I introduced a “small one story structure, its walls no wider than the span of a single door” next to the farmhouse my players were investigating. They didn’t believe the owners who told them what it was for, and went to check it out for themselves, hackles up and weapons drawn.

It’s an outhouse.

Just an outhouse.

deleted by creator

I’d like to think there is a strategist in her camp who urged Biden to stay in for as long as he did, and only swap out after the first debate, closer to the 3 month runway mark. And that strategist is just waiting until after the election to gloat publicly about the scheme.

Now that’s a conspiracy theory I can get behind.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dice

Singular: die or dice

The modules I like have:

• A DM map with a bunch of numbers on it, and text sections corresponding to the numbers detailing an encounter in a certain area. I personally skim these ahead of time, to know which parts to read out to the players when/if they get there. These should be traps (with exposition hints), puzzles, and combats.
• A hook, escalation with two options, and resolution, all encompassing a possible plot. TBH, this should be something that a DM can discard and replace with their own plot, if they have the inspiration and energy to do so. But if they don’t, then your prewritten plot is there for their use. This is required reading either way, to know what’s important (or what to replace).
• Some NPCs that have basic goals and motivations, for the DM to RP if the players find them (or need a push.} You don’t want more than a paragraph or two for each, because all the extra details should be ad-libbed anyway. Motivation is key tho–why are they there, what do they want, and where their lines lie. Two one-liners from a Background table along with an alignment can usually cover most of that, TBH. Limit the required reading to 3-ish named NPCs per session, or less, with fewer introduced in subsequent areas of the module.

Most people hear “<blank> bubble” and think “oof, that’s not a good thing.”

Capitalists (the ones with the actual capital) hear the same thing and think “just imagine how rich I’ll be if I get out right before it pops! Blow more hot air into it! Quickly!”

Make dndbeyond good/better, invest in 3rd party VTT integrations, and keep selling books through those channels. Keep partnering with 3rd party content creators to get a cut of their profits selling through dndbeyond.

I’d stop trying to disrupt the industry or chase massive profits, and just be okay with reasonable profits.

They’d oust me in a week.

I enjoyed watching Harmonquest, the episodes of which have parts video of the table and parts animated story. It’s a comedy show, for the most part, which genre appeals to me. Past, that, I enjoy a good actual play podcast, sans video, like BomBARDed or NaDDPod, both of which are also comedic stories.

Just watching a group play a game can indeed be boring. But if that game is just a format for the genre of entertainment you already enjoy, that’s the appeal.

Meanwhile, Tristaniopsis is a synonym for Santorum, and I’ve never been able to credit anyone who goes by that moniker with any amount of respect.

Do you know how derogatory words work? You’re perpetuating the thing you disrespect with your own comment.

I’ve found that the least inspiring behaviors of players, from my perspective as a DM, are when they hack and slash in combat. Whether it’s built into the system, or you brew it on, giving players free skill checks alongside (rather than instead of) their normal combat turns can make things significantly more engaging and rewarding (for both them and the DM).

Give https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html a read. Might sway you, might not.

If dropping a database scares you, you are either unaware of the disaster recovery process, or there isn’t one. Edumacate yourself, or the org, as appropriate, so as to increase your confidence when dropping databases.

I read this to my wife.

Her response was “Stop.”

“No honey, that would be the red light.”

Post office too. Really any government office where the public is allowed inside.

Underpaid workers trying to explain bureaucratic minutiae (for which they are not responsible) every single day to people who are not versed in that minutiae, do not want to learn it, cannot learn it, and are preemptively frustrated that they have to have this interaction in the first place. There is no winning–mental health isn’t cheap, do the workers’ resilience only lasts for so many years/months/days before they default to hating the clients, and the clients don’t trust publicly available instructions, thus dooming themselves to the shitty interactions.

The only way to fix this is to take both people out of the equation–preprocess everything that might need to happen for everyone, to the point of turning every transaction into a single trasaction. That requires for every city, county, state, national, international agency to federate, so that you never have to file multiple documents to do a thing.

Capitalism has been touted as superior to the alternatives (Socialism, Communism, etc) b/c it has been claimed to be “self-regulating” and “self-correcting” and “even if we don’t understand why, it fixes itself”–basically the only choice among bad ones that, given our collective small brains, has any chance of sustaining itself and society in the absence of an ability of individuals or government to do so intentionally.

What it really is is an opportunity to stay anonymous while gaming the system, all the while convincing everyone else that they too can game the system (thereby being gamed). It is not a net benefit to society when taken to extremes.

Capitalism is great for the consumer in the micro. If there is a coffee shop on your street that sucks, and you start a coffee shop two blocks away to compete with it with your better coffee, you are participating in the version of capitalism that “works as intended.”

It doesn’t work in the macro. When, instead of continuing to manage your mom & pop business that barely breaks even, you vertically integrate, buy up or otherwise destroy your competition, and then reduce the quality of your product to bare minimums in favor of profits and shareholder value and growth, you take capitalism to an extreme that makes everyone else (the consumers, the workers, the would-be-competitors) have a worse quality of life.

People prefer better quality of life. Capitalism in the modern age is so far in that macro extreme that it no longer makes people’s lives better. East Palestine train derailment as an example… why would they prioritize safety over cost cutting? Bam, a town is cancerous. It’s not unreasonable for people to point at a corruptible system and blame it for the corruption that exists.

Problem is, people are corruptible, so whatever alternative we think is better, someone will come along and ruin it for personal gain.