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Does your character need mechanics to reflect every story decision you make about them? Are they all lies? Like, if I decide my character is an orphan, does that need a mechanic or else it feels like a lie? I don't get it. I never have. What makes mixed ancestry so different that it also needs...

What is really striking to me is the lack of a single great film (again, barring Thunderbolts; maybe it will save the day). Phases 1-3 didn't any films that I thought were outright bad and a number that were great. Hopefully Fantastic Four is the revitalization it needed. However, I don't love...

Daredevil was good and I have hope for Thunderbolts, given the reviews. Captain America, Quantumania and Invasion were bad. The rest were varying degrees of mid. Their weakest phase thus far, by a considerable margin.

I didn’t find it depressing at all. No spoilers, but I will say that it ends on a hopeful note. Very early in James is a funny and thought provoking scene where he is teaching his daughter the “correct incorrect grammar” to keep her off white folks’ radar. At that point, you either love the...

Just read the 2025 Pulitzer winning James by Percival Everett. It's a (sort of) re-telling of Huckleberry Finn, from the perspective of Jim, the escaped slave that Huck accompanies. But that really only scratches the surface of the novel, which is really a deconstruction of the performative...

There already is an active thread on this series.

The Sprawl Trilogy absolutely holds up; I just re-read last summer and Gibson's themes are prescient. Plus, he's a gorgeous writer. I'm intrigued that the tiny teaser for this series shows them going with a retro-80s version of the future.

Yes, they should've. Because it's a great story, and the mechanics had nothing to do with it. That's the point. There is nothing preventing you from making a character with mixed ancestry in 5e; to the contrary, several of my current players have done so, and it is an important part of their...

Obviusly, I can't speak to your game world and the relations between various factions. In my games, just like real life, "alignment" is not a thing and factions are full of individuals. If the outlaw is a psychopathic killer then yeah, lethality is justified. But situations are varied. If you're...

Thanks to this thread I have been reducing and reformatting my notes for my next session and have them down to 10 much better organized pages. Baby steps!

It's there because of a disinterest in storytelling and setting reasonable narrative stakes, IMO. Becoming known as "murderhoboes" should be lethal for the party, turning them into shunned and hunted outlaws. If murdering everyone is typically the "safer option," then that is pretty...

Again, I don't think that's a D&D problem, I think it's a DM problem. The fights are not properly structured. If it's a confined dungeon, then yeah, letting them retreat means they are retreating towards reinforcements, so that's one situation where letting the mobs go might not be a great...

These all sound like DM problems. So yeah, if you want your players to be able to retreat or accept surrender, don't put them in situations where retreat, allowing surrender, etc. is not much of an option.

There's optimizing and there's optimizing/power gaming. If the player has character power as a primary concern, that isn't wrong in itself but is typically an awkward fit - you basically need the whole group to be like-minded because that tends to be not just about character creation but about a...

You pretty much hit the nail on the head. Again, I don't find too much difficulty making it clear when the party needs to retreat - I simply explain how their characters would see the current situation: "from the perspective of your characters it is pretty obvious that this ancient dragon is...

I just got Civ VI on my phone because it was free with my Prime account or something. Anyway, I will play with it and report back. Civ IV is my first, my last, my everything, so we shall see how this compares. I don't like its chances.

You got the beefcake to pull it off!

If the spouse is onboard, it's a massive win. My spouse is my favourite player; they could give a crap about the rules but they love to roleplay their character. It's a hobby of ebbs and flows, isn't it? Sometimes, you need a break. Then a great group forms and you love it again - my current...

Yeah there's no new information but it's nice to hear an overview of the history from Luke Gygax's perspective. The anecdote about his rainbow shirt was sweet. 9 minutes well spent!

That sounds scary! As teachers, we get a refresher on them every year. I’ve fortunately never had to use one on a student but my close friend and colleague has, twice. I second: if you are regularly around someone with severe allergies, learn to use an EpiPen! (PS your thumb injury is a funny...