignore. Working from inside jobs, one paper finds that agency, ownership and meaning matter; working from outside, the other finds that choice, alternatives and context matter. Both suggest the damage depends less on what is taken away than on how.

Workers already say what they want automated

The good news is that workers are not, in general, opposed to automation. They are opposed to the wrong automation.

The WORKBank study asked its 1,500 workers which of their tasks they would like AI agents to take on. For 46.1 per cent of tasks, workers expressed positive attitudes towards automation, even after being prompted to reflect on job loss and on how much they enjoyed the work. Their main motivation was to free up time for higher-value work. The researchers then compared those desires with experts' assessments of what AI could currently do, sorting tasks into four zones: a “Green Light” zone where workers wanted automation and the technology could deliver it; a “Red Light” zone where the technology was capable but workers did not want it; an R&D opportunity zone where workers wanted help that the technology could not yet provide; and a low-priority zone.

Their most pointed finding concerned where the money was going. Mapping the tasks targeted by Y Combinator start-ups, they found that 41.0 per cent of company-task mappings were concentrated in the Low Priority and “Red Light” zones. A large share of the industry's effort, in other words, was aimed at tasks workers either did not care about or actively wanted to keep.

Combined with the CHI paper's developer-worker mismatch, the pattern is clear. Workers do not resist AI. Their preferences are simply rarely the input that shapes what gets built.

A test for choosing which task clusters to automate

If the risk is demoralisation, then the usual test for automation, which asks whether a task can be done faster or cheaper by a machine, is incomplete. It needs a second question: what does this task mean to the people who do it? Drawing on the two papers and the evidence around them, an organisation could reasonably weigh at least four considerations before automating a cluster of tasks.

The first is meaning. Ask the people who do the work which tasks they find meaningful, enjoyable or expressive of their skill, and which they find pointless. The CHI study shows that this can be measured at scale with straightforward survey instruments. WORKBank shows that workers can distinguish clearly between tasks they want help with and tasks they want to keep. Tasks that workers rate low on meaning and high on tedium are the obvious first candidates. Tasks rated high on creativity, autonomy and happiness deserve a heavier burden of justification.

The second is order. The CHI authors propose that, for creative work, the sequence matters as much as the division of labour. Their design heuristics include starting creative fields empty, so that a human sketch, prompt or outline exists before AI suggestions appear; offering several alternatives rather than a single finished replacement; letting workers accept or reject AI content sentence by sentence rather than through a single “replace all”; and allowing a worker to tick a box marked “I want to do this part myself”. The question for an organisation is not simply whether AI touches a creative task, but whether the human still makes the first move.

The third is what replaces the time saved. The DeepMind review's evidence on alternative sources of meaning suggests that automation which frees time is only beneficial if that time goes somewhere that sustains structure, status and purpose. For relational work, the CHI paper suggests using AI to prepare briefs and summaries so the human arrives better informed, assigning it to silent roles such as note-taking during live interactions, and reserving protected time for direct human engagement. Its proposed measures of success are telling: workers reporting that AI helps them “show up prepared” rather than “speak for me”, and that it does not “take away the good parts” of the job.

The fourth is measurement. The CHI authors recommend tracking, during deployment, whether workers still feel in control and whether the output “still feels like my work”, alongside conventional measures of speed and quality. They also suggest logging the level of assistance AI provides, from suggestion to draft to execution, and recording who made the final decision. Over time, they argue, workers' self-reported skills and confidence in their core craft should remain stable or improve. If those indicators fall while productivity rises, the organisation has learned something its dashboards would otherwise hide.

None of this means creative tasks should never be automated. Some workers will welcome help with the very tasks others prize, and the CHI data show wide variation between sectors. The point is that meaning should be treated as a real cost in the decision, not as a sentimental afterthought.

Giving workers a binding say

That leaves the second half of the question: what voice should workers have? The CHI paper's answer is explicit. Beyond designing interfaces that let individuals retain control within a task, the authors argue that organisations should give workers some say over which task clusters are candidates for automation. Without such mechanisms, they warn, “AI exposure risks deepening existing power imbalances.” They point to remedies from research on algorithmic management: direct involvement of workers and their representatives through formal consultation and collective bargaining over AI deployments, worker or union technology representatives with access to information about how systems allocate and evaluate work, and transparency tools that help workers understand and contest automated decisions.

There are working precedents. The most prominent came from Hollywood. The 2023 Minimum Basic Agreement between the Writers Guild of America and the major studios established that AI cannot be considered a writer and that material it produces cannot be treated as literary material. Under its terms, a writer may choose to use AI with the company's consent, but the guild's own summary states plainly that “the company can't require the writer to use AI software (e.g., ChatGPT) when performing writing services.” Companies must disclose when material given to a writer was generated by AI. In effect, the writers bargained over which parts of their craft would remain theirs. That agreement has since been succeeded by the 2026 contract, ratified on 24 April 2026 with 90.38% of votes in favour and running to 1 May 2030, which “preserves all of the protections negotiated in 2023”. It adds one more: companies must give the guild written notice when they license writers' work to train a commercial generative AI system, after which the guild can request a discussion about the licence, including any payment to writers. It does not establish payment for training.

