It's so bad that my fiancée has some bras that say she's a B cup and others that says she's a D cup. In order to go bra shopping, you have to actually try them on to find out if they fit.

If I had to try on underwear to see if they fit, I might not bother with underwear at all!

I'm fiddling with a card game concept, and a very important part of it is creatures interacting with other specific kinds of creatures. This necessarily means I need to come up with lots of type names that are descriptive but vague enough to shove literally anything in them. Here's some good examples: "bug" containing ants, shrimps, pillbugs, bees, and literally anything that could be called a creepy crawly; "fish" containing everything from salmon to sharks to eels to octopi; "trees" containing all the stuff you are thinking of as well as those precambrian 6-foot fungi pillars; and "cats" including housecats, big cats, cheetah, and carcals.

And that's everything I can think of that would be useful. You see my problem? I know there are other casual-usage words for big categories of critters, but my grasp of the Enlgish language is fickle and leaves me whenever it is most inconvenient. If there is a list I could work from, that would be very helpful. Otherwise, volunteer as many words as you think would be useful.

I'm fiddling with a card game concept, and a very important part of it is creatures interacting with other specific kinds of creatures. This necessarily means I need to come up with lots of type names that are descriptive but vague enough to shove literally anything in them. Here's some good examples: "bug" containing ants, shrimps, pillbugs, bees, and literally anything that could be called a creepy crawly; "fish" containing everything from salmon to sharks to eels to octopi; "trees" containing all the stuff you are thinking of as well as those precambrian 6-foot fungi pillars; and "cats" including housecats, big cats, cheetah, and carcals.

And that's everything I can think of that would be useful. You see my problem? I know there are other casual-usage words for big categories of critters, but my grasp of the Enlgish language is fickle and leaves me whenever it is most inconvenient. If there is a list I could work from, that would be very helpful. Otherwise, volunteer as many words as you think would be useful.

The funniest Out of Game moment I have ever had at the table was in my previous IRL group. We rotated who was in the DM chair, but this session our host, lets call him Phillip Barker, was running his Pathfinder campaign. The problem player, a hustlebro i shall name Emmett Roe, decides to flirt with an NPC. Phillip reciprocates but reveals the character is asexual. Emmett lost his shit, calling Phillip r♡♡♡♡♡♡d and asking “why are there f♡♡♡♡ts everywhere now” and yelling something dumb about genders and mental illness. Phillip calmly pulls down one of his zweihanders from a display rack and unsheathes it, walks over to him, and tells him “You're going to leave now.” Emmett leaves, Phillip sits back down, and we continue the game as if Emmet was never there.

This group, by the way, was the worst I have ever been in. I have never felt so lonely in a crowded room before. I've provided bios of the players below, including myself, with fake names taken from famous people. Have fun figuring out which one is me!

1. Phillip Barker (19): Does not smoke, but drinks and pretends to be a wine snob. Ran Shadowrun 5e and a homebrew PF1e campaign, and uses an old-school impartial referee mindset behind the screen. Hes also autistic, which mainly shows in him through rigid ethics about fairness. As a player, he was the Heart of the group, and kept our in-game squabbles from getting the game off-track or spilling over to real life. His Pathfinder campaign had lots of diverse groups that were fairly represented, and whenever an NPC judged one of our rainbow-flavored party members it was clear that this was the character being an asshole, not him. He put a lot of work into his sessions, sometimes extending to making a whole soundboard for background music, and he made sure to incorporate each of our characters into the plot in an organic way. Out of game, he was an aspiring catholic priest, and boy was he living up to the stereotype. He made a suspicious number of jokes about being both a nationalist and a socialist and therefore being a national socialist (he definitely was not a socialist), was a big fan of several “"alt-right"” personalities, made several very racist and homophobic jokes in public, tried to flirt with another player's underage little sister, and tries to hide the fact that he thinks most of the other players are going to hell for their sexuality. But he’s also super hot, so at the time I thought that balanced out.

2. Emmett Roe (19): Shadowrun DM, is a bit of a railroader. Looked like he was about 12 years old. Bullied me in high school, and has not significantly changed. After being kicked out, he cofounded a FLGS with his dad, but at this time his gigachad sigma male grindset was flipping Funko Pops.

3. Dave Arneston (19): The main Shadowrun DM, uses a “DM as Ringmaster/Entertainer” mindset. Autistic bisexual twink, and a hot one at that. Smokes, drinks, deals drugs. Dropped out of college, possibly because of the drugs. Is the reason Phillip has a “no smoking indoors” rule. Ran horror sessions that literally gave me nightmares. Dude method acts his characters. When he's playing, you are going to be sitting at the table with his character until the session is over.

4. Pablo Pineda (21): An AuDHD Shadowrun DM, uses a “DM as mediator/collaborator” mindset. Bisexual, but in denial about it even though he was dating a guy at the time. Does not drink or do any chemically addictive drugs. Dropped out of college after 1 semester because he didn't do any classwork and expected to just coast through, but maintains he's just “on a gap year” when questioned about it. Cannot stick with one fucking character for longer than a fucking month. Preferred to run heists with unusual stakes, locations, or macguffins. Had no social life outside of the game and was still doing the job he had in high school. Would engage in distracting sensory-seeking behaviors during game sessions; for example, during one session he wedged a d4 up his nose and had to go to urgent care to get it out. Overall, I would say that Pablo ruined my enjoyment of the actual game the most.

