The standard payment to an artist on Spotify is “$0.003 to $0.005 per stream”: https://simplebeen.com/artists-make-on-spotify/

That is basically nothing for any artist that isn’t in the top tier of mainstream success.

prior to Spotify coming along the industry was in decline as downloading MP3’s on torrents and file sharing programs was the norm

You’re essentially pirating music by using Spotify, you are not paying the artists that you listen to in any meaningful way.

I’m still getting a ridiculous amount of value from Spotify

If only the same could be said for the artists you’re listening to…

That seems extremely high, can you explain your listening habits? Are you listening to all of those albums start to finish? Are you selecting each of those albums or just letting the algorithm run wild?

It comes from Vampire: TM, describing the kind of player that plays a Malkavian’s “insanity” as dumb shit like slapping people with a fish (a la Monty Python).

All good.

It’s not a big deal but if you’re using my idea it would be nice to reply to my comment :]

I was thinking of a scene from a Discworld book but that’s also a good example.

You could give them the spirits of the righteous dead, the fallen soldiers and heroes of the realm that continue to fullfill their duty even in death.

Summoning undead is usually an evil act in most fantasy, but you can easily write it to suit this purpose.

I really like the Year Zero Engine mechanics with the “push” mechanic, it adds a lot of tension that works well for this style of game. The setting is unique and interesting, heavily influenced by Arab culture and folklore which gives a very different vibe to most western scifi. The supernatural elements are well integrated and the setting in general just has a lot of room for a variety of styles of play (combat, politics, detective, etc).

I don’t know the Expanse rpg but Coriolis is a great system and setting. However it’s lore isn’t “hard” scifi like The Expanse, it has pseudo-scientific/supernatural elements similar to Dune (which it borrows a lot of its style and vibes from).

So that might be enough to make a decision, whether you prefer hard scifi or a Dune-like setting.

Have degrees of success that require multiple escalating rolls. You can describe it as penetrating layers of security. Layer one has a relatively easy difficulty but only gets you basic info. It lets the player feel like their skill is useful but lets you tune how much you want to give them. You can even let them make additional attempts to break through each layer but this takes time, e.g. each attempt is a week of game time. You can also have legwork decrease difficulties to give the rest of the party something to do, e.g. talking to/threatening/kidnapping employees for passwords.

I also highly encourage what other comments have said about physical access. Physically breaking into the relevant building and accessing the system from there bypasses some of the layers, and specific physical targets bypass even more, e.g. plugging into the executive’s computer on the top floor gets you straight to the deepest layer.

What the fuck are you on about, the “bot” is just a feed of RPG blogs that gets posted here on a wide range of rpgs and topics.

Gamify this stuff. Instead of a single silent alarm causing the players to get ambushed, have a threat level that you’re tracking that requires multiple triggers to end up in the worst case scenario. Give players in-game feedback that this is happening (they notice there’s a higher frequency of patrols, overhear guards getting new orders, etc). Give players mechanisms to reduce the threat level (waiting until things cool down, hacking security systems, stealth takedown of guards, etc).

As much as it is tempting to do pure simulation in a realistic way, it doesn’t always make for a fun game. Fun almost always comes from interesting and meaningful decisions for the players. Having invisible triggers going off behind the scenes that the players will never know about is only interesting for the GM.

This is such a weird take. The setting is dystopian, it’s a staple of the genre. The setting doesn’t celebrate the oppression, as this article seems to be suggesting.

Effectively firing half the employees seems like a strong sign that the new owners are going to ruin what made Bandcamp good.

I’m so fucking tired, you guys.

Digital data does not last anywhere near as long as physical artifacts like paper. Most of the data on a hard drive will be irretrievable after a hundred years.