This is one of my things I go off about. People sometimes tell me they want to move out of the city “for their kids” and I’m like are you crazy? The suburbs were hell as a kid. Can’t go anywhere because you don’t have a car and walking is dangerous and slow. I was always so jealous of my friends that lived in the city. They could just go do stuff

I finally finished the third game after all these years. New playthrough of the legendary edition. Femme Shep, but not the new default skin. Something about the face shape looks weird to me.

Also, I’d avoided spoilers all these years. The ending was as bad as everyone said. I’m late to the party , I know.

When I play RPGs, I don’t make myself. I don’t see the character as an extension of myself. I’d much rather watch a woman do cool stuff than some dude. So I usually make women characters. Maybe some part of my brain sees some cool dude doing cool stuff and goes “great. Now I’m competing with him” and is stressed.

One of my friends would always try to make himself in games. Skinny white guy with short hair and minimal facial hair. He saw himself in the game and liked it. I don’t really want to see myself get blown up or stabbed or eaten by a demon, but to each their own

In multiplayer games where other people might see it as an extension of real me, I more often play male characters. In tabletop, I’ve never played a woman PC. None of the reasons I do so in a video game really apply. (I’ve played plenty of woman NPCs, but that’s different)

I was showing my girlfriend the game a little and she said that the default male Shepard looked like an asshole. Shaved head no facial hair looks like a skinhead, I guess.

If someone writes a complicated work of fiction, is it gate keeping to not also include an explainer in simple prose?

Someone might but Finnigan’s wake and be completely baffled by it. Is that an accessibility problem? Is the author in the wrong?

Why or why not?

Note this is distinct from publishing it in braille or audiobook format

Difficulty is not the same as accessibility.

Remapping the inputs so they can be done with one hand is not the same as “you get twice as much health and mana”.

Everyone dies to the capra demon. Everyone has options within the game to adjust difficulty. Change gear or tactics. Summon help. Level up. Adding an out of game difficulty slider on top seems unnecessary.

People that are like “I want it to be easier without using any of the tools” are essentially saying “I want it to be easier but I don’t want to turn down the difficulty”

Additionally, the difficulty and the struggle creates a sense of community. People like feeling like they belong to a group.

Also, difficulty is poorly defined. Sometimes people get mad about like being ambushed by monsters that were in plain sight but they didn’t notice. Is that too hard?

One of the things I really like about Fate as a rules system, is that is built in. Every character has a Trouble and other aspects. So if your trouble is like “Manners of a goat”, you can be like “Wouldn’t it be fun if I completely insulted the Baron at this dinner??” If everyone agrees, you get a fate point.

The DM can also “compel” you on aspects in a similar way.

One of my players has an outstanding bounty and there’s been a lot of “You know what this scene needs? Razor to show up.” compels.

'm about two hours in. Taking my time. Seems good so far. I went in with my NG+ faith character. It’s a strong build.

Did some coop against a side boss. Community hasn’t changed much - saw some hosts just eat his attacks and die, get greedy and die, the usual.

It does have some sort of bug where it says “illegal activity detected” or something and kicks me out of multiplayer, but I haven’t done any mods or anything. Verified game files. Kind of annoying. Hopefully patched soon.

That’s what I always say. Targeted advertising should be illegal. Contextual advertising is acceptable.

If I’m on the star trek wiki, serve me ads for star trek, sci-fi, and whatever. You don’t need to know anything about me specifically.

We’d still need to do something about like ads that take up too much space, hurt page performance, or introduce malware, but removing the stalking would be an improvement

I’m more of a Himedere, and it’s a lot of fun when the group is into it.

I did a really good dungeon with a puzzle once. Part of how it worked resulted in players unexpectedly getting split up and not being able to find their way back, while also being at risk of freezing to death. One of the players was like “I’ve never been so stressed in my life”, but like in a good way, and I took that as the highest praise. I was so proud of them when they figured out the dungeon

I had fun with my warlock familiar, Vincenzo. He had the “Vincenzo Special” where he’d invisibly fly up to someone in combat and rip one straight from the depths of hell to flavor his Help action. I’m still a little bit a teenage boy I guess.

Accessibility like controller input options is not the same as “you have more health and can dodge more”.

Healthy parenting would go a long way. See some of the other comments in this thread.

You can also have settings on your local network. If you’re afraid of your kid casually finding something inappropriate, you can set that up stuff locally without involving the government. A determined kid will still find a way to get stuff, so this is more a safeguard against accidental discovery.

Investing in quality education would also benefit everyone.

the only way to protect kinds (like little me) is to block the porn.

This is false.

Parents have a number of options available to them that do no need to involve the state.

What an extraordinarily bad take.

RPGs are not required to have loot, so that line is just nonsense.

Baldur’s gate 1 and 2, for the bulk of it, let you revisit previous areas.

“Explore it all in one shot” is not the only kind of exploration.

Only the third game does that, I’m pretty sure. It’s not a terrible solution, though it can be annoying when money is finite.

At least you can go back to previous areas

I kind of hate the thing in games where it’s like “you didn’t look in the second bathroom so you didn’t get the staff of mega fireballs. No, you can’t go back to the house. It’s still there but you can’t go in.”.

That and the common “no matter what the game says, do the quest objective last because that might move you past something important” thing.

Playing Mass Effect 2 and there’s a lot of “go fight them and save the day!” And I’m like hold on I need to check every corner for upgrades real quick.

The game is good despite DND 5e’s rules, not because of them.

Unfortunately, DND is mega popular. Many people have never played anything else. Many people have never even played it. So any discussion about it has a “of course 15 strength is +2, isn’t that just how RPGs work?” segment where you have to establish that DND is in fact weird.

Friend of mine never got their driver’s license. They live in NYC and don’t need one. They also were concerned about safety- they have ADHD and are prone to inattentiveness, and they didn’t want to be driving a car when that manifested.

I have a license but I also live in NYC. I don’t need to drive. It’s pretty great. It’s expensive in time money space and externalized costs, and it’s often less effective than just taking public transit.

Unfortunately most of the US is resistant to investing in mass transit and density, so it’s going to be shitty car-first spaces for a while.