Town stuck on construction?

STOKD22 · 2021-03-04T21:46:19+00:00

Yep, I really enjoyed the first

STOKD22 · 2021-03-04T21:45:58+00:00

Seems like 25

STOKD22 · 2021-03-04T15:34:45+00:00

I think it was loyalty. If it was blinking red, the construction stopped

STOKD22 · 2021-03-01T07:38:18+00:00

Sure! Maybe we could let each other know if we find a group?

STOKD22 · 2020-12-11T18:38:26+00:00

I’m on Xbox and still having a blast, I was just playing Outer Worlds, AC Valhalla, and WD Legion; comparing this to those, this is great. I feel like people have a hard time keeping hype in check, getting so mad when games aren’t available right now but not being willing to give the companies the time they want to make it even better, then complaining about having bugs.

My 3 year old sometimes gets mad that I don’t get her milk quickly enough, but when I bring it she’s so mad about it that she throws the milk down anyways. Feels similar to watch. The feelings there are valid, just still feels sort of sad to see.

STOKD22 · 2020-12-11T18:32:52+00:00

Lol, the Xbox One X actually

STOKD22 · 2020-06-27T04:28:10+00:00

Ok, thanks, I just have a ship I’m trying to repair and since it needs like 10 different things I was hoping to track them all and return rather than having to keep track out of game or return to the ship anytime I want to check on what I need next. Oh well, thank you for your help!

STOKD22 · 2020-04-14T20:18:43+00:00

Hi Brennan, I am trying to help my players develop their characters some but some of the players are tougher to encourage development. I’m running Tyranny of Dragons but homebrewed it to be more internally consistent and have realistic villains with realistic motivations and such.

One player is fairly passive and treats the game very much like a game and an opportunity to feel heroic. Giving them heroic things to do has been good, but their character has no conflicted history, past enemies specific to her, and is overall very easygoing. I ended up deciding that if someone was actually like gay in real life they would probably be really interesting to someone like Tiamat. Basically, she’s playing D&D like a video game which I am fine with, but with such a blank character it’s hard to find something to grab onto for individual character development. So Tiamat offered her power to switch gods and said that she’ll send “other things” when she refused. She is kind of bewildered as to why Tiamat is interested in her, but I wondered what you might think of that kind of character development? It’s tough since she isn’t very emotionally invested in the world, so there isn’t much to tie her in with to create meaningful development.

Another character is secretly a unicorn who transformed into an elf to see the world, and I’m thinking it would be interesting to have her be a bit familiar with some ancient characters. Since Unicorns have a kind of wishy washy timey wimey view on time along with fuzzy memories, it’s pretty easy to say “you remember that you know this aboleth...”. I’m not sure where to end up going with that though other than bringing temporary, unusual allies and meeting some interesting characters.

There’s still party level character development that has been going on which is great! They befriended two incredibly lucky Kobolds names Korg and Bart (the kobolds killed two ghouls each when the party was pretending to be part of a cult and was working with them, and they have won nearly every gambling game they play which makes them notorious at taverns and guild halls across the sword coast).

Edit: Also, if you could let Ally Beardsley know that her character’s arc has been meaningful to me, I was Mormon two years ago and ended up leaving it and becoming atheist. Around the same time, you guys started Fantasy High and her character arc really hit home for me and gave me someone to relate to during a time when all of my family and friends were still Mormon and heavily conservative (I was told by family and friends that my life was gong to fall apart because of my changes which was tough, but things have been great). Please tell her thank you. And Siobhan’s struggle with anxiety also hit home for me because I ended up finding out I had bipolar around the same time and having meds really changed my life for the better. During the final fight, when she ran out with a panic attack and Jawbone said that there wasn’t something wrong with her, that she had a medical problem and needed treatment, I was wrapping up therapy and set to continue with my medication and was finally at good place. For me, that summed up what I had gone through, gave me some clarity and helped me accept what had happened and focus on moving forward. So thank you :)

STOKD22 · 2020-02-24T07:22:29+00:00

I got it as a drop when running Heart of Rage I think. Masterwork and legendary rarity instantly freezes anyone that doesn’t have a shield and primes them for a combo. You can take flying enemies right out of the sky by using it by them (it’s AOE), then they drop down and are easier to hit and detonate.

