All of these stories I feel the same way: moving to another centralized privately owned platform is stupid.

One time I made a joke to the players, “Yeah watch out, the woods could be full of dangerous things. Like fire bears.”

The players were like “lol right”

And then there were fire bears. Bears made of fire. (Some industrialists had started a forest fire, killing a local druid and wildlife, and now they were haunting the place.)

Seems reasonable. As prices rise, more people will see it as a bad deal.

It is a little disheartening that the right will riot and everyone else is just like "I guess we lost. We don’t need to double check "

I accidentally made a rom-com subplot in one of my games… Twice… And the players loved it both times.

The first time there was a divorced smith lady who sort of had a death wish, and the timid tavern owner who had a massive crush on her. Of course the players wanted to set them up.

The second time, the players had to infiltrate a masquerade ball. Sadly I’m starting to forget the details. I think there was tension around meeting them while masked and, like a rom com, trying to figure out what they thought about the PC. And then they tried to get the NPC involved in their heist, because they just happened to have a skill they needed. And of course it wasn’t a clean heist, and the NPC had some trauma.

Meanwhile Canada is removing bike lanes for more car support, and the US elected a deeply anti-environment party.

Sometimes I feel like I want to play a game that I’d run, but then I realize that’s the cliche “Go write a book”

My favorite is “I knew a poly couple and they broke up (but nevermind all the monogamous people who broke up)”

Monogamy vs non-monogamy is another axis of this, where people often find their unexamined assumptions challenged.

Yeah I don’t think anything will change until disruptive protests happen. Like, republicans resigning from office because they’re afraid.

Unfortunately, the far-right has almost all the money and guns, and a lot of bootlickers. And no one wants to throw their life away by shooting some red hats senators or billionaires.

as an almost maximally privileged person (cis straight etc), i want my whining fellows to shut the fuck up. Just stop. Stop taking up all the god damn space. Just be quiet. It’s okay not to be included in every scene all the time.

Your point about not assuming people are straight by default is valid. But I mostly just want some cis-het folks to stop embarrassing me by being fucking insufferable.

A dark souls kind of slow paced combat game, but built for co-op. Except I don’t have any friends who are on the same skill level and schedule.

More broadly, I really want more games that you can play co-op in where the players are vastly different skill levels, but it’s still fun. I don’t know how to solve this.

I can imagine like a game where one person is playing dark souls and the other is playing candy crush, and they interact somehow. Like making matches in one give estus in the other, and killing bosses gives stuff.

Basically I want to play games with my frienda that don’t play the same games, somehow.

People are stupid and value in group solidarity more than anything else.

The only way forward is to make them feel like a member of a better group, or violence.

I blame the people who voted for trump, personally. I’d be happy to watch the leopards eat their faces, but unfortunately we’re all stuck with them.

I don’t buy a game solely because it’s the zeitgeist or whatever. A friend of mine routinely buys games that are “the new shiny” and then doesn’t finish them, or loses interest quickly. I usually wait for a sale, some patches, and/or the dlc to be bundled into a goty edition.

Some exceptions:

I bought elden ring near launch because I’m a big enjoyer of the genre, and my friend confirmed it was good. No regrets.

I bought bg3 shortly before it’s full access. I’d liked the other games larian did, and a friend told me it was good. No regrets.

Both of those were pretty light on DLC. No season pass or “goty” editions were likely.

I’m going to wait for the dragon age game to go on sale. I don’t really trust Bioware, and I don’t know if they plan to do a bunch of dlc that will get bundled up later.

I’ve been waiting for Lies of P to get cheap. The demo was just ok when I played it, but a friend tells me it’s phenomenal.

Right now I’m playing a MUD (aardwolf). It really distills some online RPG into the essence of “go kill some stuff to level up, get new skills, and kill bigger stuff”. It’s strangely satisfying.

Republican women can’t help but notice that their partisan identity conflicts with their self-image as strong and competent women. “I started to learn what misogyny was, and I started to learn what patriarchy was,”

Better late than never.

Kid is lucky the racists didn’t murder him and say that he did something to deserve it.

I hope those racist almost-murderers are ruined.

It is completely insane and regressive. Poor people who need the money to live should be spared the tax, and rich people who aren’t going to miss it should pay.

Trump has repeatedly accused his Democratic opponent of lying about working at McDonald’s, in large part because the job wasn’t listed on her later resume for a legal job.

This man doesn’t know how resumes or jobs work.

I think you have to also account for the kids’ ages. An infant is different than a toddler, teen, or adult child.