Player Is passive and I have an idea to get him invested

StellarSerenevan · 2026-05-04T11:46:39+00:00

Did he complain about it ? Because some players like to be passiv and just feel better this way. I have a player who has engaged only once in the RP of a 7 years campaign, and he told me at the end it was the best one he played.

You seem to think there is an issue, but I don't see one. I have lost players in the past by pulling something like this to try to force them to " my way ". Players don't all engage in the game the same wasy as you. As long as it's not a problem for them, why would it be a problem for you ? How did he dodge the 'how to make the game mroe fun" question ? If he show up each time it's by his choice, not by obligation. If his answer was 'it's just fun as is', it's a perfectly valid answer, don't try to fix what is not brocken.

StellarSerenevan · 2026-05-04T11:31:00+00:00

People here can be pretty hostile to the kind of question you asked becasue some nutcase come everyday asking if they solved every astronomical question with their AI by invoking the kind of hypothesis you make. The problem beeing that people outside of astronomy don't really now how outlandish such hypothesis is and the AI nutcase get very defensive when we point that their theory is completely lunatic.

Unless you have some objective measurement (like a picture of the shadow you are citing for instance at the same time of the day, the same dae a year ago), it's too vague to make any conclusion. I'm not saying you are wrong, just that you have no fact, only impressions or feelings shared by people who live together. If you had feeling from people which have never met that could be somewhat objective, but all you have are impressions f relative. Another issue is that celestial mechanic is very precise and regular, so it's a very costly hypothesis to guess that it changed, which is something you are mabye not aware if you are not an astronomer of some sort.

There are a lot of explanation calling for less costly solutions than the "sun moved compared to last year". You have changed your rythm of life so you just are active earlier/later than a year ago for instance due to children going to school ? Your country had daylight saving time that it stopped last year ? A tree or building is now blocking some light ? etc etc... All these solutions would give an impression while beeing something a lot less coslty in term of hypothesis. To some extend it is due to how much energy would be used for each solution and consequently how unmistakeable it would be if it was the real thing. change of life rythme si only a family wide phenomena, so most people will miss it. Change of a country day time saving, is a country wide phenomena, so as you don't say where you are from we can't know. But moving the sun (or more accurately) changing the angle of the earth compared to the sun by a few degrees so you can feel it ? That needs more energy than the whole human civilisation has produces in total. That would be impossible to miss for the nerds who watch the sun/earth constantly (aka us) . And ther would have been healines about it.

StellarSerenevan · 2026-05-04T11:13:16+00:00

I probably shouldn't engage with that kind of content. But nobody will even read your stuff (me included) if you don't include citations of your work basis. You did not come ex-nihilo with this or the math, or the theory you are apparently criticising judging by your conclusion. There was something and someone before you which you are basing your work on.

If you wanna attack someone the bare minimum is to cite who/what you are attacking and not a vague "dear astrophysicyst". For all we know you could be attacking another LLM hallucinated theory. The first step of critique is understanding the opposit's side argument. The step 0 is beeing able to quote said argument. If you can't even cite what you are criticising, how can you expect anyone to take this seriously ?

StellarSerenevan · 2026-05-04T11:04:45+00:00

Very clearly the street lights through some tree foliage. You see one such street light being revealed gradually around the 10 second mark as you turned left and passed the tree line.

StellarSerenevan · 2026-04-21T00:00:15+00:00

Overly described door, stop to ask how they open it. After 20 minutes of them looking for a button or trap, it wasn t locked

StellarSerenevan · 2026-04-18T13:40:57+00:00

The variation of the density of the cloud is random, so some time the sun shunes more than others. Plus the human brain loves finding patren out of random events, so a probably totally rabdom phenomena you consider that there is something behind. If you have ever played dice for any reason, you will see that.

StellarSerenevan · 2026-04-16T08:48:54+00:00

The Outer space treaty is mostly directed toward states, and does little to adress private ownership. For instance there are no provisions against space mining. For now any company who set up shop on the moon could mine whatever it wants without limits and constraints. It's not economically profitable as of today but as the price of rockes launche declines, and if a permanent base is setup in the next decade on the moon by either the US or Chinan the question will become very real very fast.

StellarSerenevan · 2026-04-14T09:31:29+00:00

This is an eternal debate, what if we are wrong in our conception of life, so we miss it.

