There are many things wrong with the laws in the US. I’m not even sure where I’d start

But the other bigger problem is enforcement. Some people do a murder and get a nationwide search. Others the victims family get a “lol can’t help you”.

Recommend reading “the new Jim Crow” for one look at one part of this.

Makes sense. Many people are living paycheck to paycheck and can’t tank a $500 surprise bill. Maybe that’s not the market for what these people are selling, but it seems to be the general state of the us.

The rich have too much money and everyone, even the rich, suffer for it

Yeah, I think there’s a big difference between “I thought they were going to investigate the smith, but they’re really suspicious of the wizard now and want to check her out first” and “they decided to forget about the whole civil war for the throne thing and open a BBQ joint for the local goblins”

Nowadays I’d probably just explicitly be like “Hey, so, when we started this game we agreed on a certain tone and direction. Specifically, it was going to be about a power struggle for the throne. Running a restaurant business in D&D sounds wild, but that is really a different kind of story and a different game. If you want to do that, let’s talk about it. Otherwise, I’m asking you to stay more on theme.”

Though I say that and my best game had plenty of “beach episodes”. One time literally, after they saved some sahaugin from being subjugated by a siren.

Software engineer.

Morning meeting that’s supposed to just be “what you did yesterday, what you’ll do today, and if you need help”. People fuck that up and go off on tangents. What should be a ten minute meeting takes 30.

Product owners at some point told you what the features to work on this month will be. For example, we need to add the ability for some reasons to bulk delete appointments.

Chat with product and other engineers about what that entails. Product probably won’t give complete, clear, requirements so you need to pull it out of them. (Hard delete or soft delete? Do you need an audit log? Are you sure with no take-backs you don’t need an undo? Do you want to notify anyone when it’s deleted? One email per request or per event? Do you have designs for that email? No? Of course not. And what do you want the UI to look like? If I “just put a button somewhere” we both know you won’t like it. Give me details or that blank check in writing.)

At some point sit down and make code changes to do the thing. Change the backend server code to accept your new request. Write automated tests. Change the frontend to make the request. Write more tests. Manually bang on it. Probably realize some requirements were missed (you guys know there’s a permissions system, right? I hooked this up to the existing can-delete permission. What do you mean CS doesn’t use permissions? You made them all superusers??)

Manually bang on it a little. Deploy it to dev or some non-production environment. Have product and other stakeholders look at it and sign off. Probably get feedback and either implement it, or convince them to do it “later” (or: never, because they’ll forget and it’s not actually important).

Get code approval from other engineers. Make changes as needed.

Merge and deploy. Verify in production.

Meanwhile, do code reviews for other people’s work. Context switch. Feels bad. Other guy is working on a progress report tool that’s in a whole other part of the code, so every time you look at it it’s a shifting of brain gears.

Also look at dependabot for libraries that need updating. Read release notes. Make changes if needed. Test. Pray.

Also periodic meetings to go over work in the backlog. A meeting to discuss how the team is doing that usually doesn’t produce results, but can be a vent session.

I imagine from the product owner it’s something like:

Get a mess of contradictory ideas from leadership. Try to figure out what they actually want and in what order. Manage their emotions because they have all the power and don’t like being told no or otherwise feeling bad.

Talk to customers and other users. Try to figure out what they want. They say things like “make it go faster” or “can you make the map bigger?”. There’s no map on the website.

Talk to engineering. They ask so many questions. Why can’t they just do the thing? They’re always going on about stuff that doesn’t seem important (like security and permissions and maintainability). This needs to go out Friday because the CEO wants it out.

Write tickets (a short document describing work to be done). People don’t read them. Or maybe don’t finish writing them, and leave a vague “as a user I want to be notified about changes to my project”, without specifying any details. (Notified how, Ryan??)

I don’t know what else they do.

Startups are a mess. Anyone who says they want to run the government like a startup should be banished from the land.

This is my favorite new to me song of the month: https://pearlcharlesmusic.bandcamp.com/track/does-this-song-sound-familiar-12-version

tagged as rock, desert rock, folk rock, garage pop, psych folk, psychedelic pop

I imagine there are some “written in blood” laws and regulations that apply to hotels that airbnb is ignoring, too. That should also be addressed.

I read that airbnb lead to rents rise, because it made it so easy for landlords to run their property like hotels. I don’t use them, and kind of think lowly of people that are like “well it’s convenient so i don’t care”.

I do believe that DND is a poor first RPG, and creates a weird survivor bias in the hobby. Because it’s so popular most people try it as their first RPG, and then some of them hate it. Some of them then think the whole hobby is like that, and then leave.