European law offers a thinner but broader floor. Article 26(7) of the EU Artificial Intelligence Act, adopted in 2024, requires that, before a high-risk AI system is put into service or used at the workplace, “deployers who are employers shall inform workers' representatives and the affected workers” that they will be subject to it. That is a duty to inform, not to consult or obtain consent, and it applies only to systems classed as high-risk. It is also not yet in force for most workplace tools: the Digital Omnibus on AI, Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, which took effect on 27 July 2026, deferred the high-risk obligations for Annex III systems, a category that includes employment and worker management, from 2 August 2026 to 2 December 2027. In Germany, works councils have long held co-determination rights over the introduction of technical systems capable of monitoring employees' behaviour or performance, a provision that lawyers widely expect to cover many AI tools. The limits are visible too: in January 2024, the Hamburg Labour Court rejected a works council's application concerning employees' use of ChatGPT, partly because staff used it voluntarily through private accounts in a web browser rather than as an employer-installed system.

These mechanisms share a weakness when it comes to demoralisation. Most were designed to address surveillance, pay or credit, not meaning. The EU provision is triggered by risk classification, not by what a task means to the person who does it. The German right is anchored in monitoring. Even the WGA's protections, including the 2026 notice requirement on training licences, focus on credit and compensation, although by keeping AI out of the definition of a writer, they also protect authorship. A workplace that took the CHI findings seriously would go further: it would give workers a formal role in deciding which task clusters are automated, informed by evidence about which tasks they find meaningful, with a right to revisit the decision once the effects are known.

That voice matters most precisely where it is weakest. The CHI authors note that the decisions about exposure are made before workers can consent, especially in roles with little bargaining power. The DeepMind review cites evidence that, where safety nets are weak, pre-existing wealth becomes a key buffer against the shock of job loss. A model of AI deployment that consults only those with strong unions would protect screenwriters and leave behind most of the people whose tasks appear in the CHI data.

What a craft needs to survive

It is tempting to treat all of this as a soft concern, a matter of morale to be fixed with a workshop. The evidence suggests otherwise. Meaning is not a perk attached to work; it is part of what makes people willing to invest skill and care, and part of what keeps them well. The DeepMind review shows how much is at stake when people lose work altogether. The CHI paper suggests a quieter version of that loss may already be underway inside jobs that look perfectly secure.

The two papers point to the same remedy from opposite directions. What protects people is not the absence of change but the ability to shape it: to choose, to find meaning somewhere else when the old sources move, and to be supported while they do. For organisations, that means treating which tasks to automate as a decision with human costs, made with the people who bear them, rather than a technical question settled by whatever a vendor's model can do.

Ranjit and her co-authors end on a note of possibility. The outcome they describe, they stress, is shaped by design choices, which can in principle be revised: systems could speed up exploration and drafting while people keep authorship, make the final judgements and sustain the relationships that make work meaningful. That is a more humane division of labour than the current pitch implies. But it will not arrive by default. Left to the logic of capability alone, AI will keep flowing towards the tasks it can reach, and those turn out to be the ones people love. Keeping the spark in work will take a deliberate decision about who gets to say which parts of a craft stay human.

References and Sources

1. Ranjit, Jaspreet; Zhou, Ke; Swayamdipta, Swabha; Quercia, Daniele. “Are We Automating the Joy Out of Work? Designing AI to Augment Work, Not Meaning.” Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26), Barcelona, Spain, 13-17 April 2026. DOI: 10.1145/3772318.3791845. Preprint arXiv:2603.14963, 16 March 2026. https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.14963 (full text: https://arxiv.org/html/2603.14963)
2. Chan, Stephanie C.Y.; Bales, Adam; Hermann, Katherine L.; Gabriel, Iason. “Work, Wellbeing, and Choice: Empirical Lessons for AI Futures.” Google DeepMind. arXiv:2609.11019, 10 September 2026. https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.11019 (full text: https://arxiv.org/html/2609.11019)
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15. Littler Mendelson. “Germany: Does the Works Council Have a Say When Employees Use ChatGPT? No, According to the Labor Court Hamburg.” 2024. https://www.littler.com/publication-press/publication/germany-does-works-council-have-say-when-employees-use-chatgpt-no
16. Bird & Bird. “First Judgement on the Rights of Works Councils when Employees use AI Systems.” 2024. https://cm.twobirds.com/en/insights/2024/germany/erstes-urteil-zu-rechten-des-betriebsrats-bei-einsatz-von-kuenstlicher-intelligenz
17. Writers Guild of America. “WGA Ratifies 2026 Minimum Basic Agreement With AMPTP.” 24 April 2026. https://www.wga.org/news-events/news/press/wga-ratifies-2026-minimum-basic-agreement-with-amptp
18. Writers Guild of America. “Summary of the 2026 WGA MBA.” https://www.wga.org/contracts/contracts/mba/summary-of-the-2026-wga-mba
19. Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 amending Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 (Digital Omnibus on AI), in force 27 July 2026. https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/ai-act-explorer/digital-omnibus/

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Tim Green UK-based Systems Theorist & Independent Technology Writer

Tim explores the intersections of artificial intelligence, decentralised cognition, and posthuman ethics. His work, published at smarterarticles.co.uk, challenges dominant narratives of technological progress while proposing interdisciplinary frameworks for collective intelligence and digital stewardship.

