Tan Shao Han

The Ghost Festival is starting today! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_F... It's an important festival for Buddhists, where we offer generosity and compassion for spirits of the dead and hell-beings released momentarily from the underworld for a month, when they try to seek reprieve to their suffering.

Incense shops also do good business during this festival, as adherents purchase paper and incense offerings. Fruit and flower stalls also do a thriving business. And in contrast to my vegetarian point, roast meat and alcohol also sell, as some ghosts are tough guys who like roast pork and stout..?

The Ghost Festival is starting today! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_F... It's an important festival for Buddhists, where we offer generosity and compassion for spirits of the dead and hell-beings released momentarily from the underworld for a month, when they try to seek reprieve to their suffering.

Popular meals in Singapore include "vegetarian bee hoon", which are rice noodles served with vegetables, tofu, seitan etc. popularised here by Cantonese working-class Buddhist women, many who swore vows to never marry, and to take care of each other into old age. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetar...

The Ghost Festival is starting today! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_F... It's an important festival for Buddhists, where we offer generosity and compassion for spirits of the dead and hell-beings released momentarily from the underworld for a month, when they try to seek reprieve to their suffering.

Another character I'm deeply fond of is Itkovian the Shield Anvil, from Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen. I think I just like the idea of a decent person.. who sincerely holds space and has time for others as their cosmic superpower? So that's a vibe and angle I wanted to boost in TTRPGs.

The Ghost Festival is starting today! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_F... It's an important festival for Buddhists, where we offer generosity and compassion for spirits of the dead and hell-beings released momentarily from the underworld for a month, when they try to seek reprieve to their suffering.

In Pathfinder's Golarion setting, soul gems exist, which can be created via very costly ritual (Bind Soul) or the predations of very low-level fiends (Cacodaemon). I enjoy that asymmetry, the hint that it takes such great power and wealth to enact a cosmic violation which a trash mob does for free.

The Ghost Festival is starting today! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_F... It's an important festival for Buddhists, where we offer generosity and compassion for spirits of the dead and hell-beings released momentarily from the underworld for a month, when they try to seek reprieve to their suffering.

And I think for me it's always been... part of that ethos of "I'm holding on to pain not because I'm wallowing in pain, but cos someone has to bear witness, to dignify this, to dignify you", that went into my design of the PF2e sramana, as a celestial itinerant liberator of the metaphysically lost.

The Ghost Festival is starting today! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_F... It's an important festival for Buddhists, where we offer generosity and compassion for spirits of the dead and hell-beings released momentarily from the underworld for a month, when they try to seek reprieve to their suffering.

I based this design largely on the Bodhisattva Kṣitigarbha, a key figure in the Ghost Month... He is the Bodhisattva who undertakes an Oath to empty the hells, that one day the underworld will be emptied of suffering, to literate the suffering across the hells.. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%E1%B9...

The Ghost Festival is starting today! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_F... It's an important festival for Buddhists, where we offer generosity and compassion for spirits of the dead and hell-beings released momentarily from the underworld for a month, when they try to seek reprieve to their suffering.

Remind self; some PF2 work I enjoyed Lost Omens (Goka, Songbai; Alkenstar, Dongun Hold) For PCs (Aloof Firmament, Resurgent Maelstrom, Unfurling Brocade; Triggerbrand; Yakshas; Read the Air, Thousand-Blade Thesis, North/South Wind swords; Hedge Mage lore) Monsters (Hellbreaker devils, jiang-shi)

Like dude, reminder to self, reminder to you, whatever I did there isn't going to be typified in any framework written or devised by ppl who don't believe in spirits, not even as metaphors. There's something here about how the indie creators you respect, kinda talk about their homes, lands, scapes..

Remind self; some PF2 work I enjoyed Lost Omens (Goka, Songbai; Alkenstar, Dongun Hold) For PCs (Aloof Firmament, Resurgent Maelstrom, Unfurling Brocade; Triggerbrand; Yakshas; Read the Air, Thousand-Blade Thesis, North/South Wind swords; Hedge Mage lore) Monsters (Hellbreaker devils, jiang-shi)

I think uh telling the yaksha statues in temples and also my neighbourhood old trees where tree spirits are supposed to inhabit about the yaksha ancestry I designed in Tian Xia Character Guide is probably some peak overlap of "everyday animist Buddhist stuff" and "freelance ttrpg designer life".

Remind self; some PF2 work I enjoyed Lost Omens (Goka, Songbai; Alkenstar, Dongun Hold) For PCs (Aloof Firmament, Resurgent Maelstrom, Unfurling Brocade; Triggerbrand; Yakshas; Read the Air, Thousand-Blade Thesis, North/South Wind swords; Hedge Mage lore) Monsters (Hellbreaker devils, jiang-shi)

Just put it out there, be self-reflexive, responsible, sincere to yourself and more importantly to the communities or traditions, to the intangible heritage or the stakeholders, for both what is signified and represented, and who is interpreting and experiencing these texts/games/images etc...

Remind self; some PF2 work I enjoyed Lost Omens (Goka, Songbai; Alkenstar, Dongun Hold) For PCs (Aloof Firmament, Resurgent Maelstrom, Unfurling Brocade; Triggerbrand; Yakshas; Read the Air, Thousand-Blade Thesis, North/South Wind swords; Hedge Mage lore) Monsters (Hellbreaker devils, jiang-shi)

And also to see stuff that ppl love or hate; ppl saying "this sucks" or ppl saying "this rocks", about very same thing. Then accept and Be Yourself Even If It's A Bit Much and turn various eyes and hands of the panopticon into monsters lolol or discuss fantasy military-industrial garrison complex.

Remind self; some PF2 work I enjoyed Lost Omens (Goka, Songbai; Alkenstar, Dongun Hold) For PCs (Aloof Firmament, Resurgent Maelstrom, Unfurling Brocade; Triggerbrand; Yakshas; Read the Air, Thousand-Blade Thesis, North/South Wind swords; Hedge Mage lore) Monsters (Hellbreaker devils, jiang-shi)

Paraphrasing a friend, about shitty AI slop movies released in time for Singapore's National Day... Friend "We don't have to watch it, even if nobody watches it." Me: "ah, but what about the extremely libidinous large river reptile? Who believes in Super Ero Gatory duties? You Kant dispute that!"