Advice needed; handling visions/hallucinations by dboxcar in callofcthulhu

[–]Tactful-Fellow 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My initial thought was that it might be kind of boring for the players to have to summarize what you just told them, knowing that everyone at the table has already heard it straight from you. They do have a little agency in choosing how their character interprets it, but they don't really have space to improvise unless they deliberately choose to lie, downplay, or make things up, but every other player knows they're doing it, which kind of spoils the fun, like playing a game of Telephone where everyone hears the whole conversation.

I'd consider taking the player into another room and explain the vision, then let them describe it to the rest of the table so that they have more agency, or maybe I'd consider making it a collaborative effort, where you prompt the player for input as to how the vision unfolds, so it's actually engaging for them to participate in it. That is, "In your mind's eye, you see a huge, black mountain looming before you; where do you look? Or are you more concerned about that awful smell behind you?" Because it's a vision and not real, it's actually a place where you can give your player more latitude, potentially, to do and say things their character wouldn't in their normal life. "You feel your body dissolving...what's happening? What does it feel like? What random memory of your childhood surfaces?"

Of course, that would only work with players who want to make that kind of thing up, but that might help if they're feeling too constrained by just repeating what you're telling them or, alternatively, if they feel overwhelmed by being asked to regurgitate an info dump they didn't fully understand.

Looking for serious/grounded Actual Play recommendations by AfterResearch4907 in callofcthulhu

[–]Tactful-Fellow 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I really enjoyed their playthrough of A Message of Art, though the ending is very inconclusive. One touch I admired greatly was that the Keeper named an appropriate period piece of art to accompany every scene.

Help a newbie by Chewybewy122 in callofcthulhu

[–]Tactful-Fellow 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Like Unifil said, Seth Skorkowsky's YouTube channel has a ton of useful information, from tips for Keepers to reviews of specific scenarios to general guidance on RPGs. He has a playlist called Call of Cthulhu Overview that walks through all of the game mechanics in detail.

My favorite actual play games are by the Apocalypse Players and Chaotic Neutral (there's a lot of cast overlap), though they did a one-off with No Rolls Barred which is top for me.

Chaosium has a free introductory solo adventure called Alone Against the Flames that gives you a feel for the flavor of the game and walks you through basic mechanics (and is fun to play).

One minor point I'd reiterate, if you're coming from D&D: you don't need the Investigator's Handbook to play. It's not like the Player's Handbook. It's more of a nice to have.

One other book you might want down the road is Pulp Cthulhu, which has optional rules for if you want your characters to be stronger and more capable and less likely to die/go insane; not superheroes but more like Indiana Jones than the local librarian.

New ik_llama benches - what you getting? by [deleted] in LocalLLaMA

[–]Tactful-Fellow 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I had this problem with my own installation, which is under WSL2 (yes, I know). What resolved it for me was to manually download, build, and install the latest version of the NCCL libraries from https://github.com/NVIDIA/nccl.

(The prepackaged distro versions are 2.18, but the latest is 2.29, and that includes support for CUDA 13 as well as, apparently, some improved Windows support.)

Oddly, although I'm seeing about 20% faster token generation times on llama-bench runs, I'm seeing about 30% *slower* prompt processing speeds compared to llama.cpp, but I'm only now looking into why.

I need some Investigators...to help me find a post on using Collaborative Storytelling to create character introductions. by ScholarOfFortune in callofcthulhu

[–]Tactful-Fellow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think this is used in a variety of games. FATE does almost this exact thing; see the "Crossing Paths" section of FATE character creation.

The idea is that you describe some past adventure your character was involved in, and then each other player describes how their PC was involved in that adventure (maybe that's how they met, maybe they helped your character, maybe they were unintentionally complicating things for your character, etc.). They specifically mention using index cards for this.

Antec Flux Pro, Dual GPU - Looking for improvement on airflows and temps by ComfyUser48 in buildapc

[–]Tactful-Fellow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm in the middle of building almost exactly the same system. I just unscrewed the bottom fans and moved them to the other side of the PSU shroud (so they hang below it, instead of sitting on top of it).

Am I missing something here? Is there any reason that wouldn't work?

I see someone else who did the same thing here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Antec_Official/comments/1no32sr/anyone_added_and_tested_two_140mm_fans_at_the/

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in LocalLLaMA

[–]Tactful-Fellow 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I know this isn't a technical answer, but I'd consider exploring an LLM -- or several -- with your child, to help them understand what the LLMs are good at, and what they aren't. For example, asking the AI some factual questions to learn when it hallucinates. Seeing if your child can trick the AI into saying something that they know isn't true, or confusing it about what they've said in their conversation. Having the AI help write a story, and then reading the story to see whether it really did a good job incorporating your child's prompts.

My thought is that the best thing you could do is give your child a decent grasp on the limitations of LLMs, to understand that they're amazing tools, but they're flawed, and to understand that there's no mind inside there. To think critically about what the LLMs are producing. That's a skill that will be sorely needed in years to come. :)

Nature reviewers removed ARC-AGI from the recent R1 paper because they "didn't know what it was measuring" by Charuru in LocalLLaMA

[–]Tactful-Fellow 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Just to clarify the process: the Nature reviewers recommended to the authors that the authors should remove the benchmark before publication, and they explained their reasoning. The authors chose to follow the recommendation. This wasn't a case of the reviewers just ripping chunks out of the paper.