His writing has been featured on Ground News and shared by independent researchers across both academic and technological communities.

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Normalize unscented laundry detergent and unscented cleaning products. Smell is subjective. I don’t understand why some hotels and Airbnbs wash their linens with artificially scented detergent when they are catering to a wide range of people. Many are nose-blind, but many of us are also sensitive to smells. We can’t escape smell. It’s always there. I’ve stayed at aesthetically beautiful places with linens that smelled like cheap laundromat detergent. It is inconsiderate, offensive, and untasteful. Once my body experiences that obnoxious smell, I will never return. It’s no longer a safe place for me. 

In Summary: * Moving patiently into the night meds and night prayers part of my evening while waiting for the pregame programming of tonight's college football game to fire up.

Prayers, etc.: * I have a daily prayer regimen I try to follow throughout the day from early morning, as soon as I roll out of bed, until head hits pillow at night.

Health Metrics: * bw= 214.4 lbs. * bp= 136/66 (67)

Exercise: * morning stretches, balance exercises, kegel pelvic floor exercises, half squats, calf raises, toe raises, wall push-ups, BP breathing exercises, pilates

Diet: * 03:45 – 1 banana * 07:15 – 1 roast beef sandwich * 08:45 – garden salad * 12:50 – piece of cheesecake, 1 peanut butter sandwich * 13:30 – pizza

Activities, Chores, etc.: * 03:00 – listen to local news talk radio * 04:30 – bank accounts activity monitored * 05:10 – read, write, pray, follow news reports from various sources, surf the socials, take daily meds, unpack, organize, and nap * 12:30 – load weekly pill boxes * 16:00 – watching old episodes of Classic Doctor Who

Chess: * 09:05 – moved in all pending CC games, losing 2 and winning 1, and joined another CC tourney with new games starting 15 Nov.

Caw. Caw. Send the caw. My singing friends who fly with law.

Their treasures twinkle. I smile with glee. The blackened wings spark wild and free.

Spin. Spin. I welcome paths. Each step's of colors aged in wrath.

For gentle love's a roar twice-fierce whose scissors cut where schemes fail pierce.

© 2026 AnOublietteofThought. All rights reserved.

Hi blog friends!

Well – after less than 10 brews, the new coffee maker I wrote about last time bit the dust. We have a new pot now but didn’t for a few days, so getting our coffee drinking needs met was a little bit rough there for a bit. Unless you’re a fan of extremely bitter coffee, Great Value French Roast, although fairly good when brewed in an auto drip coffee maker, doesn’t taste at all good when made in a French press. 

R, the wheelchair tech from National Seating And Mobility, came for a visit last Thursday. Thanks to some boss over the phone help from a Quantum Rehab representative, the programming on the joystick of my new power wheelchair Q.T. (short for Quick Trip or Cutie) is more in the ballpark than it was. More torque and traction is now on the front caster tires and our turns contain much less whiplash than they did, but I still feel like I need the whiplash to be a little less in order to make a smooth natural turn.  If you’re reading this and have a Quantum R Trak power wheelchair with a smooth, natural turn, what are the settings on your joystick? Send an email to let me know. A link is at the bottom of this post. 

A new lower profile seat cushion and some guides for the outer sides of my center mount footplates have also been submitted for approval by my insurance. And R made me feel very nervous because he didn’t seem experienced or confident. He actually spent a suspiciously long time driving my new power wheelchair and spinning it around on our carpet. And he kept telling me about why my wheelchair was behaving the way it was, but he seemed reluctant to do anything to fix it. If he hadn’t called Quantum to inquire about the guides for my footplate, I don’t think the joystick to my new power wheelchair would have ever been reprogrammed. I think he was inexperienced. And I don’t think he even knew about the Quantum R Trak reprogramming app that’s on his phone. I know he didn’t have a password for it, which tells me that he hardly, if ever, uses it. 

I’m also still spending my afternoons sipping coffee, napping and watching a lot of YouTube videos. Paul and I also enjoyed the World Series and have also been enjoying Best Medicine, RJ Decker, Line Of Fire and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. We’re up to the part where Susie enjoys a Mexican dinner with her captors. 

Also tried a lower dose of estrogen patch. Still a no-go. My body just hates it – so off to another option I go.

What’s happening in your neck of the woods? What are you watching? What are you eating? Or what exciting things have you seen or done lately? Send an email, text or message to let me know. A link to email is at the bottom of this post. I found a spaghetti sauce heart after I finished a plate of spaghetti this last week.

If you’re looking to add a sweet SNAIL-TASTIC touch of whimsy, charm or cheer to your fall, winter or holiday correspondence, Cute Snail and I have some new postcards you might appreciate. Fall, winter and other coloring pages are also available as well. Pages and postcards are 100% FREE to download, coloring books and packs are pay what you want. We also have promotional postcards and fliers available for those who would like to help spread the word about our SNAIL-TASTIC creations. Oh! And digital sharing postcards are also bundled in with the printable postcards if sharing in that way is more your pleasure.

That’s it! Thanks for reading! Until Next time!

