jjjalljs

joined 2 years ago
[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 4 points 1 hour ago

I think of lot of people are semi illiterate and embarrassed by it

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 6 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

What's with the weird censoring of the post metadata? Do we not want to credit the original poster for some reason?

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 3 points 4 hours ago

But dnd's paradox is it is both open ended and rigid. My problem is it's too open ended in many ways (eg: social conflict), almost completely missing rules in other parts (eg: meta game mechanics, conceding conflicts), and too rigid in others (eg: Eldritch blast targeting rules, unarmed smite and sneak attack). That's not even going into the bigger problems like the adventuring day or how coarse class+level makes many concepts impractical at best.

On top of that, it is so mega popular many players have no other reference points and don't realize its assumptions are not universally true. It's like people who have only ever watched the Lord of the rings movies, and they're like "of course movies are four hours long and have horses. That's just how movies are."

The main things DND 5e does well are popular support, and the very small decision space for players makes it hard to make a character that's mechanically very weak or very strong. It brings nothing special to the table for roleplaying.

Compare with my go-to example of Fate, which has simple systems to encourage it. CofD, my second favorite, also does.

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 1 points 4 hours ago

DND is a team game, and both have agreed upon rules. Not sure I follow your objection

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 4 points 8 hours ago

It's the thing conservatives do. They just say stuff for effect and don't care about truth or consistency.

The Constitution is a perfect document that must be upheld when it suits their goals, and a living document that must be updated when that suits their goals instead. They are liars. They should not be accepted in polite society.

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 4 points 10 hours ago

I'm pretty sure the browser has more sandboxing than a desktop app running as me. The desktop app could do anything. Firefox tries to prevent webpages from doing nefarious stuff.

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 20 points 10 hours ago (4 children)

There's a spectrum of play that runs from strict rules-as-written to complete calvinball. Calvinball can be fun, but it's not really a transferrable game. It's very particular to that moment and that group.

Sometimes people post wacky calvinball moments (eg: rolling damage against the floor, a free action to eat tiles, a +2 bonus to hit) as if that's baseline RAW DND. It is not. Many tables would be like "wtf, that's not how this game works". So it can be kind of weird when it's presented as obvious, as if it's raw, when it's just make pretend.

Imagine if the post was "we were playing basketball and I missed the shot, so I got in my car and drove up close so I could jump off the roof and dunk". Like, wacky story but not how you're supposed to play the game.

Furthermore, DND specifically is kind of bad at creativity. It's very precariously balanced, with specific rules in odd places and no rules in others. Compare with, for example, Fate, which has "this thing in the scene works to my advantage" rules built in. DND is almost entirely in the hands of the DM.

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 6 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

When I have to use discord, I use it in the browser. I don't trust the app not to get up to no good.

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 2 points 21 hours ago

Labor should organize and tell management if they don't get their heads out of their asses they might lose them.

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 17 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I've recently started to have to use Teams at work and wow it's awful. In subtle and overt ways.

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Google is complicit

 

Do you remember your first character death? Was it memorable?

I usually GM, and NPC deaths don't hit as hard. I don't even remember my first. I lost a warlock in a D&D 5e game, but we were high level so raise dead was just right there. Not very impactful.

Last night, I had a player's first character death ever in a game I've been running. It's sort of Shadowrun + World of Darkness, using Fate for the rules. The player had learned a kind of magic I stole from Unknown Armies: If you take big risks now, you can do more powerful magic later. Blindly crossing a busy street might be a mild charge, but russian roulette would be a major charge.

The players were trying to investigate a warehouse for plot reasons. This player ends up by himself in the basement while the ground level is on fire (for player reasons). He finds an armed goon, a guy dressed like a doctor, and several unconscious people wired up to a machine.

The player goes, "I'm going to russian roulette for a charge."

I go, "Are you sure? It's all or nothing. No take backs. You get a major charge, or you die. You'd roll 1d6, and on a 6 you lose."

They go, "Hmm okay." The player tries to threaten the goon, but the dice don't favor them. Now they're in a slightly worse position, mechanically.

The player goes, "I'm going to roulette" and just rolls the die. No more discussion. It came up 6.

The rest of us are like, "Wait, what? You just..? Right then? That's so... anti-climactic."

I wasn't sure what to do. I hadn't expected them to so casually go for the big score! I thought it'd come up in a big climax scene, not a fully escapable conflict with an unarmed goon!

We talked a little about ways forward that keep the character but don't cheapen the mechanic, but the player was like, "No, I rolled the dice on it and lost. His brains are all over the floor now."

The player had to go sit on their own for a little while. They're thinking of rejoining as an NPC they'd worked with, but said they absolutely do not want to use magic again.

This is one I'm going to remember for a while.

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submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by jjjalljs@ttrpg.network to c/linux@lemmy.ml
 

A friend of mine has an old macbook air. It still works, more or less, but the OS isn't getting any updates anymore, and updating to the latest OS seems dicey.

Has anyone had experience installing linux on an old macbook? From a quick internet search it looks like you can just make a bootable USB and have at it. Thinking mint because it's popular and my friend is a pretty basic user. The laptop will be mostly used for like youtube/netflix and basic web browsing.

Edit: a little extra context: I am moderately comfortable with Linux. I ran mint for a while on my desktop, and I've done software development for a job. I can install docker and start a python project fine, but I'd use a GUI for like partitioning a hard drive.

 

Like I saw one that was titled "I wonder why rule" and had a picture about overpaid CEOs or something.

Why "rule"? What's the origin of this format?

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