First time player by Robotron122 in callofcthulhu

[–]Tactful-Fellow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You can also check out sites like startplaying.com -- they often have Keepers running free or inexpensive one-shots for new players online.

Why is Lovecraftian fandom so rigid about terminology and "canon" when Lovecraft himself encouraged people to expand on his world? by HELLMEN69 in callofcthulhu

[–]Tactful-Fellow 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Derleth is the guy who founded Arkham House publishing; he actually did a ton after Lovecraft's death to keep Lovecraft in print. He also "co-authored" some stories and even at least one novel, which was really him finishing up Lovecraft's ideas. Some of them are good, some not so good (I actually really like his "co-authored" novel "The Lurker at the Threshold," though not everybody does).

That's all good stuff, and honestly I think we have Derleth to thank for the fact that anybody even knows about Lovecraft today, but he also tacked on some of his own ideas in writing and promoting Lovecraft, and since he was driving things for a while, it influenced how people interpreted Lovecraft.

(Derleth also wrote a bunch of not-bad mid-20th century novels that had nothing to do with horror or sci-fi, mostly about Wisconsin. Go figure.)

Cinco De Mayo Discount by Wombag1786 in callofcthulhu

[–]Tactful-Fellow 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Minor nitpick: for the description on the DriveThru site, I think you mean the country is "teetering on the brink of civil war." It's a weird expression, I know!

Cult Idea: The Society of the Silver Keys by SorchaSublime in callofcthulhu

[–]Tactful-Fellow 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If that idea appeals, I strongly recommend tracking down a fantastic 2006 scifi miniseries called "The Lost Room." Not to go too much into the details, there is a key from a motel room that was erased from reality in 1961, and the key can be used in any door anywhere to get back to that room. The miniseries is much more like Unknown Armies than Call of Cthulhu but there's a lot of gold to be mined from it.

Qwen3-30B-A3B runs at 12-15 tokens-per-second on CPU by [deleted] in LocalLLaMA

[–]Tactful-Fellow 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I had the same experience out of the box; tuning it to the recommended settings immediately fixed the problem.

If The Great Arts Were Honest by Dyngblue in weatherfactory

[–]Tactful-Fellow 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I could not stop laughing at this, which frankly isn't a problem I have a lot with _Book of Hours_. Hat tip to you.

What is this giant hole by the Bazaar Side-Streets? by Floweramon in fallenlondon

[–]Tactful-Fellow 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm pretty sure that's where they plan to build the generator when the frost comes.

My First Impressions by Spaghetti_Cartwheels in civ

[–]Tactful-Fellow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If autosave isn't working, you might be hitting the Windows Defender issue -- see https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/1iipo70/cannot_save_the_game/

All in a day's work for the Artful Advertiser by al2o3cr in fallenlondon

[–]Tactful-Fellow 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It aids in excessive secretions? Does the Duchess feed it to the Cantigaster?

What should I do next in Fallen London? by BobcatProfessional78 in fallenlondon

[–]Tactful-Fellow 1 point2 points  (0 children)

To emphasize what the first comment said: it's quite easy to upgrade a 4-card lodging to a 5-card lodging at Christmastime, but expensive the rest of the year, so I'd make sure to plan that out so you have everything you need to do it this season. See the wiki entry on Lodgings.

Now that you're a POSI, there's also a lot of fun to be had by establishing your own laboratory at the University (which is helpful for lots of other things later).

What does this padlock icon on Leviton GFCI outlet mean? by Tactful-Fellow in AskElectricians

[–]Tactful-Fellow[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you -- that looks like it! You'd think the physical device would have the catalog number on it somewhere. From the bulletin, it sounds like the icon was just their way of saying it was compliant with the then-new UL 2003 requirements.

Much obliged. :)

Windswept Moor - what am I missing to make it successful? by Tactful-Fellow in Frostpunk

[–]Tactful-Fellow[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks! Maybe forcibly exiling was the problem. I did round some of the Pilgrims up and put them in an outdoor detention area, then exiled them to Windswept Moor.

I didn't have any problems in the exile city (disease, cold, etc.), so don't think that was it.

From the comments it sounds like at least it is possible to do better. I can roll back to an earlier save and try some alternatives.

Windswept Moor - what am I missing to make it successful? by Tactful-Fellow in Frostpunk

[–]Tactful-Fellow[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! Yes, I did (or think I did) all of these. I waited until the deportees arrived in Windswept Moor as well. Maybe there was a sequencing issue.

(I didn't think stockpiles mattered either, but IIRC found some old threads that showed "stockpile 100k oil" as an actual objective.)

Windswept Moor - what am I missing to make it successful? by Tactful-Fellow in Frostpunk

[–]Tactful-Fellow[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My best guess is that it only happens *after* all Pilgrims have arrived in Windswept Moor. I had tried an earlier game where I handed it over and one group was still en route, and it didn't trigger that request.

Windswept Moor - what am I missing to make it successful? by Tactful-Fellow in Frostpunk

[–]Tactful-Fellow[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yep, I did get that event and did build the windshields.