I know this will vary a lot, so hypothetically let’s say you currently WFH/work remotely at least 3 days a week. Your commute to work takes an hour max (door to door) each way. If you were given the choice of a 4 day week working onsite, or a 5 day week WFH (or as many days as you’d like) for the same pay, which would you...
I don’t want to go in to the office. The pay doesn’t include the extra commute time, plus getting dressed up slightly nicer.
I live alone. I don’t have kids. Home is fine.
The office is loud. Often the wrong temperature. I get interrupted a lot. I don’t get as much done on the tiny monitor they provide vs the big ass 4k ones I have home.
Some people are really not great at responding on slack though. If they could get on my level that would be nice.
For example, I am terrible at Super Meat Boy, but just playing it has really improved how I play platformers and games that need faster imputs overall.
I was also going to say dark souls. It made me better at accepting loss in games.
Though I do think it’s interesting how some people thrive on challenge and getting their ass kicked until they triumph, and some people just aren’t here for that. If the game is hard they just don’t want to fuck with it.
This topic is often a good example of how people are more emotional than reasonable.
Someone will complain about all the things they don’t like about DND, but when presented with alternatives balk and stick to DND. The devil you know, the comfort of the familiar, whatever.
Which is fine, I guess. We all do that kind of thing. I’m just as emotional as anyone else.
The fact that they let prepared casters change prepared spells without a long rest is a HUGE buff. As written you pick your spells when you long rest, and if it turns out you needed something you didn’t prepare you’d be out of luck
The fact that you can long rest basically whenever is a huge break from D&D’s expectations. Namely, the adventuring day. Granted, D&D’s adventuring day is hot garbage so I see why they didn’t stick to it.
But you’re right it doesn’t make a huge difference in BG3, outside of the few timed events, but it is a buff.
One risk with this is when you have a new player join your group. They might expect raw and be surprised by a whole kettle of home brew.
I for one would be annoyed if I joined a group and found they were ignoring the rest rules. They may be having fun but I would have made different decisions if I’d known what they were actually playing.
In my imagination there is a large set of players who “homebrew” stuff because they don’t know or understand the rules, and a very large subset of those players are also disorganized. A sizable subset also just don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.
So they’ll be like “oh we let the wizard attack and cast a spell on the same turn. Is that not the normal way?”
But for people who homebrew with intention and thought, yeah, what you said.
Are you one of the players who wants to “just talk out” social conflicts? That’s a totally valid way to play but I hate it. Or at least I hate it when the game has stats for like charisma and intelligence. I cannot be 20 charisma in real life do not try to make me.
This introduces confusion in new players like “sorry cat’s grace only applies to dex skill checks, not saves”. Which then makes them think all RPGs are a convoluted stack of exceptions, so they don’t try other games.
Are you going to reinvent 4e? Because a lot of attempts to fix 5e turn into 4e.
I think it worked like Everyone has a few defenses. Probably Armor, reflex, will, fortitude. Write them down on your sheet. They can receive bonuses from different things. All attacks target one (or more, maybe, if you want to get fancy) defense. Attacker always rolls. Easy peasy.
I think it was a different thread where I posted about how a guy in my dnd group straight face told us something like “the beauty of DND is we can just try out different rules. If we want to do a chase scene we can try it one way, and if it doesn’t work or we don’t like it we can try something else”.
I’m just like that’s not a unique property of DND. That’s just how playing make believe works. And I’d rather have a game that runs okay out of the box rather than keep playtesting as a DM, or deal with unchecked dm whims as a player.
Elon Musk’s alleged penchant for not paying bills is catching up with him. In the wake of numerous lawsuits claiming the world’s richest man failed to pay severance owed to many of the 6,000 employees he fired after acquiring Twitter. On Monday, CNBC reported that the tech company now known as X is facing some 2,200...
The other day a guy in my group straight faced said something like “The beauty of D&D is we can make up and try out some rules for, like, a chase scene. If we don’t like them we can be like ok that didn’t work let’s try something else.”
My dude that is not a unique property of D&D. That’s true of any pen and paper game. The fact that D&D provides lousy rules for things and we have to stumble around trying to come up with something that works is not a strength
Most of that stuff is async so probably not a lot. Like, you load the page and it sends a request off to pendo, but the page doesn’t wait for that to finish before doing the next thing.