5. Henry Cavendish (19): Audience member. Does not smoke, drink, express feelings, or roleplay. Stereotypical autist. Plays a human fighter whenever possible. Keeps breaking up with Amy and getting back together. Usually a helpful person. On that sigma grindset with his long-term life plan.

6. Amy Winehouse (18): Femme-presenting nonbinary pansexual disaster. (she/them, prefers femme pronouns) Smoked weed to self-medicate, often while driving since driving scares her. As a result, she was generally too blasted during game sessions to read her character sheet or the tiny numbers on the dice. Also had trouble with maintaining a job, which resulted in periodic homelessness.

7. Theresa Berkley (19): Was Amy's best friend, and was invited by Amy. Vapes and drinks. The dudes all very much liked ~~her gigantic tiddies~~ her personality.

Unfortunately, no actual horror stories happened in this group. There were bad moments, and there were horrifying moments, but thats all they were: moments. So, here's a short list of the moments i can remember:

● As stated above, Henry and Amy would break up and get together repeatedly. When they were together, they would sit together snuggling, and Henry would help out Amy when her high ass needed support. When they were broken up, Amy was on her own. This resulted in a sad space of time when Henry had helped Amy make an Alchemist which exploited some complex rules interactions, but then let her just flounder after they broke up. He also went well out of his way to scare off any potential partner that might replace him when they broke up; Amy has told me about how she would be at a rave flirting with some hottie and suddenly Henry is right there calling her Babe and Honey until his competitor backs off. Apparently he used to only chase off men, but after Amy called him on this he worked on his internalized homophobia and now he walls her off from all partners equally. (Good for him, I guess?) This effectively made him the only option, and when they got back together he would smother her with appreciation and love. Carrot and stick, like a fucking cult leader.

● In our Shadowrun campaign, Emmett founded a Corp for our runners to work for. Normally, this would be mostly fine, especially for a group like ours. What wasn't fine was all the times an in-game argument would be resolved with Emmett's character saying “You work for me!”.

● Dave had a habit of not prepping for his sessions. Fair, he's got a life, he's hustling the good stuff and holding down a day job too. But this is Shadowrun! You have the material plane, the astral plane, and the Matrix to keep track of! You've got one player that has a bow that can shoot through walls, one player with a high-specced cyberdeck and a lot of experience using it, a vampire that can turn into mist and astral project, a guy who is basically We Have Tony Stark At Home, and a character who gets closer to being Robocop with every paycheck. You can't show up and wing it, because there are 5-6 of us and one of you. We can both outsmart you and outstupid you at the same time!

● Pablo's characters tend to make the table uncomfortable or be awkward to play with. Examples:

○ A human fighter going through a midlife crisis. He has a wife and child at home who think he is going on a business trip, when in reality he is putting his life in danger on a daily basis and bedding any woman he can seduce. This character was actually pretty similar to many of the other players’ actual parents, and was retired unceremoniously after he made Amy cry.

○ A dissonant technomancer. In Shadowrun, technomancers work their computer magic through Resonance, which is essentially the light side of the force. Dissonance is like the dark side, which encourages destruction, chaos, and insanity. Importantly, the compulsion to destroy vanishes the moment you unplug. Pablo spent a lot of time thinking about how to manage what is in effect a chronic illness when buying equipment. This made Amy uncomfortable because she plays to escape the reality of having a chronic illness. Phillip, on the other hand, was made uncomfortable by the murder hobo hacker they had to work with, since this caused interparty conflict and he Is Not Down With That.

○ His first Shadowrun character was a troll who had a very chaotic relationship with his size queen orc girlfriend. Their on-and-off relationship prompted the rest of the group to make fun of Amy and Henry for a bit. He also got some criticism from Phillip for establishing that the orc girlfriend was only dating him because he had a massive dong with subdermal cartilaginous bumps and ridges, but Dave LOVED role-playing the GF and made her existence a part of several sessions until Amy told him that sex stuff made her uncomfortable at the table.

● Pablo also used his (metal) dice as fidget toys, often loudly, sometimes disruptively. There were multiple times he has flung a d6 across the table in the middle if tense rp, and multiple times he had to be asked to stop shaking and rolling his (metal) dice when his characters weren't active. He also tended to chew on his nonmetal dice, especially his d20s.

● Pablo had a serious caffeine addiction. Like, it was actually a problem. He needed an intervention. The games often started at 7, 8, or 9 PM, and would show up with one or two thermoses of black coffee and drink it all before the session was over. He was often so jittery from the coffee that he couldn't focus during RP, and he often went without sleep (which probably made everything worse) to the point where he was hallucinating quite often. He bragged about this, like it was something to be proud of. Thankfully, when Covid hit he went cold turkey for all of quarantine, which fixed the problem.

● During one of Amy's unhoused periods, Phillip let her stay in his spare room in exchange for sex. She took him up on this, because what the fuck was she supposed to do? She had no job and no car at the time! So, she accepts, and Henry finds out and dumps her for it.

