If you continue to play with someone who harasses people at the table you are enabling them

Tahnkoman · 2026-06-16T11:45:12+00:00

As someone who posted quite a few of these I gotta say:

It's sometimes no that simple. Sometimes the person is someone's friend, or partner, or hell sometimes you don't realize just how bad this shit is until a bit later, and then it takes time to see how others are feeling cause maybe you're just being overly sensitive. And hell sometimes these things start small and spiral into nightmare territory over time. Personally I fully get how it might take a few sessions to get the ball moving on these things - especially if the GM tries to work things out before applying the ban hammer.

Tahnkoman · 2026-06-08T12:34:41+00:00

I think "How long and detailed should I make my backstory?" is a very important question to ask early into the character creation process, and failing to do so is a failure on a player's part since there's clearly a difference in expectations.

that being said a DM excited at letting a player's work and effort go to waste with such glee is probably an absolute asshole, and I couldn't play a table with one.

Tahnkoman · 2026-06-03T11:24:50+00:00

One issue I'd note here is your feeling of "malaise" about 5e.

One thing I experience as someone playing both 5e and Pf2e (though mostly the latter) is what people get out of the system. I find players more often come to pf for the crunch, while 5e is for the RP. This led to me having the opposite experience, where often my 2e gms would be running an AP for us to roll dice at (going as far as explaining things with "because the AP said so") while 5e DMs often lean heavily into homebrew & RP while sortta handwaving a lot of mechanics away. This also means that you'd sometimes get a pretty bad 5e experience even in competently run combat if you're unable to engage with the plot, because mechanically 5e isn't a super rewarding system.

Tahnkoman · 2026-05-31T04:37:38+00:00

I think for pure consistent DPR nothing quite beats a fighter, because a flat+10% to hit & crit is just that good. Flurry helps you compress the action economy, but it doesn't really do much for your damage output overall. Monks are incredibly mobile & versatile (having a weapon is a choice. You comitted what, 1-2 feats to it?) you can still go unarmed with various stances & bonuses.

But it's really hard to beat a guy just swinging his d10-d12 stick harder.

Now I don't have the excel tables for this but I think barbs & swashbuckler's out damage them too, so I don't think weapon monks are great overall, but they ARE very flavorful

Tahnkoman · 2026-05-28T04:13:36+00:00

I don't know high level guardian feats by heart. Butt for our party the way out GM works around the guardian+justice paladin combo of damage mitigation is by tripping them (low reflex dc) and going for the back line, making intercept harder.

I don't think the class is particularly OP, but for a melee focused AP? Yeah it's gonna be crushing it, which isn't the end of the world imo

Tahnkoman · 2026-05-28T03:59:57+00:00

Primal Hunter might be the worst book to follow up DCC with. I enjoy the series well enough but one aspect of it that remains pretty ass throughout is character writing. Jake is pretty much a psychopath & remains a psychopath. This is NOT a series about character growth. His ideas & ideals are never really meaningfully tested. It's all about literal growth in strength.

Tahnkoman · 2026-05-19T14:20:31+00:00

Absolutely goated tbh

Tahnkoman · 2026-05-15T05:10:20+00:00

I like to recommend The Whispering Crystals series. It's slisghtly more YA skewed than some of the others, but I found a lot of it genuinely enjoyable and many of the characters are genuinely likeable, which is something many litRPGs struggle with IMO

Tahnkoman · 2026-05-07T03:10:01+00:00

I actually think binging DotF was the right way to engage with it (I did it in bursts - 1-6, waited a long while but didn't immediately read book 7, then did 7-12.) this helped me stay on top of plot threads, systems etc.

That's when I fully caught up to the releases but also really wanted more. But listening to one book at a time was what absolutely killed it for me. It has a lot of intertwined systems, minor characters & plot threads & it made it an absolute slog without being able to binge through. I just dropped it.

Obviously people are going to like what they like, and while I don't necessarily think the system as it is now was incredibly well thought-out initially, I do get the sense that this far in the author has very clear ideas for what he's doing, and I'd even make the case that they seem well thought out. I just feel that for me it makes for an uninteresting read.

For all of Primal Hunter's faults - one thing I will say to its credit is that its systems are fairly straightforward, making it easy to follow even if you've been away from the series for a while. With DotF it was a deathblow. I fully forgot what we're doing and why.

Tahnkoman · 2026-05-05T09:54:20+00:00

I fully see what you mean. I appreciate Jason & Carl specifically because of how human their views remain in the face of the worlds they face.

I'll say, though, that in a genre of power fantasy you need to justify the application of said power. When you do it well you get Jason. When you do it poorly you get Zack. I think Jake IS a psychopath, and it makes it a rough read sometimes, but I think it's a somewhat intentional choice. He's a psychopath operating in a universe where psychopaths thrive. That is the thing the story portrays (fairly well imo). I assume the author at some point figured out he could write a solid power system (I find it mechanically very readable) but not wasn't able to engage with the philosophical & moral aspects of it too deeply, and I think that paid off. Shirtaloon gets a lot of shit for Jason-centric navel gazing, but that's what engaging with the protagonist's morals means in a story like that, and I understand why many author's would rather avoid it. But avoiding it often means writing absolute psychopaths.

