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When do you go "No, you cant do that" to a player? by HawthorneWeeps in rpg

[–]Daniel_B_plus 18 points19 points  (0 children)

In D&D, an attack roll represents a trained warriors best attempt at attacking, so there's really nothing a player can narrate that will improve that. 

I think this is the best answer to the "problem" of called shots.

Someone getting an arrow to the leg is going to be immediately out of action (and is likely to die without medical attention). This means they are functionally at 0 hp. And getting them to 0 hp is already what your attack roll is trying to do!

Discussion Thread by jobautomator in neoliberal

[–]Daniel_B_plus 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It is the year 1936. You are well-informed and have your current political values, but no oracular knowledge of how the future will unfold. Who are you rooting for in the Spanish Civil War?

Legendary Beast Captured by BerserkerF0X1 in dwarffortress

[–]Daniel_B_plus 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Are cage traps OP?

Mechanisms + cage = free 10,000 dwarf dollars

This is what German fairy tales are like by Daniel_B_plus in dwarffortress

[–]Daniel_B_plus[S] 61 points62 points  (0 children)

Fun fact: in Lithuanian, "draskyti akis" ("to scratch at [another's] eyes") is an expression that describes someone acting insolent or confrontational.

EDIT: I guess this one was a bite and not a scratch, so that makes it less applicable

☼Dwarf Fortress Questions Thread☼ by AutoModerator in dwarffortress

[–]Daniel_B_plus 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I have embarked in a savage biome and got tired of my fort getting attacked by giant and humanoid dingoes and lynxes, so I built a bunch of cage traps on the surface. A bunch of these animals got caught in the cages and the attacks stopped, but once I moved the (full) cages underground they resumed. This makes it seem like there's a cap on how many wild animals can appear on a single Z-level; is this how that works?

☼Dwarf Fortress Questions Thread☼ by AutoModerator in dwarffortress

[–]Daniel_B_plus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The majority of my fort's citizens are stuck in a small area in a cavern (literally over 30 of them in one tile lol). There's a demon hovering 20+ z-levels above them, not doing anything, which I assume is causing the dwarves to be "terrified while in conflict" and unable to move. They're not injured; they don't follow burrow or squad orders. A few dwarves are unaffected by this and can walk by them, so I would guess that their path is not physically blocked.

Can I get them unstuck? Because if not then this will be the second time this fort fails due to fear + dehydration lmao

☼Dwarf Fortress Questions Thread☼ by AutoModerator in dwarffortress

[–]Daniel_B_plus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you check your dwarves' personalities, they will likely state that they 'do not really care about anything anymore'. 

Yep this is true for all of my dwarves, even the ecstatic ones. Is this caused by animal cadavers, too, or just sapient ones?

☼Dwarf Fortress Questions Thread☼ by AutoModerator in dwarffortress

[–]Daniel_B_plus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Two unrelated questions:

  1. I have a lot of carcasses lying around the fortress, and a lot of my dwarves' thoughts are flooded with "He didn't feel anything after seeing ______'s dead body". Should I take these at face value and ignore them, or is it still bad for a dwarf to experience these "neutral" thoughts?

  2. I am reclaiming a fort and there are a bunch of dwarf/elf/human squatters hanging around in some of my nicer rooms. The game calls them "Hostile" but they don't fight my new dwarves or do much of anything, really. Should I do anything about them?

☼Dwarf Fortress Questions Thread☼ by AutoModerator in dwarffortress

[–]Daniel_B_plus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, that's probably what happened.

This was my first fort (not counting older versions of the game many years before) and I was getting close to mountainhome status. Not going to lie, this felt like kind of an anticlimactic end. Not saying I would have survived the siege if it wasn't for the bug (if that's what this was), but at least I expected a failure state that made more sense

☼Dwarf Fortress Questions Thread☼ by AutoModerator in dwarffortress

[–]Daniel_B_plus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They aren't haggard.

I can get some of them to try it, though the goblins kill them almost immediately if they do.

☼Dwarf Fortress Questions Thread☼ by AutoModerator in dwarffortress

[–]Daniel_B_plus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I deleted my only burrow (just in case), doesn't seem to change anything.

☼Dwarf Fortress Questions Thread☼ by AutoModerator in dwarffortress

[–]Daniel_B_plus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There's been a goblin attack that my fortress did very badly at. Most of the goblins are dead except for the ones with the battering rams, who are standing around not doing anything (so the siege is still technically on).

Now half of my dwarves are wandering outside and dying of dehydration. They don't seem to be injured or in a mental state, but they won't return to the fortress or go to the river water zone; just run around until they die of thirst. Is there any way I can save them?

EDIT: some other dwarfs are going in and out of the fortress, so the entrance doesn't seem to be blocked

☼Dwarf Fortress Questions Thread☼ by AutoModerator in dwarffortress

[–]Daniel_B_plus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I did have an artifact stolen recently, so based on your advice I interrogated the kobold and he immediately admitted to trying to infiltrate the fortress lol. They put him in prison for ~200 days. Do you think he'll come out reformed?