● Around the time that Amy invited Theresa to the table, they started renting a house together. For context, Amy had previously gotten back together with Henry after he forgave her for the previous story, but have at the time of this story once again broken up. Amy and Theresa had some problems with the basement. They would hear bumps, bangs, and the sounds of movement. This freaks them out so much one night that they call Henry, who tells them “You're not my gf so you're not my problem”. Amy then calls Pablo, who drives over at 2 AM and helps them clear out their basement until they feel safe. They continue having problems, and eventually determine that there is something evil down there. To fix this, they get Phillip to come over and exorcise their demonic basement, which works. Basement is no longer evil. They eventually lose the house because Theresa made all the bills Amy's responsibility to pay and did not contribute anything other than drama.

● You may notice I sound like I hate Theresa as a person, which would be an accurate statement. As a DM, she was infuriating to run for, mainly because she was so dependant on her vape that she would ask for a smoke break what felt like every five minutes. Made me question my abilities as a storyteller whenever she would interrupt to whine “fuuck I need a smoooke 😭”. As a person, it quickly became obvious that she was terrible to everyone. Her dating habits were especially horrendous; she had a toxic ass rebound boyfriend, but would preferentially bed men that Amy had expressed an interest in, including Henry. At the table she initially focused her attention on Phillip because he is a solid 12/10, but he got pissed right the fuck off with her constant smoke breaks so she ended up plowing furrows in her mattress with Dave a lot. Thankfully she left after we all got frustrated enough with her to stop giving her preferential treatment.

All in all, we were losers and stuck together because we were losers. I stayed for as long as I did because I thought I didn't deserve better. Besides, bad D&D is better than no D&D, right?

Thankfully I know better now. I left the group after Covid, and I almost immediately started making real progress. I got a better (but smaller) group of friends I play D&D with now. I also am no longer dependant on the magic bean to function, found my passion and have an actual big boy job now, and went back to college and am actually doing well this time! I honestly think keeping these losers in my life just held me back socially and emotionally.

In case you are as slow on the uptake as me, I am Pablo. If you are also a Pablo, don't be so hard on yourself. You'll grow at your own pace. At the time this story took place, I believed that I had peaked in middle school, and that it was all downhill from there, that I had missed my shot to be a complete person and no one would love me for me, least of all myself. It's easy to forget that your story is not over, because that story never existed. You likely define yourself in reaction to how others react to you, mixed with your memories. None of that is “real”. Your friends likely only remember you by the first impression you made on them, plus a few highlights. They aren't gonna remember your stutters and fumbles unless they are hilarious, and what they do remember will be broad strokes. On the other hand, your (non-traumatic) memories change slightly every time you access them until they are completely unusable. A good chunk of your memories are likely so mutated that they might as well be completely made-up. “You” is not a solid concept. “You” changes on a month to month basis. So take advantage of that. You can practice making a good first impression on people by going out and meeting lots of people. Pick up some new skills and hobbies. Make new friends, drop toxic ones, and don't look back. Keep trying new things. Nobody is going to remember how bad you were at it in the beginning, and you're not even going to remember your fuckups after a few months or years. That said, keep records of the stuff you did. You can't see how far you've come if you can't compare it to the garbage you made when you were a beginner, and we just established that your memories are not accurate. That's my advice. Go out and grow!

Edit: It seems I never spelled out what my issue with 5e was. My grievance is that as a player the game doesn't empower me to do what I feel is the core fantasy of most classes. I can't fault the DMs for forgetting to include spell scrolls as loot or not do overland travel or whatever, they are small easy-to-forget things. It just gets frustrating when I ask the DM to give out a certain kind of loot or let me interact with other druids to do Druid things and then they (understandably) forget.

A while back, I got into a heated argument with a friend about 5e; I wanted to play a new system becuase I was getting tired of how generic 5e is, but my friend insisted that i could hombrew 5e to create any style of play i wanted. This was back in 2017 and we have not been friends for a while now, but I've been pondering how to homebrew 5e into a shape that encourages a specific style of play.

My main issue with 5e after all this time is that I don't feel like the classes actually encourage you to behave like your class. Druid is personally my favorite class because it's the exception (i liek da aminals) but every other class is at best somewhat samey and at worst actively frustrating (looking at you, PHB ranger).

Here's my thoughts about what I think the core fantasy of each class SHOULD be. Lmk what you think. I want to know if I am really off-base with these.

Bard: I think you play a Bard to be a drama queen and an artist.

Barbarian: s t r o n k

Cleric: The main appeal of being a cleric, for me, is promoting a god, proselytizing, doing outreach, building a temple, and most importantly asking the DM very specific questions about their setting and making them very happy. It's all about that faith babyyyy.

Druid: i liek da aminals. (fr, the actual appeal for me is similar to cleric but with Druid stuff)

Fighter: the only reason for me to play Fighter is the Battlemaster Archetype, so I can play 5e like the wargame it sometimes seems like it wants to be. I also like the Champion for the expanded crit range, but if you like being stronk like bull you could just play barbarian? (Starting to think that Barbarian should have been a Fighter subclass).

Monk: wuxia/xianxia. Kinda out of place, but I can dig it. They should have leaned more into that.

Paladin: The only class that I think was incredibly damaged by WotC's decision to make alignment not matter mechanically. IMHO, the concept of Oaths should have been more fleshed out, and there should have been consequences for breaking your oath included in the rules.

