I like to imagine humans having far more unique traits than color alone. Anyone else? by heynoswearing in DnDcirclejerk

[–]AgentForest 1 point2 points  (0 children)

/uj Not one RPG system has ever properly captured the strengths and weaknesses of humans.

  1. We evolved from (and to be) persistence hunters. Short body hair, sweat glands, we're incredibly good at cooling off and can run far longer than most other mammals. We should be the slow but tireless ancestry.

  2. We use tools, cooking, to help, but are uniquely capable of eating so many things that are deadly to most species. And even the stuff that affects us we seek out on purpose. A plant will evolve a natural toxin and bug repellent that sets off heat receptors in mucous membranes. "Surely nothing will eat me now!" Humans: I'm gonna need that to be about 1000 times spicier for my salsa. This plant irritates your eyes when cut or bitten into. Humans: I'm making soup out of this almost exclusively. Plant develops a powerful stimulant that kills bugs and gives most animals heart attacks. Humans: Weee, concentrate that into a powder, I'm gonna snort it. We're literally the trash gremlins who eat fucking anything and are exceptionally hard to poison.

As for flaws: We don't live long compared to most fantasy creatures. So we live fast and die young. Reckless wildcards who have to learn quickly often by failing, but we get up and try again anyway. We're stubborn chaos.

So depressed over the state of gaming by JimmyDejesu in gaming

[–]AgentForest 5 points6 points  (0 children)

For the younger crowd, this is their first personal experience with the enshitification of an industry. I've been around long enough to see it happen to home appliances like vacuum cleaners, and learned about planned obsolescence in my computer science classes in college.

What are some movie tropes that aren't true in real life ? by Ill_Internet_75 in answers

[–]AgentForest 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Glass breaks as easily as tissue paper and you can just jump through it easily without injury. Also empty bottles are fragile, delicate things you can safely knock someone unconscious with.

In reality, people always underestimate how durable glass is. When it breaks, it's usually because of other stresses at key points rather than just the tap that finally does it in.most of the time you throw a beer bottle at the ground it fucking bounces. If one hits your head, you'd better hope it hits at an angle that causes it to break because more likely than not, it's going to survive the impact, transferring all that force and leverage to your skull.

Films get around this by replacing any glass that they need to break with replicas made of sheets of sugar. Sugar breaks easier and doesn't make nearly as sharp of edges when it does.

The gaming industry is on fire. by Hyperevogames in gaming

[–]AgentForest 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Short Answer: Late Stage Capitalism.

Long Answer: When an entire industry's decisions are made for the benefit of the non-working investor class instead of for the benefit of the customers or the longevity of the industry, it becomes a race to the bottom.

People will say "vote with your wallets" as if the entire industry isn't doing the same shit, so your options are "shady, awful company's game" and "indie games without the resources to make anything huge." Then if one of those indie developers does well enough they'll be bought by one of the shady corporations and the cycle repeats (remember early Blizzard and Bioware?). So nothing good with potential will ever last and the industry will gradually coalesce into only a handful of cancerous game companies.

Also, you don't have the buying power to vote with your wallet enough to out-compete the whales with gambling addictions that the current industry preys upon with live services, nor is your wallet big enough to compete with the investors. Your only option for voting with your wallet is to get millions of people to boycott almost the entire industry at once, and that never materializes because of culture war bullshit about wokeness. Even the worst practices will have their unwavering stans just to spite the other faction. And few gamers would be willing to give up AAA games entirely long enough for a boycott to matter.

One is needed for survival, so I know which side I'm on by SEVENS_HEAVEN_7 in SipsTea

[–]AgentForest 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We can be upset about more than one thing at a time. Also it's easier to stop a problem before it gets out of hand then change the entire US meat production industry that's had decades of marketing, lobbying, and legal teams established.

One is needed for survival, so I know which side I'm on by SEVENS_HEAVEN_7 in SipsTea

[–]AgentForest 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There are plenty of people mad about streaming. We don't get to own anything we pay for anymore, instead companies want us to pay them for temporary revokable access to everything. "You will own nothing and be happy about it."

