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2 yr. ago

  • Wikipedia lists him as a founder

    Does it? I expected better of Wikipedia, so I checked, and both Musk's page and Tesla's avoid simply listing him as a founder by explaining the situation, i.e., that he was an early investor. Even the sidebar for Tesla, Inc. just links to a subsection rather than listing names.

    Just a note to add, addressing a related talking point that inevitably comes up:

    It's a very common piece of misinformation that he was determined to be a founder in a court of law. That never happened. It was part of an agreement to avoid a lawsuit. It's a lie that the relevant parties could all live with as part of a larger settlement.

    I like to ask Musk apologists, "Do you need to found a company to be that company's founder, yes or no?" If they waffle or say "no," there's no point continuing in good faith, because they're not serious people. It's not hard to say "Okay, that's a bit of a fib, he should be called an honorary founder, but blah blah blah..." But if they can't even do that, then they aren't operating based on reality.

  • The conversation around this topic always seems directly or indirectly framed around a zero-sum framing: what's better and what's worse? Which side wins? Even if you disagree with the premise, that's what's shaping the conversation. I don't think the article suggested there's a "correct" answer, but it was clearly inspired by people who think the author was doing things wrong.

    It can simultaneously be true that there are successful long-term campaigns with and without high character turnover due to death. It's a mater of personal preference and successful execution. The only thing categorically false is the idea that character deaths, in and of themselves, are inherently bad for long-term play.

  • Very true. Subjectively, it just seemed to have a bit of a peak not too long ago. It was one of those right-wing talking points that got popular before they realized it was embarrassing and didn't work.

    And yeah, I'm real sick of reactionary armchair "experts" who think they know more than people who actually study (and experience) the things they talk about with such confidence.

  • See also the "We're a republic, not a democracy" talking point that swelled a year or two ago (and was even repeated by a senator). It's patently stupid to anyone who knows the meaning of those words, but it was also testing the water for overt anti-democracy rhetoric.

  • You're right that multiclassing an optional rule, but in practice, I think nearly every player assume it's in use unless the DM says otherwise (and they will likely complain if the DM says otherwise). So I'd bet that if a ruleset basedo n 5e disabled multiclassing, people would either complain about it, or ignore that part and then complain when it breaks the game.

  • I guess as the devil's advocate, the publisher put out both. So it seemed like it was the high-effort way to both create a bespoke system, and appeal to the people who are completely stuck on D&D.

    Lowering HP would absolutely go a long way, you're right. I think limiting or disabling multiclassing would also help, but that would be an extremely unpopular change that most people would ignore anyway. :/

  • Off, mixed feelings here.

    On the one hand, it shows how antagonistic DMing is silly. The DM can just make stuff up, and the reason we're all playing is to have a good time. If you want a competitive game that's (at least ostensibly) balanced, you can play one of those instead, like a board game or a war game.

    On the other hand... modern D&D is built around ostensibly balanced set piece encounters, usually combat, usually intended to tax but not kill the characters. So the fact that it absolutely sucks at being a balanced game is an absolute nightmare to DM (assuming you want the game to be fair & fun).

  • Fair point. I think it would still take a lot of work, though, since Diablo includes a lot of fast-paced, high-powered stuff, while 5e kind of falls apart and turns into a slog at higher levels. To put it another way, it handles up to the heroic level fine, but the epic levels can feel like a drag, and WotC's solution was to mostly publish adventures that stop at level 15. Cutting HP would be a part of it, maybe streamlining some stuff, creating a different inventory system...

    So it can be done. But the fact that it's not D&D also means there's a higher floor to how much thought was put into the game, you know? Sometimes designers put the work in, but sometimes they just pick D&D to be lazy or as a cash grab.

    Speaking of Adventures in Middle-Earth, I haven't played it, but I heard the 5e edition is actually pretty good. You're right in that Tolkien's fantasy is way different from the high-fantasy superheroics of 5e, but I heard it had great rules for going on a journey, which 5e mostly glosses over (at least in practice).

  • Oh for sure! It's really just treating D&D as the default that I have a problem with, not using an existing system per se. Sometimes it works, but a lot of the time making D&D support a radically different style of play is a bad idea. It also tends to suggest that either the designer doesn't really know that much about RPGs, or the publisher doesn't care and just wants to cash in on what's popular. If they picked even another existing system, that at least suggests they're aware of other games, and probably picked something they thought was a good fit.