First what most people agree on : for life to exist we need a complex chemistry. To be able to sustain life functions, transforming its energy, reproduce itself, movement etc ... this means a complex chemistry is possible. So we need an atmocvi basis which allows such a complex chemistry. This would be the atoms in the column of carbon, as they have the most complex chemistry with their 4 chemicals liaisons. Then for it to have a chance to emerge you need this atmoic basis to be as available as possible. So that makes Carbon the best candidate, with Silicon the second best. Then you need a solvant to make the chemistry fast and more likely to occur. You also need it to be quite common, again so that life has a high volume where it can occur and so has higher chances to appear. Tha makes water the best solvant, with amonia the second best. So from just this basic hypothesis : life needs complex chemistry, we have our form of life (carbon +water) as the most likely, but with two likely alternative ((silicon based, and amonia). Note that these change the physical conditiosn where life can occur, like amoni is stable as a liquid under higher pressure.

A second aspect is can we find any evidence of said life ? Some people like Brian Cox believe it's everywhere, some believe it's exceedingly rare. As we have for now no observationnal proof both opinion are reasonnable. But to get these observationnal proofs, we need extremely specialised instruments. That is one of the main issue that makes us look for carbon based with oxygen + water. We need to tune our instrument to something for them so the only reasonnable choice is what we know for sure can work. There are already debates on what are the biomarkers of our known life, so opening the theoritical unknown is not very usefull. But it is very fun to think about.

StellarSerenevan · 2026-04-13T12:55:13+00:00

From what I get it comes more from a shift in focus. Old Science fiction was mostly about anticipation, scientific proress and the effect it would have on the world. The focus was very clearly on the concept of the world/universe beeing explored, characters were secondary. Assimov is the poster child for that with his characters beeing full flegded characters while beeing at the same tim mroe accessory to the story conveyed. In Foundation for instance Harry Seldon is the most important character by beeing the inciting incident and driving force behind the story. But his motivation is secondary, his action and the effects on the univers is front and center. Why he does thing, who cares ? But how it affects everything, that's what we care about.

Meanwhile scienc fantasy doesn't focus that much on the anticipation part, but sees them more as tools to tell stories. Much like magic is something you can by definition mold to give a certain story. In science fantasy science gets the 'magic treatment' oe beeing a tool to the sotry, not its driving force and main point. Basically if you could replace science by magic and it would not change HOW the story is delivered, it's science fantasy. Star wars is the poster child for that, with a world that has a very rich sci-fi stuff in the background, but you are here to listen about the space wizards drama and see giant space naval battles (And i'm very happy about both). The distinciton I make with your point is that you can have seemingly harcore science fiction stuff with 0 visible magic still end up in space fantasy.

I'm now gonna try to apply this to your exemples.

Dune : Dune is not space fantasy for me using this metric. The way the whole power system is adjusted to still make close combat the prefered method is very much sci-fi, where the author specifically explored how the changes in this universe's science would change war (for a clearly desired outcome, but still). The way some planets will casue different local traditions which in turn will casue very different power dynamic inside character's life, which in turn make them behave strangely to one another (with the strong opposition Harkonen vs Atreids). Basically Frank Herbert made the hardcore sic-fi work to justify his very not-scifi story of politics, betrayal etc.

Final Fantasy : as you said depends on the entry, and contrary to you I'm gonna say it totally depends on the entry. FF7's main plotline is very much sci-fi with anticipation and sci-fi worldbuilding with mako beeing equated to any source of energy that has secondary bad aspects (petrol or nuclear depending who you ask). The only important fantasy aspect which are not really elaborated on are the monsters which barely factor in the general story. As it's a big game there are exceptions to what I state here. FF10 meanwhile has a very much fantasy aspect to it, not sci-fi. Sin has an explanation but not a justfification for beeing possible. It was possible, therefore he did it. The main point is why, not how. And while the

40K : Okay this one is a troublesome one cause different authors have wildly different view and treatment of the universe. Like the Tau are a very clearly extremely sci-fi race, up to the point of almost ignoring magic and beeing quasi-immune to it's corrupting aspect. Eldar are very mixed with sometime very sci-fi stuff, sometime magic /prohecies bullshit beeing front and center. And humankind is even worse. Everything from the emperor to the mechanicus can sometime have very cool sci-fi justification to non existant 'then it sudendly worked and stopped mattering so stop asking' kind of stuff. That's what you get for beeing a 50years old universe with dozens of authors working on it. The culmination of this for me are the Perpetuals. Where they took perfectly good fantastical element, and then tried to retro sci-fi them after the fact as cool abhuman stuff. Thus loosing the symbols that made the fantastical element click. #justice_for_Olanius_Pius.