There are a lot of ways to make pages perform badly, though, especially as they get more dynamic.
At my job the home page was loading extremely slowly for a while until we realized a refactor had made the query backing it extremely stupid. Like it accidentally was doing a separate query for every user associated with every post you could see, and then not even using the results. Oops. Fixed that and got a huge performance increase, but it had nothing to do with data tracking.
I understand that not everyone is fortunate to have money saved to be able to have the leeway to leave jobs whenever they feel like it and so forth. But I just feel like people have lost their sense of self-respect when it comes down to employment....
I only have one anecdote. A friend of mine was having trouble at work where their boss was giving them shit about sick time (they had COVID). Friend got a meeting with the boss and the union rep on their side. They said it was like the difference between representing yourself at court and having a lawyer.
If everyone refused to put up with shit like a manager looking through your phone, it wouldn’t happen. The employer wouldn’t have any employees and they’d be done.
But enough people make the optimal-for-themselves choice of putting up with it in exchange for food and money. You can’t really blame them. Do you trust your coworkers?
We should have stronger worker protections and unions, but it’s a long path from here to there.
I’m in my 30s so I should be used to this by now, but this shit is getting so stressful guys. I have no savings, my checking account is drained every month with rent, and if there’s ever a serious emergency I have no safety net, I’m legitimately fucked. I’m one unplanned expense away from absolute ruin. Those in the same...
A lot of the good answers are already posted. I’ll share my experience.
A bunch of people I know, including myself, rose out of retail hell through customer service jobs. My first one was making $55k/year (in 2023 dollars. This was a while ago because I’m old) and jumped decently after a year. Plus it was steady work at a desk with insurance. I switched to another company doing the same kind of thing after a year or two, and was able to transfer internally to IT. A couple years later I made the leap to engineering. I don’t have a computer science degree. It was all experience and teaching myself.
A bunch of other friends took similar paths, and now have higher paying jobs.
But this was in new york city, where there are a lot of startups looking to hire people. And because the companies were small, the jobs weren’t a cubicle hell where you read from a script. I got to actually help people troubleshoot when I was doing IT. That first job I could just talk to people like people.
I don’t know how different it is now or in other parts of the country. I’m not sure how much the pandemic and AI hype has changed the market. But getting a first foot in the door is really helpful. You can meet people and get on the job experience.
A lot of job listings might require a college degree, but enough experience can be a substitute. Also knowing people helps a stupid, unfair, amount.
Patch #2 for Baldur’s Gate 3 is now live, bringing bug fixes, substantial performance improvements and much more! If you missed our latest Community Update, we highly recommend you give it a read here for a glimpse at the future of Baldur’s Gate 3, and the role your feedback is playing in that....
Also hoping they’ll do something so enemies handle stealth better. It’s very silly when they give up the search after like two rounds, even when there’s a dead body right there. Sometimes they freak out and run around, but a lot of the time they just go back to normal.
If we’re going to have guns, then I support mandatory training. If you can’t pass a safety test, you shouldn’t have a gun.
I think there’s an ideological gap that’s maybe insurmountable on this issue. I don’t want other people around me to be lethally armed. Have you met people? What’s the line? “People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.”. I don’t want the guy who’s parking spot got taken from him to pull out his gun. I don’t want someone to shoot the kid who rang their doorbell unexpectedly. A guy I used to work with would say “An armed society is a polite society” and I’m like, no. If you’re pulling out guns to settle traffic disputes, you have a failed society. I don’t want to live in a world where people think it’s okay to pull out a lethal weapon over minor problems. I don’t want to always have my speech chilled because at any moment the other guy can just shoot me dead, so I better make nice. That’s the world I imagine where everyone’s carrying a gun.
I also live in a city. Most of the time there’s stuff you don’t want to destroy behind anything you might be shooting at. Maybe it’s different out in the sticks where you have wide opens spaces. I don’t want to have to think about stray bullets because some macho idiot got mad that someone took his seat on the bus. I don’t want to live in fear that the guy sitting next to me on the train is going to switch from fondling his gun to firing his gun.
