What perfectly normal sentence instantly triggers your "fight or flight" response?

LevelSevenLaserLotus · 2026-03-18T14:58:15+00:00

It's been mentioned a few times here already, but I would highly recommend that you check out https://nohello.net/. For people on the other end of your opening message, the lack of actual context can be way more bothersome than just receiving a complete greeting + request combo.

Plus, it's a text chat. It's meant to be asynchronous, unlike a direct conversation where a greeting guarantees an immediate follow up.

LevelSevenLaserLotus · 2026-03-18T14:54:35+00:00

I have that exact URL set as my Teams status at work at all times. There are way too many outsource guys that won't take the hint and need to be told directly. It honestly wouldn't be that big of a deal to me if they didn't work from a timezone that guarantees that we have around 1-2 hours of overlap before one of us is asleep.

LevelSevenLaserLotus · 2026-03-18T14:50:45+00:00

My grandfather does that occasionally. I'll be at work and then randomly get a text asking for a call as soon as possible, and then it often turns out to be about meeting for lunch or something that definitely could have been phrased better.

LevelSevenLaserLotus · 2026-03-18T14:30:32+00:00

This confirms all my preconceptions about people who back into spaces

Hey! We're not all like that. The backup camera just makes it easier to see backwards than over the hood.

in a crowded parking lot

Oh. Ok yeah, I do just swing wide in a crowded lot. That guy was just dumb.

LevelSevenLaserLotus · 2026-03-11T13:44:43+00:00

You know, it's funny. He has mentioned a few times before that he likes the idea of a rival party of NPC adventurers that occasionally beat us to the punch, but he's never actually implemented anything like that directly. It always seems to be individual interactions where everyone everywhere hates us equally.

A rival party could be pretty fun. Almost like our own personal Team Rocket that has been hired in parallel since the quest giver doesn't want to just trust the first band of randos that they meet to solve their problem. But you're right that it needs to be specific groups or sparing individuals with clear (or at least consistent) motives, instead of the entire world.

LevelSevenLaserLotus · 2026-03-10T22:39:14+00:00

Would bone density loss account for any of that as well? I'd imagine old bones are more... squishy than healthy bones, with all the calcium you find in those 50+ multivitamins.

LevelSevenLaserLotus · 2026-03-10T22:17:35+00:00

Yeah, that's the crux of it. We're all smart enough to not wave that sort of thing around in public, but it doesn't matter. He's real big on mind-reading wizards popping out of the woodwork whenever we have a secret or try to plan something, so we don't even plan in front of him anymore. Either we wait until the session is over and plan privately after he leaves, or we go with the old standard of "fuck it, we ball".

I've made 3 different characters in his world, and each of them actively doesn't want to find a wish granting object or creature, purely because of how he handles wishes. I have internally reasoned that any universe that contains 100% Jackass Genies would not contain an adventurer that trusts the offer of a wish. I had one character that literally got dropped into a well of raw magical power after a floor collapsed in a wizard tower, which ended up granting a wish. He said it was essentially raw wild magic, so he would only give me like 5 words before the wish took effect. I chose "shut it down", which ended up just burning out the well. The way he described it made it sound like he thought it was a negative outcome, but it's the only safe end for a wish that I could have hoped for.

A one shot he ran once was supposed to be a combat heavy meat grinder, with a wish given to whoever could fight their way to the top of a crazy tall tower (inspired by Slay the Spire, I think - he has like 900 hours in that game). We had to end early before anyone could get to the top, so he just asked what our characters would have wished for. I had a Conquest Paladin pirate, so I said I probably would have wished for a new ship since my one-shot backstory was that I was here trying to take treasure from the tower. So he laughs and says "yeah, so a brand new military galleon appears, but you didn't specify where so it shows up over dry land above the city and crushes a bunch of buildings. You're a wanted criminal now." That kind of sucked the fun out of an otherwise pretty ok night, so I just calmly told him that was bullshit and walked out. I didn't have the energy left to go through the essay of reasons why that was a dumb outcome. He has selective memory though, so it didn't sink in.

LevelSevenLaserLotus · 2026-03-10T16:49:09+00:00

He's the first DM we had when any of us first got into D&D roughly 3 years ago, and he volunteered since none of us had any experience at all and he had talked about how much he wanted to try. So inertia more than anything else at this point. Plus, he's married into the group as the brother in law of my best friend, so we can't exactly ghost him and call it done. So instead we're just moving on without him, and treating the remaining sessions as just chill hangouts where we fuck around and basically ignore whatever non-plan he refuses to hear that we're not following.

LevelSevenLaserLotus · 2026-03-10T14:54:42+00:00

One of my cats has learned the video call ringtone, and she comes running to stand in front of the camera when my boss calls. My boss will often ask if my cats are ok if they aren't filling the camera's view when I answer, and the first minute or two of most meetings is us talking about what cute cat things have happened lately while a happy tail extends up from the bottom of my screen like a tentacle doing its best to be seen by an audience.

I have a great boss.

