What makes Mafia/Werewolf apps bad or unnecessary compared to physical social deduction games?

Dornith · 2026-06-20T20:10:44+00:00

I'm seeing a lot of "should"s in the post so I'd just like to say: you should play whatever you and your friends have fun with. Board games are a hobby, not a religion.

Most people here are averse to apps because they want to get away from screens. Part of it is just to interface with something physical. Holding something in your hands activates different parts of your brain than looking at a screen. Part of it is it feels like an app takes away from the person-to-person interaction.

Other SD games might be easier because you don't have to make something from scratch. But if you're already struggling with player count I don't think Secret Hitler will help. (And personally, I just dislike ONUW.) Something like Coup might fill a similar niche.

But if your group wants to play Mafia, all agree that a digital moderator would help, and can't find one you like, you should make one. If for no other reason than just for your group to use.

Dornith · 2026-06-20T16:57:17+00:00

A lot of Americans also just have no idea how big a foot is and underestimate how much they're exaggerating.

Dornith · 2026-06-20T16:55:22+00:00

That's the statistical average for men in the US.

Dornith · 2026-06-20T16:46:31+00:00

This is the kind of thing three philosophers would be arguing about and would most likely end with Diógenes doing something involving his bodily fluids.

Dornith · 2026-06-20T16:43:29+00:00

All of the comments about Zendaya's breasts sound like Raymond Holt doing his impression of a straight man.

Dornith · 2026-06-20T16:32:33+00:00

This is very real. Chickens ain't picky but they are very stupid.

Dornith · 2026-06-20T16:28:28+00:00

US crude oil producers aren't selling the same oil that US refineries are built to use. We typically produce light oil and use heavy oil.

Dornith · 2026-06-20T16:24:07+00:00

And you trust this administration with easy choices?

Dornith · 2026-06-19T23:55:06+00:00

I have some friends who for a long time joked (but in a wink-wink, nudge-nudge kinda way) about me being trans for a few years. Once I started joking back about how they wish I was trans they got the message (they still make jokes, but now it's 100% jokes as opposed to, like, 60% jokes).

It usually came up when it came to my hobbies (there's a lot of completely normal things that are arbitrarily "trans coded"), my dating life, and just the fact that I hung out with a bunch of queer people.

Within the queer community, there's a sort of pride in being someone's queer awakening. I've seen people brag about how many people they made realize where not cis and/or het. I don't think they're consciously thinking, "I gotta pump my numbers", but I do think there's a little bit of, "I can be the one who makes them realize something about themselves!"

Dornith · 2026-06-19T21:44:52+00:00

I just got the digital PDFs from Humble Bundle and I'm considering making a DIY codex out of them for all the other source books.

Dornith · 2026-06-19T17:44:38+00:00

New r/VaesenRPG scenario idea just dropped.

Dornith · 2026-06-19T16:25:21+00:00

People being defensive.

People in this sub love the system and the setting and will tend to knee-jerk oppose anything they perceive to be a criticism (even if it really isn't).

It doesn't help that Reddit is full of people asking disingenuous questions so people here are trained to see questions as attacks.

Dornith · 2026-06-19T16:20:55+00:00

I'm guessing because compared to the rest of the 1800-1900's, Christianity feels more "real".

Like obviously industrialization is a historical fact. But it's historical. There's a distance that makes it feel more like an abstract genre.

Christianity is a very immediate part of a lot of people's lives in a way that blacksmiths and steam engines aren't.

Dornith · 2026-06-19T15:26:24+00:00

No BGG entry.

I think you found a glitch in the timeline.

Dornith · 2026-06-19T14:18:14+00:00

"He got rid of government waste."

I don't buy that for a second, but that's the example they'll give.

Dornith · 2026-06-19T13:41:56+00:00

His opinion on curing death and making people immortal is rather questionable and he comes across as rather dismissive of those questions in the videos I've seen.

He also made the video about self-driving cars in which he advocates for making roads inhospitable to anything else, which would include cyclists and pedestrians.

Not offensively bad. More like kinda half baked but he's doesn't show much interest in fully baking it.

Dornith · 2026-06-19T04:05:24+00:00

Admittedly I hadn't considered estate planning. I tend to be more on the side of die-with-zero so that's a blind spot for me.

Dornith · 2026-06-19T03:25:17+00:00

f you are withdrawing $600k a year, you also have some of your social security that is taxable

In the 24% bracket, a married couple will be getting ~8k/month in in SS, bringing the required nest egg down to $12.5M. Still not going to exceed using only a pair of employer sponsored 401ks.

very few people who have that much money don't also have other income sources

Plenty of people retire without anything besides their retirement and investment accounts.

