Oh yeah, big shoutout to @elyukai@mastodon.social and the whole team for creating the best ttrpg software I‘ve ever used.
Without saying anything negative about D&D 5e, let me tell you about two of my personal favorites:
The Dark Eye
Under the name "Das Schwarze Auge", this is one of the most popular systems in Germany and has existed since the mid 80s and the latest edition has been available in English for about a decade now. There are dozens of source books and hundreds of official campaigns and standalone adventures, all set in the same world and a single ongoing canon (apart from a few early works that have been retconned). There are decades of detailed in-world history that you can use as a background for your own campaign if you want or selectively ignore if you want to focus on your own interpretation of what the world should look like.
Mechanics-wise it's a lot less board-game-like than some 70s/80s/90s systems while not going the full "storytelling first" route that many more moderns systems seem to prefer. On top of the eight basic attributes, characters can select from a pool of skills and feats that cover everything from combat to magic to social interaction to crafts and hobbies. The system focuses a lot less on combat than other high fantasy systems and it's absolutely viable to have a group of purely social-focused characters that never get into a single fight but still get to use a lot of the system's mechanics.
Overall it's relatively complex if you want to use absolutely every rule but at the same time very versatile and can be customized to your playstyle.
Opus Anima / Opus Anima Investigation
Sadly out of print and never officially translated to English so I'll focus on the one thing that works without the official setting: it's one of the simplest systems I've ever seen. It uses a pool of D2s (odd/even on D6, coins, red/black cards, whatever you have on hand) where the number of dice is determined by a basic attribute and a skill that can be combined however the situation requires. Dexterity + mechanics to build something, perception + mechanics to recognize a mechanism, knowledge + mechanics to understand the underlying principles or remember who invented something. To avoid experienced characters failing an easy check out of pure bad luck, everything over 10 dice is not rolled but gives half a success (rounded up) automatically. That's it. That's the whole system.
DB: "At least we're not National Rail."
National Rail: "At least we're not Amtrak."
But of course, the one time, the band does something special (like play a cover of a song they've never done before), there is no chance of finding a video afterwards.
The emirate of Dubai a state (not a country)inside the UAE similar to how California is a state inside the USA.
Not really but we have Springer which isn’t much better
Sadly, many wifi-enabled devices only work with some proprietary cloud-service and even if not, they're only one configuration error (or intentional backdoor) away from talking to the outside. Better have something that isn't physically able to talk to the internet no matter how badly I fuck up its configuration and my firewall.
The solution is not more but different connected devices so I can decide for myself what needs to be connected and by which protocol. Get the dumbest device on the market, no wifi, no internal clock, maybe not even a humidity sensor and then, if and only if I need to remote control it, for example to put it on a schedule, I can use the cheapest "smart" device on the market to connect it to an in-house machine that can turn it on and off.
I run home automation with lights, switches, outlets, heaters and some more and not a single device has internet access. They all use Zigbee (a simple radio protocol) to talk to homeassistant which is open source and hosted on a machine that lives under my desk.
Separating tasks between the dehumidifier and outlet has the advantage that each individual device can be a lot simpler, leaving less attack surface. My power outlet can't read the humidity sensor, it doesn't need to talk to an external server, it doesn't even need to know that the thing connected to it is a dehumidifier. It's just a chip that receives a radio signal and toggles a relay on or off. That's it.
Separating the two concerns also lets me replace the devices separately if one breaks or my requirements change. If I suddenly need wifi or bluetooth instead of Zigbee or if it's for some reason no longer supported by homeassistant, I can just replace a 9€ outlet instead of the whole dehumidifier that could get bricked by the proprietary app losing support.
This can be done with something like Zigbee. Or even simpler: you hook a non-connected device up to a "smart" power socket. No need for the device itself to talk to the outside world.
Deal with the real problem. Be honest about why people are upset. Let them actually speak their minds without judgement. Then, analyse it. Find solutions.