And I know people can do violence without guns. Fists and knives and trucks and bombs exist. But those are less efficient, useful for other things, or difficult to get. A fist fight over a bus seat probably everyone walks away from. A gun fight, probably not. And yes, knives exist, but they don’t seem to have the mystique that makes people stupid, and are less likely to kill a bunch of people real fast.
Probably the best compromise would be to have gun laws be at the state or city level. Nebraska is very different than new york city. I don’t know how you’d handle people traveling though.
Yeah I’m not a single issue voter on guns. If the guy in this thread was a serious candidate they’d have a good shot (no pun intended) at my vote, depending on the alternatives and other details.
You’re probably the most reasonable pro gun person I’ve talked to in a while.
Do you think the right to own a gun is more real than the right to drive a car? Because we require a driver’s test (and insurance and other stuff) for a car, and if you took cars away a lot of people would be fucked. Way more than if you took guns away. (Which is also a bunch of separate issues. We should be less car centered)
I don’t really accept that the right to have a gun is a fundamental right. I know it’s in the Constitution. That provides legal backing for it but not like moral or ethical backing, to me.
You’re right that poverty other issues cause a lot of problems. And our policing system is utter garbage. That’s why if you were a serious candidate, I’d consider voting for you even with the disagreements on this.
You could make an argument that travel is a fundamental right, and if you accept that the most effective tool comes with the right then access to a car becomes a right.
I don’t know if I accept that having a right also means you have the right to the most effective tools to execute it. You have the right to speech but airwaves are restricted. Many places have laws limiting noise made in the early morning.
Some of that probably comes from recognizing that you may have the right to talk about how great Widgets are, I have the right to sleep at night.
You might have the right to defend yourself, but I want the right to not live in mortal fear because that guy carries a fully automatic gun on the bus I need to take.
So this may be a silly question. Long time ago I played D&D with friends. We had a good DM, and had a great time as a party of friends roleplaying an interesting adventure. Fast forward to now, where life, family, work and all not easily allows to currently play with a great roleplaying group....
Solasta is a pretty fun story light DND game. I enjoyed it, but I never finished anything other than the original campaign. It’s pretty generous with long rests and short rests, which kind of ruins dnd’s precarious balance.
Personally I’m super tired of DND specifically. I’d love something like solasta but with a different system .
Yeah I didn’t like how they limited short rests in bg3. It’s pretty hard on warlocks. But letting people long rest as much as they want means you can solve most fights with three fireballs, which isn’t how the game is really designed. (Bg3 sort of limits it based on supplies, but supplies are plentiful and you can always cast good berry)
On the other hand, I’ve seen polling that shows most real life tables do like one or maybe two fights per long rest, which is insane.
Whenever someone suggests Pathfinder over DND I’m reminded of that blues brothers joke “we’ve got both kinds of music here. Country and western”
Anyway it depends on if you mean for tabletop or computer.
For tabletop I’d want something that takes advantage of human creativity like Fate. Or Mage: The Awakening (2e). People will say that DND let’s you be creative because “you can do whatever you want” and that’s technically true, DND doesn’t really help you out. You can make your own spells, but there’s not much guidance (pun intended). Same with classes. Aside from that, stuff like “spend a fate point to declare a story detail” isn’t something computers can handle yet.
For computerized, something written from the ground up to take advantage of that. Tabletop games need to have simple math that players can do in their head. You couldn’t practically do like “randomly pick 100 numbers from 1-100, and count how many match.” at the table. The computer can do whatever weird math you want to get whatever outcome shape you want.
For either, there’s like a three page scried in me about all the dnd’isms I don’t like. I should probably just write it once so I can repost it when it comes up. I’ll spare you unless you really want to know what some rando online dislikes about DND specifically.
I think a large chunk of people have simply never read the rules. They watch a podcast and “learn by playing” with their friends. A large chunk of that subset don’t retain rules very well, so no matter how many times you tell them “you have to roll to hit before you roll damage” they might not remember.
I don’t want to say they’re idiots because that’s mean, and they’re usually having fun, but as someone who’s extremely rules oriented it grinds my gears.
The adventuring day is a very specific kind of game and I don’t think it’s how most people actually want to play. I think most people would enjoy a game that wasn’t built around it more. There are countless other ways to balance a game.