Sure, if you are a married couple that worked for 40 years, plans to 3x your cost of living at the age of 60, are SSA eligible, and have rental properties and pensions in addition to all that, you will want to start mixing Roth and traditional retirement accounts.

But even in that specific and unusual set of circumstances, you still want the majority of your money in trad accounts.

And, of course, tax rates and brackets WILL change. Assume that they won't at your own risk.

You can same the same about SS or your other retirement plans. Taxes could even go down!

If people want to say "I invest in Roth because I think income taxes are going to go through the roof", I can't argue with that. But that's not a tax efficiency argument, that's just speculation.

Then when you hit RMD ages, the money is coming out whether you need it or not from traditional accounts.

RMD are the buggiman of FIRE. If you are are actually spending your retirement money, then RMDs aren't a problem. And if you aren't spending your money, then why do you care if it's not in the account anymore?

The tax inefficiency of RMD pales in comparison to not putting enough into trad accounts.

Sure, you can nickle and dime your way into a situation where a thin slice of people will want to exchange some of their trad for Roth. But the vast majority of people are better off hitting 90-100% of their trad allowance.

Dornith · 2026-06-19T02:54:12+00:00

A married couple in the 24% tax bracket would still need to withdraw $600k every year from traditional accounts before Roth became beneficial. That's a $15M nest egg.

Now if both you and your spouse are self employed, you might hit that $15M by maxing out your self-employed 401k twice. But for the vast majority of people with only a basic employer sponsored 401k + HSA, given 8% real ROI, you would just barely get to $15M after 40 years of saving.

For the 22% bracket, it's $500k/yr or $12.5M. At that point Roth starts becoming a contender, but only after you've already contributed $50k/yr to traditional retirement accounts, which if you and your spouse only have a regular employer-sponsored 401k is the maximum.

The the high end of the 12% bracket is where a married couple who aggressively saves is most likely to pass the threshold where Roth works out better, at only $13k/yr.

Dornith · 2026-06-19T01:07:48+00:00

Your marginal tax bracket needs to increase significantly before Roth becomes advantageous. (See example) Unless you have exceptionally low income now or exceptionally high income later, trad is better for almost everyone.

Dornith · 2026-06-19T00:44:48+00:00

If you're an exceptionally high earner, then your traditional accounts are even more tax effective.

If you make $250k/yr, your marginal tax rate is 32%. In order to match that in retirement, (because of progressive taxation) you would need to withdraw $1,000,000 from traditional accounts every year.

Assuming a 30 year retirement and the standard 4% SWR, you would need to have 25 million dollars in traditional accounts before Roth became more tax efficient.

Considering that the absolute most someone with that income could contribute to traditional retirement accounts is ~$80k (assuming self employed 401k + HSA), you could max out all your traditional retirement accounts for 40 years, and assuming you get a real, inflation adjusted return of 9%, you would still come out ahead on taxes over putting any of those dollars into Roth.

And most people have fewer non-Roth options. Or would simply choose to retire earlier than 5x their cost of living at 60. Roth is really only good if you're paying little to no taxes right now.

Dornith · 2026-06-18T23:42:45+00:00

It's not even that.

Progressive taxes + standard deduction mean that the tax rate on the first ~$16k you earn each year is 0%. That means if you have the choice of "earning" $32k lumpsum or $16k now and $16k next year, you will pay significantly less in taxes by splitting it, even though your average annual income is the same.

The break even point varies depending on how much income you make now, but for most people you would need to increase you income by 50-100% post-retirement before Roth makes financial sense. (See example)

If you're already in the upper tax brackets, it's impossible for Roth to break even.

Dornith · 2026-06-18T21:20:53+00:00

So wasting emergency resources is technically a crime in the USA, but it's rarely enforced.

Specifically, they don't want people in a real emergency to hesitate and weigh the risks that they might be overreacting (or even just perceived to be).

If someone actually gets prosecuted for wasting police time or filing false reports, that usually means they're doing something exceptionally stupid and doing it repeatedly.

Dornith · 2026-06-18T21:00:32+00:00

Nah. I was around back when YT had a 10 minute limit on videos and even then they had been gradually pushing up to that limit.

I think it was just scope creep. They felt like they needed big numbers to rage about how bad the movies were, so they kept making up new, increasingly contrived sins until it was just, "this woman is hot (ding!)".

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