Exactly. The solution to people saying "Foreigners are taking our jobs" is not to outlaw saying "Foreigners are taking our jobs" (though the AfD has done enough other things that warrant a ban), it's not to get rid of foreigners, it's not even to create more jobs. It's to make sure that people have at least their most important needs (housing, food, transport, access to information, basic entertainment) covered even with a part-time job or no job at all. Instead the CDU/CSU tries to brand everyone who doesn't work 60 hours per week until they're 70 as lazy. Guess what? There are way more people out there who would like to work but can't (for whatever reason) than ones who actively try to cheat the system. And no increase of weekly working time, no mandatory Excel training for unemployed people and no right-shift of politics will solve that.
Show people that the left and center are able to provide what they need and they will have no reason to blame minorities for their problems.
Yeah, guess what? We should have banned them long before they became the "strongest opposition force in parliament". Now that they poll over 20%, of course its tricky. Who would have thought?
Upvote: well written, adds something to the discussion
Downvote: low effort, hurtful or rage bait
I make a point of not using downvotes as an "I disagree" button. If an opinion is presented well, it may still add something to the discussion even if it doesn't match my personal preferences.
Do NOT, I repeat NOT do this. Someone very close to me did something similar and got irreversible brain damage that still shows itself years later in the form of epilepsy. Our brains are not made for that little sleep over long periods of time.
It’s easy to think that the Middle East is chaotic because of what’s going on now but the region was at peace for over 500 years under Ottoman Rule.
No doubt on that point.
But the Ottoman Empire ended a solid 30 years before Israel got established. To prevent the problems the region has now, different choices would have been necessary after WW1, not just WW2. For the purpose of a "What happens if WW2 ends differently" thread, that chance has already passed. The British Mandate has been established and there are already enough Jewish immigrants to have caused the 1936-39 Arab revolt and hundreds of thousands of Jews have already fled Europe. The Axis winning WW2 would probably put even more pressure on the Allies to let Jewish refugees live in Palestine because sending them back to Europe is not just an unattractive option, it's outright impossible.
Literally every problem in the Middle East stems from the Zionist colony established by the imperialists
The Middle East has had problems for thousands of years before the state of Israel got established. Its strategic location between Africa and Asia caused Palestine to be conquered by the Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, European crusaders, Arabs again, Ottomans and the British Empire. Three major religions see Jerusalem as a sacred place and have fought wars over it.
Zionism is definitely a major reason for the problems we have in our timeline but assuming there would be no problems at all seems overly simplistic.
Also, the Axis winning the war does not guarantee that Israel won't get established. There would still be hundreds of thousands of Jews who flee from Europe and need somewhere to live. The Axis, being the cause of the problem, wouldn't be interested in solving it and the rest of the world has basically the same options as in our timeline.
The axis powers had no interest in the Middle East prior to 1939 and there’s no reason to believe they would start wars in the region if The Gulf Monarchies were willing to sell them oil.
I could very well see them trying to stay mostly neutral and selling oil to everyone. Profit is more important than ideology, especially if food and water are scarce. But even in real life, that hasn't kept superpowers from finding excuses to attack oil-rich nations.
Thanks for the nice words. My approach was to avoid speculating too much about what might happen based on someone's ideology and instead see which real life events can't happen and extrapolate from there. This makes my answers equally plausible, no matter if the Axis powers stay fascist dictatorships or if they become more democratic over time, as long as overall alliances stay roughly the same.
Another thought is that American products and culture probably are popular partly because they were winners in World War 2.
Absolutely. American soldiers being stationed all over the world was fantastic PR. Being stationed long term, they brought along much of what they were used to in the USA. Those luxuries were traded with the locals and of course, if the locals wanted to be seen as fashionable, they just had to have those things.
On top of that, Jews fleeing from Europe would still need a place to live and there is a decent chance that the British would still give up Palestine to form Israel. Maybe a few years later and with a few details changed but overall not much of a difference.
This relates to my world that I started describing in another thread. I post it here for visibility and because it's still very unfinished. As soon as it's mostly done, I'll copy the reworked version into a new comment over there. Comments and creative ideas are more than welcome.
Some background
The Immaruk are a river valley civilization similar to real world Ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia who believe in two deities:
- Shuramud, the desert sun whose aspects are day, sun, light, heat, passage of time, growth and the inevitable death of all living things.