Ranger: the one time I played a ranger, I worked with the dm to homebrew some cool stuff for traveling so I could be the ultimate master of the wilderness. (We then went into a dungeon and spent the rest of the mini-campaign there.) I think a better ranger would have more cool stuff for traveling, and maybe let you make more animal friends.

Rogue: Stabby glass cannon skill monkey. 5e's rogue knows what it wants to be and it is very good at being its best self. I have never played a rogue, but I totally get the appeal. IMHO, best class in the game. I think the only way to improve the rogue would be to make skills better.

Sorceror: I have mixed feelings about the Sorceror. I like sorcery points, and I like being able to do more with a limited spell list. That said, if I want to play as a magical boy who casts spells as easily as breathing, I think there should be a way to slam together a spell-like effect on the spot with nothing but your Wits.

Warlock: My favorite misfit child. As a DM, I love how I can use this class to yank a player around my cool setting under the threat of [REDACTED]. However, I have noticed multiple players seem thrown off by this. As a player, I love using my Warlock pact to exploit the hell out of the setting for my own game, but the way it's spellcasting works runs completely counter to how every other class works. Ultimately, could be a better power fantasy, all things considered.

Wizard: I have a bone to pick with this class. Yes, this class offers a path to ultimate power. However, the main way you do this is by shoving spell scrolls into your spellbook like a kid on Halloween grabbing fistfuls of candy from a bowl labeled "Please Take 1". This means going into dungeons to find them, and hopefully also the gold to copy them into your spellbook. However, every DM I have played with seems to forget that spell scrolls, especially Cantrip spell scrolls, are a thing that exist and can be found as loot. More importantly, we rarely even go into the dungeons that these scrolls are in! In my opinion, the best way to make wizards playable is to make 2 changes to all or most of the other classes:

1. Give the other classes abilities that similarly depend on the Dungeon. Maybe give them stuff to spend copious amounts of money on?

2. Give some of the other spellcasters spellbooks so more people are hungry for scrolls. (Bard could definitely use a spellbook, since they are kinda like music wizards.) Then, all you would need to do is give the wizard some tiny boons to their spellbook usage to make it slightly more efficient than the other classes.

Artificer: Inventing stuff is cool! I just wish that WotC wasn't so scared of giving players the freedom to customize stuff. Maybe in another timeline we could have gotten an Artificer that functions like the PF1 Summoner. Also, guns. Not sure why they are so afraid of guns. Any table that bans Artificer is also going to ban guns, and any table that really wants guns will also really want Artificer. The venn diagram of Artificer enthusiasts and people who want guns in D&D is a circle.

Here's my thoughts on what I would need to do to make 5e conform to a style of play I like:

1. Cull the redundant classes so my work is a bit easier. Barbarian and Paladin become Fighter subclasses. Druid becomes a Cleric subclass. Eliminate Sorceror, Monk, Warlock, and Artificer until I know what to do with them. This leaves Bard, Cleric, Fighter, Ranger, Rogue, and Wizard.
2. Rework the lower levels to incentivise the core fantasy of each class.
3. At higher levels, give each class ludicrously expensive stuff to buy so they still want to go into the dungeons and get loot. Move the currency system to be based around copper pieces so I can more easily deploy the overcomplicated currency systems that make me happy.
4. Make skills a little more fun to work with. For example, maybe whenever you use a skill successfully yoh can increase your proficiency with that skill by 1?
5. Circle back to Sorceror, Warlock, Monk, and Artificer. Make new classes to replace them. Artificer gets a whole framework for fully custom inventions. Monk gets proper cultivation genre mechanics, diving deep into eastern alchemy on top of the standard martial arts flair. Sorceror has spellcasting, but also gets a toolkit for slapping together spell effects on the fly. Warlock gets a full point-buy system with their pact boons. I do not think this is very doable, though.

Lmk if I am completely off-base.

My normal DM is taking a little hiatus at the end of the summer, and has offered to let me run a game during that time. I, as a rule, let players choose what we are doing. The 2 campaigns I have prepped are most accurately described as this:

1. A Hunter: the Reckoning game set in my hometown. The party is playing as normal people with normal lives who hunt the things that lurk in the night on their off time. There is a turf war between angels and demons brewing downtown, Amazon is trapping and brainwashing werewolves in the national park, and the local Autism Mom group has recently started to try and cure their children through more sadistic means than normal. In the background, the secret alien invasion is about to get much worse, and the New World Order has sold us out. Have fun!

2. DnD as I wish I could play it. Open world, homebrew setting that I ran a 5e campaign in during Covid, using Knave. If you want cool abilities, you get those by finding magic items in the dungeons. Outside of that, tell me what interests you and we will do that. You want to do cleric stuff? A local priory has lost their sacred relic. Want political intrigue? The Marquis just to the north has a reputation of being horrific to his peasants, so get evidence, kidnap him, and drag him before the king to face judgement. There's a big world to explore.

Now, the thing that frustrates me is I have, on average, one sentence to convince each of my burned-out 20-something friends to do each game. If I send them anything longer than that, they will not read it. So, "monster hunting in the rust belt" is competing against "Open world where you can do whatever you want". I dont think that is fair.