❤️ Juliet

IMAGE ID: A collage photo of the morning hubby Paul and I went out for coffee. It contains a picture of a cup that says “Have a great day!” on the lid, as well as a picture of yummy avocado toast and a breakfast salad topped with warm bacon and drizzled with warm balsamic vinaigrette. It was delicious. 😋

De Gids

Net als Suarez zet ik hier mijn tanden in ik heb er oren naar als Tyson in de knokring ik laat me niet kisten als een Kees ben voor Acda & De Munnik niet naar maaiveld geweest ik laat me ook helemaal niet op maaien Ga voor geen enkele Spielberg naar de haaien zelfs voor Finkers, Barend en Van Dorp zeg ik geen ja en geen nee ik wil niet met Ivo te kijk staan op teevee mijn geheugen lijkt een grote, lange, eindeloze tv gids sta veel maar dan ook veel langer dan Jos en Max in de Pits maar zonder schattige poezen onder een zonne paraplu ik leef in de eeuwige herhaling van Gewest tot Gewest Hier en Nu Ik kan me Bart nog voor de geest halen en ook Karel opgegraven van onder het stilstaand beeldmonument 'heren, heren' je schiet elkaar toch niet zomaar kapot de Tros en Avro tegen de tijd, de Vpro en Vara voor de tijd en de Ncrv, Kro en Eo voor god ik heb ze gezien Binnendijk, Barend en nog veel meer B & B Het wassende water, De knokploeg en Die Twee ik vraag me wel af waarom het ding er moest komen en er nog is tijdens die verre verre voorstellingen heb ik het live optreden gemist ja waarom moesten die tv en de omroepen er eigenlijk komen wie had er baat bij die voor beeldschermen geproduceerde dromen konden we niet zonder het Sportjournaal, Jiskefet, Wie is de Mol en Boer zoekt Vrouw hadden we Hollywood, Carry en Ron echt nodig om te zeggen Ik Hou Van Jou Dynasty en Dallas, As The World Turns, Goede en Slechte Uitzendtijden de glijmiddelen om boodschappen op gezette tijden naar binnen te geleiden o heerlijk beschermland van Marvel, Disney Pixar en Illumination op de bips rij ik stilstaand nooit langzaam van station naar zendstation zonder ooit ergens aan te komen schakel ik iedere dag weer in geen wonder dat ik denk net als velen met met mij wat heeft het allemaal voor zin.

Had this big guy drop two days ago to eat some apples, chase the does and then ruminate.

Diagnose : Latent Achterdochtig Van Voorbijgaande Aard

Ze hebben me in de gaten weten nu al waarover ik straks ga praten ze hebben me in de smiezen ze laten me staan voor hun menu en kiezen ze kennen me bij naam weten waarvoor ik stil blijf staan wie ik ken ze weten al waar ik heen ga nog voor ik er ben gevangen zit ik in radarbeelden zien me digitale informatie verdelen ze zien mij als bliepende punt als ik wandel van hoogtepunt naar dieptepunt ze weten waar ik heen wil hoe zwaar ik vooraf bepaalde zaken til waar ik heen vlucht als ik vrees waar ik zal zijn en waar ik ben geweest ze kunnen me nu op alles beoordelen met dna van een huidschilver een replica mij telen zodat ik mezelf overal en nergens tegenkom ze weten wat ik wanneer doe en zelfs waarom ze zitten te wroeten in mijn administratie zoeken naar een manifestatie voor rechtvaardiging van de interventie van de dienst tegen misbruik van intelligentie een mensen leven niet ingezet voor de goede zaak voor bijvallen in de zoete smaak van bundelingen van en voor omzetbare inzet ten faveure van het goede, deelbare, hard werkende net ze willen weten waarom ik hier ben waarom ik alles wat er moet zijn om me heen verzin me nooit inlaat met de eerder gevestigde orde ze beantwoorden de vraag zelf wat er van mij moet worden zoniet vandaag dan zeker wel morgen dat ik me laat omringen door gefinancierde zorgen ze kennen mijn naam, weten wat er op rekening staat wat er inkomt van wie en hoeveel daarvan er uitgaat ze willen weten in welke kasten al mijn lijken zitten met welke reden ik instituten en organisaties ontloop waarom ik de mouwen niet voor andermans talenten opstroop en of ik verschil maak tussen zwarte, rooie, gele, blauwe en witte ze hebben me in de smiezen willen me beheren, laten delen en kiezen zeten me in kwader daglicht dan ik verdragen kan ik zit klem in hun met angst en beven gemanipuleerde toestand ik probeer hier een belachelijk ingewikkeld complex op te bouwen, renoveren, slopen en weer verbouwen terwijl ik al een hele poos niemand meer kan vertrouwen ze sneupen in mijn container en de containerzakken en in mijn fysieke alsook de digitale postvakken ze rommelen wat aan in mijn marge turen 's avonds door de naden van de vitrage luisteren naar mijn zinnen op zoek naar rede voor beklag en dat alleen maar omdat ik nooit om hun barslechte grappen lach...

Again, Conference USA Football.

Thursday's college football game of choice comes, again, from Conference USA as the Florida Atlantic Owls travel to Denton, TX, to play the North Texas Mean Green in a game scheduled to start at 6:30 PM CT. It will be nice if I can stay with the game till the end, however I'll be satisfied to last to halftime before retiring for the night.

And the adventure continues.

Certaines journées ne sont vécues que pour « fonctionner ». Le sentir et le vivre sont absents.

