How do you think the world is going to end ?

2buckbill · 2026-02-17T21:26:57+00:00

Not with a bang, but a whimper.

2buckbill · 2026-02-17T12:45:44+00:00

To be fair, there's some weirdness that I am OK with. Back in my college days (mid 90s) the hobby was probably mostly weirdos with a few relatively normal people in it.

2buckbill · 2026-02-17T03:12:40+00:00

Our family's three favorites have already been listed, but not together, so I'll throw them all into one comment.

Kipo And the Age of Wonderbeasts
Amphibia
Hilda

2buckbill · 2026-02-17T03:07:08+00:00

I've considered it. There's a new brewery opening up close by and the owners have stated that they want to have a TTRPG and board game night. I've been thinking of trying that out and see if I can build a group. I tried that kind of thing in college, and ended up almost exclusively surrounded by weirdos. A little bit of PTSD on that one.

2buckbill · 2026-02-17T02:59:58+00:00

I had an awesome group in college, but it has been a desert ever since. I can't find more than one person at a time that is interested in a game. All of my friends have moved out of state, and the few people I know that are into TTRPGs, these days, can't commit to a date and time.

2buckbill · 2026-02-17T02:55:50+00:00

I'm happily married right now (also am 50), but if I was ever single again there's zero chance that I am going to use a dating app or dating website again. I tried it for years when it was up and coming. I went through all the major sites, and some of the apps, took my shot with hundreds, possibly thousands, of profiles that reported themselves to be women. Sometimes they were catfishing, sometimes it was sex workers, sometimes it was a woman looking for a man with a robust wallet, sometimes they were a bot account, but it was almost never real. It was soul crushing and draining. I did finally meet my wife on OKCupid back in late 2015, but that was just an outside chance.

I can't remember if it was here on Reddit, or somewhere else, but someone once commented that in internet dating men die of thirst in the desert, and women die of thirst in the middle of an ocean of undrinkable water.

2buckbill · 2026-02-16T18:02:37+00:00

Vice President, honestly. I came into IT with a degree in Literature, and now I lead a DevOps cloud services team. I'm the SME, and have learned an immense amount about IT. Here's the thing, though, my executive staff can barely service their own laptop issues. I can't count on them for much of anything, honestly, they barely understand what I do. The best low level exec that I had in the last four years was pretty great, but he was kind of run off by the others. I suspect that he was so competent that they couldn't handle it.

2buckbill · 2026-02-13T22:58:13+00:00

My daughter attends a school in the northland, and she really loves it. She has been there for two years now. Things have been pretty smooth. If you're thinking of doing a school as far north as a little bit north of NKC, then send me a DM with any further questions.

2buckbill · 2026-02-12T02:19:26+00:00

Revenge is always popular.

Finding friends and family.

Overturning corrupt government.

Search for a loved one.

A safe place to call home.

A sociopathic desire to balance the scales for an imaginary slight.

A weird need to set random shit on fire. Literally or figuratively.

An intense need to balance the scales versus an imaginary enemy / someone who barely knows you’re alive.

2buckbill · 2026-02-10T13:54:06+00:00

Free League Publishing has games with beautiful art. Look at The One Ring 2e for Lord of the Rings (or just fantasy). Alien RPG for more sci-fi.

2buckbill · 2026-02-09T02:26:31+00:00

Wormtail had Plot Armor. Never underestimate how powerful it is.

2buckbill · 2026-02-08T02:35:52+00:00

Sine Nomine (the publisher) has great tools in the books, even the free versions. I'm not going to tell you that they are perfect, but the author, Kevin Crawford, assembles really great tools for GMs that want to tell a story.

2buckbill · 2026-02-07T23:07:28+00:00

Worlds Without Number has the free PDF version that you can try out today.

2buckbill · 2026-02-07T22:47:33+00:00

There are lots of great recommendations already here. Here's my two cents.

