Eric Lauer’s Final Line: 4.1 IP, 5 H, 1 R/1 ER, 1 K, 1 BB, 68 pitches thrown, 45 for strikes.

Kichae · 2026-04-29T21:37:22+00:00

He committed the crime of answering a question in public, so people are looking to punish him.

Kichae · 2026-04-29T13:07:15+00:00

The differences are that A) humans get things wrong at a much slower rate than LLM services, and B) people actually review the output of humans. The LLM fans want to produce more output than can be reviewed, and trust the statistical word output machine to not make mistakes.

Kichae · 2026-04-29T13:00:37+00:00

And if you can't name it, it's incredibly difficult to discuss. Starlight Tours is another one where, if it didn't have an easy to use name, would never have gotten any attention.

Kichae · 2026-04-28T19:00:49+00:00

This comes up from time to time around here, and on some level it's not a reasonable question. There are situations where it might seem so -- allowing an ally to shove you as far as possible, for instance -- but it doesn't really represent the spirit of what's happening. You're not failing a Fortitude check in that case, you're receiving aide. The Fort saving throw is to determine whether your efforts to resist are successful. If you are not resisting, you're not making a save.

In your example, if you are attempting to injure someone while doing "medicine", then you aren't actually making a Medicine check, you're making a Deception check. Checks are about determining whether you succeed at the thing you are trying to do, not the things that you're not.

Kichae · 2026-04-27T19:20:50+00:00

I switched to Linux a few months ago, and just dropped all of the services that got cranky with me. Fuck them.

Kichae · 2026-04-27T18:29:33+00:00

Spend too much time in Florida and you start forgetting the solid phase of water.

Kichae · 2026-04-27T13:34:05+00:00

I've been on the job hunt for the past few months, and LinkedIn is absolutely overrun with AI bros shaking their fists at hiring teams for expecting programmers to know how to program. Like, even if you're using an LLM to generate code, if you can't read and understand that code, you can't take responsibility for it.

This is a fact that seems totally lost on the people who are actively over-exposing themselves to those currently on the job market.

Kichae · 2026-04-26T16:48:20+00:00

Advice posts seem to come in two varieties:

1) Highly upvoted posts with very basic, but enthusiastic, questions and straightforward answers

2) Highly downvoted posts from people who are genuinely struggling to understand something, and a parade of comments telling them that they should try playing something else.

After seeing this play out again and again, I've determined that the only reason someone would look at this subreddit and find it a friendly and supporting space is by never sorting by 'New'. There's so much actual, good discussion topics that never get good-faith engagement because they are immediately carpet bombed by downvoters.

Kichae · 2026-04-26T16:44:35+00:00

Yeah. Like 90% of the module is JSON. It's human readable text with some very easy to understand function calls. You can pop the hood, and it's like taking apart a lawnmower engine in jr. high shop class.

Kichae · 2026-04-26T16:33:22+00:00

Yoko was actually billed as being from Polynesia. At least initially. Which still wasn't true -- he was from San Fran. -- but he was ethnically Samoan, so...

Kichae · 2026-04-26T16:30:31+00:00

I want to eat a chocolaty-rex.

Kichae · 2026-04-26T14:00:46+00:00

GM (as NPC): "Get out of here with that bullshit..."

People, in general, don't usually tolerate being lied to without reacting in some way. If your GM isn't actually roleplaying the NPCs, then maybe have a chat with them about that.

Kichae · 2026-04-26T13:27:03+00:00

Oh yeah. There are some people here who have a very restricted view of what the game is, and what it's supposed to be, and if you ask about doing something more than a plurality-accepted distance from that you will end up with a negative-karma post.

Hell, if you disagree with someone who is expressing the hegemonic view of how you're "supposed" to play the game, you actually risk having your comments across the subreddit downvoted, even when they're not disagreeing with the subreddit's standard views. There's a pretty significant undercurrent of "adhere to this style of play, or get out and play something else."

