Yyyyep

It shouldn't have to be said. And yet, here we are.

An important tweet

Absolutely this! Shutting down art because people don't like it is a problem, period.

it's true and you should say it.

I mean, I'm American and I think it's funny...

So I was playing one of my games the other day and got dropped into a dungeon with, I shit you not, 'Merica Homeofthebrave' and 'Freedom Isntfree'

Me, the healer: If you're both american Imma have to ask for a 500 gold copay before each healing spell I cast for you. 💰

Merica: that's not funny

Other DPS: it's a little funny

Getting hot here, and it's going to just get hotter. We all need to internalize all this stuff.

For all of the northerners that stood up for Texas during our freeze and said, "Don't make fun of them, they've never dealt with this before. Their infrastructure isn't made for snow and freezing."

This one is for you.

Where I live 108°F with 80% humidity with no wind is normal.

Pacific North West is dealing historic best waves 35-40°C or 95-105°F.

First of all. Don't make fun of them for bitching about the heat. Just like Texas isn't built for a freeze and our pipes burst, Pacific North West isn't built for heat and a lot of their homes don't have AC.

If you live somewhere with a high humidity like 80+ HUMIDITY IS NOT YOUR FRIEND. The "humidity makes it feel cooler" is a lie once it gets beyond a point.

If you live somewhere with a lower humidity, misters are nice to cool off outside.

Once you get over 90°F (32°C) a fan will not help you. It's just pushing around hot air. (I mean if you can't afford a small AC unit because they're expensive as hell, by all means a fan is better than nothing).

If you have pets, those portable AC units aren't safe. If your pets destroy the outtake thing, it'll leak CO2. Window units are safer.

Window AC units will let mosquitoes or other small bugs in. Sucks, but that's life.

Now is not the time to me modest. If you have to cover for religious reasons, by all means. If you don't, I've seen people wear short shorts and a swim top. It's not trashy if it keeps you from getting heat stroke.

If you do have to cover up for religious reasons, look for elephant pants or something similar. They're made with a breathable material.

Shade is better than no shade, but that shit it just diet sun after some point. Don't think shade will save you from heat stroke.

I know the "drink your water" is a fun meme now, but if you're sweating excessively you need electrolytes. Drink Gatorade, Powerade, or Pedialite PLEASE. I don't care if you're fucking sitting in one spot all day. That shit WILL save you from heat stroke.

Most importantly. RESEARCH THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HEAT STROKE AND HEAT EXHAUSTION PLEASE!

If you're diabetic and can't drink Gatorade, mix water, fruit juice, and either lite salt or pink salt

If you can afford it, cover windows with thick curtains to insulate the house

If you have tile floors, lay on them with skin to tile contact. If you don't, laying your head on cool counters works too.

If the temperature where you're at is hotter than your body temperature, don't wear heat wicking clothing. Moisture wicking is safe though.

Check your medication labels. Many make you more susceptible to sun and heat

-Room temperature water will get into your body faster. This is something I learned doing marching band in high summer in Georgia, and it saved all of our asses. Sip it, don't gulp it, especially if you're getting into the red; same goes for whatever fluid you're drinking. And just in general drink during the day.

-If you are moving from an air conditioned space to an un-air conditioned space, if at all possible try to make the shift gradual. When my dad and I were working outside and in un-ac houses a few years ago, he'd turn the air down to low in the truck about ten-fifteen minutes before we got where we were going. This way your body doesn't go from low low temps to high temps. S'bad for you.

-If you can, keep your lights off during the day. Light bulbs may not generate a lot of heat, but the difference is noticeable when it gets hot enough. I literally only turn my bedroom light on in the evening when it gets too dark.

Don't be afraid to just like... pour water on yourself if you need to. The evaporation will cool you off.

Put your hand to the cement for 15 seconds. If you can't handle the heat, it'll burn your dog's paws. Don't let them walk on it.

Dogs with flat faces are more prone to heat stroke. Don't leave them out unsupervised.

Frozen fruit is delicious in water.

Wet/Cold hat/handkerchief on your head/neck will help you stay cool.