    Again, this is just speaking in generalities. There are good games based on 5e. It's a red flag, but not a deal breaker.

  • More surprising is the confirmation that Diablo: The RPG will be built on a new “unique” gameplay system, rather than slapping a Deckard Cain mask over Dungeons & Dragons 5E or something.

    At least there's that. It might still be terrible, but I immediately lose interest in any game that's just reskinning "The World's Most Popular Role-playing Game."

  • I love that, in a competition between a corporation worth hundreds of billions of dollars and a FOSS project, all Google managed to do was annoy uBlock Origin users for like a week. I just had to manually update the extension and restart my browser a few times.

  • Thank you. The grieving has actually been both smooth & intense, with ups & downs, but I'm gradually doing better, as is my mom.

    But anyway, the meme is accurate. :P I just have a more sensitive feeling about it given recent events.

  • My dad died recently.

    He was definitely a flawed man, and there were tons of problems between the two of us over the years. But I also heard plenty of stories about how he grew up, and about his parents—both from my dad and from other family members. Without a doubt, he managed to be a better person than his parents, and a better parent to me than his parents were to him. They were straight-up cruel to him, whether physically or simply using him for the family's gain.

    That doesn't absolve everything, and I've still got plenty of my own issues. But what I respect most of him, in hindsight, is that he played the hand he was dealt and managed to be a better man. Not perfect, but better. I want to do the same.

    Sorry for being sappy, it's only been a couple of weeks. I also know that this doesn't apply to everyone, since some parents are indefensibly cruel and abusive. In general, though, I hope people can be easy on each other, easy on themselves, and stop letting "perfect" be the enemy of "good."

  • Ah, okay.

    I was inclined to think you were serious because, believe it or not, it's an argument I've heard before. Apart from random people trying to futz through an argument, Ben Shapiro complained that Democrats, when asked what they'd ban, didn't say "crime."

  • Huh, I hadn't thought of that, since PF2e is mostly poised as a D&D alternative rules system, but the setting must be popular given the existence of Savage Pathfinder... I'll have to do more digging into the lore!

    I've also had this thought that I was burnt out on crunchier RPGs, before reading PF2e and realizing, no, I'm just tired of fighting against a rules system. :P I'd love to get in some crunchier games, too, so long as they work properly and deliver on their design goals.

    and I'll have to check out Me, Myself & Die! I think I've heard the name before.

  • I did find a Burning Wheel LP with that name, so I'll have to check it out!

    There's also a podcast I loved called Campaign, and since a lot (all?) of the cast were improvisers, they would hop into scenes as NPCs quite often. (I'm pretty over that podcast, but when I liked it, that was one of my favorite parts.) I tried that in other games, but it was a bit hard to get non-improvisers to get into it. I'll have to try again!

  • What is your point, exactly? Because maybe there's a misunderstanding here, because you seemed to make a pro-gun argument by forgetting that murder is, famously, a crime.

    If that's the case, it would raise the question: do you think we should regulate gun ownership to lower the rate of gun violence, the same way that the penalties for murder are meant to lower the rate of homicide? Or do you think we shouldn't criminalize homicide, the same way people don't want to regulate gun ownership, because if it isn't 100% effective then it's not worth doing?

  • I'm not an expert on the three either, but here's my understanding:

    • Burning Wheel is the oldest of the three, the most complicated, and geared towards dramatic fantasy stories. It's replicating classic fantasy novels and the like.
    • Mouseguard came out next, is significantly simpler, and obviously made to evoke the feeling of the comics it's based on.
    • Torchbearer is the newest of the three, is an intermediate level of complexity, and geared towards dungeon crawling and the like. Think old-school RPG with a Burning Wheel chassis.

    I still haven't got my hands on Mouseguard, and I'd love to try all of them at some point. It just breaks towards Burning Wheel for me, to begin at the beginning—but they all have a unique appeal. :)

  • Ah, on the topic of templates, they're also in Dungeon Fantasy, which helps a lot. Though I do wish the "default" settings on DF were a bit lighter.

    I know that GURPS Lite is secretly the real core rulebook. :P It's easier to build off of that than go through the Basic Set and sift through everything. How to Be a GURPS GM, IIRC, also helps with things like skill lists.

    I think if I ever get a chance to play it, I'd probably start super simple, maybe even with Wildcard skills and some GURPS Action rules to smooth things out, then dial up the complexity until it's at a point I'd like. I appreciate modular systems that let me do that.