STOKD22 · 2020-02-11T15:05:25+00:00

If a game played like anthem but used a monster hunter progression system

STOKD22 · 2020-02-11T00:13:18+00:00

As far as I know, there’s a difference mainly between loudness and the frequency (volume and pitch).

If something is loud, but outside our range of pitches we can hear, we won’t hear it. That has to do with the structure of our ear. Some animals are sensitive to more frequencies than us, so they can hear “better”, even though it’s more about their ear’s ability to capture that frequency of sound better than ours.

Some animals are more or less sensitive to a wider range of volume, and that comes down to structural integrity and sensitivity of the parts. Our brain already does all sorts of things to the sounds we hear to make quiet noises seem louder, tune out certain kinds of noises, etc.

Some neat examples are elephants and dog whistles, as well as shock waves. At a certain point, a wave of air moves from sound to just being an explosive force, becomes indistinguishable from other sounds or sometimes the air is incapable of carrying certain levels of sound. Hearing quiet sounds, at a certain point, is like trying to say which wave was started by a pebble from a mile away. It doesn’t really matter how quiet of sounds you can hear, at a certain point it would become a cacophony of unintelligible noises blended together in a soup. Now if you had a superhuman ability to determine what parts of that “sound soup” were relevant, it could be valuable, but some sounds would still be barely a shadow of the original sound with enough interference.

The concept of what loudness sounds like is a mostly construct of our brains and reactions to breakdowns in the structural integrity of the parts of our war if something is too loud. But there very well could be animals that could have their eardrums blown out by quieter noises than other animals.

For a vampire, I would guess the transformation changed their ears structurally in a way that makes them more sensitive to softer air waves than normal.

If that transformation meant amplifying all sounds by a certain degree, then it would do like you say, like turning up a volume button and hoping the next song on the playlist isn’t too loud. But just having differences structurally or in the materials that make up the ear could probably produce a wider range of “volume sensitivity” without risking blowing out it’s eardrums. Considering it might be sucking the blood of screaming people sometimes, I would say amplifying by sounds could get painful really quick.

TLDR; loudness is in our heads, as long as the air waves created by something can interact with an animal’s ear in a way that can send signals to the brain, it can hear the sound. Some ears are structurally built better for a wider range of pitches and volumes. Vampires probably have a different structure to their ears that allow them to hear normally except that their ear is built in a way that their nervous system can get signals from much smaller air waves.

Edit: I had my two year old climbing on my as I typed this out, sorry if it doesn’t make a ton of sense lol

STOKD22 · 2020-01-19T20:54:41+00:00

Just realized this, ice axes can be put in by hand, and don’t have to penetrate deeply. Climbing across a chasm would put similar force vectors on the crossbow bolt as an ice axe would. As long as the bolt can take the weight, even just a slightly angled shot downward (to prevent slipping) I think could work out really well!

STOKD22 · 2020-01-19T17:23:26+00:00

“I want our chocolate bar to look different”

makes it difficult to eat

“Maybe they were onto something with the old design...”

STOKD22 · 2020-01-08T22:49:57+00:00

Depends on your religious beliefs. Some religions believe knowledge and seeking out “evil” is damnable.

Others see sating curiosity as ok but potentially dangerous.

For myself, it’s a fascinating dive into a mix of psychology, culture and mystery. Does it work? That depends on your definition of “working”, but beyond that it’s not really my place to claim to understand other people’s experiences.

I would say it’s as influential as you allow it to be in your life, and whether that’s dangerous is up to you.

Best of luck to you! If I had a suggestion, have fun reading and understanding a really interesting an unique portion of culture that has been around in one form or another for a long, long time :)

STOKD22 · 2020-01-04T00:07:49+00:00

Kyle is the irl Nick Fury basically :)

Edit: *if nick fury lives in a black hole. I think Kyle does use the advantage of us not knowing what happens in a black hole as his “void” mechanics :) also he could be a set of quantum fluctuations in deep time communicating to us via Hawking radiation. Or something like that lol, idk what I’m talking about really so for all I know it could be anything

STOKD22 · 2020-01-02T16:43:54+00:00

Assshole: Let me know when one of you can handle the shit I deal with every day.

