jjjalljs

games? I found a civilization port for the phone and it sucked up a lot of time. Turn based so you can do it for a few minutes at a time: https://yairm210.itch.io/unciv

learn a language? duolingo and other apps are out there

I forget where I read it originally, but I think a lot about "You hate every piece of capitalism but don't connect the dots to see the big picture"

The idea that players all make their characters in isolation and just show up on session 0 with them sounds like such a recipe for disaster. I know it can work sometimes, much like "just grab four things from the fridge and throw them into the soup" can work sometimes. But sometimes you get like gummy bear pizza bites with shrimp and mayo topping.

I think a lot of games that came after D&D figured out solutions to common problems, but D&D insists on staying kind of archaic.

The didn’t listen when the GM talked about Theme and mood and end up with a character who doesn’t fit with the party/canpaign

Hah, for a second I thought this was my own post because I wrote something very similar here. But yes, this is one that bugs me.

Having a minor crisis realizing that 9th grade was far more than seven years ago for me. This is fine.

A tangent, but I do wonder about all the people that played Final Fantasy 7 and just didn't get any of the pro-environment message. The protagonists are literally eco terrorists who blow shit up to stop the antagonist corporation from bleeding the planet dry.

It's like people who listen to rage against the machine and don't take any politics away.

Opportunity costs still exist

I think there's also a pair:

• Takes the setting and theme very seriously. Reads the lore. Knows the details. Can tell you why the Lancea Sanctum and Invictus are traditionally allies
• Absolutely does not take the setting and theme seriously. Wants to play Barney the Dinosaur in your game of Vampire, and Punisher in your game about running a bakery.

I'm old and tired and generally am super tired of "wacky" ideas like the second one there. I feel like I've come full circle. As a youth, I thought like "let's play vampires and struggle with humanity!" was cool . Then there was a bit where i wanted to flip it- "let's play vampires but like go to theme parks and don't do anything sad or deep!". Now I'm back around to wanting to just play the theme as intended.

This is especially true if it comes up after session 0. Like, if you want to do a D&D game about running a BBQ shop, fine. Let's do it. Let's kill, cook, and sell some weird monster parts. But please don't derail the whole game on session 3 when you insist on going back to town to cook the monster meat when it was clearly a random encounter and everyone else wants to continue the dungeon dive pitched in session 0.

One of the reasons I despair D&D is the most popular RPG. It's almost all combat, and not even great combat at that.

I recently reinstalled BL3 for a bit and I think I spent more time downloading it (like 100gb for unknown reasons) than I did playing it.

The pacing is bad. Too much walking around or listening to people talk, not enough doing stuff.

The itemization is kind of bad. Like yeah there's millions of guns but most of them are trash, and looking through a dozen to compare [damage, clip size, reload speed, etc] in that fucking awful UI is tedious.

The gameplay is kind of bad. Most things don't really react to being shot. It's just shield and HP sponges.

They haven't really changed much since like the first game launched in like 2009. That's like 15 years. Still basically the same game.

It'll probably sell a bunch of copies because of the brand, and a lot of people are low information, but I don't think it'll be good.

Rights just exist, they are a transcendent object that can’t be defined or limited by laws.

I don't think rights exist in any meaningful way unless enforced / people agree to follow them. They're just norms in a nicer suit. There's no external referee that's going to stop the game because "your rights are being violated".

This is more content-first where facebook/twitter/etc are user-first. I think user-first brings out worse patterns.