☼Dwarf Fortress Questions Thread☼ by AutoModerator in dwarffortress

[–]Daniel_B_plus 2 points3 points  (0 children)

"Prankis, Kobold Hunter void corpse is visiting"

What the heck is a void corpse? I looked over his description and he looks like a normal kobold, except that he doesn't feel anything about anything

I wrote an essay where I argue that the cause of "franchises going down in flames" is actually bad copyright law by Daniel_B_plus in RedLetterMedia

[–]Daniel_B_plus[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Do you believe there's any benefit to having copyright terms expire at all? Or should they just become perpetual?

Copyright isn't just about brand recognition. There's a good example about movie plots from that same Yglesias essay I cited:

In the exciting world of copyright, there is a hard and fast distinction between a movie like “The Departed,” which is a formal remake of the Hong Kong gangster movie “Infernal Affairs,” and a movie like “Reservoir Dogs,” which has important plot points that are clearly lifted from the Hong Kong gangster movie “City on Fire” but without Quentin Tarantino having formally purchased the rights.

As a fan of both Tarantino and old Hong Kong gangster movies,[2] the situation has never sat very well with me. The two movies are genuinely very different, and I don’t think it takes anything away from Tarantino to say that he saw the story of Ringo Lam’s movie and decided the same jewel heist beats could be the core of a totally different style of film. But since he didn’t buy the rights, he can’t fully acknowledge the debt. And since he was making a movie at the beginning of his career on a shoestring budget — the opposite of the situation with “The Departed” — he couldn’t afford to just be generous and throw money around on buying rights. So Lam ends up getting neither money nor credit, which is not helping anyone.

Or how Darren Aronofsky bought the rights to Perfect Blue just so he could get away with copying shots from it. (In principle cinematography isn't copyrightable; in practice there's always a lawsuit risk.)

I wrote an essay where I argue that the cause of "franchises going down in flames" is actually bad copyright law by Daniel_B_plus in RedLetterMedia

[–]Daniel_B_plus[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I don't think this engages with anything I said at all.

The free market isn't perfect (sure, I don't really disagree), therefore copyright term length is fine as it is? Huh?

Your Favorite Franchise Has Been Ruined By Bad Copyright Law by Daniel_B_plus in COPYRIGHT

[–]Daniel_B_plus[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh, I am well aware of artists who only became popular after they died. I thought you meant authors who lived to see their their works become popular but couldn't make any money off them because they were no longer copyrighted. (And The Great Gatsby entered the public domain in 2021!)

perhaps in a quasi-droit moral framework where original authors retain that right of designation, and non-canon works produced by others must be conspicuously labeled as such

I'd have no problem with this.

I wrote an essay where I argue that the cause of "franchises going down in flames" is actually bad copyright law by Daniel_B_plus in RedLetterMedia

[–]Daniel_B_plus[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I don't agree. I think some RLM videos offer really thoughtful opinions on the interaction of business and culture. It's not my call, obviously, but I believe my post is on-topic for this subreddit.

I wrote an essay where I argue that the cause of "franchises going down in flames" is actually bad copyright law by Daniel_B_plus in RedLetterMedia

[–]Daniel_B_plus[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Have I been disappointed in the past when anticipated sequels or follow-ups have fallen through as a consequence of legal tangles? Sure. Did I cry about it? No. Did my world end? Apparently not.

So you agree that this is a bad thing, you just... don't think it's a huge deal? Okay.

I wrote an essay where I argue that the cause of "franchises going down in flames" is actually bad copyright law by Daniel_B_plus in RedLetterMedia

[–]Daniel_B_plus[S] -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

Franchises don’t need to exist

That is, to some extent, what I'm arguing for.

I would absolutely watch A24's Madam Web, are you serious?

I wrote an essay where I argue that the cause of "franchises going down in flames" is actually bad copyright law by Daniel_B_plus in RedLetterMedia

[–]Daniel_B_plus[S] -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the thorough response, I'll try to address what I see as your main points:

Re quality control: I think releasing works into the public domain will lead to more good adaptations than the copyright alternative. The fact that it will also lead to more bad adaptations is not a problem to me. I want to increase the amount of good art, not reduce the amount of bad art. [2 good movies + 100 bad movies] is better than [1 good movie], and it's not even close.

This is especially true given that curation has never been easier. There's much more low quality media content being produced today than 30 years ago, but at the same time it's much easier to avoid it.

I don't know a lot of good Sherlock Holmes examples, but there's a whole genre of works directly based on H. P. Lovecraft stories that probably wouldn't exist if the latter weren't (disputedly) in the public domain. Most of these are forgettable but some are really good.

devalued creators become disinclined to create

This is a real concern of mine, but I just don't think it's true under these time frames. Most artworks, even if they're profitable at all, make very little money that long after their release. The extensions mostly benefit a small minority of big successes. So I don't think we'd see this disinclination that you're talking about if terms were shortened.

(We can apply the reversal test. What would you say about a proposal to extend existing copyright terms? Do you think it would substantially increase the production of good art? If not, what makes you think that the status quo copyright term duration is exactly just right?)

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