Endymion_Mallorn

All investing is speculation.

Certainly an option, but not the most profitable.

It’s great, just learn how to use options.

It also means there will never be another F2P game. They have to make their money upfront from every user. They can’t just turn it off when the profit slows and/or stops.

Were you interacting with the Fae by any chance?

Yes, this has been a problem with FOSS. Linux is only getting popular because the UX has advanced beyond “developer UX”, and Windows has declined into corp uselessness, and Mac doesn’t do what’s actually needed for half of the people. That’s how this works because users are normal people. Either you adapt or you gatekeep. Both approaches are valid, but you don’t get to complain about your choice.

The Fediverse will see mass adoption when it matches the actual features people want. Think about this: Foursquare was a great local social media. But the moment their big feature - the check-in - got added into Facebook and Nextdoor, usage dropped like a rock. People go where the most features are presented most conveniently. Privacy is a “nice-to-have”. If I’m already sharing pictures of myself from a phone, I want it to automatically read the EXIF data and pick up the geolocation and other stuff. I expect filters that are doing the intense work on the server rather than my device (and for free [as in beer]). I want easy sharing and tagging, and a way to put myself in front of my friends and especially in front of my rivals.

If the platform you’re pushing doesn’t have those features, it’s not fit for purpose. Remember - iStock, Pexels, Imgur, Flickr, DeviantArt, Pixiv, Pinterest, Instagram, and Snapchat all have different purposes, even though they all perform the same basic function: hosting and serving pictures. It’s the feature set that matters, not the core function. Don’t ask yourself “what does this thing basically do?”, but rather, “what will people want to do with this thing?”.

I mean, both. Frivolous personal spending is bad. Inflation is bad. These two things are both bad, but not in scale. It’s possible to say “Uber Eats is a waste of money”, “Uber is a greedy corporation extracting money without value”, “Corporate taxation has affected prices in a way that’s negative to the consumer”, and “Inflation and trade instability have made it harder to have the lifestyle we expect”.

None of those are contradictory. Some can be changed on a personal level. Some need greater influence involved.

I mean… Xena, Calypso, and Gabrielle confirmed I’m straight. But at least Joxer taught me the kind of guy to find as a best friend?

Oh, and always keep any women I care about away from Autolycus.

I think they realized that they won’t get the jurisdiction to bend on this one, and the general response from UK government will be “good riddance to bad rubbish”.

It’s also available on Windows, and most other Linux distros.

Dave wins every time.

It’s stable, Melroy is both a good dev and a good admin. The software basically fades into the background, which is ideal. There’s been ongoing development, but PeerTube still isn’t supported - and that’s the only negative I’ve got.

nods enthusiastically in Mbin

So basically you want Digg to undo the things that made us all move from Digg to Reddit?

I’m in a mood right now, so I’m just going to cherry-pick. I’ll come back and give you a better response when I’m in a better mindset.

It’s not very grassroots to use a system designed by an elitist corporation.

You’re absolutely right. D&D past AD&D1 should never have been the center of our hobby.

Nah, it was always cool. It just wasn’t mainstream and turned into a business.

What do you mean by this?

I mean that every time I’ve tried to run a game, either on tabletop (exceedingly rare now) or online, the demands from players are ridiculous compared to my expectations and what I set out as my intentions. I am not a voice actor. I’m decent at improv, but sometimes do need a moment to contemplate. I do not use images, music, battlemaps, miniatures, or any other equipment. Just dice, words, and imagination. This has gone from being the standard mode of play in the communities I’m accustomed to into a very niche thing that no one seems interested in anymore.

[Defense of Paid DMs]

At best, we’ll have to agree to disagree. I’m going to address the points I think I can without overcoming apoplexy first.

There are hundreds if not thousands of GM guides available. If you cannot or will not put in that level of investment, then run something GM-less, or work together to GM the game. Gary called DMs ‘referees’, and I think that model still holds up - no ref in a game is responsible for the whole field at every moment. Real referees switch up and have things like VAR or other systems. If one guy in the group is good at designing traps, let him design the traps and run them. If one person is good at storytelling, let them present the story. The person who knows combat best should adjudicate it. This is a game of cooperative fun. So, cooperate. Either that, or try something like Fiasco, Shadowrun Anarchy, Microscope, Space Bounty Blues, or something like that, and then move into refereeing a rules-light system like The Black Hack or a PbtA. Don’t be hemmed in by modern D&D (note that this ties into the ‘D&D has fewer offramps’ point above).

As far as the paid DM part, it’s very simple: This is a creative hobby. This is the time we have free together as friends, and RPGs have been some of the very few things in my life that has been an escape from the soul-crushing burden of working and money changing hands for every damn thing. Paid DMs turn it into a business, not a fun experience, and I consider their existence toxic to the community. Because after all, if some other schlub is making money doing a thing, why shouldn’t I charge money to do that thing? Why should I be the one doing free labor? And that’s the problem. It turns what should be creative, cooperative, storytelling with guard rails into a discussion of labor and capital and investment and all the crap that I want to avoid in the world via the escapism of RPGs. That paid person isn’t my friend anymore, he’s a paid service provider. But what KPIs is he measured by? ‘Fun’ isn’t quantifiable (much to Friend Computer’s chagrin), so, what? XP per session? Loot? Some other valueless measure which inevitably means nothing?

In short - no. I will reiterate, I believe that paid DMing is toxic to the community as a whole. It turns what should be an exercise in building and developing friendships into building and developing a business. It takes the party away from being a group of friends or fellow-travelers into a group of customers receiving shared service from a provider. It’s no different from the people you meet at the big table of a hibachi restaurant.

That’s before we get into how incredibly elitist it is by definition. Paid DMing takes away from the grassroots elements of the game. It puts a paywall between the player and the game. Any of the paid DMs I’ve seen have their players basically sign non-compete agreements, so they can’t just turn into a normal group without that DM - which means those players don’t join the larger community. So in every way I can oppose it, in every way I can hate it, I do.

Back on PC now, copying it:

The commodification and the desire for mass appeal are the top-level issues I have. I feel uncomfortable when I see the modern D&D branding on stuff in “normal” stores. It takes away the community and puts Hasbro in the central role, rather than the network of GMs who should be the majority influence. If I wanted a hobby with a company in charge, I would play Warhammer.

Now, on the community side, my biggest issue is with things I see as derived from CR. The lack of respect for simple theatre of the mind is a direct issue with the way I’ve always run and played since I left D&D. The tolerance and even acceptance of paid DMing also pisses me off in ways that make it very hard for me to remain civil.

Those are the big ones. There’s also the fact that D&D doesn’t seem to have the offramps it had since AD&D1 (and which admittedly went downhill when the Forge went out of the spotlight).

Windows 7 Embedded.

Mostly satirical.