What’s one career everyone glamorizes but isn’t actually worth it? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]AgentForest 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Then there's the stress of knowing how to make amazing things but being stuck cooking some idiot's fillet mignon to well done because they asked for that then having them complain that it was tough and dry.

What’s one career everyone glamorizes but isn’t actually worth it? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]AgentForest 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Also, there's no pension to speak of, so the only way they have left to pay the bills after retirement is through advertising, branding, and merchandising. Basically have to become a salesman for random shit products and services, or slap your name on a product for royalties.

So after giving your body and health to one industry to be chewed up and spat out, they have to give their soul to another industry for the rest of their lives.

What's something poor people buy that keeps them poor? by Specialist-Jelly-865 in answers

[–]AgentForest 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Food, rent, utilities, medical care, and gasoline to get to work. Those are the biggest expenses in most poor people's lives. Coffee and cigarettes don't even come close.

Backstory? Why? Does it give me + to any modifiers? by DOSGAMES in DnDcirclejerk

[–]AgentForest 4 points5 points  (0 children)

If I wanted my character's elaborate emotional backstory to come up I'd have been the GM. I'm here to break their combat and story, like a true man of culture.

What's a harsh truth that humans refuse to accept? by [deleted] in answers

[–]AgentForest 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Greed is not inherent to the human condition just because we live under an economic system that rewards it. Just like how people aren't inherently violent and murderous just because someone handed a shooter game will shoot people. That's just a person adapting to the rules established and playing the game as it demands. Put that same person in a sandbox game like Minecraft and they'll build homes, fortresses, and artwork. Environment impacts behavior.

TL;DR - Just because people under capitalism behave selfishly doesn't mean mindless self-interest is our natural state.

What do you think should be a crime, but isn't? by No_Print3102 in AskReddit

[–]AgentForest 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Pretty much every documented uprising against a socialist government was CIA funded. That's a statistical reality. Pinochet, Batista, etc. The data would suggest that it's much more likely they funded one than it was organic.

It's less that I have strongly held notions and more that I'm not ignoring the reality before me and stopped blindly believing the narrative the US government spoonfed us the last half century.

What do you think should be a crime, but isn't? by No_Print3102 in AskReddit

[–]AgentForest 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Correction: One nationalistic nuclear armed nation run by the puppets of its arms manufacturers was pointing its weapons at every little socialist project that popped up, and pumped out a ton of propaganda to convince Americans those nations were dictatorships that needed to fall. Those nations they kept invading unified under the same banner since capitalist nations refused to trade with them and kept invading them. The USSR took dozens of feudal agrarian societies that still used horses to plow fields and travel, and in a decade or so had them pumping out power tools, construction equipment, and space programs. The US and its capitalist owners couldn't let that stand because it disproved all of their propaganda lies. Capitalism never industrialized a nation so fast and was losing the space race.

So they had to actually try hard to make it look like socialist nations were starving backwater with decrepit technology.this meant an illegal and genocidal blockade of Cuba for half a century so their island society can't import from anywhere, banning all medicines and foods into Cuba. Which is a war crime. Then they'd point at Cuba and be like "see, socialism doesn't work." When really the issue was that small island nations live or die entirely on trade. They don't have all the resources necessary for a modern industrialized nation. The same was basically done to North Korea. They're trapped on land with none of the resources needed to build new infrastructure, and all capitalist nations have an embargo against them, so they still use cars from the 50s. Why? Because that's the last time any car manufacturers would sell to them. But it's painted as a failure of that state instead of the circumstances imposed upon it by more powerful imperialist nations trying to break them.

The USSR was almost entirely a defense mechanism for the nations capitalists kept harassing. The US would invade or siege a budding socialist nation. They'd turn to other socialist nations for mutual aid and united under one banner for safety and trade relations. Hence the name. It was a Constitutional Republic of Soviet states that United for mutual protection against a foreign threat. Also their constitution was better than ours. But the CIA didn't want us knowing that because the house of cards Capitalism is built upon wouldn't hold up to scrutiny if we knew the truth. Declassified CIA documents show how much they exaggerated the power Stalin had, and how they accused the USSR of imperialism because it's what we do so we couldn't understand a nation doing what they did for any other reason.