Pickle juice is great for electrolytes! You can even make pickle juice Popsicles!

Heat exhaustion is more, "drink water and get you cooled off." Heat stroke is more "Oh my god call 911."

Image Description provided by @loveize

[Image description: an infographic showing the difference between heat exhaustion and heat stroke. The graphic is labeled "Heat Dangers: First Warning." Signs of heat exhaustion: faint or dizzy, excessive sweating, cool, pale, clammy skin, rapid, weak pulse, muscle cramps. If you think you or someone else may be experiencing heat exhaustion, get to a cool, air-conditioned place, drink water if conscious, and take a cool shower or use cold compress. Signs of heat stroke: throbbing headache, no sweating, red, hot, dry skin, rapid, strong pulse, may lose consciousness. If you think you or someone else may be experiencing heat stroke, call 911. End description]

Be safe.

-fae

That honestly sounds like the version of Quakerism that you make up to stir up everyone else against them.

The problem with studying Catholic heresies is that they litreally made a hobby out of inventing fully realised heretical theologies in order to accuse each other of subscribing to them. Basically every single one comes with a big asterisk noting that it's unclear whether anyone ever actually believed this, or whether some random theologian just made up a guy to get mad at – and the worst part is that you absolutely cannot tell just from looking at them, because the heresies we do have evidence of actual practice for are, if anything, even weirder. Like, the guys who thought Jesus was a hologram were 100% real, so you can't rule anything out!

This is legit.  Seriously.

taking any college course on societal issues in the united states is just like: *realizes its bc of reagan* *traces the cause back to reagan* *discovers the original policy came out of the reagan administration* *finds factual inaccuracies ignored by the reagan administration that are then used to push policy* *finds statistics that show the severity of the aids crisis as well as the beginning of mass incarceration of poc were caused by reagan* *hates reagan*

Hey, don't forget Orson Scott Card for this, too.

It's weird that to this day a lot of people don't really get the difference between like. "this author is a bad person and the work is problematic" normal style and the much more intense "the author is an important figure in a hate group and actively uses her money and power and fame to take away people's rights, and is currently very successful at doing that"

Absolutely...

...But Perry is still a trans guy. And I'm pretty sure Doof is, too.

I was feeling agitated and artblocked yesterday so I decided to give my brain a rest by watching TV and then the next thing I knew these were in front of me

Was it a third-party platform?

See, GrubHub and UberEats and Door dash and so on are apps created by computer people, NOT restaurant people, and speaking as someone who has had to be the restaurant tech guy putting stuff in those, it really shows!

It's a thing that comes up all the time, too. "These are the data reports that your POS will give you!"

"Okay, cool. Can I have coupon use by map sector for targeted local marketing?'

"Why would you want to--"

"Then how about deliveries by address instead of phone number? Dorms and hotels and things like that can have a hundred phone numbers for one address, and I want to-- why are you staring at me like that?"

And menus in third-party apps are just as bad. Sometimes, if you're very sneaky, you can figure out how to make something the programmers never thought of work for you, but you may have to have a good idea of how the program works, maybe a background in computer work... And many small restaurants just don't have someone for that.

(It also goes both ways, of course. "Why can't the program just do the thing I want?" Because it's not set up to, or the data doesn't exist, or...)

Okay, so: there's a local restaurant whose online ordering process involves various selecting various sauces to be included with one's order – so many units of teriyaki sauce, so many units of hot sauce, so may units of peanut sauce, and so forth.

The idea is supposed to be that you can select any combination of sauces you want, as long as it adds up to no more than four units. However, what the app actually required is that you select exactly four units of sauces; it wouldn't let you submit the ordering form if the total wasn't exactly four.

Just today I discovered that they seem to have fixed it... not by correcting the errant validation rule, but by adding a "no sauce" option, which counts toward the required total of four.

Thus, it's now possible to place an order with, say, two units of teriyaki sauce rather than four by entering 2x "teriyaki sauce" and 2x "no sauce". Similarly, an order with no sauce at all is 4x "no sauce".

