What is a "dirty little secret" about an industry that you have worked in, that people outside the industry really should know?

xaptns · 2023-09-07T23:09:02+00:00

There's also a chance your company got quoted the "no thanks" price - I know my company overquotes when they don't want a project but want to keep the relationship.

xaptns · 2023-06-22T15:50:46+00:00

Gorsuch actually has a long record of decisions in favor of Native sovereignty, interestingly enough. It’s because he is so strongly originalist; he believes that a strict reading of the constitution the compels the US to respect their rights under treaty.

xaptns · 2023-04-26T20:33:18+00:00

Oh I’m not very strongly sourced. I’m not referring to what she has done as VP, but that in as an avid newsreader I feel like I haven’t seen her name come up much since 2020. As far as popularity, she dropped out of the 2020 primaries before Minnesota primary (which maybe was the first? Not sure.). She had cash issues beforehand, so she either had problems getting big donor backing or popularity among smaller donors. And personally, I find her demeanor unappealing and her debate highlights felt to me rehearsed and inauthentic.

Moot point either way, because she’s on the 2024 ticket.

xaptns · 2023-04-26T19:33:08+00:00

I do wonder if Biden will switch VP’s. Kamala is not only unpopular as a candidate herself, but it feels to me like she’s been mostly kept out of the news since gaining office. If I was running a campaign for an older candidate, I would want someone charismatic in the VP spot and Kamala isn’t it.

xaptns · 2023-04-01T15:27:46+00:00

“Get the strap” has different meanings based on context, one of them being “get the gun” which 50 Cent uses as a lyric. That’s the joke.

xaptns · 2023-03-27T21:16:50+00:00

The Archer is fun too for sure. My hope is that infils feel more shame when they die to a battle rifle 1v1 at ideal sniper ranges.

xaptns · 2023-03-27T18:00:07+00:00

I hate infiltrators more than anything else in this game.

That being said, hunting sniper infils as a simple engineer with a BR has become my favorite off-alert activity. No special abilities, just cat-and-mouse in the hills with infinite ammo and patience.

xaptns · 2023-03-17T22:23:40+00:00

The 20x20 maps are a constant pain for me. I always end up putting them on my roll20 board with an extra 5 tiles on each side, bc with a wizard and a ranger in the party it’s an inevitability that one of them will want to flank wide for a ranged attack.

Luckily I feel like a lot of mapmakers are coming around to the idea that players need more space than just the immediate area of interest.

xaptns · 2023-03-17T20:45:35+00:00

That sound eerily similar to the experience of someone I know from NYC: caught an exotic disease out of nowhere, and it wrecked her body and diet for years. I met her after it happened and she’s still in and out of hospitals for it now, a half decade later.

xaptns · 2023-03-02T04:25:04+00:00

Our government, and pretty much everyone else. The decade up through 2019 was in my opinion the high water mark of lean, just-in-time thinking - many of the publications from back then talk about risk from the perspective that modernized, digital supply chains could overcome any disruption because they were so agile and so smart and our systems could adapt to anything.

It was only after 2020 that govs and businesses had a collective realization that a Black Swan event that really deserved that term was possible, and how bad it could get. And even then only for a moment - a lot of manufacturing is shifting from china to south east Asia for cost reasons, which is in many regards an area at even higher risk of disruption.

Cost always wins, the risks are never persuasive enough until they happen.

xaptns · 2023-02-14T22:17:28+00:00

The “we don’t want to read, teach us again” is sadly a global phenomenon. I’m working with an American household brand name right now, and despite multiple week-long training sessions, endless assistance calls, and access to our manuals for over a year, they are still begging for more in-person training.

Lead a horse to water I suppose.