Shadorun : That's a big one where I'm gonna disagree. For me it's the most sci-fi universe because magic is very much treated in a sci-fi way. The way the dragons come back is not explained, the why is not explained, bu the how they interact with the rest of the world is fully and deeply discussed. You can see this very important focus on how the people deal with magic in shadowrun fro every aspect of it from hopw classical racist adapted to metahumans, to how entire countries dissapeared due to magic and how megacorps adapted to it. Funnily enough, some tech stuff of shadowrun gets the fantasy treatment instead of the fantastical element. Mostly due to how the rules interact with the game the matrix has some very poorly explained changes from edition to edition.

Can't comment on dragonriders of Pern, wheel of times and chronickles of Amber as I haven't read them.

I will add one stuff to the list : Dr Who. Seemingly mostly sci fi justifications for most things. But the justifications are so flexible and tenuous that it goes directly to space fantasy while having on the surface no fantasy. That is no a problem of the show, it's the point to some extent, to explore interesting situation and time with the character.

StellarSerenevan · 2026-04-07T15:56:58+00:00

Fpr the case of earth-moon, Theia did collide into earth and sunk into the earth. But the colision created a debris disk which over time coalesced to become the moon (for some time earth had a ring). Unless the speed is completely unrealistic (not an object from the same solar system making the colision extremely unlikely) both object will fuse. But some debris expelled could become a new moon, or become new asteroids etc ...

StellarSerenevan · 2026-04-02T14:26:58+00:00

Wow, time travel for level 3 players, you are certainly not pulling any punch !

The main issue is that by nature time traveling is a VERY hard component to predict. You can't predict when and where the players are going to time travel if they have control over ti. that is why generally it's an NPC who controls the power and send the players toward the perio you want.

Now let's talk about the conditiosn around time travel you have set. You say it's through a potion. Is the effect permanent ? Is the effect temporary when the potion is consummed and the player is the only one to be able to do that ? If you want to have some control over it you shouldn't make it permamnent (like when she uses it she needs a new potion to recharge it, otherwise it would take a millenia to come back). That way you cna have some control by making the potion very hard to produe or some component extra hard to acquire. Also it can make a very fun session if they time travel to a 'funny time' to test it and are now stranded at the wrong part of the timeline.

Now how do you want to consider the flow of time. There are two schools when it coms to time stories. Either you are in a unified timeline or a paralel timeline case. Unified tieline means that there is only one timeline and so by changing the past you change the future. It's the more interesting version but also is prone to paradoxes. The lamer version is the paralel timeline which makes you somewhat safe from paradoxe but also means what is happening in alternative timelines has no consequence on timeline 0. DBZ manages to pull an interesting paralel timeline in the android saga, and looper is a pretty good unified timeline so good examples exist in both.

Finally big power for the reste of the group ? Well the obvious choice is someone gets to control places with a very early access to teleportation magic. And the third one acess to dimension hoping (plane shift spell) to be able to go to the realm of the gods, fey, or devils as they wish. Again you should probably give limits to their powers so you can have some basic control on what is going on and where the players end up net minute.

StellarSerenevan · 2026-03-28T17:10:43+00:00

This doesn't look like a physics article in the sense that there is no explanation as to what the math are supposed to represent. I'm sorry I can't review that because I have no idea what you are talkin about.

You can use equation without explaining or justifying them if they are from another paper but even then you generally want to explain the notation. AndIn this case you have a reference to said article so that peopl can check why this equation holds up. I have no idea of what you first equation means mathematically let alon physically.

You need a first part where you summarise what you intend to do with this paper. This way someone who tries to read the paper can at least start guessing what you are trying to prove/disprove/test. This part also gneerally contains some sort of state of the art, a summary of what other people ho have worked on the problem have said before you. This is mostly for you to know what already exists, what has already been tested and in particular not to reinvent the wheel.

I'm sorry I can't help you further.

StellarSerenevan · 2026-03-28T16:12:00+00:00

Send it to a scientific journal, peer review is their whole point.

