• 2 Posts
  • 21 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 24th, 2023

help-circle

  • The reason many still associate D&D and anything else remotely related to it with fat, basement dwelling, socially inept virgin incels is because those people actually made up a significant percentage of the original following of the hobby. Because it’s founders were only a half step away from most of those descriptions in many cases. And anybody that insists otherwise is either willfully ignorant or, more likely, angry at being called out by association because they’re the same.

    So either get over it or go join the people that still insist that the confederate flag is anything but the war banner of a rebellion raised as an attempt at preserving slavery as a legal institution. You have the same mindset and validity as they do on this matter.




  • Every system has to decide where to draw the line on the prioritization of realism versus simplicity and speed of play. On one extreme you have the “one page RPG” system where you have exactly two stats and everything uses one or the other, rolled on a single D6. About two thirds of the way to the other extreme you get “Pathfinder has a rule for that,” with some systems going into truly absurd levels of detailed minutia in ways that vary from being mote or less mechanically consistent to the old school D&D method of the designers pulling a random table out of their ass for every new thing they don’t have a rule for yet and filling it out with whatever nonsense comes to mind in that moment.




  • Probably, although Martin was definitely not the first fantasy author to put a villainous faction/entity in the inhospitable frozen north, nor was he the first to have a villain with a zombie army.

    Although I think the Mountains of Muscles are more likely just a border feature slapped in between the Necrolord and the ambiguous barbarians of the northern steppes, which are again a common trope but probably directly drawn from the barbarian tribes of Icewind Dale (Wulfgar’s people in Forgotten Realms).



  • Awesome as usual, and bonus points for the bad guy’s sucker punch attack actually hitting a main weak point in plate mail.

    I also like that Angela throws a hand axe. I’ve seen a lot of people with melee focused martial characters hauling around multiple javelins as a backup ranged weapon because they do slightly more damage. When they announce in the middle of a fight that they’re throwing one or even several in a single turn I always think, “Just where were you carrying those multiple long hafted spears while fighting with both hands this whole time?” Mechanically a high strength character can handle the weight but those things aren’t exactly throwing knives you can conveniently slip a half dozen of into your belt or strap to your thighs or arms. A nice tomahawk or two, on the other hand, you can have tucked until your belt.





  • The “twist” was pretty clearly telegraphed to anybody familiar with the genre, but the delivery was good and we didn’t have to wait long to get there. Also the cleric and paladin were pretty on top of his smooth talking game, which explains him apparently deciding to just cut straight to the inevitable fight. Because it’s pretty clear what bargain he’s referring to. Well told and bravo, sir. Now let’s see some holy butt kicking!





  • The biggest problem with homebrew is that most of it is unbalanced crap made up by people who think rule of cool is an appropriate substitute for learning why those numbers in that book they barely skimmed are arranged the way they are. Yes, there’s some good stuff out there but like the internet in general Sturgeon’s Law is usually a generous assessment.

    A great example was in a game I briefly played the DM allowed a homebrew class with seven different class features, most of which could be used in the same turn combined to great effect, at first level. Why? Because the DM didn’t know half the rules to the basic system, the class came from a pretty website that was designed to look like an official source book, and the abilities sounded really cool. Nevermind that it made one PC more powerful than the other four party members combined.

    Take homebrew with a large grain of salt or everybody will end up very salty.


  • Unfortunately this one actually happened in Florida. Police arrested a guy who, among other things, someone had said was in possession of something that “looked like a pistol with a suppressor.” After searching the guy and finding no such weapon the cop put the guy, handcuffed, in the back of his cruiser. As he walked away from the car an acorn fell and hit the roof, at which point the cop started shouting into his radio about shots fired and that he had been hit by gunfire, dove and rolled around a bit (nowhere near any actual cover), then unloaded the entire magazine of his pistol at his cruiser with the suspect locked inside it. Another officer on scene, reacting to the first one yelling that he’d been shot, also fired all of her ammo at the vehicle. None of the shots actually hit the handcuffed guy in the back seat.

    A “thorough investigation of the incident” (including body camera footage from both officers involved which is now publicly available online) determined that the noise the first officer thought was a suppressed gunshot was, in fact, an acorn hitting the roof of the police vehicle after falling from the large oak tree it was parked next to. The acorn was still on the roof. Despite his panicked reaction and assertions otherwise it was also determined that he had not been struck by gunfire and that he was certainly the first person present to start shooting. The other officer was cleared of any wrongdoing as she was determined to have had legitimate reason to believe there was a clear and present danger. The first cop, who gave the second one that reason by freaking out over a fucking acorn, was determined to be whatever the official wording is for delusional, unstable, and dangerously incompetent and he resigned. In statements he still insisted after the fact that, while not disputing the findings of the review, he still recalls having heard a gunshot and feeling an impact to his torso.


  • As a tall person I can confirm that using a short girlfriend’s head as an elbow rest is a gesture of affection. I also do this with platonic friends, to mixed results. My favorite recollection is walking up to a college friend on campus who was talking to someone else, she introduced me and I did the armrest thing while joining the conversation. After a minute the other person said “Um, are you gonna…” And my friend said “Nah, he’ll get bored with it eventually and I’m used to it. I have a lot of tall friends.”