This is quite possibly the least intuitive ordering process I've ever encountered, and I've literally worked in e-commerce.

Not Equal At All

Not Equal At All

Game Design Essay

Introduction

Many game systems offer a variety of choices or options during character creation; the general thinking among these options is that they are, in theory, “equal” to one another.  In other words, while there may be specific reasons to pick one or another for certain purposes, they can all be chosen without fear of one choice being clearly superior to the others, or at least close enough to not hinder gameplay and player enjoyment.  But this isn’t always the case, and in some games where very coarse-grained choices are part of the process, a wrong choice can have a heavy impact on character capabilities.  Let’s look over some examples.

(For the purposes of this essay, I’m NOT looking at comparative resource costs to get the same result, which is the bane of certain more-complex character creation systems, but instead circumstances where players may have a handful of choices to make.  The topics are similar, however.)

Broadness of Application

One area that this will often matter is broadness of application; if a character has a trait that can only be used in limited circumstances, they may feel very limited in play compared to a character with traits that can be used in a variety of ways.  Extremely freeform traits, such as Aspects in FATE, are susceptible to this problem.  (The FATE rulebook does provide guidelines, but it can still take experience to see the difference in application between Can Make Machines Purr and “Okay, I’m going for it!”  One is good for technological challenges, but the other could be used for almost anything.)

But sometimes, these issues with broad application are actually built into the system.  One example of this is the Sentinel Comics RPG.  PCs built in this game have two Principles in their Abilities list; without getting into game mechanics and probability too heavily, these are actually a very important resource for characters, because they allow characters to use the Overcome action with a dramatically improved success rate.  (The odds of complete success jump from extremely roughly 2% to 43%; PCs should rely on them a lot!)  Principles are selected off a list (and the full range of choices is sharply curtailed depending on character type), and everybody will always have precisely and only two of them, so they should, in theory, always be comparable.

But they aren’t.  An Overcome in SCRPG is, roughly speaking, beating a challenge that is not an opponent, whether it’s persuading an official, solving a puzzle, rescuing a drowning victim, or infiltrating a warehouse.  The Principles, among other things, have a triggering circumstance in which they can be used.  For example, the Principle of Lab says “Overcome while in a familiar workspace or when you have ample research time.”  That’s good when those very specific things are involved, but it becomes a very hard stretch to rescue a drowning victim or shift a boulder out of your way.  For contrast, the Principle of the Tactician says “Overcome when you can flashback to how you prepared for this exact situation.” For that one, it becomes almost impossible for the GM to deny its use, and fairly simple for a player to justify it.  Shift a boulder?  Studied leverage just in case.  Drowning victim?  Took lifeguarding classes to know what to do, anticipating trouble.  Persuade an official?  Did research on the profiles of all of them.  One is much more broadly useful than the other, period.  A player who plans ahead and picks at least one Principle that they can use in a wide range of situations will have a distinct advantage, but a random choice might find a character who is great at knowing locals and their own business and at situations where being small and young is an advantage and nothing more.  

(And yes, very creative and/or persuasive players may be able to somehow stretch and distort their Principle to fit anything, but there’s a point where it just goes outside rational use.)

Scenario Specific

During a scenario at a gaming convention I attended last year, one of the pregen PCs had their one-and-only special trait be a bonus at piloting extraterrestrial spacecraft.  In the course of the scenario, our characters wound up on a spacecraft that we couldn’t control or pilot in any way, arriving at another spacecraft that we then took over-- and that wrapped the game.  That player never had a chance to use their specialty; it was irrelevant to the game.  Now, that’s not good design, since it was a convention game with pregen PCs, but it showcases another kind of problem with unequal choices-- scenarios where some of the options for characters don’t matter.  A classic one is a character built for social encounters who finds the group frequently in deadly combat, but there are countless other examples that are possible.  (At the same convention, I wound up with a character whose major resources were related to hacking and communications, which was fine, but the only conflict involved very dangerous enemies attacking us while we were on a highway in the middle of nowhere, and it was set in the 80s, so there wasn’t much I could do with that.)  This is at least easier to solve if the GM is involved with the characters during the creation process, and can guide them into roles relevant to the scenario, but if that doesn’t happen, it’s all too easy for a character whose focus is not relevant for the game to simply be unable to participate in the way they wanted to, and that feels like a serious loss.

