One of the reasons I don’t want to live anywhere else in the US is NYC had public transit that mostly works. Even if this weekend I had to do a Q to the N to the 7 to back to the N to get to queens. I played a whole game of Lords of Waterdeep on my phone and read some of my book.
DND 5e (the rules the game is based on) is a weird system, mostly forgiving.
Your stats matter a lot. The bonus from stats only goes up on even numbers. A 10 is +0. An 11 is +0. A 12 is +1. Yes, this is crazy.
You can only improve your stats every 4 levels, where you can choose to get +2 stat points (or take another bonus from a list, but most of them aren’t worth the opportunity cost)
Different classes and backgrounds have different “proficiencies” in skills and equipment. Your wizard can’t function well in heavy armor. The game will tell you if you put on something you can’t use. Pay attention to it, otherwise you might end up wondering why you can’t hit anything or cast your spells.
The game expects you to long rest in camp a lot. Even though the story suggests otherwise and it says resources are limited, don’t worry too much about it. A lot of story beats happen in camp, and most of the game isn’t really time sensitive. Dnd’s balance is kind of stupid imo in that it expects you to do like 6 encounters before resting, and that typically means (after low level) only the last one is a challenge. Rest as often as you need to. Blow your spells. Don’t be like me and hold onto them until you finish the whole map.
You can respec for cheap pretty early on, too. Can’t change your species or background but you can change your stats and class.
I made a rogue bird-guy (aarakroka?) that built for strength. I really wanted to pick someone up with grapple and fly them off a cliff, but i never pulled it off.
Oh I’ve seen this joke before, slightly better, but now I don’t know which was the original.
It was like
Bard: I cast vicious mockery
Dm: cool. What do you say to him?
Bard: “You’re none of your best friends’ best friend”
Dm: …
Other players: …
Bard: So do I roll damage or…?
Dm: No… No, he’s dead.
They will accept any negative sum game, they will ruin their own livelihoods and their own lives, if only it helps sad little kings of sad little hills.
I’m reminded of that book about Authoritarian Personality Types. They did like a model UN / Civilization game kind of thing, where the players represented different countries and could make decisions about policy, war, and so on. There were two groups. Unknown to the players, the people running this experiment put all the people who scored high for authoritarian personality in one group, and everyone else in the other group.
The group with low authoritarian personality scores? Basically everything was fine. They solved the ozone layer crisis. They were solving world hunger. One guy tried to be a dick and the rest of the group brought him in line.
The high authoritarian guys? Nuclear apocalypse. They made them sit in the dark for five minutes to think about what they’d done, and let them have a do-over. They still did a shit job. Petty squabbling. Stealing. Out of control climate crisis.
I don’t think there’s an ethical way to do this in real life, but I do think if you just didn’t allow people with that kind of personality to have any real power, we’d all be much better off.
It’s also possible i mangled the story because I rewrote it here from memory, but I believe it was in this book: https://theauthoritarians.org/
It’s all emotions. Facts don’t matter.
There’s still going to be production, and I don’t think we should continue with the capitalist class extracting value and making bad decisions
If you introduce basic income without addressing that, you’ll still have all the enshittification
Basic income seems like an obvious solution.
Many people would pursue happy lives. Do some art. Do some gardening.
You’d also want to have like public housing or something so you don’t have parasitic landlords and homelessness.
My understanding is the most “useful” thing a CEO typically does is schmooze with other rich assholes. A lot of companies need funding, and a lot of funding is handed out based on vibes. A good CEO makes friends with the assholes handing out money. That’s hard to replace with AI, probably.
On the other hand, CEOs routinely make stupid decisions. Maybe cutting that out makes up for the loss in funding opportunities?
Also this capitalist hellscape sucks. labor should unite instead of letting business idiots take most of the value they create.
“”"
16 Just then a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?”
17 “Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.”
18 “Which ones?” he inquired.
Jesus replied, “‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, 19 honor your father and mother,’[a] and ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’[b]”
20 “All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?”
21 Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
22 When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.
“”"
Don’t see a lot of rich assholes talking about this part of the bible. (Matthew 19:16-22)
Oh yeah. Cars are bad on like every metric.
Socially they isolate people. You don’t interact with anyone when you’re driving except to get angry. The micro interactions you have on the train matter. Seeing people that aren’t just like you, also annoyed that the train is delayed, or just having a nice time with their kids, matters. More than makes up for when other people are annoying.
Economically they hurt. It’s much harder to just pop into an interesting looking shop when you’re cruising along at 40mph. All the space dedicated to parking could be used for other stuff- housing, commerce, communal space, whatever.
They make spaces less safe. Other than the direct impact (no pun intended) of people getting hit by cars, or crashing into stuff, a space that has steady foot traffic is generally safer. If everyone was in their car instead, you’d probably be alone on foot with no one to help if something happened.
They’re bad for the environment. Air pollution, micro plastics, whatever.
Drunk driving is way more dangerous than drunk “riding the train”.
The more non-car options are built out, the better it will be for people who need to drive for whatever reason.
Cars culture is trash and if we ever escape from it, it’s going to take years.
I wonder if it’s exceeded the max length and caused a poorly handled error
Ed Zitron wrote a blog post I’ve been thinking about, where he said that a lot of decisions are made by “business idiots” now. People that don’t really use or understand the product, and don’t really understand the users or their needs. It’s an interesting read, even though the guy is rather verbose: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-era-of-the-business-idiot/
dangit i was going to make the same pun. well done.
The other day I woke up to a bunch of text notifications from people, and my first thought was “Did it happen? Did someone shoot him??”
No, it was a bunch of unrelated personal life stuff. But for one dreamy moment…
I see what you did there and I’m not going to fully fall for it.
I read about this concern (for the us) in like 2004 when I took a basic poli sci course in undergrad, and wrote a paper about how climate change is a national security threat. People knew. Most people don’t care or have no power.
My old pandemic D&D group was the best. They cared about everything. But I remember specifically one time they arrived at a large party. I was describing the scene- large tables set with food, small groups of people mingling, and off in the corner you see a man talking to a woman, her back is against the wall and he’s got his arm on the wall so he’s kind of trapping her there. She looks uncomfortable.
The players all beelined to those two to rescue the NPC from the guy. Oh, Pretty Paul. They hated him so much. Such a good villain. (Started as a riff on Handsome Jack, and it worked so well. One of the players wrote a song about how much they hated Paul)
Order of the Stick is so good, and has such surprising emotional depth for a stick figure comic about D&D.
Just be aware that the updates are intermittent.
What kind of sad sack is so anti-bike that they run a whole “no bike lanes” social media account?