L’aliénation est partout. Le découragement à quelques pas.

Ce n’est pas comme ça que je veux vivre.

Arriver à la fin et dire quoi ? J’ai fonctionné correctement ? Ah, qu’est-ce qui a mal tourné ?

The Long-Term Campaign episode went live a month and half ago on The Classic Adventure Gaming Podcast. Gus invited us to share more about our Conquering the Barbarian Altanis campaign. This Monday we celebrated our 200th session.

Since the episode went live I have received a number of questions via Discord, email, and in-person. I have collected them all (as much as I could remember) below. Feel free to comment if you have additional questions. You can listen to the episode here and find my summary here.

The questions are sorted in order I received them.

Question

Do you have a marked up map of Barbarian Altanis showing your campaign's travels? Or more zoomed in maps of the sub regions?

Answer

Yes, of course. What I don't have is the historical evolution since I haven't been taking snapshots:

Note: don't study the above screenshot if you are playing in our campaign.

First 50 sessions were around Antil region (center left area). From then on, most of the action has been around the Hara region (centre south area). Adventurers fled Antil on a merchant vessel and disembarked in Hara.

Furthest north they went is up to the Eyestones Jungle; furthest south by the south south of the Ghinarian Hills (where they got smacked and enslaved). They just begun broaching over the hills north-west from their new base in Ironburg.

I wrote high level summary of sessions 50–120 and 120–180, but no maps since they contain a lot of Judge facing information.

Question

Excellent episode guys. Hats off to you Attronarch in particular. Stellar.

Some questions I have: Did a group of mover&shaker PCs establish? If yes, what character levels are they at? In what ways (generally or specifically) have the affected the greater setting?

Answer

Thank you!

With close to 200 sessions a lot has happened, exactly because of player characters interacting with the world. I've been publishing regular session reports, but it would be quite a feat to read them at once. I summarised most important events from sessions 50 to 180 in the following two posts: 50—120, 120—180.

Did a group of mover&shaker PCs establish?

Yes, several times. So far it has mostly resulted with them being shaken out and driven away. There is a lot of political instability in the Barbarian Altanis, civilisation is scarce, and wilderness is well, wild.

If yes, what character levels are they at?

Most recent “mover & shaker” PCs are:

• Gomm, a thief level 6, who established his own hideout in Ahyf, as well as a new, disguised persona of an old sage which he used to convince the Elders to follow his lead. Since Ahyf had been conquered by Wizard-King Racoba his current whereabouts are unknown.
• Dalkanarion, a fighter level 6. He made a name for himself as heroic and just warrior, slew a dragon, and was appointed the Castellan of Cedarwade Keep by the Red Queen. After returning from an expedition (which was Cauldron 2025 session) he was defeated and enslaved by the Bull God tribe. He was rescued with great effort from his fellow adventurers. Unfortunately, he found a Chaotic sentient sword, got dominated when he was weak, killed a fellow adventurer (a hobbit!), seized his ring of invisibility, and fled. His current whereabouts are unknown. (This is being resolved in private play-by-post, in essence 1:1 with player.)
• Ambros, a cleric level 7, was the most influential adventurer. Over several years he became the Patriarch General and Justice Supreme of Kingdom of Hara, and a loyal subject of the Red Queen. On one of the adventurers he had recovered the Golden Gavel of Justice, and became a High Priest of Forseti. This triggered “name level” forces to arrive, in essence his crusading army. Players used to conquer the Cedarwade Keep, pacify some of the area around Midway, and bring Hara back under control. When Dalkanarion was captured, Ambros made the hardest choice in his life. He left Hara, despite intelligence that Racoba is marching with great force, assembled a team of finest adventurers, and went to Ghinarian Hills. Dalkanarion was rescued, but Hara was lost. In the process adventurers lost their vault, reputation, and pride. A bit more:

Kingdom level:

The Indomitable Wizard-King Racoba has subdued eastern Altanis, having crushed the traitorous Red Queen and her incompetent forces. Suffering an embarrassing defeat, her armies fled in all cardinal directions. Racoba is currently exercising his megalomania and dreams of a City-State of his own to eventually challenge the World Emperor himself.

Adventurers grovel and plead at his feet, hiding like mice in a mining thorp at the northern border. The mightiest among them, former Patriarch General and Justice Supreme of Kingdom of Hara, and a loyal subject of the Red Queen, was subjected to painful humiliation ritual. Paladin of Justice carved the Traitor's Mark on his forehead; his life now rendered worthless; and was exiled from the kingdom.

Local level:

As if their humiliation was not sufficient, the newly appointed baron treats them like petulant children. He is trying to recruit the most promising among them and get rid of the rest. He is happy to point them in the direction of trouble he deems unworthy of his men.

But the baron is a former career mercenary and warlord, and is inexperienced with any meaningful governance. It remains to be seen if he delivers what the Wizard-King expects...

In what ways (generally or specifically) have the affected the greater setting?

In so many, and all the ways. At this stage, setting and characters are interwoven. Characters, through their interactions, keep generating encounters, sites, NPCs, etc. Read summary reports above to get an idea.

