Not that guy, but also a (not-software) engineer. Coding is really great for a few things:

• Software stuff is in really vogue right now. Like there’s demand for all engineering disciplines in my area, but software guys are the hot position, with pay to match.
• Even if you’re not software, knowing a little is helpful for other stuff - e.g., whipping up some quick and dirty test interfaces, or interacting with older systems with non
• It also really, really helps for little things at home.

Unfortunately I cannot actually write code to save my life, but it’d be real useful if I could!

I am tinkering with something similar right now, with the elf-equivalents being virtually illegal outside the borders of their own empire.

So, here’s what I would suggest you consider:

• First, discuss it with your players and make sure you’re not going to piss any of them off by doing this. If any of them were planning on playing said race, make sure they’re okay with the impact on their play style.

• Consider the storytelling conflicts you want to explore with this. What encounters do you want to put your players through, and why? What themes are you looking to explore?

• Consider the larger impact on other parts of your world. Try to make this more than a point that exists in isolation and a vacuum.

It’s a fair point. I don’t know if I could say I put all the blame on bad parenting, but I do think absence of parents (or, maybe, absence of parental attention) is definitely a thing that stunts kids emotionally for a number of reasons (including overexposure to social media).

I think the incentive to be a better parent is already there for most people; humans are pretty well hardwired to want to look after our offspring. But it’s being drowned out by multiple other incentives to spend time elsewhere, or risk falling into trouble - financial, social, whatever. It’s going to take more than an hour off from work a day to ease the incredible anxiety we’re filled with to focus on working more/harder.

Unfortunately, I don’t think I have all the answers either, but I think it’s going to take a multi-pronged approach.

It’s hella weird around here, because I consider myself moderate-to-reasonably-left wing, but by Lemmy standards I’m probably waaaaaay conservative. Like some of the stuff I see celebrated around here definitely makes my eyebrows shoot up.

And like, I’d actually enjoy having this discussion as well in that frame, but I don’t think I can honestly answer as a “conservative”.

A little more appreciation for nuance, empathy, and chill when it comes to “hot” topics would be appreciated.

Like just about every day I check Lemmy, and I find some really awful, yet highly-voted take (usually on politics, sometimes on tech or something) that sends my eyes rolling so hard I could probably hook them up to a generator and get carbon-free power.

I can deal with downtimes, community drama, and needing to grow conversations. But the hostility I see almost daily turns visiting Lemmy into a stressful, not welcoming experience.

Candy Corn. Some people insist they taste like wax, and I’m like, “What?!” I will chew those things all day long.

This. “Overstressed” doesn’t begin to cover it. It’s an unimaginably stressful job even when things are going right.

Going to build on this to highlight something:

• Given the hyper-stigmatized, hyper-partisan approach to… well, a lot of things these days, not just US politics, engaging with those you politically disagree with is likely to not just produce calm disagreements but sharp, even vicious statements that your entire worldview/lifestyle/culture/ethnicity/whatever is literally the stuff of pure evil, and you are an absolutely terrible person for adhering to it. No nuance, no consideration, no empathy.

• On a different tack, consider that strong rejection/disagreement is shown to activate the same centers in your brain which are associated with sharp physical pain. To your brain, being slapped in the face conversationally and slapped in the face physically produce extremely similar results.

With these two points in mind, consider: Why would people choose to expose themselves to environments which promote something their brain interprets as actual, physical harm?

Unfortunately, the current palette of social media options don’t really offer spaces for nuanced, thoughtful discussion which doesn’t begin with people screaming their hostility to what they disagree with. It’s a big of a chicken-and-egg question whether that’s a cause or an effect, but the net result is creation of an environment which our pain-avoiding brains guide our choices away from people we disagree with.

Welp. Since Hasbro overall seems intent on running its properties into the ground, I have little doubt the next one will continue the cycle of enshittification. I’d love to be wrong, but I doubt it.

