Zonetrooper

We should be careful to avoid creating communities that are echo chambers.

I'm afraid that ship is already sailed, foundered, and is well on the way to the bottom in a lot of communities.

When it comes to spicy topics, many communities on Lemmy feel incredibly close-minded and hostile to opposing views.

Yep. The doublespeak here is wild. "Controversial topics can and should be discussed, as long as they are not causing risk of imminent physical harm. Therefore, we are leaving up comments that cause imminent risk of physical harm."

Forget the particular details of this issue. It feels way, way more strongly like they're trying to duck out of having to take action.

Here's my thoughts from when I ran GoSM:

Ghosts isn't really a campaign. It's a really un-connected series of individual mini-dungeon crawls. In particular, if you were hoping for a focus to be on the three factions within Saltmarsh itself, I will warn you that almost none of the modules have anything to do with that. The leadership divisions in Saltmarsh are just kind of there to help DMs build on their own homebrew stuff. Despite much being made of the Sea Princes, they're more or less unmentioned in the rest of the campaign, as are the other two factions.

Notably, the modules' antagonists break down into two major categories:

• Underwater creatures (Sahuagin in 'The Final Enemy', S'gothgah the Aboleth in 'The Styes', and a giant octopus that's more of an environmental hazard in 'Salvage Operation').
• Undead (Isle of the Abbey, Tammeraut's Fate).
• There's also some unconnected pirates in Danger at Dunwater and a random priest of Lolth in Salvage Operation. The mini-encounters (Cove Reef, Wreck of the Marshal, Warthalkeel) are kind of just there. You might notice there's no real theme here. Like I said, this is very open to homebrewing.

In my case, I decided I liked undead as a final antagonist better than an Aboleth. The entire thing became a plot by Orcus - my ultimate BBEG - to drown and slaughter everything in the Saltmarsh region. Everyone else - Syrgaul Tammeraut, the Aboleth S'gothgah, the Sahuagin - were either intentionally or unintentionally working towards Orcus' goals, some being duped into doing so. This required some reskinning - the generic evil cult in 'Isle of the Abbey' and the Lolth priest in 'Salvage Operation' became Orcus worshippers.

In your case, if you want to focus on the three factions of Saltmarsh, I think you could go two ways:

• Have reach of the modules be a task or threat created by each faction. For instance, maybe the Loyalists send you on the Salvage Operation, hoping to get some dirt on Anders Solmor's mysterious missing parents. Maybe the Sea Princes are stirring up the Sahuagin to attack Saltmarsh to break the King's control, etc.
• Have one BBEG running all three factions. In this case, again, I would encourage you to look to either S'gothgah the Aboleth, or whoever Syrgaul Tammeraut's magical patron is. Perhaps they are simply playing all three groups against each other to leave Saltmarsh depleted and ruined, at which point they will move in.

In either case, the political side of Saltmarsh is relatively undeveloped, giving you lots of room to work in, but also lots of work to do if that's what you want.

Back around 2010 or so, I discovered that if you had a physical PC game that was also in Steam’s store, you could type in the serial number on the game box and it would register and add it to your Steam library.

WAIT WHAT.

Does this happen even if the game wasn't on Steam at time of purchase so long as it has a Steam version now? Because that would be amazing.

I'm frankly rather concerned about the idea of crowdsourcing or voting on "reliability", because - let's be honest here - Lemmy's population can have highly skewed perspectives on what constitutes "accurate", "unbiased", or "reliable" reporting of events. I'm concerned that opening this to influence by users' preconceived notions would result in a reinforced echo chamber, where only sources which already agree with their perspectives are listed as "accurate". It'd effectively turning this into a bias bot rather than a bias fact checking bot.

Aggregating from a number of rigorous, widely-accepted, and outside sources would seem to be a more suitable solution, although I can't comment on how much programming it would take to produce an aggregate result. Perhaps just briefly listing results from a number of fact checkers?

I am tinkering with something similar right now, with the elf-equivalents being virtually illegal outside the borders of their own empire.

So, here's what I would suggest you consider:

• First, discuss it with your players and make sure you're not going to piss any of them off by doing this. If any of them were planning on playing said race, make sure they're okay with the impact on their play style.

• Consider the storytelling conflicts you want to explore with this. What encounters do you want to put your players through, and why? What themes are you looking to explore?

• Consider the larger impact on other parts of your world. Try to make this more than a point that exists in isolation and a vacuum.

Welp. Since Hasbro overall seems intent on running its properties into the ground, I have little doubt the next one will continue the cycle of enshittification. I'd love to be wrong, but I doubt it.

So, this is a bit of a "depending on the group & situation" thing.

Fudging HP is definitely a thing DMs (myself included) do. However, with an experienced group who can get a sense for how much HP is typical for mobs at a given level, and if the amount of damage done is quite clearly far enough that he ought to be dead, it can be hard to add HP without "showing the finger on the scales" - at which point the illusion breaks and it becomes "un-fun".

This is exactly why single chunky bosses drive me nuts. I once watched a rogue annihilate a major chapter boss with a single opportunity attack and some very lucky rolls.

I like this answer because, like... a lot of the others are "clever" misinterpretations of how powers classically work, trying to force real-life physics into superhero logic and stuff.

But no. Not this one. Your mind-reading powers can function exactly like how comic books say it should, and you can still be scarred by what you found rummaging through that one guy's head.

Going to echo the prior comment. But here's my thoughts:

1. Was there a "session zero" in which the group's expectations for the campaign and interactions were laid out? If not, it may be a good idea to pause and have this. Sometimes groups who are familiar with each other skip this because they "know each other", but it can still be good on a campaign-by-campaign basis.

2. When you discuss it with them, try to start by determining why the DM is acting this way: Since it sounds like the DM likes firmly heroic characters, is this just what they find 'cool' or do they actually object to playing / having grey-er characters in their party or campaign? (Same kind of applies to the cleric's player - are they just "playing the character", or is this what the player feels is right?)

3. Ask if there's been any miscommunications involved. The thing that sticks out as odd to me here, is that the DM clearly seemed to be urging you towards combat with stereotypically evil enemies in these scenarios... but views you initiating combat as "evil"? It's possible something is getting lost in translation.

4. Since you and the rogue are both clearly enjoying less cut-and-dry characters, express that this isn't just you-versus-them. Or you-versus-cleric-player. Broadly, try to avoid turning this into an argument between people.

5. This will fluctuate a bit depending on how roleplay-heavy your group is, but consider asking if this could be dealt with in-character. Is the cleric open to having a crisis of faith over working with such "tainted" people? Are you okay with your character sometimes being held back by other party members when they'd like to be proactive, so long as their view isn't changed?

It's called the double ear mutation! It's a known recessive gene that appears in some cats.