But perhaps one of the most interesting developments has been the Wizard-King Racoba himself. It is a character that absolutely all the players hate. They never met him. When they arrived to Hara for the first time, they were hired by then current castellan to break up a suspected spy ring. While searching through the undercity they found maps and evidence of foul play, plus Racoba's sigil. At that time Racoba was the Headmaster of Wizard's Guild. He fled, and has been persistent nuisance ever since. Adventurers, over the years, ignored all the bounties on his head, no matter how lucrative. Even when merchant families tried to contract them to hunt the wizard down, they opted not to get involved. But Wizards are megalomaniacs, and this Wizard returned with force, three years later.

And (still assuming) did at any point conflicts of interest between particular PCs arise, as far as influence on the world is concerned?

There have always been disagreement about what to do, which direction to take, whom to align with, but nothing that would split the party. We maintain strict no PVP rule so maybe that contributed. I ask players to discuss and commit together.

Question

Attronarch I read the post im genral above the current major movers before, are these the highest lvs or just the strongest of the current stable? Does the campaign shift geographic focus necessitating changes in stables? Are these the “next gen” of previous PCs?

Answer

Highest level; Ambros is strongest among the clerics, followed by Tam o' Shanter and Tarkus the Promising. Dalkanarion, Balarus, and Beorg the Gravedigger are among the strongest fighters. Ignaeus is the highest level magic-user, but is an elf.

I am not sure I understand the second question. Players choose where their characters go; they are the ones choosing geographic focus. After Hara fell and they lost their army they spent few sessions collecting PCs across the kingdom and getting them to Ironburg.

Nobody created any progeny, yet. Dalkanarion has been most interested in achieving that, got himself a wife and everything, but fate had different plans.

Question

Thanks for the answer and sorry for the confusion. I was confused that after 180 sessions the highest level was 7 so was wondering if it was because multiple people were in multiple parties/tpks/characters getting retired, etc

Answer

I think it is due to a combination of factors, but at its core it boils down to simple numbers stemming from open table. I don't have all the notes with me at the moment, but I would estimate that between 150 and 250 player characters have participated in the campaign so far. All of them took some XP. Most frequent players are also levelling up their whole stable, so XP disperses. Maybe I crunch all the numbers one day! But not today.

Question

I finally listened to the latest episode and it was great and fun to listen.

There was just one thing I’m interested in and it was probably mentioned but I missed it.

Attronarch what System do you run? I tried to find the answer on your website but on there you’ve listed OD&D/S&W, AD&D/OSRIC and B/X.

Do you use all of these? Did you start with one and it evolved into another? Do people use characters from whatever they like and you convert on the fly to match your world?

Like I said it was probably mentioned but I don’t know 😅

Answer

Sessions 1 thru 134 were B/X with Judges Guild house rules; sessions 135 and onwards are Swords & Wizardry Complete Revised with house rules. My plan was to begin with Basic for a year and then choose between OD&D and AD&D. I chose the former. Then I thought I would just take lbbs and a supplements and arrange them a bit so players can reference them easier. Two years later I had nothing except a ton of research notes so I decided to use Swords & Wizardry with house rules and work on the aforementioned for next couple of years.

Question

Cool. Thank you for the reply.

May I also ask why you chose S&W over AD&D? Is it because it’s more flexible due to less rules?

And it’s nice to hear that S&W is capable for this kind of campaign. It’s the only real OSR game that I own (the German translation of S&WC).

Answer

I chose OD&D over AD&D. I fell in love with it via early Wilderlands and Judges Guild material. That's all. Swords & Wizardry Complete Revised is a compromise until I finish what I had initially planned. (As an aside, when you collate all OD&D books and Strategic Review it is over 600 pages. There are a lot of rules in there.)

Question

I have another question.

How do you manage when all PCs at that particular session are in different places on your map and in different activities?

Do you jump back and forth or do you play with one group then the second group and so on till the session ends?

Answer

The first question is for the players to resolve, not myself. If they want to adventure together, and are so far apart, then they have play-by-post between the session to organise that.

It is rare that there are individual characters scattered around like that. They are usually in groups. When that happens, players that show up on any given session decide which group they play.

We play on discord. For each session I create a discord event for which players can sign up for. It is not mandatory, but is useful to signal who will be playing. On the day of the session I ping all the players and ask them what is the plan for tonight. This is more for them than me. Over the years I have been very consistent with my expectations—when we show up to play, you (players) have to have an answer to “what are you doing next.” If they don't, they get a ten minute timer. If they need more time they spend in game time (turns, days, weeks, depending on situation). They come ready.

Question

Awesome podcast, fellas. I really enjoyed it! There's a wealth of great, practical advice and reminders on running a solid game that I think extends beyond just online gaming. Really enjoyed it. Usually I listen to these a few times and this one will definitely be in the rotation, one of my favorites.

Couple questions... with a totally open table:

How do you handle it when a new player joins or an existing player misses, but you are in the middle of something and maybe there's not a seamless “entry path”? Just ignore it – the PC pops in/pops out? Practicality/gamism over “realism” ?

Also, what happens when new player joins or new PC joins (after a death) when everyone else is higher level? Still starts level one, but advances quickly if he can stay alive?

Answer

Thank you, we appreciate your kind words! I tried to focus on practices that worked for us, and which I think can be acted upon.