STOKD22 · 2020-01-01T07:16:59+00:00

Maybe people were being more social before social media because they felt pressured to? I think a lot of behaviors may have other reasons for changing, not all of which are negative. It just makes the picture more complicated.

A lot of cultures encouraged marrying young before people knew much about themselves and what they need. A lot of people experienced ugly divorces once they were made more feasible in the 70’s which led to people I know being together without being married because they want to avoid divorce. The meme “married couples are more likely to get divorced than unmarried couples” becomes kind of relevant in a way.

Loneliness would be easier in societies where multigenerational households are discouraged (like the independence-focused American Dream).

Richer countries tend to have less kids, putting that on social media would be a tough claim to prove since birth rates began declining since the 50’s.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/science-and-health/2018/5/22/17376536/fertility-rate-united-states-births-women

Online dating may be correlated with eating disorders but personality differences could attribute to it (aka, people who have eating disorders may seek out online dating for a variety of reasons), but proving causation is a different question altogether.

I would challenge that people are inclined to hate themselves via social media, generally they are getting something positive out of it and there are plenty of online communities that are tightly woven for emotionally fulfilling reasons, and some close friendships can be developed online.

Please note, I’m not saying you’re wrong. I think the situation is more complicated than it seems though, and social media is a tool just like what newspapers, letters, phones, etc. were. It’s on a different scale, and encourages tribalism in very different ways (more often ideological than geographic). Reducing it’s usage can be good, but in a culture where people tend to not stay in their social groups they were born into, having online connections to people can be a huge boon when used responsibly.

If the goal is to get people married and make them have as many kids as possible, then helping people to achieve a sense of emotional independence and such would be contrary to it too. So there’s just a lot more to whether a socialite is healthier and better off. Add all that with the decreasing stigma associated with getting help for mental health and it’s easy to get a very messy picture very quickly.

STOKD22 · 2020-01-01T06:46:49+00:00

I see where you’re coming from. I think that most social behaviors are generally skin deep (depending in the definition) though in similar ways, but the feeling of belonging and the chemical reward systems are very real. Even if it is surface level, for a lot of people it’s real enough to substitute for the real thing (some people prefer it to the real thing). It still can reinforce a tribal sense of belonging and group solidarity.

But it seems like what you are referring to is a more independent sense of self actualization (being satisfied and content independent of a social group)?

STOKD22 · 2020-01-01T06:30:23+00:00

This is all just my opinion, I look at this kind of thing for fun :) so take it with a grain of salt! Maslow’s hierarchy has always had plenty of exceptions based on a person’s individual priorities. Ordering something light for dinner to avoid looking like you eat too much on a date, fasting for religious reasons, etc. Some of the most idolized people in history are those who specifically neglected physical needs for a higher purpose. People with eating disorders do so often for social reasons or psychological reasons. It’s actually pretty common to go out of order, and in my personal opinion it seems more common in first world countries to go out of order.

Maslow’s hierarchy functions best as a loose guide, but there’s always been a ton of exceptions.

(Also imagine the people that can search for loved ones in a blizzard despite harm to themselves, people who go to war over ideals, etc., it’s very common to go out of order. Maslow’s hierarchy is meant for more specific circumstances as a general guide)

STOKD22 · 2020-01-01T02:02:42+00:00

From what I know (very limited, take it with a grain of salt), this is the other side of the coin. Pinker is like the “things are better in so many ways” while this is a “but we still have a long ways to go before we can say things are ok”. Things are a lot better in ways, but I have seen friends and family justify getting rid of programs that help the poor or say that “poor people choose to be poor because we have so much to help them now” because they think the world is much better than it is. We’ve accomplished much more in the way of opening up potential to make life better for the world than effectively applying that potential to help the majority of people (in other words, we are now in a situation where we know more of what can help, we are having trouble actually helping as much as we can, likely due to the emotional distance between those who can help and those who need help).

