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There's a time and a place
  • Addl wisdom: some people make jokes when they're uncomfortable, as a defense mechanism. If you have a player or players constantly trying to lighten the mood, consider that the atmosphere you're trying to create may not be a good fit for your party, and/or parts of your party may not be a good fit for your game.

  • Nothing else to say.
  • I understand, but also, please don't. As bad as it is right now, the world is still a better place with you in it. Call or text 988 if you're feeling suicidal, there are people there ready to listen and help.

  • Setting the bar far too high
  • One slab of dry ice is a couple pounds, I could easily see a bathtub full of it being a problem. Also, co2 is heavier than air, cats are smaller than humans, and they live closer to the ground, so I think ...m... made the right call.

  • Setting the bar far too high
  • This kind of thing can be fun. It can also be just as or more fun to sit around with nothing more than some scrap paper and an idea. Especially no shade on people that don't have unlimited budgets to spend on setups like this.

  • I just realized why some people hate replicated food...
  • My headcanon is that it's entirely perception. Kind of like how plating the same food in a pretty way can affect how you rate it's taste. The replicated food can be identical down to the molecule, but the knowledge that Sisko's Dad handmade your dinner makes you think it's tastier.

  • Kobold Rule
  • I would really like to commission that one artist that does the WWI kobolds to do a piece with 3 kobolds running a vintage SMG as if it were a crew served weapon. (But sadly they won't return my emails)

  • 500 Hours in MS Paint
  • I just want you to know how much I appreciate your hammer comparison. That is an incredibly apt simile and I want you to get credit for it. You should feel good about your analysis and communication skills.

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  • That strikes me as highly reflective of google's position of power; from the employer's perspective, the point where the diminishing returns are no longer worth it is related to the point where they're losing too many applicants from interview exhaustion. If you're not google, not offering the kind of pay and such that google does, your break-even point is likely much sooner.

    Additionally, from the worker's perspective, the only-3-interviews rule is an assertion of our power. And, as an added plus, if enough people adhere to it, it will shift that break-even point even for places like Google, and resist the shifting of that burden onto unpaid workers.

  • 500 Hours in MS Paint
  • This is silly. EVERY system can be exploited, and every group should expect eachother to act in good faith. The difference between systems is what parts are done for you and what parts you do yourself, and every group is going to want a different assortment of those pieces. You're just mad that some groups get what they want out of DnD. You are the problem person in this image.

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  • The question that raises from a process improvement perspective then is "were the first 3 rounds really effective tests?" Perhaps a better solution is not more interviews, but more focused interviews conducted by the people that actually have the knowledge and power to make the decision. (And if the knowledge and the power are divided among multiple people, another great improvement would be empowering the people with the knowledge.)

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  • Yeah, it saves you money...by costing the prospective employee. There's only so much we as employees can or should be willing to give up for free, and it's 3 interviews.

    I also question if more than that is really improving the quality of your hires. Far more often (100% of the time, in my experience), multiple interviews are more a symptom of bureaucracy; multiple managers insisting that they get to stick their fingers in the pie, rather than actually learning anything more meaningful about the candidate.

  • How do you pick spells to give players on scrolls, wands etc.?
  • I like to use the weird spells that players rarely take due to being less than optimal. That way they still get to use them situationally, without having to "waste" a slot.

    The exception is when there's a particular story reason for a certain type of item to crop up; for instance, a group of assassins hunting a powerful mage might have a lot of dispel and antimagic type things.

  • In castle/fortress design, what do you call the wall placed immediately inside the gates that prevents the enemy from having a straight shot into your fortress?
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    You see something similar in the entranceway to public bathrooms that don't have doors, where it kind of zig-zags for privacy. I'm trying to figure out what this kind of architectural feature is called. Thanks!

    7
    It's not Critical Role, it's Podcasting Itself

    I recently started a new campaign. Two players (one who has played in my games before and their SO, who has been begging me for a spot for years) unexpectedly dropped out, moments before our first session. Their reason was somewhat baffling; they said they didn't want to spend "all day" on this, despite the game only going from noon to 3PM. They seemed to think this was a totally unreasonable expectation on my part, despite them previously having stated they were available during that time. This puzzled me.

    I've been musing on this, and the strange paradox of people that say they want to play D&D but don't actually want to play D&D, and I've had an epiphany.

    A lot of people blame Critical Role or other popular D&D shows for giving prospective players misplaced perceptions, often related to things like your DM's voice acting ability or prop budget, but I don't think that's what's going on here. My realization is that, encoded in the medium of podcasts and play videos, is another expectation: New players unconsciously expect to receive D&D the way they receive D&D shows: on-demand, at their house, able to be paused and restarted at their whim, and possibly on a second-screen while they focus on something else!

    I don't know as this suggests anything we as DMs could do differently to set expectations, but it did go a long ways to helping me understand my friends, and I thought it might help someone here to share.

    16
    I need 1 more thing an evil necromancer dictator would have in his garden

    I've got an unholy-water fountain, a human chessboard, and an evil hedge maze. I need 1 more thing to put in the last corner of the square courtyard/garden thing. Any suggestions?

    3
    InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)SI
    sirblastalot @ttrpg.network
    Posts 3
    Comments 190
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