jjjalljs @ jjjalljs @ttrpg.network

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2 yr. ago

I recommend players make their characters together. Fate's rules for it are pretty good, and can be ported to many systems: https://fate-srd.com/fate-core/phase-trio . The whole "You all meet in a tavern for the first time" mode is a valid way to play, but I've had friends do that and then struggle with how contrived it feels to fight to the death for people they just met, or go on a whole dangerous sidequest for someone else's hobby.

I also recommend reading other systems. Not everyone needs to know dozens of games, but if you always play d20 games spending some time in a different branch of the RPG family tree can really be eye-opening. Or if you've only really played really light games, looking at how something crunchier does detail can be insightful.

It might've been a deeper comic if they used the person on the right for both panes .

I'm reminded of a post from elsewhere: "You hate all the parts of capitalism separately, without realizing they're all the same thing"

Many Christians don't really know the Bible well or follow jesus' instructions.

There's articles about it every so often. https://www.newsweek.com/evangelicals-rejecting-jesus-teachings-liberal-talking-points-pastor-1818706 was the top hit right now.

Logical arguments aren't going to persuade anyone of anything. This is the domain of emotions. It's about in-group and identity

I don't think we should be posting such pornographic fictions in this community.

I wonder if things get bad enough, Ukraine would take a shot at Trump. Back to the wall and all.

The average person is a heady cocktail of stupid and ignorant. We all are, to one degree or another.

I feel like one of the problems is we've let "everyone is entitled to their opinion" mutate into "everyone is entitled to their own facts". We just kind of let anti-vaxxers walk around like it's no big deal. We let people wear maga hats and don't treat it like a clear and present danger or the threat that it is. We're too polite about this shit.

If someone walked up to you and was like "I'm gonna shoot you dead later" while holding a gun and a map to your house, you probably wouldn't be like "Cool I respect your opinion."

I mean, some people would. Some people are pacifists, and I guess they'd just get in a death camp politely.

Is there a reason conservatives dislike congestion pricing other than spite?

Gods, they're just the worst fucking people.

Musk seems like the kind of D&D player who would

• Build a horrible character (frankly impressive in 5e, which is pretty simple in terms of choices to make at the start). Like, a bard with 8 charisma, or a rogue with no dex
• Or, pay someone else to build their character, and then not know how to play it.
• And/or induce the other players to murder him (in the game)

• Get accepted as goon for "Patrol" app
• Go to CEO location, armed with lethal weapons
• ???
• Profit

This is a good point. Seeing other people get onto the street can motivate people who weren't feeling enthusiastic.

But I do worry that protests will fizzle out and be, as you say, an ending point. Maybe they won't be.

"a peaceful movement". Ok. Unilaterally disarming seems like a dubious move to me.

I don't think protests where you just stand around and chant are especially effective. Maybe in 1950 when seeing people get firehosed was shocking, but the world is different today. Media is captured by the wealthy and most people don't care.

I've found that when the players hit an outright failure, a lot of the time they just draw blanks or zero in on this one specific solution. It's a weird tunnel vision.

Like, they want to talk past the doorman and he says no after they roll. Good players on their game will then think about other options. Sneak in the back. Set off an alarm. Impersonate someone who lives there. But i've just had so many players that just get stuck on this, and will try to spend 10 minutes on "What if I ask him nicely?"

I've started including a spiel about this in my session 0. "If an obstacle in the world has exactly one purpose in the story, and you attack it dead on, you may fail. Especially if it's not also your strong suit. For example, there is a doorman of a fancy apartment building. His entire role in life is to look at people, and only let them in if they're authorized. If you walk up to him, not authorized, and go 'Hey bro let me in', that will be a very hard check. That is shooting fire at the fire elemental. Disguising yourself will be easier, but still is in his domain of 'Looking at people and only letting authorized folks in'. But going in a back door so he doesn't see, setting off the fire alarm so he evacuates, calling on the phone and telling him his car has been towed, those ideas hit him where he's weaker."

I'm glad you liked the comic.

I read the tweet as saying "Actually learning about history, the good and the bad, is better than avoiding it to whitewash (pun intended) slavers and spare their feelings"

How did you read it?

This also reminds me of a separate post I saw about how social media, and tweets especially, is a really bad format for communicating. The length constraints and incentivizing being clever don't make for fertile ground for ideas. Most people aren't going to read an essay, sadly.

I also can’t imagine someone getting offended about people mentioning the Tulsa Race Massacre or the fact that the founding fathers held slaves.

Actual racists aren’t going to be offended by those historical facts, they just might argue that they were justifiable in some way. Which is obviously super fucked up, but it’s not like racist people are going to deny the fact that slavery happened or that black people got massacred by white people in history. They literally get off on that shit.

Many racists definitely do get offended by those facts. It's because they're coming at it from an emotional place, and the historical facts make them feel bad. Instead of dealing with that, they lash out. Not all racists are intentional about their racism.

I link this a lot, but it's worth a read https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe

Which is why the tweet seems so strange to me. Black people getting enslaved and massacred and persecuted? That slaps? I fucking hope not.

That wasn't the intent of the tweet and that is a bizarre misreading of it.

Someone should come for Musk and the rest of the republican party.

I can only hope some of the absolute fools who voted for republicans realize that their policies are dogshit, but I think too many of them are emotionally invested in their "team". They'd cheer for their side even as they starved to death.

Elden Ring was very good. You still get the interconnected bits in some areas, and some parts of the world connect in unexpected ways.

The main thing I didn't like about elden ring is how most of the stuff is kind of pointless. Like there's a catacomb but the only thing you get from it is some useless ashes and low level upgrade material. It made replays feel weird, because I'd skip most of it.

I'm not sure how to fix that. Maybe have the little side dungeons affect world state somehow (eg: drain poison from the swamp, get rid of invaders, whatever). Or switch over to sekiro style leveling where you only power up by doing certain things. But both of those might make the side stuff too much of a chore.

Don't put important details behind failable skill checks and just dead end it there.

Like if they find a book with ciphered text, you might be tempted to be like "make an intelligence + investigator check to decipher it", and if they fail be like "you can't figure it out".

It's better to do some sort of degree of success or succeed at a cost so the game keeps moving forward.

Like, on a bad roll they translate it but whoops awaken an angry spirit that's now attacking them. Or they make some progress, but realize they need the key to fully crack it. The note in the margin says it's at such-and-such flophouse, owned by the PC's most annoying rival group.

I've done too many "you rolled .. 0? Ok. Well you have no idea what this altar means" and then later regretted it because the players didn't have a vital clue.

If billionaires were smart they would go along with this kind of non violent plan. The longer they resist, the more likely people will try more aggressive solutions.

I would give them a chance to divest before guillotining. But someone having that much money is disgusting. You know what you could do with that? You know how much was stolen from how many people to acquire that? That's disgusting.

Look at this "wealth to scale" website https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/?v=3

In case you lost sense of how big these numbers are.

But at least we agree that some billionaires should be hung.