southsamurai

There’s only twelve lemmy users anyway.

There was a dude on reddit that bigot watch kept nailing because of that.

Dude used the same patterns and words, thinking that switching user names would matter.

But, what if I use my real name and just lie all the time?

Shit, that’s the part of prep that’s fun

Ignoring established world building, which I don’t count as campaign building, I tend to have an overall plan, plus a handful of probable diversions. Each path is going to have NPCs as appropriate, though I tend to keep them as just notes until maybe a couple of sessions before they’re likely to be used.

As an example, I might have “lvl 10 chronomancer; drow, w/magic staff, 1 ring, and familiar” when I rough out the campaign. Once I’m sure the players are going that direction, I’ll pick the specific gear, build the NPC’s spell list, and have a plan for the encounter that includes combat, non combat, and usually a combo of the two. But the encounter plan is all mental, no need for written notes of that kind of thing.

If they’re going to a location I’ve already got on paper, it’s easy prep. But I do have a lot of room that isn’t labeled on the map, as well as locations nobody has gone during play. For those, it’s usually just writing down existing ideas, and cooking up details if there’s a divination or scouting run, or whatever.

It’s one of the benefits of having an established world to play in that’s also huge enough that there’s room to grow. I never have to build from the bottom up, it’s only for one off and/or “non canon” play that I do much of that at this point. So most of the depth of those is in my head anyway, not on paper at all.

Mind you, I still have worlds I haven’t used, and likely never will. It’s a long standing mental hobby. But I really enjoy both depth and breadth for my setting.

deleted by creator

Man, the long earth series is so fucking good. It isn’t as well known as his discworld stuff, obviously, and it isn’t fantasy based in the usual sense, but the story arc over the series is just so well built, and the world building is a delight.

No shit, in my first book, there’s a zombie bigfoot. Well, not the standard bigfoot, a variant, and it wasn’t “just” a zombie, it had other powers and stuff.

But hybrid beasties are fun

One problem

Batteries.

I’ve used old devices as many things: security cameras, a form of intercom, digital picture frames, etc. The real problem is that the batteries eventually go bad, and become dangerous.

For the few devices that have realistically replaceable batteries, that’s no big deal, but how many of those are left now?

No thanks to the potential fire, I’ll pass. The few devices I have left that I can swap batteries out are becoming harder to find new batteries for as well, so that’s an issue beyond their anemic hardware (I’m talking really old tablets at this point)

Home brew that shit! Fuck balance!

In a pinch, some superglue liberally applied can either block reception or muffle it so much that anything it could send would be largely useless. Or you can open it up and remove it and hope nothing else breaks in the process.

You sound like me!

We have a household rule: don’t talk to south until he’s awake. How can you tell he’s awake? Has he been moving for at least an hour? If yes, then he may be awake, but there’s no promises. If not, then treat him like you would a manbearpig freshly out of hibernation.

The grunts and croaks that pass as communication from me that first bit are a passable caveman shtick.

No worries man, we all have days like that. I certainly do!

I’m the same way with food snobbery tbh. I see even jokes about it, and it just gets under my skin, even when I am fully awake and can tell it’s a joke. There’s that flash of “this motherfucker” before I exert control of my brain. So I totally get it.

I’m just sorry I picked a bad joke to try. Like I said, they can’t all be winners, but looking back at it, it was a lame attempt.

Hey, sorry that didn’t hit right.

Since the post was in a meme community, I didn’t take the post as a serious complaint. Memes bring out jokes, that’s part of the point of them. I intended it as a form of commiseration with a bit of tongue in cheek playfulness. If I’d known you were making a real complaint rather than playing with a trope for laughs, I would have made a totally different comment.

So, here’s what I would have said if I had known you were experiencing distress over the issue.

I get it. Back when 3.x was a thing, the old ad&d diehards made the same kind of statements. Now, 5e devotees make the same kind of statements about 3.x, and even ad&d, as well as the ongoing new version coming out. It’s a fairly universal thing.

