Your comment had me hopeful that I had missed news about David Duke’s death.

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I get where you’re coming from, but I disagree on a couple points:

Game design relies heavily on finding uses for the player character’s abilities. Imagine a metroidvania where you pick up a cool new grappling hook, only to realize there’s no terrain that can be grappled, and most enemies aren’t affected. What’s the point?

In terms of good/bad game design in TTRPGs, my philosophy is pretty simple; If everyone at the table is having a good time, it’s good game design. For my players, getting to use the abilities that they picked or earned throughout the game is super rewarding. For me as a GM, I can scale encounters a little higher knowing that they have a built-in edge.

In fact, my number one resource for game prep is my players’ character sheets. Did someone pick an obscure language as part of their backstory? You’d better believe it’s going to show up in the game! Dragonchess proficiency? Guess what the game of choice is at the local tavern?

Conversely, if an ability becomes the only thing a PC relies on, it can be interesting to add a foil to that ability. For example, one of my players built a Kensei Monk with a specialization in firearms. It was a fun character for him, but the sheer damage output he could do kind of overshadowed everyone else. My solution was to introduce a combat encounter where he could use the weapon, but doing so had a chance to attract more hostile creatures.

Anyway, all this to say that in my opinion, playing to your player characters’ strengths is not only rewarding for them, it can help a GM create some really cool moments.

Go woke or go broke 💪

It’s going to take them a long time to build back the good will that they threw away on one stupid decision. These idiots need to realize that capitulating to the far right doesn’t pay.

In fact, they should have learned their lesson when they fired James Gunn and lost him to DC Studios.

He gets the same sympathy from me that he gave to other shooting victims, trans people and immigrants.

Also grid based combat! If you want to be D&D purists, have fun but I’m glad my group isn’t!

Catfished to death by a chatbot is a rough way to go.

If I had to guess, she’s curious to see how big of a hole he’s going to dig himself into.

They shot themselves through the chest in the hope that the bullet would hit a trans person behind them.

The actual answer is that faceless pawns make better canon folder villains because it’s less likely the audience will relate to them as actual people in the context of the narrative. The in-universe explanation is that faceless pawns are better foot soldiers for the empire because it’s less likely said empire will relate to them as actual people.

Or if it’s my one year old, 2.5 seconds and she’s getting into something she’s not supposed to.

That’s 15 minutes from my house. Fuck this state.

Tariffs allow Trump to pay for his tax cuts to the ultra wealthy by stealing from the working class, without them knowing. He also gets to position himself as a strongman and negotiator. There you go.

I strongly suspect the Gemini team is trying to artificially inflate the usage statistics for it by opting people in without their consent and requiring you to replace assistant with Gemini in order to access popular tools like image gen.

It’s likely that in a few months they’ll get exposed, probably not even get a slap on the wrist for it, and go back to their shady business practices.

Or that weird thing ChatGPT was doing were it screamed “help” in your own voice before replying like nothing happened.

Wait what the fuck

The 1+2 remasters were actually really solid. I’m cautiously optimistic about this one.

Can’t wait to get Chuck unstuck.

Having a gun for self defense fucks with your head. When my wife and I lived in a relatively rural area, I used to keep a shotgun under our bed for protection, but I eventually got rid of it. Never shot it a single time, but you’d better believe every time I cleaned it or moved it or just remembered I had it, I was imagining the horrible situation I might be forced to use it in. That shit low key fucked me up. Strange sound in the middle of the night? Better grab the gun.

I can’t even begin to imagine carrying one on me, especially in public. I like to think I have a pretty level head, but some people are just waiting for you to look at them the wrong way so they finally have that moment. So frightened or psychotic or some combination of the two that their first instinct is to just start shooting. Hell, my wife’s cousin-in-law got in a fucking shootout when he cut someone off in traffic.

Used to be very pro responsible gun ownership, but lately I’m thinking that level of responsibility is far too rare in people.

My <2 year old scared the shit out of me when he started doing voices for his stuffed animals. Nothing gets you out of bed faster than hearing your kid say over the baby monitor, “night night,” and then a different voice say, “night night baby.”