- Iwaspat, the shapeless darkness who represents night, darkness, soothing coldness, the ground, stability and a resistance to change.
The realm is ruled by diarchs, two equal rulers who each represent one of the deities and also act as their high priests.
Death rites for common people
With Shuramud being the deity of death, they are naturally responsible for guiding the deceased out of the world of the living. Those who feel that they are getting old and weak travel to one of the shrines at the the edge of the northern desert. In the early morning, they pray, say their goodbyes to their friends and relatives and undress to leave all earthly possessions behind and offer every bit of their body to the sun's heat. Eventually at sunrise they walk out into the desert to die.
Once they have succumbed to Shuramud's gaze, their souls leave their body and rise up to the sky. While most souls are invisible, those of people who had been especially dedicated to Shuramud take the form of soul birds, flaming creatures with human bodies but the head and wings of a bird. There are very rare stories of soul birds who didn't directly rise up to be united with Shuramud but instead flew back to the land of the living and stuck around for a few hours or even days, presumably to fulfill one last task in service of their deity.
Not being able to have your soul collected by Shuramud is seen as a great misfortune, so the bodies of those who die before they reach the desert are carried either by their family or by priests and shrine guardians. If there is no body to bring to the desert, for example if someone drowned and got carried away by the great river or got eaten by an animal, a small statuette that resembles the deceased is made and displayed at their home for a few days to catch as much of their essence before it's taken to the desert instead of a body. I'm not quite sure about this last point yet but I think it fits
The Mirror of Shuramud
Centuries ago, the Shuramud cult lined a natural crater with reflective bronze (or gold?) that focuses the sunlight at a single spot, essentially turning the crater into a giant solar oven. Apart from being used as a furnace to create religious items, it's also where the diarchs who represent Shuramud are taken when they die. Being burned by concentrated sunlight is said to give them a higher chance of forming a strong soul bird than merely being out in the desert on their own.
Priests of Iwaspat
While Shuramud and Iwaspat are mostly seen as equal but opposite aspects of the world who keep each other in balance and should both be worshiped, it would still be seen as improper to give the soul of someone in the higher ranks in Iwaspat's cult over to Shuramud. Instead, they are entombed in a system of natural caves at the northern bank of the great river. There, their souls can forever stay in the embrace of the cool ground, never having to fear the change that leaving the mortal world would be.
For the diarchs who represent Iwaspat, this protection from change goes even further. Unless they die prematurely from an accident or violence, they can eventually retire to a chamber deep inside the caves where they can live on forever. Their bodies don't age anymore nor do they need to consume food. They spend most of their time motionless and in silent dialogue with Iwaspat but if needed, they are valuable advisers to their successors.
During the Eternal Night
Recently, the sun has stopped rising (see main thread), Shuramud has seemingly disappeared and walking into the now-cold desert probably won't free your soul from your body anymore. Those who can afford it, use the dwindling supply of firewood to have their bodies cremated but for most, this is becoming a big problem. Many still follow the old rites but their souls are trapped in their rotting bodies until there is a new sunrise. For gameplay, this could give me the chance to have zombie-like undead if I need them.
Once again, this is all work in progress and I would love to see your ideas. How can I flesh this out or can you think of alternatives that would fit the setting even better?
A place for DMs to discuss their worlds, campaigns and experiences with other DMs and players. Showcases and requests for advice are equally welcome. Rules: 1. Be nice to each other. Related communities: * !askgamemasters@ttrpg.network [/c/askgamemasters@ttrpg.network] * !rpgcreation@ttrpg.network [...
After a short discussion over in RPGMemes, we came to the conclusion that Lemmy is missing a community to discuss your works in progress and get feedback so I opened one and started posting what I'm working on.
Give it a look, leave some feedback on the stuff that's already there and add your own, no matter if it's something you're working on or a question.
!DMWorkshop@ttrpg.network
I hope this kind of promo is allowed here. If not, just let me know
After a short discussion over in RPGMemes, we came to the conclusion that Lemmy is missing a community to discuss your works in progress and get feedback so I opened one and started posting what I'm working on.
