Sometimes I make video games
When I was a teenager I felt this way. I didn’t ask to be here, and so far life has sucked pretty hard.
My stance has softened as I’ve aged. I still wish I’d never been born, mind you, but I don’t blame my parents for having kids. They just did what came naturally for them.
You can’t consent to being born, and that upset me a lot. But it’s not like they could have asked my permission anyway. Might as well make the most of the situation.
I hate CSS, my brain just can’t seem to wrap itself around a flexbox
TTRPGs are quite diverse, but generally speaking they follow a similar formula. Traditionally, play takes place around a table, but even that’s negotiable. Many people play exclusively online these days.
Depending on the system you choose to play, accessories such as minis and battlemats could be optional. However, if you favour a tactical game and want to engage with all the combat rules, they do become more important.
There’s always alternatives though. I don’t keep minis for all my creatures - as a DM, who could afford to? Personally I use paper tokens because they’re easy to whip up and doodle on. Many people use coins, legos, or colored blocks. Anything can stand as a proxy of it’s the right size. There are tales of people who use candy so players can eat what they kill.
Another option, particularly if you go for the online option, is to use a Virtual Tabeletop (VTT). This is software that simulates your table, battlemat, minis, and generally facilitates play. I find them complicated and kind of fiddly, but a lot of people like them.
At the end of the day, you don’t need all that. There’s a concept of play called the Theater of the Mind where players use their shared imagination instead of any accessories. It’s easier when there aren’t a lot of moving parts to keep track of, but if you prefer a narratively focused game then it’s a good way to play.
As far as how to play the game, that’s up to the individual system. However generally speaking you play by having a conversation. The DM describes a situation and then asks “What do you do?” Players then describe their actions. Turn-taking can be more or less rigid depending on the situation. In D&D in particular, turns become much more formal during combat where players take turns in Initiative Order.
Generally speaking, near the start of the rule book (if you have one) there will be an Example of Play. This is usually styled as a transcript of a conversation between players. I always thought those were neat, and they dona pretty good job of showing how a game might play
Getting into the hobby can be intimidating because there are a lot of rules in certain systems, and it can be hard to keep track of them all.
Almost all systems include (or should include) Rule Zero, or Have Fun - the most important rule of all.
If you’re running the game then all rules are optional. As long as everyone is having fun then you can play however you want.
Anyway, I ramble a lot, but I’ve been playing these games for a long time. You’re in for a fun new hobby, good luck getting your group together!
Calling someone an idiot after having your opinion refuted in a thread about people having thin skin is either some high level satire or proof you have thin skin
I suppose it could be some third thing, but I don’t want to make baseless assumptions
I paid a dollar for this two weeks ago
Worth it
Metal is like cereal. There’s a thousand varieties, its marketing has vibrant characters, and everyone has their favorite style
This is a reference to Warhammer 40k, a tabletop gaming / book / video game franchise
The Orkz in the setting paint their war trucks red because they believe it makes them go faster. And it does, in fact, make them go faster
In a high court judgment handed down in May, Mellor said that Wright presents himself as an extremely clever person, “however, in my judgment, he is not nearly as clever as he thinks he is”. He said he was an “extremely slippery witness”.
Sick burn from the judge
If you want an out of the box distro that just works and has that old-school flavour, maybe look into Mint.
If you want something a bit more modern, then pop_os! is something of a Linux darling
Ubuntu probably has the widest community support. Although it does seem to have some issues
I’m not clear on what your bugs are, but if it’s like, you run a command in the terminal and a bunch of scary sounding messages come up, that’s normal. That’s just how it likes to be
If it’s been a while since you’ve seen used it, then I’d say Linux is probably worth another shot. It’s come a long way, and it only gets better with age
Counterpoint: if people feel like they can’t talk about these things then they’ll never talk about them and the condition often worsens.
I also feel pretty powerless to help in a meaningful way. But I’m not going to shun someone who’s struggling either
There’s lots of schools of thought on how you should write your diary, but imo the most important thing to keep in mind is that diary is for you.
I primarily use my diary as a coping mechanism to deal with stress and to reframe my outlook. This means I don’t think very hard about what I’m writing, I’m just putting my feelings onto a page. Then once those thoughts are on paper they become easier to deconstruct.
My primary diary pulls double duty, and I use it to plan out the following day. When I reflect on how today went, it’s easier to make a plan for tomorrow. And at least in my experience it’s easier to make a plan the day before than to wait and see how I feel the next day.