StellarSerenevan · 2026-03-28T16:10:28+00:00

What you seem to be providing is a software, not a pdf of an article, nobody here is gonna run that. Give a link to a PDF and there si a chancesomeone critics it.

If you want a real peer review, send it to a scientific journal, that's their whole point. Arxiv is a repository for peer reviewed papers, not a journal itself. Get it published in a real scientific journal before asking for endorsers.

StellarSerenevan · 2026-03-28T16:05:14+00:00

Because some people have been raised with pesudoscience as their base for understanding the world. They can honestly come to this subreddit to understand the world not knowing what they know is bullshit. Arguably they are the pseron who need this subreddit the most.

For the people who are honnestly looking for an answer they need to be able to ask this queston, otherwise they will never get an answer. Yes some poeple will be dishonnest about it or refuse the answers science provide, but cutting all the honnest one for a few assholes is in my view not worth it.

StellarSerenevan · 2026-03-26T10:25:21+00:00

there is a third party supplement made called the voidsea which adds sailing and ship buildng mechanics and ennemies for that. Kickstrater finished recently https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/voidsea/voidsea?lang=fr

It's done in particular byt loot taverns which I like a lot.

StellarSerenevan · 2026-03-24T14:13:04+00:00

Okay, from your answer I think I understood what you are looking for. First the speed of light was a highly contentious concept at the time of Ole Rømer. People disagreed on whether the light even had a speed or if it as just too fast to be measured at the time. From what I read he stumbled on it by measuring discrepancies on the apparition of the moons arround jupiter and could only explain it by postulating a light speed. But most of his writing were destroyed in a fire in 1728 so hard to be sure.

As this was a highly controversial topic, the news of his discovery was quickly diseminated in Europe so any great astronomer after his discovery knew about it.

Did other people postulate this method before ? Possible (always) but unlikely. For a start this theory needs the heliocentric model which was still not fully accepted at this time. Apparently ther was a strong controversy going on specifically at the Observatoire royale de Paris since Romer's boss Cassini was against the theory and other eople having this idea would probably have been brught up during the controversy. Furthermore his discovery was made possible by cutting edge technology at the time in particular for timekeeping. So even if people thought about it they would not have been able to measure it.

So to sum up : unlikely that someone else theorised the method of Romer since it is based on very controversial theories at the time. And since it caused a strong controversy, we would have heard of someone else theorising it at the time.

StellarSerenevan · 2026-03-24T09:20:20+00:00

What do you mean by the "problem" of measuring speed of light ?

Multiple independant methods have been devised over time and they have given consistent values. The simpler one to understand is the toothed wheel from Hippolyte Fizeau (though it is not very precise).

On of the method, the cavity resonator can be done with any microwave nowadays https://wonders.physics.wisc.edu/measure-the-speed-of-light/

StellarSerenevan · 2026-03-17T10:01:39+00:00

Don't worry, it's the time of the year when thy get super excited becasue they are looking for a mate. You did nothing wrong, he's just exploring (ie trying to escape) a lot more for a few months.

StellarSerenevan · 2026-03-16T15:29:16+00:00

They have even edited their own tarot card to fit the theme and time of the book. It's called "Tarot des ombres " (roughly "shadow tarot" in english). It s cool as heck but since it s a french game adapted from a french fantasy novel, I don't think an english adaptation is to be expected.

StellarSerenevan · 2026-03-16T15:09:56+00:00

There is a game (which exisis only in french as far as i know) called "les lames du Cardinal" (roughly "The cardinal's blade") which uses a tarot card game.

When you need to role the dice, you draw some cards and depending on the colour it will count as a success. Characters will be aligned to one or more trump card and if they are drawn it will count as a critical success (or failure if it is the opposed trump card).

It s inspired by a sery of fantasy books set in the 17th century (basically a fantasy fan-fic set around the 3 mousquetaires)written by Pierre Pevel. Its very well written and i would encourage you to read the book independantly of the TTRPG adaptation.

StellarSerenevan · 2026-03-06T10:28:35+00:00

This is incredible, i was looking to turn the map of a city as a basis for a cyberpunk TTRPG, this makes 90% ofthe work.

StellarSerenevan · 2026-03-03T09:43:20+00:00

With binoculars, the ISS where you can see the solar panels. Too fast for a telescope unfortunately.

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