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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • I don’t think I’ve ever desired to have speech as an interface for a device.

    Yeah, I could yell at it “Open the browser and go to uhh the order of the stick comic index page” and maybe it would get it right. Or I could just… click on the browser, type oot and pick it from the drop down. Faster, no error, no expensive processing.

    I don’t drive (cars are a bad form of transit and I’m lucky enough to not need one) and I’m not hands-full in the kitchen often.










  • One of the things I learned from being in a group that rotated DMs: Some DMs really expect more or different things from players tactically.

    Like, when one guy was running you could pretty much just run into a room and fight, and you’d win. You’d have plenty of time to long rest, so you should just blow all your spells.

    The other guy expected like some scouting and planning. Take out the outer patrols first without letting them get a message to the castle, then assault the warlord. Going directly in means you’ll be flanked by those patrols. The total size of what you’ll be dealing with is pretty well known, so you can ration your spells out with pretty good information.

    And then there’s the “This dungeon is inhabited intelligent creatures that have spent years fortifying it against intrusion. You don’t know the layout or what forces you’ll face. Your enemies are advancing their goals, and every day you spend means more of your homeland is consumed by The Dirge”

    I’m between #2 and #3 there. The wizard struggled a little going from “leveled spell every round” to “I should think about my resources.”

    I still tend to run things a little too hard, but the group I ran for full time got into the groove and never wiped.







  • I’ve tried to run games (in a couple systems) that had complex NPC factions to engage with, and a lot of players just… don’t. I think sometimes they just don’t realize it’s an option.

    My last game was kind of picking up speed, where there was a bad megacorp (within it two main factions) and a fractured array of resistance groups. I was hoping the players would do some alliance building. It was kind of working, but then real life sort of scuttled the game.

    The other problem that happens to me a lot is I think about the game between sessions, and the players don’t. They don’t remember much detail. So I’ll be like, “And you discover he’s been working with the Seers the whole time!” And they’ll be like “the who? Is that bad?”. It’s hard to get factional stuff going if the players can’t keep straight who’s who.