Remember when all those internet duds were mad that Dragon Age 2 was “sHoVinG tHe gAy aGeNdA dOwN oUr tHroAts!!!” because the NPCs would romance the PC regardless of gender? And they absolutely lost their shit that Anders might express interest and, if you’re not interested, you’d have to politely turn him down once?

Those are the worst sort of people and I frankly wish them ill.

I dunno. problems, mysteries, and war aren’t usually portrayed realistically in video games, either.

I never got far in stardew, so maybe?

I think that you can just give them gifts until they’re horny for you is like the quintessential example of poorly done video game romance.

Half-assed sex scenes (no pun intended) are probably worse than ones that are well done.

I still think a lot about one of the beats in a DA:I romance. But like… all the ones from DA:O were kind of bad. But also the one I played in DA:V was so PG-13 and sterile it wasn’t any fun at all.

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.

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…

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

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)

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’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.

I also can’t imagine someone getting offended about people mentioning the Tulsa Race Massacre or the fact that the founding fathers held slaves.

Actual racists aren’t going to be offended by those historical facts, they just might argue that they were justifiable in some way. Which is obviously super fucked up, but it’s not like racist people are going to deny the fact that slavery happened or that black people got massacred by white people in history. They literally get off on that shit.

Many racists definitely do get offended by those facts. It’s because they’re coming at it from an emotional place, and the historical facts make them feel bad. Instead of dealing with that, they lash out. Not all racists are intentional about their racism.

I link this a lot, but it’s worth a read https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe

Which is why the tweet seems so strange to me. Black people getting enslaved and massacred and persecuted? That slaps? I fucking hope not.

That wasn’t the intent of the tweet and that is a bizarre misreading of it.

I’m not sure what you mean. There aren’t really a lot of “quests” in gw2.

There’s the main story, which is a green marker on your map. That’s always there (unless you turn it off or finish it)

There’s orange markers for nearby events. That’s like “zombies are attacking! Save the town!” or “help these kids pick apples” or whatever. They’re just things that happen in the world and, to a limited degree, change the world state. Like an area might be full of toxic vines until an event finishes successfully, or a merchant might only sell items after his mission succeeds.

There’s red markers, which are basically the same as orange, except they tend to be world events and not local.

And then there are collections, which are kind of like quests. They’re not super advertised. They’re kind of of “get these achievements for a special reward”. Sometimes NPCs will give you one- like “go find all my favorite fish” or whatever. They’re optional, but sometimes fun and sometimes have good rewards. Like if you finish the one where you get most of the achievements for one chunk of the game, you get a max-stats accessory that all your characters can share.

Anyway. Long reply. Nothing is really beamed into your head, no.

It was kind of wild going from D&D to games that don’t have tons of HP.

Players make different choices when they have a maximum of 7 health, and a random mook with a baseball bat hits for minimum 2, maximum “well if the dice keep exploding…”

Among other problems, people knowingly spread falsehoods because they feel truthy.

The problem is people. We’re all emotional but some people are just full on fact free gut feel almost all of the time.

Fans were happy to run the servers at their own expense.

In the distant past of like 2000, you didn’t have to pay for online functionality. Also, people could host their own multiplayer servers. It was nice. Consoles and capitalism did a team-up to make things shittier for the end user, though.