When it’s said in a lighthearted, unserious way, it can even help bridge players and DMs that are more entrenched with one version or another because it acknowledges that there’s not always compatibility between versions, making play groups harder to arrange since very few people really enjoy learning a new system to play what is (at its core) the same game.

Me and my kid make the same joke to each other, both of us aware that we have played both systems and have a different preference. Me and the DM of my kid’s group talk shit about our preferred versions too. And we piss and moan about the difficulties of running games with players that are most familiar with one edition and having trouble adapting years of play experience in one to a different one.

Like, I’ve got over a grand in 3.x books. At least that, maybe more, I lost track. So I’m not going to pony up a dime to get the equivalent library in 5e, or any future editions. But I’ve had players from 5e, and ad&d in my games (though I haven’t DMed in years at this point). There’s always a learning curve to a different edition. It places an artificial barrier of entry to the underlying game. So most people will commit to one version and stick with it.

When they do try others, what they see is changes that are a pain in the ass for fairly minor benefits, along with one or two great ideas. Us 3.x folks look at bounded accuracy, or advantage/disadvantage and drool a little, but there’s no way we’d switch just for that when the rest of the edition is just different, not better. 5e folks look at the 3.x prestige classes and how easy they are to home brew and really make a unique character but look at all the imbalances in the base classes and nope the fuck out

And don’t even ask about how newer players stare blankly at you while you try to explain thac0. Or how a black hole of despair forms and sucks your brain in trying to explain a truly awkward and counterintuitive system like thac0 in the first place.

There’s no such thing as a perfect system. They’re all approximations of fantasy settings (I’m talking about standard d&d here, but there’s no perfect system in other types of games either), and approximations simply can’t fit every situation every time.

So, when some asshole is being serious about “your edition sucks, play a better one”, fuck them. It’s bullshit, and if they don’t know it, they’re going to be a shitty player or DM anyway. They’re not worth the time and effort. But the rest of us kinda have the shorthand of the trope as a way to say “the problem exists, but we can’t fix it”. You either put the effort in to learn the details of each edition, or you stick to the one you like best and deal with having more trouble finding stable groups.

No bullshit Stamets, my entire goal was to join in on what I thought was your joke along that same line. I thought you were poking fun at the trope of it, and that’s what I was doing. The little winky face ;) didn’t do enough to convey that, or maybe your stress over the subject meant nothing would have conveyed the intent of shared recognition of how silly it all is to edition snob. But it definitely failed to convey the intent, no matter why it failed.

Sorry about that. They can’t all be winners ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but I swear it was meant to be something we’d both have a chuckle over.

I mean, that’s true.

5e sucks and you should play a different system ;)

Unless the DM is fucking stupid, and allows bards powers they shouldn’t have, this would make it possible to seduce someone that would otherwise not be attracted to you. That’s about it in terms of practical use.

I would rule that if you’re actually making them gay, they’re fully gay, so there wouldn’t be anyone upset about being gay within the duration of the spell. They might be upset at related problems, like a partner that made a saving throw now being incompatible, but not because they’re suddenly attracted to people of the same sex and/or gender.

Now, if the spell had been written so that all it changed was that they were now attracted to a different gender or sex, they might be distressed. And as written, they might be upset at the potential fallout of now being gay, but not the fact of being gay itself.

Side note: lemmy doesn’t tend to censor the word suicide, or kill themselves. It’s okay to use actual terms if you want. Not saying you have to, just that it’s allowed.

You’re either born quadruple gay, or you longingly wish you were. There’s no shortcuts

I dunno, considering that Facebook data has been used to go after people, we’ve got fascists using every method possible to target their current hated group, and police everywhere ignoring or bypassing due process by just buying data, I don’t think it all paranoid to think that privacy concerns are already huge, and could get worse

Dammit Harbor Freight! Always ruining a mid tier joke with affordable pricing on acceptable quality goods!

Shit, make sure you take good notes. Share that stuff with lemmy.

I’m too damn paranoid to join in a lemmy related game like that, but it does seem like it would be relatively easy to find a decent group here.

Hey, hey, now.

Nobody on roll 20 can afford a real machete