FearfulSalad

joined 2 years ago
[–] FearfulSalad@ttrpg.network 4 points 6 days ago

Check out Disboard, and search for 5e or avrae (and optionally play by post) to find a discord server to play on.

There are plenty of small Discord servers that use a bot called Avrae to automate the crunchy mechanics of d&d 5e, with things like char sheets, initiative, monsters and combat, and even maps. Some servers are slow paced, where everyone is expected to act once per ~24 hours, so you get a nice asynchronous game going where you have time to learn your character's abilities, bot commands, etc, all while typing up your roleplay that matches the mechanics of your turn. That format is great for learning and getting the hang of things in the system, IMO, because you have a ton of time to ask questions in a chat channel to have others help you. Other servers will do sync events, where you sign up for an event with a specific star time, hop into a voice channel, and play with ~5 minute turn timers to really crunch through some combat quickly. This is great once you have the basics of Avrae down (and by extension, the mechanica of 5e).

That's usually a "westmarches" format, where the server has a large number of players who queue up for events, but each event can only accommodate a small number of players from the top of the queue. You get grouped with random others this way (contrast that to "campaign" play where you stay with the same players for many consecutive sessions). IMO westmarches really helps get you acclimated to D&D through broad exposure to lots of classes, monsters, mechanics, RP styles, etc. And it works really well for someone who is casual!

[–] FearfulSalad@ttrpg.network 15 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (5 children)

I know that this is the cycling community, but... Why would someone choose to bike to Costco unless they are an employee? Are there people who do not purchase a carload of goods when they go? Cyclists are nowhere near Costco's target demographic, so this really doesn't seem surprising.

[–] FearfulSalad@ttrpg.network 22 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I think it turned into some amount of shit slinging that stopped being relevant to the shit at hand. I'm guessing mods decided to close that sphincter before the verbal diarrhea overflowed the rim of the post ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[–] FearfulSalad@ttrpg.network 72 points 3 months ago (40 children)

The poop knife is irrelevant until and unless one plans to flush, which this question did not ask.

Also, why do you assume the nurse is a lady?

[–] FearfulSalad@ttrpg.network 17 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Sync has it as an app option, and several of the apps I was using prior to sync had something similar.

This has vastly improved my experience on Lemmy's Top 6 Hours

[–] FearfulSalad@ttrpg.network 1 points 1 year ago

In 5e: Simon the Devious and the Leather Skins (from What We Do In The Shadows) as a Dhampir Hexblade Warlock with Pact of the Chain.

Between the chain familiar (Count Rapula), a zombie from Undying Servitude (Ken the Accountant), Summon Undead (Blagvlad the Exsanguinator, or Desdemona the Shrieker, or Impussa) and an Accursed Specter (Carol), you have a 4-person posse by level 6. It grows situationally or permanently when you gain access to Danse Macabre, Create Undead, and Finger of Death.

Mechanically, you're done by 13, and can either finish off with Bard (probably Whispers) or Paladin (Oathbreaker). Either way, take Inspiring Leader once you've maxed Cha, and then go get yourself that cursed witch's hat!

[–] FearfulSalad@ttrpg.network 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It is totally fine to kick or knee or headbutt someone for your unarmed strikes when your hands are busy--this is true with or without Tavern Brawler

[–] FearfulSalad@ttrpg.network 22 points 2 years ago

Post office too. Really any government office where the public is allowed inside.

Underpaid workers trying to explain bureaucratic minutiae (for which they are not responsible) every single day to people who are not versed in that minutiae, do not want to learn it, cannot learn it, and are preemptively frustrated that they have to have this interaction in the first place. There is no winning--mental health isn't cheap, do the workers' resilience only lasts for so many years/months/days before they default to hating the clients, and the clients don't trust publicly available instructions, thus dooming themselves to the shitty interactions.

The only way to fix this is to take both people out of the equation--preprocess everything that might need to happen for everyone, to the point of turning every transaction into a single trasaction. That requires for every city, county, state, national, international agency to federate, so that you never have to file multiple documents to do a thing.

[–] FearfulSalad@ttrpg.network 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Capitalism has been touted as superior to the alternatives (Socialism, Communism, etc) b/c it has been claimed to be "self-regulating" and "self-correcting" and "even if we don't understand why, it fixes itself"--basically the only choice among bad ones that, given our collective small brains, has any chance of sustaining itself and society in the absence of an ability of individuals or government to do so intentionally.

What it really is is an opportunity to stay anonymous while gaming the system, all the while convincing everyone else that they too can game the system (thereby being gamed). It is not a net benefit to society when taken to extremes.

Capitalism is great for the consumer in the micro. If there is a coffee shop on your street that sucks, and you start a coffee shop two blocks away to compete with it with your better coffee, you are participating in the version of capitalism that "works as intended."

It doesn't work in the macro. When, instead of continuing to manage your mom & pop business that barely breaks even, you vertically integrate, buy up or otherwise destroy your competition, and then reduce the quality of your product to bare minimums in favor of profits and shareholder value and growth, you take capitalism to an extreme that makes everyone else (the consumers, the workers, the would-be-competitors) have a worse quality of life.

People prefer better quality of life. Capitalism in the modern age is so far in that macro extreme that it no longer makes people's lives better. East Palestine train derailment as an example... why would they prioritize safety over cost cutting? Bam, a town is cancerous. It's not unreasonable for people to point at a corruptible system and blame it for the corruption that exists.

Problem is, people are corruptible, so whatever alternative we think is better, someone will come along and ruin it for personal gain.

[–] FearfulSalad@ttrpg.network 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Oh, certainly! But then, I would avoid coming up with a policy at all until the amount of content reaches critical mass. If you're not ready for whatever will be the right policy, why bother enacting one that you know you'll have to walk back or ammend later?

[–] FearfulSalad@ttrpg.network 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

RE Battlemaps: strongly opposed to allowing them. Lemmy.world already has a battlemaps community. Ttrpg.network is welcome to make such a community too, I suppose. That content works for many more ttrpgs than dnd, so putting it in its own space makes more sense than allowing it in here.

RE artwork, if someone wants to post a hand-drawn scene of their group's epic win/loss against the bbeg, that's cool. I think we like seeing dnd success stories from folks, and a picture can be worth a thousand words. But, if that person is open for commissions, I would strongly prefer not to know about it.

IMO advertising needs to be segregated to opt-in communities kept exclusively for that purpose, much like LFG posts get their own space to mot pollute the general discussion.

(Similarly, links out to other sites that have comment sections, like youtube, should IMO be required to have actual supporting text content worthy of discussion, as without it they are just more advertising. That's outside the scope of the original discussion tho.)

Edit: RE homebrew--IMO it too should be sequestered, as it represents a divergence from everyone else's frame of reference.

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