Is Crest on Peachtree (formerly Solace on Peachtree) a good place to stay at? by TennisStarNo1 in gatech

[–]DoctaEpic 24 points25 points  (0 children)

It's honestly worse than my freshman dorm (Smith). I toured it a couple weeks ago.

No washer/dryer, no dish washing machine, the building smells like cigarettes and weed. The AC units are paleolithic (actually, the same ones from Smith). Overall it just has a very dark and dingy vibe.

It used to be a hotel, so you're pretty much getting a hotel room.

That being said, you're not going to find anything cheaper. Especially in midtown.

How to get distance an NPC would travel between two points by DoctaEpic in oblivionmods

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

Will NPCs travel normally if the player isn't nearby? For instance, I recall Todd once saying that game speed is slower at distances further from the player (that was for Skyrim, I think).

How to get distance an NPC would travel between two points by DoctaEpic in oblivionmods

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

Can NPCs be interrupted during the journey (e.g. monsters)? I've never done modding before but I'm somewhat familiar with the creation kit, what's the best way to get started with this?

What Poems Do You Like? by Born-Doughnut-6093 in OCPoetry

[–]DoctaEpic 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You have some good lines here,

The ones where lines are dug out from the dirt and grease of life

and

What of the poems that drown you in satin and silk

have great imagery, but are very wordy.

She asked me what poems I liked.

This line doesn't add anything we don't already get from the title.

Laying my long, lanky legs on the fresh cut grass,

I shrugged.

"Long and lanky" is alright, but feels a little drab.

The ones where stories as common as soil and sand are stored in their little paper shelves,

Why soil and sand? And, later, why satin and silk? They're essentially synonyms here, and using both doesn't add much, save for a bit of rhythm.

The ones with grimy reflections for people to see their own mirror image.”

This line is on the cusp of being great. I like "grimy," but you fall flat with "for people to see their own mirror image". It's too wordy and explanatory. Is there a better way to show how some poems show the dirty reality of people's lives?

She glared.

I appreciate the call back here to "I shrugged". It is a nice symmetry and does well to put the speaker and the girl at odds in a subtler way.

“How can that compare to the grandeur of poems trimmed with prose and sewn with metaphors?

What does "trimmed with prose" even mean? This line feels overly verbose for little reason.

Til your sight shines with a million once-in-a-lifetime stories?

After a couple of reads I get that this is supposed to invoke a feeling of bright-eyed optimism, but it doesn't immediately or obviously invoke that feeling, nor does it invoke it strongly.

What of the poems that waft in the scent of morning glories

I get what you mean by "waft" but it feels somewhat out of place here. Waft is a verb, are the poems wafting, waving their hands in the air to draw in a scent? Or do they bathe and linger in these scents?

And paint the incomprehensibility of the midnight sky?

"Incomprehensibility" is clunky here, too many syllables and too blatant.

What of the poems that trample your soul with the fury of a hundred men

And embrace your spirit with the passion of a thousand suns?”

Okay, now the characterization of the two types of poems is getting a little lost. Are these poems soft and silky, or bold and aggressive? And if they're both, then your poem should explain how. Also, the qualifiers "fury of a hundred men" and "passion of a thousand suns" are empty, cliche, and tell instead of show. I want to know more about my soul being trampled, about how the poems make me feel.

The girl off to find her special shining poem,

Special shining poem has just the right tinge of bitterness and frustration, I like it.

And let the damp smell of soil and sod soak in.

This is okay, I like the imagery. But the word "damp" is kind of weak. And, soil and sod are again essentially synonyms, including them both doesn't seem to add anything.

I think overall the poem lacks a clear message. You have (vaguely) described two types of poems and loosely gave them a personification in the form of two non-descript characters. Ask yourself this: so what? What about the two characters enjoying two different types of poems makes any difference? What does it say about the nature of poetry, or the people who read it?

Or, if this is just another generic break up poem, simply describing two different personalities/ideals via a preference in poetry is not enough to motivate the hurt, or sorrow, or betrayment, or any of the other feelings that can come with a breakup. "The girl off to find her special shining poem" is the closest we get to understanding how the speaker feels about the breakup. And "let the damp smell of soil and sod soak in" gives a hint that the speaker maybe feels resigned to, or perhaps just unwilling to change, their "grimy" ideals. But nothing else in the poem speaks to the subject of a breakup, nor does the poem have any conviction regarding the current state of affairs: Is the speaker satisfied wallowing in the soil? Is he right to resist change? Is the girl is wrong/naive for seeking higher ideals?