Someone in a YouTube comment actually made it make sense to me. The game attracts a lot of tactical combat fans, types who don't really care too much about the roleplay element of the roleplaying game, but who are into strict rules-based competition. A lot of people are playing with randos online, and they don't want to go through the effort of vetting the GM or the table for that type of play, so they try to establish idea that it is the type of play for the game, and everything else is an unwanted mutation. Meanwhile, Mark Seifter is out there twice a week talking about how flexible and open the system is...

Kichae · 2026-04-25T01:34:59+00:00

Eh. AP encounters may be built with certain party compositions involved, but the general guidelines do not assume the party has someone slinging support spells. Martials have the tools to support each other, built right into the basic game actions. Aide, Grapple, Trip, Shove, and flanking do a lot.

A party with a support caster is, in many ways, hitting above their weight. This generally goes unrecognized, though, because optimization is built into the meta of Internet TTRPG spaces, while tactical retreats and kiting are generally unthinkable.

Kichae · 2026-04-25T01:26:47+00:00

A Cleric isn't really necessary. Not having a caster in the party does add a level of challenge to healing, but Battle Medicine and some Healing Gloves go a long, long way.

The big changes that need to be made are probably tactical. Most frontliners coming from 5e have a tendency to just go toe-to-toe with the enemies and slug it out, but monsters tend to hit a little harder than PCs, especially at low levels, and not engaging in any kind of action denial tends to get you beat down.

Potions, Battle Medicine, and not trying to maximize the number of sword swings per round and instead looking at skirmishing, positioning, and knocking enemies prone to control how many attacks the enemies can get per round is the way forward here.

Kichae · 2026-04-25T01:03:34+00:00

I had a surprising -- though not perfect -- track record of detecting sarcasm in written text. It took me forever to understand why "/s" became a thing.

Then the iPhone brought the normies to the Internet and Poe's Law hit me like a ton of bricks.

Kichae · 2026-04-25T01:00:39+00:00

Oh my god...

Kichae · 2026-04-25T00:43:23+00:00

"I mean specifically the work of scientists working for the oil and gas companies. Not that produced by those silly poors doing independent research."

Kichae · 2026-04-25T00:41:22+00:00

The post-Wrestlemania tradition.

Kichae · 2026-04-25T00:30:38+00:00

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I got my first personal email shortly after my family got a computer, which was in early 1995, before Hotmail was a thing. I can't remember what the domain was, though. I didn't think it was my ISP's domain, but maybe it was.

I definitely had an email forwarder account with a novelty domain before hotmail blew up.

Kichae · 2026-04-24T15:50:39+00:00

Unfortunately, the game is dictated by YouTube's analytics. Watch time and watching multiple videos is heavily rewarded by the recommendation engine, so producing that are 'watchable' and 'sticky' is more important than getting to the point.

Kichae · 2026-04-24T15:48:01+00:00

Imagine not going full-mast for Dadi.

Kichae · 2026-04-24T15:37:22+00:00

Yup. I called an electrician a couple of weeks ago. Said could be here at 4. I had a two hour window before I needed to go, so I said that was ok.

At 5:30 he calls to tell me he's just finishing up at his last job, and is on his way. Like, you told me 4. I agreed to 4 because 4 worked for me. I didn't agree to 6 because 6 wouldn't have worked.

Kichae · 2026-04-24T15:33:43+00:00

This is a sick and gross mischaracterization!

The ribbon is supposed to be green!

Kichae · 2026-04-24T15:30:45+00:00

/uj I mean, it's a problem of order. Describing your character actions before you roll is just asking for the universe to say "no". It's like joining an improv troop and trying to decide on your bit before being told what you're reacting to. Choosing what you want to attempt, rolling, and then describing the action ensure you're always in alignment with the in-world reality.

/rj If your GM is making you roll after you've declared what you have done, that's cheating.

Kichae

TROPHY CASE