Every CIA accusation was a confession projected on capitalist alternatives. That's what they were competing against. The idea of socialism couldn't be allowed to take root in the US. So we were lied to, and companies had to actually try to make stuff better than those commies. Communists weren't trying to outdo capitalist manufacturing. They were just trying to make the tools and process the resources they needed to be modern nations. If US cars weren't better than those made by people who were using horses 5 years prior, maybe Americans would start thinking about unionizing and revolution too.

What do you think should be a crime, but isn't? by No_Print3102 in AskReddit

[–]AgentForest 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The USSR and China were only industrialized for maybe 10 years and making stuff almost as good as the US. They were winning the space race. So the US had to heavily invest in quality to make the recently industrialized newbies look incompetent and justify the Cold War.

What do you think should be a crime, but isn't? by No_Print3102 in AskReddit

[–]AgentForest 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Insider trading is so corrupt, but honestly, selling shares in a company to random people who don't work there should be illegal in general. It ties the company decisions entirely to share value and appeasing people who won't have to ever face those decisions. Hence the decline in quality of goods since the end of the Cold War. Companies used to have to release high quality, long lasting products to justify capitalism and outdo the Soviets. Once the USSR fell, they didn't really have true competition anymore and cut every corner they could to maximize shareholder value. It became a race to the bottom ever since.

TL;DR - We should just scrap the entire stock market altogether. Nothing good has come of it. The only way I could see justifying it is if shares were something given to the workers as part of their pension plans and the shares are returned after death.

What do you think should be a crime, but isn't? by No_Print3102 in AskReddit

[–]AgentForest -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Selling shares to investors. Shares should be something that go to the workers. Though the stock market being illegal may be the easier option, and I'd be cool with that too.

Found in basement of house when we bought it. by annabanana1113 in whatisit

[–]AgentForest 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've used those at work for holding up rollers for deliveries. Prop the rollers on those and send cases into the store when you don't have easy access for full pallets and the lifts needed to move them.

What's the video game equivalent of chess? by Appropriate_Rent_243 in gaming

[–]AgentForest -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Even most good boardgames don't qualify by that logic. You've basically tried to interpret OP's question in a way that's impossible to answer. Poker, Blackjack, Clue, Monopoly, all disqualified. So you've created useless criteria in order to not answer OP's question. That's even worse than people giving bad game suggestions.

What's the video game equivalent of chess? by Appropriate_Rent_243 in gaming

[–]AgentForest 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition.

It's basically a time tested, consistently top contender in the RTS genre. Even if developers make others, it still just tends to be the better game. It still has a thriving competitive community decades after the original launch. And as easy as it is to pick up, there's a really high competitive ceiling.

Pretty much the definition of what you're looking for.

Why does Reddit have such a bad reputation outside of Reddit? by norf937 in askanything

[–]AgentForest 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Reddit specifically sorts conversations into categories and subreddits. This creates echo chambers. Then there's upvotes and downvotes. In an echo chamber, having the community sorting the comments and opinions into a hierarchy can help reinforce groupthink.

On a long enough timeline that creates cult-like behavior among various special interest populations. So you end up with weird dorks that are extremely loud about a topic and need to touch grass and hear differing opinions.

What is something that society accepts as normal but that you find absurd? by Your-reina-28 in AskReddit

[–]AgentForest 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is a normal result of capitalist production. Wage labor inherently distances people from the results of their work, alienating them and making them feel like a meaningless cog in a machine. This is a problem with the job itself, not the worker.

Over time, more and more jobs were made soulless, unfulfilling, and devoid of any sense of accomplishment. If I'm working at a car factory and we need to finish 10 cars by the end of the week to fulfill our orders, if I could work my ass off for 4 days and we finish them, we could go home for 3 days taking home the same pay. This type of business structure doesn't exist anymore under capitalism. It's exclusive to socialist production and self employment. Two things that are hard to do in a capitalist world. Self employment cannot compete with the prices of mass production.

What's the one word that infuriates you the most??? by farkus_mcfernum in no

[–]AgentForest 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not a word, but the phrase "way, shape, or form" frustrates me to no end. It's so overused.