But DND is so mega popular it sucks all the air out of the hobby. People don’t even imagine a game that’s not based on per-rest powers.
I have a wizard in my DND game who “just wants to do cool stuff”. He blows spell slots on silly or suboptimal stuff all the time. But if I’m like “do you want to play a game where that’s expected?” he’s like no I just want to play DND.
You are correct that DND doesn’t have as much customization. A lot of character choices are kind of eclipsed by the big 1d20 random factor, too. Like, it doesn’t matter a lot if you have +2 or +5 if you’re adding 1-20 to it and looking for a result of 13. You’re going to hit it a lot either way.
As to what you should play instead, that’s really hard to answer from here. What is your group like? What do they want out of the game? Is it really a bunch of people who have never played anything before?
Personally, I really like Fate and think it’s more intuitive. But it requires your players to be a little more bold and creative than DND. If you have a bunch of timid wallflowers it’s not going to be great. But if you have a bunch of fun storytellers it can really sing. Also it’s free and only uses standard d6 dice. But if no one’s played anything before you might struggle, and might want to look into sourcebooks for sale.
Powered by the apocalypse games are also really popular. Some of them are meh, but that’s sturgeon’s law. They tend to be a lot more narrative and less concerned with “you can move exactly 15 feet”.
Blades in the dark is also really popular. It’s about heists. Pretty easy to pick up. Probably I’d recommend this one if the theme is interesting. It’s a decent system and doesn’t have any dndisms.
There’s also a whole universe of dnd-likes, but to my knowledge most of them aren’t different enough to be worth it. Most of them bring a lot of dnd-isms with a handful of tweaks. I don’t see the point.
I personally really like the Chronicles of Darkness games. They can be a little crunchy, but I started them many years ago so they have a soft spot in my memories. If you wanted to play a game about being a vampire or werewolf or mage in modern day, they have you covered. They do require more reading and investment though.
Which goes back to not knowing your group. Most groups have at least one person who’s not going to read or learn shit. Some have more. How many do you have?
Tldr: fate is awesome. Pbta is worth checking out. Blades in the dark is good.
The 27-year-old man who police say shot and killed a California business owner over a Pride flag draped in her store appears to have had a yearslong history of posting disturbing — and often violent — anti-LGBTQ messages on social media....
Also a little surprised the police shot him instead of making nice. On the one hand I’m not sad the violent bigot is dead. On the other summary execution by the police is fucked up.
Former President Donald Trump’s supporters say they hold him as a source of true information over their family, friends, and religious leaders, according to a new CBS News/YouGov poll out on Sunday.
Let me begin by making it clear this is not my invention, I encountered the method in City of Mist but I doubt it debuted there. But it is a nifty method....
There’s two main versions of fate. Core and Accelerated. Core (and it’s slightly abridged sibling Condensed) have skills in addition to aspects. So you might have Swordplay +3, Sailing +2, Parley +2, athletics stubbornness threatening +1 on your “First Mate of The Black Harpy” pirate. When you try to threaten someone, you can invoke your relationship with the infamous Black Harpy for a bonus on your roll.
Accelerated is similar but has approaches instead of skills. They’re like flashy, careful, quickly, etc. So your pirate can swordfight because his aspect gives him that permission, and he probably uses the Flashy approach most of the time because he’s a showoff.
It’s a neat game I’d like to play more, but DND sucks all the air out of the hobby. It also needs players to be more engaged than DND typically requires, and the table needs to be on the same page about what you’re playing. If you have one player that’s just “I attack” and it’s going to go poorly.
I like Bandcamp. You can keep music you buy from it drm free. They do writeups on genres and cities and stuff that are (or at least feel like they are) written by real people.
It’s less of a brainless recommendation algorithm than Spotify , but I like my music to be a little more intentional anyway so it works for me.
I feel like that’s going to do weird things to your story pacing, and possibly put your players in an unwind position.
Like maybe they’re idiots or unlucky and use a lot of resources, and need a rest. Does the plot allow a full week of the bad guys/natural disaster/whatever to do ita thing unimpeded?
The solution remains kill the adventuring day. It’s not how most players actually want to play the game.
Remote or hybrid workers, would you rather work a 4 day week on site, or WFH completely for 5 days a week, for the same pay?
