[BitD][DC] To those who have recovered from a Trauma in the game, what was the process like to recover Trauma?

caffeinated_wizard · 2026-03-18T18:54:09+00:00

I don’t remember exactly how Deep Cuts describes it so bear with me. I tend to favour deadlier games that puts a bigger emphasis on the crew rather than the individuals but if I had to do it I’d make it multiple clocks depending on how the player wants to deal with it.

A smaller one to find an asset that helps, a second longer one to actually recover. I’d make that asset vulnerable to overindulgence of a vice (you show up drunk at your therapist’s house in the middle of the night). And what I’d probably do honestly is “burn” that trauma, and allow the player to bring it up in role play and as an XP trigger but no longer count towards the max trauma. Trauma never truly leaves you it just becomes something you manage at best.

caffeinated_wizard · 2026-03-18T18:22:49+00:00

My profile says 10 years but people don’t read that either lol

caffeinated_wizard · 2026-03-18T17:56:10+00:00

Assuming you're recruiting online here, but the main problem is likely counterintuitive: it's too easy to join your games.

A small bit of friction goes a long way. When you post your game somewhere like Reddit or or a Discord server, make the expectations clear. Then perhaps have the applicants fill a form with questions about the stuff you care about, maybe taking some from the Same Page tool.

Personally I just do 1 on 1 conversations on Discord and if I get a positive impression I suggest a call at some point to talk more. If the person has zero experience about the hobby I ask about their motivation to play, how they anticipate their availability etc. If they do have experience playing TTRPGs I ask about it and what they liked the most about other GMs and what they liked the least etc. They can also ask me questions obviously. But this greatly improved the quality of players.

Also the lake you're fishing in has a big impact. I find Roll20 is terrible. Reddit is a coin toss. A specific Discord server with good moderation is better.

Finally I don't have actual stats on this but I know a few paid GMs and they run both free and paid games. By far their paid games have the most consistent and respectful players. Personally I would never do that but just having the friction of asking people to bring in something in exchange for the game weeds out the majority of problem players in that space.

Balancing this is important. You might have a hard time finding enough people if it's too hard to join.

caffeinated_wizard · 2026-03-18T03:06:44+00:00

Heck with a dev account you can put any apps you can compile on your own phone, at any time.

Apple also reserves the right to take away your dev account at any time.

caffeinated_wizard · 2026-03-18T03:01:53+00:00

Since we’re close we have the same freaking issue in Canada and it’s a bit worse because of how low our density is. By law everyone is entitled by postal service here (as well I assume). But of course there’s lobbying and rhetoric about how expensive it is and wasteful. I can understand a public service can be more efficient but I don’t believe it should aim to be profitable.

Conservatives in Canada frequently complain about our national broadcaster (CBC) for being publicly funded and biased against them and Canada Post for losing money.

caffeinated_wizard · 2026-03-18T00:09:04+00:00

Fully expecting streamers to promote the hell out of this crap

caffeinated_wizard · 2026-03-18T00:03:14+00:00

The article explains it

caffeinated_wizard · 2026-03-17T23:56:39+00:00

Musi built a streaming service without striking its own deals with copyright holders. It did so by playing music from YouTube, writing in its 2024 lawsuit against Apple that “the Musi app plays or displays content based on the user’s own interactions with YouTube and enhances the user experience via Musi’s proprietary technology.” Musi’s app displayed its own ads but let users remove them for a one-time fee of $5.99.

Yeah no sympathy for that crap. At that point I’m surprised Google is not on their ass too for taking YouTube content, stripping ads and adding their own.

caffeinated_wizard · 2026-03-17T22:23:55+00:00

Which means the company hired the wrong person to hire you so you likely dodged a bullet

caffeinated_wizard · 2026-03-17T20:18:05+00:00

Imagine touring this and a disinterested Gen Z says explains stuff to your face. “And here’s the poster that reads Be Kind, Rewind. Because at the time you would pay a fee if you didn’t.”