Give it a look, leave some feedback on the stuff that's already there and add your own, no matter if it's something you're working on or a question.
!DMWorkshop@ttrpg.network
A place for DMs to discuss their worlds, campaigns and experiences with other DMs and players. Showcases and requests for advice are equally welcome. Rules: 1. Be nice to each other. Related communities: * !askgamemasters@ttrpg.network [/c/askgamemasters@ttrpg.network] * !rpgcreation@ttrpg.network [...
After a short discussion over in RPGMemes, we came to the conclusion that Lemmy is missing a community to discuss your works in progress and get feedback so I opened one and started posting what I'm working on.
Give it a look, leave some feedback on the stuff that's already there and add your own, no matter if it's something you're working on or a question.
!DMWorkshop@ttrpg.network
My ongoing work on this world is basically the reason I created this community. Feel free to give feedback, both positive and negative. I honestly have no clue if this is interesting to anyone but me.
I plan on creating a conlang for this world, following Jesse Peterson's amazing guide but I'm not done by far, so most names in this post are placeholders in either English or the proto-version of the language.
Premise
The Immaruk are river valley civilization similar to real world ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. According to their legends, they descend from two tribes that were both led by their respective deity to the fertile lands along the great river. Shuramud is the god of the sun, daylight, sky and growth but also desert heat, merciless passage of time and eventual death of all living things. Iwaspat is Shuramud's exact opposite, representing the night, darkness, nothingness (this world has no moon) but also soothing coldness, stability and the ground.
The Immaruk's culture is centered around the duality of these two deities. All things in life are attributed to one of the two but there is an understanding that a balance between them is needed for life to prosper: for example, grain needs both Iwaspat's fertile soil and Shuramud's light to grow. Of course, this balance is not always perfect but over time, it evens out. Every morning Shuramud's sun rises and gives life to the world and every evening Iwaspat banishes it behind the horizon, providing much needed refreshment and calming down the bustle of the day.
But now, after centuries of this constant meandering, the world has gotten out of balance. First, there was a long period of constant daylight and after Iwaspat's priests managed to depose the leader Shuramud's followers, it has in turn been cast into a seemingly eternal night. Nobody knows exactly how long it's gone on as timekeeping mainly relies on the passage of the sun but it feels like months or even years now.
More to come
Translating all my notes from German and turning them into a post that makes sense takes a while so I'll probably add comments for individual topics and link them here.
- Campaign outline
- Death in the world of the Immaruk (separate thread for now, will be copied into here once it's a bit further along)
How is it May already? And why are there so few fox-sized playgrounds around here?
This photo might not look like much but it has a lot of emotional value for us. The foxes and I live in a big city with very little greenery. So every year in April we rent a small cottage out in the woods and enjoy the sounds and smells of nature.
So first of all, this is not a "help me like linux" post but desktop linux specifically and it's not a "linux is shit" post either.
I run a whole bunch of linux servers (including the one that hosts the instance I'm posting from), the first thing I install on a Windows machine is WSL and I've compiled my first kernel about 20 years ago so that's not the problem we're facing here. I understand how linux works and considering the end of support for Windows 10 this is as good an opportunity as ever to fully make the switch.
My problem is more that specifically linux on a desktop still feels more like an unfinished prototype than like something I'd want to use as a daily driver. About once a year I challenge myself to try it for a while and see how it feels. I look around for a distro that seems promising, put it on a spare SSD, put it either into my Framework laptop or my gaming machine and see where the journey takes me, only booting Windows in an emergency.
And each time, I get fed up after a few days:
- Navigating a combination of the distro's native package manager (apt, pacman, rpm, whatever), snap, flatpack and still having to set up the maintainers' custom repositories to get stuff that's even remotely up-to-date somehow feels even messier than the Windows approach of downloading binaries manually.
- The different UI toolkits, desktop environment, window manager and compositor seem to be fighting each other. I feel like even for something simple as changing a theme or the UI scaling, I have to change settings in three different places just to notice that half the applications still ignore them and my login screen renders in the top left corner of the screen but the mouse cursor acts as if the whole screen was used.
- All of that seems to be getting worse when fractional scaling is involved which is a must for the 2256x1504 screen in my Framework 13.