How do you handle it when a new player joins or an existing player misses, but you are in the middle of something and maybe there's not a seamless “entry path”? Just ignore it – the PC pops in/pops out? Practicality/gamism over “realism” ?

These are two different scenarios, with slightly different emphasis. If a new player is joining our campaign, then the goal is to throw them into action as quickly as possible. If they happen to join a session which resumes a previous expedition, then I decide the exact moment of introduction on a case by case basis.

Are we resuming during a combat round? If I believe it will conclude within 3 rounds, then new player will be rolling for monsters. More than 3 rounds, I work them in. Are we resuming during an underworld expedition? As long as it isn't some hyper-exotic alternative plane of existence or antediluvian place, we will work you in with a simple “What are you doing here?!”

When existing players cannot make a session, and there is a party that is one a expedition, then two things happen. If at least half of the players whose charterers are on the expedition are joining, then it can resume. Character whose players can't make it do not vanish, but are delegated to carrying light sources and similar. Their players designate another player for decision making. Any rolls that might result with their death are mine to roll.

If less than half can show up, that expedition cannot resume. Players have to pick another character they have and figure out what to do with them.

My operating principles could be summed up as shortest time to action, we will work you in, there is no vanishing out of danger. Risk, consequences, and all that.

So far no has attempted to “game” our system.

Also, what happens when new player joins or new PC joins (after a death) when everyone else is higher level? Still starts level one, but advances quickly if he can stay alive?

Every new player get to roll three characters with zero experience. They pick one and introduce them. Then they start playing.

Players can write in-character session reports. Each nets their character 300 XP. After they have written 20 session reports (or created drawings, memes, poems, whatever), all their new characters begin with 5000 XP.

Once a character has been introduced to the game, player can freely choose which one will go on an expedition, engage in downtime, etc. This is helpful for sessions when only two to four players show up. Then each player usually controls two of their characters, plus whatever retinue they have. This enables them to assail bigger dangers. It also backfired several times when they gathered big numbers, stormed a dungeon, and then had to divide experience into twenty shares... Decisions, risk, reward, consequences, and all that...

Yes, exactly. Old player from three months ago drops in, his PC is 300 miles away from the others. He uses a fresh level one PC maybe, that's popped into the main group?

We have that frequently. Some players travel the world for their work and can only play sporadically, or during specific months. I have locations of each character. When they show up, I look up how much in-game time has passed since they played last. Usually enough time to judge they would have been able to travel to where ever action is right now. It hasn't really been an issue so far; we were always able to work out something that has satisfactory verisimilitude.

Question

Hello Attronarch,

I just listened to the CAG podcast's episode on your open-table sandbox campaign! Fascinating!

I am preparing to run an (in-person) open table campaign, so it is really useful to listen to your advice and your players' feedback.

Could you please expand on something that you touched upon towards the end of the episode)? Unfortunately I can't join the campaign to learn by experiencing it (its time conflicts with my work schedule). I would love if you could address it via Discord on or a blog post.

What I am referring to is how you handle continuity/discontinuity between sessions/parties.

The conventional view—or at least the “Alexandrian view”—is that an open table session needs to start in town and end in town—and, if PCs don't, a “table of doom is” used. I haven't tried it, but, I was getting ready to do it... So I was very interested when I hear your take on this, which goes against the conventional view.

Paraphrasing, I think you said the following (I'll be adding some specific questions along the way, and then add some more). For the purposes of this summary, I'll refer to “party XN” as the party (group of players/PC) that exist on a specific session. You said:

(a) Don't force each party to end the session back in town; the session can end in an adventuring location, e.g., deep in the dungeon.

(b) Let's say party A1 ended the last session deep in the dungeon. Next session, if half of the players with PCs in party A1 show up to play the game resumes on the same adventuring location with, e.g., same room of the dungeon; we could call this party A2.

Question 1: how do you handle, narratively, the absence of some PCs of party A1 in the location? (This question assume not every player of party A1 showed up on the next session.)?

Question 2: relatedly, how do you handle, narratively, the presence of PCs of party A2 who were not in party A1?

© A corollary: if less than half of the players of party A1 show up on the next session, then the session focuses on a different location/party (let's call it party B1). I imagine this could be another party that was exploring that location (so its more of a case of party B2).

Question 3 & 4: same questions about verisimilitude mentioned above, related to absence/presence of PCs.

More questions, and perhaps more important questions:

Q5: Did I get it right?

Q6: Could a party C explore the same adventuring location that is being explored by party A?

Q8: More generally, how do you handle the interaction of parties, and their potential impact on the world, when those parties may be operating in different times?

Q9: How do you keep track of who is doing what and when, and interactions between what they do?

Q10: what are other procedures, decision-making processes and resources that you use for this “many parties in many places” approach?

I know it's a lot of questions! Maybe if you explain more your approach many questions will be answered at once! Also, if you have already explained your approach, please point me towards the relevant message/resource where you did—you must be already quite busy running the campaign! Thanks!

And later, an addition.

A related question: how do you allocate XP? When an expedition has ended and the treasure has been taken out? At the end of the session, regardless of where PCs are? And who gets it? PCs whose players are present only?

Answer

Thank you for your kind words. I am happy to hear you found the episode inspiring. I have answered some of the questions above so I will not repeat them at length. Before doing so, I wish to stress that handling “continuity/discontinuity between sessions/parties” is less onerous and disruptive in play than it might seem at first. So, in order.