Some people like a themed diary. I keep a separate gratitude journal where the only rule is to write things in it that made me happy. This is helpful on bad days when I can’t think of anything good going on in my life
If you’re into mental health and self improvement, there’s loads of literature on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) online. CBT is the gold standard of psychiatric care currently, and is primarily self directed through journaling exercises. Searching for these exercises could give you a framework if you’d like to follow something a bit more rigid
I’ve done a couple tours myself, it’s no picnic
I feel it’s one of those jobs that everyone should do at some point in their life. That or customer / food service. Either exposes you to some of the rudest, most entitled people, and if everyone had that exposure I feel there’d be more empathy to go around
I tell you though, hearing people yell at your mom all day is great motivation to stay in school to find a better job
I was the kid, mom was working in a call center
I learned that people suck, and I still hate talking on the phone.
I also learned sudoku because you have to do something between calls.
Spotify has vaguely attributed the need for the API changes to improving security:
- In its blog post, Spotify says that it rolled out the changes with “the aim of creating a more secure platform.”
- In a community forum post, a Spotify employee says that “we want to reiterate the main message from the blog that we’re committed to providing a safe and secure environment for all Spotify stakeholders.” The post has many pages of replies from frustrated developers.
- In a statement to The Verge, Spotify spokesperson Brittney Le Roy says that “as part of our ongoing work to address the security challenges that many companies navigate today, we’re making changes to our public APIs.”
This is fairly disingenuous. The affected endpoints are all GET requests, which are read-only requests that provide some data about the track/artist/playlist/etc. There isn’t really very much potential to do anything insecure here.
The only thing they’re securing is their hegemony.
I just finished Wind in the Willow and I have to say it’s a good book. Thanks for the recommendation, it definitely holds up.
When Mole came home for the holidays really affected me. I wish I had a friend as good as Rat, because even though Mole was ashamed of where he came from and had neglected his past, he still made him feel like home. And then the carollers visited and it was really quite wonderful. I guess home really is the people in your life. Fuck, now I’m crying again
I don’t know if I totally understood what was going on with the pan-goat. Then again, I’m not sure I was meant to.
Anyway, thanks again. I’ve been enriched by this book
In English we have an idiom, “same shit, different day,” which means dealing with the same sort of unpleasant task until it’s routine. Do you have something similar?
This Hamburg court thing sounds like something I’d call “same shit, different pay,” which would be like when you have an issue with your boss so you appeal to their boss, and find out that they’re just as bad except they’re higher in the organization.
I learned it by watching you, dad!
I don’t know, I guess I must have forgot
Friendly reminder to DMs that Counter Spell is a reaction, so after your fireball gets counter-counter-counter-counter-counter-counter-counterspelled you can just have some other mook cast another.
I mean, you shouldn’t counter-counter-counter-counterspell if you can help it. But having multiple casters in an encounter adds some more strategizing, especially if you have a scenario where a player might want to hold their reaction for something else.
I’d say your instincts are good, and that this is too many rituals to give out. In fact, this looks more like a list of all rituals than a player’s wishlist of rituals.
You’ve got some good advice here on how many to allow, so let me take a different tack here and give some advice for handling a lot of rituals at once.
The foremost important rule of a ritual is that it takes ten minutes longer to cast a spell as a ritual than to simply cast the spell.
Many of these spells have a duration of one hour. Say you have three rituals going: comprehend languages, floating disk, and unseen servant. Every hour you would have to rest for 30 minutes to refresh your spells, then you’d have another 30 minutes of adventuring before they begin to expire.
So if your player wants to have the rituals active and ready, the entire party only travels at half speed. I’d have NPCs take the piss out of them and I’d encourage the players to do the same (in character, and all in good fun)
Time is important to you as a DM because you can use it to put pressure on the party. You can do this narratively by imposing deadlines, or taking NPCs hostage, or what have you. However, you can also impose this mechanically by having random encounters.
As the DM you get to decide how to do random encounters. The most common rule I see is to roll once per hour to see if there’s an encounter.
Now, a lot of this sounds like you might be punishing the player for using too many rituals. That’s not strictly true though. You’re enabling the player to make choices, and choices have consequences. Enforcing these rules are a way that you can be the Yes DM you want to be while also keeping the power level grounded.