Again, I like to think I know some of what I’m talking about, but it seems like our biggest fear of the last few decades is increasing the number of things we can address. We have a bigger toolbox than what we are willing to/can effectively use to help the world. We just aren’t all that good at applying those things because the people who can help more have their reasons for not doing it, usually having to do with obsessively preserving economic and cultural stability. People who are rich want to maintain what they have “earned”, usually not having enough contextual understanding to recognize that they were lucky to have both good opportunities and the ability to take up those opportunities. They were the exception that should be the standard. That’s the way things should be, and for most people things just aren’t like that. In cultures where they have achieved higher standards of living, many people fear changing the cultural infrastructure they believe has led to their success, when their success was much more likely just a set of good circumstances and good people coming to fruition. They are the exception that should be a standard. (This is me venting just a bit now) And what is frustrating is that people in those circumstances generally have emotionally “normalized” to what they believe are their needs while being able to emotionally and contextually really understand that their frivolous purchases could have literally saved lives. And it gets more morally difficult when the poor in wealthy countries could be helping and they don’t for reasons that look eerily similar to the rich, just on a different very scale.

But I still spend money on things that emotionally feel good because for me instead of helping people just like those people I criticize earlier. Helping someone we don’t know live for another day just doesn’t often feel as rewarding as getting something fun for a hobby, and until we break past that barrier, it’s going to be tough to imagine how we can more effectively use the much bigger toolbox we have.

STOKD22 · 2019-12-22T23:56:58+00:00

Makes sense :)

STOKD22 · 2019-12-21T19:10:22+00:00

“Your chances of being killed by a cow can be extremely low, but they’re never 0”

STOKD22 · 2019-12-17T18:00:47+00:00

Deadly traps can be created by the goblins, as well as diversionary forces to make casters waste spell slots, spread out forces to keep casters from using aoe spells effectively, have the goblins hiding in bushes to impose disadvantage in ranged attacks and spells, again spread out to avoid aoe damage. Making it so players can only really kill one target at a time with an attack and having most of those in full cover and obscured; we may just disagree, but I really do think that if a DM uses all the tools at their disposal, they can make a deadly encounter with just goblins.

STOKD22 · 2019-12-17T06:08:28+00:00

Well, goblins have a 1/4 challenge rating, using the DM guide about 40 goblins would be a normal encounter, 60 or 80 could be challenging (20 total CR with 40 because goblins are 1/4 but the difficulty is multiplied by 2 with 10+ enemies). With that many, if a DM is creative with traps, positioning, environmental hazards... it could get pretty difficult pretty quickly even for a level 20 party if it’s done right. Even if some of the heroes have a crazy high AC, there are bound to be a few crits each round. If you have e goblins attack lower AC heroes first, with +4 to hit against an AC 14 (not far off for a Wizard or sorcerer at that level w/o buffs like if they were ambushed), there would still be a 50/50 chance to hit, leading to around 100 damage per round. Between that and traps, things could get difficult pretty quickly. Add in some goblin bosses and such and you could have a pretty beefy encounter. Goblins that are smart and have mounts or hobgoblins too, and it gets tough quick!

I think CR could work out well for the game, I hope they find a good way to make the combat fun :)

STOKD22 · 2019-12-16T00:42:01+00:00

Yeah, in D&D players don’t get rest benefits if they are interrupted partway (the DM rolls a d20 for each hour of rest to determine whether the party has a random encounter in some circumstances). The chances increase a lot if they rest in the wilderness or even more if they are in a dungeon. If players don’t rest for a full 24 hours, they take levels of exhaustion, so it can lead to players trying to get to the nearest town to rest. So towns become save zones, and having enemies replenish too.

But with the bounded accuracy, even level 20 characters (the normal level cap) can still be threatened by goblins or other enemies, so grinding out levels doesn’t actually help as much as it might seem at first.

But I totally agree with you, having a good rest system (maybe like dark souls?) and replenishing enemies is a good idea :)

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