- The general advice seems to be "just wait until you run into a problem, then research how to solve it". For my server stuff, this works really well. But for desktop linux, it feels like for every problem I find five different solutions where each of them assumes an entirely different technology stack and if mine is even slightly different I eventually run into a step where a config file is not where it should be or a package is not available for what I'm using.
- I do a lot of .NET programming and photo editing. I could probably replace VS with VScode or Ryder but it's an additional hurdle. For photo editing, I haven't found a single thing that fits my workflow the way Bridge, Camera Raw and Photoshop do. I've tried Gimp, Krita, Darktable, RawTherapee and probably a couple more and they all felt like they were missing half the features or suffer from the same unintuitive UI/UX that Blender had before they completely overhauled it with 2.8.
Sooo... where do I go from this? I really want this to work out.
I'm working on a replacement for a broken shelf in my fridge door. It's about 37.6 cm (14.8") on the longest axis so I need to print it in two pieces (as shown in the screenshot). Does anyhone have a good idea for a connection between the two that will be sturdy enough? The fridge door will support it from below for about half of its depth, the rest hangs free.
Wall thickness is currently at 3mm but I can increase it a bit if needed.
One of my favorite pictures from my photo calendars (see my other post). Taken at Ferriter's Cove in Ireland in August 2016, became the August picture for the 2017 calendar.
It all started with a trip to Ireland in 2016 where I thought that simple landscape photos would be too boring so I brought some fox plushies. The photos turned out so cute that I turned them into a calendar as a Christmas gift for friends and family.
Now, years later, I have nine of these calendars and I'm working on a tenth. I've posted them on Mastodon for a while but never found the right community on Lemmy so I guess now you'll have to deal with it here.
The photo in this thread is this year's title. I was packing for a photography job at the local disco and the way the fox sat in the backpack seemed like a good representation of what I'm doing.
For tabletop miniatures I prefer to use a flexible resin to avoid small details breaking off when removing supports or when a mini falls off the table. So far I've used Ameralabs TGM-7 but now that my current bottle is almost empty I'm thinking about looking into alternatives. At over 75€ per liter, TGM-7 is really expensive compared to other resins.
Amazon recommended me RESIONE TH72 as an alternative and there are others on the market like Sunlu Standard Plus. So far I couldn't find a good comparison between them. Do any of you have experience with any of those or other recommendations?
Finally found out what kept me from uploading photos directly to lemmy so hopefully it will work this time.
This is part of a series that I shot in 2020 and now I’ll finally have the chance to show them in an exhibition on Berlin later this year.
I made this list based on the instructions PDF that's available from LEGO's website. For most of these, it doesn't really matter if they are black, dark bluish gray or light bluish gray so I picked them based on what will most likely look good with the surrounding colors and what is cheapest on Bricklink.
Two notable parts: Technic, Axle and Pin Connector Perpendicular Double with Axle Connector 2L is only available in white (the same color as in the set) and for the Technic, Axle 1L with Pin without Friction Ridges "old" light gray is significantly cheaper than any of the newer colors except the included tan.
In general, if you want to save a few bucks, you can probably leave all tan and white pieces as they are. For me, the complete replacement (250 pieces) cost about 35€ plus shipping.
