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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • Sometimes I go to a meetup that does one-shots. They’re a pretty good group.

    Most of my friends either aren’t interested, or aren’t interested enough to actually show up. It’s easier to make friends with people who want to play RPGs than get your friends to play. The worst outcome is when your friends are kind of people-pleasers, and they say yes to the game even though they don’t really want to. Then they half-ass it or flake, and the friendship suffers.





    • it’s free
    • runs on a wider range of hardware
    • is more customizable
    • can run much windows software with wine or proton
    • has a large ecosystem of native software
      • much of it free and open source

    The advantage of Mac is it’s more widely used and thus more widely supported (for things that are supported at all). You can just buy an apple computer from a trusted source and it’ll work. Linux doesn’t quite have that yet. If more people move to Linux , you’ll find better drivers and stuff.


  • Yes! I usually take any opportunity to gush about Fate but I restrained myself here

    The main weakness of Fate is you need more engaged players. Stuff like DND can mostly hum along with passive players, but Fate falls really flat if people aren’t engaging with it.


  • On player training, I like systems where you can bribe players to let bad things happen.

    Like in vampire: the requiem, a player can always turn a regular failure into a Dramatic Failure, and get a little XP. This meant the players went from “oh no the cave is probably full of monsters let’s take forever stressing” to “I ROLLED GARBAGE CAN I JUST BARGE IN LIKE A CONFIDENT IDIOT FOR MY DRAMATIC FAILURE?”

    Tastes vary, but I found it made a more interesting and snappier game.


  • Much of this slots into time outside work rather than the workday itself.

    • walk a different route to a destination
    • pick an algorithm and walk with no destination (eg: straight until you hit a light not in your favor, then turn. Works in urban envs)
    • go somewhere you don’t normally go. Eg: library, different coffee shop, that little art store you always see
    • go to the library. Walk along the shelf with eyes closed and pick a book at random.
    • pick a genre of music you never listen to. Listen to it.
    • cook or prepare a meal unlike your normal fare
    • go to a thrift store. Buy a cheap article of clothing you wouldn’t normally wear. Wear it. See how it feels
    • find free or cheap art (music, theater, whatever) in your area. Go.
    • journal. Spend a few minutes writing down your day’s details
    • hit wikipedia’s random article button. Read it.








  • Python.

    • It’s pretty easy to get going.
    • the debugger is very good. Being able to put a breakpoint and interactively fuss with it is so much better than print statements and crying
    • you can (and should) use type annotations, but they are optional
    • it’s on most machines already, but you don’t want to fuck with the system install of it. On Linux and Mac you can use pyenv or similar if the system came with a version you can’t use. (Don’t teach anyone python 2.)
    • the standard library is very good.

    You could also do JavaScript, as that’ll work on any modern browser. However, JavaScript is a deeply cursed language. It’s really bad at like every level.

    I don’t recommend it unless your top priority is “it is definitely available everywhere” and “these are future web developers”.



  • jjjalljs@ttrpg.networktoWitchy Memes@lemmy.worldEmpowered witches
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    24 days ago

    I think there’s a difference between “these rituals and metaphors help me deal with the struggles of the world” and “yo I totally hexed him that’s why he got the flu”.

    The former is pretty harmless. Some people meditate. Some people lift weights. Some people draw cards from a deck and reflect on how they feel about getting The Tower when they asked about their boyfriend. It’s just a lens to focus your thoughts.