Tactical gameplay is already something I very much encourage. One nice thing about playing with the same group for a long time is that I know they’ll respond when I put things on the map - opportunities to flank, drop or collapse things, and so on.
Thanks for that link! I’ll toss that at my group and see what they think.
Out of all the ideas here, this is one that interest me the most. I’ve seen a lot of things, but not something that does better when you’re low…
Oh, my rolls as DM are private (and of course I’m fudging them as needed). But their rolls are public still!
Well, I’d like to fix the frustration (for both me and my players). Whether that means fixing the rolls or fixing the encounters to account for bad rolls, something needs to be altered.
After I noticed this, to confirm it wasn’t just imagination I just started logging the roll results (d20s, at least) into an Excel sheet as we played. And yeah, they’re actually rolling that badly.
Oh, trust me. I’m already working in that kind of thing.
Actually it was a sign of how incredibly frustrated my group is with this situation that they - who normally will pull out every stop to ensure not a single foe escapes - looked at the fleeing NPCs and said “Nah, forget that. We’re not dealing with more of that.”
Don’t know if you caught it in the OP, but this is already a digital platform. I will look into the idea of a “trinket of luck” or something (non-attuned, because punishing them for their bad luck seems like a bad move).
I really think you were one of the few people who actually read that bit of the original post… thank you!
!Worldbuilding@lemmy.world isn’t althistory specific, but you’re certainly welcome there!
Civilizations are big, and people are resilient - so we rarely find things like, “This plague/volcanic eruption/extinction of a species 100% wiped out this civilization and their culture”. People tended to move away rather than just die, and their cultures tended to assimilate and combine rather than just vanish.
But there are placed where we reasonably believe that natural consequences resulted in the decline of civilizations:
The decline of the Sumerian nations is associated with increasing salinity of the fields in southern Sumeria, shifting populations north towards Akkad. I believe there’s still uncertainty over whether this was driven by Sumerian irrigation practices or some other cause, but the fact that it happened is undeniable.
The Hittite Empire was a vast prehistoric empire which collapsed as part of a period of upheaval known as the Late Bronze Age collapse. The cause of the collapse is still disputed, but it is clear that there was some environmental shift involved. Warfare, plague, and economic changes may also have contributed.
In both these cases, we have only very fragmentary remnants of the surviving culture, often filtered through the lens of subsequent civilizations’ recordings. The Hittites even were arguably “lost” for a time - until the mid-1800s, they were only known through Biblical references, rather than any relics or ruins.
For reference, the first generation of IPhone actually preceded the IPod Touch, but the Touch reached my friend group first. Thus my reaction when I first heard of the IPhone was more or less,
“The IPod Touch is a gimmick, and now they want to make it your phone? Why the hell would anyone want a touchscreen phone in your pocket? Touchscreens are finnicky at the best of times, break at the slightest provocation, and a whole computer in your pocket would cost an absolute fortune. There’s nothing wrong about just carrying an Mp3 player and phone separate in your pocket; this is just Apple selling an overpriced toy to their fanboys. Touch-screen computer-phones will never take off.”
Boy do I feel like an idiot now.
Ah well, fair enough.
Waterdeep Dragon Heist is, I believe, intended to have a conflict between the Xanathar’s Thieves Guild and Zhentarim. I know when we ran it, the DM noted that we had actually managed to avoid some campaign material by resisting getting associated with either guild. But I’ve only seen it from a player’s perspective, so I’m not sure how deep or detailed it goes.
And this infuriates me because the market for those suites is so oppressively terrible.
Like, hell, I don’t even need the full suite of simulation and modeling tools that they come with. Just give me a rock-solid parametric CAD engine, a decent rendering suite tacked on to it, and I’d really love it if anyone in this market could start investigating Linux compatibility! Hell, I’d even pay for that - just not the awful licensing regimes the current offerings operate under.
Yes, unfortunately. Or at least seems to.
This person was an eye-opener for me in terms of how deep political groupthink and unquestioning belief can go. He’s an intelligent person in a highly technical position that requires plenty of reasoning and thought, but if the right political commentator says something, it is absolute truth.
The overwhelming thing I remember is a sense of “Huh, I guess this is it.”
There was a possum in the middle of a busy road, acting oddly. Walking in slow circles, pausing to stare, wandering back and forth… just generally acting odd. I was concerned it might be rabid, and nobody else had called 911 yet, so I did. Gave them the info, they connected me with the local dispatcher, and that was that. Didn’t stick around to see what happened.
When I got home I found out that Possums are almost never rabid. Poor thing had probably been hit by a car. Animal control probably would’ve been a better option, but when I’d called I was actually worried for anyone else who stumbled into it.
Huh. Today I learned. Neat!
Many of your examples of “bad” moderation are more about site administration (including use of tech tools and appeals) than the degree of moderation. Like, yes - Reddit’s moderation ecosystem, particularly in large subreddits, is fundamentally broken. Powermods, lack of accountability, malfunctioning digital filters, mods who lack of options for alternatives (or, where those alternatives exist, they are frequently overwhelmingly cesspools)… it’s got issues. But this isn’t about “more” or “less” moderation; it’s about poorly-applied controls in the first place.
I’m not so sure Lemmy is so “perfect” either. I’ve seen plenty of moderation based on political views rather than actual misbehavior here, and conversely plenty of actual hatred and bigotry getting a pass because those in charge of a give space viewed it as aimed at the “correct” people. Likewise, while the Fediverse allegedly lets parallel communities develop, in reality it can be hard to overcome the inertia of people moving towards a popular community, unless the mods/staff there really screw up.
Okay, so what’s the actual right amount in a given community?
My admittedly cop-out answer is “That depends on the community”. There were some where extremely rigidly-enforced rules - particularly about quality or contents of answers or posts - helped to ensure communities retained a high degree of quality and reliability in what was posted. But others might want a more casual, relaxed space to goof around in - including in ways that others might not like - which require looser rules.
And that’s really the rub: There’s no absolute right answer. We can point to lots of wrong answers, but getting it right is a complex journey for each space. My personal focus is that whatever level is agreed on, it must be fairly applied for all users. You cannot be passing one user’s slipup and coming down hard another. Be fair.
…and in the end, there will be people who simply cannot follow the rules, no matter how clearly they are explained.
This. It says, “I acknowledge you are upset, and accept blame.”