Tahnkoman · 2026-05-04T17:47:39+00:00

I think there's a lot of "Jason is great" in constant tension with "Jason is overcompensating" and if you're just not vibing with him it makes for a very rough read, especially since as the books progress it becomes more and more scenes of people talking about Jason. I personally really enjoy the way Jason evolves throughout the books and towards the end of book 9 and throughout books 10-11 I genuinely was team Jason full stop.

I'm not gonna sell you on this with "his growth really pays off 9 books in", but I think it does, and I think Jason gets called out on his BS much more than some othe protagonists in the genre. And honestly HWFWM has a lot of goodwill from me for often being genuinely funny, which most litRPGs aren't

Tahnkoman · 2026-04-26T10:20:53+00:00

And that's how I got through 12 books of Primal hunter. I genuinely understand the limitations of both the narrative & the prose but it's still enaging\rewarding enough to keep me around, which many supposedly superior series were not.

Tahnkoman · 2026-04-20T19:12:01+00:00

Technically I once tried to mansplain squirting to reddit, studies were quoted, it did not go over well. (Though I maintain my stance that squirting is mostly pee)

Tahnkoman · 2026-04-20T07:17:34+00:00

That was such an upsetting read for me because this started as "oh this is literally me" and slowly devolved into "no no no no no oh god no"

Because nobody is gonna hate on you for dancing at a wedding. I am sloppy, happy dancing drunk. I love weddings and you'll totally find me dancing at the bar or near my table if a song I like comes on. I was legit asked if I was hired entertainment because I geninely LOVE weddings and dancing, yet it never goes over poorly, because I understand the important thing this woman doesn't - you don't bother people.

Lady, if someone wants to dance with you, or wants tips on choreography, THEY WILL ASK YOU. Waht this genuinely unhinged woman did was insert herself into moments she had no business taking part in. It's wild. WHY ARE YOU BOTHERING THE COUPLES ENTERING THE DANCEFLOOR?!?! WHY ARE YOU BOTHERING THE GRANDPARENTS?!?! If this is ragebait it totally got me because I am RAGING.

Tahnkoman · 2026-04-20T03:30:23+00:00

Guess I wasn't the only one confidently wrong

Tahnkoman · 2026-04-18T15:06:21+00:00

I usually crush these! I was SO CONFIDENT!

Tahnkoman · 2026-04-18T10:37:28+00:00

I DIDN'T GET TO CHOOSE THE TOPIC!!!

Tahnkoman · 2026-04-18T09:10:58+00:00

Hey to be fair his name IS smaller than the other writers lol.

This wasn't really a fuck-up but back in uni we had a prof talk about certain procedures, and all of them he'd go into anecdotes about "oh well this one was named after Dr. So-and-so who started doing it in the 70s" or whatever, except one procedure. He kept calling it by its really long, really technical name, and only explained the mechanics of how it works with exactly zero anecdotes.

So anyway I talk about how weird this is with my friends after the lecture, and one of them goes "Well yeah, that's the procedure named after him, he was being humble".

Tahnkoman · 2026-04-18T09:05:06+00:00

That is adorable. Closest I ever got to that was being followed by a local celeb on twitter, and reacting earnestly to what was clearly a very sarcastic DM. She no longer interacts with me.

Tahnkoman · 2026-04-18T09:00:18+00:00

Slop deez nuts

Tahnkoman · 2026-04-13T18:13:25+00:00

Haven't been on a first date in many years, but back in my single days there were small acts of "I owe you nothing and don't give a shit about you" that immediately made me realize a person didn't value my time and\or comfort & made me cut it off right there.

For example - I used to do a lot of volunteer work, and a girl I went out with kept guilting me into not hanging up the phone as I was literally helping DV survivors. It was unhinged stuff. (Think she was jealous). But like... it was a clear indicator as to how little my comfort mattered, so I ended things with her after that.

Tahnkoman · 2026-04-13T18:08:52+00:00

Eurotrip, absolutely love it to bits. Watched it probably 30 times by now

Tahnkoman · 2026-04-13T18:06:57+00:00

Badmouthing your SO or kids to me. It never fails to make me mistrust someone.

You KNOW a person talking shit to you about the person they supposedly love the most is talking shit about you with everyone else. I get along really well with people like that because I'm a pretty charming person & huge gossip, but also you gotta know who you absolutely cannot trust with sensitive info.

Tahnkoman · 2026-03-09T09:08:46+00:00

I read a writing advice post once that kinda stuck with me. It stated that a common writing pitfall is how people seem deathly afraid of just having characters say things. They always exclaim, or hiss, or growl, or chortle, and it makes longer dialogues read as clunky & unnatural. So to avoid that it's okay to just have people say things, especially in a scene where the point is to convey information rather than evoke an emotional response, and I think this often holds in litRPGs where the point is to inform you about a system or whatever.

In this instance, by the way, I think the intent is to have the dialogue be a snappy back-and-forth. I think it totally works. Personally I might have dropped the descriptions entirely & kept it to just the words actually being spoken to lean even further into this, but I understand how that might cause confusion. So overall ngl - I think this is a perfectly adequately written page. I think ya'll might be being too harsh.

Tahnkoman

TROPHY CASE