I miss dungeon-crawls. But it's so hard to pitch them! Like, when I play a wizard, I want to go into dungeons, find spell scrolls for the DM's cool homebrew spells, copy them into my spellbook, and become the most versatile mage in the world; but when we play, we never even set foot in a dungeon because none of the other classes yearn for the mines at all! It just doesn't seem fair to me that the option I think is just as cool as Alien Invasion in Conspiracy Clown World, and the option I prefer, won't seem as cool to my players.

Edit:

Just to clarify, I am also excited to run Conspiracy Clown World. It was listed first because when I first heard I might get a shot to run something, that's what I started working on first. My reticence to run it, though, mainly stems from 2 problems that I think only I am having:

First, our current campaign is a morally grey, politically complex, character-driven campaign. The good guys are not winning, and that's 100% our fault; i might even go so far as to call it grimdark. Conspiracy Clown World, despite taking place in a giant funhouse painted to look like the real world, will be a morally grey, politically complex, character driven campaign in a grimdark setting with no good guys. It's more of the same. Maybe they will find it to be a pallette cleanser, but probably not me.

Second, I know from experience that I am going to feel like if I don't run Conspiracy Clown World for at least a year, I will not feel like the campaign has properly run its course. I don't think Dungeon World will be like that.

These are, from my perspective, selfish concerns. If the players want to hunt monsters in Conspiracy Clown World, thats what they are getting.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/13942739

Sometimes I look back on my life and wonder exactly how much of my life and current personality is purely due to the autism.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/21181822

Writers of Lemmy, how do you do outining?

I normally just do a big text document, but I'm starting to think thats not the best method for me. It can be overwhelming to keep nice and linear over time.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/14609524

Problem player kills new campaign by being a creep

A few days ago, 3 players from my old 5e campaign reached out to me to see if I would be open to reviving that game. Henceforth, I will call them Lynnea, Warlock, and Druid. There was unanimous support for the game to begin. However, when we started arranging for session 0, I got a message from one of them:

Lynnea: So something happened between Warlock and I. I may not be able to play if she does. I have proof that she said something not okay with me if you would like to see it.

Me: Oh absolutely. Tbh I didn't really like them much. What did they do?

Now, before I tell all you wonderful readers what evidence was presented, I should explain my enthusiasm to kick this player out. Warlock was not exactly a pleasure to have at the table, although this was made less obvious by the fact we ran everything online through discord. I have written horror stories back on the alien site starring them, but since I deleted all my posts during the API apocalypse I will have to retell them from memory as best I can.

The Cardinal Sin of Apathy

Every session (until they introduced Lynnea to the party) they would spend nearly the entire session playing a videogame instead of rping or listening in general. The only time I had their full attention was combat. It was easy to forget that we were a secondary task to them, but every once in a while I would be in the middle of describing a scene when their game would get loud enough for me to hear it. Warlock also did not put any effort into role-playing. I have very low standards for role-playing; I don't need a voice or custom art, I just want to see you immerse yourself in the game. They couldn't even clear that bar outside of combat.

A good example of this happened when we were getting excited about the new campaign. I was trying to find a reference point for my players for the survival horror vibes I wanted, and settled on one session where they had to clear out a haunted keep to reclaim it. The plot went something like this:

As they entered the keep, they would explore each room after room, discovering fun lore things like dwarven hardtack, a mimic being used as a talking door, and steel bars from bad guy land. However, each time they entered a room, they would experience things which implied that something material was following them. Claws gently scratching at walls behind them, bodies would be found disemboweled and partially eaten, and every room had a shattered mirror. Rogue, at one point, felt hot, wet breathing down the back of her neck; she whipped around to stab the menace, but there was nothing but clicking and scratching sounds retreating down the hall behind her. At the end of the day, they decided that food stores in the basement were defensible, locking themselves into a lightless room with only one door in or out. They were assaulted that night. Warlock and Barbarian successfully held the door; as hard as the monsters tried, all they could do was scrape and gouge the edges of the door. Eventually they relented. The next day, Rogue decides to try something new: she picks up a fragment of a broken mirror, looking through it over her shoulder to see an emaciated humanoid with steel claws for fingers, which immediately grabs her by the legs and sprint-drags her to the other room. It is a quick fight. However, after discussing with each other for a bit, the players remember that there were at least 2 of these things assaulting them last night. Their hackles did not go down for the rest of the session, working together to scan each room with their mirrors.

It became apparent in the chat that the only one who remembered this session was Warlock:

Me: @warlock, would you like to tell the newbies about the keep with the invisible monsters? I have mind-of-god knowledge about what was actually going on, so I’m not the best person to tell this tale.

Warlock: basically was filled with creatures that could only be seen in a mirror or reflection and almost killed the entire party while taking a long rest by swiping through the broken barricades door.

Warlock: every mirror in the building was smashed and burned

The Lesser Sin of Sloth

Warlock was often a bit inflexible. Sometimes it seemed like they didn't want to listen with their ears. For example, during the party's session 0 where everyone met each other, I explained that the local area uses a gift economy and what that means. My setting was a sort of Studio Ghibli post-apocalypse, where the world is just barely getting out from under the collapse of my Roman Empire analogue, so establishing a standardized currency system wasn’t a priority and most of their part of the world had decided it wasn’t worth it. Warlock refused to understand:

Warlock: this is so stupid. You're saying I can't buy things?