So the bulk of the people left in the hobby are people who like dnd, or at least tolerate it enough to stick around.

One of my friends has no real interest in fantasy, tactical combat (as much as DND is that), or resource management. They had no interest in DND. But they really liked Vampire.

I keep trying to get people to play fate, but all of these games struggle with finding people who will show up. Everyone seems to be just barely holding it together, and asking them to be creative and present once a week seems like a big request

I love Fate and think it’s much more intuitive. DND tends to crush player creativity with a lot of “sorry that’s just flavor”, and guides players towards “just move and attack”.

I’m not sure I agree about splitting hit and damage feeling weird,

It feels weird to me when you roll a really big number to hit their AC, and then roll the minimum for damage. Or the other way, where you just barely roll their AC and then roll max damage. There are narrative ways you could justify it, but I don’t see why you would want to. It’s not adding anything worth having to the experience, imo. The game doesn’t care if you beat the check by 0 or 20. It’s just an extra step and the information is discarded.

I think pf2e fixes this.

Forgot in my original: DND 5e barely has a concept of degree of success

DND is not a good universal game system. It’s pretty good at being DND, but that’s a particular beast that’s mostly about resource management.

You can definitely use it for a game about social intrigue, or horror, or modern day anything, but it’s not really good at any of that. Like using a hammer to put screws in, you’ll probably get something done, and if you’re hanging with your friends you’ll probably have a good time. But it’s a weird tool to reach for.

Personally, I don’t think the core of the rules system is very good at all. Flat probability feels weird. Armor as all-or-nothing is weird. Hit and damage being split into two rolls is slow and weird. In the latest edition, making very few choices about your character often feels bad. Levels are a very coarse unit of growth. The magic system somehow manages to make magic not feel like magic- no wonder, no mystery, it’s just safe and standardized. I could go on.

But it’s mega popular and people are emotionally invested, so there’s not much to be done about it. There are dozens of people playing the thousands of other games out there.

Also a lot of people have never played anything else, so their analysis and defense of it is often lacking. Like if I’ve only ever played baseball, and never even watched any other sports, I wouldn’t feel qualified to talk about bowling. But you get people saying like “no you need to wear cleats that’s a universal property of sports” when bowling comes up. Like, not every game has six stats. Not every game has attributes like that at all.

And again, if you’re having fun with dnd then that’s the primary goal achieved. We don’t need to maximize fun and efficiency in all things all times. I just think that it would be a good experience to branch out more, even if it’s scary, because that will lead to a richer experience overall.

Feels like they should be able to view the software and hardware controlling the odometer, and if it’s doing anything suspicious.

I wonder if they’ll actually do anything if they find Tesla is doing fraud. Feel like everyone who OK’d the decision should be barred from working in the industry for life, and made to forfeit everything they gained while doing the fraud.

While I’m making magical wishes, I’d also like Musk and all of his followers to choke to death.

If you’re engaging with the content you are contributing to it

Reddit is owned and operated by assholes. Don’t even try to use it.

I was hoping you had some insight and revelations about how to use Finder.

I also get mad at people who drive cars instead of walking or taking mass transit, if that helps.

But someone smoking near you makes your day undeniably, immediately, worse.

If you’re sitting in a room that smells uncomfortably of cheese, and someone rips a juicy fart on your face, it would be unreasonable to be like “who cares about my shart it smells like cheese in here”

People are emotional. They feel things, and then make up justifications for it afterwards. We all do this to some extent, in some contexts or others, but some people seem to do it the majority of the time.

Someone who smokes and has a choice between admitting they fucked up, they’re hurting themselves and those around them, OR denying it so they’re just a persecuted innocent? A lot of people will go for the latter. It’s weakness and cowardice, but saying that won’t change their mind. If results are wanted we have to do the very arduous task of massaging their emotions and I kind of resent that thankless, endless, work. Even though I almost certainly am the same way about other things.

Humans are a mess.

I ran a game in near future New York and used Google maps and street view for guidance. Worked well. None of the other players lived here, so I think the visuals helped them.

I had one really good game of Vampire. Lasted a couple years. We still talk about it sometimes, and its best scenes. Like how one PC saved an NPC by jumping out a 10th story window with her. Or the time they had a huge in character fight because the job they’d tried to do went sideways.

But I’ve also had a couple really bad games. There was one where they just didn’t read and retain anything from the books. One of the players on like session 4 was like “wait. How do I get more blood? Do I like… Bite people?”. My friend what do you think was happening in the other scenes when people were hunting for blood? They also didn’t retain anything about the different factions, so they didn’t really understand anyone’s motivation. It was bad. Still feel bad about it.

Please. Elaborate.