ANOTHER series I just remembered and highly recommend is the Unincorporated Man series. I think there are 4-5 books in the series. Pretty good IMHO. Similar to The Expanse, it’s the Inners vs the Belters, and explores personal liberty and person hood from the perspective of owning “shares” of yourself like a company.

The conflict is awesome, and two military strategy geniuses duke it out in a Legends of the Galactic Heroes sort of way–one has all the resources and latest tech, the other is scrappy and has to deal with extreme resources shortages. Awesome story.

Wholeheartedly agree. I’ve read the first and second, and liked the first the most. Still planning to read the third eventually.

I also should mention I “read” them on audible, and the narrator was good too.

The only other one I’ve attempted to read by Niel Stephenson has been Cryptonomicon. It seemed to get way, way into the weeds and is over a thousand pages. It was in my 20’s that I attempted it and I only made it half way through.

His work is top tier and highly regarded by many as thoroughly researched.

Going to have to check this one out!

Seveneves is incredible, with the caveat that the last chapter of the book was almost handwavey with regards to the author’s conclusion of where humanity ended up. 10/10 otherwise.

Children of Time series goes over this a little bit, especially in the first book. Colonists end up waking up early due to a malfunction and end up falling into a devolving tribalistic race to the bottom on their journey to the planet.

EDIT: As for “hard” scifi, while I wouldn’t say this series is at the same level as The Martian or maybe The Expanse, it is pretty good with trying to keep things real, especially with regards to the human threads of the story.

Same. I’ve found Minneapolis to be fairly good too, but I only visit occasionally for work.

You say this pocket dimension connects to the internet, a la Matrix? I’d create a game with an in-game currency that looks the same as ours, and give it the same physical properties in-game as the real currency is for the region I’m in. I then would define that I am a billionaire with a bank account to match. I teleport in, withdraw my money in cash one suitcase at a time from the ATM that has an infinite cash supply, and then teleport out.

Be careful. That last one can turn into a nightmare too if it’s the wrong person.

Yeah, that’s a fair criticism. Maybe you could ask your players which way they would prefer? Give them the option to build new characters, or if they want, keep their current characters for a price.

I also wouldn’t do this without talking to the offending player and making sure they are cool with it and that it isn’t a “punishment” as much as you trying to help them build something that works well for their play style. It might give the players an interesting “living backstory”

Best wishes! DnD is such an awesome thing and I love hearing other people’s experiences both as players and GMs!

As an idea, you could very easily begin your next session with all your players in Avernus, with a devil that sees “great potential” in them, and knows they have unfinished business and want nothing more than to continue their quest–and feels like giving them a second chance and a gamble for their souls.

But the cost! Oh! The cost of such a trade is enormous. So enormous in fact… That it will require ripping the magic potential away from one character irrevocably as compensation… They are free to try and scrape together what they can by taking feats, subclasses or multi-classing if you allow it, but they must re-spec their character in a 1-for-1 trade into whatever class you believe best suites their play style (sounds like Paladin, Fighter, or Barbarian).

And the ongoing cost of this contract… Occasionally have this patron reveal himself and task the party to go do questionable things so that eventually, the party gets it in their heads that they are strong enough to take him on and try to end the contract prematurely.

Just an idea, I hate causing players to remake characters to continue a quest and figuring out a plausible excuse for them to pick up where the original characters left off!

This sounds like someone that doesn’t take the time to read and understand the mechanics of their chosen class or the spells and how they work. That’s unfortunate.

Have you discussed how their actions are impacting the other players, and that their play is leading to the deaths of their friends? They may not realize how irritating it can be from the friends’ point of view.

It seems as though they want a wizard-warrior, almost like a Jedi–who fights with swords, but has magic spells too. There are many ways to achieve this character idea and I’m sure you’re more aware of them than I, but it could be as simple as a fighter with the magic adept feat.

But is it Arch?

Atom was my go-to editor while in school–hard to believe it’s been long enough to be abandoned already. I’m going to have to check Pulsar out.

Thou shalt not be a poo poo head

Thou shalt not hold unbelievers to the moral standards thou agreedest to and that only applyeth to thee

Thou shalt not giveth a shitteth about shitteth that is not thine own

I’m such a carebear. I’ve never played a darkside character because I love the supporting characters too much 😅

KOTOR 1. Taris is cool but let’s be honest. I play that game because I like playing a Jedi. I’ve also played it from start to finish at least 20 times.

Those kids are going to remember you for the rest of their lives. Try using ChatGPT for any questions you might have with your game. It has helped me in a pinch.

I wrote a lot of star wars fanfic back 20 years ago because I was terrible at writing and couldn’t afford college classes for a few semesters. I needed the practice, and the best way at the time for me to exercise that skill was forcing myself into creative writing. Those chapters and the idea of how the story would end were never finished.

In 2020, I started a DnD campaign based off those chapters, and we are still playing the same campaign. When we began, I thought I had maybe two, or maximum three years of content. Now at three years later, we are optimistically at bout 1/3 of the way through the story playing at roughly every other week.

If I had one wish, it would be to have three hours to sell the idea to Jon Favreau, because he would make it the next Star Wars saga. I’ve taken elements from KOTOR1, The Witcher, The Expanse, and most of the new star wars shows to create a story where my players are battling for what they believe is right, when there are no right answers.

I’ve been lying to my players for about three years. They believe they are bringing peace and prosperity to a shattered Republic by fighting on the side of the rebels about 1000 BBY. What they do not know is that they’ve been manipulated and windwashed by a sith lord into decapitating the Jedi order and acting as the admirals and generals of the rebel fleet and army.

I have been planning this for ages. All the names of recurring characters are anagrams for things like “Revan was right”, “peace is a lie”, and “sith lord doom”, and in one part of the story, a player is actually playing his same character without knowing it, and his “new” character’s name is an anagram of his original character’s name.

There will come a point where he will find out he was manipulated by the story, and the other players will find out I did not tell them the whole truth of their own situation. It is going to be glorious. The party will find out they are all essentially Sith apprentices with no easy way out. And then we will get to the actual subject of the story–what it means to be a Jedi. What do you do, when everything you believed in and believed was right turns out to be a lie?

When faced with losing everything, like Obiwan Kenobi, how do you continue serving the light when it has robbed everything from you?

Not only that, but Bond has an entire agency and thousands of people supporting him and his activities. There really are things you can’t do yourself while in a heated situation that have to be done.