|Count|Number|Name|Original|Replacement(s)| |:-|:-|:-|:-|:-| |2|6346389|Technic, Axle and Pin Connector Perpendicular Double Split, Reinforced Sides|White|Dark Bluish Gray| |5|6058177|Brick, Modified 1 x 2 with Studs on 1 Side|White|4x Dark Bluish Gray, 1x Black| |6|6289797|Technic, Axle 2L with Pin without Friction Ridges|White|Light Bluish Gray| |4|4208160|Technic, Liftarm Thick 1 x 3|White|Black| |2|6370532|Technic, Axle and Pin Connector Perpendicular Double with Axle Connector 2L|White|Not available| |10|371001|Plate 1 x 4|White|6x Dark Bluish Gray, 4x Light Bluish Gray| |2|6360069|Technic, Liftarm Thin 1 x 5 - Axle Holes|White|Light Bluish Gray| |2|389401|Technic, Brick 1 x 6 with Holes|White|Black| |2|6001831|Technic, Liftarm Thick 1 x 9|White|Dark Bluish Gray| |4|6013938|Technic, Pin 3/4|Tan|Dark Bluish Gray| |6|4666579|Technic, Axle 1L with Pin without Friction Ridges|Tan|Light Gray| |1|6117975|Bracket 1 x 2 - 2 x 2|Tan|Dark Bluish Gray| |8|4121921|Plate 1 x 3|Tan|4x Dark Bluish Gray, 2x Black, 2x Light Bluish Gray| |4|4118790|Plate 2 x 3|Tan|Dark Bluish Gray| |4|4201062|Brick, Modified 1 x 4 with Studs on Side|Tan|2x Dark Bluish Gray, 2x Black| |5|4550323|Arch 1 x 4|Tan|Black| |2|4550324|Tile 1 x 4|Tan|Black| |1|6186258|Slope 45 2 x 4|Tan|Dark Bluish Gray| |2|4143409|Plate 1 x 10|Tan|Dark Bluish Gray| |7|6271820|Technic Bush|Red|Light Bluish Gray| |30|6378120|Technic, Pin 1/2 with Friction Ridges|Red|Dark Bluish Gray| |20|6360104|Technic, Pin with Friction Ridges and Tow Ball with Round Pin Hole|Red|Black| |2|6384112|Bar 1L with 1 x 1 Round Plate with Hollow Stud|Red|Black| |31|4142865|Technic, Axle 2L Notched|Red|Black| |7|300421|Brick 1 x 2|Red|4x Dark Bluish Gray, 3x Black| |1|6385920|Technic, Brick Modified 1 x 2 with Hole and 1 x 2 Plate|Red|Light Bluish Gray| |2|6271827|Technic, Liftarm, Modified Bent Thick L-Shape 2 x 4|Red|Black| |3|6130002|Technic, Axle 6L|Red|Black| |1|6335578|Tile 2 x 6|Red|Black| |2|379521|Plate 2 x 6|Red|Dark Bluish Gray| |1|6130005|Technic, Axle 10L|Red|Black| |7|4206482|Technic, Axle 1L with Pin with Friction Ridges|Blue|Black| |20|6299413|Technic, Pin 3L with Friction Ridges|Blue|Black| |4|6271167|Technic Bush 1/2 Smooth|Yellow|Light Bluish Gray| |14|654124|Technic, Brick 1 x 1 with Hole|Yellow|8x Black, 6x Dark Bluish Gray| |1|6344181|Plate, Modified 1 x 2 with Pin Hole on Top|Yellow|Light Bluish Gray| |8|6130007|Technic, Axle 3L|Yellow|Black| |1|6072627|Technic, Liftarm, Modified T-Shape Thick 3 x 3|Yellow|Light Bluish Gray| |2|362224|Brick 1 x 3|Yellow|Black| |2|6170294|Technic, Liftarm Thin 1 x 6|Yellow|Black| |4|6474196|Bar 1L with Tow Ball|Orange?|Dark Bluish Gray| |4|4164022|Brick 1 x 2|Lime Green?|Dark Bluish Gray| |1|4164037|Plate 1 x 2|Lime Green?|Dark Bluish Gray| |5|4537937|Plate 2 x 2|Lime Green?|1x Light Bluish Gray, 4x Dark Bluish Gray|
Can we please get a post that explains what this community is for? Seems like nobody reads the sidebar (which is hard to access on most mobile clients) so we constantly get flooded with questions that would rather fit in !lemmy_support@lemmy.ml or !fediverse@lemmy.world
I understand that many people are still confused by how lemmy works but we should make clear that this is for general questions and discussions similar to what /r/askreddit was and not a place to ask technical questions about lemmy.
The fediverse is discussing if we should defederate from Meta's new Threads app. Here's why I probably won't (for now).
The fediverse is discussing if we should defederate from Meta's new Threads app. Here's why I probably won't (for now).
(Federation between plume and my lemmy instance doesn't work correctly at the moment, otherwise I would have made this a proper crosspost)