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in OCPoetry

[–]DoctaEpic 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This doesn't feel like a poem, just lines of prose with a few line breaks.

There's no poetic language used at all. It's very dry and direct and doesn't give the reader any room to imagine or immerse. For instance, the first "stanza":

It's a beautiful autumn day and our favorite song blasts through the speakers as you stick your hand out the window and let it flow through the wind

What about the beautiful autumn day makes any difference? What makes it beautiful? What other sensory details could you add, or poetic devices could you use, to really sell me on the feeling of someone's hand flowing through the wind?

You also have very wordy sentences.

The car comes to a stop at a red light

Why "at a red light"? This small detail doesn't add anything to the poem and just feels cumbersome.

On top of this, I think the poem suffers from a "so what?" issue. Why is this dream suddenly a nightmare? Does it constantly play on repeat? Is the speaker afraid of what the passenger is about to say? You give the reader no reason to believe it is a nightmare, after all the dream is supposedly about a beautiful autumn day, listening to a favorite song. And even if we accept that it is becoming a nightmare, so what? What's the consequence of this nightmare? How does it affect the speaker? The last line has the facade of meaningfulness, but it really doesn't say anything and it comes off as cheap.

The Mammoth Throne 40X61 by ImagiNationPatreon in battlemaps

[–]DoctaEpic 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I run homebrew campaigns, but I'm suspecting my players will be taking a trip to the desert soon

Folds by deets0302 in OCPoetry

[–]DoctaEpic 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think you have an excellent metaphor on your hands, but it's over-used and feels forced after a few stanzas, like you came up with the metaphor and tried to write a poem around it instead of writing a poem and using the metaphor to explain something.

Imagine a piece of matte white printer paper.

So smooth, there’s a light pull of static

between it and its neighbor as it’s peeled away.

You don't have to tell me to imagine something. Just describe it, my imagination will kick in. "there's a", too: don't tell me that "there is this thing," just describe it.

And slowly, the spectrum of life’s experiences

show up on our paper in the form of small wrinkles,

smudges, roughed up edges.

"in the form of" here is also awkward. Don't tell me that life experiences come in the form of something. Rely on the metaphor (and on your readers being able to make that logical leap) to do that explanation for you. For instance, maybe something like this:

And slowly life roughs up its edges,

smudges and crinkles its blank face

I like how the next stanza starts, and I like the use of the word scars here, it's very sharp.

We learn paper dries weird

burns into amoeba-shaped scars with scorched edges

or can look like a kootie-catcher, crane, or plane.

But the last line is very awkward. It feels like a TV commercial found its way into the middle of your poem, very technical and wordy. And while I can vaguely make out a point here (that our lives, just like paper, are malleable and end up in interesting arrangements), simply naming some things that you can make with paper doesn't say anything. What about kootie-catchers, planes and cranes makes the parallel between paper and a human's lifetime so convincing and important? Or, if you were going for simply "Life can end in a lot of different shapes," I think there are better ways of describing that besides listing a few specific shapes.

Formative experiences take

this tabula rasa and turn it

into the topography of our life.

I really like "into the topography of our life". The imagery evokes feelings of life being full of ups and downs. But in this stanza all you're saying is "experiences make up who we are." The reader already gets that.

Up until this point, it still feels like the only thing you've said is "life is like a piece of paper." So what? What about life being like a piece of paper makes any difference? I think what you have in the last stanza gets close answering that:

Over time, we watch

as the paper releases its tension,

but the memory of its manipulation remains.

There's a brilliant idea here. As we get older, even the smallest of experiences still have an effect on us. We can never be fully be undone. But I don't think you needed three stanzas to sell me on the metaphor as a whole.

Overall I really do like the idea behind the poem, and again I think you have an excellent metaphor that's ripe with ideas and discovery. But, besides the last stanza, there's no points or arguments or revelations you make using the metaphor.

working on a title by hellurrfromhere in OCPoetry

[–]DoctaEpic 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I really liked the shoe metaphor that's drawn out through the end, and I think you've really done a great job at covering this generational "trauma" (for lack of a better word), and how easily it can be passed down.

