An advanced technique: ask your players to make shit up.

Like, the players decided to go to the wizard university the wizard PC graduated from. So I ask him, “what’s their entrance hall like?” and let him just riff on it for a while. Players feel more engaged with the world, and it’s a little less work for me.

Warlock is trying to commune with his patron. I ask, “what is your patron usually like?” and the player is delighted to describe “the great sculpin” in detail. This then inspires me further.

Note that some players are very much “just tell me a story” and don’t want any input, and won’t like this. Some players are also shy and don’t think well on their feet. And some players are just really bad at staying on theme. But if you know your players , this can be a powerful technique.

Something with “lil” like “lil’un” (little one) maybe?

It’s not exactly my genre of music but i like it anyway.

It does feel like chaotic times are ahead. At some point, the republicans will do something so vile that people will say “No”, and when that happens there will be violence.

I don’t want a civil war. I don’t want unrest. But I do want every republican and their enablers removed from power, and the billionaires stripped of their wealth. I don’t know how to get from here to there.

The damage will last for decades.

The republicans should be stopped.

I would probably make spells easier to interrupt like they were in 3e.

https://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/castingSpells.htm

These two things were key:

• Casting a spell provokes an opportunity attack
• Taking any damage requires a check or you lose the spell

Now casting when the orc warlord is up in your face is a lot riskier.

I think I get why they got rid of this system. It was more to think about, and I think they wanted the game to generally be easier so more players could enjoy it. Certain classes of player don’t want to think about tactics and positioning. They want to cast fireball. But as a result, the whole game is kind of shallower sometimes.

For mages countering mages, I’d probably give it a rework. It shouldn’t just be its own spell. It should be an action. Maybe have a separate check to identify the spell, or maybe just tell the player to skip double rolls. Then make some sort of opposed check. Use the spell level delta (and if you had them roll to identify, how thematically opposite the spell is. Like a fire and ice spell, or shield v magic missile).

Everyone saying “they can evacuate” clearly doesn’t remember how bad the covid response was.

There will be anti-space conspiracy theorists. The ownership class would demand people continue working until the last possible minute (and beyond). It would be politicized, because some people are unbelievably stupid, cruel, and selfish, and enough people are so stupid they’ll buy in.

Now, if we could make the meteor fall on a location occupied solely by the people who don’t believe in science…

Anyone who seriously proposes privatizing the US postal service should be removed from power. They’re either trying to harm the US, or are too stupid to be trusted with anything more dangerous than a paper towel.

I recommend players make their characters together. Fate’s rules for it are pretty good, and can be ported to many systems: https://fate-srd.com/fate-core/phase-trio . The whole “You all meet in a tavern for the first time” mode is a valid way to play, but I’ve had friends do that and then struggle with how contrived it feels to fight to the death for people they just met, or go on a whole dangerous sidequest for someone else’s hobby.

I also recommend reading other systems. Not everyone needs to know dozens of games, but if you always play d20 games spending some time in a different branch of the RPG family tree can really be eye-opening. Or if you’ve only really played really light games, looking at how something crunchier does detail can be insightful.

It might’ve been a deeper comic if they used the person on the right for both panes .

I’m reminded of a post from elsewhere: “You hate all the parts of capitalism separately, without realizing they’re all the same thing”

I don’t think we should be posting such pornographic fictions in this community.

I wonder if things get bad enough, Ukraine would take a shot at Trump. Back to the wall and all.

The average person is a heady cocktail of stupid and ignorant. We all are, to one degree or another.

I feel like one of the problems is we’ve let “everyone is entitled to their opinion” mutate into “everyone is entitled to their own facts”. We just kind of let anti-vaxxers walk around like it’s no big deal. We let people wear maga hats and don’t treat it like a clear and present danger or the threat that it is. We’re too polite about this shit.

If someone walked up to you and was like “I’m gonna shoot you dead later” while holding a gun and a map to your house, you probably wouldn’t be like “Cool I respect your opinion.”

I mean, some people would. Some people are pacifists, and I guess they’d just get in a death camp politely.

Is there a reason conservatives dislike congestion pricing other than spite?

Gods, they’re just the worst fucking people.

Musk seems like the kind of D&D player who would

• Build a horrible character (frankly impressive in 5e, which is pretty simple in terms of choices to make at the start). Like, a bard with 8 charisma, or a rogue with no dex
• Or, pay someone else to build their character, and then not know how to play it.
• And/or induce the other players to murder him (in the game)

• Get accepted as goon for “Patrol” app
• Go to CEO location, armed with lethal weapons
• ???
• Profit

This is a good point. Seeing other people get onto the street can motivate people who weren’t feeling enthusiastic.

But I do worry that protests will fizzle out and be, as you say, an ending point. Maybe they won’t be.

“a peaceful movement”. Ok. Unilaterally disarming seems like a dubious move to me.

I don’t think protests where you just stand around and chant are especially effective. Maybe in 1950 when seeing people get firehosed was shocking, but the world is different today. Media is captured by the wealthy and most people don’t care.

I’ve found that when the players hit an outright failure, a lot of the time they just draw blanks or zero in on this one specific solution. It’s a weird tunnel vision.

Like, they want to talk past the doorman and he says no after they roll. Good players on their game will then think about other options. Sneak in the back. Set off an alarm. Impersonate someone who lives there. But i’ve just had so many players that just get stuck on this, and will try to spend 10 minutes on “What if I ask him nicely?”

I’ve started including a spiel about this in my session 0. “If an obstacle in the world has exactly one purpose in the story, and you attack it dead on, you may fail. Especially if it’s not also your strong suit. For example, there is a doorman of a fancy apartment building. His entire role in life is to look at people, and only let them in if they’re authorized. If you walk up to him, not authorized, and go ‘Hey bro let me in’, that will be a very hard check. That is shooting fire at the fire elemental. Disguising yourself will be easier, but still is in his domain of ‘Looking at people and only letting authorized folks in’. But going in a back door so he doesn’t see, setting off the fire alarm so he evacuates, calling on the phone and telling him his car has been towed, those ideas hit him where he’s weaker.”

I’m glad you liked the comic.

I read the tweet as saying “Actually learning about history, the good and the bad, is better than avoiding it to whitewash (pun intended) slavers and spare their feelings”

How did you read it?

This also reminds me of a separate post I saw about how social media, and tweets especially, is a really bad format for communicating. The length constraints and incentivizing being clever don’t make for fertile ground for ideas. Most people aren’t going to read an essay, sadly.