kattfisk

A neat thing is that a lot of command line programs use readline. So learning and configuring it will also be useful in for example the Python REPL and calc.

Here are some neat configuration options you can put in ~/.inputrc

set completion-ignore-case on
set show-all-if-ambiguous on
set completion-prefix-display-length 9
set blink-matching-paren on
set mark-symlinked-directories on

And if you are a sensible person who is used to vim

set editing-mode vi
set show-mode-in-prompt on

I actually do not miss the powerful save-or-suck mechanics as "roll the dice to see if you get to keep playing" is more randomly punishing than fun IMO.

But getting rid of damage type resistance doesn't make any sense, as that's one of the few ways weapon choice actually matters!

Giving monsters better initiative seems like a good idea, because otherwise they risk dying without getting to actually do much.

Making creatures like Gith and Gnoll, Aberrations and Fiends etc. makes sense, and gives a bit more meat to the creature types. But having them not be humanoids also seems really weird. Either they should be both, or "humanoid" should be renamed.

So it really seems like a mixed bag to me. Good well implemented ideas, good poorly implemented ideas, as well as oversimplifications.

Pigeons are actually a domesticated animal that used to be bred for (among other things) food. So you re-domesticate a few of them, and then eat their offspring which you feed household scraps.

You might also save on heating in the winter by having larger cattle in your house and sleeping on a loft above them.

Yeah, like the music or movie industry, it's rife with abuse because there are so many young people who dream of working in it that there's always fresh meat for the grinder.

And selection pressure means the industry veterans in charge are people who somehow thrived in this environment, so they're unlikely to change things.

I have a friend who worked in vfx on some very high-profile movies and shows, stuff you have definitely seen. And that industry actually seems even worse! Everyone is a contractor, so you work on one project, and then you don't have a job anymore, and you better make the bosses happy if you want to get another contract ever again. Everything is stunningly poorly planned, with deadlines that are impossible to meet without working all night, constant last-minute changes from fickle directors and incredible amounts of nitpicking and demands of perfectionism.

This is likely exactly the type of industry they are turning game development into. Because it's maximum profit with minimum responsibility. Hire the best in the world, squeeze the most work in the shortest time you can out of them, and then toss them to the wind when they're spent.

Many years ago. But as you said, it's a big industry, and the US is not an easy place to unionize in.

Pretty much all Germans with any experience post WW2 were in some way nazis. As I understand it, you had to be a party member to hold any important job.

Something like an actual true NATO-nazi conspiracy is how nazi chief of staff and war criminal Franz Halder ended up avoiding the Nuremberg trials and working with the US Army Historical Division and the coming founder of the CIA to create the myth of a clean and non-political Wehrmacht.

But any reasonable person will understand that that was an enemy-of-my-enemy kind of deal. (We all know NATO are secretly Islamists as proven by Operation Cyclone.)

I think the simple answer is that DnD is a game focused on combat, so it'll have a lot of cool hostile creatures, while Lord of the Rings is focused on exploration and drama, so it'll have a lot of cool places and friendly creatures.

But when I compile a mental list of all the fights in LotR + The Hobbit, they do feature quite a varied assortment of monsters. Trolls, orcs, spiders, a dragon, a balrog, wargs, nazghuls, ringwraits, wights, the watcher, olifants. Then there are the non-hostile monsters like ents, eagles, ghosts, and shape-shifters.

So I'm not sure the enemy variety in DnD is that much greater in relation to the amount of time spent fighting.

I've mostly read the new PHB, but I feel like the clarity of the updated rules make it obvious how needlessly confusing much of original 5e was.

Sure, charging full price for what is mostly rephrasing and polish does feel a bit rich.

But refusing to give the new edition it's own damn name makes my blood boil. Trying to explain to my players that while most parts of fifth edition is compatible with fifth edition, some parts of fifth edition is actually not compatible with fifth edition, has significantly shortened my life span.

I have no idea if this is true, but it certainly fits the very strange vibe of the game.

It's like how I would imagine the most violent cops see the world.

All people are awful. Every criminal is a heavily armed, highly trained, fearless lunatic, who does not care if they live or die, as long as there's a tiny chance they can hurt more people. Civilians are uncooperative, ungrateful, and suicidal.

Every deployment, no matter how routine, will likely lead you into an ambush by dudes with assault rifles.

Avoiding bloodshed is almost impossible and even trying is likely to get you killed.

The game has some of the strangest bugs.

The last time I tried to play, I had no UI at all, but only in multiplayer. It worked fine in single player, but if I joined or created a multiplayer game, the whole HUD was just gone and nothing could make it appear.

That's really the only time I've tried to play it since 1.0, and I'm not going to blame them for bugs in early access. But loosing the mission after the last civilian (Daniella Voll) managed to trap two officers in a bugged closed and slap us to death was as infuriating as it was hilarious.

Never found even harvesting to require more than the occasional puff of smoke. But we had Buckfast, and made sure to replace the queen of any aggressive colony. Maybe you have more aggressive breeds.

Looking around there does seem to be people who use tobacco. I guess poisoning the bees probably makes them more docile 😅 Still a bad idea though