Q1: I handle this on a case by cases basis. How did the previous session end? How are we beginning the session? Would it be plausible for the player character to leave the dungeon and reach a safe place (a guarded camp, a hidden chamber, a settlement, etc.)? If the answer is no, then the player character does not simply vanish, nor do they “fade to black.” They are still present but delegated to holding light, offering support, and similar. If we ended in a dangerous situation, and the player can't make it, then they nominate another player to take care of their character.

Q2: Likewise, on a case by case basis. I consider the player character, the situation, and the location. Would it be possible for them to simply walk in and join? Is the site expansive enough that they could be just around the corner? We meet weekly for three hours to play, surely we can suspend our disbelief enough to figure out a way to introduce new player character. Over the years we have everything from poof here is a dwarf to divine interventions and simple around the corner they come. All of them worked because they were ground in the current situation.

Q3 & Q4: Same answers as above. Consider the conditions: where are these characters? What are they doing? In practice, treat it as any other expedition, because that is exactly what they are. Thus, answers are the same.

Q5: So far, so good!

Q6: My default answer is no, unless special conditions are met. If it is a sprawling locale (think megadungeon with multiple entrances), then I might allow it. Once an adventuring party enters a locale I am not interested in bringing more different parties at the same time. That is too fragile regarding time coordination. Exceptions are for example if Party A is captured or defeated, and Party C is rushing in to save them. We had that several times during our campaign and it worked fine. For example, when Dalkanarion and others were captured they crawled the deep tunnels, while the rescue party advanced overland, and then crawled other portion of the caves. They eventually reunited, rejoining the parties.

Q7: I don't see question seven, let me know if I accidentally overlooked it.

Q8: Assuming you are asking about play parties, I don't handle their interaction in any particular manner. Those are player characters, they interact with each other as they (i.e. their players) wish. I merely keep track of where and when the characters are. Players do too; I help them if they lose track of time.

Q9: Over the years I have developed a session tracker. I started with pen and paper, then reusable PDF templates (still pen and paper but less prep), and am nowadays using a spreadsheet with those same templates. It consists of four elements:

• Session dashboard. Session number, real-world date, in-game date, for each character: player name, character name, race, class, alignment, armour class, notes (special abilities, memorised spells, etc.), monsters encountered and overcome, treasure recovered, judge's notes.
• Day tracker. Session number, real-world date, in-game date, season, watches, turns, turn notes, day notes, compass. Makes it trivial to mark any unit of time, note anything of significance, and track resources.
• Combat tracker. Session number, real-world date, in-game date,, rounds, round notes, party notes, monsters and monster notes. Goes to 60, i.e. 6 turns or a full hour.
• Calendar. In-game calendar with months, days, and seasons. I mark the first and last day played during the session.

All of these fit a single A4 paper, so I have overview at glance. I might write a longer post on keeping time records in a practical manner. Perhaps later this year. These allow me to quickly get up to speed, calculate experience, check who is who, and who did what, so on and so forth. I use them when writing the session reports too.

Q10: The single most important thing a Judge can do is knowing who is where and when. That is it. When they know that, then they can easily summarise the situation and available options.

Also, I feel it is important to stress that the goal isn't to have “many parties in many places” but that it is something that happens due to open-table and sandbox approach. Thus, the Judge has to be comfortable with it, but should not necessarily strive for it.

As I said on the podcast, a valid reason for that is ending a session while an expedition is ongoing because the party is dealing with a large dungeon, locale, or site. An invalid reason is getting bored, distracted, or whatever, and attempting to start seven parallel expeditions at once. If that is happening, then something is amiss.

I continuously ask players about their plans, goals, intentions, ambitions, and similar. I ask them to discuss them with each other between the sessions, during the sessions, in different ways and scales (e.g. “what are we doing today” versus “what do we want to accomplish over the next three months”). Frankly, I do not care so much about their answers, for they can change their mind at moment's notice. No, the valuable part is them articulating aforementioned to each other, developing alignment, and shared agenda.

After all, they are playing together. Why then would they want to be separated most of the time?

BQ: I allocate treasure and monster experience after the expedition has concluded and adventurers have returned to a safe haven. I go through the session trackers, make a list of all the player characters that have participated, tally up sessions they played in, and then reward shares accordingly. Here is a multi-session expedition example:

SESSIONS 193, 194 & 195 EXPERIENCE

Total experience earned:

5 260 XP.

Eligible characters (number of shares):

• Ainsley (3)
• Ambros (2)
• Aurella (1)
• Balarus (3)
• Hedwig of Hogwarts (1)
• Ivor (3)
• Tam (3)
• Tarkus the Promising (2)
• Thorinda Bung (3)
• Volkard (2)
• Wilbalt (1)

Total number of shares = 24.

XP per share = 219 XP if 5% XP bonus = 230 XP if 10% XP bonus = 241 XP if 15% XP bonus = 252 XP

Reminder that multi-classed characters gain no bonus to earned experience.

No treasure recovered.

The player looks for their character, and then simply multiplies the XP per share with their number of shares. That's it.

More questions?

If you have a question of your own drop it in the comments below or via email. I will answer, but might take some time to do so.

Fight on!

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