I know this will vary a lot, so hypothetically let’s say you currently WFH/work remotely at least 3 days a week. Your commute to work takes an hour max (door to door) each way. If you were given the choice of a 4 day week working onsite, or a 5 day week WFH (or as many days as you’d like) for the same pay, which would you...
What are some video games that made you a better gamer?
For example, I am terrible at Super Meat Boy, but just playing it has really improved how I play platformers and games that need faster imputs overall.
Happens every week 😭 (ttrpg.network)
Well, yeah... (diyrpg.org)
Larian knows Baldur's Gate 3's D&D combat is super complicated: "We used to joke you basically need a tutorial for every class" (www.gamesradar.com)
"So then it's onboarding people, teaching them how to play D&D, which is really complex"
Hot Take: 5e is too bloated with unnecessary rules and should be simplified (ttrpg.network)
I recommend this video to look more into OSR philosophy regarding the rules: www.youtube.com/live/bCxZ3TivVUM?si=aZ-y2U_AVjn9a…
“X” Didn’t Pay Severance. Now It’s Facing 2,200 Cases—and Big Fees (www.motherjones.com)
Elon Musk’s alleged penchant for not paying bills is catching up with him. In the wake of numerous lawsuits claiming the world’s richest man failed to pay severance owed to many of the 6,000 employees he fired after acquiring Twitter. On Monday, CNBC reported that the tech company now known as X is facing some 2,200...
No excuse (diyrpg.org)
Would the internet be significantly faster if there wasn't so much farming of metadata / cookies?
I grew up during the dial up era of internet and remember how insane it was each time the technology improved, broadband, dsl, fiber etc....
Is Not Taking Any Shit From An Employer A Bad Thing?
I understand that not everyone is fortunate to have money saved to be able to have the leeway to leave jobs whenever they feel like it and so forth. But I just feel like people have lost their sense of self-respect when it comes down to employment....
How do you deal with being broke?
I’m in my 30s so I should be used to this by now, but this shit is getting so stressful guys. I have no savings, my checking account is drained every month with rent, and if there’s ever a serious emergency I have no safety net, I’m legitimately fucked. I’m one unplanned expense away from absolute ruin. Those in the same...
Can you recommend contemporary music artists without lyrics?
Keyword artist , or band/group name. I’m not looking for a genre, I want to search artists. Tell me about someone you like listening to....
Baldur's Gate 3 - Patch #2 Now Live! - Steam News (store.steampowered.com)
Patch #2 for Baldur’s Gate 3 is now live, bringing bug fixes, substantial performance improvements and much more! If you missed our latest Community Update, we highly recommend you give it a read here for a glimpse at the future of Baldur’s Gate 3, and the role your feedback is playing in that....
If you were to run for higher office in your country, what controversial thing would the vetting process uncover about you?
Solasta as a platform for solo DnD?
So this may be a silly question. Long time ago I played D&D with friends. We had a good DM, and had a great time as a party of friends roleplaying an interesting adventure. Fast forward to now, where life, family, work and all not easily allows to currently play with a great roleplaying group....
Pride flag killing suspect appears to have a long history of anti-LGBTQ social posts (www.nbcnews.com)
The 27-year-old man who police say shot and killed a California business owner over a Pride flag draped in her store appears to have had a yearslong history of posting disturbing — and often violent — anti-LGBTQ messages on social media....
Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure Launches Today (www.guildwars2.com)
guildwars2.com/…/guild-wars-2-secrets-of-the-obsc…...
Trump Voters Trust Ex-President More Than Their Family and Friends: Poll (www.newsweek.com)
Former President Donald Trump’s supporters say they hold him as a source of true information over their family, friends, and religious leaders, according to a new CBS News/YouGov poll out on Sunday.
Scene Tags - A way to make descriptions matter (ttrpg.network)
Let me begin by making it clear this is not my invention, I encountered the method in City of Mist but I doubt it debuted there. But it is a nifty method....
White noise podcasts are costing Spotify $38m per year, and record labels are not happy about it (www.bloomberg.com)
It is widely believed that monks have too few resources, here's a house rule I made for my campaign's monk player. (Made in 1 minute) (ttrpg.network)