Seriously this was very surprising. I've been experimenting with GrayJay since it was announced and I largely think it's a pretty sweet app. I know there are concerns over how it isn't "true open source" but it's a hell of a lot more open than ReVanced. Plus, I like the general design and philosophy of the app.

I updated the YouTube backend recently and to my surprise and delight they had added support for SponsorBlock. However, when I went to enable it, it warned me "turning this on harms creators" and made me click a box before I could continue.

Bruh, you're literally an ad-blocking YouTube frontend. What kind of mental gymnastics does it take to be facilitating ad-blocking and then at the same time shame the end-user for using an extension which simply automates seeking ahead in videos. Are you seriously gonna tell me that even without Sponsorblock, if I skip ahead past the sponsored ad read in a video, that I'm "harming the creator"?

I assume that of course we are posting the iconic Lower Decks character who is Peanuthamper's father.

How exactly do the Klingons justify using cloaking ships, a strategy which necessarily involves sneaking up on an enemy and catching them unaware? Wouldn't sneak attacks conflict with their notion of honour?

The party finds a secret door. Not knowing what's on the other side, they send the fighter in first. The fighter pushes open the secret door. As it swings forward it pushes aside a corpse on the other side that apparently died trying to pry open the secret door and escape from the next room.

The fighter steps over the corpse, walks into the room, looks around, sees there are no enemies immediately attacking him, and says to the rest of the party "come on in guys, looks like it's safe in here!"

I'll preface this by saying I'm a very new GM, so I'm fairly sure I made the wrong ruling here, but as the saying goes, the best ruling is the one that keeps the game going. I was running the first session of Abomination Vaults last weekend and something came up that I'm not sure how to handle RAW.

Basically, a PC wanted to use the Lie activity in order to talk their way out of a fight. They were fighting a group of Mitflits, and had already used Recall Knowledge to know that Mitflits are easy to manipulate. The PC speaks Undercommon, and they are a Bard, but they want their character to be friendly and therefore didn't like the idea of using Demoralize or Coerce. They instead tried to use the Lie activity. They told one of the Mitflits that the party was sent by their boss, and therefore they should let them go. They rolled a critical success on the Lie. Now I needed to decide what to do with that.

This was a weird situation, because the rules don't really say what lying can accomplish. All it says is that the target believes the lie. Given that the combat had already started, and the PCs had already attacked some of the Mitflits with lethal attacks, it seemed impossible to me that this Mitflit would actually stop fighting (ie. go from hostile to unfriendly), even if he believed the lie. The lie was convincing in terms of how it was worded, but the situation in which it was spoken made it kinda unbelievable. But then again, Mitflits are supernaturally easy to manipulate and bully. Ultimately I ruled that the targeted Mitflit would become Frightened 1, as though the Bard had succeeded on a Demoralize. My reasoning being that the Mitflit believes the lie, but also believes he should continue fighting the PCs. This cognitive dissonance in his mind shocked him and distracted him from the fight at hand.

I'm curious if any GMs out there have any tips on what the best way to handle this would have been.

I've noticed that many archetypes with a level 2 dedication feat simply don't have any level 4 feats. How does this work with the free archetype variant rule? Do you just discard the bonus feat slot at level 4? Also, does playing with this variant rule essentially make it impossible to take a level 4 dedication feat at level 4?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/1339512

As a GM I'd like to feel like I fully understand how to utilize my monsters tactically, but over the past couple months as I've been running the beginner box and now leading into Abomination Vaults, I feel as though I'm very often just making three strikes with an enemy or moving and striking twice unless the enemy has a very specific action in its statblock which is obviously better. Like a dragon is obviously supposed to use its breath weapon, but then I ran goblin warriors last night and I couldn't even figure out how to use their scurry reaction beneficially.

As a GM I'd like to feel like I fully understand how to utilize my monsters tactically, but over the past couple months as I've been running the beginner box and now leading into Abomination Vaults, I feel as though I'm very often just making three strikes with an enemy or moving and striking twice unless the enemy has a very specific action in its statblock which is obviously better. Like a dragon is obviously supposed to use its breath weapon, but then I ran goblin warriors last night and I couldn't even figure out how to use their scurry reaction beneficially.

I just played Codenames for the first time and was in the situation of needing to clue "Ninja" and "Czech" for the win. Ended up going with "Defenestrate". My teammates didn't end up getting it but I'm still proud of coming up with anything that could link those two words.

What are some you've played that were memorable?