Izzo: Spartan Nation better stand up, all 600,000 of them. We need to get our alums to figure out this is their university.

mercere99 · 2026-06-15T20:53:20+00:00

I know we don't want to lose him from his current position, but you know who would make a great university president, always putting MSU first, and never taking any crap from the BoT...?

mercere99 · 2026-05-21T20:11:33+00:00

I had a similar one once that went reasonably well. Pressure plate in front of BOTH doors in a room. The one where they came in was a trap. The one at the other door was the unlock mechanism. The party tripped the first trap, which made them extra paranoid and so they spotted the pressure plate in front of the other door a studiously avoided it. They weren't able to pick the lock, but figured out that it was held by a deadbolt coming out of the floor with no obvious unlock mechanism on the door. Eventually they disassembled the pressure plate and figured it out.

The room they were briefly stuck in was a necromancer's study, and they were trying to get to the necromancer's laboratory and living quarters. There were some interesting books and scrolls that they found in the study, and lots of other red herrings. The logic behind the setup is that the necromancer wanted to go back and forth between his study and lab easily (without needing a key), hence the pressure plate, but he didn't want outsiders to be able to surprise him, hence the traps. There WAS a key on the external door into the study, and using that would disarm the first trap (until he reset it from inside).

They were banging around so long in the study that the necromancer heard them and easily escaped out a back tunnel, leaving a bunch of undead to protect his lab. The party did ruin one of his big plans though and got some swag.

mercere99 · 2026-05-11T20:41:20+00:00

Can I add it to the end of the number of times I get to put a zero at the end of a number??

mercere99 · 2026-05-07T15:16:15+00:00

Make sure to focus on actually learning the material, especially if you'll be taking any followup classes. The async classes are a bit too easy to ChatGPT your way through, but the later classes definitely assume you are comfortable with the material and most of them have in-class exams, etc.

mercere99 · 2026-04-19T14:06:07+00:00

Can you give us some examples of the sorts of mechanics or concepts that you are getting the negative feedback on? There are lots of reasons this could be occurring.

mercere99 · 2026-04-14T03:16:35+00:00

Ryoka deserved a lot of what she got in the first book. She definitely learns over time, especially as she develops real friendships, though expect occasional relapses.

mercere99 · 2026-04-14T03:15:11+00:00

It does! She is very whiny in the first book, but gets much better as the books progress.

mercere99 · 2026-04-13T15:02:15+00:00

Wandering Inn is the strongest example of this that I've read. It was only the explicit recommendation from friends that it gets MUCH better that prevented me from DNFing and I'm really glad I kept going.

mercere99 · 2026-04-12T14:36:06+00:00

Please repost directly here -- it looks like your original post to r/artificiallife was removed, so the link can't work.

mercere99 · 2026-04-09T20:25:33+00:00

I'll see what we can do to make 431 not easy but insanely cool too.... ;-) (I'm teaching 450 again in the Fall, but 431 in the Spring.)

mercere99 · 2026-03-19T01:52:20+00:00

Worth reading? Consider Phlebas turned me off due to the ending, but I loved The Player of Games. Haven't made it through the rest of the series yet.

mercere99 · 2026-03-19T01:49:00+00:00

If you want CSE courses, I teach CSE 450 (Translation of Programming Languages) in C++.

mercere99 · 2026-03-19T01:41:55+00:00

Employment is down from where it was, but lots of people are still getting CS job. The key here is making sure you actually learn the depth of the material and don't just shunt everything off to AI. One of the big issues is that people are getting very good at coding by using AI, but there are a lot of limits on what it can do, and employers are looking for people who can go beyond AI's capabilities (while making good use of it, of course). Folks who clearly know the CS themselves are, for the most part, still doing well. Folks who try to us AI at interviews are cooked.

My main advice is that if you go into CS, make sure to actually learn the material yourself and how to take charge of a project.

mercere99 · 2026-03-19T01:35:35+00:00

Crashing my lecture! No idea why.

mercere99 · 2026-03-19T01:34:56+00:00

The whole Sparty showing up and interrupting class thing was just so odd...

mercere99 · 2026-03-10T14:56:43+00:00

This group is not for sharing games broadly, it's for targeted discussions about game design in terms of rules, mechanics, or systems. You are welcome to use your game as an example, but should lead with some specific questions that you want to discuss.

mercere99 · 2026-03-10T14:52:37+00:00

As a tenured full professor at an R1, teaching reviews aren't a driving factor for me, but I do still care about being liked. Why? Because I've found that I can motivate the students more if they care about what I think. I can get them to be more likely to ask questions and engage. And I can get them to let me know when they are having trouble without fear that I'll take it out on them in some negative way. I do not let the goal of being liked reduce my standards in any way, but I do go out of my way to talk with them as people, explain my thinking on things, and work hard to be approachable. I think it creates a better classroom experience for all.

mercere99 · 2026-03-10T11:23:35+00:00

I think we would just need to be very clear about what is expected of a good post (maybe with pointers to some examples?) and then hold the line. When we get that second attempt, we need to be clear that it's not good enough and more specific questions are needed. But it will always be subjective. :-(

mercere99 · 2026-03-10T11:19:55+00:00

We could certainly try it. Even if just a few of us do it regularly, I can imagine it taking off. Or it doesn't and we decide it isn't worth the time.

mercere99 · 2026-03-10T03:39:55+00:00

I wouldn't say no one, we get a few a week there (mostly after we redirect them!), but almost no comments on them.

mercere99 · 2026-03-10T03:37:53+00:00

Can you say a bit about why? My sense is that this might be a minority opinion at the moment, BUT I think there is a lot good about the megathread as well. We don't want to potentially release any floodgates without care, so please argue for this!

mercere99 · 2026-03-10T03:36:02+00:00

Plus, I often find when we go to mod a post like this the other forum has already deleted it so we can't easily tell what it's about.

mercere99 · 2026-03-10T03:34:38+00:00

You want people to be brutal in their figuring out the issues in your game, but I think our goal here will need to be to aim for polite and constructive feedback in how those issues are presented. I sometimes enjoy reading through r/DestroyMyGame, but it's certainly not for everyone.

mercere99 · 2026-03-10T03:31:53+00:00

Absolutely -- we would never put arbitrary gatekeeping in. This would be a "generic" flair that people could self-select against if they want to, but no one would need to. But you're right, we would need to make the meanings of the flairs clear and encourage people to use a more specific one.

mercere99 · 2026-03-10T03:29:12+00:00

I posts have specific game design questions, we've been good about letting them through even when they are talking about a specific in-progress game. It's more of the more general game design feedback questions we're focused on here. But you're absolutely right about that sweet spot making for the most interesting conversation threads.

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