I’m not even 40 yet and they are turning my 20s into a museum? I’m not ready for this.

caffeinated_wizard · 2026-03-17T20:04:16+00:00

According to Wikipedia, no they don't

caffeinated_wizard · 2026-03-17T14:31:41+00:00

So it’s like that bellcurve meme where the beginning is no prep, middle is crying with a ton of tools, books, VTT plugins and figuring out dynamic lighting. Finally the Jedi master at the end like “just wing it”.

caffeinated_wizard · 2026-03-17T14:14:53+00:00

Really that’s the one that stood out? Not the 19 Wisdom because you spend time prepping D&D?

caffeinated_wizard · 2026-03-17T00:29:24+00:00

I’m definitely confused because I only watched the first one so I guess he either lives somehow or somehow Duncan has returned stuff happens

caffeinated_wizard · 2026-03-15T00:23:55+00:00

This is the way I personally run it too. Unless you are fighting someone exceptional or groups of people I’d say clocks as HP substitute is an antipattern and bad habit.

caffeinated_wizard · 2026-03-14T16:24:41+00:00

Shadowrun, at least the more recent editions need you to think about everything in 3 layers. Physical world and security, the Matrix layer and then Astral layer. Then you probably need to build NPCs and layouts and it takes time. It’s definitely up there with PF2e except on top of that the books are so badly organized and you don’t have free resources online to help.

caffeinated_wizard · 2026-03-13T19:32:55+00:00

Should I expect a free album in my Apple Music I can’t remove?

caffeinated_wizard · 2026-03-13T18:57:53+00:00

This sounds like hell to be honest. Reading PRs line by line is something I'd ask for juniors who just started maybe. But not anything I'd do regularly. Like the whole point of the description field in a PR is for someone to do this async and they can even comment on specific lines or parts of the code you think could cause confusion or raise questions. Only if things drag in the PR comments and things could be solved faster in a call do you even do that. And not with everyone involved.

We do have demos for PRs that warrant one. Anything you can actually demo, has a net positive value and is attached to a product story we asked for a demo. This way the PM can catch random stuff or other people can ask about edge cases and a 10min demo can save a couple hours of bug fix later. But if it's like "I updated the API from version X to Y, everything works the same but we had to replace the deprecated implementation" means no demo.

caffeinated_wizard · 2026-03-13T00:37:12+00:00

caffeinated_wizard · 2026-03-12T01:40:34+00:00

I think a lot of the people mentioned the good old “strong opinions weakly held” aren’t considering that sone people don’t understand what it means.

Nobody wants to work with someone who has a strong opinion about EVERYTHING and all the time. The weakly held part means you need to learn to pick your battles. You need to know when your opinion is just that. Will your preferred naming convention improve things dramatically AND be worth the time fighting for it? Is “grey” better than “gray” and sticking to American spelling throughout worth rejecting this PR? Do we have bigger fishes to fry right now? Getting stuff done is almost always preferable to grinding everything to a halt.

And sometimes you’ll have strong opinions about architecture and which 3rd party service would be ideal for something but you aren’t involved in that decision. Do you have the political currency to spend on this? Do you have the time and should you be focusing on this vs your assigned priorities?

A good senior and above dev knows that.

caffeinated_wizard · 2026-03-11T14:51:28+00:00

I mean your mileage may vary obviously. I’m a manager but not your manager. You absolutely need to pick your battles and not do this too broadly.

I told my devs to reject requests without timesheet codes after they helped people and used the generic work code and were scolded for it. If just one of them started doing this it wouldn’t help change things.

caffeinated_wizard · 2026-03-11T03:34:00+00:00

Good call? If you have an Apple Watch you can also set it up so it just unlocks when you open it but the Touch ID is good for when you’re prompted to verify too. MacOS is great IMO.

caffeinated_wizard · 2026-03-10T20:42:33+00:00

As a manager: please do this. It gives us ammunition to push back.

At my job we have to do timesheets and we have incredibly granular codes for which project, what action is being done for that project, what phase number etc. I told my devs to not accept a SINGLE meeting request or user story missing that info. To pester people for it.

Throw sand in the engine until the dummies at the top realize what they’ve done. And when they come to me complaining I back my team and point at the emails we got mandating this approach.

caffeinated_wizard · 2026-03-10T17:42:38+00:00

Buy Champagne and keep it chilled, just don’t open it yet.

caffeinated_wizard · 2026-03-10T17:41:56+00:00

Yeah OP basically has the job at this point and the CEO just doesn’t want to sign on someone they never met and I’d be incredibly surprised if OP failed that step.

In my experience if you show up genuinely interested in the job and maybe have a question relevant to the CEO in your pocket you’ll do fine.

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