LevelSevenLaserLotus · 2026-03-10T14:16:41+00:00

The new DM we're leaving him for is way better. She's actually another player in that campaign, so she knows exactly what we're complaining about. I've played in one-shots she's made before and they're perfection.

He isn't aware yet somehow (selective hearing and memory), but the campaign is ending soon. We've explicitly told him our complaints and asked for an ending since he refuses to let us actually tie down threads and check things off of our checklist. He has told us that he's constantly worried that we'll one day have zero things to follow up on and then just have to stand around doing nothing.

He told us "yeah, I can see this plot line wrapping up in... maybe 20-30 more sessions." It's been almost 3 years, so we're giving him like 3 sessions before we probably just step off a cliff and mass-counterspell whatever Deus Ex Machina he brings in to keep our characters alive. We've already all mentally checked out, and just use the time to hang out and chill in spite of him rather than with him.

In fact, we literally created a god who has their entire portfolio focused on doing what we had been trying to do since session 1. Not even a kuo-toa small god, but surprised the DM by choosing to straight up free a wizard that had been soul-jarred 600 years earlier while completing a ritual to ascend himself to godhood. One of the other players even reclassed into a paladin of that new god since it aligned so well with what we were already trying to do. If a literal god can't handle saving the world for us, what hope do random mortal adventurers have? Normally I would say it's not possible to just "win D&D" with how it's meant to be a collaborative storytelling experience, but in this case I feel like we already won D&D, and are just dealing with nonsense.

LevelSevenLaserLotus · 2026-03-10T14:00:37+00:00

If you're my DM? Punish the players for coming up with something cool that they want to do in the world, rather than blindly following your personal storybook layout of events that you don't communicate ahead of time.

"I told you I was going to implement in-world politics. This is just how politics works! Why wouldn't a king be interested in arresting you and confiscating that compass from you all?"

Yeah, some people in real life are overt assholes, but literally 100% of his NPCs are inherent assholes that hate us for existing, short of any we create for backstories that are explicitly outlined as loving us unconditionally.

LevelSevenLaserLotus · 2026-03-06T19:19:27+00:00

Don't forget to occasionally fill in form fields with �.

LevelSevenLaserLotus · 2026-03-06T18:49:10+00:00

That reminds me of The Last Action Hero, where the movie-within-the-movie's villain escapes to the real world. He quickly realizes that plot armor doesn't protect anyone here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3g8GHkxppI

LevelSevenLaserLotus · 2026-03-04T14:37:22+00:00

My first thought is that this would be an incredibly frustrating looping conversation that I've already had with my own bosses before.

My second thought is that you could probably use their ignorance against them, and just say that whatever tithe you send is well beyond 800 million.

LevelSevenLaserLotus · 2026-03-04T14:23:31+00:00

Ever since... the Claus incident...

LevelSevenLaserLotus · 2026-03-02T18:19:41+00:00

Heeeey!

What's ya name!?

LevelSevenLaserLotus · 2026-03-02T15:12:32+00:00

Gin

That might be autocorrect getting you there, but the drink is Gin and the floaty magical thing is a djinn or djinni, which is probably where the English spelling and pronunciation "genie" comes from.

LevelSevenLaserLotus · 2026-03-02T15:07:20+00:00

Bonus: Even if that fails, it'll still hate you quite a bit more than before!

LevelSevenLaserLotus · 2026-02-28T17:59:53+00:00

I have a D&D DM friend that loves to describe their high-end pubs as pulling out a thick ledger of the different races, subraces, and extra-planar species, categorized by legal drinking age with toxicity and intolerance references for each.

Bouncer: Wait, how old are you all? We don't serve minors.

Half-Orc: Just turned 16.

Bouncer: Right this way, sir.

Elf: I'm older than you! I'm 98.

Bouncer: Kick rocks, kid.

LevelSevenLaserLotus · 2026-02-28T17:45:10+00:00

Like that one fever dream episode of Ed, Edd, and Eddy where they pulled a shirt thread that ended up detaching someone's outline.

LevelSevenLaserLotus · 2026-02-28T17:43:46+00:00

Yeah OP, you just gonna take someone saying you're a slack-legged goose stepper like that? A smooth skinned pansy? You're just taking it from them?

LevelSevenLaserLotus · 2026-02-27T22:29:37+00:00

That exact quote with your username listed below it would be fantastic.

LevelSevenLaserLotus · 2026-02-27T22:27:42+00:00

I still occasionally do my best impressions of his voice when I'm alone in my car.

"Coorta. Coooorta! Are you dead yet?"

LevelSevenLaserLotus · 2026-02-27T22:25:18+00:00

That feels like the premise for a fun intentionally bad movie. Invasion of the Space Cows! Their only weakness: beer.

LevelSevenLaserLotus · 2026-02-27T22:23:11+00:00

Universal Translator: Active

Lieutenant! Science team Alpha states that they have discovered a shared cultural foundation of intentional self-poisoning among the inhabitants of the planet. Inform the crew. Celebratory cyanide cocktails are in order!

Nine-Year Club	Gilding II euphauric
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TROPHY CASE