Small horses, like small dogs, are herd animals, are utterly convinced they are ten times their actual size, and will show this off at any opportunity.

A little more appreciation for nuance, empathy, and chill when it comes to “hot” topics would be appreciated.

Like just about every day I check Lemmy, and I find some really awful, yet highly-voted take (usually on politics, sometimes on tech or something) that sends my eyes rolling so hard I could probably hook them up to a generator and get carbon-free power.

I can deal with downtimes, community drama, and needing to grow conversations. But the hostility I see almost daily turns visiting Lemmy into a stressful, not welcoming experience.

Candy Corn. Some people insist they taste like wax, and I’m like, “What?!” I will chew those things all day long.

I’m wondering if the remaining fuel in the lower segments of the ship gave those sections more momentum, causing the whole hull to pivot around those heavier sections (especially with the loss of thruster capability being discussed).

With the Space Shuttle, this tendency was largely offset by the delta wings also causing greatly increased drag at the rear of the hull, but with fins folded the Starship doesn’t really have this. That plus the seeming loss of control due to thruster malfunction…

So, this is a bit of a “depending on the group & situation” thing.

Fudging HP is definitely a thing DMs (myself included) do. However, with an experienced group who can get a sense for how much HP is typical for mobs at a given level, and if the amount of damage done is quite clearly far enough that he ought to be dead, it can be hard to add HP without “showing the finger on the scales” - at which point the illusion breaks and it becomes “un-fun”.

This is exactly why single chunky bosses drive me nuts. I once watched a rogue annihilate a major chapter boss with a single opportunity attack and some very lucky rolls.

I like this answer because, like… a lot of the others are “clever” misinterpretations of how powers classically work, trying to force real-life physics into superhero logic and stuff.

But no. Not this one. Your mind-reading powers can function exactly like how comic books say it should, and you can still be scarred by what you found rummaging through that one guy’s head.

Yep. Someone else mentioned something called the “Typhon Pact”, which I didn’t know about but sounds reasonably close to what I was thinking.

I’d be kind of looking at a Cardassian-led counter-federation. Maybe the Gorn, maybe some others.

What would be interesting is if it weren’t an overtly evil “rah, rah, we gonna beat up the UFP and reclaim our glory!” so much as a “with the Klingons firmly Federation allies, the Dominion crushed, and the Romulans devastated, the Federation is unquestionably on top… and that kind of scares us. We’re going to band together because otherwise, the Federation could do whatever it wanted with us.”

Yep. It’s quite frustrating, because I want to support the concept of the community and what it supports tech-wise, but frequently I find myself clicking off the site because I’ve seen something political so eye-rollingly crazy I don’t feel like sticking around.

Going to echo the prior comment. But here’s my thoughts:

1. Was there a “session zero” in which the group’s expectations for the campaign and interactions were laid out? If not, it may be a good idea to pause and have this. Sometimes groups who are familiar with each other skip this because they “know each other”, but it can still be good on a campaign-by-campaign basis.

2. When you discuss it with them, try to start by determining why the DM is acting this way: Since it sounds like the DM likes firmly heroic characters, is this just what they find ‘cool’ or do they actually object to playing / having grey-er characters in their party or campaign? (Same kind of applies to the cleric’s player - are they just “playing the character”, or is this what the player feels is right?)

3. Ask if there’s been any miscommunications involved. The thing that sticks out as odd to me here, is that the DM clearly seemed to be urging you towards combat with stereotypically evil enemies in these scenarios… but views you initiating combat as “evil”? It’s possible something is getting lost in translation.

4. Since you and the rogue are both clearly enjoying less cut-and-dry characters, express that this isn’t just you-versus-them. Or you-versus-cleric-player. Broadly, try to avoid turning this into an argument between people.

5. This will fluctuate a bit depending on how roleplay-heavy your group is, but consider asking if this could be dealt with in-character. Is the cleric open to having a crisis of faith over working with such “tainted” people? Are you okay with your character sometimes being held back by other party members when they’d like to be proactive, so long as their view isn’t changed?

It’s called the double ear mutation! It’s a known recessive gene that appears in some cats.

The Culture is objectively the safer answer. Living in Star Trek feels like it carries a fairly significant daily risk of being assimilated / used in a Romulan plot / sucked into some weird negative space wedgie / having a console explode in your face for no good reason.

Meanwhile, if you’re in the Culture, you’ve pretty well got it made.

Not surprised, though I do wonder - would any present-day combat footage showing casualties pass the TOS? It’s not specifically “murder”, “charred bodies”, or anything else specifically stated, but the depiction of lives being lost (and the resultant corpses) is something of an inevitability.

Gaming “journalism” can’t afford outright say “company deliberately tries to hide enshittification of their game” aloud. Might lose that access to selective early copies for review!

Specifically talking about asphalt vs. concrete:

• Asphalt is relatively cheap vs. concrete. This is partly because asphalt is a whole lot easier to recycle than concrete, which is almost un-recyclable, but also because asphalt is a relatively “simple” material - it’s mostly petroleum byproducts and gravel.

• Concrete doesn’t grip very well, compared to the relatively textured surface of asphalt. Especially when wet! This is why you often see concrete formed with “ridges” or “bumps” cast into it. However…

• This also makes concrete noisier and bumpier to drive over, making drivers less happy. It’s why it’s often used for short, low-speed uses like driveways, parking lots, or side streets.

Just about the only thing concrete has going for it is it’s endurance, which it definitely wins handily.

Every few years another engineered road solution is conceived - I’ve seen variations that would use glass which could be ‘re-fused’, concepts for recycling plastic waste, and many more. Most of these run into the issue that they’re either less ‘grippy’, or that they simply cost more even accounting for the longer lifespan.

Honestly? I’d crank out the fictional settings I’ve been tinkering with for a long time (one a military-political science fiction setting, the other a dark fantasy one).

Part of the problem is that I tend to think and create visually, so I don’t feel writing really captures either very well. I can picture, in my head, how I want to visually frame the most enthralling or emotional moments… but translating them to words never seems to capture it. So an AGI that could produce the media from my imagination on-demand is pretty much a dream come true.

I have actually heard the “original person” complaining about this… but the original person is also the kind of person who wants a picture-perfect ocean view every single day. Wind turbines? Visual pollution. Ships passing by? Visual pollution. Their neighbor has too many holiday decorations up? Visual pollution.

They just genuinely expect the rest of civilization around them to comply to their demands for a fantasy-perfect oceanside existence.

This is the problem I have as well. With a group new to D&D, it’s not so bad - they’re likely to take creatures which are cool, but not necessarily stealthiest or most situationally-fitting. It’s okay to have the bandit ask “…wait, why is a raven this far into a giant underground mine?”

Then you have the veteran players who have invisible, indefinite, sometimes incorporeal familiars… the most egregious was one who would cast through his nigh-undetectable familiar, making many encounters moot as the familiar could just ping down stuff without ever being spotted in return.

I’ve been here since that time, and I’m pretty sure your guide to the Fediverse was a huge help in understanding how the Fediverse works. Thank you very much for it.

Politics-wise, I still frankly see some frankly rather alarming takes on here, but that just makes me more committed to building this up to be a better place. I’m certainly glad to see another friend here as well!