Ehh if you are on a reputable tracker that has scene releases it’s generally downloading a torrent, copying a crack into the game directory or running some crack software, and play. It’s not in the least bit difficult.

Realistically most people don’t care about things like automatic updates enough to justify spending money on it.

Many games are trivially easy to pirate and this has been the case for decades. It’s literally as easy as downloading it from Place B.

People still buy the games.

That’s when we find out the player’s wizard character, Ehariel, has a long lost brother named Aharial with a suspiciously identical set of stats and backstory

He also has been looking for his brother for years only to conveniently find the party minutes after his brother dies

A geas is a magically enforced taboo against something. Following the requirements brings power but violation comes with grave punishment, often resulting in a character’s death or undoing.

It’s worth noting that the lack of second language proficiency isn’t a result of laziness or ignorance

In Europe, most people are a short train ride from another country. There is also a lot of cultural exchange between countries within Europe.

Most Americans are multiple days of driving from the nearest non English speaking country, and that’s just to arrive in an area of Mexico where the people they will interact with overwhelmingly speak English.

In that context, there is little utility for most people in learning a second language. It’s also very difficult to achieve true proficiency when you are so rarely exposed to native speakers of a language.

Yes I agree with most of this. If the original post I responded to had said this instead of misleading statistics and “now we have billionaires” like that class of people is a recent development I wouldn’t have said anything. We can make our arguments without those sort of rhetorical devices and people will take us more seriously if we do.

People like to look back with rose tinted glasses and act like things were so much better in the gold ole days. They weren’t and we are arguably better off now than in almost any other time in history. I see value in appreciating that fact.

That said, just because we have benefitted from automation and technology development doesn’t change that we could do better. I’d love to see more social safety nets, more affordable housing, reduced working hours, and so forth.

…

A century ago was post Industrial Revolution and after the advent of mass production as a common means to produce goods. This was also past the time where many European countries had moved to a parliamentary system.

I’m not sure if you are just ignorant of history or what.

It’s not inflammatory to argue for better systems.

It’s inflammatory when the statistics are being presented in a misleading way, which you and many others are guilty of. We can discuss how to improve the system without that sort of thing and it’s not productive to actually seeing change get made.

It’s not a lie that while we’ve had a massive industrial revolution that increased the productivity of workers, those benefits have not been seen by the workers.

It certainly is. Our living conditions have consistently improved in many ways as a result of industrialization.

You can argue that we could see more benefit and I’d agree with you, but to act like the average person hasn’t benefitted from industrialization is disingenuous.

If you think we are materially worse off now than we were before the introduction of automation you are either pushing hardcore propaganda or absolutely delusional.

Real median middle class income has stayed effectively constant since the 1980s. However, with automation the variety of goods available at that income level have dramatically improved. This is the benefit that the consumer sees and pretending it’s not a real benefit is disingenuous at best.

Maybe if you shill for billionaires a bit harder they’ll give you one of their yachts.

You really think so? That would be amazing

You said “now we have billionaires” like it’s a new phenomena. The graph I posted tracks the total wealth share of the top 1% wealthiest people, which is a much better picture of income inequality than the “average CEO”. Notice that the total wealth share went from 30% to 35% since its low in 1970, which is a much smaller change than the 200+x difference that people like to quote.

While inequality is growing, it’s not nearly as dramatic as people make it out to be and in 2023 we are far closer to that 1970s low than we were a century ago

In a world where we’ve so much automation and wealth in the world that we could care for everyone why do people still have to work 40+ hours a week just to get by?

I don’t disagree with you. Most people in white collar jobs realistically don’t get more than 5 hours a day of real productive work done to begin with. Why do we need to be at the office for 8 hours?

I just think it’s important to look at the data in an objective way. Instead of posting inflammatory comments on Lemmy that exaggerate the situation, you could try lobbying your representatives for better worker protections.

Funny you should say “we” and “American History” though :) Maybe the American model is the problem here.

Well, I’m American lol. But the trends are similar in almost every developed country so I don’t think this is an American problem.

In many ways, we have been. The average person has casual access to goods and services that would have been immensely inaccessible without industrialization. Consider the average car for example. The engine alone has hundreds of tightly toleranced parts working in a mechanical dance to harness thousands of controlled explosions per second. That doesn’t even touch on the complex support systems required for engine management or chassis/suspension. I can buy a well running used car for less than the cost of a month’s rent.

Compare that to the pre-industrial era, when a simple shirt would have taken a single person 500-600 hours in manual labor to make starting from raw wool. That’s more than three months’ work with a 40 hour work week.

It’s truly amazing that any minimum wage worker in the USA can buy multiple used cars, a monumentally complex piece of machinery by any historical standard, for less labor than it would take to get a new shirt a few hundred years ago.

That said, I do believe we have the capacity to get these benefits PLUS reduced work hours. We will see that when we demand better worker protections from lawmakers and stop equating a human’s value to society with the number of hours they work each week.

We have had ultra-rich people and major wealth inequality for most of American history. Rockefeller (1838-1937) amassed a fortune in the 1800s in excess of $400B inflation adjusted dollars. By most measures, he was the richest American of all time.

The second richest American of all time is up for debate but contenders include Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877), Henry Ford (1863-1947), or Bill Gates (1955-present).

Wealth inequality has obviously grown over the past 50 years but it’s worth noting that wealth inequality in general is not a uniquely modern problem. It is also exaggerated by comparing to the 1970s, where wealth inequality was at a historical low point (see graph below)

The real LPT is to remove water from cider to make an intensely apple flavored spirit without muting its flavors with heat.

Then sell the liquor to nobles and inflated prices without ever revealing the production method

I agree with everything you said. If the descriptions mostly add flavor and the roll of the dice determines the result, that’s exactly how DnD should be. It is a role playing game, and role playing is half the fun

Unfortunately, it seems like most DMs punish you for roll playing poorly in conversation. In my experience, if you have high charisma it’s often more successful to just say “I want to convince the person of this thing” and roll than to describe your argument to the DM. That discourages roll playing rather than encourages it.

Maybe it’s a role playing game and the entire purpose is to role play as something besides yourself

Sure but that’s still a weird situation when you lack charisma in real life. My 20 CHA character with proficiency in persuasion would have ideas and know which of those options would work best in this situation. It’s absolutely demanding on your real life charisma in a way no other check is.

Nobody asks for a real life strength check before the barbarian can push the boulder out of the way

Nobody asks the player running a rogue to demonstrate “how they’d pick the lock” to determine how high the PC needs to roll in the game

Our DM did this, I had no idea they were an official creature. We saved some of them from goblins and their god was shaped like the party’s wizard except with claw hands.

This is just what the basement of their mom’s dungeon looks like