Been seriously thinking of switching to linux for my desktop. I mostly use it for games. Today I was looking at mods for Mass Effect, and the mod manager says in all caps - LINUX IS NOT SUPPORTED :(
There’s probably going to be a lot of that sort of annoyance for years.
I don’t disagree with your main point, but D&D 5e is a rather shallow rules system. It’s needlessly complicated (15 strength gives you what bonus? How does readying an action work? Can you smite when unarmed?), but it’s not really deep.
Imho any game is either rules-heavy, and as such closer to reality with more defined rules for various situations, or it is rules-light, where GM-Interpretation is other needed to determine what to role. (Or somewhere in between)
I don’t think more rules necessarily mean more like reality. You can have a bunch of rules for grappling, and create a system that anyone who actually does hand-to-hand stuff would say is nonsense.
That said, I think a lot of people would enjoy lighter systems than d20. Maybe not the people who get a kick out of the “lonely fun” of reading about builds online, but the people who just show up to play and the people who are there for a story? They’d probably be happier in Fate.
Yes, belief is social. What our in-group believes is way more important for what we believe and how we change our minds than one might think.
Like, if someone is a flat-earther, changing their mind with facts and figures isn’t going to be very effective. Their in-group believes otherwise. And when you come at them with contrary facts, the brain treats it similarly to a physical threat to its survival. In ancient, pre-history humans, this might have been an advantage. The guy who didn’t go along with the group got left for dead. Unfortunately, modern life is more complicated.
If we want to make the world better, we should probably focus on breaking up shitty ingroups (eg: fox news, the gop) and fostering groups that are worthwhile (I can’t think of an unassailable group, which may indicate another problem)
From what I’ve read, there are a few things that change people’s beliefs. Fact is not one of them. What your in-group believes is a big factor. So if we could murder fox news, we’d probably do the world a lot of good.
But the other thing that apparently can push people into reevaluating their beliefs? Horrific, personal, trauma. Someone who’s whole town was destroyed by climate change might be shaken up enough to rethink their world view. Maybe.
You could also maybe trigger the effect by beating the living shit out of a climate change denier, because being dragged out of their coal-rolling truck and being beaten so badly they’ll never walk again would be traumatic.
Gods, it’s like some people never passed 10th grade English. Sometimes the important part of the text isn’t the literal meaning. There’s like metaphor and hyperbole and shit.
It helps I’m playing Fate, so it doesn’t require a lot of prep. My 2nd favorite system, CofD, also doesn’t require a lot of prep. Dnd’s math is so wonky it needs more prep.
In both of those systems stats are pretty constrained. A dude has like 5 health levels on average and you don’t need to scale things to player level like that.
I usually have a couple factions in the game that are up to no good. They can always start some shit by kidnapping NPCs or advancing their plots. Maybe today’s the day they dig too deep and a balrog awakens in Central Park.
A significant amount of republicans probably sincerely believe that this tragedy is worth “saving the lives of all the other babies that would have been murdered.”
Their moral calculus is foolish and predicated on questionable-at-best axioms. They are well meaning but functionally bad people.
Another significant chunk also adheres to “the cruelty is the point.” They are bad people.
Unfortunately, for various reasons, republicans have a disproportionate amount of power in the US.
I don’t know where in the world you are so there may not be a similar service for you, but the Brooklyn public library has Book Match. You tell them what you’re looking for, and a librarian makes you a list of reading suggestions. I used it once and it was very good.
My lawyer friend tried to explain it to me before, but I still kind of don’t get why civil and criminal law is split. That seems unnecessarily complicated.
Anyway, the answer is probably unions, where the unions make it clear they know where management sleeps at night.
Not to be confused with its cousin, Mage: The Ascension. For complicated and stupid reasons, there’s both versions. Ascension was first, then there was a reboot of all the games. That gave us awakening. There was awakening 2nd edition. That’s my favorite. But then for some reason, another company went back and restarted publishing the old lines, and made new versions of them?
As someone who liked CofD 2e a lot, I’m bummed they didn’t continue with it. I also think the heavy meta narrative stuff was kind of bad, and I preferred not having a strong canon.
I should probably read the new new WoD rules to see if I like them, but I haven’t had the heart. I actually bought print editions of CofD stuff.
As most of us play games, we sometimes encounter elements or routines that suck all the fun from a shipped product. They can be a dealbreaker, so it’s better to be aware of them. I’d exclude platinum challenges and MTX as they are their own beasts, and start with a couple of examples I hated in older titles:...
Tedious optimal play is probably a whole book you could write.
I remember one old RPG where you got XP from reading books in the world. But if you went three menus deep, swapped on a particular accessory, exited three menus, then read the book, you’d get double the xp. What the fuck kind of choice is that? It was super tedious to do every time, and annoying to realize I was a level behind because I hadn’t been doing it.
I think this has mostly fallen out of fashion, but some games would have a “your benefits from leveling are determined by your stats at the time of level up.” So if you’re about to level, you better swap on as much +wis +con +int gear as you can, or you’ll be significantly under powered at the end of the game. Extremely tedious. Takes you out of the gameplay loop. Trash.