Me: Well, trade on a local level is simple enough that barter works for many day-to-day functions, but like I just explained, if you don’t have something to give them for the thing you want, you do them a favor.

Warlock: You said there’s a tavern over there. Are you saying we don’t buy the drinks at the tavern?

Me: Technically what I am calling a tavern is what inlanders would call a “hospitality fort” and it’s a grey area I wanted to address later, but I feel like you are confusing trade in general with, you know, money. Think of it this way: In situations like this where there is no obvious standard of trade, people will find something ubiquitous to use as a currency: sea shells, precious metals, flint arrowheads, you get the idea. We’ve settled on favors as the currency. The community is absurdly small, so if someone owes someone else everyone is going to know about it by the end of the week. It’s like a social blockchain system powered by gossip.

Warlock: But what if I want to buy something? How am I supposed to pay for something if they don’t take cash?

Me: (sigh) I just explained, you need to talk with the person who has your thing and either find something you can do for them or get them to agree that you just owe them a favor. I’m going to be keeping track of your reputations in the community as a sort of credit score; if it gets too low you won’t be able to pay with IOUs anymore.

Warlock: I thought you said this was going to be a high-realism campaign.

Me: Fair, we probably have different ideas of what exactly counts as “realism”, but if you look at the player handout I do specify that I spent a lot of time thinking about how this new age of chaos has impacted the way people live their daily lives. I understand it is a bit of a mindfuck to try and navigate a culture so different for our irl culture, but I did a lot of research on what contexts different economic systems arise in and a gift economy fits the local area best.

Barbarian: Um. We were going to go deal with those goblins?

Rogue: (turns on mic) Right, I was just thinking about how we don’t have a healer. I’m going to go ask Calabash if we could get some potions of healing—

Warlock: How are we going to buy potions of healing if no one takes money around here?

Rogue: Mmph. (leaves the call)

Me: Calabash has a number of potions of healing for you all. It’s emergency resources for times such as now. The band looks after itself.

Barbarian: And what money are you trying to buy things with? How do you have money on your character sheet?

For context, I made homebrew backgrounds that each of them had to pick from, representing their social station. None of them come with money, unless you include the Noble’s gold ingots. Barbarian had noticed this during character creation and asked about it, so he already knew everything I was telling Warlock now and had been sitting patiently this entire time. I want to say that he must have been holding onto that question with the patience of a boulder in a river, but since he was my only IRL friend at this game I already know his patience was and is rivaled only by the Buddha himself.

Me: (pulls up Warlock’s sheet on Roll20, which I had sat with them to make, and begin checking it. There is indeed no money on it.)

Warlock: Well, I thought one of you would have been a noble. Anyway, what if we find money in the goblin camp?

Me: That’s a good question, and ties back into the tavern being a Hospitality Fort. Merchants do pass through and stay at the hospitality forts, and when you are elsewhere you will be staying at hospitality forts. So, our tavern does in fact accept gold, and merchants accept gold as well. However, most trade is done in gold ingots, as explained in my description of the noble background if you haven’t read it. Gold pieces are only worth their weight in gold. You’ll hear the tavernkeep calling them “specie” instead of coins because of this.

Warlock: You promised a high-realism campaign. I should be able to—

Barbarian: I think we have prepped all we can for our first quest. Are we going?

Me: I’ll message Rogue that Calabash gave them (rolls 3d4) 7 potions of healing and that we are starting the quest.

After this session, I talked about this with Barbarian. Barbarian agreed with Warlock that the gift economy was frustrating to deal with as a player, but they did say that Warlock was “being really weird” and didn't understand why they were so upset. I decided to quietly move the gift economy out of view after this, but never quite fully removed it because it tied into the law vs chaos theme of my setting. It was a blow to my dming confidence that I allowed session 0 to get so off the rails, but Barbarian (who also dms) was able to talk the bad thoughts out of my head.

In addition to not being the best listener, Warlock also could be quite hidebound. For example, at the climax of the quest mentioned in the last story, the party managed to stealth their way to the main chamber of the goblin warrens, where they saw 30 goblin warriors being given a rousing speech by their warchief Bogan Redcap, Lord of All Goblins.

Warlock: I have an idea. Can I use my yuan-ti ability to turn into a snake and sneak up behind the warchief?

Me: There's a lot of visual clutter in this room for you to sneak through, but there's a lot of goblins. Give me a Stealth.

Warlock: 16.

Me: Okay. There's a couple close calls, but you are a ghost in the dark and you get there unseen.

Warlock: I'm going to transform back into my humanoid form and decapitate the war chief.

Me: Sick. Roll to hit, then let's roll initiative.

They end up actually being able to take Bogan Redcap, Lord of All Goblins down in one hit, but it was a cool enough idea that I would have let them decapitate him anyway.

Warlock: I hold up the warchief's head and tell them to bow before me or die.

Me: Fuck Yeah! Roll Intimidation and I'm giving you an inspiration. Let's see what happens.

Warlock gets a 23, and I describe the entire room of goblins dropping their weapons and running in fear. However, this commotion catches the attention of every alert goblin in the warrens, and the party braces to fight the oncoming waves. When the first set of goblin reinforcements arrives, the players have decided on their first actions:

Barbarian: I rage and hit the nearest goblin.

Rogue: I'm hidden under a table. Sneak attack.

Warlock: I raise the warchief's head and tell them to surrender or die.