Combat and Noncombat

One key area where this matters in games is, of course, combat; woe betide the player whose character lags behind others in this arena, it is known, lest they simply die!  And that’s certainly a concern-- many RPGs involve a lot of combat, combat almost always involves the entire group, often takes up a lot of table time, and inability to participate meaningfully can get somebody killed.

But that’s actually not the only consideration here.  Being combat-capable is so ingrained into game design and character design that it’s almost not the largest concern compared to noncombat application in a number of game systems.  

One of the classic examples of this is the most popular game in the US and probably worldwide-- Dungeons and Dragons, notably the current edition.  In D&D, one class is “Fighter”; Fighters… fight.  They are good in specific aspects of combat; otherwise, they have skills.  But everyone gets skills; likewise, everyone can participate in combat, often challenging Fighters in their specific area of greatest strength (Single-target combat), and utterly triumphing over them in other aspects of combat (Crowd control, for example.)  It’s doubtlessly necessary for gameplay-- it wouldn’t do to have other classes be helpless in combat, which is a large part of D&D-- but outside of combat, things change.  Fighters can have Skills, as can all classes.  But spellcasting classes gain abilities that let them bypass Skill challenges, or let them do things that no Skill could ever accomplish, and this gap grows larger and larger even as the combat abilities of spellcasters grows with it.  

But this can also impact other systems!  In a relatively freeform system like Cortex, creativity can let a trait like Senses outperform Super Strength.  It’s easy enough to justify using Senses in combat-- analyzing a foe’s movement, spotting their weaknesses and strengths, and so on.  But Senses can also be used to solve puzzles, track enemies, potentially even have application in social settings.  Likewise, in some games, it’s very possible to even use social or psychological skills in combat, perhaps by creating “Good morale” assets for other to use.  However, conversely, it’s often much, much harder to apply combat skills to noncombat situations as broadly.  Being a master archer is much harder to apply to debate than it is to find a justification for a master of persuasion being able to distract a foe or boost an ally.  In this regard, it’s a serious issue if combat-themed characters can’t do anything out of combat, but the reverse isn’t true, and it’s something that needs to be considered, either in game design or in campaign design.

Does it even matter?

Does it actually matter if characters are unequal?  This is a delicate question, and depends in part on the group and the specific players.  If the differences aren’t great, of course, it surely matters less no matter what.  But sometimes it’s easy to see where one character has noteworthy advantages over the other… and I think that it does matter, broadly, and it’s worth addressing. Some players, for example, can become frustrated with their inability to contribute, or to act effectively, and that frustration isn’t fun, the more so when it’s not obvious that some choices aren’t as good.  Likewise, even if one player doesn’t mind being less capable, other players may become frustrated with that player’s weakness and having to cover for them; the GM, in turn, may find it more challenging to balance encounters and challenges while still allowing that player spotlight time.  Overall, the less inequality between equivalent choices, the more desirable the results will be, even if it’s fine with certain players.

Solutions

When making characters, of course, one should look at options and choose carefully, but that’s not always very satisfactory.  What if one’s character concept depends on certain choices, or if it’s not obvious that there’s a problem?  Another good place to work on this problem is at the design phase of a game, of course, but that’s not an option the majority of the time; most of us play games other people have already made.  (I’m a game designer, but for a variety of reasons, mostly play other people’s systems.)

Sadly, this means that a certain amount of work on the part of the GM becomes necessary; it is, however, worthwhile.  It’s good to see what choices players make, and then play to them.  Is the player immune to something?  Make sure it shows up so that they can have their moment!  Do they have a Principle that’s great at stealth?  Give them lots of chances to sneak in places!  Make sure to give players a chance to shine by adjusting scenarios to their characters, rather than making the players adjust to the scenario.  Sometimes, it’s the only solution, but I think that it’s the best one.