Half-assed, cargo-cult, implementations of D&D’s long rest mechanic.
D&D’s long rest mechanic, where you have very powerful resources that only recharge when you “rest” for a long time only barely works in the original tabletop game. Most players in that context don’t even play by the books recommendations, but instead go nova on their powers and then rest anyway. It kind of works if there is a strong narrative pressure that prevents you from taking weeks to address the problem. But it turns out players in video games kind of hate timers.
Pillars of Eternity 1 just whole ass cargo culted it into the game. There aren’t any actual timers because players hate them. You can only use your cool powers a few times before needing to use “camping supplies” or return to town. Your max health eventually stops recovering until you take a full rest.
So a full rest is probably significant, right? A serious tactical choice? No, not really. At worst, it’s several loading screens to go back to the inn, a “resting” animation, and then several loading screens to get back to where you were. There are no consequences. Enemies don’t respawn. Quests aren’t timed. It is extremely tedious.
Dark Souls has a sort of long-rest mechanic, in that your healing and spells only recharge when you hit a checkpoint, but that respawns most of the enemies. Now it’s more of a choice, and the game is built around “Can you get from here to there this your resources?” PoE1 didn’t do that. It just felt like someone liked D&D but didn’t really understand anything about it.
I was pleasant surprised they changed the game design to be the infinitely more reasonable per-encounter cadence in the sequel.
Side note: There’s a difference between good and fun. Many players probably had fun with the d&d-like system, but players and customers are notoriously idiots. “A faster horse” and all that. Would they have had more fun with a better designed system? Probably, unless the nostalgia of “long rest” was weighted really heavily in their mind.
At least BG3 had plot stuff happen when you long rest, but that creates a whole separate set of problems: If you are too good at the game and don’t need to rest often, you miss out on the plot stuff.
Gods, I’m so sick of D&D and how much influence it has.
I’m looking for players for a weekly game of Fate. I’m thinking something like a mix of Shadowrun and World of Darkness, where the players are vigilantes looking to make the world better. It would start (and maybe stay) at the street level, rather than global or cosmic....
2024: The Year Linux Dethrones Windows on the Desktop – Are You Ready? (lemmy.ca)
NTSync coming in Kernel 6.11 for better Wine/Proton game performance and porting....
Images leak of Valve's next game, and it's an Overwatch-style hero shooter (www.eurogamer.net)
Though the way the leaker describes it makes it sound more like a 3rd person MOBA than a hero shooter....
Gamers Are Becoming Less Interested in Games With Deep Strategy, Study Finds (www.ign.com)
Dungeons & Dragons will release its 2024 ruleset under a Creative Commons licence (www.dicebreaker.com)
Half of Britons wouldn't take a trip to the the moon, even in guaranteed safety (c.l3n.co)
Ocean water is rushing miles underneath the ‘Doomsday Glacier’ with potentially dire impacts on sea level rise (www.cnn.com)
What do you wear for work?
Tips to reduce Enshittification of Internet
^Qn....
It is apparently controversial (lemmy.zip)
Microsoft's new Recall AI will take screenshots of everything you do - freaky [Mircosoft: "capabilities to take images of your active screen every few seconds"] (www.gamingonlinux.com)
You're the GM, but haven't prep anything for tonight. How do you make tonight game a succes ?
Pretty sure it happened to everyone, you lacked time to prep tonight session, and now the first player just arrived...
13-year-old rape victim has baby amid confusion over state's abortion ban (abcnews.go.com)
If you were to homebrew this spell, what would it do? (lemmy.world)
a very emphatic answer (lemmy.blahaj.zone)
Romance books with more relatable male protagonists
I’ve been feeling really lonely lately so I’ve been trying to find any romance books to distract me....
Wage theft now outnumbers all other types of theft in the U.S., reaching $482 million (medium.com)
What's up with memes suffixed with "rule"?
Like I saw one that was titled “I wonder why rule” and had a picture about overpaid CEOs or something....
Good doggo (lemmy.world)
‘Psychologically tortured’: California city pays man nearly $1m after 17-hour police interrogation (www.theguardian.com)
Officers threatened to kill the dog of Thomas Perez Jr as they pressured him to falsely confess to killing his father, who was alive
This is where the fun begins! (lemmy.world)
Let's talk gamedesign blunders (pre MTX)
As most of us play games, we sometimes encounter elements or routines that suck all the fun from a shipped product. They can be a dealbreaker, so it’s better to be aware of them. I’d exclude platinum challenges and MTX as they are their own beasts, and start with a couple of examples I hated in older titles:...
[Online][Fate][UTC-5] Looking for a Thursday Evening Game
I’m looking for players for a weekly game of Fate. I’m thinking something like a mix of Shadowrun and World of Darkness, where the players are vigilantes looking to make the world better. It would start (and maybe stay) at the street level, rather than global or cosmic....