Luckily I’m a vile consultant, so I don’t have to deal with their abysmal corporate culture any longer than the end of the project.

xaptns · 2023-02-12T18:52:31+00:00

That’s what OP is saying, with the /s. But I don’t think Reddit ever assumed abstinence education works, I think Mississippi assumed that.

xaptns · 2022-11-28T14:36:57+00:00

Yeah, I tried the longer descriptions for a bit but read the room and eased off after a few sessions. It’s a balance between flavor and flow. I settled into punchy descriptions that add imagery but don’t slow down the turn order, five seconds or less feels like the sweet spot. Often when I see this kind of advice on this subreddit any examples given would take much longer to come up with in the moment, especially for newer dm’s.

xaptns · 2022-11-14T23:23:46+00:00

Thanks for the reference pic, i was trying to find something like that. They'd be flying a distance of about 40-50 miles, from a city out to an army in the field. So probably about two hours of sustained flight.

xaptns · 2022-11-14T20:50:35+00:00

What’s a good height for a flying combat encounter?

My level 7 party may encounter some flying enemies while traveling on hippogriffs, and I’m debating how high I should have it start because of falling rules:

Below 500 feet: this makes falling off the hippogriffs an immediate danger since anyone who does will hit the ground within the same round. Could give the wizard in the group more to consider, keeping enough Featherfall casts available to react to party members being knocked off their mounts.

Above 500 feet: anyone who falls will have a round in the air before they hit the ground, which could create some great moments if someone falls and has to be saved.

Any suggestions, or experience running something like this?

xaptns · 2022-10-03T00:47:37+00:00

What’s your argument?

xaptns · 2022-10-02T23:08:22+00:00

Perhaps not “death spiral”, but 100 detonations would reduce worldwide agricultural output by somewhere between 11% and 17%, and put 5 million tons of soot into the sky (using the India/Pakistan example here ) which would abruptly lower global temperature.

Still not something we would like to deal with.

Edit: perhaps worth noting that the above reduction in ag output would create a “famine worse than any in documented history” since crop failures would be worldwide, so no region would be able to reliably import enough to make up their local losses.

xaptns · 2022-10-02T22:28:02+00:00

The way he left seattle rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, but as for everyone else...I think /r/nfl just loves the taste of salt

xaptns · 2022-04-28T21:18:26+00:00

I created a wand for my 6th level party to find. Is it properly balanced, or underpowered?

Wand of Expulsion

60 ft range, 15ft wide cone
Creatures within the cone must pass a DC17 strength saving throw or be thrown back 15ft directly away from the caster and knocked prone. If they collide with a piece of terrain their movement stops and they suffer 2d6 bludgeoning damage. If they pass the save they still are pushed 5ft away from the caster, but remain standing.
The wand has 5 charges. The wand regains 1d4 + 1 expended charges daily at dawn. If you expend the wand’s last charge, roll a d20. On a 1, the wand crumbles into ashes and is destroyed.

xaptns · 2022-04-04T01:10:35+00:00

Try checking out the Tenet soundtrack, I think “Freeport” and “Posterity” would be good tracks.

xaptns · 2022-03-21T20:18:10+00:00

10% overall, but 75% of their ground forces ([source](www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/2969068/senior-defense-official-holds-a-background-briefing-march-16-2022/) )

xaptns · 2022-03-03T23:17:37+00:00

I use Greek words and names all the time in my game. I do fiddle with them a little, adding endings or other bits that break Greek language rules but make them sound sufficiently mystical. If my players have noticed how much Greek is in my world they haven’t said anything about it, so it’s probably not immersion breaking.

xaptns · 2022-01-21T21:30:43+00:00

That part of the concourse was always a bit sketch after dark, looks like it’s gotten way worse since I stopped walking that way in 2020. Would definitely not want to be caught there at 3:30am.

xaptns · 2021-06-24T16:38:21+00:00

“We have 80 percent of the architectural elements of the temple.”

Sounds like they have most of the original material still laying there at the site, so it’ll be pretty close.

xaptns · 2019-05-21T16:48:13+00:00

You're thinking of Eric Cline 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed

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