Thanks for the explanation. I’m sorry you had a bad experience working with them. Unfortunately, bad management and petty people problems don’t go away just because it’s open source. :(

Could you elaborate on this? I’m still distro shopping and know basically nothing about Mint’s development history.

Is the city council under the impression that tourists will arrive, fail to find a tour guide, then just shrug and go home? I agree that tourist congestion has gotten worse in recent years (a friend of mine recently moved, citing this exact reason), but this is going to do exactly nothing to stop it.

It looks like this is the first game made by Weta. That gives me a lot of confidence they will get the right tone for the game. Hopefully this will be like a chill Animal Crossing in Middle Earth.

When I read “the wife”, I read it as this. It feels impersonal, like you are intentionally distancing yourself from your spouse. Like, why would you do that unless you are literally Al Bundy?

Seconding The Expanse. pensive Norwegian vocalization intensifies

Better yet, hire more before the workload increases so you aren’t training newbies during crunch time.

Well, according to whatever panel was judging this competition, she had all of those things. But you weren’t talking about that. You said she isn’t “physically or genetically” Japanese, and that that was what “pagents are about”.

It isn’t called a genetics pagent. Beauty is already subjective enough without layering your myopic view of race on top of it.

Thank you for posting this. My introduction to CAD was trying out FreeCAD when I reached the limits of Adobe Illustrator’s accuracy. The interface was so obtuse and difficult to work with I just gave up and assumed all CAD programs were like that. I’ll give Link Branch a shot!

You’re right of course about this being satire. My fear though is that things like this can fall out of the author’s control very quickly, much like Pepe the Frog, and I really don’t want gratch to be a catchall dog whistle.

Do you have any examples of this? Because my experience is the opposite. It’s the perception that your group is normal, the “default”, and tearing down all of these other groups using phrases exactly like the ones in the comic.

The alt-text panel hints at this, but the problem with making up a fake group everyone can hate is that racists and bigots will stretch the definition to include whatever they want.

We’ve seen it with “antisemitism” being redefined to include any criticism of Israel, and before that “pedophilia” being redefined to include drag queens and parents supporting their trans children. For that reason, hatred like this should not be encouraged, even if it’s imaginary.

Sometimes I don’t even

Wow, yeah it sounds like your group has very different expectations from the ones I’ve played with, which is fine, but it feels really foreign to me. Clearly your players are comfortable with walking past obvious hooks, so maybe the story needs to come to them. In your examples, maybe the odd couple approaches the party and asks them a question first, or the goblin offers to paint a portrait of the party if they help find the missing paintbrushes.

Also, remember that you know your players better than the adventure author. If some vital information gets skipped, you now know that you need to twist the next encounter to somehow include it, or invent a new encounter. Prewritten adventures are there to make your life as a DM easier, not harder. If part of it isn’t working for you, you can drop it and your players will be none the wiser. Focus on what you find fun about DMing and let the adventure fill in the bits you don’t like. If the whole thing really doesn’t work without these strict events happening in a certain order, the adventure might just be… not good. In which case, you really aren’t losing much by rewriting it to your liking.

Why does the whole adventure hinge on this one conversation? It’s helpful if you don’t think of the story as a chain of events from A to B to C, but instead start by asking, “What happens if the party does nothing?”. Did the cult resurrect their leader? Does the baron usurp the throne? Does an innocent person go to prison?

Whatever the “bad thing” that might happen is, your encounters each bring the players one step closer to it coming true unless they step in and stop it. The secret of course, is that the “bad thing” can be delayed as much as you need it to, and you can invent as many consequences along the way as you need.

When it comes to starting conversations with NPCs, this is where the backstories your players give you are useful. PC backstories are basically a set of plot hooks your players have already opted into. You can even go as far as requiring backstories to answer questions like, “Who does this character care deeply about?” “Who does this character never want to see again?” “What would they do if they had 1000 gold?”

If the PC’s background talks about loving painting, or collecting artwork, then your example with the goblin missing their paintbrushes would be an excellent hook.

At the end of each session, it’s also helpful to ask the players what they plan to do next. That way, you can be reasonably certain about what they will do and plan around that. You can start your sessions more “on rails” because the players have already chosen the rails they want to be on. As the session goes on, things get less and less certain, and it doesn’t make sense to have detailed encounters planned out. Just improvise to the best of your ability, and when you run out of steam say, “Great session folks! What are you planning to do next?”

Bob Menendez

What type of Chromecast do you use? I recently bought a Chromecast Ultra for a new TV after being happy with a secondhand one for years (3rd gen, I think). The difference in UI was such a disappointing step down. I don’t want a home screen with apps and ads, I just want something I can stream to from my phone! And I can’t say for certain, but it also feels like I get more ads on YouTube compared to using the older Chromecast.