• 0 Posts
  • 108 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 20th, 2023

help-circle
  • This is definitely a selfish opinion but people who block adverts or torrent being a small percentage of users can be a good thing.

    If they lose even 5% of their userbase to Firefox over this decision, they’ll find a way to make grand modifications to Google search and YouTube in a manner that stops you blocking ads from alternative browsers, and while I’m happy swapping to an alternative search engine, it’ll definitely becometedious to sidestep Google’s gaze.

    But if it’s 0.1% of people who swap due to this, and Google already don’t care about the small percentage they lose to Firefox then I would rather sit under the radar and not be cracked down on.




  • Khrux@ttrpg.networktoRPGMemes @ttrpg.network500 Hours in MS Paint
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    12
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    1 month ago

    Also the toxicity that is implied to exist by this post is pretty rare really. Even back when I was using Reddit, toxicity generally sank to the bottom of comment sections, and even more so here. When I got into D&D close to the beginning of 5e, some online voices on YouTube for example carried this toxicity but nowadays, most voices are far newer and friendly.

    In general, most people are more interested in what happens at their table instead of all tables, and the rules are just guidelines to aid that.



  • The most common cheat is probably gaining money or experience, but there have always been pretty extensive mod menus for GTA Online with tools from invincibility to making your vehicles rainbow, to randomly causing other players to explode or setting hundreds of muggers on them.

    In 2015ish, I used to cheat, other than getting rich, all I was interested in doing was making an indestructible chrome bus with smoke trails that I’d drive around picking up players in, to teleport us all to North Yankton and back like a tour guide.


  • There’s a book called Tabletop Role-playing Therapy: A Guide for the Clinician Game Master by Dr Megan A. Connel that’s a really standout resource about this, she appeared on the official D&D podcast a year or so ago talking about it.

    I’d say that this is more a resource for therapists to use TTRPGs than it is for DMs to act as therapists for their players. There’s a fine line between accommodating your players’ preferences and needs and providing unwanted therapy; if you want to actually put any therapy techniques into your game, ask your players approval first.



  • I don’t want to throw the word enshitiffication around, especially when I’m not sure if I can spell it, but the platforms that people jump ship to when that happens are probably especially vulnerable to people jumping ship again.

    I can’t imagine Mozilla effectively marketing Firefox as anything but the bullshit free browser, and when they lose that, people will just move to the next actual bullshit free option.


  • This is also probably off topic because I can’t load the YouTube video.

    I was talking about the second Dune film a little while back and saying how much I enjoy a well realised world that doesn’t try to convey itself by comparing itself to ours. I get the same feeling watching Dune and Lord of the Rings as I do when I watch a film from a culture I’m not familiar with; a sense of needing to adjust to their way of storytelling.

    Pairing this with what you mention which is basically extra subtle show don’t tell, and you end up with something I absolutely adore, which is a story in a fully realised culture I know nothing about, that understands that the bare minimum amount of that culture I need to understand to fully enjoy the story can be the best amount to have.

    I was going to say how rare this is but thinking about it, it actually isn’t. Tolkien’s cosmology is fully realised and vast yet I learnt basically no fluff about the world that wasn’t necessary to the story. Sometimes I just had to make peace with the fact that I didn’t understand the cultural context, I could only measure it’s importance in the attitude of the characters.

    That’s the shit I love.







  • I was at the end of school during the 2016 election and my closest friend in my Comp-Sci class who I’d known from 11 was in the far right pipeline; this person found Hillary absolute abhorrent, loved trump and was generally the 2016 Pepe style crypto-facist. We live in the UK too, so this is even less common than it probably was in the USA.

    When school ended, I stopped speaking to this person, but a few years ago saw that she’s come out as a trans woman. I’m happy for her and not really keen to reconnect at all, but oh boy am I nosy about the timeline of her political views. I wonder if she still holds them, was struggling with internalised issues or just had a huge realisation at some point.



  • I’ve read quite a few anecdotes and quotes about Gygax’s misogyny before but I agree with you, I don’t think there is nearly enough information I these gods to extrapolate that it’ embodies all powerful masculine forces as good and all feminine as evil, especially as the article mentions how this perpetuates pre-existing coomo themes in story and myth. Everything we know about Gygax would say he’d lift from myths with sexist themes without adjusting that, rather than add them with intention.

    Do do think there is myriad evidence that Gygax believed femininity to be inherently inferior, but that’s different from evil. It’s still stupid and worth highlighting but by excessively demonising him to the point of nearly making things up, it’s just fuel for people to dismiss the valid points.



  • Subnautica is the perfect mesh of several things that work fantastically. It is a good survival game but with it’s upgrade and discovery based exploration limitations, it’s closer to a metroidvania than it is to Minecraft. The thing it does so well is sneak this past you, it’s a mystery driven metroidvania where the downtime is a resource gathering, based building game.

    The closest game I can think of of that tried the same mystery metroidvania approach is The Forest, but this feels like one of the many many games from the post Minecraft and DayZ boom that has a certain scrappiness to it that somehow Subnautica absolutely sidesteps, and it’s all from just being a really well made game. The vibrant and often tranquil art style that lends itself to awe inspiring locations, and the level design and overall plot support eachother so well.

    That said, I’m not in love with the amount of resources. A 4*8 gridded inventory puts me off a game from a worry of it to getting too grindy, and subnautica is a “I need to build another storeroom” kind of game. With a full survival game like Minecraft, which is endless and about exploration and progress alone, I know my storage will be unweildy and I can forgive it, but I’d have appreciated Subnautica finding a way to require less mindless resource hunting / busywork unless itnwas optional base cosmetics or the like.