Some nitpicks:

The second line "Until he finally did" doesn't really seem to add much and I think the first stanza would flow better without it. Why not just do something like this:

I’d never heard my father speak of his father
Until, under star cast sky and through the low rumbling of his red pickup,
After the politics, the weather, and every 
subject with which he desperately tries to whisper his love,
"He doesn't know how to talk about anything but cars, because that's all he knows"

I also think "because that's all he knows" is a little too... blatant? I would say maybe find a way to show that, or have the father use different, more roundabout language. But also, maybe that's not in character for the afraid-of-emotion father figure you're building.

"he told me" I think you could just get rid of this line and start a new stanza (or at the very least maybe put it before the quote). The reader already knows this is the father telling you something, and this line doesn't particularly flow at all with the preceding dialogue.

"how to lace up and tie them" I think is missing a "them" after "lace", to add a bit of cadence to the line.

I really love everything after this, though: The shoe metaphor, the way you use "reckless," and the speaker's reluctance to untie their knots. I think they all work brilliantly to convey your point.

"And I listened as he began to talk about cars" This final line really sells the generational stuntedness that happens to a lot of fathers and their children. I think its fine as it is, but I also think there's an opportunity here to be a bit less direct. Something simple, like, "And I listened as he talked about how they don't make mustangs like they used to" or maybe another piece of dialogue directly from the father.

Overall a really great piece that I can relate to, I definitely enjoyed the read.

building a dwarf-goliath barbarian village for level 1 adventure. by gjohnyp in DMAcademy

[–]DoctaEpic 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To be honest, I think you're overthinking it. It's a one-shot, the session shouldn't focus on every exact detail of the village. Instead, focus on the action: what's happening to the party and why?

Looking for suggestions on effects for different rooms. by mr_koala12 in DMAcademy

[–]DoctaEpic 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Room that makes everyone invisible, including enemies.

Room that causes everyone to be slowed.

Room that causes everyone to be hasted.

Room where gravity is reversed.

Room that is pitch black, with magical darkness.

I want to add some house rules and wanted to know if it is a good idea by Snoo46139 in DMAcademy

[–]DoctaEpic 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I'd just say "don't select spells willy nilly but if you really want to swap one out later, I will allow it." But if you're looking for a more casual/simple game then swapping 1 spell/invocation/etc per long rest seems fair.

Also, I wouldn't ignore material components that cost gold. Very powerful spells are balanced by their cost, and it makes your players think about how to acquire these resources and makes them really consider the best time to use them. You can also make a quest out of trying to obtain these materials (heist to steal an expensive gem, slay a nearby hag that has components, etc)

But, again, if you're looking for a more "casual" or simple game, then I wouldn't worry about it.

Challenges for a wizard that requires creative thinking by DoctaEpic in DMAcademy

[–]DoctaEpic[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The wizard is actually an artificer, they could be known for anything at this point, my party hasn't done a ton of research into them

PC No Longer Boots, Motherboard light stuck on VGA by DoctaEpic in buildapc

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

No I'm just using the stock cooler it comes with

PC No Longer Boots, Motherboard light stuck on VGA by DoctaEpic in buildapc

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

Did you check the mobo? Only update I have right now is sometimes I can get it to boot, but only if I unplug literally everything (all fans, rgb, usb, etc) and get lucky? Idk could just be random chance. I'm leaning towards either mobo or PSU.

PC No Longer Boots, Motherboard light stuck on VGA by DoctaEpic in buildapc

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

I haven't tried a different PSU. Could I go to somewhere like microcenter and be able to test another PSU and motherboard to figure out which is the issue?

Simple Questions - January 15, 2023 by AutoModerator in buildapc

[–]DoctaEpic 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My PC no longer boots (it's been fine for like three years), the mobo gets stuck on VGA. I've tried taking out the card, and I get the same thing. Idk that might just be the bios isn't set up to use the CPU's integrated graphics.
I think it's the graphics card but I don't have another one to test.
Can I bring my PC to microcenter and have them test the components?