Warlock rolls high on their Intimidation roll, so the goblins decide that they are the most dangerous threat in this room and prioritize taking them out, much to the amusement of Barbarian who was literally pulverizing the goblins by hitting them hard enough that their bodies took on the consistency of rice bags. When the next wave arrived, each player declared their actions, and guess what Warlock chose?

Warlock: I raise the warchief's head and tell them to surrender or die.

Warlock rolls poorly, so they effectively entirely waste their turn. So, next round they try again.

Warlock: I raise the warchief's head and tell them to surrender or die.

Rogue: Why?

It doesn't work. This continues until I pause the game and explain to Warlock a psychological principle called the Law of Diminishing Returns. They react to this by trying to find other ways to use the head to intimidate the goblins, which I allow but it still has no obvious effect on the goblins. By the end of the 12 rounds of combat, Rogue and Barbarian are exhausted both in and out of game, whereas Warlock is just frustrated. There were many other times Warlock started acting this hidebound, one of which nearly caused a party wipe, but from this point forward I knew to be on the lookout for such behavior and correct it before it became a problem.

The Sin of Greed

Warlock was only motivated by acquiring new and better weapons. Whenever we were doing anything that did not lead to cool weapons, I could feel their eyes glazing over. This contributed to the campaign fizzling out in a fairly direct way.

The way I did quests was that I had a main list of quests on the Quest Board text channel, which the entire party could see. However, if a player had their own ambitions or a patron they answered to, I would create private text channels for them to receive quests or rp with their Patron. Since Warlock had a Patron, they had one such channel for their patron to send them on quests. I like to use warlock patrons and cleric gods as ways to yank the players around the map to see all the cool things I made, so their Patron had an interest in ancient lore and lost technologies.

Their first quest from their patron went fine, mostly because I included a hint that there would be a sentient magic sword in the proximity of the cheese recipe they were ordered to retrieve. They were very excited to find this sword, and only remembered the cheese recipe because I and Barbarian reminded them of it. (The cheese was like blue cheese but with penicillium mold, making it work like a potion of Cure Disease. Barbarian thought this was funny.)

The second, and ultimately last, quest commanded them to rescue several hundred records from a nuclear reactor finally going critical after sitting unmaintained since the second age of this world ended. Since the fallout from the meltdown would inevitably end civilization as their character knows it, they also had the option of traveling to the sea where some cephalopods had finally entered the bronze age using nuclear power instead of fire, where they could recruit one of their specialists to go with them to the reactor to help them figure out how to shut this effectively alien technology down. I made it clear that their patron did not give a single flying fuck about the oncoming apocalypse as long as the records were safe.

Clearly, Warlock cared even less. They did not respond to their patron, and did not address it at all until I poked them about it during a session. I do not remember their wording when they reiterated it to the other players, only that their tone made it clear that this quest was a pointless chore. The other players picked up on this and decided to put it off until they had no other choices, and once it was the last quest no one took the initiative to start it. This put me in a bind, mainly because I had fairly explicitly stated that if they put it off any more they might be too late to stop the nuclear plant from going kaboom, but I knew if I gave them any other quests they would definitely push it to the back of their queue, and I am fairly certain they wouldn’t like to have a very high chance to accidentally destroy their own civilization. And after Barbarian and Rogue both got busy and couldn’t make the sessions anymore, things just petered out.

The Cardinal Sin of Lust

Now, you may have noticed that two of the three players mentioned at the beginning of this very, very long story have not appeared so far, namely Lynnea and Druid. This is where we will begin to sketch out the real problem with Warlock, that being that they are a terrible, very horny person irl.

I met Warlock through a poly friend of mine (an ex that I was able to keep as a completely platonic friend; polyamory really trains those emotional boundaries) and they are poly themselves. This is relevant because I am going to accuse them of cheating on very little evidence in a few lines, and I feel that it is my responsibility to let you come to your own conclusions on this subject while presenting my opinion of them.

The thing that Warlock did that annoyed me the most was that they kept inviting girlfriends to the campaign right before their relationship with said girlfriend collapsed. I was quite sad each time their girlfriends did the responsible thing and bowed out instead of staying and creating tension; each one made an effort to make a unique character tied into my lore and worked with me to find a good way to introduce them smoothly in the next session, only to leave before their first session started. Going back over my logs, I found 3 different girlfriends who left in the span of 6 months, and that’s not counting the one that stayed (Druid) or the fact that they were clearly lining up Lynnea to be their next girlfriend at the end. Speaking as a poly person myself, I think churning through about one partner per month is a bit of a red flag. Even assuming that these were long-term partners who all happened to leave at the same time, this simply does not happen unless they did something to drive them all away. Considering that each of the 3 who left sounded like they were still in the honeymoon phase when I first met them, I think they did in fact get a new girlfriend and then drive them off in a month.

I did notice that Warlock stopped playing videogames during our sessions after Lynnea joined, which should have been a hint to me that something was different. Lynnea has informed me that Warlock had broken up with them a few years before, but at the time I met them they were apparently trying to win them back. As profoundly stupid as this seemed to me, they apparently did get back together some time after the campaign ran out of steam, but Lynnea was unaware of their ongoing relationship with Druid.