“Blame England” is basically the “Blame Canada!” of history discussions.

Yawns are when your perfectly little cuddly ball of soft opens its mouth and reveals a dozen chisels of death.

(And then goes right back to being cute.)

No Wifi, as it simply doesn’t have a wifi adaptor.

Ethernet is a possibility. I tested it right now and removing the Ethernet cable doesn’t cause a wake-up, but I suppose it’s possible that slight interference if the cable were just slightly moved might cause it to register traffic plus a continued connection, enough to cause a wakeup. I’ll try tinkering with that, thanks!

My computer turns itself on when I walk through a certain spot nearby it.

“Ah, you must have your mouse or some other peripheral set to activate it and the vibrations from walking-” Nope, I know how to disable wakeup from peripherals. “Well, then the vibrations from walking must be disturbing a loose component inside-” Nope, problem existed through a near-complete teardown and OS reinstall. Also, putting the PC on vibration isolating foam did not help.

At this point, I’m down to two conclusions:

• The wire for the wall outlet runs under the floor, and vibrations are causing adequate power fluctuations to wake the machine up. Not sure how to test for this, though it does concern me about the state of the wiring.
• The PC is haunted.

So, this is a bit of a “depending on the group & situation” thing.

Fudging HP is definitely a thing DMs (myself included) do. However, with an experienced group who can get a sense for how much HP is typical for mobs at a given level, and if the amount of damage done is quite clearly far enough that he ought to be dead, it can be hard to add HP without “showing the finger on the scales” - at which point the illusion breaks and it becomes “un-fun”.

This is exactly why single chunky bosses drive me nuts. I once watched a rogue annihilate a major chapter boss with a single opportunity attack and some very lucky rolls.

Yep. It’s quite frustrating, because I want to support the concept of the community and what it supports tech-wise, but frequently I find myself clicking off the site because I’ve seen something political so eye-rollingly crazy I don’t feel like sticking around.

Going to echo the prior comment. But here’s my thoughts:

1. Was there a “session zero” in which the group’s expectations for the campaign and interactions were laid out? If not, it may be a good idea to pause and have this. Sometimes groups who are familiar with each other skip this because they “know each other”, but it can still be good on a campaign-by-campaign basis.

2. When you discuss it with them, try to start by determining why the DM is acting this way: Since it sounds like the DM likes firmly heroic characters, is this just what they find ‘cool’ or do they actually object to playing / having grey-er characters in their party or campaign? (Same kind of applies to the cleric’s player - are they just “playing the character”, or is this what the player feels is right?)

3. Ask if there’s been any miscommunications involved. The thing that sticks out as odd to me here, is that the DM clearly seemed to be urging you towards combat with stereotypically evil enemies in these scenarios… but views you initiating combat as “evil”? It’s possible something is getting lost in translation.

4. Since you and the rogue are both clearly enjoying less cut-and-dry characters, express that this isn’t just you-versus-them. Or you-versus-cleric-player. Broadly, try to avoid turning this into an argument between people.

5. This will fluctuate a bit depending on how roleplay-heavy your group is, but consider asking if this could be dealt with in-character. Is the cleric open to having a crisis of faith over working with such “tainted” people? Are you okay with your character sometimes being held back by other party members when they’d like to be proactive, so long as their view isn’t changed?

It’s called the double ear mutation! It’s a known recessive gene that appears in some cats.

The Culture is objectively the safer answer. Living in Star Trek feels like it carries a fairly significant daily risk of being assimilated / used in a Romulan plot / sucked into some weird negative space wedgie / having a console explode in your face for no good reason.

Meanwhile, if you’re in the Culture, you’ve pretty well got it made.

Not surprised, though I do wonder - would any present-day combat footage showing casualties pass the TOS? It’s not specifically “murder”, “charred bodies”, or anything else specifically stated, but the depiction of lives being lost (and the resultant corpses) is something of an inevitability.