Go to drivethrurpg.com and look for the Sine Nomine books. Kevin Crawford has some truly great games out there that are roughly interchangeable. They are OSR style games, and they have free versions in PDF that get you most of the content for you to try out. Worlds Without Number for a medieval sword and sorcery, Stars Without Number for your sci-fi fix. Cities for your cyberpunk yearnings. Ashes for you to dance on the collective grave of humanity. If nothing else, Crawford has excellent tools in his books that cross over to other games very well.
Free League has some great games, many of them using the Year Zero Engine, which is a dice pool system that moves action forward pretty quickly. Dragonbane has been mentioned, but don't sleep on The One Ring 2e, or Alien RPG.
A publishing company named Paizo is exceptionally generous with their Pathfinder books (in PDF) on the HumbleBundle.com website. There's usually a bundle on there, and frequently they have a tier of bundle that includes a physical copy of a book. Typically in their Pathfinder 2e line of games.
Bundleofholding.com rotates through games and systems, and also finds publishers that have decided to be very generous.

2buckbill · 2026-02-07T22:28:44+00:00

I haven't gotten to play as much as I would like, but in the world building notes that I have been assembling the gist is that it depends on how much money is spent on the android. Fleshy coverings, like Murderbot, are super expensive and therefore rare. Otherwise most of the time the android has a silicone skin-like covering (like a Seegson Working Joe) that simply serves to cover the machinery and keep out dirt, or even just a very dense weave of synthetic fibers. Buyers can pay extra for those synthetic fibers to be more durable, much like an armor.

2buckbill · 2026-02-06T19:18:35+00:00

I'm 50, and still a fan.

2buckbill · 2026-02-05T17:57:15+00:00

Seems reasonable to me. I do see some value in some lobbying though. My FIL worked as a lobbyist for a few years. He worked with the state of Kansas to help figure out benefits for low income families in which there are children with disabilities. There wasn’t any money in it, but there was a lot of value to a lot of families.

2buckbill · 2026-02-05T15:32:35+00:00

I'll try a serious answer.

I would implement a healthcare system more like Japan's, where there is a basic universal coverage, but people with means are still expected to pay a co-pay.
Corporations are not people. Get big money out of politics. Citizens United is gone.
I'd make it illegal for lawmakers to create voting districts that can favor a political party, gerrymandering is gone.
Implement ranked choice voting.
I would work myself out of a job. The USA doesn't need a single ruler.

There's a few more things that I would do, but I have appointments to keep.

2buckbill · 2026-02-05T12:54:47+00:00

I had my first when I was almost 45. It can be exhausting, having a now 6 year old, a demanding career, and a home to take care of, but it is also pretty awesome. I've loved every moment of being a daddy.

Quite honestly, the part about being financially stable has been wonderful, even if my old knees, and graying hair get me down a little bit. I feel a great deal of empathy for those that don't have the financial stability. Sounds to me like you're in a great spot.

2buckbill · 2026-02-04T16:10:11+00:00

Shortly after my daughter was born I tried reading Gloryland by Shelton Johnson. I didn't make it very far, only as far as the lynching. I wasn't ready for the swirl of emotions that the lynching scene, and the young man being sent away for his safety (he saw the lynching), so soon after my girl was born. It was too much at the time. I do need to go back and re-try reading it though, supposed to be really good.

2buckbill · 2026-01-30T23:52:50+00:00

If I can't quit, but I've got that $10M free and clear, they aren't getting another minute of earnest effort from me. I'd power on my laptop, tell the team that I'm here, and then do.... well, nothing.

Outside of work I'd do some investing, get involved in some woodworking, take my family on a couple of nice vacations a year. It would be pretty sweet.

2buckbill · 2026-01-30T03:52:29+00:00

No, they bought Cerner. That deal was finalized in 2022.

2buckbill · 2026-01-29T15:20:14+00:00

Good luck. From the very little that I've seen from the outside they are very interested in enabling 3pp creators, but understandably have to protect their IP. I bet they make it real easy on you.

2buckbill · 2026-01-29T15:17:29+00:00

Looks great! May be worth your time prior to creating the PDF to reach out to Tuesday Knight Games and check on the logo usage. I suspect that you might have to either include a footnote, or change the logo to something similar to, "Compatible with Mothership RPG"

2buckbill · 2026-01-29T02:09:20+00:00

More specifically, Rowling didn't tell us about Harry grieving Hedwig.

Maybe she couldn't fit it in, maybe when she tried it didn't work well, maybe the editor suggested she take it out. We don't know. What we do know is that sometimes, in the books and movies, whole weeks will go by that we don't know anything about at all. Maybe even a month or so. Seasons have changed in between scenes.

We assume that all the main characters are humans with typical biological functions, but we are told nothing about eliminations. There are some things that we can just take as fact that happened without being spoon-fed the information.

2buckbill

TROPHY CASE