For those unaware, polyamory REQUIRES open communication between all partners. Keeping secrets is generally considered cheating. Poly people tend to have a surprisingly wide category of things that count as cheating, and having a semi-secret fuckbuddy is absolutely one of them. This discovery led to a breakup.

Of course, I had no idea about any of this at the time. The next thing, however, is the thing Lynnea shared with me, and is the thing that got them kicked and banned.

The First and Final Nail in the Coffin

Quick extra context: Warlock owed Lynnea money. Because of this, Lynnea would speak with them weekly to get the money, which was given in small payments of $40-$90. At this time, she had found a new partner who is as loyal and reliable as Sam was to Frodo. This did not stop Warlock from trying to win her back by writing poetry for her and other romantic gestures. She and Druid have also been trying to worm their way back into Lynnea’s good graces, since she wasn’t able to cleanly cut irl ties.

This finally brings us back to where our story began. Lynnea sent me this screenshot:

Shitty transcription is as follows:

Warlock: Can i ask a wierd question

Lynnea: Sure

Warlock: ik you do t have an OF but can i plz get content equal fo what I’ve paid for and given money for

Lynnea explained that nudes had not come up once before now. Apparently, Warlock and Druid had excused this behavior with “they were drunk when they sent that”.

I didn’t need any other reason to ban and block them.

Druid reached out to me after this to ask why Warlock was banned.

Once again, transcription:

Druid: hey so may i ask why Warlock got kicked?

Me: Hey. Short version is that they were on thin ice with me already for how they were behaving at the table. Lynnea reached out to me to express that they wouldn’t feel comfortable playing if Warlock was at the table, and she had receipts. So the decision was not hard.

Druid: What did she do at the table, if I may ask?

I gave her a civil but curt summary of my grievances.

Me: I do feel it was immature for me to not give Warlock an explanation for the ban, and I am sure my dislike of them came out of nowhere. But even if they did want to come back, now they know that I was just tolerating them this whole time, which I am sure hurts.

Druid: I apologize but im going to leave the campaign. Id feel more comfortable playing with somebody who’s NOT Warlock’s ex-finance, as I am her finance of recent. If you’ve gotten this many problems with her, let Warlock know yourself. She does not deserve to be in the dark with everything after all she dealt with.

Lynnea and I have talked, and we can’t come up with anything that warlock could be “dealing with” right now.

So, this left me with one player who is very excited for a new campaign. I have been reaching out to IRL friends of mine, but frankly none of them have as reliable attendance as Warlock. (That is, of course, why I kept inviting them to things.) Message me if you are interested in a player-directed low-fantasy survival horror dnd campaign that most likely will run one session per month (I am going to college and essentially keeping my head above water, which is my priority). It would be very sad if kicking the problem player out is what killed the campaign.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/14539490

The bugs around the streetlight are being tricked to think they are going in a straight line. They are doing the aerial equivalent of an ant death spiral.

Preexisting research into bugs circling lights was mainly to see what properties of the lights attracted the bugs, which is how we know that certain LED lights can prevent the bugs from flying towards it.

This study, however, showed that the bugs aren't trying to get to the light at all. The light triggers their dorsal reflex, causing them to recalibrate their sense of direction to keep the light at a fixed angle from their perspective. The bugs think they are going in a straight line, forever, and they never get to where they are going.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/14539407

breaking news: light pollution sends bugs to hell

Preexisting research into bugs circling lights was mainly to see what properties of the lights attracted the bugs, which is how we know that certain LED lights can prevent the bugs from flying towards it.

This study, however, showed that the bugs aren't trying to get to the light at all. The light triggers their dorsal reflex, causing them to recalibrate their sense of direction to keep the light at a fixed angle from their perspective. The bugs think they are going in a straight line, forever, and they never get to where they are going.

My understanding of the history of fashion is that back in the 1950s America it was expected that you wore a suit/dress at work unless you had a different uniform. There were a bunch of very boring people who thought that we should be wearing office job garb all the time, because they wore suits so much it was their default style, and since suits and dresses are both conservative and good-looking they were trying to nudge culture into accepting their worldview.

But with our computers, we are living in some boring-ass timeline where the suits-4-life squares won. We are all stuck using The Office Job OS at home, unless you work in a creative field that got really stuck in with MacOS ages ago. I don't want to wear a suit at home. I want something I think is comfy and pretty, which is why I use Zorin OS.

I did not choose to get into Linux because I think it's better for my workflow or because I am weirded out by all the trackers in win11 or because I care that Microsoft is an evil megacorp. I chose to start using Linux because the last version of windows that i was happy to boot up was Windows 7, and I refuse to use something on my own time that feels gross and looks icky. My preference for something that i can just set up and not have to tinker with makes Zorin a perfect fit for me, and I tend to throw a little fit when i have to do something in Windows specifically. I don't understand why so many people are comfortable using the Office Job OS when they could be using something that suits them.

Preemptive edit because I've seen my post be misread twice already: I'm not trying to say that Microsoft isnt an evil megacorp that stuffs their os with spyware and bloat. I think that was the dealbreaker for most of us here. I just happen to have the sort of personality that Apple targets, and I have been struggling to articulate what specifically made me chose installing Zorin OS on a PC using a TV as a monitor instead of just getting a MacBook like my mom. Also its like 1 in the morning where I live and I need to get to sleep lol